Episode 122: A CLASH OF KINGS, CATELYN VI: "Songs and Screams" 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 twenty-second episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Songs and Screams: An Analysis of ACOK, Catelyn VI,” in which Edmure fights and wins the Battle of the Fords against Tywin. So why does Catelyn feel so afraid??

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Question

Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & the Pillar of Autumn, one of our small council patrons, asks:

Last week there was a breakdown of Stannis saying to Davos "I do not require your understanding. Only your service." The objections to this line were myriad but one huge aspect of it came from Stannis' failure to ask only for service that would bring Davos no dishonor, as Cat pledges to do for Brienne. How does Stannis' sentiment here compare to Robb's when he returns from the west and admonishes Edmure for not realizing and executing on Robb's plan to bait Tywin west? I know we will definitely talk about this when we get to ASOS but I think the comparison here is useful. Is Stannis' reluctance and personal struggle to give a dishonorable order before he ultimately gives it to Davos anyway any worse or better than Robb not even realizing he was asking Edmure to do the dishonorable in the first place?

So, thank you Luke for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can find show notes, access to the NotASlack at our two highest tiers, Fevre Dream episodes and ASOIAF bonus episodes like our recently-released third part of “The Second Coming”, our five-part analysis of TWOW, The Forsaken for all Poor Fellow and above patrons!

Yes! And we just announced a brand new stretch goal on patreon: if we get up to 1,250 total patrons or increase up to $7500/month, we’ll do something that we’ve been asked to do since the start of this podcast and patreon: namely a multi-part series on the first novella in George RR Martin’s Dunk and Egg series: The Hedge Knight! So, if that or any of the other benefits interests you, please head over to patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF!

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Catelyn Stark, she had arrived back at Riverrun to find Edmure preparing for battle against Tywin Lannister. 

Let’s find out what happens with said battle in this synopsis of ACOK, Catelyn VI!

Synopsis

“Tell Father I have gone to make him proud.” 

With those dramatic words echoing in his own head, Edmure Tully swings up into the saddle and prepares to set out for battle.

Catelyn tells Edmure that their dad was always proud of him, and loves him fiercely. Your father loves you, Faramir, and will remember it ere the end...sorry, wrong story. Edmure says he means to give Hoster better reason to be proud of him than mere birth. Oh, Edmure. Why do you do this to yourself, buddy? 

The host sets out, all things shining. Catelyn thinks to herself that she has a greater host than Edmure’s, a host of doubts and fears. Next to Catelyn, Brienne’s misery is palpable--you get the idea, everyone is depressed in this chapter. Brienne has rejected the conventional garments Catelyn had custom-made for her, preferring her warrior’s garb as she patrols the walls of Riverrun, along with those few men Edmure left behind to hold the castle under the command of Ser Desmond Grell. 

When the army is gone, Brienne asks Catelyn what they should do now. Catelyn responds that they should do their duty. She always did, as she thinks to herself. She’d had to play the role of son and daughter both to her father, and then take on the duties of Lady of Riverrun after her mother died. She’d been prepared to marry Brandon Stark; she did marry his brother Ned; she bore this stranger’s son as he went off to war, because she always did her duty. Poetic stuff. Compelling and rich, per Anchorman. 

Catelyn visits the sept and lights candles to the Warrior, praying that both Edmure and Robb stay safe during their respective campaigns. The new septon is an earnest young man unfamiliar to Catelyn, who can’t help but long for old Septon Osmynd. She would’ve felt comfortable confiding her fears about Stannis and the shadow in him. Alas, all the old guard are gone, dead or dying. They always seemed to know everything, and Catelyn feels she knows nothing, Jon Snow. Catelyn finds herself wondering whether the old gods might offer her more comfort these days. 

Outside, Catelyn and Brienne stop to watch local singing sensation Rymund the Rhymer entertain the smallfolk. He’s singing about Lord Deremond’s brave stand at the Bloody Meadow. A bunch of snotty little brats run around hitting each other with sticks. Catelyn wonders why children are such violent monsters, and suspects that the gilded romanticism of Rymund’s songs is the ultimate explanation. 

Brienne says she can’t stand the waiting. At least battle allows you to release your tension, and you don’t feel helpless with arms and armor. Catelyn reminds Brienne of the fatal dangers in battle; Brienne counters that women die in childbirth, and Rymund isn’t singing about them. Catelyn compares childbirth and parenting to a fierce painful battle of sorts. She assumes that Brienne’s mother has taught her all this, but Brienne never knew her mother. Swingin’ Selwyn Tarth had a different dance partner every year, but they didn’t teach Brienne anything, and PTA conservative Catelyn does not approve. 

Catelyn wishes she was omnipresent so she could protect all five of her children at once, as they’ve scattered across a continent convulsing in war. Brienne wonders who would keep Catelyn herself safe in such a scenario. Catelyn responds with a weary smile that the men around her are supposed to take care of that...but since they’re not, Brienne will have to do. 

Maester Vyman brings Catelyn a letter from Lord Meadows, the new castellan of Storm’s End since the mysterious untimely demise of Ser Cortnay Penrose. Stannis Baratheon has taken Storm’s End, and the garrison has entered his service. Catelyn tells the maester to send word to Robb, and then reviews the situation with Brienne. Catelyn concludes that Stannis needed Edric Storm to compare his looks to Joffrey, in order to bolster his case that Joffrey is not Robert’s son. Catelyn doesn’t think it’ll do any good though, lol. And anyway, this train of thought just winds up making her obsess about another bastard: Jon Snow. Who was his mother? Guess we’ll never know…

Speaking of bastards, and letters, they had also received a message from Roose Bolton confirming that he was marching on Harrenhal to play his part in Edmure’s plan. He’ll take the castle if he has to kill everyone inside! Yikes. Nice guy. He also says he’s glad Ser Rodrik executed Ramsay, a tainted monster who would’ve only threatened Roose’s trueborn children. You, uh...you don’t know how right you are on that one, Roose. 

But enough of these character dynamics and important plot groundwork, let’s get to the battle! Ser Desmond’s squire comes bursting into Catelyn’s room to tell her that men flying the purple unicorn of House Brax are threatening the nearest ford. Catelyn stops long enough to ponder if their commander might be the same Brax to whom she was almost betrothed back in the day, and then dashes up to the walls. 

Ser Desmond informs her that the enemy rode out of the southeast, but that they are outriders, and Tywin’s main force remains well to the south. Catelyn can see the nearest ford, held by Lord Jason Mallister, and the Brax men preparing to cross--no more than fifty of them. They spread out into a line, charge across the river, Brienne mutters “now,” and all hell breaks loose.

Catelyn isn’t quite close enough to make out the details; she hears screams, steel on steel, and finally watches a corpse sail downriver. The Brax men regroup and retreat the way they came. Ser Desmond wishes Lord Hoster had been able to watch and take heart; Catelyn counters that Hoster’s dancing days are done, and that Tywin still greatly outnumbers Edmure. Desmond points out that Edmure has geography on his side: the west bank is higher than the east, and there is plenty of cover for his archers. Moreover, his best knights remain in reserve, ready to throw back any Lannister forces that manage to secure a foothold on the other side. Catelyn hopes that Desmond is right. 

The battle resumes at midnight; a serving girl wakes Catelyn, who climbs up to the roof. The Lannister men try to cross under cover of darkness, hoping the defenders would be blind, forgetting that they can’t see in the dark either. The Mallister archers take down a bunch of them with fire arrows, oddly beautiful against the night sky. 

As they return to their rooms, Catelyn asks Brienne for her thoughts on the unfolding conflict. Brienne says they have just seen a brush of Tywin’s fingertip as he looks for a weak spot along the fords. If he doesn’t find one, he will gather all his strength together to make one. Or at least, that’s what Brienne would do.

The next day, Catelyn sends the steward Utherydes Wayn with a flagon of wine to Cleos Frey, to loosen his tongue for questioning. While she waits for Cleos to get wasted, Catelyn hears news of more attempted crossings deflected by the riverlords, and starts thinking that her fears about Edmure’s plan were misplaced. Hoo boy...savor that optimistic spirit while you can, Cat. 

Catelyn waits until nightfall before visiting Cleos so he’ll be as drunk as possible. Indeed, when she gets there, Cleos is stumbling around and slurring his words like your average Ohio sportsball fan. Did I do that right, Jeff? I know mocking Ohio is your thing.

Cleos protests that he had no idea Tyrion planned on using his escort to break Jaime out, and Catelyn reassures him that she knows no Frey would break an oath...unless it suited them, of course. Ha ha, that probably won’t pay off at all, ha ha ha...sob. Catelyn commands Cleos to tell her about the terms Tyrion offered, and he does so. Catelyn thinks to herself that Edmure was right: these were no terms at all. There is, however, one part of Tyrion’s counter offer that intrigues her. 

