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The Will to Change: Rereading Sandor II


Milady of York

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  • 2 weeks later...

Never worry...we are a patient lot... And it's the 'care that we put into things in our lives' that really matters. Forums are a time for us to enjoy things that interest us. Deadines are for work...and the IRS.

 

Welcome to the reread, Winterfellsedai, I hope you'll like it here.

 

DogLover hasn't been able to post the analysis of the pending chapter, so Brash has taken over Sandor IV and will be posting it imminently.

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SANDOR IV

 

HOW TO KIDNAP A LITTLE WOLF

 

SUMMARY ANALYSIS

 

·         Arya VII

·         Arya VIII

 

 

The fact that there’s no love lost between Sandor and Arya was properly established in the preceding chapters, when Arya accused him of killing her friend, Mycah, and then hotly championed for his death during the trial by combat with Beric Dondarrion. Arya VII, which opens up with the BWB attacking a septry where a group of Bloody Mummers are holed up, shows that the girl’s feelings have not changed on the matter:

 

            They should have hanged the Hound too, or chopped his head off. Instead, to her
            disgust, 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 from him was his gold.

 

These thoughts take place in the context of the BWB carrying out the trials of the Mummers who were not killed during the attack. While Arya’s sense of outrage about the Hound’s release makes her continue to wish that he was subject to the same punishment as these other criminals, there’s a clear line in the sand between the kinds of men that belong in the Brave Companions, and someone like Sandor Clegane:

 

The trials went swiftly. Various of the outlaws came forward to tell of things the Brave Companions had done; towns and villages sacked, crops burned, women raped and murdered, men maimed and tortured. A few spoke of the boys that Septon Utt had carried off. The septon wept and prayed through it all. “I am a weak reed,” he told Lord Beric. “I pray to the Warrior for strength, but the gods made me weak. Have mercy on my weakness. The boys, the sweet boys . . . I never mean to hurt them . . .”

 

Despite Arya’s views being remarkably different from the ones espoused by Sansa at this point in their respective experiences with the former KG, Martin implements a significant element of thematic symmetry that connects Sandor’s personal narrative to the Stark sisters. As the BWB are spending the night in the septry, the theme of knighthood and its relevance to Arya’s relationships and her hopes to return home is first highlighted when Beric promises to return her safely to her mother:

 

“Do you swear?” she asked him. Yoren had promised to take her home too, only he’d gotten killed instead.

“On my honor as a knight,” the lightning lord said solemnly.

 

Beric’s statement evokes a similar vow made to Sansa by Dontos in the Red Keep’s godswood:

 

                    “Are you going to stab me?” Dontos asked.

“I will,” she said. “Tell me who sent you.”

“No one, sweet lady. I swear it on my honor as a knight.”

 

These two men are strange ones to be swearing on their knighthood, as Dontos had recently been demoted to a court jester and Beric is literally a dead man walking, having been resurrected six times by Thoros. As we discussed concerning Sansa and Dontos during the Clash portion of the reread, the Florian wannabe is disingenuous about his motives and cannot guarantee Sansa true protection; rather, it is Sandor Clegane who offered her sincere security, even though he later bungles the rescue attempt during the Blackwater battle. It’s an important contrast that further defines the Hound as a protective figure, even in volatile relationships like the one he shares with Arya, and diffuses the threatening implication of the question: “Do you know what dogs do to wolves?”

 

It is Gendry’s request to be knighted, and the Hound’s appearance just at the moment when Beric is repeating the final seminal rites of this process, that succeed in sharpening our awareness of how Martin is using the same framework or gateway to introduce the significant role the Hound will play in Arya’s life as he once did with Sansa. Another noteworthy detail is one of the songs that Tom o’ Seven sings just prior to the Hound’s arrival, called “The Mother’s Tears.”

 

The marcher lord moved the sword from the right shoulder to the left, and said,
“Arise Ser Gendry, knight of the hollow hill, and be welcome to our brotherhood.”
From the door came rough, rasping laughter.
The rain was running off him. His burned arm was wrapped in leaves and linen and bound tight against his chest by a crude rope sling, but the older burns that marked his face glistened black and slick in the glow of their little fire. “Making more knights, Dondarrion?” the intruder said in a growl. “I ought to kill you all over again for that.”

 

It calls to mind the Hound’s confession to Sansa on the night of the Hand’s tourney, which ended with the following recollection:

“My father told everyone my bedding had caught fire, and our maester gave me ointments. Ointments! Gregor got his ointments too. Four years later, they anointed him with the seven oils and he recited his knightly vows and Rhaegar Targaryen tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Arise, Ser Gregor.’”

 

Incidentally, both Arya and Sandor have reason to lament the knightly appointments of these two figures in their life. Gendry hasn’t done anything to Arya on the level of a Gregor Clegane, but his knighting represents for her a significant loss of a friend; Gendry is becoming one of the Brotherhood and she expects to return to her family in Riverrun.

 

Gendry’s knighting also brings back into focus one of the major conflicts as it relates to knighthood and vows that pervades the arcs of those like Sandor and Jaime Lannister. Although Sandor never became a sworn knight, his myriad roles as Lannister liegeman elucidate the torments of divided loyalty that can ensue and the moral quagmire that these men face in fulfilling their duties:

 

This time the lightning lord did not set the blade afire, but merely laid it light on Gendry’s shoulder. “Gendry, do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, to fight bravely when needed and do such other tasks as are laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be?”

 

In the moment at hand, one can’t help to sympathise with the Hound’s indignation at this hypocrisy, as they subjected him to an unfair trial and stole all his money. Gendry’s comment about him burning crops also shows that the guilt by association prejudice towards Sandor is still firmly in place:

 

Anguy raised his longbow, but Lord Beric lifted a hand before he could loose. “Why did you come here, Clegane?”
“To get back what’s mine.”
“Your gold?”
“What else? It wasn’t for the pleasure of looking at your face, Dondarrion, I’ll tell you that. You’re uglier than me now. And a robber knight besides, it seems.”
“I gave you a note for your gold,” Lord Beric said calmly. “A promise to pay, when the war’s done.”
“I wiped my arse with your paper. I want the gold.”
“We don’t have it. I sent it south with Greenbeard and the Huntsman, to buy grain and seed across the Mander.”
“To feed all them whose crops you burned,” said Gendry.
“Is that the tale, now?” Sandor Clegane laughed again. “As it happens, that’s just what I meant to do with it. Feed a bunch of ugly peasants and their poxy whelps.”
“You’re lying,” said Gendry.
“The boy has a mouth on him, I see. Why believe them and not me? Couldn’t be my face, could it?”

 

When Arya threatens to kill him and his brother, Sandor’s reply is deadly serious:

 

                        “No.” His dark eyes narrowed. “That you won’t.”

 

This response seems to indicate that Gregor’s death is still a prevailing concern for the Hound, one that he sees as his personal duty to carry out. Ridding himself of the stigma of his brother’s activities is hard enough, but the psychic fixation on killing Gregor illustrates the inner demons that Sandor is still haunted by and must overcome for his emotional well-being. After Sandor leaves the group, Beric and Thoros comment on his character and current state of mind:

 

Thoros of Myr paid no heed to the banter. “The Hound has lost more than a few bags of coin,” he mused. “He has lost his master and kennel as well. He cannot go back to the Lannisters, the Young Wolf would never have him, nor would his brother be like to welcome him. That gold was all he had left, it seems to me.”
“Bloody hell,” said Watty the Miller. “He’ll come murder us in our sleep for sure, then.” “No.” Lord Beric had sheathed his sword. “Sandor Clegane would kill us all gladly, but not in our sleep. Anguy, on the morrow, take the rear with Beardless Dick. If you see Clegane still sniffing after us, kill his horse.”

 

Beric’s opinion supports the principled nature of Sandor, and Thoros hits on his essential homelessness and lack of direction now that he is no longer tied to the Lannisters. By the end of Arya VII, the Hound is a man not only seeking to restore his fortunes, but someone who needs a renewed purpose and sense of belonging.

 

Arya VIII details the BWB’s return to High Heart where they meet with the Ghost of High Heart and the old woman delivers her tragic prophecies. Sandor does not appear until the very end of the chapter when he kidnaps Arya after she runs out in distress at hearing Beric can no longer take her to Riverrun because her mother and brother have gone to the Twins for a wedding, and the Tully castle will soon be besieged by Lannisters.

