Summer snow swirls around the castle’s grey walls. Wind howls and its howls are answered by those of wolves. Inside the walls it is warm, but quiet. Too quiet. Jon Snow makes the climb as if it were for the last time. It is. There is danger waiting ahead for him. A monster with claws and teeth that tear at his very soul. His wolf won’t save him, no one will save him, and he would turn back, but for the love that motivates him in this quest.
He reaches the monster’s lair and its horde, as precious to him as it is to her. She snaps and snarls, but Jon will be a man of the Night’s Watch soon and will have to learn to face monsters that tear at his flesh, he has to learn to stand his ground. His aim is simple: to say “I love you” and “Good bye.” If he goes without having said it, it would wound his heart much deeper than the monster’s jabs ever could — or so he thinks. The monster draws back, she keens her own grief. Jon is thrown off balance, the monster has never before let him see her human face. Could this be at last a moment of connection? Shared grief and shared love bridging the gap between them? She calls his name, a first in fourteen long years.
It is a trick. She was only drawing him in to weaken his defenses. She strikes, wounding him deeper than perhaps ever before. Jon flees.
Poetic is the only way for me to channel my own sputtering rage here. The scene is simple: Jon is leaving for the Wall and if he’s going to say good-bye to the still unconscious Bran it’s now or never, but Catelyn’s never left Bran’s side. She’s a devoted mother, I’m not detracting from that. Yes, Catelyn is a mother in incredible grief, but she’s so absolutely vile to an innocent kid. Here’s Jon telling Bran how much he loves him and begging his little brother to get better and all Catelyn can do is say “everything bad should happen to you before I hate you”? Die in a fire — a meme that exists solely to convey how I feel about Catelyn Stark.
Outside in the yard, a madhouse what with all the preparations going on for the king’s departure, Jon runs into Robb. They chat about how hard it is to leave home, Jon thinks Robb has matured greatly since all this change and grief befell the household. Robb can tell something’s wrong, but Jon is kind to his family, so he pretends that Robb’s mother was kind to him. I think I love Jon for this more than anything: the way he doesn’t force those who love him to take sides against those that do not at the expence of their own emotional well-being. They hug and break the “family members call each other by their relationship” streak we had going by choosing to use their respective last names instead. Uncle Benjen is waiting for Jon, but Jon’s got more good-byes. He picks up a mysterious package from the armoury and is off to find Arya.
Arya’s using her wolf to help her pack. I wish I had a direwolf to fetch my stuff when I’m packing! And to growl at border security agents when they’re ruffling through my underwear. I bet direwolf owners never get picked for random bag checks. Arya’s being forced to pack like a proper lady instead of just shoving her stuff in like the rest of us. It’s just as well Jon says, because the thing in the Mysterious Package should be packed carefully.
It’s a sword! A rapier, more precisely, for poking holes in people. Jon instructs Arya to use the pointy end to stick people with and to keep it a secret from the grown-ups (and Sansa) and to find somewhere to practice so she can efficiently kill people with it. Aww, isn’t this sweet? Every little girl needs a big brother who gives her deadly weapons. But does it glow when orcs are around, Jon? He says nothing about it glowing, but it does have a name: Needle! It’s witty because Arya sucks so much at needlework. I’m thinking if she’s equally sucky at swordplay it could be a problem that requires stitches of the medical kind. The two hug and say good-bye some more and Jon’s spirits are lifted by Arya’s laughter and the grinch’s heart grows three sizes as the chapter ends.
Meanwhile, on Essos…
You are cordially invited to the wedding of
Daenerys Targaryen
and
Khal Drogo
Location: open field outside of Pentos
Form of dress: completely optional
Gifts: legendary monsters long thought extinct preferred
Sex: mandatory
Expected death toll: at least a dozen, as befits the wedding of a great khal
Viserys is being vile and impatient, but the wedding day is finally here and Dany is terrified. She’s surrounded by tens of thousands of feasting Dothraki, plus Illyrio, her vile brother, and Ser Jorah Mormont, who has pledged his sword to Viserys’s cause since they met at the engagement party, aka the day Viserys sold his sister for an army. Despite the fact that the whole thing is part of Viserys’s plan, he’s unhappy because Dany as the bride and Drogo as the groom get served food before him. Damn, Viserys has to learn to let some things go before he gives himself an aneurysm.
