Episode 63: A GAME OF THRONES, CATELYN X: "Moonlight Sonata" 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 sixty-third episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “Moonlight Sonata: An Analysis of AGOT, Catelyn X,” in which Catelyn Stark describes the Battle of the Whispering Wood with such lyrical beauty you almost forget that a bunch of people are dying horribly. 

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
• And The Blue-Ringed Octoling

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

Ser Keith J, our Small Council Master of Ships asks:

Howdy guys, just got a question for ya!  Since we're getting down to the final stretch of AGOT chapters, I was just curious if you were planning on a sizeable blow-out episode to finish out your analysis of the first book?  In other words, something similar to your other Stump the Chumps Patreon eps? 

Archmaester June, our small council Healer of the Lesser Poxes, asks:

Hello sirs!! I hope your lesser poses are responding well to treatment. Those leeches were my personal favourites.

I have a question/ musing. Do you think that Arianne Martell's story heretofore is setting her up to eventually be part of Faegon's downfall? Could she eventually end up being a Queenmaker after all...that queen being Daenerys? She certainly seems to have strong feelings about female heirs being supplanted by males...although Faegon would seem to be the rightful heir from a Targaryen POV, she might take part in a ruse and side with Dany. Wouldn't that be neat?? Thank you for the sterling work your podcast is the brightest star in a fairly amazing firmament.

Synopsis

The woods were full of whispers.

Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink of spears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.

George sometimes gets the accusation that he writes mid or even lowbrow fiction lobbed at him, but the opening lines for Catelyn X should safely dispel this falsehood. 

Catelyn Stark sits atop a horse with Hallis Mollen, the new Winterfell Captain of Guards and thirty protectors. Robb and Catelyn had previously argued on the number of guards. Robb wanted fifty. Catelyn ten. They settled on thirty, both unhappy with the outcome. Catelyn is waiting, waiting for the battle to come.

It will come when it comes, Catelyn told Hallis Mollen. When it comes, she knew it would mean death. Hal’s death perhaps … or hers, or Robb’s No one was safe. No life was certain.

And this was an emotion Catelyn had experienced so many times before. She had waited for her father Hoster who always told her to Watch for me, little cat before riding off on his southron ambitions ventures. And though Hoster hadn’t always returned at the times he said he would, Catelyn would wait high atop Riverrun, and then she’d catch a glimpse of her father. She’s run to him, and Hoster would always ask: Did you watch for me?

The same had happened when Brandon Stark had asked her to wait for him when he went off to King’s Landing to call on Rhaegar to die. I shall not be long, my lady, Brandon vowed like the literary trope of a character about to die that he was. But Brandon hadn’t returned to wed Catelyn. Ned had stood in her place in the Sept at Riverrun.

And Ned had only been able to stay for a fortnight before he rode for Rhaegar and the Trident. He had made promises (really seems like a thing with Ned, doesn’t it?) to her that he’d return. But at the very least, Ned had left her pregnant with Robb. 

She had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him. Her son. He had been so small …

And now Catelyn waits again, but this time it’s for her baby boy and his potential killer: Jaime Lannister. Brynden Tully counseled Robb that Jaime had never learned to wait. They would use the kingslayer’s impatience to lure him into a trap. Their lives would be stake they would bet on.

But despite the danger, Robb never showed signs of fear. He provided words of comfort to some men, joked with other bro-soldiers and helped another settle his horse. And because he was a hero, and helmets are hardly heroic, he wore no helm, save his Tully auburn hair, to protect his head.

Let him grow taller, Catelyn asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let me him grow as tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please.

But where Robb was once a baby that Catelyn held. Now, he was a young man with a beard and direwolf. Someone on twitter asked if I was a parent before I read ASOIAF, and I wasn’t. And reading Catelyn’s chapter and feeling the fear veining Catelyn’s thoughts bears for son really makes Catelyn’s emotions come to life for me now more than ever.

