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The Will to Change: Rereading Sandor II


Milady of York

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Milady - tremendous job.  Really impressive. 

Rag, brash -  great comments as well.

 

 

“…the outlaws had treated Sandor Clegane’s burned arm, restored his sword and horse and armor, and set him free a few miles from the hollow hill. All they’d taken was his gold.”

  • Milady: "The gold he was carrying wasn't Lannister gold, for once, that gold was "clean" in the sense that he earned it doing something of merit, not for serving his masters. That's the gold awarded to him for saving Loras like a true knight in a tourney."
  • Thank you for addressing this, Milady.  You said it well; that gold was "clean".  He earned it through meritorious and valorous service.  It represented his crowning achievement of besting all of those lordly sers and Gregor in front of everyone.  It symbolized the "first time Sandor Clegane won the love of the commons."  It was his hard-earned money and, added to his skills in weapons, would have provided him (and Sansa) with a real chance to get to safety, far away from King's Landing.

 

Now in previous summaries we noticed a theme about Sandor 'emerging from shadow' or being present but draped in shadow, appearing at a moment's notice.  Example:

 

AGOT, Sansa II

     Joffrey called out, "Dog!"

     Sandor Clegane seemed to take form out of the night, so quickly did he appear. He had exchanged his armor for a red woolen tunic with a leather dog's head sewn on the front. The light of the torches made his burned face shine a dull red. "Yes, Your Grace?" he said.

 

Part of your discourse about knights and fools reminded me of Dontos' confession to Sansa that he hears everything now that he is a fool.  People treat him like he is not there and discuss whatever secrets they wish.  This did not happen when he was dressed as a knight.  I think we can trust that Sandor has been present, dressed in subdued brown and green 'motley', tucked in the shadows, for years of confidential discussions at the highest levels. 

 

ASOS – Arya IX

Sandor:   “If this Young Wolf has the wits the gods gave a toad, he'll make me a lordling and beg me to enter his service. He needs me, though he may not know it yet. Maybe I'll even kill Gregor for him, he'd like that." "If he doesn't take me, he'd be wise to kill me, but he won't. Too much his father's son, from what I hear.”

 

ASOS – Tyrion III

"Jeyne Westerling is her mother's daughter," said Lord Tywin, "and Robb Stark is his father's son."

 

I think this is the clue to where Sandor heard that Robb was his father's son and that Robb was going to need him.  Tywin was involved with arranging the seduction of the Young Wolf by Jeyne Westerling and/or her mother.  Sandor likely knew some treachery was in the works.  He planned to use Arya as an introduction and then provide Robb with some of the intel he has picked up from the Lannisters.  Robb does need him - as a sworn shield.  And all it would cost would be a little money and a place in Robb's pack - preferably with the title of 'lordling', never 'ser'. 

 

ETA: double sentence

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“Making more knights, Dondarrion?” the intruder said in a growl. “I ought to kill you all over again for that.”

  • Sandor demonstrates a profound capacity to shrug off the supernatural.  He doesn’t blink at Beric being alive again; he just accepts it and moves on to telling him he is ugly.  (Compare this to Lem who is in complete denial that Beric ever died.) 

[spoiler]

  • A little bit ahead, we see the same acceptance when Arya tells him she knows her mother is dead because she dreamt her in the river.  And he knows she howls in her sleep.  Sandor just rolls with the fact his little companion is a warg.  I've always found that pretty impressive. [/spoiler] 

eta: 2 words

 

 

Thanks Avlonnic! Your astute comments and regular participation are very much appreciated :) You've made quite a good point here on Sandor's stance towards the supernatural, where we see him reconciling it in the same kind of caustic pragmatism he's known for. This attitude could prove very significant in his future arc, if we imagine that some kind of encounter and resolution will take place with his brother Gregor, to cite one example.

 

"... It’s going to be me who hands you over to that mother of yours. Not the noble lightning lord or that flaming fraud of a priest, the monster.”
 

 It's interesting how Sandor chooses to characterise Thoros here, and it tells us how he views the process of returning Beric to the living all these times. While he may accept what is before his eyes, there's no endorsement on his part for these activities. 

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I confess that I laughed out loud when he tells Arya "so we play a little game," because game-playing subterfuge is not something we associate with the Hound, but it's something he's adept at in his own way. Do you see the fool-knight role as having any potential relevance for TWOW and how Sandor might re-enter the story? 

 

Thank you, Brash! Me as well, Sandor's anger can often distract from how funny and hilarious he is other times like here.

 

About your question, if you mean a chance for Sandor to put on the figurative "motley" again and use a disguise, then I'd say that it's possible. As Arya says, that Sandor's face is unforgettable due to his burns is the main obstacle for him to go unnoticed, thus he needs to have it covered for concealment. Meeting this need, there's three disguises he could make use of: commonfolk, anonymous/mystery knight, and monk.

 

The first one he's already used and unlikely to be repeated, and for the second he doesn't have any armour nor helm nor accessories for Stranger. He could get the armour and the rest, of course, either buy it or more probably reuse it from any he can get his hands on. Without the Hound's helm, he's just one more in thousands of nameless and sigil-less knights and soldiers the war has left roaming about, and provided he keeps his face covered and takes precautions for safety, he could travel in such a guise, as nobody is looking for Sandor Clegane in any random big man on a horse but for the Hound with a band and a hound's-head helm. This one also allows him to take Stranger with him, with modest barding and saddle and perhaps a fake or painted "birthmark" to help in the disguise.

 

But it's still risky, so the third option looks the best. Unlike for a peasant or an anonymous knight, there'll be no question as to why he never uncovers his face, so he can keep the hood on without looking much suspicious, and as it includes a scarf to wrap round the lower jaw, it conceals the face even better than a normal hood. And that also extends to keeping silent, people would understand he has a vow of silence and will answer with hand and head gestures only, which saves him the need to soften his voice/accent and decreases the likelihood of being recognised. Another advantage is that, if he encounters rogues on his way, the religious robes and seven-pointed star deflect danger as it's less probable that they'd bother with a poor monk with little to his name than with a peasant or a lone knight. Furthermore, again nobody is looking for the Hound in monk's robes, and from that angle, Saltpans has the only favourable consequence for Sandor, specifically that it has caused a cover-story sort of distraction--Lannister men and other bounty hunters are looking for an easily identifiable outlaw--that would allow the real man to move round as someone else. Saltpans, therefore, at the same time forces him to stay in the Quiet Isle and gives him a cover for getting out with fewer risks despite the attainder.

 

All that is speculation, of course. His use of a disguise would greatly depend on whether he has a motive to move out of the Quiet Isle, and it'd have to be a very solid one considering the risk and that Winter has come to the Riverlands and the Vale, making it harder to travel. But the layout of Sandor in convincing disguise to infiltrate a castle to reach a Stark was in the mainstream storyline in ASOS for a reason, to prove that if he wants to, he can and succeed at it, that he's currently in disguise still, and that Brienne had to go where he was to spill the beans that matter to him is also there for a reason.

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[spoiler]

“All men are fools, and all men are knights”

 

 

“The most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.”

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.

 

 

In traditional chivalry, so important is the possession of a warhorse and a set of well-kept armour for a knight that the inobservance of this basic “a sword with a horse” requirement is sufficient for him to be disgraced, and its symbolic as much as its pecuniary worth also accounts for why in tournaments and mêlées to lose was to be dispossessed of both, which went to the victor as a trophy. This custom extended to the battlefield, with rules on booty and how a captured knight’s warhorse and armour are to be disposed of and recovered if he wished to maintain honour and dignity intact. And any knight of good repute was expected to look knightly when not in armour. In times when clothes were made for each instead of mass-produced for the market, a knight’s dress had to reflect his status—the higher-ranking he was, the richer and luxurious his attire—as well as his code of honour. Well-groomed meant well-respected, to the point that if someone of rank and means wanted to go about in disguise for whatever reason, they only had to make themselves look, act and dress like the commoners and peasantry. In many stories, a knight is judged by how he’s dressed and the condition of his armour could be taken for a clue on his true nature. For instance, see this verse from The Knight’s Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”:

 

He was a true, perfect, noble knight. 
But to tell you of his attire, 
His horses were good, but his clothes not bright. 