Eating gives way to dancing, as one would expect at a wedding. Dancing leads to having sex right there on the dance floor, as one would expect at a Dothraki wedding, according to Illyrio. The Dothraki as sexually liberated, they do not see sex as sinful or shameful. Well, the Dothraki men are sexually liberated, the Dothraki women are sexually subjugated, because if there’s one place where it sucks to be a woman in a fantasy setting, it’s the “barbarian” horde that’s not based on the European roots of the author and his intended audience.
As the day winds out, Drogo decides that’s enough of the dancing, fucking, and killing, and calls for the wedding gifts. Viserys used Illyrio’s money to give his sister three slavegirls, two Dothraki and one Lysene. Irri and Jhiqui will teach her horse-riding and speaking Dothraki, respectively, and Doreah is a Viserys-certified sex instructor. Viserys is certainly a practical gift-giver, I’ll give him that, everything a Targaryen princess needs to start off her marriage to a Dothraki horse-lord is here. Jorah Mormont gives Dany a stack of old books about the Seven Kingdoms written in Dany’s native Common Tongue. Books as a gift: a man after my own heart! Illyrio gives Dany three ostensibly calcified dragon’s eggs: a cream-and-gold, a green-and-bronze, and a black one. They’re not books, but I guess they’re cool. Drogo’s bloodriders, kind of like Kingsguard except less about defense and more about offense, offer Dany traditional gifts of a whip, a sword, and a bow. Dany traditionally refuses them and Drogo traditionally accepts on her behalf. There’s a stream of further gifts from the Dothraki, including a mouse-skin dress. It’s like being a Dothraki Cinderella: instead of mice making the dress, you make a dress out of them.
It’s time for Drogo to give Dany his gift and he brings forth a beautiful horse, grey with a silver mane. He chose it to match Dany’s hair. Aww, Drogo is a warrior poet! He picks her up and puts her on the horse “as easily as if she were a child.” She is a child! GRRM, you break me sometimes. Dany loves the pretty horse and has fun riding her through the crowd and jumping over the bonfire. Drogo, he of the horse-loving people (Ew, not that way. Well, maybe that way. I don’t want to know.), is happy that she’s so pleased with his gift. See, there’s a solid foundation to build this marriage on.
The sun has set, which means it’s time to get on to the consummation part. While the Dothraki put on live sex shows for their khal during his wedding, the reverse is not expected, so Dany and Drogo ride off. Not before Viserys pokes his nose into private business that doesn’t concern him and threatens Dany with violence if she doesn’t do a good job pleasing Drogo. Fuck off, Viserys, even the “shameless” Dothraki are staying out of their khal’s sex life.
The newlyweds stop at a random and picturesque spot in a field beside a stream. Dany starts crying, and Drogo uses the multipurpose horse-comfortong technique: hair-petting and soft, gentle murmuring. Then he has Dany unbraid all the bells out of his hair — maybe that’s why he married her, he needed someone to share his hair-care chores with. Dany doesn’t have braids and bells, so her clothes are the things they take off her. Drogo introduces her to arousal and explicitly asks consent before the the curtain falls on the scene.
I didn’t have a problem with this scene the first time around and I don’t now. I had a big problem with the way it was changed in the TV show. Aging up Dany to seventeen is not worth much if this is changed to having her basically resign to rape. It’s reassuring to go back to this and to know that I wasn’t particularly forgiving in my memory of it. The premise of Dany being young and forced to marry will always run contrary to modern western sensibilities, but consent is more than implied, even though Dany and Drogo don’t have a common language to speak, “no” and “yes” in Common Tongue are given to Drogo just so there’s no ambiguity about it.