A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Jon XII
Queen Selyse and her court roost in the King's Tower with red priest and fool; Jon plans the Hardhome rescue by sea over every objection Bowen Marsh can spell.
The chapter retold
Queen Selyse arrives at the Wall with her strange, diminished court in tow ÔÇö Patchface the fool, a red priest of her own, a retinue thinned by a king who took the fighting men and left her the ornamental ones ÔÇö and roosts in the KingÔÇÖs Tower while Jon tries to plan a rescue mission to Hardhome by sea, against the loud, principled objections of Bowen Marsh, who considers spending Watch resources on wildlings a betrayal of everything the order stands for.
The chapter stages JonÔÇÖs authority as under siege from two directions at once ÔÇö a queenÔÇÖs court demanding deference he has no patience to spare, and his own First Steward arguing, not unreasonably by the WatchÔÇÖs oldest logic, that Jon has stopped serving the realm of men and started serving free folk instead. Every argument Marsh makes is coherent and defensible on its own terms, which is what makes the mounting confrontation genuinely dangerous rather than simply villainous ÔÇö Jon is not fighting fools, heÔÇÖs fighting men convinced, with reason, that heÔÇÖs the one in the wrong.
This movement: The Dragon's Peace Breaks
- Cersei walks her penance through King's Landing, shorn and naked, while her champion waits: an eight-foot silence in white armor.
- Kevan Lannister steadies the realm as regent ÔÇö competence the realm can't be allowed to keep.
- On the Dothraki sea, Dany ÔÇö fevered, alone but for Drogon ÔÇö meets Khal Jhaqo's riders in the grass.
- Asha, Stannis's prisoner, watches the northmen prepare a battle in the snow that the book leaves unfought.