Episode 65: A GAME OF THRONES, ARYA V: "The End of the Beginning"

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 sixty-fifth episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “The End of the Beginning: An Analysis of AGOT, Arya V,” in which George RR Martin finally stops dicking around, pulls out our hearts, and steps on them while we watch. This is the chapter where Dad dies. 

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timothy W
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
• Lord Gene Master of Coin
• 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 Baby the Onion Baby
• Lord Blackheart the Defiant, Master of Zorse 
• Lord Micah Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• The Blue-Ringed Octoling
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King

Thank you councillors very much!

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

A fun riddle from our Sworn Sword Lady BWord who is the Riddler of ASOIAF:

Riddle, I kept it pretty easy for you guys 😉:

I am the link to both of your names

I forfeited all of my claims 

I fought with the fish, I saw the frog die

When my time is due will anyone cry?

Ponder and debate away listeners and viewers. We’ll reveal the answer at the end!

Our Small Council Master of Zorse asks:

What 'behind the scenes' moment would you most like to read about? Personally I'd love to read the conversations that took place between Stannis, Mel and Mance.

Synopsis

The smell of evil drifts along the Street of Flour. It’s calorie-heavy, carbohydrate-soaked bread. And Arya Stark takes a deep-ass whiff of this hot bread and thinks wrongly that it’s a sweeter smell than perfume. Through the smell of death and calories, Arya stalks her prey: a fat pigeon - an idiot bird - eating a stale crust of bread. Arya’s stick sword whirls out, crushing the bird’s feet, and then the Not-A-Lady of House Stark grabs the bird and twists its neck until the bone snaps.

Hm, the bird breaks its legs and then gets his neck snapped: not-at-all a foreshadow-y and ominous this open to AGOT, Arya V, right Emmett?

A passing septon looks at her with a look I’m sure George personally experienced in his youth in the Catholic Church: reproachful, and Arya matter of fact tells the septon that this is the best place to find pigeons. Father Look Askance hurries away, and Arya ties the pigeon to her belt.

As Arya moves down the street, she encounters a man and his food truck. He’s selling fruit tarts from it -- blueberries, lemons and apricots. And that makes Arya hungry. She asks if she can have a sample, but no samples today. Three coppers, the man says. Arya doesn’t have coppers. But she does have a pigeon. Believing that King’s Landing is a Hobbesian State of Nature and could operate under a barter system, Arya attempts to exchange her pigeon for one of those tarts. But no. King’s Landing is not quite Hobbesian ... yet. The Others take your pigeon, the man says.

Arya looks at the warm tarts, considers pinching one, but then Syrio’s voice comes back into her head. She sees the cart man with her eyes, thinking that he’s left-legged and that she could make off with one of the tastycakes from his cart before he’d know better. But then the man stops her cold.

You be keepin’ your filthy hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little gutter rats, that they do.

Well, Arya ain’t about having encounters with the gold cloaks. Two of them are nearby, and she decides to back away to avoid any encounters with the Robbery/Homicide section of the gold cloaks. The very sight of the cops makes her feel queasy. So much for the tolerant left. 

Though Arya hadn’t approached the Red Keep since she left it, she’d seen the heads mounted on spikes on the red walls and the crows flying around them, thick as flies. And she knew from the Flea Bottom Rumor Mill that the gold cloaks had thrown in with the Lannisters with Janos Slynt, that frog-faced motherfucker, having been raised to lordship in exchange for his service/fucking treachery. Either-or depending on your wrong perspective.

And there were other rumors about too, like: Ned had killed Robert, Renly killed Ned, Renly killed Robert and fled like a terrorist to escape justice for his crimes. Another wild story had it that Robert had been killed by a boar. Or maybe he had died eating the boar. No, no, Varys poisoned Robert. No, dammit, Cersei had poisoned Robert. He got the herp and died from that. He choked on a bone ... a fish bone, guys. Jeez. Get your sewer minds right with the LORD.