“Lannister will exchange Arya and Sansa for his brother?”

“Yes. He sat on the Iron Throne and swore it.”

“Before witnesses?”

“Before all the court, my lady. And the gods as well. I said as much to Ser Edmure, but he told me that it was not possible, that His Grace Robb would never consent.” 

“He told you true.”

Cat can’t even say that Robb would be wrong on this count. Jaime is dangerous, and Arya and Sansa are, well, children. She then asks if Cleos saw her daughters while at court. He stumbles over his words; Catelyn realizes that Cleos is trying to lie, but is too drunk to be good at it. She threatens his life, and asks again. Cleos, now with a cold sweat, responds with the truth. He saw Sansa, who looked “a bit drawn” (understatement of the year there). He did not see Arya. 

Catelyn thinks to herself that Cersei might’ve been keeping Arya locked away lest she embarrass the Lannisters in public. Or Arya might be dead. Aw, Catelyn, wrong on both counts! Catelyn shoves these painful thoughts away and gets back to business. Why was Tyrion offering terms, when Cersei is the Queen Regent? Cleos says that Cersei was indisposed, again quite the understatement. Catelyn thinks back to her time spent with Tyrion trekking through the Mountains of the Moon. He’d managed to get Bronn on his side; he’s so clever that Catelyn isn’t even surprised that he somehow survived the high road. He came to her defense when the clansmen attacked, and he had nothing to do with Ned’s execution. According to Littlefinger, who would never lie to her, Tyrion was the one who sent that dagger to slit her son’s throat. But he denied it again and again in the Vale…

Catelyn can’t bear the uncertainty and declares that Tyrion lied, like how all Lannisters lie. Cleos blinks like that one gif and says he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Catelyn agrees that you know nothing, Cleos Snow, and leaves with Brienne. Catelyn wishes that her life could be simpler like a man, like Brienne’s, with no agonizing decisions. Hmm...you sure about that one, Catelyn? Guess Brienne’s big choices come later…

Rymund the Rhymer entertains them during supper with his #1 hit “Wolf in the Night,” about Robb’s victory at Oxcross. Everyone wolf-howls along, especially Desmond Grell, who’s even more wasted than Cleos. Catelyn doesn’t join in, but hopes the songs make them brave. Brienne mentions that there were always singers in her father’s hall when she was growing up; she memorized all the songs. Catelyn recalls that Sansa was the same way, though few singers braved the journey to Winterfell. Catelyn had promised her daughter that not only singers, but a life out of the songs waited for her in King’s Landing. Will the gods forgive Catelyn for unknowingly trapping her daughter? Sad.

Brienne remembers one singer specifically, who came from over the narrow sea. Her waist was tiny. She was the anti-Brienne, basically. Catelyn asks if Brienne ever sang for her father or for Renly, but Brienne gets embarrassed. Catelyn hopes that Brienne will one day sing for her; Brienne demurs and asks to leave the table. Catelyn grants her leave.

Several days later, they hear that Brienne had the right of it: having failed to find a weak spot, Tywin tried to force one. And he failed; Catelyn knows the news is good just from the look on the messenger’s face. Lord Lefford drowned, Strongboar was taken captive, Addam Marbrand was turned back three times, and even when Gregor managed to secure a crossing, it was only temporary before Edmure’s reserve forced him to retreat. Tywin is now retreating to the southeast, Edmure writes. 

“A feint, perhaps, or full retreat, it matters not. They shall not cross.” 

Oh, Edmure. Oh, buddy. Oh, no.

Desmond Grell is overjoyed, wishing only that he’d been there, and immediately starts thinking up lyrics for the song about the battle to be commissioned from Rymund the Rhymer. Catelyn still isn’t in the singing mood, but she allows everyone to celebrate Edmure’s victory by getting drunk. Are you noticing a theme in this chapter? 

As rest of the castle parties through the night, Catelyn consults her father’s maps. As she notes, if Tywin is marching southeast from Riverrun, he’s probably reached the headwaters of the Blackwater by now. She feels profoundly uneasy, and can’t say why. After all, they keep winning battle after battle! Why does she feel so afraid?

And that is ACOK, Catelyn VI! A great battle chapter and an even better chapter in terms of characterization and prose. What did you think of this chapter, ser?

Depth

First off, amazing read and synopsis, ser! Somehow, you bring your literary brilliance and humor to the synopsis. So, well done yet again! More of this come the Blackwater!

So, my opening thought is: Is Catelyn the best battle POV character in ASOIAF? Oh sure, I love Davos at the Blackwater and Jon at the Wall and Barristan at the Battle of Fire. But Catelyn brings such a unique perspective to battle. She’s not a warfighter. She’s an observer, always watching as those she loves go out to fight. Now, I think it’s good that George shows us the shit, blood and dying of the battlefield too. It’s just that Catelyn provides pathos when the heat of battle provides adventure and horror. Both perspectives are important, but Catelyn’s (and Sansa’s come the Blackwater) are unique, and ASOIAF is so much better for it!

Another great chapter from the best POV in the book! This chapter is the sequel to AGOT Catelyn X; that one was about the Battle of the Whispering Wood, and this one is about the Battle of the Fords. Both are battle scenes fought at a distance in moonlight, with Catelyn pondering mournfully on the nature of life and death and the unknowable fates that have brought her here. It’s all very poetic and full of memorable imagery.

The difference is that Catelyn is less isolated at Riverrun than she was at the Whispering Wood. This chapter doesn’t unfold purely in Catelyn’s thoughts; rather, it depicts the struggle to reconcile those thoughts with the other characters and outside world pushing in, complicating her worldview. We haven’t taken the full plunge into darkness that is Catelyn’s last (and best) chapter in the book, but night is falling, and the last sparks of literal and figurative light in Catelyn VI don’t comfort her at the end.

