Episode 15: A GAME OF THRONES, CATELYN III: "You Weren't Supposed to be Here" (SHOW NOTES!)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast, 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 our fifteenth episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “You Weren’t Supposed to Be Here: An Analysis of AGOT, Catelyn III,” in which Lady Catelyn breaks down and then gets back up on her feet...and somewhere in there, someone else tries to kill Bran, and gets his neck eaten for his trouble. This episode is brought to you all by our Lords Commander Mark N, Timothy W and Hayden J. Thank you, gentlemen!

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

Announcements:

• GRRM announces Fire and Blood, Volume One US publication date of November 20, 2018. TWOW not in 2018. Some of GRRM’s publishers have asked GRRM to split TWOW into two volumes. He has resisted (so far)
• Iafcon report by Emmett
• Plug Girls Gone Canon
• Next patreon-special episode announcement
• 3 week break

No questions this week. We’ll pick up on our questions upon our return 

Summary and Synopsis

It’s been 8 days since everyone has departed Winterfell. Left behind are Bran the Broken, Robb, Rickon, Maester Luwin and our POV character for this chapter: Catelyn Stark. Lady Catelyn still hasn’t left Bran’s side. She hadn’t even ventured outside of Bran’s sickroom to wish her Lord Husband goodbye, but she watched them go from the window of Bran’s room.

Maester Luwin arrives in her room and tells her that they need to go over the costs of King Robert’s visit as well as make appointments for the vacancies created by the departure of most of the Stark retinue. When Luwin brings up one of the vacancies, the Master of Horse, Catelyn angrily replies:

“I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would open Bran’s eyes, do you understand that? Do you!?”

And then Robb appears and tells Luwin that he’ll make the appointments on the morrow. Luwin departs, and Robb speaks with Catelyn, asking her what she’s doing. “I am taking care of your brother. I am taking care of Bran,” Cat replies.

But is she? That’s the question Robb asks, but Cat is unmoved. She fears that if she leaves, Bran will die, but Robb tells her that Bran is not going to die, that the greatest danger has passed (Irony alert!). And then the wolves howl. Robb goes to window and opens it, to let Bran hear the howls of the wolves, but Catelyn begins shaking, screaming, “Make them stop! I can’t stand it, make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!”

An instant later, Catelyn finds herself being picked up from the floor by Robb, not remembering that she fell. Robb tells his mother to get sleep and that he’ll close the window to the howls if she promises to sleep, and then all the dogs start barking. Robb looks back at the window and sees fire. The library is on fire. Robb rushes out of the room to help combat the flames, leaving Cat and Bran alone in the room. When Cat judges that the fire won’t reach Bran’s sick room, she closes the shutters to the window, turns and there’s a man in the room.

“You weren’t s’posed to be here. No one was supposed to be here,” the stranger mutters.

Catelyn looks him over. Small, dirty, in filthy brown clothing, stinking of horses. But worst of all, he has a knife in his hand. “No,” Catelyn gasps. “It’s a mercy,” the man says. “He’s already dead.” She spins around and tries to call for help, but the man rushes her and catches her, placing his hand over her mouth and pulling her head back while the other hand brought the knife to her throat. 

Catelyn reaches up, grabbing the sharp blade with both her hands. She fights, biting his palm and pushing him and the knife away from her throat. “You weren’t s’posed to be here,” the man repeats stupidly. And then a shadow appears. Bran’s direwolf jumps the man and rips out his throat. 

“Thank you,” Catelyn whispers. The direwolf jumps onto Bran’s bed and lays down next to Bran, and Catelyn begins laughing hysterically. That was the same state that Robb and half the Winterfell guard found Catelyn in when they burst in a few minutes later on. They bundle Catelyn up in blankets and take her the Great Keep where Old Nan bathes her while Luwin dresses her wounds in her hands. She falls asleep.

When she wakes, she is told she’d been sleeping for four days. She requests food. Robb, Theon, Rodrik, Hallis Mollen and Luwin arrive at Catelyn’s room. She asks about the catspaw. No one knew him, but he had been seen about, Hallis tells Catelyn. He had been sleeping in the stables due to his smell and the bag of ninety silver stags found in the stable. And why did he come? Catelyn tells Robb to ask the question himself and come up with answer.  “Someone is afraid Bran might wake up, afraid of what he might say or do, afraid of something he knows.”

They then discuss the dagger. “The blade is Valyrian steel, the hilt dragonbone. A weapon like that has no business being in the hands of such a dude as the catspaw. Someone gave the dagger to him.” Catelyn then asks for the door to be closed and asks for oaths of silence from the men in the room. They all swear it. And then Catelyn reveals what she knows from Lysa about Jon Arryn being murdered by the Lannisters and how Jaime did not join Robert’s hunt the day that Bran fell. 

