Episode 113: A CLASH OF KINGS, CATELYN V: "Family, Duty, Honor" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

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

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

Welcome to the one hundred and thirteenth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Family, Duty, Honor: An Analysis of ACOK, Catelyn V,” in which Brienne swears her sword in service to Catelyn, Edmure prepares to give Tywin battle at the fords, and Ned’s bones swing by on their way home. I’m sure all three of these subplots will go just fine.

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timbob
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
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• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
• Lord Anonymous
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
• Ser Sourcedelica 
• Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
• Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
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• Seanwell the Slayer
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• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
• Lady Elizabeth, Mistress of Horse (Faced Lesbians)
• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
• Lady Ashley
• Lady Raj, Mistress of Horse
• The Dead Sheppard Reborn, Preacher of the Poor Fellows
• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Hedrigal Captain of the Airship Arrogance who rejoins the small council after a voyage across the Narrow Sea to find himself 
• "Lord George... uhm, sorry... sorry, I just have to get this off my chest, and I fear that if I don't just come out and say it now, I'll chicken out again. So, here goes: I actually find Quaithe to be a wonderful character, and Qarth is probably my favorite location in the whole series. I've just been too afraid to admit it out of fear of what my co-host would think of me. There, I feel relieved to finally admit it... Anyway, where was I... Oh yeah, Lord George R.R. Michael"
• And our newest member of the small council: Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices who has been elevated from being a high lord to the small council!

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

Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of Old Bay of Crabs, a small council patron asks:

This question came to me as I re-listened to episode 18 of the NotACast, which discusses the chapter where Catelyn arrives in King's Landing. Let’s say, for the sake of the question, that Petyr Baelish had defeated Brandon Stark in the duel for Catelyn’s hand back in the day. I know, it's ridiculous, but bear with me. At that point, would Catelyn *actually* have had to marry him? 

1- I can’t imagine Hoster would have allowed her to marry him, regardless of how the duel had gone. Would Hoster still need to consent to the marriage, or would Petyr besting Brandon in combat have meant he could trump Hoster's will on the issue of Catelyn's marriage?

2- If Hoster was not able to stop the marriage, would Catelyn have been able to? The agency of the woman being married tends to not be a huge factor in Westerosi marriages, but if Hoster hadn't wanted this marriage to happen, and Catelyn hadn't wanted this marriage to happen, would Petyr have been at all able to press a claim on her hand?

I can't see Brandon admitting defeat to Petyr, so for this scenario to work, Petyr would have had to have killed Brandon. If Petyr had killed the Stark heir in order to procure a marriage that no one involved wanted to occur, he almost certainly would not have survived long enough post-duel for that marriage to actually take place, Still, I thought I'd see what you guys have to say on this issue! It seems like a bit of Westerosi litigation and/or arbitration would have been in order in this scenario, so how would the NotACast guys arbitrate this case?

Thanks as always, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts!

So, thank you Kelly for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can find show notes, special posts and 27 ASOIAF/pop culture bonus episodes.

And our next patreon-only episode is coming very, very soon. We know that you are probably very, very aware of this episode, but we begin our four-part series on Aeron Damphair’s “The Forsaken” chapter at the end of this month for all Poor Fellow and above patrons which you can find at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF!

I’m particularly excited as we will record this episode later this week! So, watch the skies. The Crow's Eye is coming! 

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Catelyn a mere 3 weeks ago, she had just witnessed the copper king fall to Stannis’ shadow and had made like a bat out of hell from Storm’s End. Let’s find out where Catelyn is and what our mom does in this synopsis of ACOK, Catelyn V!

Synopsis

Two days ride from Riverrun, a scout spied them watering their horses beside a muddy stream. Catelyn had never been so glad to see the twin tower badge of House Frey.

Oh.

Catelyn wants to see her uncle Brynden, but he’s out in the west with Robb. Martyn Rivers leads the outriders ‘round these parts. Catelyn understands, now realizing that Robb had planned to go west all along as she was dealing with the Baratheons. She orders the scout to take her to Martyn Rivers’ camp.

On the ride, someone asks if she’s come from Bitterbridge, but no. No way. She couldn’t go there after everything that happened at Storm’s End. They came through the war itself to make it back to the riverlands. She announces that Lord Renly is dead. Yeah, get his ass, Catelyn. One last time for the road. 

Anyways, the scout has heard that rumor. But it’s not a rumor. Anyways, Catelyn asks after brother Edmure, and the scout reports that Edmure is holding Riverrun and playing a rearguard action to Robb. This is an awfully knowledgeable scout! Anyways, what’s the word from Robb out west?

"You have not heard?" The man seemed surprised. "His Grace won a great victory at Oxcross. Ser Stafford Lannister is dead, his host scattered."

Ser Wendel Manderly gave a whoop of pleasure, but Catelyn only nodded. Tomorrow's trials concerned her more than yesterday's triumphs.

Martyn Rivers had made his camp in the shell of a shattered holdfast, beside a roofless stable and a hundred fresh graves. He went to one knee when Catelyn dismounted. "Well met, my lady. Your brother charged us to keep an eye out for your party, and escort you back to Riverrun in all haste should we come upon you."

Catelyn doesn’t like the sound of that. Is it something to do with her dad? No. Not that. It’s just that Tywin Lannister is marching. Oh. And how long will Tywin take to get here? Three to four days. They’ve got scouts all along the road watching for his coming.

They set out for Riverrun, and Catelyn’s men want to hear more about Oxcross. So, Martyn Rivers tells them: 

"There's a singer come to Riverrun, calls himself Rymund the Rhymer, he's made a song of the fight. Doubtless you'll hear it sung tonight, my lady. 'Wolf in the Night' this Rymund calls it." He went on to tell how the remnants of Ser Stafford's host had fallen back on Lannisport. Without siege engines there was no way to storm Casterly Rock, so the Young Wolf was paying the Lannisters back in kind for the devastation they'd inflicted on the riverlands. Lords Karstark and Glover were raiding along the coast, Lady Mormont had captured thousands of cattle and was driving them back toward Riverrun, while the Greatjon had seized the gold mines at Castamere, Nunn's Deep, and the Pendric Hills. Ser Wendel laughed. "Nothing's more like to bring a Lannister running than a threat to his gold.”

But wait, how did Robb take the Golden Tooth? Seems unlikely. Ah, well, Robb never took it. Instead, he moved around it as Grey Wind showed him the way via a goat track. No Lannisters saw Robb. Anyways, did you hear the gnarly story that Robb cut out Stafford Lannister’s heart and fed it to Grey Wind? Sick, bro. Sick! Catelyn warns Martyn not to spread those stories, and he agrees. But he does say that Grey Wind was a gift from the old gods.

Catelyn remembered the day when her boys had found the pups in the late summer snows. There had been five, three male and two female for the five trueborn children of House Stark . . . and a sixth, white of fur and red of eye, for Ned's bastard son Jon Snow. No common wolves, she thought. No indeed.

When they made camp later in the night, Brienne approaches Catelyn and asks if she can go. Catelyn isn’t exactly surprised at this and had mostly kept to herself during the journey north. She had ridden with them every day and slept among them every night without ever truly becoming one of them. Catelyn thinks that Brienne puts up a lot of walls to the people around her. So, she tries to breach the wall by asking where she’d go. She’s going to Storm’s End. Alone. And she’s going there to kill Stannis. She swore a vow three times after all. Catelyn heard her. 

Catelyn had heard her, but she tries to counsel Brienne not to go to Storm’s End. She’d fail in her quest. Stannis has too many guards around him. And look, Brienne. It really wasn’t your fault that renly dies. But Catelyn knows how hard it is.

Brienne shook off her hand. "No one knows."

"You're wrong," Catelyn said sharply. "Every morning, when I wake, I remember that Ned is gone. I have no skill with swords, but that does not mean that I do not dream of riding to King's Landing and wrapping my hands around Cersei Lannister's white throat and squeezing until her face turns black."

Ooh. This is a new side of Catelyn we haven’t seen before. Brienne seems to realize this as she asks why Catelyn would hold her back if that’s what she desired. Was she scared of Stannis? Catelyn considers this for a moment and responds that Renly’s death was evil beyond all doubt. Okay, Catelyn has only been wrong twice in her life. But the gods are in control of such things. That would make Stannis the rightful-. Brienne cuts him out. He ain’t the rightful king. Robert wasn’t either, because Jaime killed the rightful king. The gods don’t care, and neither does the king. But Renly so would have been the best king. He was so good. And dead, Catelyn retorts. Stannis and Joffrey are alive. 

Horrified, Brienne says that the Starks would never make peace with Stannis or gods forbid, bend the knee to him ... would they? Catelyn says she doesn’t know. She can only follow the commands of her son. She’s not the queen. She’s only a mom with a job who wants to keep her kids safe and alive. So, Catelyn charges Brienne to fight for the living -- against Renly’s enemies who BTW are also Robb’s.

Brienne stared at the ground and shuffled her feet. "I do not know your son, my lady." She looked up. "I could serve you. If you would have me."

Catelyn was startled. "Why me?"

The question seemed to trouble Brienne. "You helped me. In the pavilion . . . when they thought that I had . . . that I had . . . "

"You were innocent."

"Even so, you did not have to do that. You could have let them kill me. I was nothing to you.”

Catelyn muses that she might be a cynic and only wanted another witness to what happened in Renly’s tent. But instead of saying that, she states that she’s never had someone like Brienne in her service before. Besides, Catelyn isn’t a battle bro.

"No, but you have courage. Not battle courage perhaps but . . . I don't know . . . a kind of woman's courage. And I think, when the time comes, you will not try and hold me back. Promise me that. That you will not hold me back from Stannis."

Catelyn could still hear Stannis saying that Robb's turn too would come in time. It was like a cold breath on the back of her neck. "When the time comes, I will not hold you back."

The tall girl knelt awkwardly, unsheathed Renly's longsword, and laid it at her feet. "Then I am yours, my lady. Your liege man, or . . . whatever you would have me be. I will shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours, if need be. I swear it by the old gods and the new."

