Episode 138: A CLASH OF KINGS, SANSA V: "Battle Hymn" SHOW NOTES

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.

Welcome to the one hundred and thirty-eighth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Battle Hymn: An Analysis of ACOK, Sansa V,” in which Sansa sings for mercy (yay) and has to talk to Joffrey and Cersei (boo) as the Battle of Blackwater begins.

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves, Captain of the war galley NIGHT WOLF, the ship that stalks the Seven Seas, and Wielder of the Valyrian Steel trident SUMMONER, the blade that brings the Deep Ones
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah, the Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
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• Lord Adam T
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• Lord Peter
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• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Olaf, proponent of establishing a feudal, pseudodemocratic system of Great Councils, wherein every count votes
• Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
• Lord Nick
• Thucydides, Lord of Plagues
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• Lord Gene the Splendid, Master of Coin, Warden of Tampa Bay
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• Lord Charles Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, Warden of the South, and The Heir of House Tyrell
• Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn
• Squid Pro Quo
• Master of Zorse
• Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Airship Arrogance
• Squire Matt S, future Ser Matt S, the one who will bring balance to the Kingdoms
• BWord, Queen Beyond the Wall
• Lord Kyle
• Lord Samuel Seaworth
• Ser Max, Lord Commander of the Constitutional Guard
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• Lady Ivory Dayne, aspiring noble author in the seven kingdoms, lady of Starfall, wardeness of the south, and patron of freewheeling bisexuals

Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Ser Keith J, our small council Master of Whisperers, asks:

Howdy guys, got a question for you two to chew on since we are approaching the end of Clash.  At one point, the both of you discussed your feelings on the first book as politics being at the forefront while magic and the supernatural were re-awakening into the ASOIAF universe but largely still in the background of the book's main narrative for the most part.  A few episodes ago, if my memory serves correct, Emmett mentioned Clash being the book where politics and magic intersect.  So, my question is this: given the way you framed the first two books, then what is your opinion on Storm?

So, thank you Keith for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, bonus episodes, merch, access to the NotASlack and all those shout-outs that you hear at the start and end of every episode and more!

Absolutely. And as our periodic reminder: we are very close towards achieving our next patreon stretch goal, and when we get there, we’ll do a FULL, MULTI-PART analysis of the first Dunk and Egg novella: The Hedge Knight! So, if you might be interested in us sinking our literary jaws into Dunk the Lunk, consider supporting us (two hunks) on patreon at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Sansa, she had witnessed the opening moves on the Battle of the Blackwater, had a fun chit-chat with Dontos Hollard and Sandor Clegane and then had her first period before being hauled in front of Cersei for another cheery chat. Let’s find out how Sansa’s doing just before the war and the bay erupt in this synopsis of ACOK, Sansa V!

Synopsis

They had been singing in the sept all morning, since the first report of enemy sails had reached the castle. The sound of their voices mingled with the whicker of horses, the clank of steel, and the groaning hinges of the great bronze gates to make a strange and fearful music. In the sept they sing for the Mother's mercy but on the walls it's the Warrior they pray to, and all in silence. She remembered how Septa Mordane used to tell them that the Warrior and the Mother were only two faces of the same great god. But if there is only one, whose prayers will be heard?

These are excellent (and existential) questions that Sansa is posing to the gods. But beyond that, BABY. We are here. It’s Blackwater time, and this train won’t stop for six glorious chapters!

Sansa is in the Red Keep royal sept as Ser Meryn Trant holds the reins for a gilded-armor wearing Joffrey to mount. BTW, Joffrey is now just wearing golden lions on his helmet with red armor. It’s as if Cersei has stopped giving a shit about passing Joff as a Baratheon. Sansa, meanwhile, thinks that Joff looks like a bright, shining knight, but he’s an empty suit on the inside. Sick burn!

Tyrion is there too, and Sansa notes that he has less fine armor, and he looks like a kid soldier, but he does have that battle axe strapped to him, and he has the very loyal Ser Mandon Moore at his side. Tyrion notices that Sansa is there and asks whether she’s headed over to Maegor’s Holdfast to hang out with the other ladies in the court. She has, but Sansa is so very, very pleased to have been summoned here by Joffrey to send him off. Sansa is also here to pray. Ah, yes, but Tyrion’s not asking who Sansa will be praying for. Regardless of what happens here, Tyrion declares that this day will change everything for him, his house and even for Sansa. But she’ll be safe so long as-

"Sansa!" The boyish shout rang across the yard; Joffrey had seen her. "Sansa, here!"

He calls me as if he were calling a dog, she thought.

Tyrion wishes her all the best, hopes to talk to her once the battle is done, and then he’s off, and Sansa is bounding over to Joffrey. This truly child-soldier gets all saucy down southy, talking about how it’s going to be battle, and he’s so totally going to kill Nuncle Stannis in the battle with his new sword.

Joffrey drew his sword. The pommel was a ruby cut in the shape of a heart, set between a lion's jaws. Three fullers were deeply incised in the blade. "My new blade, Hearteater."

He'd owned a sword named Lion's Tooth once, Sansa remembered. Arya had taken it from him and thrown it in a river. I hope Stannis does the same with this one. "It is beautifully wrought, Your Grace."

"Bless my steel with a kiss." He extended the blade down to her. "Go on, kiss it."

He had never sounded more like a stupid little boy.