Ultimately though, the one thing all the stories concurred on was that Robert was dead. The bells from the Great Sept of Baelor had rung all through the day and night with, and I love this imagery, the thunder of their grief rolling across the city in a bronze tide.

But Arya doesn’t really have any skin in the game about whether Robert is dead or not. She just wants to go home. But that’s easier said than done. The cops were everywhere, and she’d visited each of the King’s Landing gates daily, but she found 3 of the gates barred while the Mud and Gods gates were only open to incoming civilian traffic. In fact, there was only one gate open to people trying to get the fuck out of this city: the King’s Gate. But that was no sure thing. Lannister red cloaks were searching wagons and people going out of the gate. She might be caught if she tried going that. 

So, she tried to think of other options. There was swimming the Blackwater, but that would likely prove fatal due to the fast currents on the river. She could pay someone to take her across -- provided she had the money, of course. This had caused Arya to begin forgetting why her father Ned had warned her not to steal. Sooner or later, she would have to GTFO King’s Landing and risk the gold cloaks, because beyond simply the danger of being captured by the gold cloaks, the greater danger was becoming hunger.

She’d eaten several pigeons raw, and she feared that she was growing sick from doing that. And while, sure, there were pot shops in the alleys of Flea Bottom where massive tubs of stew had been brewing for years, and she could trade half a pigeon to the pot shop owners for a heel of stale bread and a “bowl o’ brown” -- even getting the other half of her bird put into a fire, the problem was that the shops weren’t empty. People had eyes, and those eyes stared at her.

Arya didn’t know what they were thinking, but she did notice them looking at her cloak and boots -- Stark clothing that Arya of House Stark, one of the most powerful houses in Westeros, had taken from the Red Keep. She’d been followed a few times into the alleys, even chased. But no one had caught her yet.

But that hadn’t meant that she had gotten off scot-free. She’d been robbed of her silver bracelet and bundle of clothes. She’d only been able to maintain her cloak and her sword Needle since she was using the cloak as a blanket and had been sleeping on top of Needle. Arya had turned to having the cloak over the right side of her body to conceal Needle and had moved about King’s Landing holding her stick sword to ward off those who might mean her harm. But she knew some of these jabronis in Flea Bottom wouldn’t have been scared off if she wielded a battle ax. So, she’d been avoiding Flea Bottom as late. And as consequence:

Often as not, she went to bed hungry rather than risk the stares.

Arya fantasizes about what it will be outside of King’s Landing. She’d pick berries, scavenge berries, fruits and roots. Hell, she might even chase down rabbits. There weren’t rabbits in King’s Landing -- only dogs and rats. And while the pot shops would pay a fistful of coppers for a litter of puppies, Arya is not about to go all Astapori.

We flash to the present with Arya moving down the maze of alleys and cross streets below the Street of Flour. A press of people crushes their way through, and Arya navigates, using the middle of the street -- a trick she learned early on. A gaggle of small children run past Arya chasing a rolling hoola-hoop. Arya envies the children their games and innocence. Arya thinks about the time when she played hoops with Bran, Jon and Rickon. She wonders how big Rickon is now or whether Bran is sad. But more than anything, she misses Jon and wishes he was there to muss her hair and call her “little sister.”

She had once tried talking to the kids in King’s Landing, trying to make friends. But the small ones ran away in fear while the big kids asked questions that she couldn’t answer. And one of those damn brats had even yesterday tried knocking her down to take her boots. Only the swift whirl of Arya’s stick sword against the child’s ear had prevented her from being robbed of her footware.

Arya sees a seagull too high over her head to try to take down. But it does make her think of the sea. Hey now, the sea! Maybe that’s the way out of this dump of a town, Arya sort-of thinks. She decides to make her way down to the wharf to see if there’s passage out as a stowaway. Old Nan had told tales of boys and girls stowing away aboard ships. She could do the same!