But the woods were still only full of whispers. Jaime hadn’t come yet. Was Brynden wrong about what Jaime would do? Did the kingslayer know that Robb and his army was nearby? According to Brynden, no. All birds that might have carried news to Jaime had been shot out of the sky, and the few outriders that Jaime had put out were all dead now.

Robb asks Brynden how large his army is. Well, it’s about twelve thousand infantry arrayed in three separate camps. It was the only way to besiege Riverrun. And Jaime had two to three thousand additional cavalry. Well, those odds aren’t good, Galbart puts in. Jaime has the northmen at a numerical disadvantage of three to one. 

True enough, Ser Brynden said, yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks.

Yes? Robb asked.

Patience.

The northern army was larger than when it rode west from the Twins. The Mallisters had joind Robb, and the survivors from Edmure’s army had joined up with Robb too. And the army had come fast to Riverrun, fast to Jaime. And now they knew battle was at hand.

Robb Stark mounts his horse, aided by his squire Olyvar Frey who Catelyn neatly describes as two years older than Robb but ten years younger and more anxious. Love that. Olyvar straps Robb’s shield into place and finally hands him his helmet. Hey, I guess heroes are quite heroic after all, TV tropes page!

When Robb lowered the helmet over the face Catelyn loved so well, a tall young knight sat on his grey stallion where her son had been.

Robb tells Catelyn that he’s going to troop the line as Ned would do, and Catelyn tells Robb to go and let them see you. Robb says that it will give the men courage, and Catelyn wonders who will give me courage? But she doesn’t voice that thought aloud. Robb turns his horse about and trots away with Grey Wind, a direwolf who is important along with his newly formed battle guard in tow. And who are the men in this battle guard? Well, they’re sons of great and noble lords from the North and Riverlands alike. Patrek of House Mallister, Smalljon of House Umber, Theon of House Greyjoy, five Freys, Ser Wendel of House Manderly, Robin of House Flint and Torrhen and Eddard Karstark and Daryn Hornwood of House Redshirt.

Additionally, Dacey Mormont is there too. And who is Dacey? Well, she’s a six-foot tall woman who was given a morningstar at an early age, and the bros got some real concerns about her. It’s about ethics in warfighting, you see. But not to Catelyn.

This is not about the honor of your houses. This is about keeping my son alive and whole.

But would twenty-nine dudes and one dudette be enough? Would the entirety of Robb’s army be enough? Well, no need for those thoughts, because a bird sounds in the distance, and Catelyn knows that it means that Jaime is coming. 

The woods grow still around everyone, and she can hear them off in the distance. Horses, swords rattling, spears, armor, human voices, laughs and a curse. The sounds grow louder. More laughs. A command is shouted. They men cross and re-cross a stream. And then Jaime sees him. Ser Jaime Lannister, shaded silver by moonlight, not wearing a helmet, because ah … you probably already know the joke.

Catelyn flashes back to Ser Brynden promising that Jaime wasn’t one to sit around in his tent while his engineers built siege towers. Besides, he’d already ridden out a few other times since the siege had started. Robb had studied the map that Uncle Brynden had laid before him. Ned had taught him how to read a map. 

Raid them here, Robb says pointing to a spot. A few hundred men, no more. Tully banners. When he comes after you, we will be waiting. His finger moved an inch to the left- here.

And I can’t help but read on for this lovely description from Catelyn:

Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot, densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to a streambed, the underbrush thinning as the ground fell away.

We flash to the present with Robb looking back at Catelyn on last time, lifting his sword in salute. Then Maege Mormont’s warhorn sounds across the valley from the east, signalling that all of Jaime’s men were now within the zone of engagement. Grey Wind howls, sending a chill through Catelyn at how terrible yet musical it is. 

So this is what death sounds like.

And then the Battle of the Whispering Wood commences!

