A Feast for Crows ÔÇö Cersei VII
The Blue Bard breaks on the third night of questioning; Margaery Tyrell and her cousins are taken by the Faith, and Cersei toasts her own genius.
The chapter retold
Cersei's trap finally closes: the Blue Bard, worn down after three nights of questioning by the Faith Militant, breaks and gives the testimony Cersei engineered him to give. Margaery Tyrell and her cousins are seized by the Faith on charges that mix real and manufactured sins together, and Cersei toasts her own cleverness in private, utterly convinced she has just removed her greatest rival from the board with none of her own fingerprints visible on the blade.
The chapter is Cersei's apparent triumph, staged with maximum irony for a reader who already suspects the High Sparrow answers to no one, least of all the woman who armed him. Margaery's arrest reads, in the moment, as total victory ÔÇö but everything about how it was achieved (through the Faith's own investigative and moral authority, which Cersei personally restored a few chapters earlier) is quietly setting up the machinery that the queen has no way of switching off once it turns its attention toward her.
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.