"And I vow that you shall always have a place by my hearth and meat and mead at my table, and pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you into dishonor. I swear it by the old gods and the new. Arise." As she clasped the other woman's hands between her own, Catelyn could not help but smile. How many times did I watch Ned accept a man's oath of service? She wondered what he would think if he could see her now.

They cross the Red Fork the next day, seeing Mallister soldiers guarding the crossing. The Mallisters warn Catelyn of traps laid in the river -- traps that Edmure commanded be laid for Tywin’s oncoming force. Catelyn realizes that Edmure is going to fight at the river crossings, and she feels uneasy about it.

They continue on through the land between the Red Fork and Tumblestone with many smallfolk heading for Riverrun as well. A half mile from Riverrun, they find one riverlander army camp. Lucas Blackwood heads off to find his father. Closer to the castle, they find a second army camp with Piper, Darry and Paege troops. Catelyn realizes that these soldiers were here at Edmure’s command. Her brother was going to fight the Lannisters.

On the walls of Riverrun itself, she discovers dead men with crimson cloaks hanging from the walls. Her escort makes jokes and laughs at the dead men, but Brienne just stares up at them.

If they have slain the Kingslayer, then my daughters are dead as well. Catelyn spurred her horse to a canter. 

The gates are open as Catelyn approaches, and Edmure rides out with master-at-arms Ser Desmond Grell, Utherydes Wayn, the steward and Ser Robin Ryger, the Riverrun captain of guards. Catelyn notes that they’re as old as her father, but Edmure. Ah, Edmure. He looks fine wearing the Tully colors with a “fierce red beard” all bushy-like. He greets her, stating that he feared that Tywin had got her. Catelyn asks after Big Daddy Hoster, and Edmure replies that their father is strong and weak day-dependent. He’s asked for Catelyn, but Edmure didn’t know what to tell him.

"I will go to him soon," she vowed. "Has there been word from Storm's End since Renly died? Or from Bitterbridge?" No ravens came to men on the road, and Catelyn was anxious to know what had happened behind her.

"Nothing from Bitterbridge. From Storm's End, three birds from the castellan, Ser Cortnay Penrose, all carrying the same plea. Stannis has him surrounded by land and sea. He offers his allegiance to whatsoever king will break the siege. He fears for the boy, he says. What boy would that be, do you know?"

"Edric Storm," Brienne told them. "Robert's bastard son."

Edmure looked at her curiously. "Stannis has sworn that the garrison might go free, unharmed, provided they yield the castle within the fortnight and deliver the boy into his hands, but Ser Cortnay will not consent."

He risks all for a baseborn boy whose blood is not even his own, Catelyn thought. 

Catelyn asks if they sent a reply back. Nope. They don’t have help to offer, and Stannis isn’t their enemy … right? Um. Yeah. About that. 

Robin Ryger asks how Renly died, and Edmure puts in that word on the street is that Catelyn or “some southron woman” did that little terrorist in. 

"My king was murdered," the girl said quietly, "and not by Lady Catelyn. I swear it on my sword, by the gods old and new."

Catelyn introduces Brienne to everyone, and all the men display excellent courtesy -- so much so that Brienne looks flustered. Man, Renly’s camp was filled with assholes, wasn’t it? Reads ahead to Brienne’s chapters in AFFC. Yup. 

Catelyn states that Brienne was with her when Renly was killed. But they didn’t do it. Still, Catelyn doesn’t want to talk about the shadow that did him in. Anyways, about all the men you’ve hanged. Who were they? Edmure replies that they were men who accompanied Ser Cleos Frey. Shocked, Catelyn asked if they hanged envoys. Not real envoys. False envoys. 

"They pledged me their peace and surrendered their weapons, so I allowed them freedom of the castle, and for three nights they ate my meat and drank my mead whilst I talked with Ser Cleos. On the fourth night, they tried to free the Kingslayer." He pointed up. "That big brute killed two guards with naught but those ham hands of his, caught them by the throats and smashed their skulls together while that skinny lad beside him was opening Lannister's cell with a bit of wire, gods curse him. The one on the end was some sort of damned mummer. He used my own voice to command that the River Gate be opened. The guardsmen swear to it, Enger and Delp and Long Lew, all three. If you ask me, the man sounded nothing like me, and yet the oafs were raising the portcullis all the same."

Catelyn thinks this is Tyrion’s work, which yeah. It was. She asks how they were caught, and Edmure starts tripping over his words about how he was out in the country, doing, um. Yeah, you were getting laid, Catelyn interjects. Tell the story. Well, his guard realized that it was Edmure on a boat below and sounded the alarm. Fortunately, they recaptured Jaime, but a couple of dudes were killed in the ensuing brawl. Edmure hanged those who aided in the escape attempt. He put Jaime into the dungeon and Cleos Frey into Jaime’s old tower cell.

Catelyn asks if they brought terms, but Edmure snaps that they weren’t real terms. Utherydes Wayn asks if there’s any help coming from the south. Stannis could make common cause with them right? Right?

Stannis has made common cause with a power greater and darker, Catelyn thinks.

But Catelyn doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. She walks her horse over the drawbridge next to Edmure, but then a naked child runs out in front of the horse, causing her to rein up hard to avoid running over a kid. Catelyn sees hundreds of smallfolk within the castle of Riverrun, along with their livestock.

"Who are all these folk?"

"My people," Edmure answered. "They were afraid."

Only my sweet brother would crowd all these useless mouths into a castle that might soon be under siege. Catelyn knew that Edmure had a soft heart; sometimes she thought his head was even softer. She loved him for it, yet still . . .

Hell yeah, Edmure. Hell yeah.

Catelyn asks if she can send a raven to Robb, but she can’t. Robb’s in the army and unable to be found by bird. Anyways, Robb left orders with Riverrun to dispatch her to the Twins when she returned to find a bride for Robb. Edmure says that he’ll give her fresh horses and provisions, but absolutely not. Catelyn is staying at Riverrun. She’s not going anywhere with her father dying her -- even if Robb ordered it.

Edmure bristles and says that Tywin is coming. Yeah. So, just let Tywin pass into the Westerlands, right?

"This is Tully land," Edmure declared. "If Tywin Lannister thinks to cross it unbloodied, I mean to teach him a hard lesson."

The same lesson you taught his son? Her brother could be stubborn as river rock when his pride was touched, but neither of them was likely to forget how Ser Jaime had cut Edmure's host to bloody pieces the last time he had offered battle. "We have nothing to gain and everything to lose by meeting Lord Tywin in the field," Catelyn said tactfully.

"The yard is not the place to discuss my battle plans."

"As you will. Where shall we go?"

Her brother's face darkened. For a moment she thought he was about to lose his temper with her, but finally he snapped, "The godswood. If you will insist."

Catelyn follows Edmure to the godswood, feeling sorry for wounding his pride. When they arrive, she tells Edmure that he doesn’t have the strength to fight the Lannisters. Yeah, that’s what you think. He’ll have 11,000 troops to fight Tywin. But Tywin has double that, Catelyn counters. Yeah, but Robb won against worse odds, and he has a plan. Plus, he has Roose Bolton. And Roose has taken the Ruby Ford with 10,000 soldiers. Helman Tallhart is coming down from the Twins with his garrison to augment Roose’s army.

"Edmure, Robb left those men to hold the Twins and make certain Lord Walder keeps faith with us."

"He has," Edmure said stubbornly. "The Freys fought bravely in the Whispering Wood, and old Ser Stevron died at Oxcross, we hear. Ser Ryman and Black Walder and the rest are with Robb in the west, Martyn has been of great service scouting, and Ser Perwyn helped see you safe to Renly. Gods be good, how much more can we ask of them? Robb's betrothed to one of Lord Walder's daughters, and Roose Bolton wed another, I hear. And haven't you taken two of his grandsons to be fostered at Winterfell?"

Catelyn feels uneasy that Stevron is dead, and that Roose got his ass hitched. But she admits that the Walders Frey can be hostages. So, Lord Walder won’t betray them, right? Uh oh. 

Anyways, the plan is for Roose to take Harrenhal while Edmure repels Tywin’s army, meaning Tywin has no place to retreat, and then Robb can return from the Westerlands to finish Tywin’s stranded army off. It’s a failsafe plan, Cat. Don’t worry! But Catelyn is worried. She wishes that the Blackfish wasn’t out in the westerlands. He was a combat veteran of lots of battles, but Edmure was only a veteran of one battle -- one that he lost.

"The plan's a good one," he concluded. "Lord Tytos says so, and Lord Jonos as well. When did Blackwood and Bracken agree about anything that was not certain, I ask you?"

"Be that as it may." She was suddenly weary. Perhaps she was wrong to oppose him. Perhaps it was a splendid plan, and her misgivings only a woman's fears. She wished Ned were here, or her uncle Brynden, or . . . 

Catelyn asks if Hoster was told of the plan, but Edmure says that Big Daddy Hoster isn’t in his right mind anymore. He’s lost in memory, rambling about Catelyn marrying Brandon. But Edmure’s plan will work. Trust in Edmure. 

"I hope so, Edmure. I truly do." She kissed him on the cheek, to let him know she meant it, and went to find her father.

Catelyn finds her dad much as she left him. He was in bed and looking sick. And he had a smell of sickness around him. But when she opens the curtains to his room, his eyes open.

"Father." She kissed him. "I am returned."

He seemed to know her then. "You've come," he whispered faintly, lips barely moving.

"Yes," she said. "Robb sent me south, but I hurried back."

"South . . . where . . . is the Eyrie south, sweetling? I don't recall . . . oh, dear heart, I was afraid . . . have you forgiven me, child?" Tears ran down his cheeks.

Catelyn says there’s nothing to forgive, and then Hoster starts muttering about Jon being a good man. And you’ll marry him when Catelyn weds. 

Catelyn realizes that Hoster thinks that she is Lysa. But then Hoster starts talking some more.