• Edmure sets out
  • The framing of this chapter is one we’re intimately familiar with and one that resonates throughout the story.
    • Tell father I have gone to make him proud.
  • Edmure is riding against Tywin Lannister and fighting a battle against Lannister invaders.
  • But he rides out desperately seeking the love from his father — and acceptance. Just be proud of me, dad.
  • Of note, Edmure, himself, did not make the trip up to Hoster’s bedside to say a possible final goodbye to dad. He leaves that to Catelyn.
  • Edmure’s relationship with Hoster never reads as a close one.
  • As we talked about in Catelyn V, Hoster seemed to invest much of his teaching and experience in Catelyn as Edmure was born late
  • So, Edmure had been a classic richboy fuck-up party animal, and now he means to give Hoster a better reason to love his son than sharing the same surname
  • But Big Daddy Hoster on his deathbed, and Edmure doesn’t want to be around the stink of death as Catelyn thinks.
  • Death unnerves Edmure; so, then why is out here on the march against Tywin?
  • Edmure’s framing device to achieve his father’s love and acceptance is through a traditional noble, Westerosi setting: war.
  • War was an ironman's proper trade according to Theon, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that this doesn’t define the existence of the noble classes of Westeros as a whole.
  • Edmure has a ser in front of his name, the title that acknowledges his training as a knight and page and squire before that — his training on how to kill.
  • Hoster was a renowned warrior, too — serving in the War of the Ninepenny Kings and fighting in Robert’s Rebellion
  • Unlike some of his more morality-curious noblemen, Hoster was quite bloody in his conduct in Robert’s Rebellion, burning the village of Lord Goodbrooke
  • And to dip a little into both Karl Marx, war sustains the stratified, economic hierarchy, with Edmure and Catelyn’s ancestors clawing their way into power through violence or the threat of violence.
  • This same power paradigm allows Edmure to keep his lands, title and future lordship. 
  • But to come from the exact opposite angle from Marx, namely Murray Rothbard, war is how the state feeds itself. That strong war horse, shining armor and flowing banner were paid for by the iron price or the threat thereof. 
  • You make good points--when I critique Edmure’s eagerness for war, I don’t mean to suggest that he’s coming up with bloodthirstiness on his own
  • Rather, he is responding to the institutional incentives of leadership in this world. And not just this world, but our world, as your citations indicate
  • Oliver Stone’s JFK wandered too far into the conspiracy weeds for many, but putting the specifics aside, he nailed how power works in general:
    • “The organizing principle of any society … is for war. The authority of the state over its people rests in its war powers.”
  • Edmure has commissioned an unnecessary battle from George to demonstrate to his peers that he can perform this kind of leadership
  • If he doesn’t do this, it’s entirely possible that they will respect him less than they did Hoster, and House Tully will lose its authority
  • I certainly would prefer a Riverlands in which the fencing-off of the commons is reversed, in which the people are free to work the land and barter with one another without putting up with armed landlords
  • But the fall of House Tully wouldn’t necessarily produce such an environment. More likely, as we see play out post-Red Wedding, is that another pack of armed landlords (namely, the Freys) would take over
  • And the Freys are definitely worse stewards than the Tullys! So I don’t mean to suggest that Edmure is preventing a better world from being born
  • Rather, I would argue that he is a good man raised in a bad system; as you say, he is struggling to reconcile his personal and political values
  • Edmure’s need to perform lordship, that shadow on the wall, for his peers is inextricable from his deep-seated need to live up to his father’s image
  • As I said last time we checked in with Catelyn, the subtext here is that Edmure resents how his big sister was raised as the heir, not him
  • Edmure has always doubted his own ability to fill his father’s big shoes, so now he is desperately overcompensating, to the ruin of his own faction
  • He’s got the armor, the horse, the army--he looks “every inch the lord” for the first time. By doing so, I will finally make my father proud of me, by demonstrating that I can be like him. Such is the hole inside Edmure Tully
  • That’s heartbreaking, because the love of a parent for a child ought to be unconditional. That’s what Catelyn tells Edmure: Hoster was always proud of you, and he always loved you. You’re his son, after all!
  • But Edmure means to give Hoster better reason than mere birth. He will love me for my actions, not merely my existence. Again, heartbreaking
  • Edmure feels unloved, and worse, he feels that he doesn’t deserve love. Only by playing his public role will he earn private intimacy and self-worth. There are so many levels of irony in terms of how this plays out
  • “Mere birth” is the only reason Edmure is in command of this army in the first place, the only reason he is heir to this castle and all that goes with it
  • Even as Edmure strives for a better world, he is locked within this world’s values and viewpoints, and so is always denied the peace he seeks
  • Moreover, Hoster is too far gone to change his opinion of Edmure, or indeed recognize his son. The man is gone; only the image remains to torment his children as they try to live up to it. Edmure is too late
  • If Hoster was more cogent, Edmure wouldn’t be in command of anything to begin with! Edmure is the classic child caught inside the adult man
  • Finally, given how the Battle of the Fords ends up screwing over House Tully in the big picture, Hoster would’ve probably ended up ashamed of Edmure if he was mentally aware enough to know what happened
  • In the end, after Hoster dies, Edmure bursts into tears and drowns his grief in booze, because he never managed to cross this bridge
  • Regardless, war is coming to the riverlands, and as much as we look askance at the way everyone — Edmure, the Tullys, the Lannisters, WESTEROS — got here historically, Tywin and the worst goons of Westeros are on their way.
  • So, Edmure and his army ride out, banners streaming in the wind, calling attention to how George tries to tease out both sides of the war.
  • As he said in 2012:
    • I think that if you're going to write about war and violence then show the cost - show how ugly it is, show both sides of it. There's also the other side (which sometimes gets me in trouble with the opposite side of the political spectrum): the glory of war. Those of us who are opposed to war tend to try to pretend it doesn't exist, but if you read the ancient historical sources... people are always talking about the banners that 'stirred the heart'... I think that if you're going to write about that period then you should reflect honestly what it's about and capture both sides of it... 
  • It should also call to mind the end of AGOT, Bran VI when Robb Stark marched out of Winterfell and the cheering grew more and more quiet
  • Left behind then was Bran the Broken, Maester Luwin and those not deemed important enough to take to battle.
  • It’s quite the same here in Riverrun!
  • George uses his gorgeous imagery and prose to make us feel that glory, the excitement in Edmure’s stomach as he rides off with his banners
  • If we don’t understand that emotion, we will be left with the conclusion that the appeal of war is limited to bloodthirsty sadists; that’s an incomplete perspective that prevents us from understanding how war happens
  • Rather than denying us the glory of the image (which is what true grimdark does), George asks us to reconcile the image and what lies beneath it
  • The shining powerful Lord of Riverrun is a scared flawed manchild who believes he cannot live up to the very imagery he is politically exploiting
  • And as you say, George also uses the distinct POV of Catelyn to inform our understanding. We are not riding off to war like characters from the songs and stories; we are left behind in their wake, picking up the pieces
• The waiting game
  • As Edmure rides off, he leaves two miserable, sad women behind.
  • Both women feel the way they do, because of the societal constraints placed around them due to their status as women
  • Catelyn feels doubt and fear for the battle ahead, but there’s premonition that something else is coming, something worse.
  • Meanwhile, Brienne is miserable, because the promise of riding to battle as a knight of summer has been denied to her yet again.
  • Similar to what happened at Storm’s End, Brienne has been ordered to stay behind yet again.
  • This time, though, it’s not the two-faced Renly who publicly extols her while privately calling her absurd. This time, it’s the gentry of the riverlands, though being polite, still place Brienne into strictures that they feel comfortable with.
  • Like Storm’s End, Brienne has been tasked with assisting the garrison of Riverrun in holding the castle if the river crossings are breached by the Lannisters.
  • So, the women stay in the castle with all the “useless mouths” that Edmure has crammed into the castle.
  • It burdens my conscience to point out that despite Catelyn being always good almost always the time, this is a spot where Catelyn’s aristocratic upbringing and status as daughter of Hoster Tully gives her a sadly short-sighted view.
  • These may be “useless mouths” in the short-term in that they will eat at the food stores that the Tullys have stashed away at Riverrun.
  • In the long-term, though, they are the citizens of the riverlands who will provide the labor that produces new food.
  • Moreover, this blindspot for Catelyn is one that shouldn’t be given that the Starks have traditionally kept a winter town for all the “useless mouths” during winter-time
  • And Catelyn should be aware of this as she’s seen at least one winter in the North (right before Bran was born) and seen how the best feudal arrangement in Westeros works.
  • As Luwin says in the very next chapter: A lord must protect his smallfolk.
  • It’s a slippery game to deduce what is conventional wisdom being expressed and what are character-specific blind spots
  • As IRL, there’s no clear-cut way to make that distinction, as the two are always informing each other. On one hand, Catelyn is clearly filtering everything Edmure does through the perspective of “fuckup lil bro”
  • On the other, Catelyn is reflecting how the Riverlands (while believing strongly in guest right) doesn’t have the same communitarian history as the North, in part because of climate differences, and in part because of the white walkers--which, of course, seem to go hand in hand
  • Catelyn has seen a different model, but she hasn’t necessarily internalized it, because it was her sons who were truly educated in it, not her 
  • The Tullys simply haven’t been in charge of the Riverlands for very long; the history here is riven with internal contradictions and endless feuds
  • Daven Lannister uses the same phrase--“useless mouths”--to describe everyone the Blackfish kicked out of Riverrun after the Red Wedding
  • Jon repeatedly uses the same phrase to describe the wildling civilians; he’s sympathetic to them, and was raised a Stark! So what’s up?
  • As things get worse in Westeros, it brings the best out some, the worst out of others, and with most people, it does both at the same time
  • Hard times breed hard choices, and while I absolutely come down with Edmure here, Catelyn as usual reflects the conventional wisdom of her class, and she honestly believes that her actions reflect a sense of duty
