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Most Powerful and Beautiful Moments


coolsaladgirl93

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Great choices guys! Another one from Jaime II, A Feast For Crows, while far from beautiful was very disturbingl and left quite an impact on my day:
"'You're hurting me." In some queer way that had been worse than Lord Chelsted's screaming. 'We are sworn to protect her as well,' Jaime had finally been driven to say. 'We are,' Darry allowed, 'but not from him.'" 

Left a feeling like a punch in the gut

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This has always been a powerful moment in my books, whether reading it myself, or having :bowdown:Roy Dotrice read it to me (which is always better).

Hugo "Big Bucket" Wull:

A Dance with Dragons - The King's Prize

That seemed to amuse the northman. "I want to live forever in a land where summer lasts a thousand years. I want a castle in the clouds where I can look down over the world. I want to be six-and-twenty again. When I was six-and-twenty I could fight all day and fuck all night. What men want does not matter.
"Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned's little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue."
"Aye!" shouted Morgan Liddle. "Blood and battle!" Then all the hillmen were shouting, banging their cups and drinking horns on the table, filling the king's tent with the clangor.
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Meribald account of the broken men. It is quite good and intense. I have shown that part (without context) to other non-asoiaf readers and all of them said it was beautifully drawn. One of them said it was quite friendly to be put on screen too, since it was both simple and powerful. So that's my pick.

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“You’re too bloody heavy.” Grenn jammed his hands into Sam’s armpits, gave a grunt, and hauled him upright.

But the moment he let go, the fat boy sat back down in the snow. Grenn kicked him, a solid thump that cracked the crust of snow around his boot and sent it flying everywhere. “Get  up! ” He kicked him again. “Get up and walk. You have to walk.”

Sam fell over sideways, curling up into a tight ball to protect himself from the kicks. He hardly felt them through all his wool and leather and mail, but even so, they hurt.  

I thought Grenn was my friend. You shouldn’t kick your friends. Why won’t they let me be? I just need to rest, that’s all, to rest and sleep some, and maybe die a little .

I don't really know why, but I cried reading Sam say this. 

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When Davos thinks he's to be executed in the Wolf's Den, he writes letters to his wife and sons. I'm always thought the letter to his wife was especially poignant.

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Davos sat beside his candle and looked at the letters he had scratched out word by word during the days of his confinement. I was a better smuggler than a knight, he had written to his wife, a better knight than a King’s Hand, a better King’s Hand than a husband. I am so sorry. Marya, I have loved you. Please forgive the wrongs I did you. Should Stannis lose his war, our lands will be lost as well. Take the boys across the narrow sea to Braavos and teach them to think kindly of me, if you would. Should Stannis gain the Iron Throne, House Seaworth will survive and Devan will remain at court. He will help you place the other boys with noble lords, where they can serve as pages and squires and win their knighthoods. It was the best counsel he had for her, though he wished it sounded wiser.

 

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I've always loved the end of AFFC, Chapter 40, The Princess in the Tower. Doran Martell revealing to Arianne his playing the game of thrones. The point where he replies that his intended husband for her died from a pot of molten gold, and that last line:

He says he sent Quenten on a journey to “bring us back our heart’s desire.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What is our heart’s desire?”

“Vengeance.” His voice was soft, as if he were afraid that someone might be listening. “Justice.” Prince Doran pressed the onyx dragon into her palm with his swollen, gouty fingers, and whispered, “Fire and blood.”

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On 24/10/2017 at 3:36 PM, Widow's Watch said:

What Needle represents for Arya;

That was going to be my pick. So in second place:

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When you smell our candles burning, what does it make you think of, my child?"

Winterfell, she might have said. I smell snow and smoke and pine needles. I smell the stables. I smell Hodor laughing, and Jon and Robb battling in the yard, and Sansa singing about some stupid lady fair. I smell the crypts where the stone kings sit, I smell hot bread baking, I smell the godswood. I smell my wolf, I smell her fur, almost as if she were still beside me.

