A Feast for Crows ÔÇö Jaime VI
The riverlands fold back into the king's peace keep by keep; his aunt Genna tells Jaime a hard truth ÔÇö Tyrion was Tywin's son, and Jaime never was.
The chapter retold
Jaime's slow circuit of the riverlands continues, castle after castle folding back into the king's peace with more ink spent than iron ÔÇö but the chapter's real weight lands in a private conversation with his aunt Genna Lannister, Tywin's sister, newly widowed by the war's arithmetic. Genna does not flatter him. She tells Jaime, gently and without cruelty, that of Tywin's three children it was Tyrion ÔÇö mocked, disowned, blamed for Joanna's death every day of his life ÔÇö who was truly their father's son: ruthless, brilliant, unforgiving of weakness, capable of building or burning a house down to its foundations. Jaime, the golden knight who spent a lifetime performing the role of heir, never actually wanted Casterly Rock, and Genna says so plainly, watching to see whether it lands.
It lands. The chapter recontextualizes the entire Lannister family dynamic mere chapters after the reader has watched Tyrion put a crossbow bolt through Tywin's chest ÔÇö Genna's verdict suggests Tywin's fatal misjudgment of his own children was no incidental cruelty but a blind spot as deep as any in the book, mistaking the son who looked like him for the son who actually thought like him. For Jaime, already unmoored from the Kingslayer identity that used to explain him to himself, it is one more plank pulled out from under a life built on being Tywin's heir ÔÇö a role, Genna implies, he was only ever cast in, and never suited for.
This movement: The Walk of the Lion
- The Faith turns on Cersei: her own scheme's whore-witness recites her sins, and the High Sparrow's cells gain a queen.
- Cersei's letter begs Jaime to be her champion; he reads it in the rain at Riverrun and burns it.
- Sam reaches Oldtown to find Pate at the Citadel's door ÔÇö a Pate who died in the prologue, wearing a smile.
- Brienne meets the Brotherhood's new lady: hooded, hanged-throated, unforgiving. Her choice: the noose, or Jaime.