A Feast for Crows ÔÇö Sansa I
High in the Eyrie, Alayne Stone soothes a lord of eight who screams for the Moon Door; below, the Vale's lords gather against Littlefinger with Marillion's song for evidence.
The chapter retold
High in the Eyrie, Sansa Stark ÔÇö living under Littlefinger's invented identity as his bastard daughter Alayne Stone ÔÇö spends her days managing Robert Arryn, her sickly, terrified young cousin, who screams for the Moon Door whenever he is crossed and needs constant, exhausting soothing to function at all. Below them, trouble is brewing that Alayne cannot fully see: the Lords Declarant, a faction of Vale nobles, are gathering to challenge Petyr Baelish's guardianship of Sweetrobin, suspicious of how convenient Lysa Arryn's death at the Moon Door was, and armed with a ballad ÔÇö composed by the surviving singer Marillion, who was made to take the fall for Lysa's murder ÔÇö that hints at more than the official story admits.
The chapter is a masterclass in dramatic irony: the reader, unlike the Lords Declarant, knows exactly how Lysa died and at whose hand, which makes every step of Littlefinger's approaching political crisis feel like a fuse burning toward a room only Sansa fully understands the danger of. Sansa's competence as Alayne ÔÇö patient, watchful, endlessly diplomatic with a boy who could have her thrown out a door on a whim ÔÇö is the chapter's real subject: she is becoming, in exile and disguise, exactly the kind of political operator the Eyrie's regency actually needs.
This movement: The Kingsmoot
- On Old Wyk the drowned god's captains vote: Asha offers peace, Victarion strength ÔÇö and Euron Crow's Eye offers dragons.
- The Crow's Eye takes the driftwood crown with a horn said to bind dragons, and sends Victarion to court Daenerys.
- Cersei's small war on Margaery begins: spies, whores, and a walking corpse under Qyburn's care.
- The Sand Snakes are locked away as Dorne seethes over Oberyn; Arianne plots a queen of her own.