AFFC, Arya II

 

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"They hate you because you act like you're better than they are. They look at you and see a castle-bred bastard who things he's a lordling. You're no lordling. Remember that. You're a Snow, not a Stark. You're a bastard and a bully. Four that you've humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I've watched you fight. It's not training with you. Put a good edge on your sword, and they're dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?"

What Donal Noye tells Jon is still one of my favorite things in the books. That's how you call someone out. And I always thought it was a powerful moment because it marks the beginning of Jon's turn around. Jon takes the lessons he learns to heart. 

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"What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Winds and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy." 

This spells out very clearly what the downfall of honorable men is. And it ties in nicely with what Jeor Mormont thinks of love. 
 
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The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember that.

 
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Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name.

I can't even explain how this moment made me feel. I read AGoT a year after it came out, and I picked up ACoK like 12 years later. So in AGoT, RLJ made no doubt in my mind and the moment that sealed it for me were Ned's thoughts after he leaves Chataya's brothel. This moment in the chamber of the Undying came out of nowhere. But what makes it powerful for me is what happens when Jon gets stabbed in ADWD, and his final thought.

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Stick them with the pointy end.

I always found these two scenes coupled together pretty devastating.

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"You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is a crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy in your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born."

God, I miss Maester Aemon so damn much. 

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The part where Jaime dreams of his mother, and she leaves with "her skirt whispering lullabies" as he thinks "don't leave me" made me cry. I could remember how much I loved my mother as a child and then I imagined how heartbroken and probably lost I would have felt if she'd died.

 

The part where Sandor tells Sansa he'd kill anyone who'd hurt her astounded me -- that sounded very impassioned. I now think he's in love with her, but I pretty much missed the signs until then. That line made me interested in all the "SanSan" stuff I'd seen here and there, as I wondered what exactly was going on in their relationship.

 

There's a part, I think, where Bran thinks of all the things he'll never be after his fall. The thoughts seemed very realistic to me, and detailed enough that I felt like I was listening to the thoughts of a real child in that situation. It was interesting and I felt for him too.

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  1. Daenerys's assault in Astapor.
  2. Catelyn's last thoughts about all her sweet babies.
  3. Catelyn talking to Brienne about her daughters before releasing Jaime.
  4. Theon crying in front of the heart tree.
  5. Winter festival in Winterfell
  6. Brienne's breakdown in the Quiet Isle.

 

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The gods were cruel when they saw fit to test my vows. They waited till I was old. What could I do when the ravens brought news from the South? The ruin of my House, the death of my family? I was helpless, blind, frail. But when I heard they had killed my brother's son, and his poor son, and the children. Even the little children!  Who are you?  My father was Maekar, the First of his Name. My brother Aegon reigned after him, when I had refused the throne, and he was followed by his son Aerys, whom they called the Mad King.  

 

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I genuinely cried when I read "Stick them with the pointy end" at the end of Jon's last chapter. The bitter irony of it, gosh.

I think Theon in the godswood of Winterfell are some of the most beautiful moments of the books, not because we see him at a breaking point, but because we know Bran is surpassing himself and gaining more and more power for the sole purpose of reaching Theon and helping him. We know right from the beginning of AGoT Bran is a kind and compassionate character, but there's something in those Winterfell chapters that gets me every time.

Some powerful moments : the dream in which Arya wargs in Nymeria and pulls her mother from the river, Jon's "Kill the boy" chapter, Dany riding Drogon for the first time, and of course the very second you realize the Manderlys successfully tricked everybody around them.

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The tenderness he exhibits when Khal Drogo approaches Dany on their first coupling after their marriage ceremony. At the wedding with his bloodriders present he's at his masculine hardest with the scene built around sex lust, blood lust, sexual-violent imagery. Away from his khalasar he comes to Dany at his softest. She's Goddess and he in his wonder, is in awe of her. It's incredibly powerful because this is what men are like, at their deepest level.  There's a neediness in men that's very complex.  For a writer to create that psychological intensity and depth in a male character, viewed from a female character pov is genius.

Arya waking up blind - I felt like I had a shot of adrenaline go through me when I first read that final sentence.

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I am really fond of how CoK ends:

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The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either.

 

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