Sansa forces herself to kiss the sword, thinking that she’d rather kiss a sword than Joffrey, but she notices that Joffrey is pleased with the gesture. He tells Sansa that he wants her to kiss the blade when it’s red with Stannis’ blood. Sansa thinks Joffrey actually killing his uncle with his sword, somewhat unlikely given that he would have all these men around her. They’d kill Stannis for Joff though. But Sansa has a question for Joffrey:

"Will you lead your knights into battle?" Sansa asked, hoping.

"I would, but my uncle the Imp says my uncle Stannis will never cross the river. I'll command the Three Whores, though. I'm going to see to the traitors myself." The prospect made Joff smile. His plump pink lips always made him look pouty. Sansa had liked that once, but now it made her sick.

"They say my brother Robb always goes where the fighting is thickest," she said recklessly. "Though he's older than Your Grace, to be sure. A man grown."

That made him frown. "I'll deal with your brother after I'm done with my traitor uncle. I'll gut him with Hearteater, you'll see."

Sure, kid. But then Joffrey is off, flanked by Meryn Trant and Osmund Kettleblack with four gold cloaks around him. Tyrion brings up the rear. Guards cheer, and then there’s silence.

In that silence, Sansa hears singing and turns back to the sept as others turn with her. Sansa sees that the sept was crowded and lit well. Part of the reason why it was lit so well was that everyone had lit candles to all the aspects of the Seven. Lots of candles were in front of the Mother and Warrior’s altars. But the Father, Smith, Crone and Maid had some candles lit for them. And there were even candles lit to the Stranger! Why? I love this from Sansa:

For what was Stannis Baratheon, if not the Stranger come to judge them?

Sansa lights a candle at each of the Seven and then she takes a seat in the pews as everyone joins together in a hymn:

Gentle Mother, font of mercy,

save our sons from war, we pray,

stay the swords and stay the arrows,

let them know a better day.

Gentle Mother, strength of women,

help our daughters through this fray,

soothe the wrath and tame the fury,

teach us all a kinder way.

As they sing, Sansa thinks that there are thousands of civilians in Baelor’s Sept singing. She hopes that the gods are listening. She knows all the hymns anyways with all the people around her: old serving men, young wives, serving girls, soldiers, cooks, falconers, knights, knaves, squires, spit boys and nursing mothers.

She sang with those inside the castle walls and those without, sang with all the city. She sang for mercy, for the living and the dead alike, for Bran and Rickon and Robb, for her sister Arya and her bastard brother Jon Snow, away off on the Wall. She sang for her mother and her father, for her grandfather Lord Hoster and her uncle Edmure Tully, for her friend Jeyne Poole, for old drunken King Robert, for Septa Mordane and Ser Dontos and Jory Cassel and Maester Luwin, for all the brave knights and soldiers who would die today, and for the children and the wives who would mourn them, and finally, toward the end, she even sang for Tyrion the Imp and for the Hound. He is no true knight but he saved me all the same, she told the Mother. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him.

The Septon rises to the high seat, petitions the gods to defend the true and noble king. Upset that the High Septon was praying for Joffrey and not Stannis … okay, a boy can DREAM. All the same, Sansa thinks this guy is full of shit, rises to her feet and pushes her way out of the sept as the septon drones on about the Warrior giving Joffrey strength. She hopes his courage fails, and everyone deserts him. Get his ass, Sansa.

Sansa pauses outside and listens to the far-off sounds of the battle: warhorns, catapults, splashes, splinterings, burning pitch, scorpions and the cries of dying men. She thinks it's like another song: a terrible one. Sansa moves to Maegor’s Holdfast, and she comes across Lady Tanda and her daughters at the bridge over the dry moat. Tanda’s daughter Falyse had arrived yesterday, and now she was trying to get Lollys Stokeworth across the bridge.

"I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to."

"The battle is begun," Lady Tanda said in a brittle voice.

"I don't want to, I don't want to."

Sansa asks if she could help them, but Tanda, looking shameful, says no thanks. Lollys has not been feeling well. Sansa notices a slim pretty girl with short dark hair and thinks she wants to push the girl into the dry moat even as Lollys continues to yell that she doesn’t want to. Sansa, being just lovely, tells Lollys that they’ll be protected in Maegor’s Holdfast, and they’ll get to eat and drink. But Lollys still doesn’t want to.

"You have to," her sister Falyse said sharply, "and that is the end of it. Shae, help me." They each took an elbow, and together half dragged and half carried Lollys across the bridge. Sansa followed with their mother. "She's been sick," Lady Tanda said. If a babe can be termed a sickness, Sansa thought. It was common gossip that Lollys was with child.

Sansa passes sellswords dressed up like Lannister sworn men guarding the door and into the Queen’s Ballroom. This ballroom wasn’t as big as the Small Hall in the Tower of the Hand, but it could still seat a hundred people and seemed graceful with all the silver mirrors, rushes and music playing from the balcony.

Almost all the noble women of the city along with some old dudes and youngins sit at the tables. The women were all related by marriage, parentage or birth to the men fighting Stannis, and everyone knows that many wouldn’t be coming home alive. Everyone feels the weight of that knowledge.

Sansa moves to sit at Queen Cersei’s right hand, but then she sees Ser Ilyn Payne standing in the shadows. He almost seems to notice her stare and starts to turn towards her.

"What is he doing here?" she asked Osfryd Kettleblack. He captained the queen's new red cloak guard.

Osfryd grinned. "Her Grace expects she'll have need of him before the night's done."

Ser Ilyn was the King's Justice. There was only one service he might be needed for. Whose head does she want?

