A Game of Thrones

*A Game of Thrones* is a novel written by George R.R. Martin. Released in 1996, it is the first book in Martin's *A Song of Ice and Fire* series, and tells of the beginning of a horrid winter in Westeros.

## Characters

* Eddard Stark

rest to be added

## Publisher's Summary

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall.

To the south, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.

Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, *A Game of Thrones* tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

## Full Summary

Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, attends the execution of a man of the Night's Watch who has betrayed his vows and fled from the Wall. His sons Robb and Bran, his bastard son Jon Snow, and his ward Theon Greyjoy all attend. After the beheading, Robb finds a dead direwolf (the symbol of House Stark), killed by the antlers of a stag (the symbol of House Baratheon), which had given birth to five pups before it died. Robb and his brothers ask to keep them and Eddard consents, on the condition that the children themselves take care of them, rather than leaving the matter to the servants of House Stark. There are five pups, one for each of Eddard's trueborn children: Robb names his Grey Wind and Bran names his Summer, whilst Eddard's daughters Sansa and Arya name theirs Lady and Nymeria respectively. Eddard's youngest, three-year-old Rickon, names his Shaggydog. Unexpectedly, Jon finds a sixth pup lying separately nearby: an albino runt with white fur and red eyes. Jon claims this one, Ghost, for himself.

King Robert Baratheon arrives at Winterfell with his court and many retainers, including his wife, Queen Cersei of House Lannister, and his children: Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen. The queen's twin brother, Ser Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard, and their younger brother, Tyrion the Imp (so named for his dwarfism), also accompany the group. Robert asks Eddard to become the new Hand of the King after the death of the previous office holder, Lord Jon Arryn. Eddard agrees and travels south with his daughters Sansa and Arya, leaving Catelyn, Robb, Bran (now in a coma after a grievous fall from a window) and Rickon at home. Jon Snow elects to travel north to the Wall to join the Night's Watch and is joined by Tyrion, who is eager to see the fabled construction for himself.

Catelyn Stark, receives a message from her sister Lysa Arryn (widow of the late Lord Jon Arryn) claiming that the Lannisters had Jon Arryn murdered. Eddard promises to investigate the matter whilst at the capital. After Eddard leaves for the south, an attempt is made on Bran's life, thwarted only by his direwolf Summer. Catelyn realises that Bran must have seen something and had been pushed from the window deliberately, and that the would-be murderers are trying to cover their tracks. Catelyn travels by sea to King's Landing and learns from her childhood friend Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish that the dagger used in the assassination attempt was last seen in the hands of Tyrion Lannister. Travelling north again, Catelyn and her retainers encounter Tyrion by chance in an inn (as he returns south from the Wall) and take him captive to the Eyrie, where Lady Lysa places him on trial. Unfortunately, Tyrion chooses trial by battle and his champion, a sellsword named Bronn, wins his freedom for him in the expectation of receiving a reward. Lysa releases Tyrion as promised, but puts him on the road with no guard, leaving him easy prey for the clans who prowl the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon. However, Tyrion wins the allegiance of the clans in return for the promise of great riches.

In the capital at King's Landing, Eddard investigates Jon's death and learns that Jon Arryn and King Robert's brother, Lord Stannis Baratheon, had discovered that King Robert's three children were actually the products of an incestuous liaison between Queen Cersei and her twin brother Jaime. Spurning the advice of Robert's youngest brother Renly to take Cersei into custody, Eddard instead offers Cersei the chance to flee. King Robert dies of a mishap whilst hunting and Cersei's eldest son Joffrey is proclaimed King before Eddard can pass the crown to Stannis, Robert's true heir. When Eddard moves against Joffrey, he is betrayed by Littlefinger. Eddard reluctantly agrees to sign a false confession of treason in return for Sansa and Arya's lives and the chance to go into exile on the Wall. Instead, Joffrey has Eddard brutally executed. Whilst Sansa is retained in custody, Arya manages to escape with the help of Yoren, a recruiting agent for the Night's Watch.

A civil war, later dubbed the War of the Five Kings, erupts. Robb Stark leads an army of northmen into the Riverlands to support Lord Hoster Tully, whose forces came under attack by Lord Tywin Lannister after Catelyn took Tyrion prisoner. Riverrun, the Tully stronghold, is besieged by an army under Jaime Lannister, whilst Lord Tywin holds a large army south of the River Trident to prevent Robb's advance. Unexpectedly, Robb wins the support of House Frey by agreeing to a dynastic marriage. This allows him to detach his cavalry and cross the Green Fork whilst his infantry carries on to the Trident under Lord Roose Bolton, one of Robb's more capable (but also ruthless) bannermen. Tywin, joined by the liberated Tyrion and his mountain clan irregulars, defeats the Stark footmen at the Trident before learning that Robb has outmaneuvered him. Shortly afterwards Robb's forces surprise and capture Jaime Lannister before smashing the Lannister army at the Whispering Wood outside Riverrun. In danger of being outflanked, Tywin falls back to the castle of Harrenhal and orders Tyrion to go to King's Landing and help give Joffrey better advice.