 

In reading this chapter with the endpoint of Arya’s kidnapping in mind and trying to concentrate on Sandor’s perspective, the paramount consideration seems to be to look at the charge Sandor is taking on and how Arya’s influence will play out in his development. Bereft, thoroughly homesick, and nursing deep grievances and anger, there is a lot in Arya that reflects the Hound’s personal circumstances and state of mind. He is already tied to the personal tragedy of the Starks via what happened in KL and reconnecting with Arya identifies him once more as someone with an important role to perform in how the Stark drama continues to unfold.  

“I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief,” the dwarf woman was saying. “I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.”

 

The chapter is an interesting mix of the romantic and the tragic: there’s talk of ‘Jenny’s song’ by the GHH that’s a reference to Jenny of Oldstones who was married to the Prince of Dragonflies for love, and Arya gets very upset when she hears the rumour that Ned fell in love with Ashara Dayne at Harrenhal. Most interestingly for the purposes of our analysis, the two songs that Tom mentions having to sing to be admitted into the Vale could be a teasing hint relating to Sandor’s experiences with Sansa:

 

Lem paced back and forth, coughing, a long shadow matching him stride for stride, while Tom o’ Sevens pulled off his boots and rubbed his feet. “I must be mad, to be going back to Riverrun,” the singer complained. “The Tullys have never been lucky for old Tom. It was that Lysa sent me up the high road, when the moon men took my gold and my horse and all my clothes as well. There’s knights in the Vale still telling how I came walking up to the Bloody Gate with only my harp to keep me modest. They made me sing ‘The Name Day Boy’ and ‘The King Without Courage’ before they opened that gate. My only solace was that three of them died laughing. I haven’t been back to the Eyrie since, and I won’t sing ‘The King Without Courage’ either, not for all the gold in Casterly—”

 

For all Arya's belief in the Hound as a monster, these two chapters reinforce his humanity and essential honour. Martin is able to maintain this impression through allusions to Sandor's relationship with Sansa and in continuing to explore crucial themes and motifs relevant to the Hound's characterisation that will become even more distinct in the upcoming chapters. 

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Very nice work, Brash. I still need to reread the chapters but a couple things jumped out at me.

 

Knighthood is largely a Southron thing because it is tied to the Seven. Beric is an instrument of the Red God now and the oath he asks Gendry to take is curious given his history.

 

 

 

This time the lightning lord did not set the blade afire, but merely laid it light on Gendry’s shoulder. “Gendry, do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, to fight bravely when needed and do such other tasks as are laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be?”

 

 

The eyes of gods has traditionally been only Seven gods while this band follows Mel's singular god while housed in an old god cave. At Sandor's trial the Bloodraven imagery was quite strong almost as if the knightless old gods were the forces behind this. The BwB has appointed captains, but they are sworn to dead king Robert and following a slightly less dead liege lord in Beric. It is a curious oath given the circumstances and worth pondering with all of the surrounding themes of knighthood-- and given that by the time Brienne meets them the knightly honor will have waned while Sandor's continues to wax.

 

Part of the drama and tension in the Sandor and Sansa dynamic is the fact that she didn't leave with him. The "what if" question looms large. As the Purple Wedding unfolds, Littlefinger tries to sink his claws into Sansa, and the Alaynne identity seems to sometimes be in danger of threatening her true self, it is only natural to for a reader experiencing the unfolding dramatic tension to think back and wish or wonder about her not escaping with Sandor. It is a natural temptation for the reader inherent in the style of the story telling.

 

Arya is not Sansa and the "what if" question is not about plot centric alternate timelines surrounding the chess moves in the game of thrones. The question is raised by the reader's desire to see the character whose viewpoint maximizes sympathy escape from peril. GRRM is an author who writes about the human heart in conflict with itself and the answer to the "what if" lies in that realm. Part of what begins to unfold in Sandor's journey with Arya, starting with the kidnaping at the end of this chapter, is an answer of sorts to that "what if." Sandor will settle for a time in a village that vaguely resembles Jaime's wish for Sansa to find a blacksmith and be happy. Sandor will try and protect Arya but we're reminded at both the Red Wedding and the Crossroads Inn that it is currently a task that is beyond him. Part of that is the scope of forces in motion that are arrayed against them and the characters have not yet developed to a point where they can be confronted.  Another aspect is Sandor's inner conflict between being a protector and being a force of vengeance directed at Gregor.

 

The unifying factor between Sansa and Arya is the desire to go home and Sandor eventually fails to get Arya home largely because of the shadow cast by Gregor that falls upon the Crossroads Inn. Just prior to Arya's kidnapping we see Sandor's role in the troubles that plague House Stark put on trial which would have been an undeniable piece of baggage on any journey he might have taken with Sansa. Starting here and playing out over the rest of Sandor's chapters are both the answer to why Sansa's fleeing with him would have been an ill fated "what if" as well as the elements of necessary character growth for what seems to be their eventual reunion whatever form that might take.
 

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Despite Arya’s views being remarkably different from the ones espoused by Sansa at this point in their respective experiences with the former KG, Martin implements a significant element of thematic symmetry that connects Sandor’s personal narrative to the Stark sisters. As the BWB are spending the night in the septry, the theme of knighthood and its relevance to Arya’s relationships and her hopes to return home is first highlighted when Beric promises to return her safely to her mother:

                                   

“Do you swear?” she asked him. Yoren had promised to take her home too, only he’d gotten killed instead.

“On my honor as a knight,” the lightning lord said solemnly.

 

Beric’s statement evokes a similar vow made to Sansa by Dontos in the Red Keep’s godswood:

 

“Are you going to stab me?” Dontos asked.

“I will,” she said. “Tell me who sent you.”

“No one, sweet lady. I swear it on my honor as a knight.”

 

These two men are strange ones to be swearing on their knighthood, as Dontos had recently been demoted to a court jester and Beric is literally a dead man walking, having been resurrected six times by Thoros. As we discussed concerning Sansa and Dontos during the Clash portion of the reread, the Florian wannabe is disingenuous about his motives and cannot guarantee Sansa true protection; rather, it is Sandor Clegane who offered her sincere security, even though he later bungles the rescue attempt during the Blackwater battle. It’s an important contrast that further defines the Hound as a protective figure, even in volatile relationships like the one he shares with Arya, and diffuses the threatening implication of the question: “Do you know what dogs do to wolves?”

 

Nice analysis, Brash! I like that you drew this parallel between both girls receiving a promise on knightly honour by two men who'll not be able to keep it, and it's Sandor who unknowingly steps in to fulfil that role despite not being the one to be held accountable for them. As we'll see in the next chapter analysis, he practically takes over Beric's vow and makes it his without intending to, and Arya will come to hold him to the lightning lord´s words.

 

In rereading this chapter, three things stand out to me. Gendry's knighting is first, as it calls back Sandor's confrontation of Ser Rodrik at Winterfell over sharp steel vs. blunt steel, which as we'd discussed is tied to knighthood and his belief that the old master-at-arms might be mollycoddling the children from the ugly reality that sharp steel represents, that knights are for killing. Here, his words to Beric carry much the same meaning. What right does Beric to make a blacksmith boy a knight, exactly? Legally, he can, since he's a knight himself, but looking at Gendry's circumstances closely, there's motive to question Dondarrion's decision. For a start, what has Gendry done to deserve a knighthood? He's just offered to smith for the Brotherhood, and however useful that may be, it's hard to see how exactly that's deserving of a knighthood, because Gendry hasn't "earned his spurs" the old way. He's not done anything heroic or particularly noteworthy to merit a knighting, and rules of chivalry state that to be knighted you either get through the training stages the right way with a knight or earn it in battle or through deeds of note. Beric, a zombie, is making a mockery of old traditional knighthood by making a ser out of a smith's apprentice who, by his own admision, it's even a fully trained and skilled blacksmith yet. In other words, he's throwing away what knighthood is supposed to stand for by giving it to a boy for the sole reason that he wants to be with them and help them.

 

But what is worse from the standpoint of Sandor's views on knighthood is that Beric is giving a knighthood to a boy that isn't trained to be one. Gendry doesn't know how to fight like a knight, not even like a common soldier. All he may know of fighting is on his own by life experience, and that won't be to his advantage if he has to fight in a battle or, gods forbid, enter into hand-to-hand combat. Beric could at least have waited a little, until the boy had acquired some more experience and training with them, but he did not. Additionally, there's the stark narrative contrast of Gendry´s knighting with Jaime's, who did earn his spurs by fighting the old Brotherhood with Ser Arthur, and here, the leader of the new Brotherhood is gifting away knighthoods to boys for helping outlaws.