When Arya arrives, she finds the wharf quiet, too quiet. She sees a pair of gold cloaks on patrol side by side, but they didn’t look at her. And the dock itself is weirdly only half-full (That’s ‘cause Stannis appropriated the fleet. It’s the royal fleet after all. And he is the king!) So, Arya glumly thinks that the sea might not be the way out until … she sees guardsmen in grey woolen cloaks, trimmed with white satin.

The sight of Winterfell’s colors brought tears to her eyes. Behind them, a sleek three-banked trading galley rocked at her moorings. 

Arya asks what ships this is, and a longshoreman tells her it’s The Wind Witch, out of Myr. Arya is overjoyed. That’s the same ship her father hired to take Arya and Sansa home back in Eddard XIV! Hooray! All's right with the world. She starts to approach this non-trap ship and sees two guardsmen dicing and one on patrol. Arya realizes she’s crying and starts to rub the tears from her eyes, and this causes an interesting reaction:

Her eyes, her eyes, her eyes, why did …

Look with your eyes, she heard Syrio whisper.

Arya looks with her eyes. She’d known every one of Ned’s men. But these three were strangers. The one patrolling catches sight of Arya.

You. What do you want here, boy? 

This causes the other two guardsmen to look up from their dice. Arya swallows hard. She knows that if she runs, they’d chase her, and they might catch her. Instead, she steps forward. And as she does, she realizes that they think her boy. Well by gumbo, she’d be a boy then!

Want to buy a pigeon?

The guardsmen tell her to get out, and Arya scurries away, not pretending to be frightened.

When she comes to after running, she finds herself back in Flea Bottom. Arya knew this part of King’s Landing by the smell of the pots o’ brown alone. And she’s still hungry But sadly, so sadly, Arya realizes the pigeon she had kept with her all day is gone. She wanted to cry and knows she’ll need to head back to the Street of Flour to find another pigeon as large as the one she had been carrying all day.

But then the bells ring.

Arya looks up and hears their distant thunder. Others peer out too. Smallfolk clatter about wondering if Joffrey is dead (Nope, not yet). Instead, it’s a summoning bell. Everyone needs to gather at one particular spot. Arya sees two boys running in one direction and calls after them:

What’s happening?

The gold cloaks is carryin’ him to the sept.

Who?

The Hand! They’ll be taking his head off!

Arya is running but doesn’t know it. She trips over a rut left in the road by a wagon, and she falls to the ground -- her knee and hand a bloody mess. The Redwyne twins pass by her then. Arya remembers that Sansa and Jeyne Poole used to call them Ser Horror and Ser Slobber. And while her sister had giggled then, Arya ain’t laughing now.

Everyone moves towards the direction of the bell. Arya’s finger hurts. She tore off her thumbnail. Big fuckin’ ouch there! She bites, not chews her lip, limping towards the sounds ahead. She hears the voices of the people of King’s Landing all around her talking about how the Hand was being carried and maybe they should start betting over whether he gets beheaded or not. Then we get some more debate on what exactly happened to Robert with more rumors tossed about. It’s good, clean Christian fun.

Arya reaches the Street of Sisters and finds a wall of people there. She lets the crowd push her forward as everyone gets closer and closer to Baelor’s Sept. But the crush of people is too great. She can’t see anything. She spies a cart and thinks to mount it, but she decides otherwise after watching an angry teamster whipping people away from mounting the cart. Finally, she’s pushed to the front of the crowd, and she comes up stone. She looks up, and Baelor’s statue is in front of her. She climbs the statue, wedging herself between King Baelor Targaryen’s legs.

That was when she saw her father.

Ned stands on the pulpit with two gold cloaks between him. He’s dressed nicely though, with his grey and white wool cloak. But Ned was thin now -- more skinny than she’d ever seen him. And he was in pain -- his face was painted with anguish. And it wasn’t like he was truly standing either. The gold cloaks were essentially holding him up. And behind Ned was the High Septon: the highest officer in the Faith of the Seven: old, grey, fat, wearing white robes and an enormous pope hat made of spun gold and a crystal that shattered light into rainbows whenever he moved about.