Her father's hands clutched at hers, fluttering like two frightened white birds. "That stripling . . . wretched boy . . . not speak that name to me, your duty . . . your mother, she would . . . " Lord Hoster cried as a spasm of pain washed over him. "Oh, gods forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. My medicine . . . "

Maester Vyman shows up with milk of the poppy, and his face gets peaceful. 

Vyman says Hoster will sleep, but Catelyn can’t be here anymore. It was hurting her soul to see her father the way that he is now. She heads out to the terrace and looks down at the castle courtyard with all the refugees in it. Then she looks out to the rivers flowing clean, pure and endless:

Those are his rivers, and soon he will return to them for his last voyage.

Maester Vyman had followed her out. "My lady," he said softly, "I cannot keep the end at bay much longer. We ought to send a rider after his brother. Ser Brynden would wish to be here."

"Yes," Catelyn said, her voice thick with her grief.

But then Vyman brings up maybe sending a letter to Lysa? No. She won’t come. But Catelyn will write to Lysa if it’ll make Vyman feel better. But who was that dude that Hoster was railing against? Lysa loved her some singers. Maybe it was that? Hmmm. I wonder who this mysterious person might be? (It’s Littlefinger)

Catelyn finds herself back in the tower and room she grew up in. She needs rest, and maybe she wouldn’t feel so melancholy. But there’s no rest to be had. She finds Utherydes Wayn with two grey women outside of her chambers.

Catelyn knew at once why they were here. "Ned?"

The sisters lowered their gaze. Utherydes said, "Ser Cleos brought him from King's Landing, my lady."

"Take me to him," she commanded.

She finds Ned laid out on a table with the Stark banner covering him. She asks to look at him, but Utherydes says there’s only bones to be seen. She still wants to see him. One of the silent sisters lowers the banner to reveal Ned’s bones.

Bones, Catelyn thought. This is not Ned, this is not the man I loved, the father of my children. His hands were clasped together over his chest, skeletal fingers curled about the hilt of some longsword, but they were not Ned's hands, so strong and full of life. They had dressed the bones in Ned's surcoat, the fine white velvet with the direwolf badge over the heart, but nothing remained of the warm flesh that had pillowed her head so many nights, the arms that had held her. The head had been rejoined to the body with fine silver wire, but one skull looks much like another, and in those empty hollows she found no trace of her lord's dark grey eyes, eyes that could be soft as a fog or hard as stone. They gave his eyes to crows, she remembered.

Catelyn states that this wasn’t Ned’s sword, and Utherydes replies that the Lannisters didn’t send Ned his sword back. Only his bones. Catelyn says that she should thank the queen for that much, but no. It wasn’t Cersei. If she wanted to thank someone, thank Tyrion.

One day I will thank them all. 

Catelyn thanks the silent sisters for their service, but then gives them a new task. They need to take Ned’s bones to Winterfell to rest in the crypt under the castle. She instructs Utherydes to give the sisters fresh horses and everything they need for the journey. Hal Mollen will be tasked with escorting the silent sisters and Ned back to Winterfell as he is the captain of guards.

She gazed down at the bones that were all that remained of her lord and love. "Now leave me, all of you. I would be alone with Ned tonight."

The women in grey bowed their heads. The silent sisters do not speak to the living, Catelyn remembered dully, but some say they can talk to the dead. And how she envied that . . .

And that is ACOK, Catelyn V! Um. I feel like Catelyn’s chapters in ACOK mostly get reduced to her two chapters at Storm’s End, and they’re fantastic chapters. I love them. But wow. This chapter is just ungodly good. What did you make of this chapter, Emmett?

Depth

Catelyn V isn’t as easy to summarize as her last couple chapters. It doesn’t build to a single big  plot point. Instead, it’s a series of alternately delicate and devastating negotiations with all the powerful forces running over and through these fragile individuals. War and peace, life and death, age and youth, fear and desire; they coexist in every paragraph of Catelyn V, feeding off each other. Try as she might to untangle them into a world that still makes sense to her, these opposites stay stubbornly bound together, all of them orbiting the three themes that define the chapter, the three words of House Tully and the title of this episode: family, duty, and honor. The fluidity and complexity of this chapter is astonishing, yet George never loses sight of the emotional ache at the heart of it. Just another reason Catelyn is my favorite POV in ACOK.

ACOK, Catelyn I-IV had our heroine performing a last-ditch attempt at peace with Renly, with Stannis, with a Great Council. With anything! But all of those efforts failed. There would be no peace, and Catelyn V feels like the spot where Catelyn has sorrowfully realized this and begins making long strides towards her Stoneheart destiny. She’s not utterly hopeless in this chapter (Bran and Rickon aren’t “dead” yet). But that aching melancholy which dominates Cat’s journey from here until the Red Wedding is felt here. And this is a large part of why I love Catelyn’s POV chapters. She feels like a real person. Oh, sure. Martin takes pains to ensure that other characters have real human struggles and feel real enough, but I can’t say that I’ll ever encounter a Cersei or Tyrion or Daenerys in my day-to-day travels. But I’ve met a thousand Catelyns in my life, and reading this chapter helps me to understand and empathize with them.