 

 

Beric’s opinion supports the principled nature of Sandor, and Thoros hits on his essential homelessness and lack of direction now that he is no longer tied to the Lannisters. By the end of Arya VII, the Hound is a man not only seeking to restore his fortunes, but someone who needs a renewed purpose and sense of belonging.

 

This is the second point I was wondering about: how does Beric know of Sandor's true nature? So far as we know, he doesn't know more than the rest of nobles that go to court occasionally and listen to gossip, and likely has heard the tales about the Cleganes, the bad reputation of the family that extends to Sandor by contagion. My thought is that we have to look at Thoros as the source of Beric's favourable assessment of the Hound's sense of honour and fair fighting, because it's the pink priest who lived at court and was drinking chum to Robert, so he definitely had plenty of chances of getting to know Clegane up close and personal. That it's Thoros speaking and not so much Beric's self-formed opinion would also be supported by the fact that it's the R'hllorite the first one to call him Sandor, even though he disparagingly called him dog before that. And Sandor doesn't react badly to the use of his first name, likely because he's been called so before at court by the same, and he even makes a sally at Thoros' expense.

 

Which leads me to my next point, about why he didn't resort to violence with the sentries. Sandor acts more like a shield and protector, with one sole exception, and that speaks volumes of his principles, like we see here. But there's also a practical, and quite sensible, reason for why he only knocked the guards silly instead of killing them as everyone assumes on sight: diplomacy. He's trying to recover his gold through talk and appeal to Beric, but he'd know the sentries aren't likely to let him in due to prejudice or overzealous guarding. He cannot use unnecessary violence so as not to antagonise them and their leader; if you're going on a parley, you won't improve your chances of being heard by killing one or two of their men. The Brotherhood are bent on killing him and can barely be restrained by Beric and Thoros, so if he had done the sentries any harm, he'd also have given them a reason to hang him for murder.

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Thanks, Rag and Milady! 

 

 

The unifying factor between Sansa and Arya is the desire to go home and Sandor eventually fails to get Arya home largely because of the shadow cast by Gregor that falls upon the Crossroads Inn. Just prior to Arya's kidnapping we see Sandor's role in the troubles that plague House Stark put on trial which would have been an undeniable piece of baggage on any journey he might have taken with Sansa. Starting here and playing out over the rest of Sandor's chapters are both the answer to why Sansa's fleeing with him would have been an ill fated "what if" as well as the elements of necessary character growth for what seems to be their eventual reunion whatever form that might take.

 

Spot on comments about the "what if" considerations that emerge in reading these chapters, and that they do highlight for varying reasons how Sansa accompanying Sandor would not have led to the important character development and growth that will make their expected reunion much more satisfying. By flipping the script to another sister's perspective, the Hound is not only going to be challenged and propelled towards additional change, but readers will have the opportunity to see the qualities that define his character be expressed in different, and in some cases, more revealing ways. To your point about Sansa and LF, it's interesting that in the prophecy by the GHH, Sansa is "triumphant." She's the maid with purple serpents in her hair and will later slay a savage giant in a castle of snow. Had it not been for the Hound's interventions, advice and protection, Sansa might not have made it to the Purple Wedding. While his aspiration to journey to the Twins with Arya is always already doomed even before the kidnapping, there's definite space (and need) for him to eventually rejoin Sansa's narrative, especially in light of the giant symbolism in their arcs. 

 

 

 

In rereading this chapter, three things stand out to me. Gendry's knighting is first, as it calls back Sandor's confrontation of Ser Rodrik at Winterfell over sharp steel vs. blunt steel, which as we'd discussed is tied to knighthood and his belief that the old master-at-arms might be mollycoddling the children from the ugly reality that sharp steel represents, that knights are for killing. 

<snip>

 

I'm glad you brought this recollection back, since there's an additional detail to the parallel you noted, when at Winterfell Sandor asks Ser Rodrik: 

 

“Are you training women here?” the burned man wanted to know. He was muscled like a bull.

 

Fast forward to present time and he questions Beric: 

 

“You going to make her a knight too, Dondarrion? The first eight-year-old girl knight?”
 
Sandor's antipathy towards knights and show of chivalry that hides their true purpose may be as keen as ever, but the irony of him being the one who takes on the training of Sansa and Arya is once again foregrounded here. 
 
I didn't mention this in the analysis, but Lem's comment to Gendry about not romanticising knighthood also struck me as ironic in the context of Sandor's presence and his relationship with Sansa: 
 
“You must be a lackwit, boy,” said Lem. “We’re outlaws. Lowborn scum, most of us, excepting his lordship. Don’t think it’ll be like Tom’s fool songs neither. You won’t be stealing no kisses from a princess, nor riding in no tourneys in stolen armor. You join us, you’ll end with your neck in a noose, or your head mounted up above some castle gate.”
 

In Sansa's memory of their last encounter at the Blackwater battle, Sandor is thought to have taken a kiss from her in addition to the song, tying him to the ideals of courtly romance and chivalry, even as he rejects the other aspect of what Beric is doing pertaining to the untrained Gendry. 

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Following up on Milady's parallel to Sandor's introductory scene at the training yard in Winterfell we also have Arya's conversation with Ned Dayne.

 

The burned man looked at Robb. “How old are you, boy?”
“Fourteen,” Robb said.
I killed a man at twelve. You can be sure it was not with a blunt sword.”

 

“I never learned the lance, but I could beat you with a sword,” said Arya. “Have you killed anyone?”
That seemed to startle him. “I’m only twelve.”
I killed a boy when I was eight, Arya almost said, but she thought she’d better not.

 

Another curious parallel between Arya and Sandor is the confluence and conflict amongst the various religions that play out thematically in their stories. Sandor's traumatic origins are tied to fire and the Seven with Gregor's oils and his role as a Lady replacement for Sansa ties him to the old gods. The imagery throughout these two Arya chapters is filled with religious symbolism. The battle is fought with fire to take a sept. The guilty are hung to create what Arya thinks of a Mummer's Tree in a line that brings together an image of all three religions:

 

A mummer tree, Arya thought as she watched them dangle, their pale skins painted a sullen red by the flames of the burning septry.

 

There is both cooperation and conflict amongst these faiths.

 

One brother, a young novice, was bold enough to tell the red priest not to pray to his false god so long as he was under their roof. “Bugger that,” said Lem Lemoncloak. “He’s our god too, and you owe us for your bloody lives. And what’s false about him? Might be your Smith can mend a broken sword, but can he heal a broken man?”
“Enough, Lem,” Lord Beric commanded. “Beneath their roof we will honor their rules.”

 

and even the very source of their divine powers seem in conflict as we see on the visit with the Ghost of Highheart.

 

“Look in your fires, pink priest, and you will see. Not now, though, not here, you’ll see nothing here. This place belongs to the old gods still… they linger here as I do, shrunken and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists.”

 

While the magical abilities of flame gazing and the visions of the Greenseers we learn about through Bran and glimpse through the Ghost of Highheart seem quite similar, Martin goes through the trouble of emphasizing that fire consumes. It was fire that consumed the villages Arya sees destroyed along the Riverlands and the consuming nature of fire repeatedly comes up between Thoros and Beric.

 

“Fire consumes,” Lord Beric stood behind them, and there was something in his voice that silenced Thoros at once. “It consumes, and when it is done there is nothing left. Nothing.”

 

While fire consumes, wood preserves. The weirwoods contain the memories, knowledge, and history of those who worshipped the old gods. It is a very different sort of immortality than the variety Thoros has "gifted" Beric with:

 

“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?”

 

The very things preserved in a weirwood are those things being consumed within Beric. There is a parallel here to the conflict within Sandor. He has a consuming desire for revenge against his brother that is at odds with the desires he indirectly hints at while accepting the Kingsguard position-- those of a wife and lands that lead to a different form of immortality through children and the lineage of the House whose origins he deeply embraces. The very thing Beric is lamenting are those same things Sandor risks forgoing if he follows the consuming path of fire and there may be some symbolic evidence of a choice between the fiery Red God and the old gods in his future just as there seems to be an impending choice for Arya between the old gods and the Many Faced God who takes everything on the path to drinking from the cold cup.