  • That plays out in an interesting way with Brienne. Catelyn had a bunch of gowns sown for her, because of course she did, a pure Catelyn move
  • On one hand, it’s well-intentioned, and you can see how badly Catelyn is missing her daughters that she’s trying her best to “mother” Brienne
  • On the other, this is salt in Brienne’s wounds given her relationship to the performance of femininity; Catelyn has known her long enough to know it
  • Catelyn is making Brienne less comfortable, not more; she is servicing her own comfort, an unthinking selfishness under surface generosity
  • But this dynamic is then rendered moot by the needs of the war. Brienne is required on the walls because all the most capable men are leaving
  • We see this in the real world too, with the most familiar example for Americans being women moving into more jobs during WWII
  • But Brienne still isn’t satisfied by this, because she’d rather be off with Edmure, and that was really never on the table. Such complex dynamics!
  • We’re seeing a step forward collide with multiple different kinds of steps back, and no individual is really satisfied with the outcome of it. How are Catelyn and Brienne supposed to conduct themselves in such a scenario?
  • Brienne asks what they should do, and Catelyn, having already fulfilled the Family portion of her family’s motto, says it’s time to do some duty.
  • But even as Catelyn says this, she starts to question this concept of duty that she’s lived her life for.
  • What has she gained from the duty that she’s performed her entire life?
  • As we’ve been saying for every Catelyn chapter since AGOT, her arc is all about discovering that the norms that kept her safe don’t exist anymore.
  • And we get the clearest statement of how she’s performed her duty in the past
    • I gave Brandon my favor to wear, and never comforted Petyr once after he was wounded, nor bid him farewell when Father sent him off. And when Brandon was murdered and Father told me I must wed his brother, I did so gladly, though I never saw Ned's face until our wedding day. I gave my maidenhood to this solemn stranger and sent him off to his war and his king and the woman who bore him his bastard, because I always did my duty.
  • Feel those pathos and see what “doing her duty” has brought to Catelyn Stark.
  • This is one of the key passages in Catelyn’s story, and like many of those key passages, it is a sorrowful reckoning with the weight of time
  • What Edmure fears, Catelyn confirms, if only in her thoughts: Hoster always loved her best. Why? Because she always did her duty
  • As I said when Catelyn faced down her chalk-outline gods down in the Stormlands, doing her duty has involved constantly changing her mask
  • She had to be son to Hoster at first, as well as daughter. Then she had to be the lady of Riverrun. Then she had to be Brandon’s bride. Then she suddenly had to be Ned’s, a parent to this “solemn stranger’s” child
  • Edmure has been staring down a single identity his entire life, but Catelyn’s own crisis is of a different nature. Her identity is splintered, hence her line about wanting to be divided so as to protect all her children
  • She has expected to carry out an iron constant--her duty--even as the nature of that duty changed, even as the role she had to play changed
  • This is a sentiment that Jaime will bring to the surface in Catelyn’s next chapter: the demands of duty are not only onerous, they are unfair, absurd
  • Catelyn has not only had to run a gauntlet, she has had to run multiple contradictory gauntlets, each seeking to erase the previous one. Her mirror is a broken one, and the cracks are rapidly growing as we go
  • Catelyn does not describe being conflicted in these moments. There is no doubt, no tears, in these flashbacks. She knew her duty and did it
  • She is nostalgic for these moments that seemed so clear, decision points that made her who she was. She is trying to take comfort in them now
  • But it is not working. These keystone memories are not giving her fresh strength. They are not allaying her host of doubts and fears
  • Why is that? I think there are several factors at work. One is just what Catelyn has been experiencing recently, everything from Bran’s fall to the attack on him in his bed to Ned’s execution to the shadowbaby attack
  • All of that is weighing on her, replacing even the wistful dream of what could have been from Catelyn II with dread, a growing certainty of doom
  • Another factor is that her duty, in this case, requires her to sit still and chafe while Edmure executes a plan she hates to fill his own hole inside
  • She’s as miserable being left out of this as Brienne. Not that Catelyn wants to directly engage in combat, but she wants to be involved
  • That gets into the major factor at work in Catelyn’s depressive summary of her life: she knows what it was all leading to now, and that taints it all
  • It was all in service to Hoster’s needs, and now Hoster is beyond her help. As a young woman in these moments, she was looking forward to the future. Looking back now, she sees it was all marked by death and pain
  • Her brothers died in the cradle, and so she had to be Hoster’s son. Even when her mother brought forth a living son, she died in the process, and so Catelyn had to be Lady of Riverrun. She was going to be Brandon’s bride, but then he died, and so she became Ned’s, and he rode off to war
  • Becoming the woman she is was a process of grieving, of constantly having to let go of not just people, but the lives she had to live for them
  • Death--aka winter--has come, again and again, taking part of Catelyn away each time. And I took part gladly; I gave Brandon my favor over Petyr, I burned the letter from him unread, I saved my virginity for Ned
  • What Catelyn feels looking back is what so many people feel looking back at the major moments of their youth: I don’t even feel like the same person
  • I don’t even remember consciously making those decisions. I just did. Catelyn feels like duty has acted through her, not the other way around
  • It’s a sense of alienation from one’s own life. Catelyn has been acting out a script, she realizes, and now it’s only blank pages and she’s improvising
  • This internal monologue is thus kin to the “knights of summer” monologue, a reckoning with what the sweep of time has done to youthful ideals. I lived my life for duty, and now I find I don’t even know what that is
  • But with these fears and doubts still fresh in her mind, Catelyn returns to a familiar source of comfort: faith.
  • So, she goes to the sept to pray — which should put us back into the mindset from ACOK, Catelyn IV when she goes to the small sept to pray just before the Battle of Storm’s End.
  • In Catelyn IV, Catelyn saw the faces of those she knew in the gods, but here she barely lights a candle to the Warrior and prays for the souls of the future slain (and victory! She’s praying the gods are Tully partisans here)
  • In similar fashion to Storm’s End, Catelyn is consumed with doubt and wishes for answers.
  • But the answers she wants won’t come from the gods. Rather, she desires answers from authority figures to tell her what to do when she has no idea what to do.
  • Catelyn wonders what answers the old gods might offer which speaks to her multi religious background and her love for Ned
  • We just saw Tyrion praying to the Seven in King’s Landing. Whose prayers will be answered? Which side will the Warrior favor and protect?
  • As Jaime himself will say about knighthood: it’s too much. Whatever the gods do, they’re forsaking one side or the other. No one winds up saved
  • Catelyn only wishes she had the septon of her childhood back to help her explain things; she doesn’t know this earnest young new one
  • This is less an accurate reflection on the two septons and more another reckoning with the subjective Doppler-effect nature of memory and time
  • The old septon would probably be baffled by shadowbinding, and would likely have little more to offer regarding the rest than comfort
  • Why would that comfort work for Catelyn, whereas comfort from the new septon wouldn’t? Because of her nostalgia for the way things used to be
  • That’s what she wants to feel again. Not the gods in themselves, but the security she felt back in the days when the gods made sense to her
  • Hoster is gone, her memories of duty are behind her, and that they can all be replaced so easily has her spooked. What was all that duty for?
  • But then she gets outside, and she hears a different type of singing than was found in the sept.
  • This time, it’s singing, and it’s Rymund “Toby” the Rhymer belting out the words to “Courtesy of the Silver, Red and Blue.”
  • No, what he actually sings about is some Lord Deremond Darry whose only mention is in this chapter.
  • Catelyn observes some boys hitting each other with sticks and wonders if Rymund’s song and other like-minded songs encourage boys to be war-like
  • As someone who was definitely not influenced by stirring music, band of brothers imagery on recruiting posters … absolutely not.
  • I am reminded of a scene from Sebastian Junger’s 2010 book War which I ironically read while in Afghanistan, in which one of the soldiers interview recounts that his mom banned him from owning toy guns; so, he would take bites out of graham crackers to fashion them into guns.
  • Maybe there’s something intrinsic in us that desires violence and war.
  • The song that Rymund sings is interesting. It’s one part death metal ballad and one part Azor Ahai Reborn imagery with the red sword of heroes glowing red with the setting sun.
  • Of course, the blade is also red with all the blood this Lord Darry shed, and the sword is hungry for more blood.
  • This is a potential allusion to Valyrian Steel and the bloodmagic that goes into the process of creating such a metal.
  • This is my favorite part of the chapter, and one of those perfect passages in ASOIAF that seems to so beautifully summarize the whole
  • Catelyn spends her story in the heart of the war, trying and failing to save her family from the fire. Here, she asks: why is it like this in the first place?
  • Now, of course, Catelyn’s answer is not “a bunch of warlords invented a self-serving definition of property, fenced off the commons, got obscenely rich off it, and have been playing at war ever since to the ruin of all”
  • That’s my answer, and I think if you pressed George, he’d say something similar. But Catelyn doesn’t have that perspective, and anyway, she’s getting at something different than the material historical causes of war
  • What she’s getting at is the heart of what ASOIAF is about. Stories give our lives meaning, yet they are not an accurate reflection of those lives
  • Human beings are inchoate masses of contradictory thoughts and feelings, confined to a present moment we can never truly inhabit
  • We’re smart enough to realize there’s something more to our lives than eating, shitting, and dying, but not smart enough to know innately what it is
  • We dwell on stories, songs, narratives, myths, not as diversions, but because these are our only tools for truly understanding ourselves
  • I say this not as a rejection of scientific understanding, but even scientific understanding is filtered to us through narrative. It’s humanity’s #1 tool
  • Is it biology that makes us turn on one another? The competitive dictates of evolution at work, the fallen nature of man since we forsook paradise?
  • Perhaps. But what George suggests here via Catelyn and Rymund the Rhymer is that we are not born violent; we are made so by our stories
  • Nurture, not nature, makes us who we are. The culture Catelyn has been immersed in, part of, her whole life: that is what makes us this way