• The glory of victory v. the domain of death
  • Right from the beginning of the chapter, we get a collision between contradictory forces, joy and despair, life and death. Catelyn is so happy to see the twin towers of House Frey...but as rereaders, we know that those towers will spell her doom
  • Even for a first-time reader, this chapter is overflowing with these interlinked opposites, suggesting how everything contains its negation, an action spawning a reaction, and how the human heart is a vessel for the full range of emotions
  • Catelyn rode through the heart of the war--yet the war is itself repeatedly characterized as an absence of heart. In the heart of the war, fertile land becomes blackened desert, with fury as the agent of conversion
  • And of course, right after describing that summer turned to winter, Catelyn brings up Renly’s death--because that’s exactly what happened to him at Storm’s End
  • The corruption, the fall, extends well beyond the Baratheon bros. It’s as if all the land is giving up the ghost, entropy taking over where life and love once reigned
  • Martyn Rivers is a ruddy, pleasant man with little resemblance (in appearance and temperament) to his trueborn Frey brothers. His name speaks to the rivers that Catelyn associates with life throughout her story, especially in this chapter
  • Yet he has made his camp in a shattered holdfast, next to a hundred fresh graves. Life and death are hopelessly comingled, like the smell Arya encountered
  • Martyn was sent to watch for her. She assumes it’s because of Hoster--the death hanging over her--but it’s a different source of death: Tywin on the march
  • Now Catelyn V feels like the flipside to Arya VIII, the same struggles with power and death seen from the other side. Catelyn is also concerned that Stannis will be on the march soon--Tywin and Stannis, fearsome figures of death for her
  • It is in this context, reeling from the deaths behind her and fearing the deaths to come, that Catelyn hears word at last of Robb’s victory at the Battle of Oxcross
  • It’s the fourth time the reader has been made aware of what went down in the Westerlands. We learned about it at the Lannister court in Sansa III and saw it filtered through the Winterfell court in Bran V and Tywin’s army in Arya VIII
  • Now we’re hearing about it at Riverrun, which ought to be the most joyous backdrop for the news. We’re in a Stark court, after all, and not even the homefront Stark court like in Bran V, where they miss those off at war
  • We’re back at the front. No complications here! No worries about getting Robb home, or saving oneself from the Lannisters. This should be purely good news
  • And it is for the men around Catelyn, who take heart from Robb’s victory. But it’s not for Catelyn, who thinks that she is more concerned with tomorrow’s trials
  • This beautifully captures so much, both about Catelyn as an individual and about human nature in general
  • As Catelyn will say later in the book, she feels she has become a sour woman, someone who fixates only on the grievous side of life, only the losses, never the gains; only winter, never summer. She cannot take joy from victory, because all she can think of is the potential for defeat on the morrow
  • On the other hand, that’s not just Catelyn’s perspective. That really is how it works; Oxcross won’t save Robb, and one defeat can be all that it takes
  • It’s impossible to live in the present moment; the past and future are always closing in, constantly offering convincing cases for utter nihilism; doing better than that is, quite literally, a confidence scheme. You fake it till you make it
  • It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall. You have to lie to yourself a little just to get through life, just to do any good at all. Catelyn is losing the ability to do so
  • She’s seeing behind the curtain, her doors of perception cleansed. She is coming to understand what so many characters in ASOIAF understand, that her previous life was woven together with words--oaths, declarations, histories, songs, stories
  • Those words have power, but only when we invest that power in them. In the beginning was the Word, but there’s no God behind the Word--it’s only us
  • It’s all beginning to waver, and what Catelyn sees beyond that gossamer veil is death and more death with a side order of extra death; death and despair forever
  • Death without meaning, death without purpose, death that negates life and quashes happiness and leaves you alone. Death that births Lady Stoneheart.
  • So she rides silently as her men listen eagerly to the story of Robb’s victory in the Westerlands. We aren’t even hearing a song--we’re hearing a story about a song, interjecting some reality and some extra myth regarding Grey Wind and the heart
  • This is George giving us a tour of the heart of the image factory, the dialectical process by which reality is combined with bullshit to create a new reality
  • Even the guy telling you the reality behind the song has swallowed his own myth, and even when Catelyn points out that Robb would never feed an enemy’s heart to his wolf, the guy still kinda wants to believe in it
  • And you can’t blame him, because at the core of all this is the reality that the wolves almost certainly were sent to the Starklings
  • But that’s got nothing to do with Oxcross, or the Golden Tooth, or the Lannisters, or Rhymund the Rhymer. All of that is what we project, what we bring to the table
  • It’s so revealing that this guy thinks Grey Wind “deserves” Stafford’s heart. So while Catelyn dismisses this practice as savage, clearly some people in her class, from her part of the country, who share her faith, are into it
  • Moreover, we hear that Robb’s lords are now paying back the Westerlands for the destruction of the Riverlands--or at least, that’s how they think about it
  • In truth, none of the people responsible for the destruction of the Riverlands are suffering in any way other than financial, and even then, it’s only temporary
  • The people directly suffering, losing their lives and livelihoods with little hope of redress from their own lords let alone Robb’s, are the Westerlands smallfolk
  • They had no say in any of this. Now suddenly Greatjon Umber comes roaring over the only land you’ve ever known, cutting down your friends and forcing your family to work the mines for him. Who’s the villain in this war, in your eyes?
  • Now, to be fair, Tywin is engaged in kidnapping and enslaving the smallfolk en masse, and is deliberately sowing terror with his pet monsters to force Robb to face him; there’s no indication Robb goes that far in the Westerlands
  • It’s the Starks, and I think it’s easy to fall into this “Starks, good guys, Starks, do no wrong” mentality
  • And you can fall into this line of thinking when Robb explains the strategic intent of looting the Westerlands come ASOS
    • "You think we stayed for plunder?" Robb was incredulous. "Uncle, I wanted Lord Tywin to come west."
  • Does this plan net Robb and Brynden the reaction they wanted from Tywin? Yes. As we’ll talk about a little later on, Tywin has taken the bait and is moving from Harrenhal
  • But does that matter to a Westerlands peasant who was just robbed of their livestock with winter on the horizon? Oh okay. You’re only doing this, because you want to bait Tywin Lannister into coming west. Makes perfect sense. Please. Take all the livestock you need to defeat my overlord, m’lord of Last Hearth. No!
  • Here’s the kicker: where did this plan come from? Where did the idea originate?
  • Chevauchee seems to be a common practice of Westerosi warfare, but to make a controversial argument, I think that Robb took a leaf from Tywin Lannister’s playbook.
  • In AGOT, Tywin deliberately sowed terror in order to bait the Tullys into striking the first blow as the aggressors to give the Lannisters legal pretext to invade the riverlands, defeat the Tullys and secure the release of Tyrion 
  • And then as you were saying: Tywin’s terror campaign in the riverlands in ACOK was an attempt to bait Robb Stark into attacking Harrenhal while scattering the riverlords.
  • Robb is doing the same thing: a campaign of chevauchee to bait Tywin Lannister into attacking him.
  • It’s the same tactic Tywin used -- albeit done in the normal course of warfare as opposed to the industrial-scale atrocities Tywin commits in the War of the Five Kings.
  • But even the “normal” practice of war carries horrors with it, and wounds that will never heal, and perspectives that are very different from Catelyn’s, or ours
  • The overall point is the escalation of violence and all the longstanding bitterness and resentments that go with it. This raid is a response to the destruction of the Riverlands, which was a response to Catelyn snatching Tyrion. In response to the Red Wedding, we get Stoneheart’s corruption of the Brotherhood
  • Again, this is not to say it’s a wash between all sides. The Lannisters consistently conduct themselves in a more cruel and selfish fashion than the Starks
  • Rather, this is to say that even the good guys have been seduced by the taste of gold and glory rather than keeping peace as their highest priority
  • It is easy to talk yourself into all manner of slippage and corruption when facing an unreasonable foe. We saw it with Stannis and Renly, a race to the bottom
  • As long as you can keep telling yourself you’re not the worst player in the game, you can ignore how the entire game is getting worse, until it’s far too late
  • Once more, the Battle of Oxcross is a shadow on a wall, revealing everyone’s interests by how they project themselves into it. Stories work the same way
  • You mentioned this back when we were doing our AGOT episodes about how the class structure of Westeros works as microcosm for the Others in the story
  • War in feudal Westeros ups the parasitic relationship between the nobles and the peasants.
  • The smallfolk become pawns as the high lords play the game of thrones. They can be robbed, brutalized, killed, enslaved by these lords to gain small tactical advantage over their enemies
  • The Others work similarly, using Craster and his wives as an Other-producing factory and enslaving dead humans into undead wights
  • And that’s why it’s so important that amidst this Long Night microcosm, you have a few willing to stand athwart the shadows, yelling stop!
• Brienne swears her sword
  • This pattern of collisions between youth and age, life and death, and how it all keeps amounting to everything pouring down the drain of time continues with an intimate scene between Catelyn and her new supporting character, Brienne
  • Catelyn describes how Brienne has taken part in all the necessary tasks on the road, and always speaks politely when spoken to...but that’s it
  • Just like how Catelyn’s losses have left her unable to enjoy the present, tainted by the grief of the past and the dread of the future, Brienne is only the semblance of a living person, only the outer shell, the image, the shadow. She’s dead inside
  • She performs the rote duties, but with none of the life and love duty is ostensibly supposed to uphold. She is not one of them: a loner, an outcast, more than ever
  • “There are walls around this one higher than Winterfell.” A castle under siege is a metaphor for a lonely alienated soul; we’ll see it again with Theon at book’s end. It’s also a link to Brienne’s ancestor Dunk the Lunk, thick as a castle wall
  • Castle walls keep you safe, but they also cut you off from humanity; we see that push-pull dynamic across the series, from Tyrion’s “wear it like armor” to Jaime’s “go away inside” to the Wall itself, keeping out the Others...but also the wildlings
  • When we met Brienne, her face was lighting up with pride as Renly bestowed a rainbow cloak upon her. Now we understand that for Brienne, this moment of satisfaction, of coherence between her external and internal selves, of accepting her own face in the mirror, was an exception. This isolation is the rule
  • These walls have been up for years, because other than Renly, Brienne never met anyone she considered worthy of letting inside. They’d mock her, hurt her, and then walk away, like Red Ronnet Connington (as we’ll see in AFFC)
  • She wants to leave Catelyn precisely because Catelyn is now among those who make her feel at home--something Brienne only ever had with Renly
  • Brienne doesn’t want any part of Catelyn’s home and community. They will only make her feel the lack of it all the more. She is committed to the loner’s life, a heroic knight standing up against injustice, a sacrifice, too good for this world
  • You can see here how Brienne’s fairytale “we will live forever in song” mindset wasn’t completely shattered by Renly’s death. Instead, it was inverted
  • She’s gone from being a bodyguard to a kamikaze assassin. The emotional tenor has flipped from joy to despair, but the common thread is that Brienne needs, absolutely needs with every fiber of her being, to devote herself to someone
  • She’s never been able to be comfortable with herself, alone behind her walls with that face in the mirror, so she needs to externalize her reason for being onto someone else, someone Good she can defend to the death and so be at peace
  • That’s why Renly’s Rorschach-blot shell game of empty charm worked so well on Brienne. He’s an empty vessel to be filled, but that’s exactly what she needed
  • She keeps her rainbow cloak because it fit, literally and figuratively; now all she can wear is strangers’ odds and ends, fragments of identities that aren’t hers
  • “The broad face was a pool of still water, giving no hint of what might live in the depths below.” Brienne wants only to be a still pool, a mirror, reflecting perfectly back the object of her devotion, more beautiful than she can ever be
  • But Brienne is not a duty robot. She is not a zombie slave. She is a living breathing person, and no matter how she pretends otherwise, she is hurting
  • The only place she can think to put that pain is a sword buried in Stannis’ guts. That’ll get rid of it all. That’s what I vowed to do--three times, the magic number!
  • Oaths, revenge, my king’s sword. It’s a new narrative snapping back into place. A much sadder song than Brienne wanted to live, but it’s better than chaos
  • Again, George is showing us how appealing vengeance is in the narrative -- to a good character too!
  • Gutting Stannis is a temptingly sweet thought to Brienne, because it satisfies that need to respond to violence with violence.
  • But the story theme of how vengeance leaves the people committing it hollow inside is one that’s spread throughout all five books of ASOIAF.
  • That’s what vengeance does or will do to the characters who engage in it on a personal level
  • If you guys haven’t followed on twitter: George RR Martin has been running polls on audiobook scenes, and the one that won for ASOS was Arya’s scene at the Inn at the Crossroads. I relistened and was struck by this line:
    • Joffrey's dead. She could almost see him, with his blond curls and his mean smile and his fat soft lips. Joffrey's dead! She knew it ought to make her happy, but somehow she still felt empty inside.
  • That emptiness that Arya feels at Joffrey’s death — an emptiness brought about by death (not even a death she’s responsible for!) is what Catelyn is attempting to prevent for Brienne, because Catelyn is well-aware of how death leaves people feeling.
  • Catelyn understands the appeal of this mindset. She might have given up on living inside the songs and stories long ago, but she’s been trying to hold onto the idea that oaths have power, that they will save her and hers on their own
  • But Brienne demonstrates that this isn’t the case--what matters is what people make of what they’re given, the shadows on a wall. “Is that what troubles you, that some fool might call you craven?” Brienne’s ready to die for her image
  • Catelyn wants to spare her that, but in order to do so, she has to come up with an alternate worldview, a way of looking at what’s happening in Westeros that doesn’t lead to the conclusion that Brienne should ride off to a glorious death
  • Catelyn sees her own grief and isolation in Brienne’s. She, too, wants to give herself over to the catharsis of revenge, and senses that isolation makes this more attractive. Why not die against your enemies, if you have no friends?
  • So she reaches out, “to offer what comfort a touch can give.” Simple empathy. I see you. I see your suffering. I cannot resolve it, but I can share it
  • Brienne rejects her touch, because like so many people lost and grieving, her one foundation left is her sense that her grieving makes her unique
  • If all Brienne has now is grief, then she will grieve the most, goddammit! It’s the only way to honor what she felt for Renly. No one could ever understand, because if it was something people could understand, it wasn’t so special after all
  • The need to believe we are separate from humanity can sometimes be sympathetic, as with Brienne. It can be unsympathetic, as with Euron. But in the end, no man is an island, and even the walls with justifiable foundations must fall
  • The fact that Catelyn understands Brienne’s pain and anger doesn’t devalue those emotions. It frames them as threads of common humanity
  • Catelyn wants Brienne to understand that everyone is broken, not just her. Everyone is walking around with ghosts, longing at some level to join them
  • Brienne must be part of that world, or she will always be alone and unhappy, even as she does good deeds. She must cross that bridge
  • But establishing that empathy doesn’t necessarily answer all of your questions. It just means you have company while you agonize over the lack of answers
  • Brienne asks Catelyn that if she shares those dreams of vengeance for her dead loved ones, why try to hold her back from Stannis? Is it because of his claim?
  • Once more we come back to Catelyn as the voice of conventional wisdom, struggling to find a singular truth among the competing ones she’s been told
  • She was taught that good fights evil--a simple call to action to which Brienne is responding when she declares she will ride off to kill Stannis. And Catelyn believes that Renly’s death was evil in itself, regardless of Stannis’ claim
  • Yet she also believes that the gods make kings, not the swords of men. There is an immutable law, an immortal gold standard, next to which our petty violent bullshit is judged. What if Stannis is King by that standard? What matters more?
  • This is a remarkable moment, because even as Catelyn and Brienne keep the discussion focused on what Brienne can and should do now, they wind up addressing the whole of the societal collapse they are inhabiting
  • It can’t help but be any other way. To establish their next steps, to forge a new relationship, to decide where Brienne’s loyalty lies, they must critically examine how Westeros got here and how one is to perform one’s values in such a world
  • These are competing conceptions of justice. Is “good” that which fights evil, or is “good” that which maintains order and peace? What if they come into conflict?
  • Catelyn appears to believe that Stannis’ rightful place atop the divinely ordained social pyramid might outweigh the individual horror of Renly’s death
  • It does not occur to her to critically investigate the foundations of that divinely ordained pyramid, even though Robb has arguably rebelled against it
  • Stannis is no Joffrey or Aerys, but as Brienne immediately points out, Aerys also had a claim to be the “rightful king.” At what point does that not mean anything?
  • Well, it stops meaning anything when people decide it stops meaning anything. “Rightful king” is not a meaningless statement. It is, however, a fluid one
  • We return back to what our guest Clint was saying back when we did ACOK, Tyrion II: the concept of the “rightful” king is one that is entirely dependent on the eye of the beholder.
  • Does the illegal and unethical conduct of the sovereign negate the rightful aspect of the claim? Theoretically, it can in the American system (though only once in practice)
  • Does Aerys’ evil conduct in murdering Rickard and Brandon Stark and breaking the feudal contract negate his “rightful” claim to the Iron Throne? 
  • We talked about that all the way back in episode three, but we came down to a qualified yes.
  • But now let’s get uncomfortable and turn that question on Stannis: does his use of a shadowbaby to kill Renly negate his claim to the crown?
  • In Brienne’s mind, Stannis never had the rightful claim to begin with as her conception of “rightful” king has it that Renly was the rightful king, because he was the best possible candidate, because he was “good.”
  • We’re not talking “objectively” here, we’re talking perceptions.
  • Of course, we interrogated that concept of Renly’s “goodness” and came down to the idea that a lot of what seemed good about Renly was mostly at the surface-level.
  • What I’m getting at, ultimately, is that “good”, “rightful”, etc rulers are concepts that we ascribe meaning to. 
  • But for Catelyn, these conceptions of kingship are not just sourced to their own individual preferences. They are grounded within a larger ideological framework.
  • Yet just as Catelyn can’t resolve abuses of power with her faith in the system, Brienne can’t follow her statement that “the gods don’t care about men, any more than kings care about peasants” to its logical conclusion. No gods, no kings!
  • None of these power structures are really worth the labors of good people like Brienne, or even flawed and well-intentioned people like Catelyn
  • This is such a bittersweet scene because here we have two women who have always hovered on the fringe of power, who have only been brought together by an utter failure of power, and they come so close to the conclusion that the system has failed them, but they can’t quite bring themselves do it
  • All Catelyn can do is tell Brienne to serve Robb; another lord shouts you are his now. All Brienne can do is look for another perfect vessel to fill with devotion, never wondering if “my life for yours, O sacred one” is a problem to begin with
  • Fantasy from Pratchett to Fury Road has borne the message that “evil begins when you begin to treat people as things,” and Brienne really does think of herself more as a shield for others than a person in her own right
  • This can inspire great heroism, of course! But it leaves her own internal needs and damage, her personal fears and desires, unattended behind her high walls
  • Going to kill Stannis isn’t dealing with that pain, those contradictions, the human heart in conflict with itself. It’s a way to die and leave a simple song behind
  • Instead, Catelyn says Brienne should fight for the living. Protect someone; a better legacy than the stories and songs. Don’t follow Renly down the drain
  • But Brienne doesn’t want to fight for Robb, because she doesn’t know him. This opens up the gap between the two women that Catelyn was trying to bridge
  • At the end of the day, Brienne belonged to a different faction in the civil war breaking Westeros apart, and that decision on her part has not vanished just because Renly is dead. It meant something to her, and she wants it back
  • Serving someone she doesn’t love, just because you gotta serve someone? That’s no more meaningful than killing Stannis to please Renly’s ghost
  • Brienne wants to be more than a cog. She does not want to be alienated from her labor. She is not satisfied merely fulfilling Catelyn’s conventional wisdom rulebook for how society is supposed to go. Of course not, she’s a woman wearing mail and wielding a sword! Fitting in is not exactly her thing!
  • So instead, she wants to serve Catelyn, because Catelyn saved her life when she did not have to. This act of grace, like Catelyn reaching out to give what comfort a touch could give, is more than Brienne ever got from her comrades
  • That’s what sticks with Brienne. Not the larger movements of the war, not the overarching questions of where power comes from and how to use it
  • It is being treated like a human being worth saving, someone to be plucked from the fire of the war, life preserved amidst endless, hopeless death
  • Brienne wants to repay that mercy with service. Catelyn protests that she only saved Brienne because she was innocent, but inside, she knows that’s not true
  • She saved Brienne because she could not bear to be alone with the knowledge of what happened in that tent. She could not bear to stand alone like a solitary willow bending to the wind as war and death devour all Westeros whole
  • She saved Brienne for the same reason she reaches out to comfort her: in the face of an uncaring universe that will kill you, human beings need each other, in spite of all we do to each other. Especially because of all we do to each other.
  • Catelyn’s family has been scattered to the winds. She must find a new one, and she found Brienne. Now, Brienne finds her, and they stand alone, together
  • They are trying to recreate the sacred bonds that are supposed to hold their society together. I will give my life for yours; in exchange, you will give me food and board, and not ask anything of me that would dishonor me
  • Brienne’s oath to Catelyn feels like the ideal feudal contract — one that isn’t just words and promises that can be broken at will.
  • I’ve always looked at the spectrum of knighthood as Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch on one side and Brienne of Tarth and Beric Dondarrion on the other
  • The Gregors and Amorys will break their knightly vows on behalf of vows of fealty to their overlords time and again
  • Brienne and Beric often break their bonds of fealty to their overlords on behalf of their knightly vows.
  • But it’s important to note that Brienne is not the norm of knights. Neither is Gregor.
  • Brienne works as the true knight — the ideal to aspire to. Except, of course, she’s not technically a knight
  • That’s why I say that Brienne’s vows are a callback to the ideal of what a feudal bond is supposed to be.
  • It isn't a knightly vow. It’s an act to do good works and deeds via fealty to someone who is good (Catelyn has only done one thing wrong in her entire life after all)
  • Catelyn believes her battlefield is motherhood; Brienne believes her battlefield is, well, a battlefield. But their belief in a world that works holds them together
  • From this act of empathy, you could imagine building a society that works. But so much gets in the way. So much weighs it down. This feudal bond is forged with the mutual recognition that Catelyn will allow Brienne to kill Stannis in order to save Robb’s life. The war runs through this brief moment of peace
  • Catelyn thinks to herself how often she saw Ned accept a man’s oath of fealty, and wonders what he would think of this. But if he were here, she wouldn’t have to be doing this. If Ned and Renly were still around, Catelyn and Brienne wouldn’t have to pick up the pieces of the world that broke with them, wearing them like Brienne wears the fragments of Wendel Manderly’s clothes
  • They don’t fit. This world is broken. But the pieces are all they have, and all they can do is try and put them back in order, together
  • Real life amirite? lol
• False envoys
  • So Catelyn approaches the Tully castle of Riverrun, cradle of her birth, foundation of her identity and worldview that are under siege
  • Riverrun is what she thinks about when she thinks about the good life, about a world that makes sense to her, from the very beginning of her POV
  • She began the book here, staring at Robb’s new crown, hoping the best for him. What’s changed since she left? Well, she saw another beloved young king struck down by a shadowy avatar of death, one that threatens Robb as well
  • And so when she returns to Riverrun, Robb is gone, and he’s been replaced by bodies, hanging from the walls like banners, standing in for her disillusion
  • These are Lannister bodies. The sight of them brings joy to her men, just like news of the Battle of Oxcross, which left many Lannister corpses behind
  • But just as Catelyn takes no heart from victory, knowing that it turns to ash in your mouth when winter comes for you. All she sees when she looks at those bodies is escalation, vengeance, blood for blood that will claim her daughters
  • I’m fascinated by the reaction of Catelyn’s men here.
  • Are they showing off to each other in a Theon Greyjoy kicking the head of Gared-esque display of machismo?
  • Are they so desensitized by the war that they look at these hanged men and have a sociopathic reaction to death?
  • Or are these the boys who’ve never seen a real battle and are compensating?
  • It’s such a small moment, but it stuck in my craw in re-reading this chapter.
  • No point. Only questions.
  • She rides ahead to the castle, all joy in homecoming lost. Before George lets her (and us) know what’s up with the bodies, he drops this bittersweet moment:
    • Edmure rode out from the castle to meet her, surrounded by three of her father's sworn men—great-bellied Ser Desmond Grell the master-at-arms, Utherydes Wayn the steward, and Ser Robin Ryger, Riverrun's big bald captain of guards. They were all three of an age with Lord Hoster, men who had spent their lives in her father's service. Old men, Catelyn realized.
  • Everyone she knows got old without Catelyn realizing it, including Catelyn herself. When did that happen? You can’t say. All you can say is that it did.
  • Once more, Catelyn is reckoning with how time’s flow is all-powerful yet imperceptible: an invisible force, easy to ignore, crushing people and mountains
  • As she said earlier, she’s caught between yesterday’s triumphs and tomorrow’s trials. The present moment is gone, because the destabilization of grief has clued her in to what might be the ultimate contradiction of the human condition
