50 pages • 1 hour read
George R. R. MartinA Feast for Crows
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Jaime”
Inside the Great Sept, Jaime stands vigil in front of Tywin’s body. He must do this for seven days and nights before the funeral. During this time, he reflects on his role in his father’s death. Jaime recollects how he was the one responsible for freeing Tyrion, so that his younger brother would not be executed for Joffrey’s murder. He forced Lord Varys, the previous “master of whispers” responsible for espionage and information, to help him by drugging the wine of Tyrion’s guards. However, he also recalls that Tyrion “never said he meant to kill our father” and that if he had, “I would have stopped him” (132).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Brienne”
Brienne arrives at Duskendale and inquires into the whereabouts of Ser Dontos and Sansa. The lord there says that he has seen neither and that they are most likely in Old Town or the Vale, where Sansa’s aunt Lysa lives. In a tavern, Brienne hears that in the nearby port town of Maidenpool, in the “Stinking Goose” inn, a man named Nimble Dick was seen with a fool looking for sea passage for himself and two others. Hoping this is Ser Dontos and Sansa, Brienne decides now to travel to Maidenpool. On her way, she encounters a young man who has been stalking her, and she knocks him from his horse. He turns out to be Tyrion’s old squire, Podrick, who has been following her because he is also looking for Sansa.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Sansa”
Sansa Stark is living in the Vale, a kingdom on the east coast of Westeros, in a mountain castle known as “The Eyrie.” She is posing as “Alayne,” the daughter of Petyr Baelish, a man recently made Lord Protector of the Vale after marrying Sansa’s aunt Lysa. He helped Sansa escape from King’s Landing after her father’s death. However, her aunt Lysa is no longer there. Lord Baelish murdered Lysa after she tried to kill Sansa. Lysa did this because she was jealous of Baelish’s romantic interest in Sansa. When an important knight from the Vale, Lord Nestor, comes to visit the Eyrie, Baelish convinces Sansa to lie about her aunt’s death. He persuades her to blame the murder on a singer called Marillion who, they will claim, loved Lysa and acted out of jealousy. After being fooled by their lies, Nestor informs Baelish that other lords of the Vale are conspiring to remove him as Lord Protector.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Kraken’s Daughter”
After being away at sea, Asha Greyjoy arrives back to her home island in the Iron Islands, Harlaw. She arranges a feast to see which captains and lords will support her claim to be ruler of the Iron Islands following her father’s death. Asha observes that there are too few there, and that “even ironborn will hesitate to give their lives for a cause that’s plainly lost” (178). She then meets with her bookish uncle Rodrick, Lord of Harlaw. He informs her that the next ruler will be decided by a kingsmoot and advises her against competing in it. Nevertheless, she insists on going to the kingsmoot taking place on the island of Old Wyk.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Cersei”
It is the day of King Tommen and Margaery Tyrell’s wedding. At the small ceremony, Cersei is jealous at being usurped by another “queen.” This fear is connected to a prophecy she heard as a child which said that she would be queen “until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear” (201). This anxiety leads her to ask Jaime to keep watch inside the bedroom of the newlyweds, despite the fact that eight-year-old Tommen is too young to consummate their marriage. Cersei also learns from a confidant of Margaery’s, Lady Taena Merryweather, that one of Cersei’s maids may be a spy for the Tyrells. After the wedding, Cersei has the Tower of the Hand burned down in a symbolic reaffirmation of her desire to rule alone.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Soiled Knight”
A knight of the Kingsguard, Ser Arys Oakheart, is staying in Sunspear, Dorne to protect Myrcella Baratheon, Cersei’s ten-year-old daughter. She was sent to Dorne to marry a young Dornish prince by former Hand Tyrion to cement an alliance with Dorne. Ser Arys is sleeping with the Prince Doran’s daughter, Arianne. He feels guilty about this due to the vows of chastity taken by the Kingsguard. Meanwhile, Arianne is frustrated by the idea that her birthright, Dorne, is being taken away by her father to give to her younger brother. Identifying with Myrcella and wanting to help the cause of Doran’s nieces, “the Sand Snakes,” in provoking war, she seeks to crown Myrcella as queen of Westeros. However, Arys has been ordered by Prince Doran to take Myrcella to the Water Gardens “to keep her away from those who’d seek to crown her” (219).
