81 pages • 2-hour read
A Storm of Swords
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Chapters 51-60Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide features discussion of graphic violence, death, slavery, and sexual content.
Chapter 51 Summary: “Arya”
To infiltrate the Twins, Sandor and Arya pose as servants bringing goods to the wedding feast. They arrive while the wedding feast is ongoing. Sandor wants to reach Robb directly.
Chapter 52 Summary: “Catelyn”
Although Edmure is happy with his new bride, the wedding feast strikes Catelyn as being joyless. At one point, Bolton leaves the feast, presumably seeking a better celebration in one of the adjacent halls.
Walder urges Robb to initiate the bedding. The Freys lead the ritual, pushing a terrified Roslin and Edmure away from the feast hall. Catelyn turns suspicious when one of the remaining Freys, Edwyn, refuses a dance with one of Robb’s vassals. The musicians start playing “The Rains of Castamere.” Catelyn pursues Edwyn and realizes he is wearing armor. Catelyn slaps him, and when Robb approaches to intervene, he is suddenly shot by several arrows. Crossbowmen start firing on the Stark bannermen.
Catelyn struggles to reach Robb after being shot in the back. Walder pauses the ambush to mock Robb, promising to apologize for his betrayal. Catelyn threatens to kill one of Walder’s grandsons unless he allows Robb to escape. Bolton kills Robb, passing along Jaime Lannister’s regards. Catelyn kills Walder’s grandson before she herself is killed by a Frey.
Chapter 53 Summary: “Arya”
The Freys slaughter the Stark soldiers. Arya runs back toward the castle, hoping to save her mother. Sandor knocks her out to stop her.
Chapter 54 Summary: “Tyrion”
Tywin informs his family that Robb Stark has been killed and that Edmure has been taken hostage by Walder Frey. Tywin sees an opportunity to turn Robb’s allies against one another to the Lannisters’ advantage. Joffrey protests because he wants all the Stark bannermen to die. Tywin scolds Joffrey and urges him to focus on his impending marriage. Joffrey responds by insulting Tywin. Tywin sends him away and scolds Cersei for failing to curtail Joffrey’s arrogance.
Tywin shifts his concern to Oberyn Martell. Tywin wants to protect Gregor, whom he believes to be a valuable servant. He intends to misdirect Oberyn with a false answer to the identity of Elia’s killer. He also plans to surrender Arya to Bolton so that she can marry Bolton’s son Ramsay. Tyrion wonders how he plans to do this since Arya is still missing.
Chapter 55 Summary: “Davos”
News of the bloody massacre at the Tully-Frey wedding, now called the Red Wedding, reaches Dragonstone. Stannis is shocked by Walder’s treachery. When Melisandre urges Stannis to sacrifice Edric Storm and conquer the North, Stannis balks at the idea. Davos reminds Stannis that it would curse him to kill his own nephew. He also argues that Melisandre’s magic hasn’t fully worked: Joffrey, one of the men Stannis named when he burned the leeches, is still alive. Stannis accepts Davos’s reasoning and sends Melisandre away. Davos continues to argue for Edric, but it upsets the rigidly moralistic Stannis to keep thinking of Edric as a result of Robert’s infidelity. Stannis is also conflicted because of his commitment to defend the realm from the Lord of Darkness. He admits that he does not know how to achieve this other than to follow Melisandre’s advice.
Despite the popular support for him as Hand, Davos is not yet confident that he can perform his role competently. Maester Pylos encourages him to think better of himself and offers to teach him to read. During their first lesson, Pylos instructs Davos to read a letter. The letter comes from the Night’s Watch, warning of the wildling invasion on the Wall. Davos expresses concern over the contents of the letter, which was dismissed by his predecessor.
Chapter 56 Summary: “Jon”
The Night’s Watch prepares for the wildling siege. Jon stations himself in a tower to fight the assault back by bow. Jon tries looking for Ygritte among the attackers, but they are too far away for him to recognize her.
The wildlings advance, breaking through the castle’s exterior lines of defense. When Styr ascends the steps to the castle gates, Jon fires a flaming arrow at the incendiary kegs hidden beneath. The fire kills many of the wildlings, including Styr, and halts their assault.
Jon descends from the tower to inspect the dead. He finds Ygritte mortally wounded by an arrow. Jon assures Ygritte that Maester Aemon will tend to her wound. Dying, Ygritte mocks Jon’s naivety and wishes they’d stayed in the cave.
