Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 6

Episode 4 years ago

Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 6

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So he watches as Ice’s midnight-black blade goes up, then comes down, bringing away the head of the deserter with it, blood spraying from the neck to wet the snow.

On their way back home, Ned rides up beside Bran and asks him whether he is okay. The boy says he is. His father tells him that a day will come when it will be him holding a sword and passing a death sentence on another person, and that when that day comes, he must “take no pleasure in the task”, but mustn’t shy away from it, either. Lord Stark says that if he cannot look a man in the eyes and tell him why he must die, then maybe the man doesn’t deserve to die at all.

Before they reach Winterfell, however, they come across a very strange thing. A dead direwolf. Those animals are native to the North, gracing as they do the banners of the House of Stark, but they only exist in the wilds of the North and in the vast forests beyond the Wall.

This particular one is female, and dead. His firstborn Robb, who first saw the animal, had seen the pups the dead animal had whelped, and was quick to spot the cause of death, much to his father’s pride: the broken-off antlers of a stag lodged deep in its throat. Obviously, it had been in a fight with a stag, and had the antlers as a prize to show that it had been victorious. But now, it too had lost its life.

Ser Rodrik and even few of Lord Stark’s men consider it a powerful omen, since the sigil of his friend’s House, Baratheon, is a stag, same way the sigil of House Stark is a direwolf. Ned Stark, however, doesn’t believe in omens or all that nonsense.

Poor, poor, practical-minded Lord Stark.

And the direwolf had died in childbirth, probably even giving birth to the pups after she had died, a bad omen for an animal.

Even though Robb and Brann are holding one pup each and seem to like them, Ned Stark says the animals cannot be allowed to leave.
He has already called Jory forward to put the animals to death when Jon, the one of his children who looks the most like him both physically and in personality, points out that the direwolf birthed not just two, but five pups, and that the gods have sent the animal of their sigil to his family, and that the similarity in the number of pups and his children is no coincidence.

“Your children were meant to have these pups, my Lord.”

Eddard knows that, for Jon to make that statement, he has excluded himself from the count of his children so the rest can have the pups. It was that selflessness more than anything else that made him agree for his children to take the animals as their pets. But he makes it clear that a direwolf is no dog, but a wild animal that will tear off a man’s arm just as soon as look at him. And Ned makes it clear that he will neither keep the wolves in the same kennels with his hounds nor bear any inconvenience for their upkeep. If his children want to keep their pups, they will have to feed and groom them by themselves.

If you’re wondering what the difference between a direwolf and a normal wolf is, just know that a direwolf is between two to three times as big as its much more normal wolf counterpart.

They had already left the carcass of the dead female direwolf behind and were proceeding on toward Winterfell when Jon heard a sound from behind them. He rode back quickly and came back with a sixth direwolf pup, an albino, white as snow.


Even the bastard would get to keep a pup for himself.

The real story-story begins when Robert Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms and Ned Stark’s b0s0m friend, came to visit Winterfell with his wife, Cersei of House Lannister, and his children Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella. Ned had already recieved a letter from Robert in which he said that they were coming North, and that letter also brought some bad news.

Jon Arryn, the man at whose house Ned and Robert fostered and who has served as Hand to the King ever since Robert took the throne, has passed.

Remember when I mentioned about the sigil of House Baratheon? Yes, I meant this Baratheon.

I know what you might be thinking. “Ned Stark’s friend is the KING of the seven kingdoms? E life don set!” Which is about as wrong as you can possibly be, since this arrival ends up meaning just the opposite.
But Ned Stark already knows the reason for this visit. He recieved a letter from the king only about a week before, stating that their friend, Lord Jon Arryn of the Vale, who was Hand to the King, had just died in King’s Landing under suspicious circumstances, and that the King himself was coming to visit.
Remember what I said about King’s Landing? It is the capital of the seven kingdoms and seat of the King. Robert is originally from Storm’s End, ancestral home of the Baratheon family line.

Ned still remembers how it came to be that a Targayen no longer sat on the throne their family line had sat for centuries. The king before Robert was a Targayen, Aerys II, known the seven kingdoms over as “the Mad King”.

Remember the ancestral conquerors of the Targayen line, Aegon the Conqueror, and his sisters Rhaenys and Visenya? Well, Aegon married his two sisters, and since then, the Targayens have been so obsessed with keeping their blood pure that they continued the tradition of marrying brother and sister together.