But before Sansa can get her question answered, her grace Cersei is announced by the royal steward. Cersei shows up dazzling as she does, wearing a snowy-white gown, same color as the Kingsguard cloaks. Her sleeves were lined with gold satin, her blonde hair curled down to her bare shoulders. She looks innocent, like a maid. But there was color on her cheeks. Cersei asks that everyone be seated, and that everyone is so very welcome here. She turns to Sansa:

"You look pale, Sansa," Cersei observed. "Is your red flower still blooming?"

"Yes."

"How apt. The men will bleed out there, and you in here." The queen signaled for the first course to be served.

"Why is Ser Ilyn here?" Sansa blurted out.

The queen glanced at the mute headsman. "To deal with treason, and to defend us if need be. He was a knight before he was a headsman." She pointed her spoon toward the end of the hall, where the tall wooden doors had been closed and barred. "When the axes smash down those doors, you may be glad of him."

I would be gladder if it were the Hound, Sansa thought. Harsh as he was, she did not believe Sandor Clegane would let any harm come to her. "Won't your guards protect us?"

According to Cersei, they need protection from her guards. She says this while side-eyeing Osfryd Kettleblack. And then we get an all-timer from Cersei:

"Loyal sellswords are rare as virgin whores. If the battle is lost my guards will trip on those crimson cloaks in their haste to rip them off. They'll steal what they can and flee, along with the serving men, washer women, and stableboys, all out to save their own worthless hides. Do you have any notion what happens when a city is sacked, Sansa? No, you wouldn't, would you? All you know of life you learned from singers, and there's such a dearth of good sacking songs."

"True knights would never harm women and children." The words rang hollow in her ears even as she said them.

"True knights." The queen seemed to find that wonderfully amusing. "No doubt you're right. So why don't you just eat your broth like a good girl and wait for Symeon Star-Eyes and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight to come rescue you, sweetling. I'm sure it won't be very long now."

And that is ACOK, Sansa V! A short, good chapter which sets us up for the Blackwater! What did you think, ser?

Depth

All through ACOK, this has been our destination. Arriving here with you feels like we’ve been driving to Vegas at night and now we’re seeing the lights suddenly emerge before us. The Battle of Blackwater is the climax of the book and the most iconic battle sequence of the entire story so far. It’s a work of staggering ambition, unfolding across three different POVs while the rest wait in the wings. George is putting everything he has as an artist into every aspect of this gargantuan setpiece, and in every aspect, it succeeds. Imagery, suspense, characterization, the shocking twists and turns of the battle itself--all of it is as sublime as it’s possible to be, in both concept and execution.

Sansa V is not the most attention-grabbing of the six chapters that make up the Blackwater. No wildfire in this one! But it sets the tone perfectly, and does so in an emotionally moving way. Even before we see the battle, we can feel it begin.

I loved your point back in Sansa IV that Sansa will be our primary POV for the battle and its aftermath, and I think a strong piece of evidence for your viewpoint can be found here: this is truly the first Blackwater chapter. George has successfully set the Battle of the Blackwater up in all of the previous Sansa and Tyrion chapters, but here, the war horns are sounding, catapults are throwing stones and the screams of dying men can be heard in the distance. To get this through Sansa’s POV first is both unique and great! Unique, because the roles of women and non-combatants on a battlefield are minimized in fiction or historical tellings unless it’s after the city is taken, and there’s a sack underway. And then the accounts would merely be about how sad that this would occur. With Sansa, George wants us to look before any potential sack and slaughter. He wants the camera pulled away from the action and wants an auditory experience. It’s like the civilians of Rohan hiding in the caves of Helm’s Deep, listening to the orcs bang their spear butts against the ground. The sounds of war are barely within earshot, and we come away from the experience, feeling the heightened danger and ready to see this thing explode.