Chapter 57 Summary: “Bran”
Bran’s party arrives at a castle called the Nightfort. Bran is scared of the Nightfort because it is the domain of Night’s King, a figure from Old Nan’s stories. The Nightfort also has a sealed gate that will allow them to cross the Wall. Meera searches for alternate paths, but does not find any.
That evening, they camp in the Nightfort. Something climbs up through the nearby well. Bran, Hodor, and Meera apprehend the intruders, who turn out to be Samwell Tarly and Gilly. They explain that they were sent there by Coldhands, the stranger who saved them from the Others. Coldhands was actually looking for someone else—Jojen identifies Bran as that person. Sam recognizes Bran as Jon’s brother and promises to keep his identity secret out of loyalty to Jon.
Sam leads Bran down the well to the hidden Black Gate. This magical gate can only be opened by a Night’s Watch ranger who recites his oath. Sam does this for Bran.
Chapter 58 Summary: “Daenerys”
The Second Sons, led by their new commander Brown Ben Plumm, join Daenerys’s army. Daenerys prepares to attack the city of Meereen, which is better defended than its sister cities. Meereen sends a champion, Oznak zo Pahl, to challenge Daenerys’s army. Daario offers to fight him, but Daenerys, who is attracted to Daario, is anxious about losing him. Instead, she sends Strong Belwas, whose showy fighting style wins the duel.
Meereen refuses to open its gates, so Daenerys and her war council consider the best way to take the city. When no clear strategy presents itself, Jorah advises leaving to refocus on her campaign on Westeros. Daenerys does not want to leave without emancipating the enslaved children, so she urges her war council to consider another strategy. Brown Ben Plumm suggests entering the city through the sewers, though this would prove difficult for both the Unsullied and Daenerys’s bloodriders.
Daenerys rides out with Missandei and Arstan to visit the many people who now follow her. Mero emerges from the crowd and attempts to assassinate Daenerys, but Arstan successfully defends her. Daenerys scolds Jorah for failing to warn her about Mero’s threat. She then declares her intent to knight Arstan, much to Jorah’s chagrin. Arstan then reveals that he already is a knight, having served House Targaryen in Westeros. His true name is Barristan Selmy. Barristan regrets seeking Robert’s pardon when Robert usurped the throne from Aerys. Barristan only realized that he needed to uphold the honor of his oath after he was disgraced by Joffrey.
Barristan reveals that Jorah has been spying on Daenerys and sending reports to royal spymaster Varys in King’s Landing. Jorah admits that he did this on the promise of a pardon for his crimes. Upset, Daenerys sends both knights to lead the sewer assault on Meereen.
Chapter 59 Summary: “Tyrion”
Tyrion shares the news of the Red Wedding with Sansa, who grieves in private. This fills Tyrion with guilt and self-loathing.
Later that night, he goes to meet with Shae, who now serves as Sansa’s maid. Tyrion and Shae have sex and lie together until dawn. Tyrion is too burdened with anxiety, however, to fully enjoy their time together. He decides that the wisest thing to do is to detach himself from Shae, either by sending her away or by marrying her to one of his allies. He soon dispels this notion and instead tells Shae how happy she makes him. She expresses her love for him.
Chapter 60 Summary: “Sansa”
Sansa dreams of Winterfell and wakes up alone. She only sees Tyrion when she is dressing for breakfast with the Lannisters. Tyrion indulges her request to wear his new doublet to look more presentable.
After breakfast, the wedding guests come to offer Joffrey their gifts for his upcoming nuptials to Margaery. His uncle Tyrion gifts Joffrey a history of four kings, which Joffrey resents. His grandfather Tywin gifts the Valyrian steel sword, which Joffrey uses to destroy Tyrion’s gift. He demands a better gift from Tyrion.
As they ride to the wedding, Sansa expresses her sympathy over Tyrion’s destroyed gift. Tyrion asks if Joffrey ever quarreled with Bran, curious about who attacked Ned Stark’s son. Sansa does not think so. Tyrion observes Sansa’s affection for her brothers. Sansa denies it, frightened that any warm feelings toward the Starks puts her in danger in the Lannister household; she quickly calls them traitors, in keeping with court opinion. Tyrion reassures her that he does not mean her any harm, but Sansa doesn’t believe him. Tyrion respects her wish not to learn any more about Robb and Catelyn’s deaths because he understands that it will give her bad dreams.