But there were more than just those people there. Joffrey was there with his knights and high lords. Cersei was there in mock-mourning clothing. And there too was Sandor Clegane along with four other kingsguard knights. Varys is there too. Oh and some strange short dude with a pointed triangle dick beard who had fought for Catelyn’s hand in marriage. Yup, mf’n Littlefinger is there too. Wonder why he’s here. Hm. So much hm.

But then Arya spies Sansa there, and she scowls at her sister for standing up there smiling. What the fuck does she have to be happy about? 

A line of riot cops hold back the smallfolk from getting too close to Baelor’s Sept. They’re ready to deploy MRAPs, SWAT and military-style rifles if the smallfolks get too uppity. Gods only help the smallfolk if they start calling for systemic political and social reform.

And finally the bell stops tolling. 

And Ned began to speak.

And the people respond with their usual response: WHAT? LOUDER!

Arya feels a righteous indignation. You leave him alone! She wants to shout. But she knows no one will hear and no one will listen. But then Ned lifts his head, and look, summarization is fine, but this deserve the full reading. So bear with me:

I am Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King, and I come before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and men.

NO! Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to scream and shout. Taunts and obscenities filled the air. Sansa had hidden her face in her hands.

Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard. “I betrayed the faith of my king and the trust of my friend, Robert,” he shouted. “I swore to defend and protect his children yet before his blood was cold, I plotted to depose and murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High Septon and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

Devastating. Utterly devastating. And yet, there’s a fun turn of phrase in what Ned’s proclamation. Did you catch it? We’ll talk about it in a bit if you didn’t!

A stone come hurling from the crowd as Ned gets hit in the face to Arya’s dismay. The gold cloaks hold Ned up while two Kingsguard knights step in front of Cersei and Joffrey to be their personal meatshields. 

Arya’s hand goes to Needle and it grips around the leather. She prays:

Please, gods, keep him safe. Don’t let them hurt my father.

The High Septon steps forward and somehow kneels in front of Joffrey (I like to think he flops in front of Joffrey, because of the lulz):

As we sin, so do we suffer. This man has confessed his crimes in the sight of gods and men, here in this holy place. The gods are just, yet Blessed Baelor taught us that they are also merciful. What shall be done with this traitor, Your Grace?

Barabas! The crowd screams. GIVE US BARABBAS! Ah, wait, that’s wrong. Different but similar story. And then Prince Joffrey, no King Joffrey steps forward, and you bitches know I need to read this:

“My mother bids me let Lord Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father.” Joffrey looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, and for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer, until Joffrey turned back to the crowd, and said, “But they have the soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”

The crowd goes wild, and Arya feels Baelor’s statue rocking under her. The High Septon, still in a near-fetal position, clutches at Joffrey’s cloak. Varys comes rushing forward, waving his arms thinking about Oh my god. My 20 year plan to put some Blackfyre on the Iron Throne is suddenly running into complications! And even Cersei is trying to say something like, “But Joff, my good boy Joff, I must advise you otherwise”, but Joffrey shakes his head, and everyone moves aside.

Damn, it’s like an indictment of feudal society almost, right Emmett?

Through the gap, a tall man steps forward. It’s none other than the Prologue POV for TWOW: Ser Ilyn Payne. Sansa falls to her feet, sobbing hysterically. And Ser Ilyn climbs the stairs towards Ned at the pulpit.

Arya scrambles off Baelor’s statue, drawing Needle. She lands on someone, bowls over him and pushes towards the front. Arya slashes at people with Needle in a blind fury. Above her, Ilyn Payne gives the signal to the knight in black and gold, and the knight gives the command. The gold cloaks throw Eddard Stark to the ground.