• The sounds of long-awaited battle
  • You make an excellent point that George engages our ears before he engages our eyes. Sansa is listening to the battle approach
  • But not only that. She’s also listening to everyone singing in response to the sounds of battle. The sounds overlap: “a strange and fearful music”
  • It’s the auditory equivalent of when Arya smelled both cooking meat and corruption at the same time. This is what it means to grow up: hovering on the threshold between innocence and experience
  • It’s all in where you’re standing, as Ygritte told Jon. Sansa is literally and figuratively standing in such a way as to hear both kinds of songs. The hopeful sound of prayer is shot through with the battle hymn of the Stranger, the knowledge with maturity that we are forsaken
  • It’s a layering effect of both sounds and tones, as though Sansa is looking at the world through glasses with lenses of different colors
  • This process isn’t just happening to Sansa, however. She is taking part in it. She gets that the element in common between these two sets of sounds is the desire for divine intervention: please save us from ourselves!
  • Those who can’t fight pray out loud to the Mother for her mercy; those who must fight pray silently to the Warrior, for luck in battle against the enemy
  • As Sansa realizes, these prayers are contradictory. The prayer to the Mother asks for an end to the battle--everyone cast down your spears
  • The prayer to the Warrior, however, is a prayer for victory, and for courage--don’t let me flinch from the killing blow when the moment comes
  • They can’t both come true. Yet Sansa remembers being told that the Seven are faces of a singular god--the Warrior and Mother are one
  • How does that one god manage contradictory prayers? It’s the same point Jaime made to Catelyn: no matter what you do, you’re forsaking a promise
  • Sansa is starting to critically interrogate the systems in which she was raised, the unquestioned assumptions as familiar as the stories
  • She notes that even as the singers try to drown out the sounds of battle, she could still hear men dying if she tried to. She is no longer able to drown it out: her father’s execution, the bread riots, it’s all crashing down
  • It’s George’s continued play on “Sweet smells are sometimes used to cover foul ones”, but here he’s engaging a different sense: sound.
  • Harp music can cover up the sounds of people dying in the distance. We close our ears to things that upset us, or we try to distract ourselves, because Sansa is subconsciously thinking it could be her dying moans she could be hearing, and that’s a thought pattern that could drive her (and us) mad.
  • Another contradictory aspect of all the praying is that the people praying for the Mother’s mercy or the Warrior’s strength are hoping that the same prayers offered by the enemy won’t be answered.
  • Remember! A lot of Stannis’ men outside of the walls of King’s Landing are not followers of R’hllor. Many still - and will continue - to profess allegiance to the Faith of the Seven.
  • Does the divine show favoritism to one side or another? That’s certainly what everyone - on all sides - are hoping here.
  • It speaks to something we covered in our Forsaken episodes: God, are you there? Do you care about me, Aeron, Sansa, Davos, Tyrion? If we lose, have you forsaken us?
  • That forsaken feeling is what Davos will experience on that speck of rock he ends up on early in ASOS.
  • For Sansa, it’s equally-wrenching. She knows that there is no escape even if her prayers are answered. Cersei will still be there. And Joffrey will remain.
• Joffrey and Tyrion’s departure
  • Sansa didn’t wander here of her own accord; she was summoned by Joffrey, as in her earlier chapters in the book, a prize pet
  • She gets her revenge for this constant humiliation the only place she can: in her thoughts, which we share. She sums up Joffrey perfectly:
    • Bright, shining, and empty.
  • That’s the contrast between the image and the reality George hammers home throughout Sansa’s story. She used to be all about the bright and shining surface: now she can perceive the emptiness underneath
  • The king on the Iron Throne is an empty suit of armor, a shadow on a wall. His claim is illegitimate, his behavior is sadistic, his leadership nonexistent
  • The splendid red and gold armor does not indicate his inner worth, but rather covers up for the lack of same. Beauty can be turned against you
  • At the same time, the optics of Cersei sending Joffrey out to battle in Lannister colors is both a) not very bright and b) probably signalling that Cersei doesn’t give a shit anymore.
  • Davos is going to later remark that Stannis’ navy should have come in with Baratheon colors in Robert’s name instead of a Stranger’s banner applies here but in the reverse.
  • Everyone knows that the Lannister colors are red and gold, and that the Lannisters are blonde of hair.
  • And now that Stannis’ letter has gone out and has made its way out to the population (as evidenced by all the people declaring Cersei a brother-fucker and Joffrey a bastard during the riot in King’s Landing), Cersei sends him out looking the very soul of a Lannister.
  • Now, Cersei may be thinking that Joff should look like Jaime Lannister in his swirling crimson finery to inspire the men.
  • Or, as may be more like the case, she’s flaunting her own ego by having Joffrey go into battle looking as Lannister as possible.
  • This angle works almost as if Cersei is sending Joffrey out on a suicidal last charge, because she thinks that the city is going to fall anyways.