  • I can’t tell you how many post-9/11 recruitment ads I saw growing up that basically made the Marines look like you were going to fight a Balrog
  • Those ads played on our innate love of narrative, our obsession with building tension and catharsis, our framework for understanding life. And just like with the songs of Rymun the Rhymer, it will end in blood
  • Is this a bitter confession on George’s part? I often find myself thinking about filmmaker Francois Truffaut’s dictum that there is no anti-war movie
  • The very act of framing war with a narrative arc makes it exciting and therefore appealing. It’s impossible to convey the destruction of war thusly, because that destruction is anti-narrative by its very nature
  • I can point to counter examples like anyone else, saying that the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan would not make anyone want to enlist
  • Yet the very act of stirring our emotions, which Spielberg (like Catelyn, a pure avatar of conventional wisdom) feels he must do, runs counter to the idea of critiquing war, which by nature is about un-stirring our bellicosity
  • George’s faith in storytelling animates so much of ASOIAF, but he refracts his own doubts through Catelyn’s here by exposing the limits of stories, how they can always be corrupted in service of violence and power
  • With that as background, Brienne finally gets around to voicing her misery. She hates waiting around. She could be fighting. She feels helpless
  • Besides that, she would be well-protected and unlikely to be hurt with a suit of armor on — which should give us pause when we think about how Stannis and all his armored knights defeat a hundred thousand wildlings with relative ease come the Battle of the Wall.
  • Anyhow, this drives the conversation towards Brienne and Catelyn talking about gender roles and norms in Westeros
  • Brienne talks about the birthing bed as a battlefield, and Catelyn agrees, but it’s the unglorious type of battle. No banners or warhorns.
  • The struggles of women are so often left out of the stories and songs, and so come to seem unglamorous, unremarkable, even though they involve pain and perseverance just like survival on the battlefield
  • Brienne does seem to have a genuine taste for swordplay, but I have to wonder whether she embraced this knight persona because she desperately wanted to be part of the songs and this was the only way
  • No banners would wave, no warhorns would blow, for the Lady of Tarth, giving birth to and raising the children of her husband, the protagonist
  • Yet even when she arrived at Renly’s camp, seemingly the heart of the songs, she was left out, ostracized, treated as if she didn’t belong there
  • Catelyn, meanwhile, was raised as Hoster’s heir, but then replaced by Edmure; she has to stand on the periphery and watch him fail
  • But as I keep saying, Catelyn is the avatar of conventional wisdom in Westeros, so she doesn’t look at her gender role as a cage
  • She believes in the gender roles of Westeros. I know that because of what she says to Brienne about her father’s paramours: “Those were no ladies.”
  • Brienne lacked a mother to raise her with the understanding Catelyn is trying to communicate: that women fight their battles by raising children
  • Instead, the only women Brienne had around were Selwyn’s lovers, and in Catelyn’s conventional wisdom, they don’t count as proper women
  • They wouldn’t have anything to teach Brienne about motherhood, about the pain of childbirth, about the struggles of being a lady in Westeros
  • Catelyn feels like she’s being pulled in five directions at once. Her duty demands she look after all her children, but that’s impossible right now
  • She would give her life to keep them safe...but then Brienne asks who would keep *Catelyn* safe, which is where it all falls apart
  • Catelyn says her mother, a proper lady unlike the women in Brienne’s life, told her the men in her family would keep her safe. Her father, her uncle, her brother, her husband: they protect her while she protects the kids
  • That’s how this society is supposed to work, the system in which Catelyn believes: a series of overlapping protections, keeping everyone safe
  • That’s how it works in the lessons Catelyn was taught, the stories she read, the songs she sang. But that’s not how it works in the waking world
  • Catelyn’s husband is dead, her father is dying, and her uncle and her brother are off unknowingly screwing up each other’s battle plans
  • She is alone, bereft and grieving, forsaken even by her gods. Catelyn’s conservative insistence that “those were no ladies” looks so silly now
  • Oh, those women failed to live up to the societal norms? The very societal norms that have now abandoned you? Perish the thought!
  • The definition of “lady” by which Catelyn operates is founded on society working like it’s supposed to, and it clearly doesn’t. Of what use the rule?
  • The shadow on a wall is fading, faltering, and Catelyn knows it. That’s why her smile is so drawn and tired as she explains her worldview to Brienne
  • It’s a mantra, a projection, an image, nothing more. Catelyn is losing the thread that connects this worldview to reality. The Red Wedding will cut that thread for good, the culminating break after all these early trembles.
  • Later, a letter arrives from Storm’s End, and this is where George complicates events from Davos II
  • The letter comes from Lord Meadows: the new castellan of Storm’s End, and he reveals that the castle has surrendered to Stannis.
  • And Stannis has … let everyone (but Cortnay Penrose) live? Wait, that’s not right. I could have sworn I heard Stannis say: “I give you fair warning. If you force me to take my castle by storm, you may expect no mercy. I will hang you for traitors, every one of you."?
  • Instead, Stannis has spared everyone (but Cortnay), and they’re now Stannis loyalists.
  • I guess Stannis had an out from executing the garrison in that he did not have to storm the castle, but still. Points to Stannis for not murdering everyone!
  • Discussion then turns to an omission in the letter: no mention of Edric Storm. Why did Stannis want him so badly?
  • After a bit of back and forth, it finally dawns on Catelyn that Stannis wanted Edric because the boy looks like Robert while Joffrey doesn’t.
  • To reiterate a point we’ve been making since Davos I, Stannis doesn’t explain why he does most of the things that he does.
  • And this leaves people to assume the worst about Stannis’ motivations.
  • Of course, the great thing about ASOIAF is that these mentions of Edric Storm work as a pseudo-handwave of the plot point away which helps set up the core of the second half of Davos’ arc in ASOS.
  • But that idea about Joffrey and Edric looking nothing alike would not be proof to Lannister supporters. Besides, most of the children Catelyn had with Ned favored the Tully look (red hair)
  • But Jon didn’t, and Catelyn doesn’t know if Jon’s mother prayed for Jon in with the same fervency as Cat prays for her kids. Maybe she was dead if the mom was Ashara Dayne.
  • This is about as close as we’ll ever get to Catelyn feeling something besides dread and fear regarding Jon.
  • Catelyn is forced to confront the limits of her own knowledge here. She doesn’t know who Jon’s mother was or what she might be feeling
  • She’s losing her ability to handle this kind of uncertainty, as we see later in the chapter with her doubt over whether or not to trust Tyrion
  • She feels a tinge of empathy for Ashara or whomever Jon’s mother might be as she did for Cersei and her children in the sept at Storm’s End
  • Catelyn wants things to be black and white in order to quell her terror, but everything is shades of gray. Everyone treats their bastards differently
  • And then she thinks about how Roose Bolton treats his bastard and how cold and strange his response was to his son’s death.
  • Roose Bolton writes a letter, basically shrugging at Ramsay’s death and says that it’s probably better that Ramsay is dead.
  • Of course, it’s specifically better for Roose Bolton for two reasons. The first being the one he says in his letter: that Ramsay would be a threat to his own children.
  • The second reason is that a dead Ramsay keeps anyone from finding out that he was the one who ordered Ramsay to take Lady Hornwood and marry her by force to advance Bolton power in the North.
  • However, it’s important to note that Roose’s cold and queer letter sounds an awful lot like the way that another character will talk about a bastard’s threat to trueborn children.
    • “I know you trust Jon. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? The Blackfyre pretenders troubled the Targaryens for five generations, until Barristan the Bold slew the last of them on the Stepstones. If you make Jon legitimate, there is no way to turn him bastard again. Should he wed and breed, any sons you may have by Jeyne will never be safe."
  • Catelyn does not rise anywhere close to the cold psychopathy that is Roose Bolton, but she is still the product of the same class prejudice against bastards.
  • But then news arrives. It’s the war shit.
• Battle!
  • To set up this battle properly, I think it’s important to talk about the background plot-wise and character-wise to why the Tullys and Lannisters are about to fight here
  • We talked about the placement of forces back in Catelyn V, noting where Tywin, Robb, Edmure and Roose Bolton were.
  • We also talked about Edmure’s plan of trapping Tywin’s army between the Edmure’s army on the rivers, Roose Bolton at Harrenhal and the Tyrells to the south was a cunning plan.
  • Here, though, let’s laser-focus on Edmure, his history and his temperament as a commander.
  • Edmure has a giant chip on his shoulder as he rides out from Riverrun. The last time the Lannisters came galloping this way, Jaime walloped him and took him prisoner.
  • He was only freed at the Battle of the Camps due to the cunning plan of his nephew Robb Stark and his uncle Brynden.
  • Now Edmure feels like he has to prove something with this battle. He’s already started off wanting to make dad proud, but he has to make a victory as splendid as the ones that Robb has been winning.
  • So while the underlying plan Edmure is embarking upon is relatively decent, he’s operating emotionally.
  • But let’s talk about that plan now that we’ve set the table accordingly.
  • The basic outline looks like a standard strongpoint defensive plan, i.e. key defensive points which anchor the overall defense.
  • In this case, the strongpoints are the areas of the rivers where the water is shallow enough to allow a crossing, AKA ford, hence “The Battle of the Fords.”
  • Talking a little about OCOKA which everyone knows is an acronym that means Observation and Fields of Fire, Cover and Concealment, Obstacles (man made and natural), Key or Decisive Terrain, Avenues of Approach, we see some sense behind Edmure’s plan
  • Ser Desmond Grell points out that the west bank of the Red Fork is higher than the east bank which gives advantage to the Tullys.
  • Additionally, the west bank is wooded and able to provide cover and concealment for the defenders.
  • Finally, Desmond mentions that there are clear fields of fire for their archers which indicates to me that the trees are spaced out, and archers can duck out of cover, release a few arrows and move back to cover quickly.
  • Edmure’s purpose of using these tactics to mitigate the disparity between riverlander #s and Lannister #s as Catelyn pointed out back in Catelyn V that Tywin has more soldiers than Edmure does.
  • Strongpoints allow Edmure to mass his smaller army in key spots and also to force the Lannisters to constrict themselves into smaller formations to cross the river or risk being swept away by the rushing river or swept under by the deeper water.