 

We get more coloring of this conflicted choice through the theme of mercy that continues to play out during their time together and see some of that play out in the chapters here. Sandor was given a trial in the eyes of the God these outlaws claim to follow yet his innocence is far from accepted as we see during their parley. Arya herself continues to wish for his death and deliberately puts out of her mind her own merciful hesitation that recalls her father's notion of justice.

 

They should have hanged the Hound too, or chopped his head off. Instead, to her disgust, 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.

 

And in contradiction to the somewhat universal religious notions of redemption in the afterlife and leaving judgment to the gods Thoros himself has rather vengeful wishes for these men after their naked hangings.

 

Thoros implored the Lord of Light to roast their souls until the end of time.

 

Not exactly the pious "have mercy upon their souls" sentiment usually embraced by those of a priestly nature. While Arya herself shares the Thoros sentiment in these chapters she will eventually choose a different path when she and Sandor part ways.

 

The idea that Sandor has effectively taken it upon himself to fulfill Beric's knightly vow to return Arya home is a very interesting one to explore. Arya's own thoughts and words are specifically about Robb and whether or not Robb would want her back or pay her ransom. Yet the oath the Lightening Lord takes is specifically to return Arya to her mother's arms

 

Thoros chuckled. “Your brother will pay, child. Have no fear on that count.”
...
I do not have the power to give you back your father, no more than Thoros does, but I can at least see that you are returned safely to your mother’s arms.”
“Do you swear?”
she asked him. Yoren had promised to take her home too, only he’d gotten killed instead.
“On my honor as a knight,” the lightning lord said solemnly.

 

That is a curious distinction in the oath and it falls in line with the rest of the thematic elements in play. Beric has been brought back to life six times with him forgoing undeath and reviving Cat into Lady Stoneheart as the seventh resurrection.

 

“How many times?” Lord Beric insisted.
“Six,” Thoros said reluctantly. “And each time is harder. You have grown reckless, my lord. Is death so very sweet?”
“Sweet? No, my friend. Not sweet.”

 

This makes Cat the holy seventh number which also aligns her with the face of the Stranger which is the very consuming path Arya will be following for at least two books to come. It also implies that Arya being returned to her mother's arms is perhaps the key to what will quell the Lady Revenant in the end. If so and if Sandor really is the "knight" to carry through on Lord Beric's vow that has rather significant implications for the future. To tie Sandor into that speculation we have Arya's wish for a headless man to be brought back to life which actually seems to have happened with Ser Robert "Gregor" Strong. There is also Arya learning the "truth" about Jon's mother from Ned which may also tie into merciful things that could quell the vengeful Stoneheart. If so that would imply Jon has reached a certain point in his arc by then and would fit with the general speculation of Sandor eventually serving the North in the future.

 

But back here in the present of our reread we're still in the thematic development of mercy in an interwoven tangle of religious themes that create a strong parallel foundation between Arya and Sandor in the lead up to their brief but extraordinarily significant time together.

 

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SANDOR IV

 

HOW TO KIDNAP A LITTLE WOLF

 

SUMMARY ANALYSIS

 

*snip

 

 

Very nice analysis brash

 

What struck me most about the Dontos & Beric parallel is that not only does Beric ultimately fail to keep his promise, but that like Dontos he has a hidden agenda. He isn't going to return her to her mother because it is the right thing to do according to his knightly vows ("protect women and children") but for the financial gain it will bring the BwB. In a sense he is no better than Dontos.

 

Sandor, on the other hand and as Milady notes, unwittingly takes on the vow to protect Arya and reunite her with her family when he kidnaps her. That he has an agenda of his own goes without saying. If one can be forgiven the sin of looking forward briefly, he tells Arya in the next chapter:

 

"You're worth twice what they stole from me, I'd say. Maybe even more if I sold you back to the Lannisters like you fear, but I won't. Even a dog gets tired of being kicked. 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." 

 

A statement completely in keeping with his previous comment to the BwB:  "I'm the same as you. The only difference is, I don't lie about what I am." 

 

It's this honesty that makes Sandor so appealing to both Sansa and Arya. In the world they've been cast adrift in, it's difficult to know whom to trust, when even those who  offer aid have hidden agendas. 

 

Moving on to Sandor's views of knighthood, that he has utter scorn for the institution goes without saying and is illustrated by comments such as "Making more knights, Dondarrion? ... I ought to kill you all over again for that.” and "Ointments! Gregor got his ointments too." But we shouldn't forget that at one time, in the distant past, young Sandor had yearned to be a knight himself. Perhaps some vestige of that yearning contributes to his anger at seeing Gendry knighted. As Milady said, Gendry hasn't done anything really to deserve knighthood, hasn't trained or shown any particular skill or vocation, or done any deed of valour. In fact, taking Sandor's conviction that "a knight's a sword with a horse" at face value, Gendry can't even meet the basic requirement. Although as Gendry's comments about the crops illustrates, in Sandor's eyes at least, he meets the basic requirement of hypocrisy.

 

Thoros of Myr paid no heed to the banter. “The Hound has lost more than a few bags of coin,” he mused. “He has lost his master and kennel as well. He cannot go back to the Lannisters, the Young Wolf would never have him, nor would his brother be like to welcome him. That gold was all he had left, it seems to me.”
“Bloody hell,” said Watty the Miller. “He’ll come murder us in our sleep for sure, then.” “No.” Lord Beric had sheathed his sword. “Sandor Clegane would kill us all gladly, but not in our sleep. Anguy, on the morrow, take the rear with Beardless Dick. If you see Clegane still sniffing after us, kill his horse.”

 

In light of the above, I find it interesting that while the leaders of the BwB, Thoros and Beric, seem to possess a slightly different image of Sandor than the others, they take no action to prevent the unfair accusations of their fellows. Almost as though they have resigned themselves that their collective anger needs an outlet and a target, and who better than the brother of one of their principal enemies?

 

And last, speaking of the brother-- it is through Arya's PoV that we get firsthand accounts of many of Ser Gregor's worst atrocities. Her wish to kill him, and Sandor's refusal of it and clear desire to keep that particular pleasure for himself, will ultimately be one of the keys to bringing Arya a deeper understanding of the man who has now placed himself in the role of her guardian. Of course that's looking forward again, so I'll leave it there, except to note that I agree with Ragnorak's assertion that part of what ultimately leads to Sandor's failure as Arya's guardian is "Sandor's inner conflict between being a protector and being a force of vengeance directed at Gregor." Which comment left me with a distinct sense of what the possibilities are for a Sandor Clegane who has overcome his need of vengeance :)

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It's this honesty that makes Sandor so appealing to both Sansa and Arya. In the world they've been cast adrift in, it's difficult to know whom to trust, when even those who  offer aid have hidden agendas. 

 

Always glad when you come, Gwyn, thank you! It's a good point that you make with Dontos and Beric's double agendas involving the Stark girls. Sandor does have other motivations besides ransom, too, and he opened up to tell Arya all of his motivations in one sitting, including the nature of his other motivation alongside the hope for a reward. But Arya got stuck with half of it, accepted the gold reasons only, and rejected or did not digest the rest, understandable as because of her age she wouldn't grasp that his revealing chit-chatting about her sister had an obvious meaning, and loathing him for Mycah, she would naturally not consider that he might harbour any such feelings either.

 

Moving on to Sandor's views of knighthood, that he has utter scorn for the institution goes without saying and is illustrated by comments such as "Making more knights, Dondarrion? ... I ought to kill you all over again for that.” and "Ointments! Gregor got his ointments too." But we shouldn't forget that at one time, in the distant past, young Sandor had yearned to be a knight himself. Perhaps some vestige of that yearning contributes to his anger at seeing Gendry knighted. As Milady said, Gendry hasn't done anything really to deserve knighthood, hasn't trained or shown any particular skill or vocation, or done any deed of valour. In fact, taking Sandor's conviction that "a knight's a sword with a horse" at face value, Gendry can't even meet the basic requirement. Although as Gendry's comments about the crops illustrates, in Sandor's eyes at least, he meets the basic requirement of hypocrisy.

