Do you know how competitive reality audiences can predict, with some accuracy, who’s going to be eliminated at the end of the episode? They know because the episode footage and contestant “confessionals” tend to get edited to focus on that person. It’s a Ned chapter again. I’m just saying.
The Dothraki have their own interpretation of “dinner and a show” and it’s something. Drogo cuts a heart out of a stallion and serves it to Dany, who has to consume it for the benefit of the dosh khaleen, the Merry Widows of Vaes Dothrak. I’m not at all squeamish about the fact that it’s a heart, but it’s raw and she’s pregnant! Surely that’s bad for reasons of salmonella or, I don’t know, it just seems axiomatic that pregnant ladies should not be consuming large quantities of fresh blood. Then again, I fully plan to eat sushi if I feel like it if I’m ever pregnant, so maybe I’m just a big old hypocrite.
Ned’s chapters are coming so often that he’s starting to remind me of Old Spice Man. “Now back to me!” Unlike Old Spice Man, however, Ned does not have the abs with which to entice me. He doesn’t have diamonds either, and he’s one of the few Starks who are not, have not been, and are not planning to be on a boat.
Ned is internally whining about how uncomfortable the Iron Throne is. That’s not a metaphor about the burdens of kingship, the throne is literally the least comfortable seat imaginable. On the other hand, at least it’s a seat, the people flooding the hall to seek the king’s justice have to stay standing, except for Varys and Littlefinger (and Pycelle, who doesn’t count). I think the entire scene is a metaphor for this book: the little guys are screwed, the kings are screwed in a more showy fashion, only the slimy bastards are doing well for themselves.
Ser Alliser Thorne is giving the Night’s Watch recruits an inspirational speech, a phrase that here means being emotionally crippled by deep-seated childhood trauma, stemming from the incident during which he witnessed his mother fellating a pony only to later find out that it was his father indulging a My Little Pony fetish, and therefore being able to express feelings towards men younger than twenty-five only by metaphorically jerking his dick and ejaculating a pile of abuse all over them.
Catelyn is feeling poetic about the view from her window. It sounds very pretty, but Tyrion’s fate is hanging in the balance, so maybe we should hurry this along, hm? I will say this about the picturesque beginning to the chapter: it’s about a waterfall named Alyssa Arryn after a woman who’s been dead for six thousand years. Now, it could just be me, but six thousand years seems like an awfully long time for one family to still be ruling this one patch of land. I don’t think any dynasty on Earth ever cracked the thousand-year mark, and I’ve done extensive research, a phrase which here means spending five minutes on Wikipedia. Forget ruling dynasties, is there even a family, any family, that can be traced back that far? How politically stable would a region have to be for allow for that kind of longevity not to mention records-keeping? Look up 4000 BC, we certainly don’t know much about it.
Ned is flying high on “milk of the poppy.” We all know what it means when a character is injured, unconscious, and medicated: it’s dream-sequence flashback time!
(The role of a dreamscape’s shimmery border is here played by italics.)
Ned is accompanied by six people, but the only name we need to bother remembering is Howland Reed. He’s facing three enemies, knights of Aerys’s Kingsguard, and we don’t really need to care about any of them except maybe Arthur Dayne. Even in his dreams, Ned is on top of his favourite high horse — honour and duty! — and questioning the knights about their absence from the Battle of the Trident, the slaying of Aerys in King’s Landing, the Siege of Storm’s End, and Ser Willem Darry’s flight to Dragonstone with the pregnant queen and little Viserys. The knights are fairly certain that Ned’s mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries. Ned apparently took offense, because a skirmish ensued, and at some point before, during or after, Lyanna was wailing her brother’s name and Ned was promising her something.
The Eyrie’s jail cells are built in such a way that they double as a torture device: they have three walls, one drop to the death, and one mean, stupid jailer who’s been starving Tyrion by throwing his food off the deathly drop side for mean, stupid laughs. Tyrion reacts with a mixture of sarcastic disdain (Tyrion) and prideful fury (Lannister). A Lannister always pays his debts (that’s not the book, that’s just me, don’t drink), but as far as I’m aware, Mord is still being a Karma Houdini. I know he doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things and GRRM is busy cutting a swath through the major players, but I hope he doesn’t forget to balance the books on this one before the end.
Bran’s new special horse is named Dancer. It would be a bit too on the nose for him to ride out of Winterfell with the cry “Now, Dancer!” I suppose. I’m choosing to believe it’s a hidden metaphor casting Tyrion as Santa; he did bring Bran a present, after all.
Ned stands in a brothel, a pillar of chastity in a sea of debauchery; one of his men seems to be playing strip-checker with a girl and a squire was apparently having sex while waiting for Ned and Littlefinger to finish their business. Ned exchanges his high horse for a real horse and ruminates on his findings during the ride back.