“I do not think that Bran fell. I think he was thrown.”

Everyone is shocked. Robb is so shocked that he draws his sworn and waves it around, declaring that he will kill Jaime Lannister himself. Ser Rodrik tells Robb to put the blade away and to never draw your sword unless you mean to use it. Abashed, Robb puts his sword away and the discussion shifts to proving the allegation that Catelyn raises. Someone must go to King’s Landing. But not Robb. There must always be a Stark at Winterfell. Luwin? Rodrik? Theon? Hmmm … not them either. And then it dawns on her. Catelyn will go herself.

But what about Bran? “I have done everything I can for Bran. His life is in the hands of the gods and Maester Luwin.”

Finally, they all talk about who will accompany Catelyn and how they’ll get down to King’s Landing. A host of guards would bring unwanted attention, but what about Rodrik accompanying Cat? That could work. And the route? They wouldn’t take the kingsroad. They’d take ship from White Harbor down to King’s Landing, and then, they would see what they would see.

And that’s AGOT, Catelyn III: a damn good chapter if I do say so myself.

Depth and Structure

Catelyn III is GRRM’s portrait of a breakdown. Whereas Eddard is consumed with keeping the trauma of memory at bay, whereas Daenerys has traded one captor for another even as she feels hints of liberation stirring within, whereas Arya and Jon and Tyrion are struggling to digest their daily diets of dehumanization, this chapter is about the world falling apart around someone for whom the world was, for the most part, working. Catelyn Tully Stark’s story is an accumulation of descents that form one great Greek tragic fall. It began with the dark wings and dark words that told of Jon Arryn’s death in her first POV chapter, continued with the portentous letter from Lysa in her second, and now in her third, at the potential deathbed of her beloved boy Bran, she feels as though the bottom has truly fallen out. Tonally and thematically, it’s the followup to Bran’s literal and metaphorical fall in Bran II. Indeed, throughout the first three books, it is through Catelyn’s eyes more than any other that we see the fall of House Stark.

This is not to suggest Catelyn is wholly sympathetic in this chapter. Far from it--GRRM is unflinching in presenting how difficult it is to be around someone deep in the throes of grief and existential doubt, especially when you’re trying to nudge them back towards the practical workaday world. It’s not easy nor fun to occupy her headspace in Catelyn III. But it’s unpleasantness with a narrative payoff; Catelyn is shocked out of it by the heart-pounding attempt on Bran’s life, and afterwards returns to “family, duty, honor” with renewed purpose. Strength comes through all the more powerfully on the page when paired with vulnerability, and the sorrows wracking House Stark have to be given emotional weight for the downfall (which has only begun) to hit home with us.

Likes and Dislikes

Likes: The emotional rawness of Catelyn’s POV--it’s uncomfortable in a very appropriate and effective way.

Dislike: Theon feels stiff, ill-defined, and somewhat out of place in these early chapters. For example, when Catelyn reveals her suspicion that Jaime tossed Bran from the broken tower, she describes all their faces as horrified, but then Theon’s next line of dialogue suggest he’s not taken aback at all. Contrast this with how well Ser Rodrik functions as a supporting character for Catelyn over her next several POV chapters, or Maester Luwin in Bran’s ACOK storyline. Theon Greyjoy really is the ultimate Ascended Extra; unlike Stannis, who also doesn’t appear in the initial pitch letter, we get very little evidence in AGOT that this is a guy worth paying attention to as the story expands. There’s Ned’s order to keep a watchful eye on Theon so his father Balon will side with the Starks against the Lannisters, and...that’s about it. 

Likes: Catelyn’s emotional state, Robb the boy, the violent fight with the catspaw, this line: “His blood felt like warm rain as it sprayed across her face.”

Dislike: Theon’s line after Cat tells the party: Winterfell may have need of all its swords soon, and they had best not be made of wood."

"My lady, if it comes to that, my House owes yours a great debt."

Uh, what? A debt for sparing Theon’s life? Maybe Theon is just being naive, but still, there’s no debt that the Greyjoys owe the Starks. They were beaten enemies.

Foreshadowing and Groundwork

Fitting the theme of House Stark’s fall and rise, this is the first of several chapters wherein the seeds of Stoneheart are sown. As the chapter opens, note the form Catelyn’s impotent fury takes when Maester Luwin tries to go over the books with her:

“My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new master of

horse? Do you think I care what happens in the stables? Do you think it matters to me

one whit? I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would

open Bran’s eyes, do you understand that? Do you?”

