A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Tyrion VI
The ripples reach King's Landing as laughter: Joffrey crows about serving Robb's head at his wedding, and Tywin explains why a dozen at dinner is cheaper than ten thousand in battle.
The chapter retold
News of the Red Wedding reaches King's Landing not as horror but as triumph. Joffrey crows about it at length, delighted by the idea of serving Robb Stark's head at his own upcoming wedding feast as a centerpiece, a joke in monstrously bad taste that nobody at court has the standing to correct. Tywin Lannister, unmoved by either the cruelty or the spectacle, explains the calculation behind the massacre to Tyrion with the same flat clarity he applies to everything: a dozen deaths bought at a wedding table cost the Lannisters far less, in gold and in soldiers, than ten thousand more deaths on a battlefield would have.
The chapter is the war's aftermath filtered through the people who benefited from it rather than the people who suffered it, and the contrast is the point ÔÇö a boy king's glee and an old lord's cost-accounting standing in for the entire realm's verdict on the Starks' destruction. Tyrion, caught between disgust and his father's unassailable logic, has no real answer, which is its own kind of horror.
This movement: The Wall Holds
- Mance's host hits Castle Black from both sides; Donal Noye trades his life for a giant's in the gate.
- Jon commands the Wall with quips and a crossbow ÔÇö until the Watch arrests him for oath-breaking.
- Stannis lands at the Wall with the fury of the one king who answered the letters.
- In King's Landing, the realm dresses for a royal wedding no god intends to bless.