A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jaime VII

Jaime comes home lighter by a hand to a son dead in state and a sister who no longer fits him; grief and worse are had beside Joffrey's bier.

The chapter retold

Jaime Lannister comes home to King's Landing missing a hand and finds his son lying in state ÔÇö Joffrey, publicly his nephew, privately the child he was never allowed to claim ÔÇö dead of poison before Jaime ever had the chance to know him as anything but a monster from a careful distance. The homecoming he imagined, whatever shape it took in his head during the long ride south, did not include this.

Cersei, gutted by grief and half-mad with the certainty that Tyrion is responsible, no longer fits against Jaime the way she used to ÔÇö the twins who were once each other's whole world find the old intimacy strained by a hand that is gone and a son that is gone with it, both losses sitting between them at Joffrey's bier in ways neither can fully voice. The chapter measures exactly how much the book's two great catastrophes ÔÇö the maiming, the murder ÔÇö have changed the Lannister twins' bond without either of them saying so directly.

This movement: The Purple Wedding and the Trial

• Joffrey chokes at his own wedding feast, purple as his namesake; Sansa vanishes with a fool and a hairnet lighter by one stone.
• Tyrion stands trial for kingslaying; Shae's testimony cuts deepest; he demands trial by combat.
• Oberyn Martell fights the Mountain for a confession ÔÇö and wins everything but the ending.
• Petyr Baelish sails Sansa to the Vale as his "daughter Alayne"; Lysa marries him inside a week.