Another horn sounds from the far ridge as Greatjon Umber sounded his own horn. The Mallisters and Freys trumpets sound vengeance. And finally Lord Karstark’s warhorn sounds. And in the stream below, the Lannister men shout, and their horses rear.I just can’t help but want to quote the whole thing, but I need to speak this next paragraph in full, or I’ll hate myself more than usual:

The whispering wood let out its breath all at once as the bowmen Robb had hidden in the branches of the trees let fly their arrows, and the night erupted with the screams of men and horses. All around her, the riders raised their lances, and the dirt and leaves that had buried the cruel bright points fell away to reveal the gleam of sharpened steel. “Winterfell!” she heard Robb shout as the arrows sighed again. 

Magnificent! And it was nice of #TeamStark to give Jaime some surround sound entertainment before handing his ass to him.

Catelyn sits still atop her horse with her guard nearby, and a few moments later, they’re the only ones in that spot as the horsemen plunge forward into the darkness. Lady Did Only One Thing Wrong in Her Entire Life watches as the Umbers move down a long, endless line from the hilltop and … damn, gotta read it:

All Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the points of their lances, as if a thousand willowwisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver flame.

But then Catelyn blinks, and she sees only men rushing down the hill to kill or die. 

And then the battle blurs into a cacophony of echoing war sounds: cracking lances, the clang of swords, men calling out Lannister, Winterfell, Tully, Riverrun. Catelyn closes her eyes, and the battles come to even more life. Hoofbeats, iron boots splashing in the water, swords connecting with oaken shields, steel on steel, screaming horses, dying men and once she heard Robb shouting “To me! To me!”

But the sounds of battle begin to die as a red dawn rises. Blood has been spilt. Robb returns to Catelyn atop a different horse, his Stark shield hacked to pieces but Robb seemingly unhurt. But when he gets closer, Catelyn sees blood on the sleeve of his surcoat, and she thinks him wounded. But no. It’s not his blood. It’s Torrhen Karstark’s blood or someone else’s.

A gaggle of troops led by Theon and the Greatjon come up the slope after Robb, bringing a captive Jaime Lannister between them. The men throw Jaime down in front of Catelyn.

Lady Stark, I would offer you my sword, but I seem to have mislaid it.

It is not your sword I want, ser. Give me my father and my brother Edmure. Give me my daughters. Give me my lord husband

I have mislaid them as well, I fear, Jaime responds.

Theon tells Robb to kill Jaime, but Robb ain’t about that. They need Jaime alive, and besides Ned would never murder prisoners after the battle. Jaime puts in that Ned is wise and honorable.

Catelyn orders Jaime to be bound in irons and placed under guard. Robb agrees, adding in that Rickard Karstark is going to want him dead -- especially after he killed Torrhen and Eddard Karstark. Jaime also killed Daryn Hornwood too. Sure hope that Daryn’s death in this battle coupled with his father’s death in the preceding Tyrion chapter won’t have any long-term negative impacts on the North come ACOK!

Galbart Glover speaks highly of Jaime’s courage, telling Catelyn about how close Jaime came to killing Robb, and Robb helpfully puts in that he mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark’s neck. 

He was shouting for me. If they hadn’t tried to stop him-

I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark, Catelyn said. Your men did what they were sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege lord. Grieve for them. Honor them for their valor. But not now. You have no time for grief. 

Catelyn tells Robb that they’ve removed the commander of the Lannister army, but the rest of it is still encamped around Riverrun. Theon starts bragging about how awesome of a battle it was, and how it was the great victory since the field of fire, and bros, didn’t we kill so many of them. And …

Lord Tywin? Catelyn interrupts. Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin, Theon?

That shuts Theon up finally. If they don’t have Tywin Lannister, then the war isn’t won. They have victory in this one battle, but the great war is about to begin.

Robb Stark looks at Catelyn and tells everyone that Catelyn is right (When isn’t she?). They still have Riverrun ahead.

And that is AGOT, Catelyn X! Dammit, Emmett. How is George able to get away with it? He writes two battle chapters back-to-back, but they’re both, both outstanding in different and unique ways. How? How does he do it!?