Chapters 51-60 Analysis
The sudden and unexpected deaths of Catelyn and Robb Stark at the hands of their former allies, Walder Frey and Roose Bolton, are a shocking twist in the novel. This willingness to sideline, kill off, or otherwise dispose of major characters, especially protagonists seemingly destined for eventual victory, is characteristic of Martin’s style. A similar plot point marked the climax of the series’ first book, A Game of Thrones, when Martin chose to kill off the novel’s de facto hero, Ned Stark. This device is one of Martin’s primary ways of signaling that while he is writing a fantasy novel, he is writing against the high fantasy subgenre epitomized by authors like J.R.R. Tolkien (whose middle initial Martin’s pen name pays homage to), in which ideals are rewarded and heroic characters achieve their goals and prevail. By removing such characters from the novel in unceremonious ways, Martin shows his interest in infusing gritty realism and realpolitik into his fantasy world.
Catelyn and Robb’s deaths have a widespread impact on their surviving family members. The pressure on Sansa, Arya, and Jon increases with the sudden power vacuum created in the Starks’ northern domain. Likewise, other factions, such as the Lannisters and Stannis, find themselves regrouping to assess new objectives in the wake of this violence.
The family that gains the most from the assassination is undoubtedly the Lannisters. Tywin is proved to be a strategic thinker with broad perspective: He not only orchestrated the alliance of the Boltons and Freys to undermine Robb, but also arranged Tyrion and Sansa’s marriage to block the Tyrells from gaining a foothold in King’s Landing and to give the Lannisters a strong claim to Winterfell. However, Tywin’s ability to manipulate the external situation does little to quell the intra-family turmoil that stems from Lannisters facing The Challenges of Choosing One’s Own Destiny. The spoiled and sadistic Joffrey, raised to believe himself ideally suited for tyrannical rule, defies being his grandfather’s puppet on the throne; the resentful Tyrion plots against Joffrey, Cersei, and Tywin to reclaim the political power he once held; and Cersei is unwilling to once again be traded away in politically advantageous marriage. As the patriarch, Tywin still holds the most power in his family, so to achieve their personal desires, his progeny must oppose him. Keeping Tyrion, Cersei, and Joffrey in positions of symbolic power, Tywin asserts his hold on the real power he has to achieve his own objectives, but the infighting that weakened the Starks foreshadows similar decline for other ruling families.
In these chapters, Daenerys reconsiders her vassals. Unlike Jorah and Arstan, Daario Naharis comes into Daenerys’s service with open unscrupulousness: He betrays his co-captains to surrender the Stormcrows to Daenerys. Jorah has warned Daenerys of betrayal, suggesting that Daario is the strongest threat to her because he has proven himself capable of betrayal. However, Chapter 58 reveals the ironic twist behind Jorah’s counsel: Arstan exposes Jorah as having been a traitor all along. This recontextualizes Jorah’s constant urging to return to Westeros. Much like Jon when caught between the Night’s Watch and the wildlings, Jorah is likely to have struggled between completing his mission to destabilize Daenerys and feeling sympathy for her, given Jorah’s recurring declarations of love. However, for Daenerys, Jorah is a cautionary tale about the impossibility of ascertaining loyalty, especially when promises of allegiance are backed only by claims of honor. Unlike Arstan, whose commitment to Daenerys stems from his oath to the Targaryen family, Daario’s motives are easier to discern: Rather than pledging an oath, he is open about his mercenary interests in plunder and sexual interest in Daenerys.
Chapter 57 marks the end of Bran’s narrative in this novel, which has largely focused on his quest to find the three-eyed crow. Bran’s journey addresses the series’ interest in the clash between older, animist religious traditions in Westeros and the newer Faith of the Seven practiced by the nobility. The oppression of people who hold the older faith—typically Northern smallfolk—echoes the series’ foregrounding of the ways aristocratic power increases the suffering of those who do not wield it. Bran’s magical powers are tied to the old gods, now represented by sacred trees—elements that work against the more realistic features of the series. As he travels, he discovers various landmarks from Old Nan’s childhood stories—now revealed to be myths from this older belief system and retellings of historical events in the North. Bran’s reliance on his childhood memories and his conception of this dark history as bedtime stories neuter the threat of places that appear eerie and foreboding, allowing him to navigate them. In these chapters, Bran exposes the fantastical elements that surround the Wall, setting up the increasingly fantastical bent of his story during his next appearance in A Dance with Dragons.
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