Of rough cloth he wore a tunic 
All rust-stained by his coat of mail, 
For he’d no sooner returned from his voyage, 
Than he set out to make his pilgrimage.

 

That the knight’s clothing is “roughspun” and “not bright” instead of the brightly-coloured fine clothing of costlier fabric favoured by the wealthy is a subtle metaphor for what lies beneath: his desire to fulfil a religious duty going on pilgrimage even before he has had time to change his clothes, because piety (inward quality) trumps looking knightly (outward quality) in his priorities; and this is contrasted with the flashier flowery clothing of the character called the Squire, his son, indicating vanity and an arrogant superficiality borne of youth.

 

If dressing below his station is used to exemplify how for a model knight a greater obligation/necessity always supersedes the external and less important—but often better upheld socially—trappings, frippery and mannerisms of his position, for him to abase himself deliberately by way of wearing poor dress and performing activities or labour contrary to nobiliary rank and knightly creed is likewise used in courtly love chronicles to signify the depth and breadth of his feelings for his beloved. In a time and a culture that emphasised social dominance and demonstrations of physical skill and strength as the defining features of masculinity, there was no superior sacrifice for an accomplished warrior than to relinquish these same features, get off his big mean warhorse and literally or figuratively walk in the mud for love of his lady. A famous example of this, discussed previously by Gwyn, is Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who, going with a fellow knight to rescue kidnapped Queen Guinevere, encounters a dwarf in a cart that tells him to ride in it if he wants to discover her whereabouts, and he accepts to dismount and hop onto the cart in spite of the humiliation, forsaking his honour for his love of Guinevere. And aside this cart-riding, he later allows himself to be beaten in single combat on request by the queen, which is also dishonouring for a knight. Yet this is by no means the best example in existence, there’s another, much older, that better encapsulates the spirit of the things knights renounced for their ladies and that entails bringing greater social opprobrium as the “dishonour” is more significant: that of a knight playing the fool.

 

That one was Tristan of Lyonesse, of the Tristan and Isolde medieval epic who, to be able to get near Isolde at her husband’s court and to protect her, has to adopt successive disguises as a lowborn minstrel, a nameless hedge knight, a merchant, a begging leper and a fool; all of which have in common that they’re too humble a station for a son and nephew of kings and the best knight alive. The most demeaning of his impersonations occurs when he wants to reunite with Isolde after too long an absence and for protection he adopts the guise of a crazed fool, as recounted in Joseph Bédier’s rendition of the Folie Tristan (Tristan the Fool):

 

Then Tristan shaved his wonderful hair; he shaved it close to his head and left a cross all bald, and he rubbed his face with magic herbs distilled in his own country, and it changed in colour and skin so that none could know him, and he made him a club from a young tree torn from a hedge-row and hung it to his neck, and went bare-foot towards the castle.

 

The above omits a detail from the original by poet Béroul, that Tristan also disfigured himself with scars he scratched on his face with his own hands. He infiltrates the castle in this state, suffering jeers and abuse, being pelted with stones by the people in the non-sanitised version, and generally being laughed at for his repellent attire and his feigned lunacy, so to achieve his goal. But when he, tired of the abuse and on seeing the queen appear at last, protests that he’s actually Tristan, nobody believes him, least of all Isolde herself, who shows a reaction in the same vein as the “A fool and a knight? I have never heard of such a thing” objection by Jonquil to Florian in The Hedge Knight, and outright accuses the fool of being a rotten liar because it’s impossible that imposing Tristan should be dressed like that, all shorn like a sheep, covered in filth, ugly to the point of disfigurement, and stark raving mad. Pleading with her and the intercession of her maid aren’t enough, and it takes the joyful recognition of his dog Toothold, the one with a predilection for biting everyone who’s not its master, for her to finally embrace him as the real Tristan, rags and all.

 

In his book Love’s Masks, Merritt R. Blakelee explains why this specific type of disguise holds so much significance:

 

Each of Tristan’s attributes is travestied in the disguises. The noble knight and harper gives himself (…) for a minstrel of such low birth and station that he would bring dishonour to any knight who engaged him in combat. His skill at the royal sport of the hunt is parodied in his account in Folie Tristan of the chasse a l’envers [wrong-way hunting]. The knight who vanquished Le Morholt and sundry giants receives blows from youths and squires (…), and insults and blows from menials and messengers. When the fool proclaims to the queen, “J’ere chevaler mervilus” [‘What a great knight I was’], she protests in horror: “A chevalers faites vus hunté!” [‘You dishonour all knighthood’]. His disfigurement is extreme: his head is shaven, his voice altered, and he is apparently missing an eye. In the Folie, his crudely tonsured head implies the loss not only of his wits and beauty but of his physical strength. [Three Tristan epic poems] abound in Iseut’s protestations against this individual who proclaims himself her lover. Tristan, she affirms, is nothing like this vile creature—minstrel or madman—capering before her.

The inversion of values and the distortion of reality suggested by the disguises have several implications. They signify Tristan’s involuntary exclusion from the society of the court as a penalty for his lawless passion. They further signify his voluntary abasement in the service of his lady in conformity with a personal code of honour that differs radically from that of the collectivity, either as a means of reaffirming his love or as penance for real or imagined wrongs against his lady’s love.

 

And the same also says that within the framework of this strong class conscience, the fear of dishonour, foolery, ridicule, and everything perceived as commoner ill-breeding that Tristan throws away through divesting himself of his social (knightly) identity to masquerade as the very personification of those feared aspects “is at once an index of the strength of his passion and of the disorder of his spirit.”

 

This kind of narrative isn’t restricted to medieval settings and knightly stories, it has survived well past the age of chivalry into the age of gunpowder, with the consistent element being that the man adheres to his personal honour over societal honour, shedding the ribbons of masculine prowess and warrior culture rules to court social disgrace for his lady’s sake. A couple of such relatively more modern examples that come to mind are from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, in which Uncas is attracted to Cora Munro, but never discloses it verbally and the reader would’ve missed it if not for Major Heyward keenly observing that during their escape through the wild the young warrior serves choice food portions to the two Munro sisters, lingering subtly on the eldest, and takes mental note of that as a transgression because as a connoisseur of the native culture he’s aware that amongst the Indians it’s considered unseemly for a warrior to do menial chores and serve the women. A chief of the old blood of the Mohicans acting like a solicitous handmaid to women, and white women at that? Inconceivable! Yet Duncan Heyward doesn’t judge him, and soon he’s in the same position when his girl, Alice, and Cora are kidnapped together and held captive by hostile natives. He follows in the footsteps of Tristan: knowing that the Indians see fools as harmless creatures, he descends from his lofty perch as officer of the Royal Americans to impersonate one, overriding protests by stating: "I, too, can play the madman, the fool, the hero; in short, any or everything to rescue her I love." Dressed and painted as a madcap, he infiltrates the enemy side, and aided by allies takes Alice out.

 

In Westeros, that fools are viewed by the nobility along the same lines as in medieval times—entertaining to have in courts and households, but too lowborn, disrespectable and lacking in dignity to be esteemed besides for amusement, and that it’d be the ultimate shame for any well-born man to be one—is made clear by the case of Dontos Hollard, demoted from knight to fool as punishment from Joffrey. Sandor isn’t immune to this mentality if we consider his “a fool and his cunt” comment to Sansa within this framework. Florian is described as “the greatest knight of all” in the books, and one would expect this sufficed to send him into elucidating on how much knighthood stinks; but he fixates on half of the equation and pinpoints the legendary personage as “a fool” with nary a peep on being a knight as well. This would work as a clue in to his thinking like a proud nobleman (he’s one, and noble blood of all ranks is of paramount importance in a feudal society) that foolery is undignified and unbecoming.