Depth

I love the experience of reading the Green Fork and the Whispering Wood back to back, always have! In part it’s just thrilling to have the two large scale battle scenes in AGOT together so it feels like one big setpiece. In part it’s how well they fit together in the plot, with the Whispering Wood providing immediate payoff for the punchline of the Green Fork. But this time through, what I loved is the different perspectives they represent in terms of “how to write a battle scene.” 

The Green Fork feels (appropriately) fussy, ordered, and managerial. I’m not saying conservative, but I’m also not not saying it. Here are your marching orders, everybody! Form in nice neat formations for the audience to see, they’ve paid hard earned money to see you!

The Whispering Wood is all about how you gotta listen to the battle, man. Go with the flow, stop being so uptight about “formations” or “what’s happening.” Soak it all in and relate it to your life! Take this joint, Catelyn, and look at the trees and think about life. Robb’s got this. 

To be clear, I love em both, and of course the Green Fork has lovely imagery and the Whispering Wood has sound strategy. But the Whispering Wood is nearer and dearer to my heart, almost entirely on the strength of the prose. The natural imagery, the slowly building suspense, the way it shifts between past and present on a dime just to create the most beautiful moments possible in between…it’s my favorite Catelyn chapter in AGOT. This episode is called “Moonlight Sonata” after the Beethoven not out of pretension (or not only, anyway), but because Catelyn X feels musical to me. The other title I had in mind was “In a Silent Way,” after the Miles Davis album. That one doesn’t have the perfect jazz structure of his earlier triumphs like “Kind of Blue,” but it’s a masterpiece of mood. It’s the sonic equivalent of watching a candle slowly, lazily, burn itself out as the smoke curls and thickens above it. This is the literary equivalent.

• GRRM immediately grounds us in sonic and visual cues as the chapter starts:
  • The woods were full of whispers.
    
    Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink of spears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.
• This is different from the equally fluid and vivid language of Tyrion VIII, which was about acquainting us with the battlefield and all the moving parts on it
• The Whispering Wood is about everything except the battlefield, and there are two major takeaways from that for me, starting with the framing of Catelyn as King Arthur’s Mom
• Catelyn’s perspective is liminal: she’s aware of the strategy, making her own moves where she can (as with Robb’s Wolfguard, foreshadowing that he will be king soon), but always herself on the threshold of action, watching Robb with equal parts hope and fear
• The gender aspect of this dynamic is highlighted by the presence of Dacey Mormont among Robb’s guard, which provokes some grumbling among the lords
• So while Catelyn isn’t exactly waving a tearful goodbye at the doorstep while the menfolk march off to war, she often has to stop just short of the actual arena of power and watch helplessly as things spin out of control; see also Stannis v. Renly and the Red Wedding
• That’s an interesting contrast with Tyrion at the Green Fork, who isn’t privy to the true strategy and doesn’t enjoy nearly as warm a parent-child relationship with Tywin, but despite being looked down on for his stature, directly takes part in the battle 
• Even as Cat fears for Robb’s life in this chapter, however, she finds a kind of zen attitude in her inability to change fate, tying into the aforementioned laid-back mood: 
  • “It will come when it comes,” Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean death. Hal’s death perhaps . . . or hers, or Robb’s. No one was safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was content to wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm wind in her hair.
• For once, Catelyn Tully Stark is living in the moment, surrounded on all sides by death.
• The water and wind calm her, implicitly reminding her of Riverrun, and my other big takeaway from the Whispering Wood has to do with nature: a constant presence in Catelyn X, from imagery to sounds to the association of the forest with Robb’s army
• This is more than gorgeous background detail (though it is that), this is GRRM’s way of putting the life-and-death struggles of men in the context of the natural world, which will keep right on going regardless of whether it’s Stark or Lannister who wins the day
• Robb and Catelyn pass back through the Whispering Wood on the way to their grisly fates at the Red Wedding, and by then nature has reclaimed the battle’s remains
• So the cinematic equivalent would be Terrence Malick’s movies about the contrast of human struggles and the grand cycles of nature, especially Greatest War Movie Ever The Thin Red Line, in which a dead soldier speaks up from the earth swallowing him: 
  • Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your sufferings will be less because you loved goodness? Truth?
• The aesthetics of it all exist not only for their own sake, but also for making the strategy more visceral as it unfolds in both past and present
• First things first, this is a romp of a victory for Robb Stark and the northmen. Yes, Tywin wins a tactically and strategically insignificant battle in the chapter before against an enemy who wasn’t trying to win in the first place, but Robb does more than win tactically against Tywin.
• But before that, we have to get to the battle planning portion of it all.
• Of note, Robb and Brynden consult the map and pick a spot to ambush Jaime before even moving to the ambush site.
  • Robb is smart to lean on Brynden Tully for this pre-battle planning.
    • Brynden, as native Riverlander, and the most experienced practitioner of warfare in Robb’s army is important here
    • But it’s not the most vital. As much as I believed in years past that Brynden was the one who was guiding Robb’s victories, we see Robb as the one who makes the site selection for the ambush of Jaime’s forces:
      