Someone shouts at Arya, but she moves beyond his reach. Someone reaches for her leg, but she kicks it aside and hacks at it with her sword. Arya slashes her sword at people, trying, trying, trying to get to Ned. 

But it’s not good.

There are too many people. She can’t make it in time.

Ser Ilyn Payne draws a massive two-handed greatsword from behind his back, and Arya realizes that this guy, this motherfucker has Ice! Ned’s sword! Tears come streaming down her face. And then a hand reaches out and grabs her arm.

Needle goes flying from her grasp, and Arya is pulled to this man. A face comes within a centimeter of hers.

Don’t look!

Arya sobs, and the old man shakes her. Shut your mouth and close your eyes, boy. And then it comes.

Dimly as if from far away, she heard a … a noise … a soft sighing sound as if a million people had let out their breath at once.

The man holds onto Arya. Look at me. Yes, that’s the way of it, at me. The old man’s breath smells like old wine.

Remember, boy?

Arya does remember. The smell is what does it. The old, black cloak over a twisted shoulder helps her memory. This was the Night’s Watch man who had visited Ned after she was in the black cells.

Know me now, do you? There’s a bright boy.

But now the deed is done. And Arya is coming with this man. 

The press dissolved around them as people drifted back to their lives. Bur Arya’s life was gone. Numb, she trailed along besides … Yoren, yes his name is Yoren. She did not recall him finding Needle, until he handed the sword back to her. “Hope you can use that boy.”

Arya starts to protest that she’s not a boy, but Yoren shoves her against a doorway. Not a smart boy, that what you mean to say. As Yoren holds her with one hand, Arya sees he has another knife in his other hand. 

And the end of this chapter, oh wow, I had forgotten this. 

As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself backward, kicking wildly, wrenching her head from side to wide, but he had her by the hair, so strong, she could feel her scalp tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of tears.

And that is AGOT, Arya V! Everyone can let out the breath they’ve been holding now. But … wow. Just …

I mean look, I remember where I was 9/11 happened and what I was doing (I was in my basement, not at school, when my mom came down to tell me that a plane at hit the World Trade Center). I remember where I was when I asked my wife to marry me (I was in my old apartment, and we were watching The Hangover, and I excused myself to “use the bathroom”, but I went to get the ring instead).

And I remember where I was when Ned Stark was executed. It was 2011. I was in my basement apartment at my brother’s house. I had been home from Afghanistan for barely 6 months, and I was watching on my laptop. And I just knew that Ned was going to make it. You can’t kill Ned. He’s a main character! You can’t! You can’t! YOU CAN’T.

You did.

Where were you when Ned Stark was executed, Emmett?

Depth

Other than the Red Wedding, this is the single most iconic event in both ASOIAF and Game of Thrones. It’s a landmark in pop culture, one of the most dramatic and devastating moments in the history of the genre. Our hero Ned Stark, father to his children and his men, driven first like a noir detective to find the truth and then like a paladin to save innocent lives from that same truth, is bruised and battered and brought low in every fashion. A war for all Westeros hangs in the balance, with an even greater threat looming on the northern horizon. Here comes Joffrey, the shining golden prince at the end of the rainbow, to spare the white hart and heal the land like in Sansa’s stories, and he turns to her with a smile…

...and pulls out a knife…

...and cuts the poor thing’s throat. 

The blood spills over the pale marble. The dream is defiled. The prince is a monster. The war spreads outward from the sacrifice of our protagonist. It’s a narrative prism, the story splintering into a thousand rays from one dreadful cathartic burst. 

This is what the entire book has been building to: the overarching theme of loss, the bright shining possibilities of youth and song and fantasy giving way to the reality of mortality. Lyanna in her bed of blood and Robert in his; Sansa’s cheers of joy at the Hand’s Tourney cut short by Gregor Clegane’s crimes, past and present; Bran’s dreams of knighthood dashed when a knight steps out of the stories and throws him for a fall. Ned’s death is the Fall, the ultimate incarnation of the fall from grace that is AGOT’s central subject. Coming back to it feels (perversely enough) like going home--not to remember childhood, but the moment childhood ended.