 

Now, a clarification: this attitude both in real history and the books is towards fools, as in buffoons, clowns, jesters, mimes, mummers, all those who use ridiculous costumery, motley and body paint to play their pranks and entertain; and not towards minstrels, songsters, troubadours, minnesänger, etc., who definitely were respectable, and it wasn’t rare to find nobles or offspring of nobles amongst them, and some crowned heads also had as pastime to compose their own songs and perform for an audience. But Florian is a fool, who before he somehow got a knighthood is likely to have earned his bread as a common jester; and once knighted, Florian doesn’t set aside his former occupation but espouses his motley and incorporates it into his armour, perhaps his sigil has also some allusion to this, and keeps it for his knightly moniker as his representative feature. In his refusal to obliterate the “dishonourable” past once a “honourable” station is achieved when he becomes the best knight, Florian redeems all belittled and degraded fools, similar to how Martin is using non-knights to redeem knighthood.

 

Up to this point in the books, the Hound has been followed by Florian the Fool imagery like a stubborn thundercloud hovering round his head; he even left the stage at Blackwater and returned onstage at the Peach inn with a song about the fool and his lady-love in the background, but he’d not had a Fool Moment of his own. For when his time arrives, he will have to shed the clothes that identify him as minor nobleman Sandor of House Clegane from the Westerlands as well as the attire of the feared Hound.

 

Like for Chaucer’s knight, Sandor’s garb is a reflection of his principles: he favours roughspun and woollen fabrics and opaque colours such as brown, gray and green; and even when he does wear jewels and dresses in bright red, his jewellery is unostentatious and his colourful clothing is still roughspun. This doesn’t mean he dresses shabbily, “roughspun” alone tells more about the texture of the fabric than the quality, and there’s no commentary in the POVs of those who describe his clothing—Sansa and Ned—that goes in that direction. It is always just descriptive and brought forth by them as a contrast to the rest of the court and his bosses, which seems to be the authorial intent. Through this sobriety, Sandor sets himself apart from the courtiers as well as from the overbright family he serves. Have you had a good look at Joffrey’s clothing? The boy is even more dashingly dressed than Sansa, the most stylish of the Stark clan. At his side, and at the side of all Lannisters with their brocades, velvets, crimson silks, cloth-of-gold, rubies, huge emeralds and gilded armour, Sandor must look like a sober bird of prey amongst peacocks and cockatoos. Which is the whole point, hawks (and dogs) don’t need any gaudy plumage (and fur) to complement their nature and purpose.

 

The Hound’s armour falls within the same philosophy; it’s said to be “good steel,” which indicates the highest quality and price, but he refuses to have it decorated with gold or silver scrollwork and gemstone incrustations, and from Duncan the Tall in The Hedge Knight we learn there’s a practical reason also: swords and weapons can get caught in the decorations and tangle a knight up whereas plain unadorned steel stops the blows and weapons slid down its surface smoothly. All this draws him closer to the North, for sharing this simplicity with the Starks: The Ned also dresses sombrely and in wool, the rest of the family follows him (Jon and Arya are ones to wear roughspun), and even when he’s in silks for the Hand’s Tourney the colour is a discreet blue; both he and his family wear jewellery that’s modest, no gold but generally silver and stones of lower value, and Robb’s crown would’ve been scoffed at by any other king because it isn’t golden and has no gems, just plain iron and bronze, the metals of Winter. And we can be sure it’s not for lack of means or no fashion sense at all, those are people that don’t follow the Southron ethos nor place so much importance in knighthood and so their attire has to convey that.

 

In his need to reach the objective of his quest, Clegane divests himself of all of the above to put on the figurative “motley.” His disguise of choice to play the fool is that of a farmer, a “poxy peasant” as he defines it, opted for precisely because he knows first-hand the highborn and knightly mentality with regard to the peasantry, the same viewpoint so unfavourable to jesters. One gets the impression from the chapter that, far from feeling demeaned by this, Sandor is in a felicitous mood, and to add to the comicality of his behaviour in such a disguise, he starts with telling Arya that:

 

“So we play a little game.”

 

A lot is at stake in this game that is serious, but this line sets up a droll tone appropriate for the theme of foolery with a purpose. More humour ensues with the way Sandor obtains the stuff necessary for his guise:

 

The Hound had taken them at swordpoint. When the farmer cursed him for a robber, he said, “No, a forager. Be grateful you get to keep your smallclothes. Now take those boots off. Or I’ll take your legs off. Your choice.” The farmer was as big as Clegane, but all the same he chose to give up his boots and keep his legs.

 

So, besides not being a whit ashamed for the farce that’s so beneath someone of his class, nor for riding a shaky foraged cart instead of the less amused Stranger like a proper noble (and this is his second cart-riding besides), he is also feeling confident and is a convincing actor that deceives the first knight to stop him. Sandor, who backtalks to all and sundry, kings included, feigns humility and hilariously changes his accent:

 

“Salt pork for the wedding feast, if it please you, ser.”

“M’lady told me to bring him, ser,” Clegane said humbly. “He’s a wedding gift for young Lord Tully.”

 “Old Lady Whent, ser.”

 “Aye, m’lord.”

 

This also illustrates that he talks like he usually does because he wants and not necessarily for lack of education, for he adapts his speech to circumstances from one extreme to the other: he can be formal in court like the highborn, with correct diction, and he can switch to speaking like a commoner as in here, and we can assume his diction was modified beyond the m’lords and m’ladies to lose his natural accent as well as to soften his characteristic raspy voice. And the motley becomes less metaphorical when we get a description of his peasant clothing:

 

(…) the Hound himself was garbed in splotchy green roughspun and a soot-grey mantle with a hood that swallowed his head. So long as he kept his eyes down you could not see his face, only the whites of his eyes peering out. He looked like some down-at-heels farmer. A big farmer, though.

 

The splotchy appearance is what brings his attire closer to the motley and raggedy dress of fools. That it’s quite effective with the first knight he comes across, a Southron, is cause for a hearty laugh when he succeeds in getting through unstopped, with the knight leaving them after a derisive sally at fools that rebounds onto his head. We can picture Martin chuckling heartily as he wrote these passages to include some oh-so-subtle nods to Sandor the Farmer’s little lady: he’s masquerading as a servant of Lady Whent of all people he could’ve chosen to name, and that’s the family of Minisa Tully, maternal grandmother to Sansa and Arya. And the chuckle can devolve into a belly laugh, at least for yours truly, on the realisation that the author has written an inside joke with two sets of similarly-named characters: he has a Sandor (Frey) squiring for a Ser Donnel (Waynwood) in the Vale, and here he has the real Sandor (Clegane) as a poor peasant in a wayn duping a Ser Donnel (Haigh).

 

“Keep your eyes down and your tone respectful and say ser a lot, and most knights will never see you. They pay more mind to horses than to smallfolk.”

 

That’s an invaluable lesson that Arya, herself a participant in the play shielded by her “drowned boy rat” and half-bald urchin guise, has already had a chance to experience and make use of during her long Riverlands traipsing. But there’s a surprise lesson awaiting our houndish player too, when the second person to stop the cart, a hardboiled Northerner, makes it more difficult for him to keep up the pantomime:

 

“Salt pork’s no fit meat for a lord’s wedding feast,” he said scornfully.

“Got pickled pigs’ feet too, ser.”

“Not for the feast, you don’t. The feast’s half done. And I’m a northman, not some milksuck southron knight.”

 

Perhaps it’s the first time in his life that he’s been made to stand on the receiving end of the identical tongue-lashing he often doles out. It’s always been him who corrects any soul that calls him ser even if it’s well-meaning, and perhaps he never stopped to ponder how it’s like for others because no one else has ever found the knightly manner of address offensive in his presence. Then he meets here a man that balks at being addressed as a knight and doesn’t fall for such a flattering appellative, proving to him someone else out there also takes issue with being called a ser, just like himself. And for similar reasons to his, for additional emphasis. And, again just like Sandor was, this no-nonsense Northman is in the service of a dishonest liege lord that is apt to test his honour. With this tacked on to his long record with Northerners showing him the other side of the coin on matters meaningful to him, is there any wonder left as to why he’d be seeking to serve in the North?