      Robb had studied the map her uncle had drawn him. Ned had taught him to read maps. "Raid him here," he said, pointing. "A few hundred men, no more. Tully banners. When he comes after you, we will be waiting"—his finger moved an inch to the left—"here."
      • Nice for Ned to get a nod here -- he taught his son(s) well to give them courses in orienteering. 
        • But Ned’s block of instruction went beyond simple map reading. As Jon says to Stannis in ADWD: "The map is not the land, my father often said.”
        • So, too, will Robb not simply read a map. 
        • Reminds me of a maxim that I learned in my lean, violent days: the first reconnaissance is always, always a map reconnaissance.
• And you have that beautiful here, here, here structure, which snaps everything into place: we understand the strategy, we get another rush of imagery to set the mood, the battle kicks off at last, and it’s so stylized and cinematic that it always sticks in my mind
  • Again the contrast with the Green Fork, which was a fairly linear series of events. The Whispering Wood hops and skips through time to accomplish its ends
  • Those ends include not just setting up the strategy, but emphasizing how Catelyn increasingly feels the past inside the present inside the future:
    • Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him grow as tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. As she watched him, this tall young man with the new beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see was the babe they had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago.
  • We’ve said before that Catelyn is such a rich character in part because of how her backstory is constantly informing her mindset, in ways large and small
  • So an event through her eyes is never just the event itself, but a cascade of memories and premonitions crowding in, like pages in a flipbook
  • Riverrun brings her back to childhood, the “knights of summer” in Renly’s camp remind her of the false spring at Harrenhal before the Rebellion took its toll, etc.
  • Ned has a similar unstuck-in-time feel, but is fixated on a single event--Lyanna in her bed of blood--to which his feelings are always drawn like a magnet
  • Catelyn’s emotional net is cast wider, more diffusely, so instead of drawing everything back to one primal scene, GRRM skips like a stone across spacetime:
    • Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. “I shall not be long, my lady,” he had vowed. “We will be wed on my return.” Yet when the day came at last, it was his brother Eddard who stood beside her in the sept.
      
      Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to war with promises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had given her a son. Nine moons had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in the south. She had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him. Her son. He had been so small . . .
      