  • From what we can tell from the chapter, Edmure has tasked his subordinate commanders with blocking the Lannisters to keep them on the east bank of the river IOT prevent them from gaining the western bank of the river
  • To accomplish this, his plan revolves around the usage of ranged weapons: archers and scorpions to break up any advance into the river.
  • Additionally, the Tullys have planted caltrops, i.e. sharp little metal balls that work as an area denial weapon and would cause men and horses to step on them and get stabbed in their feet. OUCH
  • If ranged weapons and booby traps did not prevent Lannister men from making it it to the western bank, knights would gallop down on the westermen before they could properly form for battle
  • Turning to the Lannister plan: from what we can tell, Tywin’s plan seems four-fold: probe for weak points, assess the intelligence collected during probes, mass in force and attack in force at the spot judged weakest.
  • Because I’m always extremely fair to Tywin Lannister here on the NotACast pod-cast, I should point out that Tywin is at a disadvantage in attacking at all.
  • Tywin’s army doesn’t know the land as well as the riverlanders do, and without having any soldiers on the west bank of the river, they don’t know the disposition of the riverlander army
  • So, Tywin attempts to develop the intelligence picture with multiple probes at the various crossings.
  • The first one occurs near Riverrun with fifty Brax soldiers attempting a daytime crossing. 
  • Catelyn and Brienne directly observe this crossing and watch as these westermen are gallantly killed and driven back across the river.
  • The Lannisters try again at night, thinking that the Tullys nightfires will make the defenders night blind, and here I’m a little perplexed why they kept attempting to push across this particular ford given their reception the last time.
  • Tywin seems only to be probing. Maybe he’s attempting to see if he can get his army across at night easier? Not entirely clear.
  • Next, Ser Flement Brax takes a force and probes the riverlander line twenty miles south of Riverrun.
  • This time the Lannisters come in on foot which indicates that they’ve adapted from their first probe to determine if they can get across the rivers easier without horses.
  • This proves not to be only slightly more successful as two westermen reach the western bank before they’re killed by Mallister knights.
  • Then we hear about another incursion in the north with Vances turning back another probe.
  • All seems to be going well for the Tullys, but Brienne states that this is just the brush of Tywin’s finger. The main punch is yet to come
  • George does a great job making us feel the bigger picture unfolding just beyond the horizon, even while showing us only a small fraction of it
  • Like Shakespeare, he uses messengers to give us a sense of the battle he can’t show us from this limited perspective; he gradually raises the stakes throughout the chapter, even with the climax happening offscreen
  • You did such a good job talking about the setting and the strategy, so I just wanted to talk a bit about the gorgeous imagery in this part of the chapter
  • As with the Whispering Wood, keeping our POV at a distance means George can be impressionistic with the battle itself
  • The glint of steel from afar, the flight of the fire arrows; it’s all martial artistry disconnected from death. But then the bodies flow downstream...
  • I love this, because that which makes the battle real, that which makes the deadly consequences clear, is the river that makes House Tully what it is
  • It’s as if the rivers Catelyn love so much have been corrupted by war and death, delivering corpses like those draping the battlements of the castle
  • It’s in keeping with what you were saying earlier about Edmure’s army. The fire arrows are strangely beautiful; the corpses, not so much
  • The overall aesthetic supports this tone. As I’ve said before, Catelyn’s ACOK storyline takes the form of a rainbow, an arc represented in colors
  • Dawn broke, introducing us to the light spectrum, with the morning light glittering off Robb’s sword and new crown at the start of Catelyn I
  • From there, we moved through the vibrant shades of red and rose at Renly’s camp in Bitterbridge, the bright yellow of Stannis’ banner at Storm’s End, and the deep greens of Renly’s tent and armor as he died
  • Catelyn IV, that middle chapter where time seemed to stop and space seemed to unravel, plunged us from dawn into deep dark night
  • Even when we returned to day as Catelyn returned to Riverrun, her mood is permanently altered, her desperate hope in dawn giving way to despair
  • So we proceed through the light blues of the river water and the Tully banner to the dark blues and purples as this chapter develops
  • Those brief sparks of fire in the night, the light glinting off armor, that’s all that’s left of the wave of color and possibility earlier in this storyline
  • They only highlight the gloom around them now, and come Catelyn’s final chapter in the book, they will give way entirely to black as midnight comes
• Drinks with Cleos, dinner with Brienne
  • But now that there’s some time to kill before more Lannisters are killed, Catelyn decides that now is the time to follow up on a hanging plot thread from Catelyn V.
  • Remember those bodies that were hanging from the wall that Catelyn and Brienne see on the way into Riverrun. Catelyn wants to know more.
  • So, she decides to send some booze over to Ser Cleos Frey, reasoning that he’ll be drunk and chatty. She waits until nightfall to ensure this is especially true.
  • Whatever your feelings about Catelyn Stark (did only one thing, maybe a few more things wrong), she is savvy!
  • She starts the conversation by saying that she knows he’s a good guy because he’s Walder Frey’s grandson, which, oh boy Cat.
  • This leads to Ser Cleos immediately jumping around like a maniac and blurting out the terms that Tyrion sent to Robb
  • Despite Catelyn’s stated desire for peace that she’s been attempting for the entirety of this book, she realizes that the terms are unacceptable
  • But she thinks that maybe exchanging Jaime for Arya and Sansa was something worth considering.
  • Catelyn backs off of this thought almost immediately, recognizing the danger that a released Jaime would be.
  • But then she casually asks after Sansa and Arya’s well-being.
  • This causes our brave Ser Cleos to start sweating and trying to lie drunkenly, which I gotta tell you, is hard. No, babe, I only had two beers.
  • After more questioning, Cleos admits to only seeing Sansa and that Cersei was indisposed for the day.
  • Tyrion was the one making the calls which bothers Catelyn due to him being very, very guilty of the attempt.
  • But then she thinks about how Tyrion wasn’t behind Ned’s death. Also, Tyrion had saved her life on the high road.
  • Again, George is keeping the narrative open on who was really behind the catspaw and has Catelyn again doubting whether Tyrion was behind it.
  • George is setting us up perfectly for the showdown between Catelyn and Jaime in her next and last chapter in the book. This is the dry run
  • Cleos Frey looks like a weedier Lannister, a more Frey-ish version of Jaime. Catelyn’s ploy with the booze succeeds on him, but fails on Jaime
  • She is able to play Cleos like a fiddle, playing on courtesies and then showing the steel beneath when he gives away his own deceit
  • She will not be able to pry Jaime apart so easily. This reflects how Catelyn still feels somewhat in control here; that will change after Bran and Rickon supposedly die. After that, she will consider that which she deems unacceptable here: trading Jaime for Arya and Sansa
  • She dwells at length on whether she can trust Tyrion, concluding only that everything is too thorny and knotty to know. Life is just too complicated
  • The power of grief will overwhelm her doubt and leave her with the only option to preserve what’s left of her family: trusting her own enemies
  • And then it’s onto dinner. And it was only in this re-read that I realized that George structures Catelyn’s journey in ACOK around food and supper in particular.
  • From Renly’s feast to fasting before the shadow comes to two dinners in this chapter to the heartbreak of Catelyn’s final ACOK chapter where she reveals that Bran and Rickon are dead, George uses food as the architecture for many Catelyn scenes in ACOK.
  • Here, this scene could have been filler between the battles to give an artificial sense of time progressing.
  • Instead, George uses this scene as an opportunity to learn more of Brienne’s backstory and get a sense of Catelyn’s mindstate as we hurdle towards her ACOK endgame.
  • We get another song from Rymund the Rhymer with some metal imagery of the stars being the eyes of the wolf and the wind as their song.
  • Is this a subtle reference to the Others and their cold, blue eyes? I don’t know!
  • Catelyn is fine with a song now if it gives the men courage which reconnects with her earlier thoughts about whether patriotic songs drive boys towards violence and war.
  • But then Brienne upsets that apple cart by talking about how she knew all of the songs and knew them all by heart.
  • This reminds Cat of Sansa, and here I think George is giving Brienne an identity outside of “tomboy.”
  • But Catelyn’s mind is still dwelling on her conversation with Ser Cleos and she talks about how Sansa loved singers though few ever came to Winterfell.
  • (Sansa even sort-of imprisoned one for a half-year)
  • The songs for Catelyn, though, have turned against her. 
  • Where once Catelyn told Sansa that she would hear so many songs and learn the high harp when she got to King’s Landing, Catelyn now knows that she was wrong.
  • The songs and stories that Sansa fell in love with at King’s Landing were shimmering illusions that were violently torn down on the kingsroad, during the Tourney of the Hand, when her father was murdered, etc
  • Now, Catelyn is not guilty of some sin as a parent in telling Sansa about the opportunities she would find in King’s Landing.
  • But she recognizes that she helped feed an unrealistic portrait of what life would be like in a place that wasn’t Winterfell.
  • And not to lend too much criticism onto Catelyn, but Catelyn knew some of the danger she was exposing Sansa given the message she received from Lysa.
  • But Catelyn was a believer in the songs and stories, believing that the norms of Westeros would protect her daughters from the predations of evil men and women.
  • Again, the terrible truth that Catelyn discovers in ASOIAF is that the societal norms which kept her safe in the past don’t anymore. She asks the gods for forgiveness for her parental sins of leading Sansa astray.
  • Brienne has been exposed to songs too as she alluded to earlier.
  • For her, the songs were the things to inspire a knight of summer to ride off to war.
  • But they were also a source of embarrassment too. Lord Selwyn Tarth kept the singers about seemingly to entertain his female guests from across the Narrow Sea.
  • Brienne recounts one of her father’s paramours who came to Evenstar Hall with purple eyes and sang so lovely.
  • Catelyn notes that Brienne closes her long, thick fingers, attempting to hide them from view. 
  • Brienne is self-conscious about her appearance and hides away the parts that she thinks are ugly or fall short of the beauty she admires in others.
  • But Brienne herself never sang for her father, and she never sang for Renly.
  • For Brienne, her ‘unwomanly’ features became weapons that others used against her to put her down, to remind her of how she falls short of the ideal Westerosi woman.
  • Renly’s fool “made cruel japes” about Brienne