 

Despite Arya’s sudden unease once they’re already within the camp, completing the quest on reaching the Stark bannermen alive and unharmed, Sandor doesn’t want to either end or slow down the play until she’s in Catelyn’s or Robb’s presence as per the oath of Beric that’s his own now. It’s gone “like in the songs” thus far, if we look at it through a chivalric narrative lens: the destitute royal guard from a knightly House is captured and sentenced to trial by combat by outlaws, that leave him burnt and impoverished, but he finds they have the sister of a king and of the beautiful lady he pines for, so he snatches her away to her family with a vow trailing behind; and on the way he uses wit and reputation and threats (and blankets) to get through water, wood and land to the big castle between rivers in time for a large wedding feast, and so as to infiltrate the castle unmolested to present himself to the king with some dignity instead of dragged in chains, he forsakes his status to disguise as a beggared villein, dirty clothes, boots and all (minus the smallclothes), and has fooled his way forward to the king with his sister; now he’s there, close to receiving his reward either in a fat purse or, preferably, a place amongst the king’s men, and maybe his lady will like that, too. Summed up this way without the grittier bits, it does read like something for the likes of a medieval chronicler writing a diverting knightly adventure. But Martin doesn’t follow through to the complete triumph that’d have crowned such a typical story; instead, the comedy on wheels is abruptly stopped by violence, and the fool has to throw away the motley for the steel and revert to being a knight.

 

 

The first eleven-year-old girl squire

 

 

“All right, you're a squire. How does a squire squire?”

“Well, first I ride behind him. Then he fights. And then I pick him up off the ground.”

Man of La Mancha, 1972 film.

 

 

On the front-stage of the Hound’s Riverlands storyline, Arya has been serving as a Talking Cricket analogy for him, in that she’s like a conscience when she directly pronounces the recriminatory words and accusations (“You’re a murderer!” “You killed Mycah!”) of an inner voice, yet she’s more than just that, for at the same time she’s a walking and breathing consequence or ripple effect of his actions regarding the butcher’s boy coming full circle to both bite him and, like an expiation, contribute to his ongoing restorative growth. But once he makes her his prisoner, Arya has to deal with the duality she’d not been confronted with in her hitherto one-note sentiment towards this man; it had always been the Hound in her prayers, and now she’s going to know Sandor too, and that can only mean conflicting sentiments. Such a complexity is exemplified by two other roles she comes to play in the chapters at hand, that happen after he explains that reaching her mother and brother is the true goal: his child and his squire.

 

The role of Sandor’s child is purely a thematic thread, because she doesn’t really play it nor is forced to. As this is the second time he’s mistaken for the father of a Stark, it’s the continuation of the pattern linking him to the family by setting forth this shared affinity as well as adding an intriguing context to Sansa’s wish for a child with the looks of her sister. With Sansa, the mistake had been a brief one on her part, but with Arya it’s persistent like a bad rash. She’s taken for his child approximately four times; first by the ferryman, then likely by the outriders near The Twins, then by the villager in the Vale, and last by Gregor’s squire:

 

“That will do.” The ferryman spat. “Come on then, we can have you across before dark. Tie the horse up, I don’t want him spooking when we’re under way. There’s a brazier in the cabin if you and your son want to get warm.”

“I’m not his stupid son!” said Arya furiously. That was even worse than being taken for a boy. 

 

. . .

She looked like a farmer’s son, or maybe a swineherd.

 

. . .

“There’s frost above us and snow in the high passes,” the village elder said. “If you don’t freeze or starve, the shadowcats will get you, or the cave bears. There’s the clans as well. The Burned Men are fearless since Timett One-Eye came back from the war. And half a year ago, Gunthor son of Gurn led the Stone Crows down on a village not eight miles from here. They took every woman and every scrap of grain, and killed half the men. They have steel now, good swords and mail hauberks, and they watch the high road—the Stone Crows, the Milk Snakes, the Sons of the Mist, all of them. Might be you’d take a few with you, but in the end they’d kill you and make off with your daughter.

I’m not his daughter, Arya might have shouted, if she hadn’t felt so tired.

 

. . .

“Are you the puppy’s puppy?”

 

We’ve always known Clegane has the physical traits of the First Men, but this likening him in appearance to the Starks specifically is curiously explicit on Martin’s part. First, it takes more than shared colouring to lead people to deduce a blood relation, because parents and children can look alike with opposite colouring and share colouring without looking alike, which indicates the author implies that Sandor and Arya look more similar than just for having the same dark hair and gray eyes. People were easily mistaking Sandor for a knight and calling him ser, so they’d be expected to assume the “boy” by his side could be his squire, knights and men-at-arms of means travel with squires or servants all the time. But no, they explicitly call her “your son” and “your daughter” when they see them together, so there has to be something else. You wouldn’t take any random blond and green-eyed boy for, say, a lion’s son if there isn’t something in his appearance that screams “Lannister!” My thought is that what makes these people think automatically of Sandor as Arya’s father is the face, long in shape and sharp-boned, a trait we know is a Stark family characteristic from the statues in the crypts and Eddard and Jon, that Arya resembles, so by inference Sandor does too. And perhaps there’s also some hand mannerism to have made Sansa think he was Ned without even looking, just from the physical feel and movement of his hands.

 

The second role is truer in that Arya does actually play the squire, doing work that is traditionally a squire’s. There are several assignments for them, but the three most important tasks a squire has to perform for a knight are to take care of his horse, take care of his armour, and assist him before, during and after combat. With that in mind, it now seems fitting that Arya was the one to reveal the name of the Hound’s courser and not another POV, for now she has to get acquainted with it as part of her tasks. And a troublesome charge the horse is, but in upcoming chapters we’ll see that he comes to accept to be fed, watered and groomed by Arya, and eventually earns her respect (“Stranger would have fought”).

 

The bloody interruption of Sandor’s “little game” propels them both into a knight-squire relationship dynamics at the very gates of success, and though not chosen nor planned but done for survival, both instinctively fit together as a team. Neither accepted nor rejected as a Stark liegeman yet, Sandor has been taken for one by the three Freys that charge at him, slashing his peasant robes and forcing him to become the “lion-killing dog” in a clash with Lannister allies not in the least like he must’ve wanted; and his individual struggle outside the castle echoes the collective struggle of the Northerners inside the castle: he and them are fighting outnumbered for their lives and for a child of Eddard Stark and causing as much damage as possible before the fall.

 

Paralleling Podrick Payne, another squire for another non-knight, Arya is a good assistant to her outnumbered non-ser when a Frey goes for her:

 

When he charged Arya threw the rock, the way she’d once thrown a crabapple at Gendry. She’d gotten Gendry right between the eyes, but this time her aim was off, and the stone caromed sideways off his temple. It was enough to break his charge, but no more. She retreated, darting across the muddy ground on the balls of her feet, putting the wayn between them once more. The knight followed at a trot, only darkness behind his eyeslit. She hadn’t even dented his helm. They went round once, twice, a third time. The knight cursed her. “You can’t run for—”

 

That momentary blow to the head causes a distraction that’s enough to give Sandor time to finish off two of the other Freys and then come for the third Frey accosting her, just like Pod stunned Shagwell with a rock to the head to give Brienne time to kill another Bloody Mummer before. These same dynamics they’ll repeat almost exactly at the Crossroads inn, again with three men, two for the knight and one for the girl squire, and again Arya will parallel Podrick’s stabbing Ser Mandon from behind to save a wounded Tyrion by repeatedly stabbing Polliver in the back to help a wounded Sandor.

 

“Get my helm,” Clegane growled at her.

 

It’s now that he symbolically takes her in such a role, by sending her to fetch a part of his armour, the first time he trusts her with orders on his equipment as he’d do with an actual squire. But as a result, Arya holds him up to impossibly heroic standards like a knight from the songs and demands he go rescue her brother. Sandor argues back that it’s not likely he’s alive, she insists a second time, and a third . . .

 

“Maybe we can save her . . .”

