Bran
Bran is left behind in the castle as the men go out to hunt for the last feast before King Baratheon and his entourage, including several Stark children and Eddard, leave south for King's Landing.
Since he's so upset he wasn't allowed to go with, Bran leaves the castle for the city of Winterfell and does what he does best: climbs the walls of the city. From the godswood, he climbs a wall, leaving his unnamed direwolf behind. While climbing, he does some reminiscing of his climbing adventures and all the attempts at scaring him out of the act by his mother and Maester Luwin. Maester Luwin even crafted a clay model of a boy and put some of Bran's old clothes on him, then threw the model from the roof of a building to crash on the bricks of the road below. Bran's response: "I'm not made of clay. And anyhow, I never fall."
Guess what happens in this chapter.
Bran climbs to the roof tops and adventures through the city. The young boy is capable of noting the contour of the land is evident from the rooftops, while it isn't very apparent from the streets of the city. He makes it up to the First Keep, which is empty, when he begins to hear voices as he swings from gargoyle to gargoyle.
He hears a man and a woman talking, discussing who should really be the Hand of the King, instead of Eddarrd Stark.
I sense a bit of dissension in the ranks.
But the man even admits he would not want the job. Too much work. Regardless of that, the woman points out how dangerous the situation is now, and that Robert will actually listen to Eddard; they're closer than Robert is to his brothers. The woman makes a note of having to keep an eye on Eddard, but the man turns the line into an inuendo and insists the woman come closer to him.
Bran doesn't know what's going on except that they're talking about his father and that he cannot swing by the window lest the man and woman see his feet. The woman notes that Eddard has never taken interest in happenings of the south before, why now? She feels he's planning a move against them (them being this woman and man).
The man insists that Eddard might just want to get away from his wife, or make a name for himself in the history books, or both. Maybe he even just wants to be warm for once in his life.
The woman then says this: "His wife is Lady Arryn's sister. It's a wonder Lysa was not here to greet us with her accusations."
Confirmed: The woman speaking is Cersei Lannister, the queen. Lysa sent the letter a two chapters back to her sister, Catelyn, Eddard's wife, with the accusation that Cersei had Jon Arryn murdered.
And because Cersei refers to the man she is speaking to as "us", the man cannot be any other than her brother Jaime. House Lannister is under scrutiny and she knows it.
It is later confirmed as Bran attempts to get down a ledge to get a view into the room. Cersei and the man continue to talk; Lysa is growing bold and may come forward without proof of the murder. And Robert may believe her simply because he hates Cersei. The man then says "And whose fault is that, sweet sister?"
Yup. That's definitely Jaime. And I have half a mind to believe he has some incestuous relations with his sister.
Some more talk continues and though Bran is scared out of his wits, he manages to drop down to a lower ledge, and then swing down from a gargoyle head to take a peak in at who's talking.
He sees the man and woman wrestling, as Jaime had pushed Cersei up against a wall. She was moaning and making feeble attempts at push Jaime to stop, but not physically moving him away. Bran recognizes her as the queen.
Cersei hears Bran make a noise and screams. In a fit to escape, Bran makes a grab for the gargoyle's head but slips and falls. He manages to catch a ledge, hanging by a few fingers. Cersei and the man look out of the window and comment on how Bran saw them. Bran then recognizes that the man looks exactly like Cersei. So it is Jaime.
He pulls Bran up on to the ledge, and asks him how old he is. Bran says he's seven and Jaime, without a second thought, says "The things I do for love," and then gives Bran an almighty shove out of the window.
He has nothing to grab on to. The courtyard rushes up from so far away.
I Never Fall
When Bran reminisces of telling Maester Luwin this, I cringed. It's the ultimate of foreshadowing. Something had to happen.
But I didn't picture something of this nature happening. I've put two and two together here from this conversation and discovered a couple things:
- Cersei definitely had Jon murdered; Jaime proved it by asking her if there was proof. But why? I'll address that later.
- Cersei and Jaime are incestuous in their relationship. That was damn obvious.
- Cersi mentions that with Robert dead, Joff would have the throne and this would be a good thing. And Jaime agrees.
- Per the previous bullet point, the reason Jaime agrees is because, without a doubt, Joff is Jaime's son, not Roberts.
- This would put House Lannister in full control of the Seven Kingdoms.
- And the reason Cersei had Jon murdered? He was on the verge of discovering Joff's parentage and was going to come forward with proof.
And now Bran his falling to his death. Does he die? I'm not sure. I have half a mind to think he'll die but ... maybe Martin's rep for killing off characters has irritated him enough that he just wants to make us think he's killed another character so early in the book. We'll see in the ensuing chapters.
Reviews/Criticism
I realized I've been doing more ... synopsis type reviews as opposed to criticism. And I've figured out that this was more so my intent. However, as things come up that I find to be poor writing (like in the last Catelyn chapter) I will point it out without hesitation. But I think this is going to be the format from here on out; little intro, major synopsis review, and then some after thoughts.
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