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Saddest moment in the books.


Lions-and-Roses

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"These wolves are more than wolves, Robb. You must know that. I think perhaps the gods sent them to us. Your father’s gods,

the old gods of the north. Five wolf pups, Robb, five for five Stark children.”

“Six,” said Robb. “There was a wolf for Jon as well. I found them, remember? I know how

many there were and where they came from. I used to think the same as you, that the wolves

were our guardians, our protectors, until...”

“Until?” she prompted.

Robb’s mouth tightened. "Until they told me that Theon had murdered Bran and Rickon. Small

good their wolves did them. I am no longer a boy, Mother. I’m a king, and I can protect myself.”


"When I was a lad I found an injured goshawk and nursed her back to health. Proudwing, I named her. She would perch on my shoulder and flutter from room to room after me and take food from my hand, but she would not soar. Time and again I would take her hawking, but she never flew higher than the treetops. Robert called her Weakwing. He owned a gyrfalcon named Thunderclap who never missed her strike. One day our great-uncle Ser Harbert told me to try a different bird. I was making a fool of myself with Proudwing, he said, and he was right."


Luwin chuckled, a froth of blood on his lips. When the maester tried to move, he

gave a sharp gasp of pain.

Tears filled Bran’s eyes. When a man was hurt you took him to the maester, but what could you

do when your maester was hurt?



“R’hllor chooses queerly, then.” The king grimaced, as if he’d tasted something foul. “Why me,

and not my brothers? Renly and his peach. in my dreams I see the juice running from his mouth,

the blood from his throat. If he had done his duty by his brother, we would have smashed Lord

Tywin. A victory even Robert could be proud of. Robert...” His teeth ground side to side. “He is

in my dreams as well. Laughing. Drinking. Boasting. Those were the things he was best at.

Those, and fighting. I never bested him at anything. The Lord of Light should have made Robert

his champion. Why me?”



“And Winterfell... Jon, be strong... Winterfell is no more...”

“No more?” Jon stared at Aemon’s white eyes and wrinkled face.

“My brothers are at Winterfell. Bran and Rickon...”

The maester touched his brow. “I am so very sorry, Jon. Your brothers died at the command of Theon Greyjoy,

after he took Winterfell in his father’s name. When your father’s bannermen threatened to retake it, he put the castle to the torch.”

“Your brothers were avenged,” Grenn said.

“Bolton’s son killed all the ironmen, and it’s said he’s flaying Theon Greyjoy inch by inch for what he did.”

“I’m sorry, Jon.” Pyp squeezed his shoulder. “We are all.”

Jon had never liked Theon Greyjoy, but he had been their father’s ward. Another spasm of pain

twisted up his leg, and the next he knew he was flat on his back again. “There’s some mistake,”

he insisted. “At Queenscrown I saw a direwolf, a grey direwolf... grey.. . it knew me.”

If Bran was dead, could some part of him live on in his wolf, as Orell lived within his eagle?

“Drink this.” Grenn held a cup to his lips. Jon drank. His head was full of wolves and eagles,

the sound of his brothers’ laughter. The faces above him began to blur and fade. They can’t be

dead. Theon would never do that. And Winterfell... grey granite, oak andiron, crows wheeling

around the towers, steam rising off the hot pools in the godswood, the stone kings sitting on their

thrones... how could Winterfell be gone?



“Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a

woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of

that woman’s hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades.

Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my

mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros?”







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These are my top five:



The Red Viper's Death


The Red Wedding


Eddard's Death


Brienne's Vow

"I dreamt I was old."


And, if Dunk and Egg counts, then Baelor Breakspear dying is definitely an honorable mention. That nearly had me in tears.

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