The moment you grew up. 

“The moment when all the smiles died.”

• Living on the streets
  • ...but before that, let’s talk about Arya Stark, Dickensian orphan!
  • AGOT Arya V is kind of a weird chapter in that everyone remembers it for the second half, and the first half basically has nothing to do with Ned’s execution
  • Not the most structurally exact chapter in the series, but the first half is still good
  • It’s less about wrapping things up for book one and more about establishing how Arya’s story is going to work in books two and three
  • Perhaps because originally this wasn’t the original end to Arya’s AGOT arc ,,,
  • Arya Underfoot will be our eyes on the ground for the war raging in Westeros, wandering through the dust left behind by all the crusading kings
  • We can see the first half of Arya V as a dress rehearsal wherein George tries out the tones and themes that will dominate that storyline
  • Constant threats to safety
    • Kids attacking and stealing from her
    • Grown men attempting to rape her
    • Soldiers on the hunt for her
  • No worthy institutions to which to appeal
    • Can’t trust the Faith
    • Can’t trust the gold cloaks
    • Certainly can’t trust the crown!
  • A city at war
    • The gold cloaks hunting 
    • Gossip everywhere, but precious little truth
    • Everyone rising (Janos) and falling (Ned)
  • Violence is the only way to survive
    • Killing pigeons 
    • Eating puppies and probably people at the potshops
    • Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was growing harder to remember why.
  • She tries to fit in among the peasants, but they know she’s not one of them
  • The bitter irony is that Arya thinks life is gonna be easier if she can just make it out of the city. No, my poor daughter, things will get even worse on the road!!
  • But through it all, she’s got Syrio’s teachings to guide her, as at the port
• The buildup
  • I love how George handles the reveal that Ned’s being taken off to be executed
  • First of all, he puts it in a mouth of a child who we assume is exaggerating/lying
  • Then he has the other peasants doubt it: “They ain’t neither going to lop him. Since when do they knick traitors on the steps of the Great Sept?”
  • One might as well ask “since when do they kill guests at a wedding?” Taboos are being broken, fitting the theme of instability and danger early on in the chapter
  • Arya doesn’t scream “ahhh!” at the sky when she hears the news like Point Break
  • Instead, George shows her horror in a more subtle way: she doesn’t see the rut in the road right in front of her, because her heart has just stopped
  • She falls in, gets injured, and sobs, expressing her emotion in a less melodramatic way than we might expect
  • The Redwynes almost run her down, reflecting both the class dynamics that will dominate Arya’s story going forward and also the end of her innocence: they do not look so silly as when Sansa and Jeyne made fun of them in happier times
  • Arya pushes and shoves her way through the crowd, the masses that will slowly vanish over the course of her ACOK and ASOS storyline, as more and more empty space comes to dominate war-torn Westeros
  • Only Baelor is able to save her, a religious king like a god reaching down his hand…
  • ...but no gods hear her prayers. Baelor is a just statue of a long-dead man like those in the WF crypts. If the Seven exist, they don’t care enough to intervene
  • Speaking of which, Ned makes an interesting reference to them in his confession!
• The horror, the horror
  • Then we get to the execution itself, and we have to talk about Joffrey’s smile
  • For me, this is the purest example of villainy in the series, the atomic core of awful, stripped down to its essence
  • Joff smiles just because he knows it’ll hurt Sansa more if he does it, if he shows her and the audience the image of the perfect prince before snatching it away
  • There’s no other reason to do it; it’s breathtaking in its pettiness and cruelty
  • This is why I look askance at any plan, be it Renly’s or Littlefinger’s or Tywin’s, that involves this sadistic little fuck remaining in power. You can’t fix this.
  • Then he gives the command, and there’s nothing anyone can do despite this being an affront to everyone involved and dumb on every conceivable level
  • That’s a systemic critique indeed! If the rule you followed brought you here, of what use was the rule? What worthy system puts Joffrey in charge?
  • That’s not to say we enlightened moderns have figured out the problem of power (we haven’t), but that unchecked monarchy is being exposed as not only bad, but childishly bad. It promises order, but offers “madness. Madness and stupidity.”
  • Yoren steps in to save Arya, which fits--he stubbornly believes in the ability of the Night’s Watch to bring order to chaos, to synthesize a realm out of this madness
  • But that doesn’t make him friendly, and in the scene, he’s just another threatening element Arya can’t understand or control
  • That haunting moment: the breath goes out, and Arya’s life is gone
  • Everyone else can resume their business, because what’s another high lord failing at the game of thrones? But for Arya, that’s Dad, and I think George wants us to adopt that perspective. 
  • I think we need to move past Ned’s death as genre deconstruction and recognize it as tragedy. He’s not just being swept off stage to make way for the real protagonists. There’s a Ned Stark shaped hole in the story that follows, and in his children, and in us.
  • He’s an emotional and thematic presence that defines so much of the story to come. “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths,” and Ned’s story meant so much more than the image of an honorbound fool.
  • We see this most clearly in the books in ADWD, when the clansmen are willing to fight and die for “the Ned’s little girl.” Who will do that for Tywin Lannister? His legacy is a feast for crows. Ned’s is a dream of spring. 
  • The show adds another layer to this, in my single favorite addition to the canon: Ned shouting “BAELOR!” to Yoren, and knowing in his final moments that Arya got out alive
  • For once, for once, he gets to actually save the children, and nothing goes wrong! He goes to his grave knowing he did that one thing right.
  • Pour one out for Eddard Stark. He was a good man in a shitty world, he tried his best to do the right thing, and that’s all any of us can do. 

