A Feast for Crows

“A Hand without a hand?”

This quote is Jaime’s response when Cersei offers him the position of Tommen’s Hand—though effectively her Hand. Jaime turns the offer down. His insecurity about his physical loss reflects a deeper psychological insecurity and a fear that he does not have the strength to help Cersei rule.

“He will need me to teach him how to rule and keep him safe from his enemies.”

Cersei is concerned about Tommen. Unlike her other son, the now dead Joffrey, Tommen is weak and sensitive, as shown by his crying at Tywin’s funeral. Cersei endeavors to change this and uses it as a justification for her effectively ruling by herself.

“How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?”

Jaime reflects on mortality while keeping vigil over his dead father. He wonders if the ultimate prize of ruling is worth all the struggle and bloodshed it involves. After all, kings end up dead like everyone else.

“Queen you shall be […] until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.”

This is part of the prophecy that a sorceress delivers to Cersei as a child. It forms the basis for a paranoid obsession over Margaery Tyrell, who is marrying Tommen and to whom Cersei believes the prophecy refers. However, the prophecy really refers to the transience of youth and beauty, and the inevitability of being usurped.

“[I]t is not right for men to kneel to women.”

Arianne outlines the attitude which she believes informs her father’s decision to make her younger brother Quentyn his heir to the rule of Dorne. She believes that she is being denied her birthright by this sexism. This frustration leads her to rebel against her father.

“Dogs and wolves and lions, may the Others take them all.”

On her way to Maidenpool to look for Sansa, Brienne encounters a farmer who tells her this. It reveals a hatred for all the warring factions in Westeros. And it shows how the interests and well-being of the common people have been disregarded in these conflicts.

“Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods […] gods of empty air […] I know them all.”

This quote is Euron Greyjoy’s response when he is accused of being godless the night before the kingsmoot. His comment is a clever way of parrying accusations that he is impious. He instead emphasizes his strength in seafaring and breadth of experience, in having travelled so widely.

“Men of a hundred different nations labored in the mines, and each prayed to his own god […] yet all were praying for the same thing. It was release they asked for, an end to pain.”

The priest in the House of Black and White explains to Arya the origins of the Many-Faced God religion. He argues that it evolved from the struggles of a slave class drawn from multiple nations. What unified them was a common nihilistic desire for an end to the suffering of existence.

“I do not need a silly little boy fidgeting on the throne behind me and distracting me with childish questions.”

Cersei explains why Tommen cannot sit on the Iron Throne, even though previous child king Joffrey had been allowed to. She claims that he is not old enough and it would distract her. What this really reveals is Cersei’s growing anxiety that Margaery is trying to gain influence through Tommen.

“At the end dragon hatches from an egg and devours all of the lions.”

This is Qyburn’s description to Cersei of the ending of a subversive puppet show. It is a parable for Lannister misrule, alluding to their future deposing by the return of the Targaryens in the form of Daenerys. Cersei’s brutal response to this show—to have the puppeteers executed—betrays an insecurity about the underlying fragility of her rule.

“[S]he could feel their dead eyes on her back, and once she dreamed she heard them whispering to one another.”

After killing three men near a castle called “the whispers,” Brienne’s fellow traveler, Ser Hyle, straps their heads to the back of a horse to take to his lord. These heads disturb Brienne and affect her dreams. They are symbols of a deeper horror and fear she has over her involvement in violence and bloodshed.

“Some men are blessed with sons, some with daughters. No man deserves to be cursed with such as you.”

This quote is what the Lord of Maidenpool, Tarly, says to Brienne. It reflects a prejudice about the idea of Brienne as a female knight. It also taps into an anxiety Brienne has regarding her parents: that she is neither properly a son nor a daughter to them.

“They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win.”

A priest, Meribald, explains to Brienne and Podrick the nature of “broken men.” These are ordinary people who go off to war with idealistic expectations of the adventure it will be. However, when confronted by the brutal reality of battle, they are traumatized and psychologically broken. They end up then roaming the countryside, hunting for scraps of food and stealing.

“This is what comes of letting fools and cowards rule themselves.”

Cersei has just heard about the new High Septon, who was brought to power because of the popular support he enjoyed amongst the commonfolk. She expresses both a contempt for ordinary people and a belief in the necessity of aristocratic, authoritarian rule. However, this attitude will blind her to the real strength and danger of the new High Septon.

“A king who does not protect his people is no king at all.

This quote is what one of the sparrows blocking Cersei’s way into the Great Sept says. This comment reflects a growing questioning of royal authority on the part of ordinary people in Westeros. If the king cannot fulfill a basic duty of his rule— providing security—there is little incentive for people to obey him.

“Septon Torbert has been confined to a penitent’s cell on bread and water. It is sinful for any man to be so plump when half the realm is starving.”

This quote reveals the fate befalling one of Cersei’s favorite priests. This punishment shows how the new High Septon is clamping down on corruption. It also shows his emphasis on asceticism, humble living, and concern for the poor.

“Suffering is everywhere […] Weeds and thorns grow where gardens once flourished, and bones litter the roadsides.”

This is part of what the High Sparrow says to Cersei when she asks him to send the sparrows in King’s Landing back home. He points out that many of them no longer have homes, as they have been destroyed in the recent wars. In many cases, entire villages have disappeared. However, Cersei is unable to sympathize with or properly respond to the plight of the sparrows.

“Every day in every way she tries to steal him from me.”

Cersei imagines that Margaery is constantly conspiring to take Tommen from her. In reality, this is mostly a paranoid fantasy fueled by her childhood prophecy. While Margaery seeks greater influence, she is not obsessed with either power or Tommen in the way Cersei imagines her to be.

“Ignoble as it was, the hope of seeing his brother’s blood upon his blade was all this sad and angry creature lived for.”

A priest in the monastery near Saltpans explains to Brienne that the Hound, whom she is looking for to get to Sansa, is dead. He also explains that he deserves pity as someone torn apart by a desire for revenge. His comments are intended to show why Brienne should give up on her quest, free herself from past obligations, and go home. Brienne does not heed this advice.

“The singers would have us believe it was all Rhaegar and Robert struggling in the stream for a woman both of them claimed to love.”

The priest tells Brienne how he came to that vocation. He had been fighting in a battle and almost killed, then he woke up at the monastery. The priest seeks to show how the romanticization of war and the great figures supposedly central to it rests on the suffering of a mass of other individuals.

“The crow had transformed himself into a peacock.”

Arya sees the singer Dareon with a woman having abandoned the Night’s Watch. “Crow” is a nickname for members of the Watch, and Arya’s comment implies that he has given up duty there to become something vain and self-serving. They also betray a sense of jealousy on Arya’s part around the fact that Dareon has escaped from the world of violence and political struggle toward something more appealing.

“Brienne spied axes, arrows, several salmon, a pine tree, an oak leaf, beetles, bantams, a boar’s head […] Broken men, she realized, dregs from a dozen armies, the leavings of the lords.”

Brienne observes the different symbols on the cloaks of men who have been hung near Saltpans. Beyond the differences in the lords they fought for, these men are indistinguishable in death. They had been responsible for raiding Saltpans and hanged by the Brotherhood Without Banners as a result.

“He will never have a wife that you don’t hate.”

Cersei goes to visit the imprisoned Margaery in the Great Sept. Margaery sees through Cersei’s feigned sympathy and expresses both her certainty that Cersei was behind her imprisonment and what she thinks is her motivation for organizing it. Namely, Cersei wants to have Tommen all to herself and resents any other female influence on him.