A Storm of Swords — Jaime VIII
In the white tower Jaime reads his own thin page in the White Book — then arms Brienne with Oathkeeper and a quest: find Sansa Stark, keep her safe.
The chapter retold
In the White Sword Tower, Jaime Lannister reads his own entry in the Kingsguard's official history — the White Book, where every knight's deeds are recorded for posterity — and finds his own page thin, undistinguished, dominated by a single damning line about regicide with none of the context he gave Brienne in the bathhouse at Harrenhal. Seeing his life reduced to that record stings in a way physical maiming never quite managed to.
Rather than dwell on it, Jaime acts: he arms Brienne with Oathkeeper, one of two Valyrian steel swords reforged from Ned Stark's Ice, and sends her out from King's Landing on a quest with real moral weight behind it — find Sansa Stark, wherever Littlefinger has taken her, and keep her safe, whatever that costs. It is Jaime's first fully self-directed act of the kind of honor his white cloak was always supposed to represent, undertaken not for reputation but because he has decided, privately, that it matters.
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 — and wins everything but the ending.
- Petyr Baelish sails Sansa to the Vale as his "daughter Alayne"; Lysa marries him inside a week.