A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Jon VII
The Watch weds fire and ice: Alys Karstark flees a stolen inheritance to the Wall, and Jon marries her to the Magnar of Thenn before her kin can steal her back.
The chapter retold
A refugee girl named Alys Karstark arrives at the Wall in flight from a forced marriage engineered by her uncle to seize Karhold for himself, throwing herself on JonÔÇÖs protection with nowhere else in the North safe enough to run to. Jon solves her problem and solidifies a wary alliance in the same stroke, marrying her instead to Sigorn, the young Magnar of Thenn, binding a free-folk chieftainÔÇÖs son to northern nobility before her scheming kin can drag her back south to claim her inheritance by force.
The wedding is JonÔÇÖs clearest demonstration yet of statecraft rather than soldiering ÔÇö using the WatchÔÇÖs neutral ground and his own authority to solve a southern inheritance dispute and cement a wildling integration at the same time, killing two political problems with one ceremony. It is also, quietly, a rehearsal for exactly the kind of overreach his enemies at the Wall will hold against him: a Lord Commander arranging northern marriages is a Lord Commander acting like a king, and not everyone watching intends that as a compliment.
This movement: The Winterfell Knot
- Winterfell fills with Bolton banners and murdered guests; someone is killing Freys in the dark and the walls whisper 'Theon'.
- Abel the bard and his washerwomen ÔÇö spearwives ÔÇö recruit a broken creature to steal 'Arya' out of the castle.
- Theon remembers his name jumping from the battlements with a weeping girl in his arms, into the snow.
- Jon lets the free folk through the Wall by the thousand and lends Val, loans wildlings, and writes letters lords burn.