  • Catelyn tries to ask if Brienne would sing for her, but Brienne refuses and wants to go now.
  • I think it’s important to emphasize that Martin isn’t using this scene to do a check-in with how women fare in this world.
  • Rather, it’s showing how two women - one who has always done her duty as a woman and one who is outlier to traditional feminine norms are both hamstrung by the patriarchal culture of Westeros.
  • The songs and stories led Catelyn to believe that she could survive in this world, and that everything would work out. She extended that viewpoint to Sansa, and now both Catelyn and Sansa are miserable.
  • But when the songs aren’t lying to Catelyn and Sansa, they’re weapons that are used to shove non-conforming women like Brienne into her place.
  • And now I’m sad.
  • All these dinner scenes point toward the Red Wedding, in which slaughter will be cued by a song and the musicians wield crossbows against their guests. There, the wolf howls will not be ones of victory, but of grief 
  • Even before that particularly brutal intersection between narrative and reality, mythmaking and mortality, we see the same dynamic at work
  • Catelyn is happy to let them sing if it makes them brave for the trials ahead, because the trials ahead are all she can think about anymore. It’s a cynical sergeant’s perspective on bonding rituals they stand outside
  • It’s a reckoning with how the stories provide the essential ingredient of courage, yet by that same token, can be lost as easily as courage
  • It’s an evanescent thing, powerful yet immaterial, a guttural primal wolf howl spun out into an entire inner world of metaphors, of dreams
  • The creative spark is one of the major reasons for being; George has talked about his characters being like his children
  • But like any source of meaning, like any other reason for persisting in existence, it can be used against you: in its absence, in its corruption
  • Sansa longed for the singers not only because they were rare, but because Winterfell itself is not quite like that romantic world
  • Catelyn knows it--her POV started with her saying the Winterfell godswood was so much different than the pleasant one in Riverrun
  • That’s not to say Winterfell is a world of harsh-bitten realism. Quite the opposite--there are few places in Westeros with more magical resonance
  • But it’s not a place of expressive chivalry. It’s a place of wolves, whether wild (Brandon) or quiet (Ned). Their howls are the music up there
  • Catelyn promised Sansa the south would be different. She could not only hear music, she could play it herself, learning the high harp
  • This is a perfect metaphor for how Sansa has in fact been stripped of all agency, denied a role in telling her story--playing her song--in the capital
  • The world of songs was supposed to be one in which Sansa self-actualized and became the radiant southern queen she was meant to be, but instead she’s become a prisoner and victim of repeated abuse
  • The irony in part is that she would’ve suffered as Joffrey’s wife, not only as his prisoner; marriage can be a set of chains as well
  • But the other level of dreadful irony is that Catelyn feels herself complicit in snaring her own daughter. Like Cersei and Joffrey, she played a role in keeping Sansa just naive enough to ensure her own downfall
  • As you say, Catelyn does not bear (much) direct responsibility here, but again she is sensing older, deeper currents at work. She is sensing her tiny part in something much larger that has ensnared her daughter
  • Brienne, as you said so well, brings an increasingly complex perspective to these issues, in which George deliberately blurs the line between “the Arya” and “the Sansa,” to ground these tropes in Catelyn’s POV
  • She learned all the songs by heart, but just as Sansa never learned the high harp, Brienne was always too embarrassed to sing
  • Here we see, as you say, how the structure of custom inhibits women who don’t conform to the ideal and women who do, in different ways
  • Brienne was made mock of, a convenient social scapegoat for reality’s failure to live up to the songs. She isn’t pretty enough for that world
  • And that goes hand in hand with how Brienne feels really awkward about her own body, as George captures so well here, and that goes hand in hand with how awkward she feels about sex, as we’ll see with Jaime
  • Sansa, on the other hand, looks pretty enough...to be treated as a prize possession, a plaything to be trotted out to fit Joffrey’s tableau
  • Joffrey plays the song; Renly plays the song; Edmure plays the song; Brienne and Sansa love the songs best, but must do as they’re told
  • Catelyn feels caught in between here, though she has more in common with Sansa in terms of upbringing and overall worldview
  • Adulthood has taught her terrible lessons, and so she pities Sansa for her naivete, but when she tries on the other hand to comfort Brienne via the language of stories and songs, it only furthers Brienne’s alienation
  • There’s no way out here. Everyone seems hopelessly separated and permanently sad. No wonder Catelyn takes no heart in victory
• Victory (?)
  • Finally, after Catelyn interrogates/threatens Cleos Frey and then shares a dinner with Brienne, news arrives from the front.
  • This time, we find out that Tywin’s hammerblow finally fell in the Riverlands.
  • Tywin attempted a dozen different crossings to get into the Westerlands — which just goes to show how desperate Tywin was to save his own lands (and gold) and willing to abandon his own children and grandchildren down in King’s Landing.
  • The largest battle was fought at a place called Stone Mill — a location a good ways south of Riverrun, perhaps near Pinkmaiden Castle
  • It seems that all of the intelligence gathered by Tywin on whether to try for a mounted or dismounted crossing led to Tywin deciding on a mounted crossing with Gregor Clegane and Strongboar Crakehall leading the attack across this particular ford.
  • The interesting angle is that Edmure, himself, played a direct role in this battle and had his reserve near enough to launch a counterattack.
  • This indicates that Edmure kept some of those scouts and outriders that Catelyn saw back in her last chapter on the east bank of the Red Fork  in order to have advance knowledge of where Tywin’s main attack would come.
  • It also seems that instead of having static observation points to monitor Tywin’s movement, they were mobile and shadowing Tywin’s main host and reporting back to the west bank — we saw the one outrider ride up on Catelyn in her last chapter which indicates roving patrols and movement along the east bank of the Red Fork.
  • Onto the battle itself.
  • This battle was particularly bloody with Gregor’s men gaining a foothold on the western bank of the Red Fork before Edmure’s cavalry reserves came pounding down and killed most of the Lannister dudes on the west bank to include Lord Leo Lefford.
  • Unfortunately, Ser Gregor Clegane was merely wounded in the battle, and given that all of the Mountain’s Men show back up in ASOS, it seems that none of the named mountain’s men were killed in this battle either.
  • Edmure reports that the Lannisters have been defeated and are retreating or feigning movement to the southeast which … yep.
  • It’s not a feint, and it’s not really a retreat. If certain riders from Bitterbridge hadn’t reached Tywin’s army, Tywin would have continued attacking the fords until hell or high water.
  • As Brynden reports in ACOK, though, riders from Bitterbridge arrived at Tywin’s camp at some point during the battle, and this is what caused Tywin to take his army and move southeast towards the headwaters of the Blackwater.
  • For now, though, this seems like a complete victory on Edmure’s part, and everyone wants to celebrate.
  • Everyone but Catelyn that is.
  • Catelyn doesn’t want Rymund to sing more songs. She wants no singing until the fighting is done.
  • That’s an interesting choice of words on Catelyn’s part!
  • She’s couching the desire for song and revelry not in Stark/Tully victory against the Lannisters but a cessation of fighting.
  • This keeps up a line of thought that Catelyn has been thinking and saying since her final chapter in AGOT where she’s the sole voice for peace in Robb’s war council at Riverrun.
  • Still, she relents and allows cheering and alcohol to be drank in Riverrun in celebration. And even Rymund starts playing the harp at Catelyn’s allowance
  • She allows it. Again, Catelyn is demonstrating her previous chosen daughter of Hoster Tully leadership dynamic. Even the staff at Riverrun defers to her when Edmure isn’t around.
  • Another point here is that the entire castle is celebrating, and I just love this line by Catelyn:
    • They’d come frightened and helpless, and her brother had taken them in when most lords would have closed their gates.
  • Edmure’s defense of all Riverlands regardless of their station is something that endears him to all the people inside of the castle.
  • But it also serves as damnation for how this was not the norm for most lords. They would have left the people out for the lions for the greater good.
  • But as the celebration occurs, Catelyn feels that the sounds don’t touch her, and she’s unhappy.
  • As at Renly’s camp, Catelyn feels as though she alone bears the burdens of mortality and uncertainty, while everyone else around her enjoys life
  • The smallfolk are grateful for the protection of the walls, but Catelyn has her own metaphorical walls cutting her off from their joy
  • In part, it’s age. Renly’s knights of summer felt impossibly young to her; Catelyn can’t get back the optimism she lost to the cost of doing her duty. But it’s also the losses she’s suffered, which have not been made whole
  • It’s not that Catelyn is a woman of complete and utter sorrow at this point, but she’s been through a lot of traumatic shit.
  • Robb is still in danger in the west, Sansa is still held by the Lannisters and she has no idea if Arya is at the Red Keep or not.
  • This appears a major victory for her side, but has she gained her daughters back? Is Robb more safe?
  • No. It’s still status quo for Catelyn. They’ve won everywhere, and she’s no closer to getting Arya and Sansa back. She’s no closer to having Robb put down his sword and live a life of family and peace.
  • So, she decides to make for her father’s solar to figure out what Tywin might be up to.
  • And like any good leader, the first recon she does is a map recon, tracing the movement of the Tywin’s army to the southeast, realizing that the Lannisters are probably now at the headwaters of the Blackwater Rush.
  • She closes the map book, feeling more uneasy despite all the victories her side has won.
  • She’s afraid now, more than ever, not knowing why. 
  • And then we turn the page to ACOK, Bran VI and the death of the Stark cause in the War of the Five Kings.
  • As I said, part of why Catelyn feels so unhappy even amidst victory is age, part of it is the losses she has suffered. But another part is this almost prophetic sense of dread, Catelyn as the Cassandra figure of House Stark
  • The doom of her family is making itself known, just around the periphery of her awareness. War suits the emotional needs of Desmond Grell, it makes the smallfolk think they’ll be safe, but it doesn’t heal Catelyn’s wounds
  • It doesn’t bring her family back to her. It doesn’t allow Robb to put up his sword, marry a Frey girl, and take her home to Winterfell to make babies
  • War has not produced peace but further war, and Catelyn is drawing from her own life experience and also intuition to sense it’s going to get worse
  • Logically, they’re winning. But these are the nights of summer, and winter is coming. As you say, we cut from this to the fall of Winterfell. 