“Maybe you can. I’m not done living yet.” He rode toward her, crowding her back toward the wayn. “Stay or go, she-wolf. Live or die. Your—”

 

He’s very sure they’ve been killed because, as a Westerman and a Lannister vassal, it’s impossible that he wouldn’t know what The Rains of Castamere stand for: unmerciful annihilation from which neither children nor women are spared. Not the best end for him to knock his improvised squire senseless with the flat of an axe, though in part it explains his action as he’s responsible for her now that the Starks have been slaughtered; he cannot let her go despite his “your choice” line: she is Sansa’s sister, she has given him a hand, and there’s still danger round them, for more Freys can come, and he is one man against hundreds, likely with his arm still bothering him due to the healing burns, and that’d have to fight outnumbered to keep the girl alive too, not just himself. The way Martin’s written the scene, with Sandor first asking her to “come with him,” a plead, and his exasperation increasing at the fact that in her despair she wasn’t listening, makes it appear like his reasons for hitting her unconscious were that the chances of more Freys appearing were rising by the minute and they’d already lost time in their back-and-forth, and that she was running deliberately into the killing told her desperation was too great so she was likely to thrash wildly and perhaps scream if he caught and lifted her conscious onto his horse, thus attracting more soldiers towards them. Considering she resisted, kicked and bit when he first abducted her, and that she was ascribing him the worst intentions, plus she didn’t accept the impossibility of such a rescue and kept insisting they go back for days afterwards, such a reaction is quite probable. Unconscious, he could carry her out of the battlefield silently and unobserved as fast as Stranger could carry them both. Hard but pragmatic. The little wolf still has to see that the songs may tell that knights perform rescues and slay the dragon, but songs also will show, though not so often, that every great knight that makes it into the songs is preceded by many that were slain in the rescue or fried to ashes by the dragon for imprudence, or foolishness, or courage without commonsense. After all, paraphrasing Dirty Harry, a knight’s got to know his limitations.

[/spoiler]

This is truly edifying. 

 

If dressing below his station is used to exemplify how for a model knight a greater obligation/necessity always supersedes the external and less important—but often better upheld socially—trappings, frippery and mannerisms of his position, for him to abase himself deliberately by way of wearing poor dress and performing activities or labour contrary to nobiliary rank and knightly creed is likewise used in courtly love chronicles to signify the depth and breadth of his feelings for his beloved. In a time and a culture that emphasised social dominance and demonstrations of physical skill and strength as the defining features of masculinity, there was no superior sacrifice for an accomplished warrior than to relinquish these same features, get off his big mean warhorse and literally or figuratively walk in the mud for love of his lady. A famous example of this, discussed previously by Gwyn, is Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who, going with a fellow knight to rescue kidnapped Queen Guinevere, encounters a dwarf in a cart that tells him to ride in it if he wants to discover her whereabouts, and he accepts to dismount and hop onto the cart in spite of the humiliation, forsaking his honour for his love of Guinevere. And aside this cart-riding, he later allows himself to be beaten in single combat on request by the queen, which is also dishonouring for a knight. Yet this is by no means the best example in existence, there’s another, much older, that better encapsulates the spirit of the things knights renounced for their ladies and that entails bringing greater social opprobrium as the “dishonour” is more significant: that of a knight playing the fool.

 

That one was Tristan of Lyonesse, of the Tristan and Isolde medieval epic who, to be able to get near Isolde at her husband’s court and to protect her, has to adopt successive disguises as a lowborn minstrel, a nameless hedge knight, a merchant, a begging leper and a fool; all of which have in common that they’re too humble a station for a son and nephew of kings and the best knight alive. The most demeaning of his impersonations occurs when he wants to reunite with Isolde after too long an absence and for protection he adopts the guise of a crazed fool,

 

Comments hidden so as not to go off-topic too far.  [spoiler]

  • This really illuminates a quote from Mance Rayder, when Jon asks if he is a true king:  ""I've never had a crown on my head or sat my arse on a bloody throne, if that's what you're asking," Mance replied. "My birth is as low as a man's can get, no septon's ever smeared my head with oils, I don't own any castles, and my queen wears furs and amber, not silk and sapphires. I am my own champion, my own fool, and my own harpist. You don't become King-beyond-the-Wall because your father was." (ASOS, Jon X)

[/spoiler]

 

 

About your question, if you mean a chance for Sandor to put on the figurative "motley" again and use a disguise, then I'd say that it's possible. As Arya says, that Sandor's face is unforgettable due to his burns is the main obstacle for him to go unnoticed, thus he needs to have it covered for concealment. Meeting this need, there's three disguises he could make use of: commonfolk, anonymous/mystery knight, and monk.

 

The first one he's already used and unlikely to be repeated, and for the second he doesn't have any armour nor helm nor accessories for Stranger. He could get the armour and the rest, of course, either buy it or more probably reuse it from any he can get his hands on. Without the Hound's helm, he's just one more in thousands of nameless and sigil-less knights and soldiers the war has left roaming about, and provided he keeps his face covered and takes precautions for safety, he could travel in such a guise, as nobody is looking for Sandor Clegane in any random big man on a horse but for the Hound with a band and a hound's-head helm. This one also allows him to take Stranger with him, with modest barding and saddle and perhaps a fake or painted "birthmark" to help in the disguise.


One of the intriguing things about Quiet Isle is that its banks receive a plethora of armor, accessories, shields, and shiny swords as well as corpses in clothing of almost any type. 

 

Sandor would have a good chance of infiltrating a camp or castle as a random knight or one dressed in that castle's livery.  But, I agree, the monk's apparel would help him pass more easily, especially due to his size.  Perhaps he could pass as one of the defenders of the Faith, the Swords and Stars.  (Forgive me for saying "pass as", but I would not want to see him become part of the Faith Militant in earnest.)

 

He is unlikely to pass as a woman, as we have seen with Varys!

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<snip>

 

He is unlikely to pass as a woman, as we have seen with Varys!

 

Who knows, maybe he's posing as a very big washerwoman at the well :D 

 

 Shameless plug is shameless

 

 

 

All that is speculation, of course. His use of a disguise would greatly depend on whether he has a motive to move out of the Quiet Isle, and it'd have to be a very solid one considering the risk and that Winter has come to the Riverlands and the Vale, making it harder to travel. But the layout of Sandor in convincing disguise to infiltrate a castle to reach a Stark was in the mainstream storyline in ASOS for a reason, to prove that if he wants to, he can and succeed at it, that he's currently in disguise still, and that Brienne had to go where he was to spill the beans that matter to him is also there for a reason.

 

Thank you for such a detailed reply, my dear, and I agree with your postulations. Disguised as a monk would afford Sandor the best opportunity for subterfuge, and result in the least questions being directed at him; in addition, these chapters have shown that people see what they want to see, especially lofty knights who think they are better than the commoners and religious folk around them.

 

[spoiler] There are currently very intriguing dynamics in play at the Gates of the Moon, concerning the Stark Sandor cares most about and a host of knights vying to win honours and her favour, alongside those with hidden agendas. If the fool-knight motif is once again to be enacted by Martin, a tourney would be a particularly meaningful and appropriate setting for Sandor's arc, as this event has twice elevated him to heroic displays in the narrative. [/spoiler] 

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Thanks, Ragnorak. It was nice to write it.

 

 

It's possible, of course. However, there's some facts that make me doubt that he was looking for Gregor when he was captured, foremost of which is his emotional state. He was in a very bad state, profoundly depressed, drinking himself senseless and being uncharacteristically careless, with the same depressive lack of concern for whether he would be caught or not that he exhibits post-Red Wedding on losing all hopes and being expelled from the village. The Sandor we know is thorough in whatever he does, and alert and careful, yet there you have him sleeping drunk under a tree, apparently having dropped like a dead log there with no care to seek a hideout or a secure place to pass the night, and let's not forget he was carrying a fortune in gold, and he didn't even take measures to not be robbed or caught! If he was looking for Gregor, he'd be way more careful, knowing how his brother would torture and kill him.

 

Second, look at the place where he was taken: Stoney Sept isn't nowhere near where Gregor was at the time. See the location in this map, and then take note of which important places are nearer to it: Riverrun and . . . the border with the Westerlands, where Robb and his army are raiding. The Lannister men with Gregor are further to the south/east. Sandor is a good intelligence gatherer from talk in the countryside, so he'd know full well where his hated brother was, and he'd be nearer him instead of the seat of the Tullys or near his own native land.

