A Feast for Crows ÔÇö Cersei VI

Taena's poison bears fruit: Cersei builds a trap for Margaery out of the Blue Bard's fear and Osney Kettleblack's ambition, and calls it statecraft.

The chapter retold

Lady Taena's whispered poison in Cersei's ear finally produces its intended fruit: Cersei begins actively engineering Margaery's downfall, using the frightened Blue Bard ÔÇö a singer with damaging knowledge or testimony to offer ÔÇö and the ambitious, malleable Osney Kettleblack as the instruments of a trap she is quietly proud of designing. She frames the whole scheme to herself as brilliant statecraft, the kind of ruthless maneuvering her father would have approved of, without registering how thoroughly it depends on people she barely controls telling exactly the story she wants them to tell.

The chapter shows Cersei's plotting at its most active and, from the reader's vantage, its most reckless ÔÇö she is building a trap using tools (a frightened singer, an ambitious social climber, a fanatic High Sparrow she personally armed) that have no particular loyalty to her once the scheme is set in motion. Every piece she is placing on the board here will, within a few more chapters, turn and point directly back at her; the chapter is essentially the queen loading a weapon she has not thought through who else it might hit.

This movement: The Queenmaker

• Arianne Martell steals Myrcella to crown her by Dornish law; Ser Arys Oakheart dies for it and Myrcella loses an ear.
• Doran reveals the game beneath the stillness: Dorne has been wedding itself to the dragons for years.
• Cersei springs her trap on Margaery with a perjured singer ÔÇö and the Faith takes the little queen.
• In the Vale, Alayne Stone keeps Sweetrobin dosed while Littlefinger collects the Lords Declarant like debts.