Chapter 27: Sansa
Sansa Stark (age 12) has the finishing touches made on her brand new dress, with which she is certain that she will impress Willas, only for Cersei to dash her hopes by revealing that she is actually going to marry Tyrion, in five minutes. NOOOOOOO!
Yeah, Sansa (age 12) isn't happy but reasons that Tyrion is at least not as bad as the other Lannisters. Oh Sansa, if you only knew...
Sansa (age 12) does the whole a lady's courtesy is her armour thing that Catelyn taught here, even though Joffrey is filling in for her father and is lording it over her. Once again, Tyrion saves her from Joffrey's cruelty by asking to have a moment alone with his wife to be, where he tries reassuring her that he is no more happy about this marriage than she is. He says he can arrange for her to marry the younger, handsomer Kevan instead, but Sansa regains her courtesy and goes along with it.
The marriage mostly consists of an exchange of cloaks. Sansa (age 12) fits hers to Tyrion easily enough, but Tyrion has trouble when Sansa refuses to kneel down to make it easy for him.
Then there's the wedding feast, where the Tyrell women make a point of avoiding Sansa (age 12). Tyrion is mostly concerned with getting drunk, while Sansa is dreading the part where they get carried up the stairs, each by a bunch of the opposite sex, who rip off their clothes while making dirty jokes, bundle them into the bed, and then listen outside while shouting more dirty jokes through the door.
What, seriously? I know people in the Middle Ages were a lot raunchier than we generally imagine, and in these books they are randier still, but even so, that sounds like something even the Romans would consider a bit crass.
Sansa dances with Garlan Tyrell, who comisserates with her on her circumstances, and then some other men, and then Joffrey announces it's sexy time. Tyrion, rather, drunk, proclaims unwillingness to have sex with a 12-year-old girl, but Joffrey invokes the fact that he's king to force them. Tyrion, tremendously drunk, threatens to cut off Joffrey's penis, which is objectively awesome. After a few tense moments, Tyrion apologises, saying he only meant to emasculate Joffrey due to jealousy over Joffrey's much bigger penis, and also indicates that he knows about cunnilingus.
Tyrion takes Sansa (age 12) up to their wedding chamber, where he reveals that he's not really drunk, though intends to be. He also tells Sansa (age 12) a short version of the story of his first marriage, and after some discussion of courtesy and armour, has Sansa (age 12) remove her dress.
...
...
Oh Jesus.
...
You know how Tyrion's a rapist? Turns out he's also a paedophile. Upon gazing at Sansa's naked 12-year-old body, he gets an erection, which Sansa (age 12) finds grotesque; it's unclear if this is because she's never seen a man's penis before or if it's because Tyrion's is deformed in some way, though with all the prostitutes he goes through, it's almost certain he's picked up a few STDs, a couple of which could conceivably cause disfigurement.
Actually, on a side note, does anyone in these books ever acquire an STD? Just curious.
Anyway, talk of STDs aside, the important thing here is that naked 12-year-olds make Tyrion hard. I know people marry younger in these books as well as in most historical societies, but come one, 12? That's just squicky.
Fortunately for the reader, Tyrion has the basic human decency to be ashamed of this, and says they'll wait until Sansa is ready, then leaves the bed.
Fuck you, George RR Martin. Being grimdark is all well and good, but I do not want to read about paedophiles.
And to all the people who think Tyrion is cool? No. He isn't. He really, really isn't. He is a deeply disturbed, unpleasant, screwed-up individual. It says a lot about the Lannisters that Cersei is the nicest and most sympathetic.
Chapter 28: Arya
After the high drama and near paedophilia of the last chapter, Martin gives us a break with an absolutely hilarious chapter where Harwin and his dudes pay a visit to a brothel.
But before the humour, there is a serious moment. Harwin and his dudes arrive at Stony Sept, where they see some Stark men who have been exposed to the elements by someone called the Mad Huntsman. It's a pretty chilling scene, with the effects of thirst, starvation, and exposure described in revolting detail. Harwin decides the Huntsman has gone too far and has the prisoners euthanised.
After that, they go on to an 'inn' called the Peach, where they are greeted by a beautiful woman named Tansy, who has the same name as the woman Hoster was babbling about in his death dreams. She is very familiar with Harwin's dudes, and playfully flirts with them; she gives Gendry some attention too, and he blushes hard.
Arya is given a bath and forced to wear a frilly dress Sansa would like. At dinner, she applies one of Syrio's lessons on observation and notices that there are rather too many girls present, and so they're clearly in a brothel. This leads to an amusing exchange:
- Gendry
- You don't even know what a brothel is.
