S1·E4 — Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things

The hour retold

The title is Tyrion’s phrase, and the hour is built around it: a catalogue of the people the realm was not designed for. Tyrion, passing through Winterfell, hands Bran the drawing of a saddle a cripple can ride — kindness from the family that crippled him, which nobody knows yet but Bran’s dreams. Sam Tarly arrives at the Wall, fat, frightened, and disowned with a hunting-accident threat, and Jon quietly makes the bullies stand down — the first time Jon leads anything. Meanwhile the Hand’s tourney opens with the Mountain putting a lance through a young knight’s throat, and Sansa learns that the pageantry she loves has blood just under the paint.

Underneath the pageant, two investigations converge. Ned follows Jon Arryn’s last steps to an armorer’s shop and a black-haired apprentice with Robert’s jaw — the dead Hand was counting the king’s bastards, and someone killed him for the arithmetic. And at a crossroads inn, Catelyn Stark rises from a table, calls on her father’s bannermen by name and pedigree, and arrests Tyrion Lannister for a crime he did not commit. It is a magnificent scene and a catastrophic decision: the wrong dwarf, seized on a liar’s evidence, and every sword in the room answers her. The war that will eat the Starks starts here, at dinner, on bad information.

What happens

• The Hand's tourney opens; the Mountain's lance finds Ser Hugh of the Vale's throat.
• Ned follows Jon Arryn's last steps to an armorer's shop — and Robert's black-haired bastard.
• Samwell Tarly arrives at the Wall, and Jon makes the bullies stand down.
• Viserys learns he will ride in a khalasar's dust; Daenerys stops flinching.
• At the Crossroads Inn, Catelyn calls on her father's bannermen and arrests Tyrion Lannister.

The people of the episode

The fallen — spoilers

• Ser Hugh of the Vale — Jon Arryn's former squire, opened at the throat by the Mountain's lance.