      And now it was for Robb that she waited . . . for Robb, and for Jaime Lannister, the gilded knight who men said had never learned to wait at all. “The Kingslayer is restless, and quick to anger,” her uncle Brynden had told Robb. And he had wagered their lives and their best hope of victory on the truth of what he said. 
  • That’s the same threefold structure of the here passage, and I love it!
  • It sums up Catelyn’s whole life, the way she’s always waited, always done her duty, always assumed that would make everything OK...and now, maybe it won’t.
  • She’s talking about Robb like Ned is already dead, just like Brandon rode to his death, as if she senses what’s about to happen to her husband in King’s Landing
  • So it’s not merely GRRM summing up Cat’s life, it’s her actively sifting through the memories, trying to find meaning in how she and her loved ones got here
  • She’s sensing the structure of her own tragic downfall, making it all the sadder
  • That achieves resonance with the battle, because its life-or-death stakes prompt these musings on Catelyn’s part, allowed for by her semi-removed position
  • The author shifts between her bittersweet thoughts and the steadily rising suspense as it becomes clear that Robb is preparing an ambush for Jaime. Speaking of which...
• But to understand the site selection for the ambush, we need to infer why this particular spot was chosen.
  • First, the ambush site is a valley floor with hills surrounding it.
    • Why is this important?
      • It gives Robb and his northmen advantage of coming down the hill against Jaime’s army below
      • This is especially important for Robb’s all-cavalry force. Their speed will be vital against Jaime’s force because …
    • A valley is doctrinally defined as: a stretched-out groove in the land, usually formed by streams or rivers. 
      • Why important?
        • As is noted in this chapter, Jaime’s army is caught in a stream when Robb sounds the attack
        • And water restricts cavalry mobility, mitigating Lannister cavalry from riding quickly against Robb’s army
        • In effect, it makes the Lannister army a force of tall infantryman
        • And the stream works to diffuse the Lannister army so that they can’t fight as en masse. 
        • Robb and his factions can defeat the Lannister army incrementally
  • People often talk about force multipliers (tactics, technology, personnel that multiplies the effect of friendly forces on the battlefield) as just the things I referenced. 
    • But terrain is another force multiplier, and that’s absolutely essential for Robb’s plan to work against Jaime.
• Another element, of course, is Robb himself as a personal command presence
  • He’s already being called the Young Wolf
  • He knows he has to be seen by the men before battle to give them confidence
  • He moves down the line with assuredness, tailoring his approach to each man
  • Then there’s that direwolf!
    • And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled.
  • Tyrion will later scorn the rumors of Robb using sorcery as lickspittles covering for their incompetence, and the stories Lancel passes on are indeed absurd
  • But there is a nugget of truth to it--Robb and Grey Wind have a budding connection between warg and wolf, and their bond is a killer political image
  • Given that the direwolf is House Stark’s sigil, this is a metaphor for Robb coming into his own as the head of his family; he is becoming the leader of the wolfpack
  • This coming-together is mirrored in his army, who through Robb are rediscovering their wolfish selves, the Northern identity challenged by the south
  • That’s why Catelyn hears the wolf howls and snarls everywhere during the battle and isn’t sure there’s only one; they’re all one pack now, the winter wolves reborn
  • It’s not just that Grey Wind fights with such ferocity and fearlessness, it’s that the Northmen following him and Robb into battle are inspired to do the same
  • Not only them, but Robb’s younger siblings are repeatedly inspired by his courage and skill on the battlefield...which really hurts the heart on reread!!
• Outlining the Stark and Lannister orders of battle.
  • Stark host
    • First, the army is an all-cavalry force -- important to seize the initiative and use mobility to overcome numerical disadvantages
      • Northmen: 3000 armored lances, 300-400 knights per Maester Luwin in Bran VI. Catelyn says that 9/10 of the northern horse is with them; so call it 2700 lances, 270-360 knights
      • Frey knights/lances: Unclear, but I’d estimate 1500 knights/lancers
      • Mallisters/other Riverlanders: 1000ish
      • Total Stark/Riverlander host: 6000 per Catelyn 
  • Lannister host
    • Jaime’s army besieging Riverrun is mixed infantry and cavalry
      • Infantry: 12000 in 3 separate camps around Riverrun
      • Cavalry: 2000-3000 all coming for Robb
  • The battle plan
    • Mission: Robb Stark’s army conducts an ambush NLT waxing crescent phase of the moon IOT destroy Jaime Lannister’s cavalry force and take Jaime prisoner
    • Execution: 5 phase operation
      • Phase 1 Shaping Operation 1: Brynden Tully and a force of Riverlanders flies Tully banners and conducts a raid against Jaime’s army
      • Phase 2 Shaping Operation 2: Brynden and the Riverlanders fall back to predetermined location as Jaime pursues
      • Phase 3 Shaping Operation 3: Once Jaime’s army is fully within the valley itself, Maege Mormont closes the entry point
      • Phase 4 Decisive Operation 1: Once the valley entry point is closed, horns sound, and archers deployed atop trees engage Jaime’s army with ranged weapons
      • Phase 5: Decisive Operation 2: Once arrows volleys are complete, Robb’s cavalry force attacks Jaime’s cavalry force from 4 directions: Greatjon from the north, Freys and Mallisters from the east and west and Robb from the south
      • Endstate: Jaime’s cavalry destroyed, Jaime taken prisoner, minimal casualties suffered by Stark/Riverlander host
• The Battle of the Whispering Wood
  • Basically, Robb’s plan works incredibly well
  • Brynden raids, Jaime takes the bait and chases the Riverlanders back to the ambush spot
  • Once the Lannister army is inside the zone of engagement, Maege Mormont closes the trap, horns sound, arrows fly, Robb’s cavalry, and I’ll use a doctrinal term here, wrecks the fucking shit out of the Lannister cavalry
  • Jaime is taken prisoner
    • But not before killing 3 important men: Torrhen and Eddard Karstark, Daryn Hornwood
  • Theon calls it a glorious victory, and for all that he’s an obnoxious prick, it’s hard to disagree! 
  • GRRM has talked about wanting to show both sides of war, why people fight and why they shouldn’t, and you really see both at the Whispering Wood
  • On the one hand, you can easily get swept up in the excitement of Robb’s victory over Jaime, especially given how the latter’s arrogance is what screws him over
  • There’s so much stirring imagery, so much catharsis to the suspenseful buildup
  • On the other hand, you get that jarring moment when Robb returns on a different horse covered in the blood of young men who died to save him
  • He’s shaken by having to watch members of the Wolfguard die for him, and as we’ll get into later, the deaths of these young men have important consequences
  • That gets at the chaos and instability of the battlefield, the death of young men in their prime (as will befall Robb, of course) in contrast to the glory and excitement
  • I think one more beautifully written passage sums up both sides of the coin:
    • They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver flame.
      
      Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.
  • For just a moment, it’s as if the beauty of the natural world emphasized throughout this chapter has transferred to the world of men
  • This is more than writing a battle scene poetically, this is arguing that the battle itself is poetry, a martial art if you will
  • And then she blinks; they’re mortal again. Some will get mercy and some (like Ned, like Robb, like Daryn Hornwood and the Karstarks, and like her) will not.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Lord Karstark’s anger about Jaime is gonna pay off in just the worst way come ASOS...

More southron ambitions groundwork: Catelyn notes that Hoster Tully spent a lot of time away from Riverrun in her youth. "Watch for me, little cat," her father would always tell her, when he rode off to court or fair or battle. Of course, lords often ride off to court or fair or battle, but it’s a intriguing how often Hoster was gone. Not a perfect contrast, but consider Ned who only left Winterfell/the North once after Robert’s Rebellion: to fight in the Greyjoy Rebellion.

Theon is Robb’s hype man, as he will be at Riverrun and will try to be back home in book two

More R+L=J groundwork “Blood and pain”

There’s only black in Robb’s visor...because he’s gonna lose his head. “Will thirty be enough? Will six thousand be enough?” No! I’m so sorry Mom, they will not!

Theory/Discussion

The Whispering Wood is a victory for Robb Stark, helping cement his reputation as a military prodigy (especially given that his opposite number Jaime is so well-known). But in the wake of the tactical Lannister victory at the Green Fork last week which turned out to be a strategic disaster, we should ask ourselves: how much of a victory is this? While Catelyn X ends rather abruptly on Robb saying Riverrun still awaits them, the equivalent scene in Season 1 of Game of Thrones gives the Young Wolf a very somber speech. He outlines how they haven’t actually met their political goals, and indeed as rereaders/rewatchers we know many of them are never met. So should we be cheering during the Whispering Wood, or are we missing a larger point? 

