A Storm of Swords

“The plan was Chett’s. He was the clever one; he’d been steward to old Maester Aemon for four good years before that bastard Jon Snow had done him out so his job could be handed to his fat pig of a friend. When he killed Sam Tarly tonight, he planned to whisper, “Give my love to Lord Snow,” right in his ear before he sliced Ser Piggy’s throat open to let the blood come bubbling out through all those layers of suet.”

Although Chett is a minor character in the larger plot of the novel, his perspective is valuable in reacquainting the reader with the world of Westeros. Chett defamiliarizes the heroic character of Jon Snow and his allies, framing them as villains in his own story. The statement he plans to give Sam subtly foreshadows what Roose Bolton will tell Robb Stark before killing him—“Jaime Lannister sends his regards.”

“You, who killed your mother to come into the world? You are an ill-made, devious, disobedient, spiteful little creature full of envy, lust, and low cunning. Men’s laws give you the right to bear my name and display my colors, since I cannot prove that you are not mine. To teach me humility, the gods have condemned me to watch you waddle about wearing that proud lion that was my father’s sigil and his father’s before him. But neither gods nor men shall ever compel me to let you turn Casterly Rock into your whorehouse.”

Tywin spells out his hatred for his son Tyrion. Tywin’s spite for Tyrion is existential, stemming back to the circumstances of his birth. When Tyrion later confesses that he has been on trial all his life, he is responding directly to his father’s opinion of him in this passage. Throughout the novel, Tyrion tries to prove that he is more than that opinion, ultimately failing in the face of his father’s political machinery.

“‘They don’t much care for that beast o’ yours,’ Longspear Ryk said to Jon.

‘They’re dogs and he’s a wolf,’ said Jon. ‘They know he’s not their kind.’ No more than I am yours.”

Jon’s white dire wolf, Ghost, is symbolic of Jon’s many different ways of being an outsider. Just as Ghost is the only dire wolf to be a different color from his litter, so too has Jon always stood out, from his status as a child born out of wedlock during childhood, to his decision to join the Night’s Watch, to his position as a spy infiltrating the wildlings here.