Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 10

4 years ago

Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 10

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Where his first daughter kept her woolens and silks spotless and had the step and manner of a lady, his second was always getting dirty and running all over the place.
Which is exactly why he’s taking her with him to King’s Landing, to see if she can maybe learn the ways of Southern ladies since the Northern ladies have had no effect on her.

Sansa, however, has taken a fancy to something else entirely. The charming Joffery Baratheon, Robert’s firstborn son, prince of the seven kingdoms. She is smitten with the young man, and hopes that their love can be just like in the stories, that they can get married and she can one day sit as queen beside her king.

So Robert told Ned, “What better way to unite our two Houses? You have a daughter, I have a son.” And what better way indeed? It was only meet that the two friends became fathers-in-law as well. Which is why they betrothed Sansa to Joffery so they could both marry when they were of age.

On the night of the feast Ned held for the King, Maester Luwin had brought up a letter for his wife. The letter was from his wife’s sister Lysa, the widow of Jon Arryn and mother of his son, Robert, who Jon named after the King. It was written in code words, a code which the two sisters had created when they were little children, so that in case the letter had gotten derailed anywhere along the way, no one would have been able to make any sense of it. And Catelyn had burnt the letter before even relating its contents.

Eddard was beginning to fear what the need for such secrecy was, until his wife said what was in the letter. Lysa said that she was sure that her husband had been poisoned to death by the Lannisters, that he hadn’t died a natural death. As the wife of the Hand, she was supposed to have followed the King North, but she had left King’s Landing immediately after her husband’s death, running back for the safety of her husband’s keep, the Eyrie in the Vale, which her sickly boy would be heir to.

She warned them to be wary of the spawn of Tywin Lannister they were housing under their roof, even if for a short while.

And with an adminition that grim in mind, Ned makes the long trip South.

The Southernward trip took almost two weeks, slowed down as they were by the ridiculously huge wheelhouse of Queen Cersei who was averse to either herself or her children riding horses like the rest, not to mention the skirmishes that arose from such a great host of both Southerners and Northerners travelling together on the road.

On the way, Robert confides in Ned that he never wanted to sit the throne if it wasn’t with Lyanna Stark at his side. After the death of his beloved, Robert said he lost all interest in Kingship, but the deed was already done. Aerys was already dead, as was his heir, Rhaegar, even Rhaegar’s heir, and neither Lord Tywin nor Eddard Stark had any desire for the Iron Throne, having as they did great keeps to look after. Being the one who called together the alliance, he’d had no choice but to take the throne.

And then Jon Arryn had made him understand that a King didn’t marry for love, but to have an heir. Choosing to remain celibate because Lyanna Stark was dead was folly, impractical. He had to marry a wife who would give him sons. And as Tywin Lannister had a daughter who was of age, marrying her would bind the Lord of Casterly Rock to him should ever Aerys’ other two children— Viserys and his sister Daenerys, who had been whisked across the Narrow Sea the day their father fell —return to try to take back their birthright.
And as her father had been hoping she would marry Rhaegar and one day become Queen, the deal was sealed.

Robert took Cersei Lannister to wife, and named Jon Arryn the greatest fool who ever lived.

Ned couldn’t reveal the contents of the letter his wife had recieved, even to— especially not to Robert, but he asked after Lysa. Robert let him know that he’d had intentions to send her boy to foster with Tywin Lannister at Casterly Rock, but that Lysa had run away to the Eyrie in the dead of night and hadn’t even let him know.

Eddard would personally rather have sent the boy to foster with a pit viper instead, but he offered that young Robert be brought instead to foster at Winterfell with his aunt Catelyn and her children. But Robert let him know that, since Lord Tywin had already agreed to let Robert foster with him, it would be a grievious slight to let Eddard take that responsibility instead.

In King’s Landing, Eddard sat on the King’s council as Hand alongside the King’s other councillors: Lord Petyr Baelish, a small, sly fox of a man who had grown up with Catelyn, fostering as he had with Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun, was Master of Coin; Renly Baratheon, a spitting image of the King as a young man, was Robert’s youngest brother and Lord of Storm’s end; Lord Varys, a plump, perfumed eunuch who was Lord of Whisperers; Grand Maester Pycelle, Robert’s maester who had served Aerys and Aerys’ father before him, sworn as he was to the throne regardless of whoever sat on it, and Ser Barristan Selmy, an elderly knight who was Lord Commander of Robert’s Kingsguard.

Another man also sat on the council. Lord Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Dragonstone, the former Targayen stronghold, was immediate younger brother to Robert, but he had vacated his seat on the council and returned to Dragonstone when the King rode North, and had so far refused to return.

To Be Continued