Awesome / A Storm of Swords

• The definitive Moment of Awesome for Manipulative Bastard Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish from A Song of Ice and Fire is when Lysa Arryn blabs out how the entire civil war was set in motion by a few well-chosen words from Littlefinger. He then throws Lysa off a mountain and pins it on Marillion.
  • How utterly cold he gets when trying to stop Lysa from killing Sansa. "I have only loved one woman." "Truly?" "Only Cat." *shove*
  • Another of Littlefinger's best moments was his (indirect) poisoning of Joffrey. That was the moment where a significant portion of the fandom forgave his betrayal of Ned Stark.
    • That kinda went out the window when it was revealed he also plotted the death of Jon Arryn, kickstarting the entire shitstorm that was the war. Which is also kind of awesome, when you think about it.
• Olenna Tyrell looking out for the safety of her granddaughter by plotting the assassination of Joffrey with a little help from Littlefinger. And the best part? The Rains of Castamere gets played seven times, the Lannisters are torn down from the height of their power...and she completely gets away with it.
  • Not to mention virtually the entire fanbase was more than overjoyed to watch Joffrey Baratheon squirm and choke to death. Doubles as a funny moment considering it's at his own wedding, and we get to see him suffer slowly and painfully after two and a half books of being a little shit.
• Arya Stark reclaiming Needle and killing The Tickler herself. Even more awesome as she recites The Tickler's series of questions he would ask whenever he tortured somebody as she does it:
  Is there gold hidden in the village? Is there silver? Gems? Is there food? Where is Lord Beric? Where did he go? How many men were with him? How many knights? How many bowmen? How many, how many, how many, how many, how many, HOW MANY?! IS THERE GOLD HIDDEN IN THE VILLAGE?!
• Tyrion Lannister is a walking Moment of Awesome. But his best scene in the book is when he chokes the traitorous Shae with the Hand's chain after she falsely testified against him in court AND finally stands up to Tywin himself, murdering the selfish bastard with a crossbow bolt to the groin. Tyrion manages to gain a funny moment as well, proving once and for all that Tywin Lannister does not shit gold.
• "The Wall was Jon's."
• Dany buying the Unsullied, turning them against the masters, and then freeing them, at which point they join her and become her army.
• The moment Jaime became more than just The Dragon to Tywin and moved into the "favourite characters fast lane" was this exchange early on in A Storm of Swords:

  Jaime: Come on, let's see who's home (*opens door and finds a crossbow in his face)

  Crossbowman: Lion, Wolf, or Fish?

  Jaime: We'd hoped for capon.