 

Indeed, it does. I'm of the opinion that Sandor hoped more than knighthood, because the station in itself and becoming a ser don't have merit unto themselves. He is from a knightly family, and all male nobles of all ranks that follow the Seven will become knights, it's a part of being a member of this social class he was born into, so just like the blacksmith's son who's apprenticed to his father from a tender age to become one himself and the child prince that is prepared to be a ruler, for Sandor becoming a knight was an inevitability, a matter of time only. Judging from the age he was when he was burnt, I'd even think he was already training with wooden swords, which also explains why he'd want the wooden toy knight so much, because those toys in real life could be for didactic uses just like the ABC blocks for toddlers to learn their letters. Bran, at the same age as Sandor, was training already and was sure that he'd be a knight in some years, but if you read his POV you see that he doesn't want to be just Ser Random Sword: Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, Florian the Fool, Ser Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, Ser Arthur Dayne, Barristan Selmy... those are the names he thinks of, and those are the sort of knights he wants to be, men of valour and principles according to the songs. And that's also what boy Sandor would've wanted, not just be a knight but the best knight, and so the incongruency between what knighthood actually is and what it should be is crushing.

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In light of the above, I find it interesting that while the leaders of the BwB, Thoros and Beric, seem to possess a slightly different image of Sandor than the others, they take no action to prevent the unfair accusations of their fellows. Almost as though they have resigned themselves that their collective anger needs an outlet and a target, and who better than the brother of one of their principal enemies?

 

 

Thanks, Gwyn! Completely agree with your point about Sandor's honesty, and how he's the one who proves more trustworthy and dependable to the Stark girls in the long run. Despite the harsh exterior and oftentimes rough language, he possesses the kind of frank sincerity one wants in a protector. With regard to the above quote I highlighted, this is another salient observation, and in thinking of your Lem as Richard Lonmouth theory, where Lem potentially made a life changing choice to fight on Robert's side of the conflict, one might expect some sort of  sympathy with regard to Sandor's own predicaments at this stage in the story. But there's a definite predilection on the BWB's part to tar him with the same brush they use for all Lannister soldiers. 

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SANDOR V:

 

The end of a hope

 

 

  • Arya IX (Ch. 47)
  • Arya X (Ch. 50)
  • Arya XI (Ch. 52)

 

SUMMARY

 

A while after the kidnapping, Sandor and Arya arrive at a raging river swollen by the incessant rains, and she thinks it’s the Blackwater, a belief he doesn’t dispel yet, which leads to her convincing herself they’re going to the Lannisters. As they ride on seeking a way to cross to the other bank, she reminisces how she resisted the abduction and the resulting avalanche of warnings she’d gotten from the Hound the first day spent together:

 

“The next time you hit me, I’ll tie your hands behind your back,” he’d said. “The next time you try and run off, I’ll bind your feet together. Scream or shout or bite me again, and I’ll gag you. We can ride double, or I can throw you across the back of the horse trussed up like a sow for slaughter. Your choice.”

 

She’d obeyed and ridden double with him, but on the next day tried to assassinate him in his sleep, just to be disarmed and given further warnings that next time he’d not be so tolerant. And to mark his words, after she screams at him to kill her just like her friend, Sandor carries out his promise to have her wrapped up in a blanket and thrown over his horse. That does work insofar as she’ll not attempt to murder him again until the end of their time together, despite thinking of and calculating on ways to end his life all the while.

 

The Hound summons a ferry from the north bank, dashing any hopes for the outlaws to catch up with them, and haggles with the ferryman over the scandalous fees:

 

“We can get you across,” he said sourly. “It will cost you a gold piece. Another for the horse. A third for the boy.”

“Three dragons?” Clegane gave a bark of laughter. “For three dragons I should own the bloody ferry.”

“Last year, might be you could. But with this river, I’ll need extra hands on the poles and oars just to see we don’t get swept a hundred miles out to sea. Here’s your choice. Three dragons, or you teach that hellhorse how to walk on water.”

“I like an honest brigand. Have it your way. Three dragons . . . when you put us ashore safe on the north bank.”

 

It’s him and not Bent-Back who’ll get his way, nonetheless, when Sandor threatens the aspiring cheater and then convinces him into accepting money post-crossing by unsmilingly stating that knight’s honour will stand good for it. The ferry has a tempestuous time across the river, and Arya’s unwise contemplations to escape via swimming are deflected by a near-collision with a tree trunk in the midst of the current that causes a ferry helper to fall and drown in trying to row away from it.

 

“Six dragons,” he demanded. “Three for the passage, and three for the man I lost.”

Sandor Clegane rummaged in his pouch and shoved a crumpled wad of parchment into the boatman’s palm. “There. Take ten.”

“Ten?” The ferryman was confused. “What’s this, now?”

“A dead man’s note, good for nine thousand dragons or nearabouts.” The Hound swung up into the saddle behind Arya, and smiled down unpleasantly. “Ten of it is yours. I’ll be back for the rest one day, so see you don’t go spending it.”

 

Riding past curses hurled at their back, dog and wolf and horse later stop to rest and eat, and the Hound tries to draw the girl into conversation: You like my face? No, you’re all burnt and ugly. Here, have more cheese. And by the way, my brother is much worse than I. That’s how their chat leads to him finding out he’s not the first of House Clegane to have caught this direwolf cub and bringing up the little bird unasked twice in the context of familial conflict and the death the younger sister hates him for:

 

“Didn’t you ever have a brother you wanted to kill?” He laughed again. “Or maybe a sister?” He must have seen something in her face then, for he leaned closer. “Sansa. That’s it, isn’t it? The wolf bitch wants to kill the pretty bird.”

“No,” Arya spat back at him. “I’d like to kill you.”

“Because I hacked your little friend in two? I’ve killed a lot more than him, I promise you. You think that makes me some monster. Well, maybe it does, but I saved your sister’s life too. The day the mob pulled her off her horse, I cut through them and brought her back to the castle, else she would have gotten what Lollys Stokeworth got. And she sang for me. You didn’t know that, did you? Your sister sang me a sweet little song.”

 

That’s like a preparation to revealing he’s going to her mother for a ransom and a reward, not to continue running with lions, which he does now. Spelling it out at last earns him the girl’s better behaviour, for she afterwards shows more willingness to collaborate and assist him in the mummery they must perform to breach into her brother’s “bloody wedding.” They arrive to The Twins disguised as a poor farmer and his poorer son in a time-worn wayn, with salt pork and pig’s feet for the banquet as an excuse for their presence, and following Peasant Hound’s instructions, she keeps silent as he gets past prideful knights and alert sergeants towards the feast, but soon the incoherent music gives her a bad feeling:

 

“They’re not very good,” Arya observed.

The Hound made a sound that might have been a laugh. “There’s old deaf women in Lannisport complaining of the din, I’ll warrant. I’d heard Walder Frey’s eyes were failing, but no one mentioned his bloody ears.”

 

The bad feeling grows and grows the deeper into the campground they drive and the more she observes. They don’t stop by the feast tents, however, determined as Sandor is to reach her “bloody brother” soon. But once in front of the castle’s gatehouse, he sees with his own eyes that “bloody” is less a curse and more a reality. Frey soldiers come pouring out of it, and before Arya can discern anything clearly, a battle is upon them and all round them:

 

The Hound reined up so suddenly that she almost fell off the wayn. “Seven bloody buggering hells,” Arya heard him curse, as their left wheel began to sink in soft mud. The wayn tilted slowly. “Get down,” Clegane roared at her, slamming the heel of his hand into her shoulder to knock her sideways. She landed light, the way Syrio had taught her, and bounced up at once with a face full of mud. “Why did you do that?” she screamed. The Hound had leapt down as well. He tore the seat off the front of the wayn and reached in for the swordbelt he’d hidden beneath it.

 

Probably it was the change in the music that alerted him so quickly as to what was to happen before the knights reached him. In any case, Arya hears after him the infamous song of the Lannisters she’d recently known from Tom o’Sevens, playing loudly as Sandor fights for their lives in the middle of tents burning and Stark bannermen and soldiery dying everywhere. It’s not so much a battlefield as a “butcher’s den,” and once he kills the Freys, she asks the Hound to rush into the castle to help Robb as oil and pitch rain down from the castle’s catapults:

 

“My brother . . .”

 “Do you think they’d slaughter his men and leave him alive?” He turned his head back toward the camp. “Look. Look, damn you.”

 

He then offers his hand to her and asks her to leave with him, because it’s hopeless and she can only save herself now, but the girl still refuses:

 

“Come with me.” Sandor Clegane reached down a hand. “We have to get away from here, and now.” Stranger tossed his head impatiently, his nostrils flaring at the scent of blood. The song was done. There was only one solitary drum, its slow monotonous beats echoing across the river like the pounding of some monstrous heart. The black sky wept, the river grumbled, men cursed and died. Arya had mud in her teeth and her face was wet. Rain. It’s only rain. That’s all it is. “We’re here,” she shouted. Her voice sounded thin and scared, a little girl’s voice. “Robb’s just in the castle, and my mother. The gate’s even open.” There were no more Freys riding out. I came so far. “We have to go get my mother.”