Lord Renly Baratheon flees south from King's Landing to Highgarden, stronghold of the powerful House Tyrell, and there is declared King of Westeros by acclamation, becoming the second of the war's five kings. Robb Stark becomes the third, when he is proclaimed the King in the North and by all the Stark and Tully bannermen present.

In the lands beyond the Wall, three men of the Night's Watch stumble across the massacred bodies of wildlings. Ser Waymar Royce is confronted by several creatures of ice, the fabled 'Others' of legend. He fights, though he gets killed. The second man, Will, investigates Royce's corpse only for it to come to life and strangle him. The third, Gared, is so terrified of what he sees that he flees south to the Wall and then beyond Until he is arrested as a deserter, and executed at Winterfell by Lord Eddard Stark.

Jon Snow chooses to join the Night's Watch after his father departs for King's Landing and travels north with his uncle Benjen Stark, the First Ranger of the Watch. At the Wall Jon finds that the Watch is beset with problems. A new King-Beyond-the-Wall has arisen in the northern lands to rally the wildlings to his banner. This man, Mance Rayder, was once a brother of the Watch before fleeing to join the wildlings. Jon also learns that the Watch is grievously under strength, mustering barely a thousand men to cover the three hundred miles of the Wall, and its manpower is now made up of murderers and criminals who chose the Wall over execution or imprisonment. Some time after Jon's arrival, Benjen vanishes whilst on a ranging beyond the Wall.

Jon and many of the other younger men are remorselessly bullied by the master-at-arms, Ser Alliser Thorne, but Jon concocts a plan for them to stand up to him. Jon wins the friendship of Samwell Tarly, a craven but intelligent boy from the Reach, and also that of Maester Aemon. Jon is startled to learn that Aemon is a member of House Targaryen, the grand-uncle of the now-deposed Mad King Aerys II, and the oldest man alive in Westeros.

The Lord Commander of the Watch, Jeor Mormont, is attacked by a corpse which suddenly comes back to life, it belonged to one of Jon's uncle escort whom they found not so far north the wall, and brought it back to the maester to check it. But Jon burns the wight, saving Mormont's life. Shaken by this incident, Mormont resolves to lead the Watch beyond the Wall in strength to test Mance Rayder's strength. Although news of his father's death causes Jon to doubt his calling, but eventually he decides his place is with the Watch after an attempt to flee them.

In the Free City of Pentos, Magister Illyrio Mopatis and the exiled Prince Viserys Targaryen conspire to sell Viserys' thirteen-year-old sister Daenerys in marriage to Khal Drogo of the Dothraki. Drogo commands a clan of forty thousand mounted warriors whom Viserys plans to use to reclaim his homeland and the iron throne from the usurper Robert Baratheon. Among the wedding gifts are three stone dragon eggs from Ilyrio. Unexpectedly, Daenerys and Drogo find love as they journey east into the vast grasslands of the Dothraki sea, and Daenerys becomes pregnant with a son, to be named Rhaego after her dead brother. Ser Jorah Mormont, son of the Lord Commander of the night Watch and a knight exiled from Westeros for dealing in slaves, joins Viserys' entourage as an advisor on the current state of the Seven Kingdoms.

Viserys becomes angry about how long he must wait before Drogo decides to invade Westeros and, in a drunken rage, insults Drogo grievously. Drogo decides to crown him with molten gold. And then Daenerys picks up her brother's quest to reclaim the Iron Throne, but Drogo remains reluctant to embark on an invasion across the seas. He relents when a Westerosi assassin, in the pay of King Robert, nearly kills Daenerys and their unborn child and swears vengeance. However, during a warm-up raid on the peaceful Lhazareen, Drogo takes a wound which festers. Daenerys loses both Drogo and her unborn son to the machinations of a Lhazareen witch, Mirri Maz Duur, and has her burned in a pyre along with her husband and dragon eggs. Playing a hunch, The eggs hatch, and Daenerys Targaryen, the Stormborn, becomes mother to the first three dragons seen in the world for one hundred and sixty years.