  • As we get more into the Blackwater, that seems to be Cersei’s perspective. She gets drunker, lets down her guard and starts talking about Ilyn Payne killing everyone because she won’t be able to seduce Stannis into sparing her life.
  • So, if she’s going to go out, she’s going to out Lannister-style: not giving a damn about telegraphing that Joffrey is a Lannister through and through.
  • Tyrion, by contrast, doesn’t fit that beauty standard. He’s the adult, not Joffrey, but Sansa says he looks like a child in his armor
  • There’s nothing childish about that battle axe, however, because unlike Joffrey, Tyrion will actually be riding into battle: style v. substance
  • Certainly, that makes us more inclined to admire Tyrion than Joffrey! But Tyrion is unslinging that axe to keep Joffrey in power. He tells his men different in the moment to hold them together, but that’s the outcome of Tyrion’s suicidally brave last stand: the “bright, shining, empty” king wins
  • As he is throughout the book, Tyrion is caught here between his personal desire to “do justice” and his political imperative to tow the company line
  • Tyrion thinks too late that he should’ve sent Sansa off to safety with Tommen, but he can only abandon her to Cersei’s tender mercies
  • His attempt to reach out to her courteously is limited by the awkward mutual awareness that they are on different sides of this war
  • As he says, he can’t assume Sansa is praying for the Lannisters. He won’t ask; he doesn’t want to know. There can be no honesty between them
  • It’s interesting because the lack of honesty between Tyrion and Sansa is an extension of much the same between Tyrion and the rest of his family.
  • When Tyrion jokes around with Sansa about not asking who she’s praying for, it engenders sympathy for Tyrion, because hey! Look at that: someone who has self-awareness in this nest of liars!
  • But that sympathy only extends so far. As you were saying, Tyrion knows that he’s fighting on behalf of a monster, and he knows that injustice is flowing from the Iron Throne
  • And yet, Tyrion has been inculcated with a twisted notion of “family-first” by Tywin, of operating in his lord father’s stead.
  • And much like Tywin, that family-first motto revolves around self-preservation. And that self-preservation is sourced to the lie that is Joffrey as both Robert’s trueborn son and also that Joffrey is the true king in action.
  • So much of what we’ve seen in ACOK is Joffrey acting like a slightly-more restrained version of Aerys II Targaryen. Sociopathic Murders, psychosexual assaults on Sansa, tortures.
  • On this read, I got a real feeling of Rhaegar riding out to the Trident from King’s Landing, knowing that he’s supporting a monster on the Iron Throne.
  • Rhaegar might have told Jaime that “changes will be made”, but first, uh, gotta y’know, go and kill the rebels who BTW were righteous in rising against my dad’s delegitimizing sociopathy, y’know the same delegitimizing sociopathy that I was probably attempting to overthrow just two years past.
  • Ain’t that Tyrion too? He’s fighting for Aerys-lite, riding out to battle against the rightful king (by birth at least), fighting for an unjust cause.
  • And that begs the question: can you fight honorably for dishonorable people and causes? No, no, no. This has no personal ramifications or deep personal questions that I struggle with personally whatsoever ...
  • Joffrey, of course, has no such conflict going on. He unabashedly treats Sansa like a prop, using her to inflate his ego prior to battle
  • I say “prior to battle,” but Joffrey never gets anywhere close to the actual battle. It’s all stage-management on Tyrion’s part
  • Joffrey wants Sansa to kiss his sword to work out his developing sexual desires, rooted in his love of domination in all forms
  • He promises that she’ll kiss Stannis’ blood and then Robb’s, but it’s playacting, every bit as much as Sansa’s performed courtesies
  • In her head, she revels in the truth: Arya took away Joffrey’s previous sword, maybe Stannis will take this one away! Sansa is afraid of Stannis’ fiery banners, but as with the Great Sept, he’s a powerful figure in her mind associated with the destruction of everything she hates
  • Sansa does break character to taunt Joffrey for his pantomime. Robb is the real deal, she points out, always going where the fighting is thickest
  • But he’s older. A man grown. A king who is more than bright, shining, empty. Joffrey instead rides off to enjoy his torture
  • There’s a palpable tension in scenes like this, as Sansa risks herself by poking Joffrey, followed by relief that she got away with it
  • As the tension fades, she’s left alone with the rest as you were saying earlier, the behind-the-scenes of war like Bran in AGOT
  • You have to admire Sansa’s courage and intelligence in this scene. For one, she’s one of the few (besides Tyrion and Sandor intermittently) who stand up to Joffrey’s cruelty.
  • Unlike Tyrion (who can rely on his sellswords and mountain clansmen) or Sandor (who can rely on his sheer ferocity), Sansa is defenseless from Joffrey’s brutalities.
  • Yet she tells this brat that he’s less of a warrior than her brother Robb, who of course, is older but also personally leading cavalry charges, besieging castles and doing the things a storybook warrior-king should be doing.
  • On that point of Robb being older, I love how Sansa helps fulfill an earlier plot point form back in early AGOT when Joffrey and Robb are sparring in the Winterfell yard, and we get this exchange:
    • “Robb may be a child,” Joffrey said. “I am a prince. And I grow tired of swatting at Starks with a play sword.”
      