“Stupid little bitch.” Fires glinted off the snout of his helm, and made the steel teeth shine. “You go in there, you won’t come out. Maybe Frey will let you kiss your mother’s corpse.”

“Maybe we can save her . . .”

 

Sandor is barely done telling her it cannot be, that it’s suicidal to try when Arya sprints towards the gatehouse and he has to pursue her on horseback, hitting her senseless before she reaches the drawbridge.

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ANALYSIS

 

 

The honour of a hound, the honour of a knight

 

 

“There are many who are errant,” said Sancho.

“Many,” responded Don Quixote, “but few who deserve to be called knights.”

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.

 

 

“Do you swear?” Arya had asked the Lightning Lord on hearing he’d take her to Catelyn Stark. “On my honour as a knight,” was his reply and with those words a mere declared intention became a solemn oath. And when Sandor Clegane kidnapped Arya from the Brotherhood without Banners, he unknowingly stepped into the boots of Beric Dondarrion and took over his mission to deliver the girl to the Starks; and in this manner, paradoxically, a knight’s promise sworn on the knightly honour he doesn’t believe in became his own quest.

 

Those familiar with Brienne’s adventures in the fourth book will recognise it as a knightly quest deconstructed, but Sandor’s wandering in the Riverlands is also one such, the first to happen in the series, and more thematically rounded-up. His is at the same time the archetype and the deconstruction of both the Knight on Quest and of another kind of chivalric figure that comes after the older questing type and is just as tightly interwoven into the narrative fabric of chivalry epics, the Knight Errant.

 

What exactly could be the distinction between questing and errantry? On glance, not a really significant one as both share basic principles. Closer, it’s a matter of motives. A Knight Quester goes in search or pursuit of something or someone and is set on his path either by his lady-love, his liege or another figure of authority, or of his own volition for his own desires. A Knight Errant, on the other hand, is usually either 1) a landless and masterless man who goes from place to place in search of work, a roof over his head and a liege to serve for varying lengths of time or permanently, or 2) a man who does the same, but with the intent of seeking adventure, glory, fulfil a vow, right the wrongs of the world, succour the weak, and vanquish the evildoers, etc.

 

All these types can be found in Martin’s books in archetypical and subverted states: he gave us a figure of the Knight Errant par excellence in Ser Duncan the Tall, a female Knight Quester subversion in Brienne of Tarth, and a Knight Errant-Knight Quester hybrid in Sandor. It’s in the chapters since his abduction of Arya up to the Red Wedding when his arc acquires strong knightly questing-errantry imagery and symbolism, as well as a good dose of humour that seems intended to offset the gloomier tone of the parallel progress by the Stark and Tully convoy headed to disaster at The Twins. This roadside humour sprinkled with laugh-out-loud dialogue, together with the now masterless Hound’s sublimated motivation lying under his more outward reasons, the fractious and ever-shifting relationship with his captive, his deeds and practical life lessons that go both ways, are staples of chivalric errantry that would suffice to qualify the adventures of the non-knight of the burnt countenance as belonging in this narrative type. But, most striking amongst all these elements is that the Hound did, in the end, factually succeeded in taking Arya to her family—that the Freys chose the moment of his victory for slaughter is another matter—and so for the first time symbolically fulfils the oath of a knight he’d not even made.

 

All this, of course, whilst he isn’t one himself, but neither was Alonso Quixano, and therein lies the joke.

 

One of the funniest lines by the hero from Cervantes’ comedy of knighthood is during the windmills-as-giants adventure and says that “knights-errant aren’t allowed to complain of any wound, even though their bowels be coming out through it.” And fittingly enough, in the opening chapter paragraphs, Arya’s first observation is that “if the burns pained him, though, Sandor Clegane gave no hint of it.” This passage tells a few things: he has a high pain threshold, as anyone that’s ever burnt their fingers in the kitchen will know the pain of burns is excruciating and hard to tolerate even if superficial, and Sandor’s are considerably bad judging by the description. In Jon’s POV post-hand burn we see he weeps in the night due to the pain, and he has two things in his favour the Hound doesn’t: a ready maester to give him milk of the poppy, and no fire-induced trauma to add emotional baggage. Sandor doesn’t even have money for wine to dull the pain, and he’s to take care of the dressing change himself as he cannot afford a healer either. Secondly, that he didn’t get any infection given that burns are more likely to get infected than other wounds like cuts because of the bigger exposed/affected area, helps understand better why he did get the infection for his leg wound later. He got better care and swifter, kept the arm dry and clean, and more importantly, he was in a better physical and emotional condition than months later; better fed too, and didn’t suffer blood loss, which weakened him and made him more vulnerable to sepsis, combined with not taking care of it so quickly.

 

That also puts into perspective how resourceful he can be one-handed. Just think of it: he knocked two armed sentries senseless with one arm. He kidnapped Arya, who fought back like a rabid cat, one-handed. He also disarmed her when she tried to kill him, wrapped and tied her up in a blanket one-handed, and took care of skittish Stranger one-handed as well. He also knows how to effectively use his intimidating appearance for good effect, because he may have an arm uselessly in a sling but he still can use the other for swordfighting and that’s what he does, rattle his sword meaningfully to give emphasis to his words to the ferryman and to the farmer whose cart he takes. And being one-handed explains partially why he had to resort to cunning and tricks to get his way through towards his destination, besides the lack of money.

 

The crossing of the river offers a contrast with a similar ferry crossing by Ser Duncan and Egg in The Mystery Knight, in which the former refuses to heed the advice of his squire to utilise the Targaryen seal ring the latter hides in his boot so they be ferried across to the Butterwell-Frey wedding, and prefers to pay instead:

 

"We need to save our pennies for the ferryman." The last time he had crossed the lake, the ferry cost only a few coppers, but that had been six years ago, or maybe seven. Everything had grown more costly since then.

"Well," said Egg, "we could use my boot to get across."

"We could," said Dunk, "but we won't." Using the boot was dangerous. Word would spread.

 

Egg wants to use his highborn privilege as Prince Aegon to circumvent paying the ferryman (who is, amusingly, called Ned) for a service and save his ser a few pennies, but knight’s honour mixed with prudence thwarts it. Sandor, on the other hand, doesn’t have a penny to save and offers knight’s honour as assurance instead of gold in advance, and then pays with a note given him with knightly honour as assurance for repayment, adding four dragons more with the ease of the millionaire that gives hundreds in tips to his barber. Humorous as this scene is, it illustrates that the disdain for knighthood that impels him to educate everyone in his way on how “knights have no bloody honour” floats to the surface as a reaction to realising the ferryman is going to take advantage of his need so he can unduly overcharge at will, thereby the supposed honourability of knights becomes his method of outwitting attempts at duping him.

 

 

Cherchez la femme, or rather, cherchez le petit oiseau

 

 

“What’s more, it’s my belief that not all knights errant do have ladies to commend themselves to, because not all of them are in love.”

“That cannot be,” said Don Quixote. “What I mean to say is that there cannot be any knight errant without a lady, because it is as natural and proper for them to be lovers as it is for the heavens to have stars, and it is quite certain that there has never been a history in which one can find a knight errant without a lady-love; because his lack of one would in itself be sufficient for him to be regarded not as a legitimate knight errant but as a bastard who had gained entry to the fortress of chivalry not through the main gate but over the wall, like a thief and a robber.”

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.

 

 

Question of the ten thousand gold dragons: what exactly were the Hound’s true reasons for abducting Arya Stark of all people? Sandor himself gives an answer, an easily credible one:

 

“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.” He grinned at the look on her face. “You think your outlaw friends are the only ones can smell a ransom? Dondarrion took my gold, so I took you. You’re worth twice what they stole from me, I’d say. Maybe even more if I sold you back to the Lannisters like you fear, but I won’t.”

 

There’s no cause for doubting his so plainly stated motivation to seek a ransom for her as a means to recover at least part of the gold he was robbed of. Yet there’s definitely cause to believe that isn’t the only motive or even the principal one for wanting to reach the girl’s mother. Whilst it’s evident that he does need that well-earned gold and wants it back as it was taken from him unlawfully, with an untenable promise to pay that won’t be kept, the impression Sandor sends out through his actions is that there’s something else he’s more interested in.