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

We’ve been comparing Ned’s execution to the Red Wedding, and perhaps the strongest link (besides, y’know, the feels) is how the chapter ends, with a Stark woman being grabbed by the hair as a knife flashes towards her--just like Catelyn at the Red Wedding. 

The potshops with their bowls of brown and the (let’s say) unsavory ingredients within come back in ASOS, when Tyrion has Bronn add Symon Silvertongue to the pot. 

“Is it the boy king that’s died now?... Ah, that’s a boy for you, they never last long.” And indeed, Joffrey doesn’t survive book three! Of course, it could also be referring to Robb...

Theory/Discussion

On the surface, it seems pretty clear who bears responsibility for Ned Stark’s execution: Joffrey and Joffrey alone. As established in Eddard XV, Cersei has arranged a deal to send Ned to the Wall, in the hopes that Robb and his bannermen can be pacified. Joffrey altered the deal, because he’s an arrogant little prick who loves nothing more than public displays of violence and lacks even a rudimentary grasp of political strategy. This is repeatedly reinforced in ACOK: Cersei tells Tyrion about the plan and how her beloved perfect son messed it all up, and Yoren tells Arya that he was paid off by a mysterious stranger--aka Varys--to take Ned (and Gendry) to the Wall before Joffrey intervened. Thematically, that works very well: the best laid plans go awry due to bloodlust enabled by a corrupt power structure. Case closed, thanks for listening...

...or is it? 

Way back when we covered Eddard IV, we argued that while on the surface Robert seems to be responsible for the crown’s catastrophic finances, there are strong hints that it was actually Littlefinger (as master of coin) who broke the bank. Along the same lines, George has left us clues that Joffrey does not bear sole responsibility here. Littlefinger urged him to execute Ned.