Chapter 15 Summary: “Brienne”
At the gates of Maidenpool, Brienne is confronted by aggressive soldiers One knight, Ser Hyle Hunt, tells her where to find the “Stinking Goose,” though first he takes her to the lord of Maidenpool, Lord Tarly. Tarly threatens Brienne and accuses her of killing Stannis Baratheon’s younger brother, Renly, a common rumor. This is before she shows Tarly a letter stating that she has “king’s business” finding Sansa. Brienne then locates the Stinking Goose and Nimble Dick. The man admits to having sent a fool and two girls seeking sea passage from to a place called “the Whispers” within Crackclaw Point, an area northeast of Maidenpool. This was once a smuggler’s cove, and Nimble Dick tricked the fool into believing a ship would arrive there to take them away. In return for gold, Nimble Dick agrees to guide Brienne to the cove, where she hopes Sansa and Ser Dontos are still stuck.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Samwell”
Sam, Gilly, Maester Aemon, and a singer from the Night’s Watch named Dareon are on a boat heading for Braavos on the way to Old Town. As the boat passes through choppy waters, Sam is badly seasick and Gilly is constantly crying. Maester Aemon stays on deck one time when it rains, before being brought into the ship’s cabin, soaking wet and ill. Several days later, Aemon tells Sam that Gilly is crying not because of seasickness but out of grief. Jon Snow forced her to leave behind her own child and instead take the baby of a Wildling king, Mance Rayder. This was to protect Rayder’s child from Lady Melisandre, a sorceress in the service of Stannis Baratheon at the Wall, who threatened to burn the child as a sacrifice to her god. In turn, this preserved an uneasy truce between Jon Snow’s Night’s Watch and the Wildlings.
Chapters 9-16 Analysis
During the “War of the Five Kings,” precipitated by Eddard Stark’s execution after Robert Baratheon’s death and the Lannister’s seizure of power, many men were killed or maimed. This violence came through both direct conflict and related murders and reprisals. Victims included Rob Stark, Renly and Joffrey Baratheon, Jaime Lannister, who lost his hand, and countless other minor lords and common folk. These events also helped cause the deaths of Tywin Lannister and Oberyn Martell and the disappearance of Tyrion Lannister and Lord Varys. Yet while this human cost is terrible and a testament to the brutality of the war, it also has important social consequences. Set in the aftermath of the conflict and its political fallout, the novel emphasizes how these losses disrupt the social order and create new opportunities for women. Specifically, they allow figures like Brienne, Asha, and Sansa to become more prominent in events and to challenge the traditional female roles foisted upon them.
These traditional roles are epitomized by Gilly and Margaery. As Sam says of Gilly, “She would not come up on deck, no matter what he said, and seemed to prefer to huddle in the dark with her son” (245). While on the ship to Braavos, Gilly is confined to looking after her baby, refusing to move or go outside. Symbolically, this represents Gilly’s acceptance of an entirely passive role as a mother and the restriction of her world that comes as a result. At the other end of the social spectrum is Margaery. She is not likely to be a mother for some years, and unlike Gilly she enjoys a large degree of comfort and wealth. Nevertheless, her identity is defined first by her youth and beauty and second by her marriage. Any power she wields will be indirect and surreptitious via her influence on Tommen.
In contrast, Brienne and Asha consciously carve out independent roles. As a teenager, Asha told a love interest who “began to go on about the children she would bear him; a dozen sons at least” that “I don’t want to have a dozen sons […] I want to have adventures” (190). She seeks a life of action and exploration, instinctively viewing motherhood as a limit to this. Likewise with Brienne; because of the premature death of the man to whom she was betrothed as a girl, she is now “dressed in man’s mail, and carrying a sword, hunting for a dead woman’s child” (228). She does this instead of “swaddling a child of her own and nursing another” (228). Sansa’s status is more ambiguous and a result of circumstance rather than choice. Still, as awful as it was, her father’s death allows Sansa to join Baelish in a life of political scheming and intrigue. It also allows her to take part in “the game of thrones” (177), played by Baelish. Part of this is linked to the tantalizing possibility that she could emerge as the Queen of the North and Winterfell.
However, this newfound freedom and adventure is not without struggle or cost. To avoid subsequent marriages Brienne must literally fight off and defeat would-be husbands in combat, to prove that she is not a conventional woman whom they can subdue. Similarly, once a knight, she must endure constant slights about her femininity or lack thereof. Ser Hyle sarcastically described her as “Brienne the Beauty” and as someone “as mean as she is ugly” (230). Even her squire Podrick repeatedly stumbles over whether to call her “Ser” or “Lady.” The price for defying gender expectations here is to have one’s status and desirability as a woman perpetually questioned.
Asha does not fare much better in this respect. She is forced to violently confront her old lover, Tish, when he insists on calling her his “wife” and grabs her arm. Like Brienne, she is compelled to use force to defend her freedom and resist those who would cow her into marriage. In part as a defense mechanism, she adopts a flippant, unemotional attitude toward sexuality, bragging, “I have touched more men than I can count” (191). Sansa also modulates her behavior as she navigates male-dominated spaces. Although she is allowed into Baelish’s world of plots and power politics, the price is that must she become more and more like him, learning to deceive others, shift identities, and conceal intentions. This can be seen in her adoption of the role of Alayne. And like Baelish, Asha, and Brienne, she must do this with the knowledge of the dangers of playing such a “game”—namely, that to slip up is to risk death.
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