 

The point I find the most implausible, however, is on the theoretical uses for his gold. The gold he was carrying wasn't Lannister gold, for once, that gold was "clean" in the sense that he earned it doing something of merit, not for serving his masters. That's the gold awarded to him for saving Loras like a true knight in a tourney. Would he employ that gold to hire mercenaries to kill his brother? Considering the type of men that'd take that gold, he'd not be any better than him, hiring "rats" to help him out in what's essentially plain murder anyway. And this also presupposes he'd have taken a leap backwards after that leap forward that was refusing to kill Gregor when he could have, at the Hand's Tourney, more easily and with less consequences. Besides, if he had any intentions to use that gold for such a purpose, why was he still carrying it? He's been in the Riverlands for long, over a month, and yet he's still alone with not even one single companion for the most basic help like with his horse and armour. In the Riverlands, there'd be enough refugees and deserters and mercenaries for him to hire a few by then, had he wanted.

 

So no, I have a hard time believing Gregor was his chief objective. He was already off-track from the path of vengeance and had been for a while when he was captured. The rapidity with which he took Arya away, and that he never hid from her his hopes to serve the Starks tell that was always if not his main objective then an ever-present thought. But given that he didn't have anything to present himself with, he couldn't approach any of the Northerners, so he was lingering about aimlessly. He wasn't going to Robb and tell him all he'd done for Sansa and hope he don't send him to keep Jaime company in the dungeons, he needed something substantial to offer the Starks and get them to at least listen.

 

Did you perhaps have an alternative mind? A couple of those had occurred to me but not nearly your whole list.

 

One of the aspects about Sandor that I've ruminated on from time to time is why he hasn't killed Gregor yet. Most, in fact almost every moment of that, can be answered by their mutual Lannister service. However the duel in defense of Loras can not. Why did Sandor hold back? He would have been perfectly justified in killing Gregor given the circumstances and those same circumstances would have offered him political cover from multiple angles.

 

One possible reason is that he would become head of House Clegane and Tywin might well reassign him to replace the dog he had in Gregor. But the incident does speak generally to a man who burns to kill Gregor yet is not in a dire hurry to accomplish the task. Hope can be a peculiar kind of anticipation and the longer one subsists on it the more it begins to imbue its fulfillment with an artificial weight. Back in the Arya reread Blisscraft had a post on the Mad Huntsman. The relevant line is:

 

"The huntsman is symbolically the embodiment of desire. He represents a restless spirit who seeks action for its own sake, the pursuit of transitoriness and the will to remain part of an endless chase. He will never be satisfied with the present, only a future he will never run down. He is doomed as he will never snare the quarry he doggedly pursues. Peace forever eludes him."

 

How much of this applies toward Sandor's pursuit of Gregor? Is he in that depressed state because the Huntsman's quest is nearing the end? He has no future as the Dread Pirate Roberts waiting for him after he ends his career in the revenge business. Is it that he has the freedom to pursue Gregor at long last but not the plan or the means? He'll later slump into a similar alcohol fueled depression while he has Arya but no plan or means that he can devise to do anything with her. Somewhere in the vaguely defined answer to those questions I saw room to explain away Sandor's depression and still do. Though the geography is the hardest to dismiss unless we consider the possibility that Sandor was actually seeking out these outlaws because they are an armed force already in conflict with Gregor. Does he have the type of relationship with Beric or Thoros such that it wouldn't be an unreasonable option for him?

 

With regard to the gold as Lannister power I was referring more to the choice of land over gold in that regard. Gold is typically the power of the merchant while land is the power of the noble with the Lannisters as a peculiar non-merchant nobility relying more on the merchant's wealth than the noble's land (though they do use both.) To choose Arya over pursuing the gold carrying Huntsman reflects the values he desires in his liege. Though pragmatically if he is hunting for Gregor he is going to need more men than just himself and gold is the only alternative to joining men already in conflict with Gregor. He may have been in pursuit of a Riverlands lord actively resisting Gregor's foraging (as a potential feather in his cap to earn a place with Robb) or again he may have been searching for the very outlaws that found him.

 

It is possible that he was just wandering aimlessly, but that feels off to me.

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Thank you, Avlonnic! Much appreciated.

 

Sandor thought the same thing back in King’s Landing when Jon Arryn’s squire was raised to knighthood for sentimental reasons rather than ability. 

 

That's so, it's a sore spot with him when someone is elevated to knighthood without preparation, not just without merit. At least Hugh of the Vale was trained, which we can assume from his age, although he hadn't been fully ready yet. But above all, his real issue was imprudence as the boy was too eager to debut as a knight on a grand tourney that had well-trained nobles, veteran knights, rugged sellswords and experienced men-at-arms against which he'd have to compete. Jousting may be a game, but it was one with plenty dangers and required special abilities in horsemanship, and you trained for it from a very young age with hay-filled dummies and wooden lances, like Tommen, for lack of preparation could kill you. And yet, there was Ser Hugh without even a squire to help him with his armour, and going against Gregor. Likewise, Gendry is going to have to face dangerous men as an outlaw, men who've been fighting for years, for which he's not prepared. Look at how hard Brienne had it with Rorge and Biter, and she a trained knight, which makes one question whether Gendry would have been able to protect the orphans at the inn on his own.

 

Part of your discourse about knights and fools reminded me of Dontos' confession to Sansa that he hears everything now that he is a fool.  People treat him like he is not there and discuss whatever secrets they wish.  This did not happen when he was dressed as a knight.  I think we can trust that Sandor has been present, dressed in subdued brown and green 'motley', tucked in the shadows, for years of confidential discussions at the highest levels. 

 

Indeed, I had Dontos' words in mind when choosing the Don Quixote quote for the analysis. And in Sandor's case that he hears more than he should would also be due to his unquestioned loyalty that carries a degree of trust on his masters' part. The Lannisters cannot fathom the idea that he'd ever leave them or not be on their side doing their bidding, so they take him for granted, and talk away in his presence. Nobles tend to underestimate servants just like fools and to be less careful with what they say round them, so they find out a good deal more than their superiors would like and gossip about it. Sansa finds out a lot from listening to the servants in the Red Keep, who are sort of her intelligence network since nobody tells her anything. A little bird's network of her own made up of the lowly household, a buffoon, and a dog.

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It is possible that he was just wandering aimlessly, but that feels off to me.

 

Only if you take it literally and forget his psychological state, and what PTSD does to a man like him. With that in place, it makes sense that he'd be wandering about the Riverlands and awaiting an opportunity to jump into action. Besides, from King’s Landing to Stoney Sept there’s a long while by horse at a moderate pace, and it’d be slower if the traveller is dealing with the mental baggage of losing everything he ever had in life.

 

Seems to me that we could find a more satisfying answer or answers if we let go of the vengeance angle that seems to be informing the interpretation posited here and think instead of the justice angle, that would help in understanding why he didn't kill or maim Gregor during the Hand's Tourney. If you think of it, the picture of Sandor as a man burning to kill Gregor comes from whom? Sandor himself, whose words we know never to take at face value, more so when his conduct contradicts what he’s saying, so why exactly are we supposed to take him seriously when a) nothing indicates he’s taken any action in that regard ever, b) the text shows the one that’d not hesitate to kill him is Gregor, c) Sandor lets go of perhaps the perfect and once-in-a-lifetime chance to kill his brother?

 

The vengeance angle—besides being overstimated based solely on Sandor's mouthiness—doesn't add up with the Lannister service as explanation for why he never took any action against Gregor, for when one wants vengeance, burns with it, has it as a major goal in life, that's not going to stop you, less so if there are many ways to exact revenge so that it isn't tracked back to you, and considering this is kinslaying, a fear for your lord makes even less sense if you're going against the gods. If Sandor wanted Gregor dead so bad, he can quite well arrange for it and cover his bases, it’s not like he’s a suspect ripe for hanging if Gregor as much as breaks a toenail. On the contrary, he has been very public about his desire to kill him, he even jokes about it and uses it to scare little girls, which is no behaviour for a serious vengefulness. It rather smells of sending out a message to his brother, that if he comes for him, he’s prepared and won’t be defenceless. Nobody has asked him to shut up nor has tried ever to talk him out of it so far as we know, everyone takes him at his word.