• Motive
  • “Chaos is a ladder,” and Ned’s execution guarantees that the civil war will continue to spin out of control 
  • Littlefinger has a vendetta against House Stark thanks to his duel with Brandon
  • He has already betrayed Ned once, ostensibly because Ned wouldn’t keep silent about Joffrey’s heritage, but in truth it’s probably because Ned married Catelyn
  • Speaking of Cat, it’s possible LF still has an interest in her and wants Ned out of the way; he says as much in Season 2 when he runs into her at Storm’s End
  • On the other hand, we learn from Cersei’s chapters in ADWD that he had asked for Sansa’s hand in marriage prior to this chapter, and been rebuffed by her
  • As such, this might be his way of getting back at Cersei by messing up her plans
• Means/opportunity
  • While Joffrey loves being a tyrant and making everyone dance at his whims, he’s also repeatedly influenced by his elders--Cersei, Robert, Sandor, etc. 
  • We know he’s vulnerable to flattery and that he loves a sophomoric joke, both of which offer Littlefinger an opportunity to schmooze the new king
  • We see in Sansa VI that he’s happy to let LF govern, every bit as much as Cersei
  • It wouldn’t be the only time Littlefinger used his influence subtly--see how he spread Joffrey’s reputation at Bitterbridge
  • It also wouldn’t be the only time he commits murder via a catspaw in order to foster conflict--see how he got Lysa to poison Jon Arryn and frame the Lannisters
  • Then there’s Janos Slynt, whose role is described by Cersei thusly:
  • Almost as if Lord Slynt is taking orders from someone else...who does he follow? “The man who pays him,” of course!
• The staging of the scene
  • What convinces me above all, however, is a subtle but telling omission as everything goes to hell in this chapter
  • When Arya describes the various nobles on the dais, she establishes that Littlefinger is indeed present: “she thought the short man with the silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who had once fought a duel for Mother.”
  • Yet after Joffrey gives the order, Littlefinger is not among those protesting it
  • Varys runs over, Cersei whispers in Joffrey’s ear, the High Septon is affronted by the insult to his faith, but Littlefinger? He doesn’t seem to move a muscle
  • This is in spite of Cersei saying in ADWD that he helped arrange the deal
  • So why isn’t he as upset as Varys? Because it’s all going according to plan. He lit the fuse, and now he sits back and watches as the dynamite goes off.
• Fuck you, mockingbird
  • If Littlefinger is indeed responsible, then once again he has plunged the continent into a civil war that will kill, injure, and dispossess thousands, all because he didn’t get the girl
  • To be clear, as I’ve said before, I think Littlefinger has a legitimate grievance against Hoster Tully for how the latter treated him and Lysa. If all he did was work to weaken Riverrun politically, I wouldn’t be telling him to go die in a fire
  • But Ned? Ned has never done LF wrong, any more than Jon Arryn did. They made the mistake of trusting him, and he delights in their deaths for that reason
  • Given that he’s already trying to marry Sansa, he might have arranged Ned’s death not only to spite Cersei, but also to isolate Sansa
  • Just look at how he manipulates her after killing Lysa, convincing her that she “has no friend but Petyr” and has no choice to put up with his gross grooming
  • I think it’s telling that George chose not to show us Littlefinger grieving for Catelyn after the Red Wedding. He doesn’t view the Tully/Stark women as people--just props in his personal revenge play. There’s no humanity left in him
  • Littlefinger’s death was the highlight of Season 7, and after rereading this chapter and contemplating his role, I’m more eager than ever for his downfall in the books

Conclusion

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• And like we promised, the answer to our riddle from Lady Bword!

Barristan Selmy 

The link to your names is your twitter handles, he connects you both by fighting with the (Blackfish) during the battle of the stepstones and saw the frog (Quentyn) die. 

Gave up his claims well you know that part, when my time is due will anyone cry - because he’s changed sides a few times and likely will change again.

• Join us next week for Bran VII, as we continue the pattern established in this chapter of Ned Stark’s children facing his death. And then we have Sansa, Jon, and Robb to deal with...fun times.