- Arya
- I do so. It's like an inn, but with girls.
One of the hookers named Bella claims to be one of Robert's various bastards. Arya can see the resemblance, but then realises that Gendry also looks a bit like Robert, and he isn't one of the old king's bastards. Gendry stalks off when Bella starts coming on to him, thankfully sparing us some incestuous paedophilia, and Arya ponders escape, eventually deciding it's impossible.
She overhears a story about how Catelyn shagged Jaime, and the next morning freed him out of love; she silently insists that no such thing could have happened. Yet another paedophile tries to get into the panties of Arya (age 10, seriously), but Gendry comes to her rescue, though misunderstandings on both their parts cause friction.
That night, everyone sleeps in an incredibly big bed, and they are awoken in the morning by the Mad Huntsman arriving with a new captive. Arya is relieved to see it isn't Jaime.
This chapter made me laugh out loud. Martin can do humour, it seems, though I have to wonder by Sansa and Arya have both been accosted by paedophiles in adjacent chapters.
Top moment:
- Bella
- Doesn't [Gendry] like girls?
- Arya
- He's just stupid. He likes to polish helmets and beat on swords with hammers.
Chapter 29: Jon.
This entire chapter consists of freemen climbing the wall in the hopes of being the first up, which will get them professionally-forged swords courtesy of the Mance. It's tense. Some of them die.
At the end, Ygritte is upset that they dug up like a hundred graves and didn't find someting called the Horn of Joramun in any of them. Wait, wasn't there a mysterious horn in that cache of obsidian weapons Jon found in the last book?
Chapter 30: Jaime
So Jaime's lost a hand. Yeah, apparently the Bloody Mummers cut his right hand clean off, making him utterly useless at everything. To rub salt into his bleeding stump, he has to share a horse with Brienne.
After several pages of Jaime being humiliated in various ways, notably drinking horse urine, three of the Mummers come to rape Brienne. Rorge and Zollo, a Dothraki who cut off Jaime's hand, argue over who gets to go first. Shagwell, a perverted jester, urges Rorge to remove Brienne's nose, teeth, and one of her eyes so she'll look just like his mother, and he really really really really wants to anally rape his mother.
Say, Martin, do you have some medication you should be on?
While that's going on, Jaime advises Brienne to essentially lie back and think of England; if she 'goes away inside', perhaps thinking of Renly, it won't be quite as bad. That's how he was able to endure watching Aerys burning Brandon Stark and friends, anyway.
As it turns out, Jaime manages to prevent Brienne from being raped by shouting Sapphires, which prompts Vargo Hoat to post guards to keep Brienne a maiden so that her father will pay out a decent ransom. Jaime and Brienne silently agree not to tell Vargo that Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle because of the colour of the sea.
Well now, this is surprising. Jaime actually not only shows basic human decency, but brings harm upon himself to save Brienne from rape. I honestly didn't think he had it in him. Wow. Just... wow. That's impressive.
Jaime also shows a certain dry, acerbic wit in his conversation with Brienne which wouldn't sound out of place coming from Tyrion. I guess the brothers have more in common than might be thought.
A page later, the two arrive at Harrenhal, which you will remember from the last book is held by Roose Bolton. There's also a bunch of Freys around, which Jaime comments on. Brienne tries insisting that she is sworn to the Starks just as they are, and Aenys Frey spits on her, saying that trusting Robb Stark screwed them over. So, do they intend to betray Robb or what? Although saying such a thing in front of Roose Bolton... actually, no, I can totally see the Boltons defecting to Team Lannister.
Roose updates Jaime and Brienne on the current political situation, and sends Jaime to bee seen to by Maester Qyburn. Qyburn makes a dressing of nettle leaves, mustard seed, and bread mould for the infection in Jaime's stump, though Jaime refuses opium, as he wants to be alert no matter how painful it is. Some of Roose's many leeches are also involved.
Some pretty cool medieval science at the end of this chapter. Bread mould makes a natural penicillin, and this is in fact where penicillin was first identified; it's quite possible someone in a medieval society might have stumbled upon its antibacterial effects and incorporated it into a medical corpus. Not sure what the nettles and mustard seed are for.
Leeches were also a prominent fixture of medieval medicine. In general, the idea was that disease was caused by excess blood, and leeches could help redress this by draining off said extra blood. Today, we know that to be false, but leeches could potentially drain diseased or septic blood, which the patient's bones could then replace with fresh, healthy blood.
We've seen no evidence of the four temperament theory of medicine in the books so far, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Actually, I would be interested to read a medical textbook from this world. Don't suppose there's any chance of that, eh Martin?
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