• Ultimately, the Battle of the Whispering Wood is a shaping operation for the true decisive operation: the relief of Riverrun from Lannister siege, but that’s not to take anything away from Robb’s victory, because the accomplishments are immense
  • The Lannister cavalry force is completely destroyed
  • Thus, the Lannisters besieging Riverrun have no eyes and no cavalry force to match Robb’s large and now battle-tested cavalry force
  • Several Westermen lords/knights are taken prisoner
    • They can be ransomed for money to fund Robb’s war cause
    • Or held prisoner to their family’s good behavior
      • This, of course, doesn’t happen. The Westermen are more afraid of Tywin than what Robb will do to their kin. That’s saying something.
      • Consider how not the norm this is with the example of the Redwynes from ACOK
        
        "All the Tyrell bannermen but for the Redwynes, and you have me to thank for that. So long as I hold those poxy twins of his, Lord Paxter will squat on the Arbor and count himself fortunate to be out of it." (ACOK, Tyrion IV)
  • Most importantly, Jaime Lannister is taken prisoner and effectively sidelined from the War of the Five Kings only participating in the Siege of Riverrun some two years later
    • This was exactly what Catelyn counseled Robb to seek in battle with the Lannisters back in Catelyn VIII:
      
      Our best hope, our only true hope, is that you can defeat the foe in the field. If you should chance to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a trade might very well be possible, but that is not the heart of it. So long as you have power enough that they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe. Cersei is wise enough to know that she may need them to make her peace, should the fighting go against her.
• So, the stated, pre-battle objective has been achieved. Will it help the Stark cause?
  • No.
  • The problem isn’t that Catelyn miscalculates here. Catelyn is operating under common Westerosi that there’s a psychopath on the Iron Throne who won’t give a shit about the political ramifications of killing Ned when trading him, Sansa and Arya for Jaime would net Tywin Lannister what he wants
  • Even worse for #TeamStark: in the next Tyrion chapter, Tywin is going to give up Jaime for dead and is going to embark on the most brutal chevauche imaginable against the Riverlands with the idea that they can do what they want as Jaime is dead
  • This doesn’t mean it’s a failure in the shorter-term though.
    • Jaime’s defeat will ensure that ⅔ of the Lannister army surrounding Riverrun will be destroyed
    • And this will open up the Westerlands to Robb’s vengeance campaign in ACOK.

The latter is a really important point because of how thorny the politics and timing get when Robb tries to make peace in book two. He offers a deal to the Lannisters, but as he tells Catelyn, he’ll have to force them to the table. We know Robb is right about that because we have Tyrion’s POV! His plan is to pretend to be negotiating in good faith, while waiting for cousin Stafford to prepare a second Lannister army so he and Tywin can crush the Young Wolf between them. For good measure, Tyrion breaks custom regarding envoys so he can free Jaime without trading Sansa, a blatant sign that Robb needs sticks as well as carrots. “I’ll give her another Whispering Wood” is a strong sign that Robb understands how war is an extension of politics (as with capturing Jaime being more important than defeating every single one of his soldiers). He follows that up by invading the Westerlands in an effort to hit Tywin’s vassals where it hurts, shatter Stafford’s fledgling host, and force the Lannisters to sue for peace. If the dominoes didn’t fall perfectly at the Fords and the Blackwater to doom him, it might’ve worked. 

On the other hand, beyond the logistics, there’s the larger themes at work. It is telling that the first two big battles in the story turn to ashes in the winner’s mouth. Tywin wins the Green Fork but loses the larger strategy; Robb wins at the Whispering Wood and again at the Camps, proving masterful at strategy, but loses his father anyway to Joffrey’s malicious whims (and Littlefinger’s manipulations). In the same way that Robert’s revenge quest did not satisfy and indeed gave rise to the problem it was supposed to solve, the author is demonstrating here that while battle scenes can be rousing and beautiful and great fun to analyze, war is not bringing our characters closer to their heart’s desires and chance will always play a role.

Conclusion

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