• The entire Siege of Castle Black. The very dregs of the Night's Watch, those considered too green or too old or physically incapable to be one of the Nights Watch's frontline fighters, hold the Wall and the Gate against the unleashed fury of the wild. Mammoths, giants, massed infantry, crude siege engines- no matter what Mance throws at them, these teenagers and old men hold firm, and throw back every attempt inflicting terrible casualties on the wildlings in the process. In their old lives they might have been a "pack of thieves, killers, and baseborn churls", but now they are "Men of the Watch" and they prove it well.
  • The defense of the Castle Black is also a personal Moment of Awesome for Donal Noye. In the absence of any senior officer, he takes charge of defending the castle from the Thenn's vanguard. He plans and commands a very effective defense that bleeds the wildlings, before activating his incendiary trump card that takes out all the wildlings and one of their best commanders in one fell swoop. After this, he personally takes charge of defending the gate and goes out in a blaze of glory, by taking the King of Giants down with him. Did we mention he has only one arm?
    • Even Tormund, who is on the enemy team acknowledges that this was a last stand worthy of a song.
• Strong Belwas, one of Daenerys's best Elite Mooks, gets one in the second half of A Storm of Swords, when he fights the champion of Meereen in single combat and knocks him from his horse, allows the champion to cut him once before he kills him and then drops his trousers, shits in the direction of the city and wipes himself with the Meereen champion's cape and then goes back to camp demanding to be fed.
  • Even better, the reason Dany chose Belwas to face Mereen's champion was because not only was Belwas relatively expendable (as he'd done nothing of note up to this point) but if he lost it would be no great shame to Dany's forces (as Belwas was merely a former slave, pit fighter and eunuch), but if he won then Mereen would be greatly shamed by their champion losing to a former slave, pit fighter and eunuch. And Belwas doesn't just win, he wins with casual ease, making a show of how easily he outclasses his "noble" opponent.
• So-Called Coward Samwell Tarly killing an Other. In this case, the awesome comes not so much because he was successful (that was mostly a fluke), but from the fact that he proved brave enough to try at all.
  • Also, when Sam uses his cunning to get Jon Snow voted Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Particularly of note is how he gets the two current leading candidates to endorse him.
    [to Denys Mallister] There’s another man. Lord Commander Mormont trusted him. So did Donal Noye and Qhorin Halfhand. Though he’s not as highly born as you, he comes from old blood. He was castle-born and castle-raised, and he learned sword and lance from a knight and letters from a maester of the Citadel. His father was a lord, and his brother a king.
    [to Cotter Pyke] You won't withdraw for Ser Denys, you said, but you might for someone else. [...] A fighter. Donal Noye gave him the Wall when the wildlings came, and he was the Old Bear's squire. The only thing is, he's bastard-born.^note Which, of course, Pyke also is
• Jaime Lannister gets a Crowning Chapter of Awesome: His Character Development and his actions which lead to his rescue of Brienne, make for one of the highlights of the book.
• Oberyn Martell's duel with Gregor Clegane is still the best duel in the series thus far. How could it not be, when you've got the Red Viper of Dorne facing off against the Mountain That Rides?
  You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children.
  • Made no less awesome by the fact that Oberyn lost the duel and died. Died first, anyway...
  Her name was Elia of Dorne. If you die before you say her name, Ser, I will hunt you through all seven hells.
  • Also, Oberyn's Badass Boast right before the duel, when he and his lover get their first glimpse of The Mountain That Rides with his full armor and One-Handed Zweihänder.
    Ellaria Sand: You're going to fight that?
    Oberyn: I am going to kill that.
• While the Red Wedding is mostly horror and tragedy, Greatjon Umber's Defiant to the End moment stands out as awesome. The Lannisters want the Freys and Boltons to take him alive, as he's a valuable political hostage, so the Freys try to trick him into drinking to unconsciousness...and it doesn't work. Greatjon then proceeds to fight several Frey soldiers while completely shitfaced, and while he is ultimately subdued and captured, it takes eight men to do so. One dies in the struggle and three are wounded, highlighted by the Greatjon ripping off Ser Leslyn Haigh's ear with his teeth.
  • For that matter, Grey Wind despite being shot with crossbow bolts, still manages to kill four Frey war hounds and tear the arm of the kennel master before falling, Raynald Westerling, managed to free him despite having been shot himself (and given that they Never Found the Body he might still be alive), and Dacey Mormont smashes Benfrey Frey across the face with a wine flagon. He would ultimately die from wounds in the Red Wedding, possibly that one. The Northmen may have been slaughtered but many went down fighting.
• The Red Wedding is a villainous one for Tywin Lannister. All that time, he'd just been sitting there, waiting and watching, because he had already won and nobody else knew it yet.
• Davos Seaworth spiriting away Edric Storm and then heading straight to King Stannis to confess and convince him to give his strength to the Night Watch.
• Sandor Clegane's trial by combat with Beric Dondarrion is a big one for both, though Sandor comes out a bit ahead with his preceding What the Hell, Hero? speech about how they're laying all the crimes of the Lannisters on his head when he didn't take part in any of them.
  • Especially powerful because as he points out they're shirking responsibility for their own crimes.
  • To add to the awesomeness, Arya even noted that Dondarrion's group had found Clegane was he was drunk. In other words, even drunk and terrified of Beric's flaming sword, Clegane still won.