  • We live in a perpetually evolving present; the past is inaccessible, the future unknowable. So many philosophies come down to living in the moment
  • But what’s “the moment?” As with Zeno’s Paradox, you can’t ever access a pure unit of time. You just keep subdividing it. It’s gone as you conceive of it
  • So the space humanity actually inhabits is this projected stew of memories, impressions, half-formed thoughts, fears, desires, and disasters
  • We know too much for the bliss of ignorance, but not enough for the bliss of serenity. We’re half-formed, part beast and part angel, and will never be at peace
  • The shadow on a wall isn’t just power, it’s everything--it’s brushing up against the limits of awareness, which Catelyn does throughout this chapter, from trying to breach Brienne’s walls to trying to imagine Ned’s eyes in his skeleton
  • The way we try to get around the limits of awareness, the fact that we really can’t know anything for sure about anything, especially ourselves, is by creating rules to live by. Invisible walls, invisible laws, the projected self-image we call society
  • How do these people get around the fact of Renly’s death, the intense awkwardness this specter of mortality and political alienation raises? By being honorable. By being polite. Brienne blushes, because she’s not used to it
  • But what do the rules of the game have to say about those other bodies, the ones hanging from Riverrun, not Storm’s End? They were envoys. Catelyn is shocked. The rules have been shattered, and we shattered them!
  • Ah, but you see, they were false envoys. It was Tyrion who broke the rules, by sending in jailbreakers under a peace banner. This gets at the political complications of trying to keep these rules going in a Westeros at war
  • As soon as one side breaks taboo, the other side feels an incentive to do the same, because what’s the use in unilaterally disarming? We can say “it’s the right thing to do” til we’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t it amount to vulnerability?
  • I’m reminded of how Edmure is conducting a mini-version of Tywin in the Riverlands
  • Tywin had Masha Heddle strung up at her Inn for the crime of being present at Tyrion’s abduction.
  • It was a mockery of justice then. Edmure, at the very least, hanged actual criminals
  • But leaving the bodies up there does … what, exactly?
  • It’s not like the Lannisters are sending another diplomatic mission to Riverrun any time soon! 
  • This display of corpses and death is Edmure compensating. He was our wenching. Now he needs to look like a leader again.
  • There’s a Theon from two weeks ago feel in Edmure: committing an act of violence to “fit the mold” of leadership.
  • Hoster wasn’t above a public display of violence to prove a political point as Lord Goodbrooke found in Robert’s Rebellion.
  • The rules were only ever a trick, a disguise worn by murderers in this case. But our belief in those rules is what makes them real, because the human understanding of what reality is, what power is...that’s the true battlefield
  • Edmure was not the instigator here, but as Jaime points out later in the book, Tyrion was acting to save his brother; would Robb do any differently? It is not the political or personal motivations on their own that cause disaster, but the combination of the two, the inflation of personal needs to a continental scale
  • It is the demand that your internal turmoil be externalized onto the landscape, that the very rivers and trees and people around you must orbit your presence: the protagonist delusion that haunts good works every bit as much as evil ones
  • Our inability to reconcile our internal conflicts makes it impossible to even conceive of reconciling our external conflicts. The struggle between body and soul; which do you free first? Which resolves the other? We’ll never know.
• Preparing for battle
  • One of the pleasures of this chapter is rediscovering a forgotten part of the War of the Five Kings: Edmure Tully vs. Tywin Lannister.
  • What people most remember about this part of the war is what happens in ASOS when Robb and Brynden return from the Westerlands.
  • But the strategic situations for the Lannisters and Tullys coupled with their battle plans is a vital part in understanding what’s to come for the story as it marches towards the Red Wedding
  • Strategic Picture
  • 
  • With Tywin Lannister booking it westward from Harrenhal in hopes of making it out to the Westerlands to confront Robb Stark.
  • So, let’s pause and broaden out briefly:
    • The Lannister position: it’s bad
      • Tyrion remains in King’s Landing with a small force of sellswords, mountain clansmen and gold cloaks
      • Stafford’s army is routed. Presumably Daven is able to rally some of the army back together after Robb leaves
      • And that leaves Tywin at Harrenhal.with his army and no good options as to where to go.
      • As we covered in Arya VIII, Tywin can’t run the risk of letting Robb Stark run amok out in the westerlands or face the desertion of his army and loss of political authority over his bannermen
      • So, Tywin moves his army out of Harrenhal. At the very least, it outnumbers Edmure’s army, but its exact size is unclear. Let’s ballpark it as 15,000-20,000.
    • The Tully position: it’s okay
      • When we last checked in with the riverlands military dynamic way back in AGOT, Catelyn VIII/Tyrion VII, it was pretty bad with the riverlords scattered and defeated
      • But with the entry of the northmen into the riverlands and the defeat of Jaime Lannister’s host in and around Riverrun, they’re in a strong position
      • However, as we talked about in Catelyn I, Edmure petitioned Robb to allow his riverlords to go back to their homes to defend them against Lannister marauders. 
      • Robb reluctantly allowed the riverlords to go home, and some like the Darry boy lord were murdered by Gregor Clegane.
      • But now with the Lannister army days away from forcing an attempt into the riverlands to get into the westerlands, Edmure is brings his riverlords and their hosts back together for battle
      • Now, something that escaped my attention before coming onto this chapter, but the reason Edmure can do this is as we know from Arya’s ACOK chapters, Amory Lorch, Gregor Clegane and the Bloody Mummers have all returned to Harrenhal.
      • So, the lands of the various riverlords is not under threat from Lannister reavers
      • Still, Edmure counts that he has 11,000 soldiers to face Tywin's army.
      • Additionally Edmure has an additional force in Roose Bolton that is advancing on Harrenhal from the north.
  • Edmure’s strategic plan
    • It’s too easy to reduce Edmure’s plan to block the Lannister advance into the riverlands, because that, in and of itself, is not a good plan. It’s dumb.
    • But there’s a degree of complexity in the plan that I hadn’t fully put together in previous reads.
    • The basic gist of the plan, as Edmure explains to Catelyn, is to wait for Tywin’s army to depart Harrenhal and then have Roose Bolton attack and seize Harrenhal from Tywin as Edmure blocks the main westermen host trying to make its way into the Westerlands.
    • We’ll talk more about the tactics that Edmure employs come ACOK, Catelyn VI, but suffice to say that Edmure chooses key terrain to use as a force multiplier to mitigate the size disparity between his and Tywin’s army.
    • All the same, Harrenhal would be retaken, and Tywin would be caught out in the open terrain between Riverrun, Harrenhal and the Blackwater Rush, cut off from any line of retreat or supply line
    • And then when Robb Stark returned from the west, he, Edmure and Roose Bolton would descend on the stranded Lannister army to destroy the remnants of Tywin’s host.
  • Hindsight on the Battle Plan
    • This is not a bad plan! But to use a very old adage: no good battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.
    • Roose Bolton will take Harrenhal and Edmure will repel Tywin at the fords, but the Lannisters did have an out: to the south and the Reach host
    • I think it’s easy to look at Edmure, and think that he was a moron for not thinking that Tywin would turn south.
    • But consider that the Tyrells are still enemies of the Lannisters at this juncture of the story.
    • If Edmure thought about the Tyrell army sitting pretty at Bitterbridge, he likely thought that they would fight any Lannister coming for them.
    • Additionally, no one besides Tyrion and the small council knew that Littlefinger was on his way to the Tyrells to bring them into marriage alliance with the Lannisters 
• Catelyn and Edmure
  • These political and military maneuvers are not taking place in a vacuum--they are filtered through the personal fears and desires of our characters
  • Like all adult siblings, Catelyn and Edmure inevitably drag each other back to childhood, seeing the youth inside the adult like Cressen vis-a-vis Stannis
  • Edmure’s anger had always been a sullen, sulky thing. Always because Catelyn remembers Edmure as a child, before he had to perform manhood. She sees past the disguise, the shadow on a wall, and he can’t stand that
  • Robb can’t stand it either; that’s why he left orders for Catelyn to be sent to the Twins, orders she promptly ignores because of her duty to her family
  • Neither Robb nor Edmure’s self-image has room for Catelyn; she is unwelcome in their perfect projected fantasy tableaux, precisely because she’s pointing out that it’s a projection. She knows them better than that; intimacy behind the image
  • Edmure, however, also resents Catelyn’s presence for a reason specific to him, to their relationship, to the personal and political history of House Tully
  • Edmure’s doing all of this to live up to his dad’s reputation, yet he can’t quite seem to do it. Why is that? He certainly fears that he’s just incompetent
  • But there’s more to it than that. The subtext of this conversation between Edmure and Catelyn, the source of the resentment and sorrow simmering just beneath the surface, is that Hoster raised Catelyn, the firstborn, as his heir, not Edmure
  • Every time Catelyn thinks about Hoster, he’s teaching her something, taking her somewhere, instilling lessons in her she has carried throughout her adult life
  • This is not merely because Hoster loved Catelyn and enjoyed her presence, though that certainly seems to have been the case
  • This is because Minisa Whent, Hoster’s wife, did not have a son that lived past infancy until Edmure. As such, for a long time, Catelyn was the heir to Riverrun
  • By the time Edmure came along to be the heir, Hoster had given all his best efforts to Catelyn. One gets the sense that Edmure got the leftovers, a recycled relationship, a copy that can’t sustain the illusion when set next to the real thing
  • Here stands Hoster’s heir, Edmure knows. It’s not me. It’s my big sister, who is now telling me that my plan is stupid and I’ve once more failed to be like Dad
  • This is a brilliant point! Catelyn has the gravitas to stand in judgment of Edmure, because she was the designated heir until Edmure arrived.
  • And the better part of her father’s instruction went to her -- hence why she’s so good at politics like her father.
  • Edmure and Hoster’s relationship is an under-thought-of relationship. The son who was the baby of the family.
  • I can’t help but think of Edmure in contrast to characters like Tyrion and Theon with older, beloved siblings.and how they try to behave.
  • Edmure, love him, but he hasn’t had to rely on his wits the way that Tyrion has.
  • And he’s not a swaggering brute like Theon tries to play to the Ironborn and uses sex as a means to cover his insecurities.
  • Edmure reads a milder version of Tyrion and Theon. He’s smart, and the ladies love Edmure. 
  • But he’s still the youngest. 
  • Oberyn says in ASOS that the fact he was born third and Doran first was proof of the grace of the gods, because Doran is a steadier hand on the wheel
  • The Tullys, then, are proof of the capriciousness and carelessness of the gods. If Edmure had been born first and Catelyn third, this never would’ve been an issue
  • Instead, they are both split, divided from themselves and each other. Catelyn was raised to be the heir, but Edmure’s birth left her on the periphery of power, having learned just enough to know how much she’s missing. Again: we are denied the bliss of both ignorance and fulfillment. We’re forever caught in between
  • Edmure, meanwhile, gets the position of power, but lacks what Catelyn has: the feeling of capability, the ability to see oneself as master of Riverrun in the mirror
  • The image and the reality, the thing in itself and the idea of the thing, are split, alienated from one another, leaving it impossible for the Tullys to be at peace
  • Edmure believes his battle plan will reconcile all of this--hence him saying that Bracken and Blackwood agree on it, the eternal divide healed and made whole
  • Edmure is getting ready for battle in large part just to look like the kind of guy who can get ready for battle! As Michal said last week: power is its own justification. It’s a constant audition for fulfilling the shadow on a wall
  • Edmure is going to be Lord of Riverrun any day now, and is terrified that he’s not going to be up for the challenge. His fears are partially grounded in reality; he did get his ass kicked by the Kingslayer, after all
  • But this is mostly performance anxiety, just like when he couldn’t get it up that one time. Edmure is getting in his own way. The idea of who he’s supposed to be is preventing him from doing what he actually should. The image of Hoster is more present in his mind’s eye than the man who was as flawed as anyone else
  • Catelyn points out that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by meeting Tywin in the field. He is not coming to attack Riverrun. He is riding for his own lands. Fighting him now keeps him and his reavers here! It makes things actively more dangerous for the people Edmure is sworn to protect
  • But all the world is a stage, and Edmure is performing. Like Theon, he feels the need to thrust his dick in the wind and do some great deed to be remembered
  • He is responding to real political incentives. He needs to keep his fractious bannermen in line after Hoster dies. He needs to prove that when he calls the banners, they will come. That means something. But it’s not everything!
  • Edmure commands Roose to take Harrenhal, and to take the men Robb left behind to keep an eye on the Freys; the Red Wedding can’t happen without both
  • All because he conjured up a battle out of thin air for role-playing purposes, like George is an artist on commission and Edmure is paying him to write a battle
  • It’s about grasping for what can’t be grasped, trying to get back the battle he lost, trying to get back the father he’s losing, trying to be someone from the songs, set-dressing reality until it looks like the theater playing constantly in your head
  • Scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal said that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ASOIAF fandom writer Adam Feldman said that our problem is that even when we get a taste of peace, we decide that war tastes better. Both could’ve been written about Edmure Tully
  • I’m being very hard on our boy here! While Edmure sows the seeds of destruction with one hand, he kindles the embers of hope with the other
  • Is part of the issue that Edmure doesn’t know Robb’s plan? 
  • I’m not suggesting that the personal isn’t deeply intertwined with political for Edmure, but if he had the knowledge of what his nephew was doing, he might react accordingly.
  • To give Edmure a sliver of credit, he thinks he’s trying to help Robb by isolating Tywin in the riverlands so that Robb can bring his army back from the west and everyone can converge on Tywin
  • I think you’re right to suggest that a lot of that is a heaping scoop of rationalization, but there is political and military purpose for what Edmure is doing here.
  • Hi. I’m a member of the Edmure Did Only A Few Things Wrong Defense League. See you in ASOS, Catelyn II.
  • When Catelyn demands to know who all these other people are running all around their father’s castle, Edmure responds: “My people. They were afraid.”
  • You see why Catelyn is my favorite POV in ACOK! This is a tossed-off incidental moment, utterly ancillary to both the larger movements of the plot and the overall arc of our POV character, and yet it’s one of the best lines in the whole story
  • The casual nature of it is key to what makes it so great. Edmure doesn’t even get why this should be a big deal. And it really shouldn’t be! It’s only remarkable in context. It’s only remarkable because the bar has fallen so low in a world at war
  • It’s not that Edmure has taken a step forward, it’s that everyone else stepped back. He’s not going above and beyond--he’s literally fulfilling his duty
  • Protection is what lords are supposed to offer their people. It’s what they’re supposed to give back in exchange for not having to work for a living
  • You labor in the farms and the forests, the rivers and the mines, and you give up a chunk of what is produced by your labor so that we, the Tullys, don’t have to
  • In exchange for that, we will protect those farms and forests and rivers and mines, we will protect you and your partners and your children, with our lives
  • Yet where are they now, these shields of men? Where are the valiant protectors that both the laws and the stories say should be here, defending their people?
  • They are absent or worse; some are not content with merely neglecting the smallfolk, and are preying on them. “Sometimes the knights are the monsters.”
  • It turns out that it was all a con. A rope ladder dangling out of reach, up to a treehouse you helped build. The songs and stories lie to you not to protect you, but so that you don’t notice that the wealth and power is only going one way in this relationship, and all that’s coming back the other way is fire and blood
  • This is not something that can be safely locked away in the past, covered up with the gauzy gossamer veil of fantasy. Our modern finance capitalism is, to a large degree, a house of cards that can collapse just by looking at it too closely
  • We talk about economic crises in terms of bubbles bursting. Is that not also how we describe the worldview of characters in ASOIAF coming apart?
  • I thought I was investing in my future. Instead, I was being drained dry. I was being treated like a resource, like I belonged to another human being
  • That’s the great ambiguity of Edmure’s statement. On the one hand, he is doing what so few lords in Westeros are willing to do: use their power to shield people
  • He’s doing it because they were afraid. He empathized, just like how he cares about the men Jaime killed, remembering their names. He saw human beings suffering, and realized he had the power to do something about it, and he did it
  • What more can you ask of someone in power? It’s an act of heroism so pure that it brings tears to my eyes. The essence of grace. I was in need; you took me in
  • But why are they in need and afraid? Because Edmure means to give battle. If he just let Tywin pass, they wouldn’t be in danger. The threat that Catelyn notices, that so many people could spell starvation under siege, only constitutes a threat in the first place if there is a siege, if Edmure insists on giving battle to Tywin
  • So Edmure is heroically keeping people safe...from a problem he caused. Why not just avoid causing the problem in the first place? Because of the shadow on the wall. Because of the need to look like, feel like, be like the man you wanna be
  • That man needs a battle to win, so Edmure created one for him. That’s what’s putting his people in jepoardy here. I think George wrote this scenario as he did to demonstrate why even the good lords aren’t good enough to bring justice
  • Edmure, as a basic animal in Eden, an individual untethered by any institution or sense of shame, is driven by empathy, humanity, and love. Bless him. 
  • But within the context of our institutions? Filter that need for love through power? You get a disaster. You get a battle that doesn’t even need to happen
  • “My people. They were afraid.” But what makes them your people to begin with? Why have we arranged things so that their livelihoods depend on your whims?
  • There ought to be a world where we can do more than pray for a kind master; there ought to be a world where we guarantee our mutual security and dignity
  • That is not Edmure Tully’s world. He is bumping up against the border of where his worldview can take him, no further. He can conceive of protecting these people from Tywin. He cannot conceive of liberating them from himself.
• Catelyn and Hoster
  • Catelyn and Edmure reconcile as best they can, a reassurance and a kiss to let him know that the reassurance is genuine, that the inside matches the outside
  • Only then can Catelyn take her pilgrimage to the decaying godhead of Riverrun and all the lives that have run like rivers through it: their father, Hoster Tully
  • He is a strong man and proud in Catelyn’s memories, a rock-solid foundation like the castle amidst the endless rivers of life eroding and transforming everything
  • Catelyn repeatedly associates Hoster with the castle and the land; he is the protagonist of the Riverlands, the center around which they all orbit
  • You can see a Fisher King framework here, a spiritual understanding of the world that dovetails with Catelyn’s political understanding of the world
  • But George isn’t necessarily endorsing this viewpoint. He wants us to understand it’s how Catelyn sees the world, but I think we are supposed to realize that this spiritual perspective exists to justify Catelyn’s political perspective
  • If Hoster is the castle, is the land, is the rivers, than the notion that the system needs changing seems not only dangerous, but absurd on the face of it
  • You might as well rebel against the rivers themselves. To challenge Hoster Tully is to challenge the nature of the world itself, to invite chaos and despair
  • But now, this man, Hoster Tully, Catelyn’s father, the font of history and heritage and identity and meaning, does not know who she is or why she has come
  • He’s a mortal man after all. Information temporarily embedded in rotting meat, like the rest of us. Sickness can befall him like anyone else, and yet the rivers keep running. Like Renly’s banners, they didn’t belong to him after all
  • This is what haunts Catelyn so much: not only that her strong proud father has been reduced to this, as she puts it, but that the sun keeps shining, the rivers keep running, Edmure prepares to take over. The gods don’t seem to care
  • Death is something Catelyn can comprehend, now more than ever. But the way in which her father seems to have been robbed of what gave his life meaning, this is what Catelyn cannot bear. Flesh dies. But must my image of him die?
  • Yes, it must, because for all that the image of Hoster Tully is driving Edmure on, it’s become a noose around the neck of the man himself
  • Hoster inflicted unimaginable harm on his own daughter in order to maintain that image. Family comes first, ahead of duty or honor, and Hoster forgot that
  • Now, at the end, the image is gone. It lives on only in Edmure’s head, not a property of the man himself. Jon Arryn is gone. Robert is gone. Ned is gone. That whole era that seemed to mean so much has been poured down the drain of time
  • All Hoster cares about as his rivers run dry is trying to take back what he did to maintain that shadow on the wall. It was hidden from the world, but it lived inside Hoster, a seed of guilt that has grown to consume him whole
  • What matters in the end is not what you accomplished as an individual; it’s what you did with the space between yourself and others. That’s what lingers. Hoster realized this too late, not only to redeem himself, but to pass it on to his children
  • So the truth escapes Catelyn, both the truth about what Hoster did to Lysa and the truth about what’s important in life. The communication breaks down; you can’t get beyond the limits of awareness. Hoster has run out of power
  • What he wants is something he finally can’t have: forgiveness. Lysa will not give it to him. And so he sees Lysa’s face on Catelyn, just as Littlefinger once saw Catelyn’s face on Lysa. We don’t want the truth. We want to believe.
  • Lysa is the missing link, the middle child that would make all of this make sense, but she’s not here and she’s not coming, a ghost filling the room with absence
  • Catelyn may be more coherent than Hoster right now, but when she tells Hoster that he’s done nothing that requires forgiveness, she’s not living in reality either
  • She looks out the window and thinks to herself that the rivers, pure and clean and endless, represent Hoster’s life...but as George writes it, she is deliberately overlooking the “crowded and chaotic” yard full of refugees
  • That’s what life actually looks like: a roiling stew of need that sates itself until it can’t and then it dies. Catelyn doesn’t want to look at that. She wants to look at the rivers, her metaphor for life, her projection of how the world ought to be
  • And so father and daughter are talking past each other, speaking different languages, unable to recognize themselves or their own faces in the mirror
  • All they can do is speak to the idea of each other, the person they think they’re speaking to. Beyond that, all you can do is accept the mystery
• Catelyn and Ned(‘s bones)
  • The chapter builds to Ned’s bones--not in a plot sense like Renly’s death in Catelyn IV, but in a thematic sense, an unshakable image that grounds the rest
  • This chapter has been all about the borders between life and death, past and present, the singular soul and the world pulling it to pieces
  • Yet what makes this chapter so insightful, so true to life, is that it neither shatters nor preserves these borders. It does both at the same time
  • Sometimes, you can cross those borders. You can reach out to another person and share their pain; you can see the child inside the man; you can look at the natural world and see it as a reflection of you, and yourself as a reflection of it
  • But other times, those borders hold fast. You can’t undo your own aging. You can’t take back actions you regret. You can’t step past the limitations and ambiguities of language to achieve unclouded communication with another
  • Again, we are half beast and half angel, aware enough to see our cage but not enough to escape it. Such is the human condition; death is the only escape
  • If Ned Stark still exists inviolate, it’s in a place his loved ones can’t reach. All they’re left with is the idea of him, the shadow on a wall. That’s extremely powerful, inspiring good deeds large and small; it will never die like he did. But it is not, in any way, an adequate replacement for the man himself, body and soul
  • In book one, Ned was our protagonist, a world we lived inside. Now we’re left with his bones. This is literally him...but as Catelyn thinks, it’s also not him
  • “Ned Stark” was something invisible: love briefly clarified by words and actions. The memory of warm arms around her. He was a time to her as much as a person, and now that time has passed, leaving only what a person technically is
  • The idea of Hoster Tully, too, has faded from his own failing mind. Catelyn goes from a man trembling on the brink of death to what will be left of him afterward
  • The bones could be anyone’s. There’s nothing that makes him unique. Again, what lingers is who we were to each other, the way in which Catelyn cannot help but look for Ned’s eyes in empty sockets. Those eyes, she remembers, could be soft or hard depending on the day. But it’s the soft days she remembers
  • That which made Catelyn feel protected, like the world made sense and it would be an OK place to die one day, is gone. And she is still here, living for the dead
  • Tyrion sent Ned’s bones as a gesture of peace and reconciliation, trying to move on from the dead and focus on healing the living. But as he did that with one hand, he sent in false envoys with the other, ensuring the conflict continues
  • He held back Ned’s sword, and Robb will keep fighting with his sword to get that sword back; round and round it goes, no one setting the damn things down
  • The restoration of Ned’s bones has not brought peace to Catelyn; it has only reminded her of what she has lost forever, what the Lannisters could never give back to her even if they wanted to. The life in death’s rearview mirror.
  • So the escalation of violence, blood for blood until there’s no one left to fight for, is guaranteed to continue. “One day I will thank them all.”
  • The chapter closes with Catelyn’s wistful desire to break through the firmament and speak to her ghosts. She envies the silent sisters for their ability to do so
  • Now, of course, they can’t actually speak to the dead! It’s a metaphor! But Catelyn can’t help but project a longed-for reality into that shadow on the wall
  • Nothing magical happens in Catelyn V, but the shadow of the shadowbaby lingers, a voice whispering in the back of her mind that all these structures built on faith could come crumbling down any moment, as they did for Renly
  • That’s what it looks like to cross the border of death. You don’t bring your loved ones back, as Dany learned with Drogo. You just bring death back with you.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Roose will indeed take Harrenhal in Arya’s next chapter...but it will only be a “bloody business” for the Lannister men, as Roose takes the castle by guile (with Arya’s help) rather than battle