 

First, he tries to have the gold returned to him peacefully and with no more damage than a lump in the head for the sentries; he tries to talk Dondarrion into giving him back his money, back and forth, and it doesn’t appear to occur to him to win it back through violent methods, or ambush, or taking their leader hostage. And once told where it is, it doesn’t occur to him to go stalk Greenbeard and the Huntsman on their way south with the gold, fall on them at the best chance he gets, recover the gold, and continue on his way. His personal code and sense of fair play is a good explanation, but it’s also true that since he was robbed of honestly-earned money by outlaws that are armed and willing to put an end to his life if not restrained, he does have a good casus belli for employing force on them for its retrieval.

 

Then, there’s his “you’re worth twice what they stole from me, (…) maybe even more” line, which raises the question of how much he expected the Starks to pay for Arya. Did he truly believe it likely that the King in the North, of a House not known for their astonishing riches, would pay ten thousand/twenty thousand gold dragons for his youngest sister? Not very believable in a pragmatist like Sandor, who’s well informed about the Stark family and would know that they’re not exactly swimming in gold like his former lieges, who he knows would pay any ludicrously high amount for the girl. And the Tully offer of 1,000 gold dragons as reward for recapturing Jaime gives a clear idea of how much the Starks could realistically pay: that amount is a lot, but it’s a pittance compared to the ten times that amount that Cersei would pay for her brother without as much as blinking, as Jaime tells Bolton. Sandor is aware he cannot (and doesn’t want to) go back to the Lannisters, to continue to be “kicked.” So, although he certainly did expect the Young Wolf to agree to a ransom paid in gold, it’s not as plausible that he expected the amount would be literally the same or more as that lost to the Brotherhood. His remark about Arya’s worth acquires then a less literal meaning when we examine what he says after assessing her value:

 

“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.”

 

So, it becomes apparent that the monetary worth of the girl is enhanced by the prospect of a position in the Northern forces and a new liege to serve, which long-term has higher value than the more immediate necessity to recover his gold. Sandor has never lacked for money, having been born in a minor noble family of sufficient means and having served a clan so filthily rich and having lived in the spendthrift royal court, and that plus his confidence in himself as a capable worker would’ve given him the attitude towards gold of someone that knows he can earn it with reasonable ease. But there’s one thing he’s never known: the pride of the subordinate in an equable superior, the mutual honour of the liegeman who serves a decent liege lord. When all you’ve known in life by virtue of your birthplace and the feudal vassaliage system is Tywin, Cersei and Joffrey as your bosses, plus a tosspot of a king in Robert, it’s not hard to end up wishing for better overlords. Especially on ascertaining that such a rarity as an honourable master does indeed exist, when you meet Lord Eddard of House Stark.

 

It’s not accidental that after allowing Arya to draw her own alarming conclusion that she’s going back to King’s Landing to be thrown at the Lannisters’ feet, Sandor takes the crooked route in clarifying it for her and instead of a brief no, we’re not going there, becomes rather conversational before he reveals their destination:

 

“Didn’t you ever have a brother you wanted to kill?” He laughed again. “Or maybe a sister?” He must have seen something in her face then, for he leaned closer. “Sansa. That’s it, isn’t it? The wolf bitch wants to kill the pretty bird.”

 

There’s two interesting details to look for in the context of this exchange, foremost of which is the conflict with Gregor that’s shaped his whole life. He’s trying to explain why it may not be best for her to escape—she would be caught by others that might mistreat her worse, and they’re not going where she fears—and to support his first point he brings up the Mountain, with which Arya at least can agree is worse, but is still appalled at the Hound stating he’s gladly going to rip his brother’s heart out; because it’s his brother. Sandor had gone down the straight route with Sansa and told his reasons for hating his brother, but Arya is no confidant material to him. So he takes the indirect path and brings up her sister, teasing her about whether she ever entertained bad feelings towards Sansa. Of course, he exaggerates in likening the girls’ conflict to his own case and so Arya doesn’t grasp what he’s trying to say. The point Sandor goes for in his sharp-edged way, and that she seems to grasp only instinctively, is sibling rivalry; that it can sometimes have a grave cause for existing—like for himself—and other times it’s due to disagreements or different personalities—like for her.

 

The second time he brings her sister up, it’s also to prove a point to Arya. He’s on one hand finally accepting her condemnation over his killing of the butcher’s boy that had been rankling him until now, and on the other hand is defending himself from the same condemnation through Sansa. It’s notable that he only mentions the bread riots to recommend himself to the little sister, indicating that this of all his deeds makes him the proudest, and crowns the tale mentioning that he got a sweet little song, which naturally means that at least once her sister had a good opinion of him so he can’t be a complete ogre in the same league as Gregor like Arya is arguing. A need to prove it to Arya is the driving force behind his mention of the song, and is also why he’ll later confess he forced the song out of Sansa at knifepoint as part of painting himself as the worst ever in order to goad her into killing him. Ogres, after all, don’t rescue maidens and get songs.

 

He would never care for the opinion of the Starks if he hadn’t hoped to serve them, and so it’s in his best interests to get Arya to see him if not somewhat positively at least not as an irredeemable monster. That could be determining in whether her brother or her mother felt inclined to either give him a position or just pay the ransom and send him off; her and Sansa are his “introduction cards,” because the Starks, being the sticklers for fairness that he saw they are, would be compelled by this very sense of fairness to take into account all he’d done for their girls, especially for the eldest.

 

The hints at his priority being to try becoming a Winterfell man are further supported by his allusion to Robb making him a lordling, which is funny in isolation, but considering he admires his grandfather and the value he places in earning one’s lands and titles through meritorious service, plus the already mentioned need for pride in serving, it acquires an earnest meaning. In all this, Sansa plays a huge role by giving him the initial and enduring impulse, as this is like a second chance for him in that by delivering Arya to her mother he’s doing with the littlest sister what he could’ve done for the big sister; and not only that, the very fact that he’s even considered to serve the Starks, the family of Sansa, is also informed by his experiences with her at King’s Landing. Were they to emerge victorious in the end, or sue for peace, or merely find a way to have her back with them, then that could mean seeing her again on the same side, not as part of an enemy household, with the added bonus of an overlord that won’t order him to kill small boys and beat small girls.

 

And there’s more to recommend him to the King in the North, as Sandor believes: “He needs me, though he may not know it yet.” What can he possibly mean by this? Knowing what lies ahead, it’s tempting to ascribe all this to bragging or delusions about his real prospects. But it’s necessary to set aside any whole-picture hindsight and knowledge of the Red Wedding, and assess what Clegane has to offer that could be of value to the Starks.

 

First thing to come to mind is his skill as a warrior and troop commander, which’s hardly of the highest significance seeing that Robb himself is great at both and has capable captains of men in his army, and that he doesn’t bring desperately-needed soldiers with him. So, we’re left to conclude that Sandor Clegane’s biggest asset is information; important information if we remember that he’s been in the innermost Lannister circle for decades and that by the nature of his job and his closeness to his bosses could be as much or more damaging than what Lancel knows. If Lancel’s information is explosive principally for Cersei, Sandor’s information had the potential of being explosive for the entire Casterly Rock clan, for the crown and for some courtiers to boot, such as Littlefinger. The amount of key information the Hound has is unknown to us, but that which we can reasonably infer he does know is damning enough, and gainful to opponents of the Lannisters. For example, whilst he may not be cognisant of the details of how Ned was betrayed, he’d only have to mention how the Hand got arrested for someone like Catelyn to put two and two together. There’s also the twincest, Cersei’s babies, and whatever other dirty Lannister laundry he is aware of, and the Starks have Jaime in case of doubt to corroborate at least some of Sandor’s revelations (he did admit some things to Catelyn, after all). And he would know how the Lannister armies fight, their leadership and level of threat, which is useful military knowledge to counter them in the field short-term and in the long run: his “kill Gregor for him” comment hints that he could lead a war party specifically to bring his brother down and put an end to his terrorising of Robb’s Riverlander subjects; and in relation to a hypothetical march towards the capital with his own experience he’d know how not to attack or lay siege to the city and where defences could be pierced, if Robb were to decide to go south, which he hadn’t planned yet at that time, but Sandor doesn’t know. Then there’s what he knows about how the Lannisters have treated Sansa, too; the beatings and threats.