• Jon Snow takes an arrow in the leg while escaping the Wildlings and Thenns, and painfully takes it out himself. He then manages to ride the miles back to the Wall with this increasingly painful injury to deliver his warning about the attack. His leg isn't much better by the time the attack comes, but he still manages a few nice kills.
  • Of course, that's just the beginning of the awesome, culminating in Jon gaining leadership of the Night's Watch during the attack on the Wall.
  • The entirety of Jon leading the defense of the Wall. His Rousing Speech to crushing battering rams, he knows how to drive away the enemy.
• The White Tower scene is little more than Jaime verbally bitch-slapping the rest of the Kingsguard, calling them out pretty much every failing they've shown over the first three books, and it is wonderful. One highlight:
  Jaime: Where have you served, before my sister found you?
  Osmund: Here and there, my lord.
  Jaime: I have been to Oldtown in the south and Winterfell in the north. I have been to Lannisport in the west, and King's Landing in the east. But I have never been to Here. Nor There. I will ask once more. Where have you served?
• Anytime Davos Seaworth opens his mouth long enough to deliver a speech of awesomeness:
  "I don’t doubt Lord Celtigar bent the knee to the boy Joffrey. He is an old done man, who wants no more than to end his days in his castle, drinking his fine wine out of his jeweled cups.” He turned back to Stannis. “Yet he came when you called, sire. Came, with his ships and swords. He stood by you at Storm’s End when Lord Renly came down on us, and his ships sailed up the Blackwater. His men fought for you, killed for you, burned for you. Claw Isle is weakly held, yes. Held by women and children and old men. And why is that? Because their husbands and sons and fathers died on the Blackwater, that’s why. Died at their oars, or with swords in their hands, fighting beneath our banners. Yet Ser Axell proposes we swoop down on the homes they left behind, to rape their widows and put their children to the sword. These small-folk are no traitors."
• Joffrey boasts about how he intends to torment Sansa by stripping her naked for her bedding ceremony. Tyrion, now Sansa's husband, threatens to geld Joffrey and tells him that he'll have to service his betrothed with a wooden prick. He does all of this in front of Tywin and Cersei, and Tywin almost seems to acknowledge Tyrion's intolerance of Joffrey's cruelty.
• Brienne hops off the boat while transporting Jaime Lannister out of Riverrun, scales up a cliff, then drops a boulder off on top of the boat pursuing them. Then she jumps off the cliff, almost landing in the boat.
  • Discouraging Vargo Hoat from raping her. By biting off his ear.
    • Even better, Jaime later learns that the wound festered and drove him so mad that he didn't even notice his fortress getting stormed.
• Donal Noye: A one-armed smith defeating Mag the Mighty, King of the Giants, in a tunnel beneath the Wall.
  "There'll be songs about that one."
• Stannis Baratheon's determination in spite of repeated blows and failures is nothing short of impressive. And this book has his most impressive moment, The Cavalry showing up with his entire army to defend the Wall and crush the wildlings. Stannis at this point is very much the underdog in the War of Five Kings, and yet he is the only one who recognizes (with encouragement from Davos) that it's his duty as king to protect the realm itself from a greater threat.
  "Stannis! Stannis! STANNIS!"
• Stannis fully cementing in a short speech why he deserves to be taken seriously as a contender for the throne.
  Stannis: "Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne." Stannis pointed north. "There is where I'll find the enemy I was born to fight."
• Catelyn Stark brought back from death by Beric Dondarrion's Kiss of Fire, taking leadership of the Brotherhood Without Banners, and hanging both Petyr and Merrett Frey for their parts in the Red Wedding. Walder Frey, Roose Bolton, and all villains beware, hell hath no fury like a vengeful mother on a killing spree!
• A Storm of Swords is a landmark book for Sansa:
  • After Sansa is informed that she will be forced to marry Tyrion and be made to have sex with him, she tries to be brave through the nightmarish ceremony, and refuses to kneel for the cloaking, showing that she can only be pushed so far, and like the rest of her family she has wolf's blood.
  • Subsequently, she refuses to give up even after being informed of her family's murders, and she successfully escapes King's Landing, which she has been working toward since the previous book. She even scales down a cliff in the process, despite hardly being someone given to physical exertion.
  • Sansa's wedding night is terrifying for her, as she's fully expecting to be raped. Tyrion has her strip and molests her but stops himself from doing worse. He tells her he'll wait until she wishes to sleep with him and she gets the courage to say, "And if I never want to?" Standing up to someone she is scared of and has absolute power over her took guts.
• In Jaime's and Brienne's fight, there's awesomeness for both characters, as well as an epic fight scene. Brienne holds her own and eventually overpowers one of the greatest swordsmen in Westerosi history, amazing him with her strength, whilst Jaime fights Brienne, who we see to be no slouch in previous and subsequent books, for ages despite being weak and starved from a year in captivity, a year out of practice, with his hands manacled together and no form of armour. Both later think about how skilled their opponent was.
• Daenerys hates slavery and slavers, having been sold as a slave by her brother, hoping to buy his kingdom. But she needs the Unsullied as the unbreakable core of her army, so she purchases them with one of her dragons. As soon as the transaction is complete, she uses her new army and all three dragons to kill all the slavers and free all the slaves.
  Daenerys: A dragon is no slave.

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