      “You got more swats than you gave, Joff,” Robb said. “Are you afraid?”
      
      Prince Joffrey looked at him. “Oh, terrified,” he said. “You’re so much older.”
      
      And then later:
      
      "Come and see me when you're older, Stark. If you're not too old."
  • Back when George wrote AGOT, that scene in the Winterfell yard was establishing groundwork for Robb to kill Joffrey in battle as seen in the 1993 pitch letter.
  • But I rather prefer the way George pays it off with Sansa getting to tell Joffrey off one last time, showing the king that Robb is not merely playing at war the way that Joffrey is about to.
  • And as it turns out, Joffrey will be terrified to be in his first battle and will be yanked from the battlefield when he’s not in any real danger anyhow resulting in the collapse of Lannister morale.
  • Those optics, the beauty and chivalry that Joffrey rides out to battle with: they all end up proving empty as Joffrey proves a hollow suit of armor and comes running home to mama.
• Singing in the sept
  • The heart of this chapter is Sansa joining the singers in the sept. It’s beautiful imagery put in service of pure feeling
  • George lovingly describes the shafts of sunlight turned into rainbows by the crystals, the candles twinkling everywhere like stars, as though we’re in the cosmos. It’s the rainbow style of ACOK in full bloom
  • We talk about George as a lapsed Catholic a fair amount, but he still loves the aesthetic of the mother church. In that way, he’s a lot like Martin Scorsese, another Boomer icon raised in the New York area
  • Scorsese originally dreamed of entering the priesthood. He wound up worshipping at the altar of movies instead, but all of his movies reflect his love for the idea, if not the reality, of Catholicism
  • In Mean Streets, Harvey Keitel’s Charlie stares at a display of votive candles, the shine reflected in his eyes; in voiceover, he passionately decries the rituals of the church and declares he’ll worship in his own way
  • This scene with Sansa in the sept has a similar meaning to it. Sansa is losing her faith in the institutions and stated beliefs of her religion
  • And yet there’s something magical about this moment: the candles, the rainbow light, the singing. She can’t help but be swept up in it all
    • The air was hot and heavy, smelling of incense and sweat, crystal-kissed and candle-bright; it made her dizzy to breathe it.
  • The Sept briefly functions the way temples are supposed to, as oases from the fallen world in which we can reach for something higher
  • A sense of harmony prevails. All seven faces of god are being worshipped, just as the sounds blurred together outside
  • The Mother and the Warrior have their candles, but so too do Smith, Crone, Maid, Father, and even the shadowy face of the Stranger
  • Catelyn said in the sept at Storm’s End that she could get no comfort from the face of the Stranger, because the Stranger stands in for death
  • The Stranger is an outcast dwelling in the spaces between things, half-human and unknowable, observing, judging, waiting for us to falter
  • The Stranger is terrifying, yet to ignore them does not diminish their power. Catelyn looked away from the Stranger’s face, but they arrived all the same in the form of Stannis’ shadow to slay Renly
  • The worshippers in this sept do not look away from the Stranger like Catelyn. Instead, they worship the Stranger along with the rest, albeit not as enthusiastically. One must stare into the face of death to live fully
  • It’s a brilliant bit of transitioning to have Sansa go from the empty suits of beautiful, gleaming armor and false chivalry to a beautiful sept, burning incense and candles but no substance behind the optics.
  • George is agnostic on whether God or gods exist in the real world, and that agnosticism gets its extension in the Faith of the Seven.
  • There very likely is nothing behind the seven statues and aspects of God as there is no Faith of the Seven god behind it all.
  • It’s just a series of beautiful images and gorgeous ritual that captivates Sansa and the rest of the congregants in this sept.
  • However, just because there’s no ethereal power there, it doesn’t mean that these images are still not powerful.
  • All the candles burning, casting light and shadows on the wall mean something. Power resides where men it believes it resides.
  • And here in this sept, power resides in those images, because people have imbued power onto those images.
  • As we record this episode, we’re entering into the Christmas season in the United States, and even though I, personally, look at a lot of the traditions I grew up around as empty and hollow, I can’t also shake that feeling that Sansa and the rest of the congregants and even George feels when he enters a church.
  • These images, however false, give the illusion of safety to these congregants, much as the prayers offered to the Warrior by the men on and under the walls of King’s Landing give comfort and even strength to the men about to die.
  • That’s the true power here, but as we’ll find out in AFFC, the image can only go so far. There has to be a there-there behind the images, and the sparrows will provide that there-there in just two books’ time.
  • As I said in the Stormlands, the gods are archetypes we apply to our own lives, figurative masks to wear, just as with storytelling
  • Sansa has now matured enough to make this connection, the metaphorical leap from the archetype to the individual
  • Who is the Stranger, she asks? Stannis, she answers. He is the face of death for these people now, as he was for Catelyn
  • I love this line! It perfectly captures Stannis as an intense figure of Catholic dread and guilt. We are all sinners; we will all be judged and punished. This is the cleansing fire foreshadowed by the street preacher in Tyrion VI
  • The comparison to the Stranger also further establishes Stannis’ duality. The Stranger is morally ambiguous, a shapeshifter, just as Stannis is made up of equal parts hero and villain, both playing themselves out
  • Sansa is eager for the destruction of House Lannister he represents, but also afraid of what will happen to the city and herself in the process
  • She lights a candle to him and all the rest, before joining the singers at the benches. She sits between an old woman and a boy as young as Rickon
  • That’s the full arc of life right there: youth, maturation, and aging, all sitting together like links in a chain. They’re like the threefold goddess--Maid, Mother, Crone. But they’re humans, thrown together by the war
  • I think George is suggesting that we can find divine grace not in literal gods and churches but in the presence of each other, if only temporarily
  • This song is not just a tribute to peace. It is peace. This is what it looks like, feels like, sounds like. All the faces we wear, no longer separate, tormented in isolation. The walls come down; we cherish one another
  • Sansa thinks that the gods must surely hear them. I don’t think that’s true. But I also think it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how good it feels for Sansa to have someone to hold onto, the comfort a touch can give
  • The hymn reminds Sansa of her mother, happier days at Winterfell. Catelyn herself had learned it in her cherished childhood days at Riverrun; after that innocence died, she carried the hymn with her to the cold north with its nameless gods, and passed it onto her kids, a fragment of home
