It’s double Ned for Chapters 43 and 45. Plus, Sansa is a bit useful this time around.
We’re starting to see the repercussions of Catelyn’s decision to kidnap Tyrion in Chapter 43. Villages and holdfasts in the Riverlands are being pillaged and burned by brigands who might actually be knights under Tywin Lannister’s command. The lords of the Riverlands are pretty upset about this and have come to court to seek some justice. Their biggest piece of evidence is that the lead brigand looks exactly like Ser Gregor Clegane aka The Mountain. The reasoning being that if it looks like The Mountain, sounds like The Mountain, and acts like The Mountain, it probably is The Mountain.
Unfortunately, nothing can really be done about the pillaging since King Robert is off hunting presumably with his fingers firmly in his ears. So, Ned decides that the best course of action is to send a bunch of knights (and most of his men) off to execute The Mountain in hopes that it will restore peace. It most likely won’t, but it’s nice of Ned to try. The Mountain is not a nice guy, what with having burned off most his brother’s face and bashing Rhaegar’s son’s head in and beheading his horse after it bucked him. He does have a bit of a temper, and I don’t think a group of knights, even with orders from the king, would be able keep him from losing his cool and hulking out on all of them.
Next up, we come back to Sansa to her version of the court dealings, which is pretty lackluster true be told. As I’ve said before, I like Sansa. Her journey is one that we don’t really get to see in a lot of fantasies. I just wish she would start it already. Sansa has good sense, but a lot of it is eroded by her fantasies and naivety. She’s not completely blind to the world around her; she just ignores or rationalizes away anything that gets in the way of her perfect view of the world she has created for herself. In a sense, Sansa is the embodiment of all those girl protagonists from Twilight and its rip offs who ignore all the abusive and problematic things their boyfriends do in their respective books because love. All of Sansa’s problems are summed up in one passage:
In the songs, the knights never killed the magical beasts, they just went up to them and touched them and did them no harm, but she knew Joffrey liked hunting, especially the killing part. Only animals, though.
This part encapsulates both Sansa’s and Joffrey’s personalities. Sansa can see that Joffrey really loves to kill things but she is able to rationalize it away by clarifying that he only kills animals, and it just nails another nail in the coffin for Joffrey, psychopath-in-training. It’s also probably why she doesn’t take going back to Winterfell very well. Sansa has hit the jackpot. She has a one way ticket to a life of luxury and didn’t have to anything but be born in order to get it. Now, her father has taken away her one chance. I hope that she doesn’t do anything stupid.
It’s thanks to Sansa that Ned has finally figured out why Jon Arryn was killed: he found out about Cersei and Jamie’s affair and that all of her children are bastards. DUN DUN DUN. Unfortunately, Ned is an honorable man and instead of running off and telling King Robert or Lord Renly about this, he decides to give Cersei a chance to run away with her children.
I haven’t really talked much about Cersei in awhile, mainly because she’s stayed on the side lines and is only mentioned by Robert and others in the pejorative. She does seem to like to cause misery for others, especially her husband and Tyrion, but she does love her children and Jaime (even if their relationship is really creepy). She’s an ambitious and highly complicated woman. Even Ned has to concede that he and Catelyn might do some of the things she’s done in order to protect her children. I just wish Ned would not underestimate her as much as he did in this chapter. Cersei has arranged the death of Jon Arryn, tried to kill Bran, and has the might of one of the most powerful families in Westeros behind her. Does Ned really think she’s just going to walk away from this? What a bonehead!
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