A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jaime VI
A dream under a weirwood stump turns Jaime's horse around: back to Harrenhal, where a bear pit is singing ÔÇö the bear, the bear, and the maiden fair.
The chapter retold
A dream beneath a weirwood stump does what nothing else could: it turns Jaime Lannister's horse around, away from King's Landing and back toward Harrenhal, on nothing more concrete than a feeling he cannot fully explain even to himself. What he finds justifies the detour completely ÔÇö Vargo Hoat's men have thrown Brienne of Tarth into a bear pit for entertainment, making cruel sport of the old song about the bear and the maiden fair by staging it for real, with a starved bear and a woman armed with nothing but a wooden tourney sword.
Jaime, one hand gone and the other barely trained, jumps into the pit anyway rather than watch her die for his captors' amusement ÔÇö an act with no strategic value and every emotional one, the clearest proof yet that whatever Jaime is becoming since the bath at Harrenhal, it is no longer a man who calculates his own safety first. The rescue does not undo his maiming or erase what the Kingslayer name has cost him, but it marks the moment the book stops asking readers to merely tolerate Jaime and starts asking them to root for him.
This movement: The Red Wedding
- Edmure weds Roslin Frey under the Twins' roof; the bread and salt are eaten; the music is wrong.
- Crossbows from the gallery, tent canvas cut over the feast outside, Grey Wind penned and shot.
- Robb dies with Roose Bolton's steel in his heart: "Jaime Lannister sends his regards."
- Catelyn opens her own face with her nails, and a Frey opens her throat. The North dies at a wedding.