  • And so Sansa sings her battle hymn, a plea for peace. Not a negotiated ceasefire, not a reworking of government policy. She pleas not for a pragmatic political transformation but a seismic spiritual one
  • She pleads for the gods to teach us how not to fight. Help us decide as one that it is acceptable to throw down our arms and refuse. Teach us how to improve ourselves--teach us a kinder way so we can soothe our fury
  • I come back as always to Gravity’s Rainbow, and a fantasy of peace:
    • “Oh, fuck it. I’m sending all the soldiers home. We’ll close down the weapon factories, we’ll dump all the weapons in the sea. I’m sick of war. I’m sick of waking up every morning afraid I’m going to die.”
  • Sansa has been tapping into a sick dread undergirding everything, a collective emotion that demands a response: a need for release. We will see this emotion unleashed in the joyous bells that follow the battle
  • Sansa is praying for something worth surviving for. Her prayer is answered, not by the gods, but by the people around her
  • She’s singing with all kinds of people, all ages, all classes. She’s singing for people outside the sept: those on the walls, those on the ships, those who will die, those who will be left behind
  • Sansa is affirming their common humanity, even after everything she’s been through and despite everything they are all about to go through
  • In singing, she reaches out to her family and her friends, the living and the dead, the residents of the world of her childhood
  • This is the only way she can connect with them. It’s not the real thing, but it’s all she has. She even sings for Tyrion and Sandor
  • Within the space of a song, you can achieve empathy. It’s a metaphor for art, and how it puts us in the shoes of another. You want mercy for them
  • Love how she sings for the mother’s mercy for the Hound here in this scene.
  • Knowing that Sandor Clegane’s mother disappeared in mysterious Gregorian circumstances, Sansa acts as Mother to Sandor Clegane here, signalling the role she’ll occupy in her penultimate chapter when Sandor shows up in her room.
  • Even the song Gentle Mother is the same from this scene to that scene.
  • And Sandor weeps at the end of that song come just two Sansa chapters from now.
  • But there are limits. As soon as the septon calls upon the gods to defend Joffrey, Sansa stands and leaves, shouldering her way past everyone
  • She wishes not mercy upon Joffrey, but the opposite: failure, humiliation, a curse called down from the gods. The mood of harmony disappears
  • That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however. Rather, Sansa is establishing mature limitations on her empathy. Joffrey does not deserve it
  • He does not deserve it because of his treatment of her, and also because his power and behavior winds up getting in the way of empathetic politics
  • One of the great human contradictions is that an ideal world has a place for everyone, but there are people who will stand directly in the way of that
  • In order to create a more loving world, the obstacles must be seen as such, without love getting in the way. How do you manage that?
  • It’s similar to the agonizing questions Jon and Dany face in ADWD. You want a world in which humanity unites against the Others. But how do you unite with the likes of Ramsay? You want a world at peace. But how do you make peace with people determined to roll back liberation?
  • No one really has that figured out; growing up is about trying to get better at it. This is Sansa trying to make sense of it, and it’s a powerful moment
  • With Joffrey, it’s a spot where there are limitations on pacifist beat swords into plowshares, because Joffrey will continue committing violence on Sansa and will never stop until he’s stopped.
  • What separates Joffrey from Sandor Clegane and Tyrion Lannister is that he doesn’t worship at the altar of the Warrior who defends the weak.
  • Joffrey might find a more relatable religious home in R’hllor of the Melisandre burning innocents.
  • The distinguishing factor is one you were referencing a few weeks back: most people who fight in wars are just normal, everyday people who commit a war crime here and there but return to some form of peace thereafter.
  • That’s most people. That’s not true for Ramsay or Gregor or the Tattered Prince or the Weeper (fuck that guy) or especially Joffrey.
  • The dude telling Sansa that he wants her to kiss his sword when it’s red with blood? That demonstrates someone who isn’t into this war shit to defend the people. They’re all in on the violence in hurting and killing people.
  • For peace to occur, they must be stopped. So far in the story there hasn’t been a means to do that other than violence
• Cersei’s throne of lies
  • Sansa leaves the sept and walks to Maegor’s Holdfast. As Sansa describes it, it’s a castle within a castle, as far from the battle as possible
  • Cersei has promised the noble-born noncombatants of the Red Keep that they will be safe here. George spends this final part of the chapter showing us all the ways that’s not true. There’s no safety to be found anywhere; in Sansa VI, Cersei will make that clear in multiple ways
  • I mean, it’s Maegor’s Holdfast. Even a first time reader has been made familiar with one of the worst Targaryen monarchs. Not a comforting sign!
  • Right away, Sansa sees the illusion breaking down. At the drawbridge, she comes across the Stokeworth women. Falyse has recently returned to King’s Landing with a fresh levy of troops. The image of security
  • But that feeling of security is not taking hold, even among the Stokeworths themselves. Lollys is holding everyone up, refusing to enter the holdfast
  • Lollys doesn’t articulate why she doesn’t want to go inside. More than likely, she can’t. It doesn’t seem like Lollys ever gave free rein to her emotions before, and now she’s been traumatized by gangrape
  • She might be terrified of the social obligations, or of Cersei as an individual, or of any sign of the war. The point is that she’s been reduced to expressing her fears in the most repetitive and childish fashion
  • Her own relatives have no sympathy for her. Certainly, it must be trying to face these struggles with Lollys every day, but it’s chilling to see how Lollys’ mother and sister are more concerned with what others will think
  • Just as Cersei is pretending that they are safe, so do the Stokeworths try to conceal Lollys’ raw pain from sight lest it embarrass them
  • In both cases, the norms of polite society demand that you lie. These people cannot honestly address what is happening to and around them
  • Tanda even lies about Lolly’s pregnancy, pretending she’s sick. They refuse to afford her the slightest of dignities
  • Sansa is a more well-intentioned individual than Tanda and Falyse Stokeworth. She speaks to Lollys gently; her human decency persists
  • But the specific words she uses to try and make Lollys feel better are Cersei’s words. Sansa is repeating her lies: we are safe here
  • I don’t fault Sansa for that! The truth is that Lollys is right to be terrified, and the only reason to hide it is to make everyone else feel better