 

Besides, would Gregor bother to heed his lord? Perhaps most of the time, but he sure as hell is not going to lose any chance to kill Sandor, Tywin or no Tywin, and the Hand's Tourney proves that. It’s Gregor the one that shows the desire to kill his brother, and doesn’t brag about it but goes for it with no pause. He wasn’t so blinded by rage at the Tourney as to not have seen it was Sandor in front of him, perhaps the first blow would’ve been unintended due to the fury, but the rest? He was trying to kill his brother in earnest. He has killed his father, probably his sister too, and never suffered the consequences, so he sure doesn’t expect any if he kills the little brother. It’s also Gregor the only one that seems to be expecting Sandor to come for him, if one listens to his rats' talk, and he’s the one that doesn’t know his brother well enough and slanders him with that he did “piss himself” at Blackwater.

 

Justice, on the other hand, would explain why Sandor's not done anything: he doesn't want Gregor dead at the first chance regardless of how it occurs, he wants Gregor brought down in the right manner, without trickery and unfair advantage. At the Hand's Tourney, Gregor was unhelmeted whereas Sandor was fully protected, and killing his brother in that manner would make him the murderer he tries not to be. He needs it to be on fair grounds, a fair fight, or on orders by superiors and with cause if we again take into account he quickly submitted to Robert’s shout to stop and he offers to kill Gregor on Robb’s behalf. It’s rather absurd that he’d spend a lifetime trying to be as different as possible to his brother only to sink to his level through finishing him off in any way he could no matter what.

 

What caused the hatred is the injustice done to him and the injustice of the system that rewarded instead of punished. But it's not just Sandor here. There's his dead family too, and that also would add to why he needs to do it right with putting an end to Gregor for closure. Simply killing him won't do it, otherwise he'd have jumped at the first clear chance to get away with murdering his brother. Not wanting to be used by Tywin as the new dog doesn't sound right, he cannot be forced to leave the court and do the dirty work because now he's Joffrey's shield, by extension under the king's command as Robert is the higher authority, above a liege lord. Tywin won't take that away. Why should he? He didn't even try to overturn Joff's decision to make him a Kingsguard, he just scoffed at it, and given his a man for every task and a task for every man philosophy, he can replace a dead pet monster with anyone else. He's not used Sandor as such before, and I can’t see that he believes the Cleganes are interchangeable. Even having Gregor and Lorch, he still brought Hoat and the Mummers, there’s plenty of pet monsters that Lannister gold can buy him.

 

 

How much of this applies toward Sandor's pursuit of Gregor? Is he in that depressed state because the Huntsman's quest is nearing the end? He has no future as the Dread Pirate Roberts waiting for him after he ends his career in the revenge business.

 

That interpretation presupposes that Sandor's driving motive in life is revenge against Gregor, and it brings us back to square zero with the million questions the vengeance angle leaves unanswered or unsatisfactorily answered.

 

 

Though the geography is the hardest to dismiss unless we consider the possibility that Sandor was actually seeking out these outlaws because they are an armed force already in conflict with Gregor. Does he have the type of relationship with Beric or Thoros such that it wouldn't be an unreasonable option for him?

 

That would be worse than saying that he had a future and options as a sellsword in Essos, in my opinion. First, Sandor is a noble and all his life he's served a liege like his class demands, he is no mercenary and never has been. To be a mercenary is profoundly dishonouring for a knight, their very ethos demands they serve a king and a lord, it's in their oath of fealty and in their knightly vows. Sandor may bark at knight’s vows, but he has taken oaths of fealty, and the very fact that he embraces his grandfather as a role model prevents him from mercenary work. If he's not considered to seek service in some sellsword company, which completely nukes any character growth he's had until now, why would he seek to join outlaws and attainted criminals, completely against his personal code, his class and all he believes in? Beric had no better option, he was sent by Eddard lawfully and was caught up in the war before he could get out, same as Thoros. And given how they treated him in that trial, the contempt Sandor demonstrates towards them and their ways, the hostility that they meet him with—Thoros is even foolish enough to blackwash House Clegane’s origins to his face—it answers what type of relationship those men have with Sandor; they may not think of him so poorly as the rest but to them he's just a Lannister like the rest. On top of that, what was going to prevent these thieves from simply taking his gold and killing him if he went to them with the idea to join them and use his gold? They did it in any case and threw him out. Sandor would have to be profoundly dumb to go seeking outlaws en solitaire with no means to protect his gold and no assurances that he’d not just be killed for that gold. I’ll pass the Riverlander lordling as a feasible option because it’s rather thin on the evidence.

 

En fin! It's been fun to try creative alternative explanations, but in the end I believe the evidence points to a rather straight narrative with regard to Sandor’s presence in the Riverlands, from his offering to take Sansa with him up to the location he was caught forward to kidnapping Arya and even past that until his “death,” all points to his main objective being the Northerners. More importantly, Martin had been carefully building up getting Sandor out of the Lannister/Gregor moral mud puddle for two books previously, a return to innocence as you called it, so having him do a flip backwards to a vengeance agenda that seems to have always been from the teeth out in order to seek hirelings to kill Gregor or allying himself to any passing goat opposed to his brother makes little sense, creatively or otherwise.

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  • 3 months later...

Hi, everyone!

As you would have noted, the co-hosts of this reread took a hiatus in order to allow the recent updates to the forum to take effect and to have some problems resolved with missing content. We will be returning early in the New Year to resume the reread, and will repost the missing analyses and comments at that time. We would like to thank you all for your continued interest and support, and send our best wishes for the holidays.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Lyanna Stark, on 23 September 2015 - 01:49 PM said:

Hah, and here I thought this thread had retired for a few months but now it is back with treats!

Another point from the buildup sequence towards the UnKiss that is often overlooked is that Sandor isn't by any means the only man, nor even the first one, that Sansa has fantasised with in a sexual way. Not at all. Loras Tyrell was that man, actually, in ASOS Sansa I:

 

She remembered Ser Loras in his sparkling sapphire armor, tossing her a rose. Ser Loras in white silk, so pure, innocent, beautiful. The dimples at the corner of his mouth when he smiled. The sweetness of his laugh, the warmth of his hand. She could only imagine what it would be like to pull up his tunic and caress the smooth skin underneath, to stand on her toes and kiss him, to run her fingers through those thick brown curls and drown in his deep brown eyes. A flush crept up her neck.

 

This happens before the UnKiss, which is in her next POV afterwards. In context, this works also as a buildup towards the latter, like a escalation in stages from chaste to explicit. If Sansa already had had fantasies of kissing and caressing a naked man, then that she'd have more explicit fantasies about another man, with whom she had more potential with romantically and a basis to construe it all on, shouldn't come as a surprise to those paying attention to her development. It's rather a natural progression and comes as a result of her development towards womanhood, towards awakening her sexuality. This is why arguments that her sexuality sprung up in her TWOW sample chapter and that fans would be freaked out by it are fascinatingly incomprehensible in my opinion. That had already awakened, and in ASOS, and with Loras, and progressed with Sandor.

Sorry if this seems to be a long step back in the progression, but as I know a "white cloak" commentary will come up in the next section, I thought it may be fitting to be a bit retro here and bring this back. I found this contrast between Loras innocent white vs Sandor's bloody and torn cloak, and the "flower vs dog" comparison really interesting, since we know that Sansa learns a flower is really of now use, and how she later thinks that no Tyrell will ever kiss Alayne the bastard girl. In other words, the Tyrells are a lot of show, but little substance. In contrast, Sandor is the "displaced" northman (loved this one) and is really the anti-Tyrell in this regard. Doesn't care for surface, but a lot of substance.