Speaking of Roose, his Frey marriage becomes very important indeed come the Red Wedding and the Northern half of ADWD. At this point, though, there’s no indication that the Lannister alliance is in the works. Helman Tallhart’s been there to keep an eye on the Freys, and anyway, the war hasn’t turned against Robb yet in such a way for that to make political sense for Lord Walder. Roose is probably just making a smart alliance with a powerful house in the new joint kingdom...although maybe he’s thinking he can control the Northern cavalry’s bridge home?

Martyn Rivers talks about Robb feeding Stafford Lannister’s heart to Grey Wind. Perhaps this was the seed for the White Harbor Freys to claim that Robb and the rest of the northmen turned into wolves in ADWD.

Seeds of the valonqar prophecy with Catelyn saying she wants to put her hands around Cersei’s throat until her face goes white.

Brienne says that Robert wasn’t the rightful king, because Jaime Lannister murdered the rightful king. This sets the character foreshadowing for a number of Brienne and Jaime’s interactions -- one especially where Brienne will tell Jaime “Aerys was mad and cruel, no one has ever denied that. He was still king, crowned and anointed. And you had sworn to protect him." which then helps foreshadow Brienne and Jaime’s fateful bathtub conversation.

Hoster will leak more details about Lysa and her “wretched stripling” in ASOS, although not enough for Catelyn to put all the pieces together before it’s too late. 

Theory/Discussion

Will Ned’s bones get home? How and when?

Tracking Ned’s bones

• At the Red Keep in ACOK, Tyrion I, with the head still mounted on a spike. Tyrion orders the head to be removed
• Between that moment and ACOK, Tyrion VI, the Silent Sisters give Ned’s eyes to the crows and sew the head back onto the body
• The Silent Sisters then travel with Ser Cleos Frey to Riverrun where they await Catelyn’s return.
• As we discussed in this chapter, Catelyn then sends the bones north with Hal Mollen and the Silent Sisters to be buried in the crypt under Winterfell
• This is the last known spot for Ned Stark’s bones as things get dicey up in the North.
• Victarion takes Moat Cailin, cutting the North off from the south. So, it’s unlikely the bones made it farther than the Neck
• On the journey up to the Twins and the Red Wedding, Catelyn wonders where Hallis Mollen ended up
• Lady Barbrey Dustin tells Theon in ADWD that if the bones somehow make it into the North, her outriders will prevent them from going farther than Barrowton.
• So, where are the bones now and where did they go?
• Given that Lady Barbrey Dustin mentions that they’re probably in the Neck.
• If they’re there, I think it’s a fair assumption to believe that Howland Reed might have possession of them.
• But Howland isn’t the only person in the Neck. As we talked about in our Grand Northern Conspiracy episode, Maege Mormont, two of her daughters and Galbart Glover are also likely in the Neck too.
• So, that begs the question as to what happens to Ned’s bones in TWOW and ADOS? 

What happens to Ned’s bones in TWOW/ADOS?

• Ned’s bones are quite the potent metaphor, not only for the reader, but for the characters in-universe. Catelyn isn’t the only one projecting; Barbrey is projecting too
• Turns out there are some people in the North who didn’t love Ned Stark, who wouldn’t see his bones coming home as a perfect reconciliation of the story’s struggles
• She wants to deny us that catharsis in favor of her own, an insistence that her story matters, that the collateral damage done by the protagonists of reality matters
• Given the parallel set up between her and Theon in ADWD, I wonder if Barbrey will end up reconciling with her desire to be a Stark and allowing the bones through
• The other possibility, as you were getting at, is that the Reed-Mormont-Glover coalition pulls an end run around Barbrey somehow and gets the bones home on their own
• That’s also a potent metaphor: the literal remains of Stark rule being brought home by the dead lord’s vassals, who are working to restore his children to power
• But regardless of how they come home, the importance of Ned Stark’s bones will ultimately rest with those children
• It will undoubtedly be very cathartic for them to bury Ned with his generation, next to the statues he built in a breaking of tradition, just to represent how he loved them 
• It’s a way of dealing with death in a way that leaves you feeling whole in life, which no one in Catelyn V can seem to do! Hopefully we will see it at the end
• But it will still be bittersweet, because they can’t get Dad back and can’t erase the pain of losing him. For Jon in particular, this cuts both ways, because he never got the chance to hear the truth about his parentage from Ned’s lips
• All he can do is stare at the bones, imagine what might’ve been, and try to forgive. That’s the end of the story of Ned Stark, once a protagonist in his own right, now a shadow on the wall for the next generation, who like Brienne, must wear the ill-fitting fragments of a world that left them behind before they even entered it
• “All our songs will be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing.” 

Conclusion

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