 

Moreover, there’s the propaganda potential. Sandor is no Barristan Selmy, nor a popular idol that’d bring honour to whichever side he defects and be hailed as a hero with a Kingsguard cloak waiting to be wrapped round his shoulders. But nonetheless, his defection is liable to make waves, because of his reputed loyalty and unbuyability: if their Hound leaves the king and queen and is taken in by an enemy House, that can look ominous for the Lannisters in the eyes of the people; and at least Cersei appears to realise it later, when she decides to lie to the High Sparrow that she kicked her dog out instead of admitting he abandoned them as it’s known.

 

Arya believes there’s no way and no how for him to be accepted by her family, yet that also has to be measured against the little she does know and the lot she doesn’t know, because she’s not the best predictor for what her brother might decide. She had been fretting over him not paying her ransom to Beric and over her mother not wanting her anymore now that she’s all untidy and a killer, and she’s also unaware of the political and military situation of her brother, his marriage, his loss of the Karstark and Frey troops, etc., as well as of what the Hound can give to the North. Certainly, there are negatives that could cause the Starks to not take him in—the butcher’s boy (more for Arya), the killing of Stark guards and household, his too long service with the Lannisters, having been Joff’s shield, for whom Robb feels a special animosity, the spectre of Gregor, that the Northmen might have something to object to a former Lannister with such a reputation, et cetera . . . And Sandor seems to have considered that he could be met with a flat rejection of his services, for his quick retort to Arya’s “he’ll never take you” hints he thought a no from Robb was possible:

 

“Then I’ll take as much gold as I can carry, laugh in his face, and ride off. 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. Fine with me. Either way I win.”

 

Indeed, that tells he is aware that, realistically, it can go any given way for him with the Starks. Arya’s true worth, therefore, is tied to increasing the chances of tipping the scales towards his most desired outcome more than anything; this kind of priceless opportunity with the Starks isn’t going to fall on his lap any day again, and he’d already lost another opportunity once.

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“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.

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What a wonderful and delightful treatise on knighthood you've gifted us with, Milday.

 

For starters I'd like to take a look back at Sandor's intentions upon leaving King's Landing. What was he doing? Where did he intend to go before the BwB so rudely interrupted him? What was there in the Riverlands for him? The answer seems to be Gregor.

 

Sandor's journey is a struggle to return to innocence and Sansa in many ways is the key to that journey. She is certainly the one who set him on the path. His inner struggle on this journey is between embracing his role as a protector in the spirit of the founder of his House that he admires so much vs. the consuming desire to exact revenge upon Gregor. He asks Sansa to come with him before he leaves King's Landing and she declines. So he has been denied an object to protect and is left only with the path of vengeance to pursue. This seems to be the path he was on before encountering the Huntsman and his trial. The kidnapping of Arya actually puts him back on the path of the protector though he will ironically end up in the same destination as his path of vengeance at the Crossroads Inn.

 

One of the symbolic representations of Sandor's conflicting journey is symbolized by fire and mud and this will come up again in future chapters. This internal symbolism is later explicitly defined for us by Barristan in his reflections on Dany

 

You could make a poultice out of mud to cool a fever. You could plant seeds in mud and grow a crop to feed your children. Mud would nourish you, where fire would only consume you, but fools and children and young girls would choose fire every time.

 

Barristan's mud description aligns perfectly with Sandor's choice to pursue service with the Starks. It is a choice to abandon his gold (Lannister power) and instead seek a lordship that comes with land through embracing his role as the protector of Arya, over his pursuit of vengeance against Gregor on the consuming path of fire. The gold was likely a tool for vengeance to hire men in his plan to kill Gregor so abandoning the gold is abandoning vengeance in a very real way. This also places Sandor in the role of the Fool to the extent that he embraces fire over mud. One of the other symbolic associations with mud is youth and innocence.

 

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious
...
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful

-- e. e. cummings

 

Mud is a recurring theme in Arya's chapters and it is prevalent in all three of Arya's POVs covered here. We can see its innocence symbolism as she fails to see what is so very clear to the wiser and more jaded Sandor.

 

She landed light, the way Syrio had taught her, and bounced up at once with a face full of mud. “Why did you do that?” she screamed. The Hound had leapt down as well. He tore the seat off the front of the wayn and reached in for the swordbelt he’d hidden beneath it.

 

Despite all the horrors Arya has witnessed she is still fundamentally innocent, though this is the deathblow to that innocence. It is that innocence that prevents her from seeing what's really going on here symbolized by the face full of mud. It is that innocence that makes her cling to the belief that she can still reach her mother and brother inside despite the blatant betrayal she's witnessing. Sandor even unknowingly invokes Syrio's lesson to no avail.

 

“Dead,” he shouted back at her. “Do you think they’d slaughter his men and leave him alive?” He turned his head back toward the camp. “Look. Look, damn you.”

 

Life is a song and Walder Frey is just one of many people to prove Littlefinger wrong with his rendition of The Rains of Castamere. Arya still has Sansa's original innocent view of songs such that she expects the "knight" to rescue her mother from the castle and can't see the her own epic rescue whose heroism rivals a dragon slaying. But this is still a curious moment between these two characters because Arya is still at the stage of shedding innocence and Sandor's is one struggling to reclaim it. This moment in time is a major step for both of them on those paths.

 

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A compelling and comprehensive analysis, Milady! I love how you've situated his early time with Arya within the knightly quest tradition, and your exploration of how he plays "the fool" offers an intriguing bit of original insight. Two things stood out to me in reading these chapters, with the first one alluded to in your analysis, which is the remarkable resourcefulness and keen awareness of Sandor Clegane when he has a purpose and objective in mind. Is this the same man that was found "sleeping off a drunk" in the Riverlands? In weighing Ragnorak's point about how he turned to the pursuit of vengeance against Gregor after Sansa declined his offer to leave the city, it's obvious which of these roles -- avenger or protector -- provides Sandor with positive motivation that fuels his intent. While he does end back at the Crossroads Inn to face Gregor's men by the end of the book, it's noteworthy that what consumes his attention and emotional investment at the Inn is not his brother's men or Gregor's whereabouts, but the news of Sansa's escape and her marriage to Tyrion. 

 
The second point that I wanted to highlight, and it's connected to Sandor's resourcefulness, is the strong sense of his will to live that comes through in these chapters, and how much that is connected to the possibility of earning a livelihood with the Starks. We are reading Arya's POV, and it's her much denied and overwhelming desire to reach her family that pierces our consciousness at this stage, but Sandor's hopes are quite palpable as well. With the imagery of battle and death all around them, Sandor is actively choosing to pursue a better life than one he would have ever known with the Lannisters. Their crossing on the river has mythological allusions to Charon's ferrying dead souls to the underworld, and there's some thought provoking threads to pull out there, with Sandor's creative cheating of the ferryman and their post-Red Wedding situation. 
 
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? 
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I am just catching up on Part I.  I am having a few problems with the quote function so forgive me.

 

brashcandy – terrific analysis.  Ragnorak, Milady of York, Lady Gwynhyfvar - great comments.

 

Part I –

 

"…Thoros hits on his essential homelessness and lack of direction now that he is no longer tied to the Lannisters. By the end of Arya VII, the Hound is a man not only seeking to restore his fortunes, but someone who needs a renewed purpose and sense of belonging."

"... Bereft, thoroughly homesick, and nursing deep grievances and anger, there is a lot in Arya that reflects the Hound’s personal circumstances and state of mind."

  • Like Arya, the Hound is looking for a new pack.

 

“…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.”

  • They released him…but he tracked them like a hound.

 

“But what is worse from the standpoint of Sandor’s views knighthood is that Beric is giving a knighthood to a boy that isn't trained to be one. Gendry doesn't know how to fight like a knight, not even like a common soldier.

  • 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.  Ser Hugh of the Vale died in his first tourney ride.

 

“You’re lying,” said Gendry.

(Sandor) “The boy has a mouth on him, I see. Why believe them and not me? Couldn’t be my face, could it?"

  • This reminds me of how Sandor stood by watching Sansa swoon over Joffrey’s 'pretty face' - a face that covered a monstrous personality.
  • Speaking of faces, Sandor was at court for well over a decade, staring at Robert and occasionally Renly.  It is understandable he would be annoyed by another little Baratheon-face giving him attitude without even knowing him.

 

“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

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Thanks, Ragnorak. It was nice to write it.

 

 

For starters I'd like to take a look back at Sandor's intentions upon leaving King's Landing. What was he doing? Where did he intend to go before the BwB so rudely interrupted him? What was there in the Riverlands for him? The answer seems to be Gregor.

 

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.

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