  • Telling her that won’t help her. What can Sansa do but lie? The same question arises with Sweetrobin in AFFC. Does Sansa feel comfortable making use of the same sweet lies she herself used to believe?
  • I wonder whether this is a play on what you were describing from the scene in the sept: it’s not about the #ObjectiveTruth. It’s about what makes us feel better.
  • It’s comforting to be in a castle within city walls, within a holdfast in that castle. Those are several layers of protection.
  • And even though Lollys is scared, and even though Falyse, Tanda and Shae are all acting shamefully, there is value in sweet-sounding lies.
  • That’s how Sansa has been operating as a hostage here in King’s Landing, learning to lie to protect herself from her oppressors.
  • Now, she’s applying lies to convince someone to do something they don’t want to, attempting to provide comfort to someone else.
  • At this point in her journey, Sansa might not even be putting it all together, connecting her knowledge that Maegor’s Holdfast isn’t safe with convincing Lollys to cross the dry moat.
  • But later, after further education in King’s Landing in the Eyrie, Sansa will reflect on the lies that Littlefinger tells her:
    • He is serving me lies as well, Sansa realized. They were comforting lies, though, and she thought them kindly meant. A lie is not so bad if it is kindly meant. If only she believed them . . .
  • Sansa starting to make the conscious decision to use lies, and that lies are alright so long as they’re kindly meant is good queenmaking raw material.
  • May come in handy later on!
  • The theme of comforting deceptions blurring into scary realities continues as Sansa steps inside. She knows those aren’t proper Lannister guards
  • Sure, they wear the Lannister colors, but their undisciplined conduct reveals them to be dressed-up sellswords. Sansa used to focus only on the colors, the image; now she sees the reality revealed through actions
  • A year ago, Sansa might’ve believed she was safe with these men. Now she is starting to know better. A year ago, she would’ve fallen uncritically in love with the Queen’s Ballroom, all arched windows and reflected light
  • Now Sansa can’t help but realize that all this beauty exists to cover up fire and blood. The velvet hangings are there to drown out the sound
  • It doesn’t matter, Sansa thinks. The battle is with us. We carried it inside like a virus. It’s in our trembling hands, our laughter on the verge of sobs
  • It’s all over Ilyn Payne, the embodiment of death in Sansa’s storyline just as he was back in book one. Only this time, he has her father’s sword
  • The emblem of family and home, a model of justice worthy of her belief, has been stolen and corrupted, now belonging to her enemy’s bloodhound
  • He’s here, as Osfryd Kettleblack tells Sansa, because Cersei might “need” him. Even this violent tough guy relies on euphemisms for violence!
  • Sansa has to say the truth in her own mind: Ilyn Payne is here because Cersei anticipates executing people. Again, there is no safety here
  • George cuts right from that revelation to Cersei’s introduction. As the royal steward declares her titles, we should be thinking of this implied violence. That’s what undergirds all the beautiful objects and rhetoric in this room
  • Cersei is dressed in white, making her look innocent, but the color in her cheeks suggests she’s already started drinking
  • Her first words to Sansa cut right through the performed courtesies. Are you still bleeding? Good! They’ll bleed out there, and you in here
  • That speaks to how suffering continues in this sheltered space; it’s the inverse of the sept, in which people were bonded through faith and hope
  • But it also speaks to Cersei’s very particular views on gender. As she will say in Sansa VI, she always felt cheated of the possibilities open to men
  • Men are allowed to go out there and risk themselves in bloodshed; women must bleed passively, inside, waiting for the battle to be over
  • Cersei reinforces this worldview when she compares “loyal sellswords” to “virgin whores.” That’s what the state of innocence means to the two different genders, and the world quickly takes both kinds away
  • As such, Cersei articulates what Lollys could not: if the battle turns against them, their guards will abandon them to the invaders’ tender mercies
  • Cersei does not, of course, empathize with her fellow women on this basis. She despises them for their weakness and foolishness
  • You can see that clearly in how she treats Sansa. Cersei knows that Sansa has never been educated about what happens during a sack
  • George is also critiquing fantasy stories that elide the grim realities of what wrestling a city away from the evil villains would really look like
  • All Sansa can do is parrot what she’s been told: true knights would never hurt them! The words ring hollowly on her ears
  • She’s seen too much to believe in that. Ilyn Payne, Meryn Trant, Dontos Hollard, Sandor Clegane: they’ve all made clear it doesn’t work that way
  • Rather than nurture her development, however, Cersei mocks Sansa for her naivete. Yet her cynicism comes off considerably worse
  • While it is necessary to burst those childish bubbles, George is showing us via Cersei how adulthood does not always translate into maturity
  • The lies have poisoned Cersei. Will they poison Sansa? This becomes the drama of the next couple Sansa chapters, as much as the battle itself
  • In earlier ACOK Bran chapters, we both talked about how everything that Bran was learning at the feet of Luwin, Rodrik and the other people in Winterfell was subtle but explicit royal training for the kid.
  • And we also talked about what Sansa was learning was similar for her in ACOK in King’s Landing, building her up to her future QiTN role.
  • But with Sansa, it’s different in that Sansa is learning how not to rule as Cersei and her henchmen are doing.
  • Sansa observes how Cersei is ruling cheerlessly, having headsmen wait around to murder them if things go bad, getting chippy and undercutting the morale in an already-tense situation.
  • If Season Eight of the Thrones Show is a guide, then a lot of the what not to do training that Sansa receives here at the Blackwater will be informative to how Sansa holds her own “women’s court” when Winterfell comes under siege from the Others.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Sansa hopes that Joffrey’s courage fails, and that his men desert him. Her prayers are answered in the battle, but sadly Tywin shows up to save the Lannisters in the nick of time.

Joffrey makes reference to killing his uncle, and Sansa thinks that one of his Kingsguard might do it. That comes to pass...but the uncle in question is Tyrion, not Stannis!

Theory/Discussion

So, now that we’re here at the Battle of Blackwater, I figure I’d ask you, Emmett, what you make of the battle as a generally peacenik guy, and how does George, a fellow generally peacenik guy, write some of the finest battle prose in modern fiction? And while we’re at it, what does all the glorious work George does with the Battle of the Blackwater say for the major battle setpieces planned to open Winds?

Conclusion

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• Join us next week for ACOK Davos III, part 1 in which the fleet flying the banner of the fire god gets blown apart by...fire? No, that can’t be right.