The idea of Catelyn “gladly butcher[ing] every horse in Winterfell with my own hands” in the name of her fallen son lays the groundwork for Lady Stoneheart’s forest of nooses, sprouting from the blood-soaked soil of the Red Wedding. It’s an image that smacks of both The Godfather and blood sacrifice; given the resonance with Dany butchering Drogo’s horse in her attempt to revive him later in the book, it could qualify as a hint that Catelyn’s rage will ultimately be filtered through sorcerous resurrection.

Next, as her breakdown reaches a fever pitch: 

Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the direwolves. Night after

night, the howling and the cold wind and the grey empty castle, on and on they went,

never changing, and her boy lying there broken, the sweetest of her children, the

gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh and climb and dreamt of knighthood, all gone now,

she would never hear him laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand free of his and

covered her ears against those terrible howls. “Make them stop!” she cried. “I can’t stand

it, make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!”

The language here strongly echoes the fragmented thoughts that flash across Catelyn’s mind in her final moments before the knife finds her neck--it’s the same sense that she is being torn to pieces by loss and grief and the death of her son’s innocent dreams. There’s even the mournful howl of the wolves in common with the Red Wedding. Yet here, Catelyn calls for the death of the supernatural guardians that will save her life along with Bran’s in a moment. As Stoneheart, her rage will flare out heedlessly and in a self-sabotaging fashion as it did with Jon Snow, targeting innocents like Podrick Payne.

Then, as the fire breaks out:

Fire, she thought, and then, Bran! “Help me,” she said urgently, sitting up. “Help me

with Bran.”

Robb did not seem to hear her. “The library tower’s on fire,” he said.

Catelyn could see the flickering reddish light through the open window now. She sagged

with relief. Bran was safe. The library was across the bailey, there was no way the fire

would reach them here. “Thank the gods,” she whispered. 

Robb looked at her as if she’d gone mad.

One certainly cannot fault Catelyn for prioritizing her vulnerable child above all else, but she’s framed here as having the blinders on to all else, which will get turned up to 11 after Beric brings her back. Not for nothing does Robb look at her as if she’s gone mad (as she will, watching him die); it’s not far off from the sort of thing Cersei was saying during the Blackwater. She, too, will order a direwolf killed. 

The early glimpses of the Red Wedding ramp up when the catspaw arrives: 

“No,” Catelyn said, louder now as she found her voice again. “No, you can’t.” She spun back toward the window to scream for help, but the man moved faster than she would have believed. One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The stench of him was overwhelming.

Just as at the Twins two books later, Catelyn has a dagger at her throat, forced to witness an attempt on her beloved son’s life. In this instance, of course, his wolf is there to save the day, but even after that, the scene still directly foreshadows the Red Wedding:

The wolf padded closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the blood with a wet rough tongue. When it had cleaned all the blood off her hand, it turned away silently and jumped up on Bran’s bed and lay down beside him. Catelyn began to laugh hysterically.

That was the way they found them, when Robb and Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik burst in with half the guards in Winterfell.

The blood on her hands, the horror bubbling out of her as hysterical laughter, the guards watching in shock...the Red Wedding was hiding in plain sight all along. The Woman of her Time and Place comes unstuck from space and time; all she can do as the blood pools is laugh at the joke that was her world. “And the woman breaks.”

Similar wording too between this chapter and the Red Wedding:

AGOT

One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe.

ASOS

She pressed the blade deeper into Jinglebell's throat. 

“Make an end," and a hand grabbed her scalp just as she'd done with Jinglebell, and she thought, No, don't, don't cut my hair, Ned loves my hair. Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold.

AGOT

One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The stench of him was overwhelming.

ASOS

The lackwit rolled his eyes at her in mute appeal. A foul stench assailed her nose

AGOT

When it had cleaned all the blood off her hand, it turned away silently and jumped up on Bran's bed and lay down beside him. Catelyn began to laugh hysterically.

ASOS

Slow red worms crawled along her arms and under her clothes. It tickles. That made her laugh until she screamed. 

All of which is to say that the transformation of Catelyn into a revenge zombie at the end of ASOS does not represent an out-of-left-field cheap trick, as it’s sometimes argued, but rather a natural extension of the ideas and images the author’s been pursuing with her character all along. The worth and meaning of Lady Stoneheart has been back in the discourse of late given the author’s unhappiness with Game of Thrones not featuring his hangwoman. It’s understandable to a certain extent to dismiss Stoneheart’s significance, because there hasn’t really been any payoff yet on a grand scale; we get strong hints in AFFC as to what she’s got cooking with the Brotherhood, but the red won’t run in full until TWOW. What makes Stoneheart work dramatically, though, is her dreadful congruence with what came before. You can see her already, this early on, waiting in the wings, eyes glimmering beneath the hood. The anger is there, waiting to be unleashed. 

Theories and Discussion

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/613ux8/spoilers_extended_dragonheit_451_the_temperature/ 

Conclusion

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