Further, the cloak difference had similar connotations to me. Loras is pristine, innocent and in that way, he is not *real*, or at least not anchored in reality. As Cersei points out to Sansa, a woman's life is nine parts mess and only a little magic. In that way, Sandor's cloak reflects reality, the mess it contains, but also an earthiness in a way that Loras's pristine white cannot compete with.

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LongRider, on 25 September 2015 - 07:51 PM said:

Milady of York, on 09 Sept 2015 - 9:02 PM, said:snapback.png

~~~snip~~~

Seems to me that we could find a more satisfying answer or answers if we let go of the vengeance angle that seems to be informing the interpretation posited here and think instead of the justice angle, that would help in understanding why he didn't kill or maim Gregor during the Hand's Tourney. If you think of it, the picture of Sandor as a man burning to kill Gregor comes from whom? Sandor himself, whose words we know never to take at face value, more so when his conduct contradicts what he’s saying, so why exactly are we supposed to take him seriously when a) nothing indicates he’s taken any action in that regard ever, B) the text shows the one that’d not hesitate to kill him is Gregor, c) Sandor lets go of perhaps the perfect and once-in-a-lifetime chance to kill his brother?

 

The vengeance angle—besides being overstimated based solely on Sandor's mouthiness—doesn't add up with the Lannister service as explanation for why he never took any action against Gregor, for when one wants vengeance, burns with it, has it as a major goal in life, that's not going to stop you, less so if there are many ways to exact revenge so that it isn't tracked back to you, and considering this is kinslaying, a fear for your lord makes even less sense if you're going against the gods. ~~~snip~~~

 

What caused the hatred is the injustice done to him and the injustice of the system that rewarded instead of punished. But it's not just Sandor here. There's his dead family too, and that also would add to why he needs to do it right with putting an end to Gregor for closure. Simply killing him won't do it, otherwise he'd have jumped at the first clear chance to get away with murdering his brother. ~~snip~~~

 

That interpretation presupposes that Sandor's driving motive in life is revenge against Gregor, and it brings us back to square zero with the million questions the vengeance angle leaves unanswered or unsatisfactorily answered.

~~~snip~~~~

 

En fin! It's been fun to try creative alternative explanations, but in the end I believe the evidence points to a rather straight narrative with regard to Sandor’s presence in the Riverlands, from his offering to take Sansa with him up to the location he was caught forward to kidnapping Arya and even past that until his “death,” all points to his main objective being the Northerners. More importantly, Martin had been carefully building up getting Sandor out of the Lannister/Gregor moral mud puddle for two books previously, a return to innocence as you called it, so having him do a flip backwards to a vengeance agenda that seems to have always been from the teeth out in order to seek hirelings to kill Gregor or allying himself to any passing goat opposed to his brother makes little sense, creatively or otherwise.

Who besides Sandor tells us he's burning to kill Gregor?  Well there's Littlefinger smirking at Ned when he sends Dondarrion and his party after Gregor.  Do we believe LF, the liar and betrayer of Ned?  I don't.  Next would be the Elder Brother's upcoming discussion with Brienne.  And it's the EB's discussion that clinched that idea for the fans. 

 

But is that really how Sandor feels?  The more I look into the character the less I think that's true.  If it was true, he had the perfect chance at the Hand's Tourney, but didn't take it.  In this case, his behavior speaks more than his words.  He's more vocal about his distaste for knights than his desire for Gregor's death by his hand. 

 

Sandor caught Arya easily because she ran right into him and he quickly recognized the opportunities afforded by capturing her.  The main one was ransom money of course, and I think as time went on he began to realize the new opportunity of siding with Robb and his army.   Once he realized that, I think he really convinced himself there was a good chance that Robb would accept him.  It's arguable as to if Robb would or not accept the Hound, but Sandor did take Arya directly to the Twins without harm, if not without antagonism on both sides.  :)

 

What is interesting is following the Hound's gradual change into Sandor.  It's marked by what he leaves behind and loses.  He leaves his position with the Lannister's.  He's forced to leave Sansa by her refusal to go with him.  He leaves the white cloak, the cloak given to the Hound, not Sandor.  He loses his gold to the BWB and his shield is destroyed in the fight with Dondarrion.  He leaves half of his sword in a Frey when fighting at the Twins.  Here he picks up an ax, not his usual weapon but one he knows how to use.  As this process of loss and leavings is going on, Arya is there for much of it and she slowly begins to see him as the man Sandor, not just the vile Hound, as their journey progresses.

 

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Milady of York, on 25 September 2015 - 09:48 PM said:

LongRider, on 25 Sept 2015 - 8:51 PM, said:

Who besides Sandor tells us he's burning to kill Gregor?  Well there's Littlefinger smirking at Ned when he sends Dondarrion and his party after Gregor.  Do we believe LF, the liar and betrayer of Ned?  I don't.  Next would be the Elder Brother's upcoming discussion with Brienne.  And it's the EB's discussion that clinched that idea for the fans. 

 

But is that really how Sandor feels?  The more I look into the character the less I think that's true.  If it was true, he had the perfect chance at the Hand's Tourney, but didn't take it.  In this case, his behavior speaks more than his words.  He's more vocal about his distaste for knights than his desire for Gregor's death by his hand. 

Indeed. And both can be tracked back to the same source again: Sandor. Without his outward and very public declarations against Gregor, neither Littlefinger nor the Elder Brother would know a thing. So it's not a matter of the crediblity of who else besides the Hound has said he wants to kill his brother, it's a matter of the source itself. When the origin of the tale himself behaves and acts in ways that makes us take a closer look at his claims, then it's not really relevant whether the others' are credible or not, as their knowledge is second-hand, and limited in one case (Littlefinger) by his own arrogance and underestimating of what Sandor really is and feels like, as he's demonstrated by his betting against him on grounds that he'd not bite the hand that feeds him, and in the second case by the Elder Brother being only able to draw conclusions that are as good as what Sandor tells him, without the benefit of context and all important circumstantial details that render the whole picture before us.

 

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LongRider, on 25 September 2015 - 10:07 PM said:

Milady of York, on 25 Sept 2015 - 10:48 PM, said:

Indeed. And both can be tracked back to the same source again: Sandor. Without his outward and very public declarations against Gregor, neither Littlefinger nor the Elder Brother would know a thing. So it's not a matter of the crediblity of who else besides the Hound has said he wants to kill his brother, it's a matter of the source itself. When the origin of the tale himself behaves and acts in ways that makes us take a closer look at his claims, then it's not really relevant whether the others' are credible or not, as their knowledge is second-hand, and limited in one case (Littlefinger) by his own arrogance and underestimating of what Sandor really is and feels like, as he's demonstrated by his betting against him on grounds that he'd not bite the hand that feed him, and in the second case by the Elder Brother being only able to draw conclusions that are as good as what Sandor tells him, without the benefit of context and all important circumstantial details that render the whole picture before us.

But I also got from the EB that he was telling more of what he had heard of the Hound.  He wasn't discussing Sandor so much, as he was expounding on the Hound's reputation as had filtered into the Riverlands over time. 

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Milady of York, on 25 September 2015 - 10:19 PM said:

LongRider, on 25 Sept 2015 - 11:07 PM, said:

But I also got from the EB that he was telling more of what he had heard of the Hound.  He wasn't discussing Sandor so much, as he was expounding on the Hound's reputation as had filtered into the Riverlands over time. 

The point remains unchanged as it pertains his desire to kill Gregor, regardless of whether the Elder Brother was speaking from what he heard Sandor tell or whether he heard rumours that reached the Quiet Isle. Sandor is the source.

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LongRider, on 26 September 2015 - 09:42 AM said:

I'm simply making the point that reports of Sandor's desire to kill his brother were exaggerated  by others.  And interestingly, these exaggerations were to used for the others agendas, ie; LF's aside to Ned was to what? Give Ned something more to worry about, to make him mistrust the Hound more?  The EB to convince Brienne to give up her quest and go home?   The Hound's stated desire to kill his brother is almost myth like; it grows with the telling.  But what Sandor originally meant or what it continues to mean to him, is not so clear as his feelings towards his brother are quite complex.

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