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

#RLJWatch: Catelyn mentions that Jon has his father’s look about him. Sorry, Cat. It’s actually the mother’s look.

Roose will indeed take Harrenhal in Arya’s next chapter, though thankfully he won’t kill everyone inside to do so.

Roose also mentions how a living-Ramsay would threaten his trueborn children, and this is what we see when Roose comes north and casually says that Ramsay will kill all of his trueborn children (like he did for Domeric), and then in Theon’s final ADWD chapter where Fat Walda is pregnant, and Ramsay and Roose are fighting, Theon notices Fat Walda looking terrified which has led to many fans to believe the fighting was over Fat Walda’s unborn child. 

Robb is mentioned as marching on the Crag in this chapter. He will have taken it by Catelyn VII, and therein will meet and marry Jeyne Westerling, to his doom.

#StoneheartComing For a woman, a mother, the way was stonier and harder to know. George is laying more and more foundation for Catelyn becoming Stoneheart — especially in wordplay, subtle as this one might be. 

Theory/Discussion

The Thrones show did the Riverlands and Edmure Tully dirty. Thank you. I’ll take your questions now.

• In the wake of Game of Thrones, Season 8, sometimes, it’s hard to remember how the Riverlands factored in at all in the show.
• Early seasons of the show didn’t really factor the Riverlands in either.
• There was the Twins in Season 1 and Harrenhal in Season 2.
• We had no real sense where Robb Stark was fighting. We had pared-down versions of both the Battle of the Green Fork and the Battle of the Whispering Wood.
• Both battles were condensed greatly for budgetary reasons, but we never got a sense of where these locations were.
• And Riverrun, arguably the most central location to the Stark/Tully vs Lannister portion of the War of the Five Kings, didn’t make an appearance until Season 3 of the show.
• And it was only there that we were introduced to Brynden and Edmure Tully.
• Oh boy, that introduction.
• I was both disappointed and relieved to search YouTube to try to find a compilation of all Edmure scenes in Game of Thrones and found none.
• Disappointed, because it would have been easier to watch all of Edmure’s scenes as research for this episode.
• Relieved, because maybe this indicates how little people think about Edmure on the show, and then they’ll open the books and find one of the few genuine heroes in ASOIAF!
• Because in the show, Edmure Tully comes across as a shallow, arrogant elitist fop.
• We get Edmure being a dum-dum early on in his inability to hit Hoster Tully’s pyre with a fire arrow with Brynden being especially dismissive of Edmure.
• The Battle of the Fords was condensed down to one battle: at the Stone Mill, and Edmure was involved in that battle to win glory by defeating Gregor Clegane in battle.
• He proceeded to lose 208 soldiers at the Battle of the Stone Mill to win glory over Gregor Clegane.
• There’s no mention of Edmure bringing the smallfolk into Riverrun to keep them safe.
• Edmure is then scolded by his uncle Brynden and lectured by Robb in Season 3 which then leads to Edmure having to marry Roslin Frey and then the Red Wedding where he’s taken prisoner.
• Edmure reappears in Season 6 of the show as a captive of the Freys with the ensuing noose and the threat to hang him if Brynden doesn’t surrender the castle.
• Jaime then uses Edmure to order the castle to surrender with a yelling Brynden ordering the riverlanders to kill his nephew.
• Edmure makes his final appearance in the show at the Great, small, NotACouncil in which he offers himself as the King of Westeros.
• Sansa then tells him to sit down which led to my favorite GoT tweet of all time by @TVKevLance
• GEORGE RR MARTIN: I will share three book twists with you. Stannis burns his daughter and Hodor means Hold the Door

DAVID BENIOFF AND DB WEISS: What's the third

MARTIN: I'm gonna dunk on Edmure Tully so hard

• That tweet aside, I CANNOT BEGIN to say how thoroughly aggravating the show’s treatment of the Riverlands and Edmure Tully was.
• The show strips his true nobility away, making his entire character the butt of every joke or dressing down given in the series.
• That being said, Martin and the narrative lend plenty of criticism onto Edmure Tully. He was a bit vainglorious. He did fight at the fords, in part, because he wanted to win a share of the glory Robb had won.
• Edmure is hot-headed and a womanizer, and he has an empty space where the love of Hoster should have been.
• But he’s also a good dude — at least relative to the norms of Westerosi nobility as Catelyn points out in this chapter.
• He had a good plan and executed it violently here at the fords, and I was always told a good plan executed violently is better than a perfect plan half-assed.
• Edmure does get dressed down by Robb and Brynden, but George imbues enough nuance to the matter that we are going to debate whether Edmure bears any culpability come ASOS, Catelyn II.
• And he does miss his shots on Hoster’s boat, but Brynden relates that Hoster missed his shots too when it was his father’s boat, and he treats Edmure with the respect due his station.
• Edmure does get Riverrun to surrender in AFFC but not before spiriting Uncle Brynden out of Riverrun with a probable BWB-plan to go HAM on the Lannisters thereafter. 
• What I’m saying is that in the Thrones show, Edmure is a punching bag masquerading as a character. In the books, George drew together a full and complex secondary character who tried to do the right thing by his people and fucked up many, many times
• I prefer the latter by a lot.

Conclusion

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