Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 21

Episode 4 years ago

Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 21

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She and Ser Rodrik rode down to White Harbor where they were recieved warmly by Lord Wyman Manderly, the fat lord of White Harbor who was also one of her husband’s lords bannermen. The both of them boarded a swift galley from there that plied the Trident, all the way to King’s Landing.
After almost a week at sea— which Ser Rodrik spends vomiting out his guts because of seasickness —they finally reach the Blackwater in King’s Landing and Catelyn sees the almost-forgotten sight of the Three Hills: Rhaenys’ Hill, Visenya’s Hill, on top of which sits the Great Sept of Baelor, and Aegon’s Hill, on top of which looms the infamous Red Keep, where the King and his Hand have their residences. Apart from the keep being built with pale red stone, the keep gets its name from a tale of something that happened when it was built.

The Red Keep was built by Maegor the Cruel, a Targayen King who slaughtered all the builders once it was completed to preserve the secrecy of everything inside his keep.
On a normal occasion, she is supposed to announce herself Lady Catelyn of House Stark, wife of the King’s Hand and follow the guard which her husband would deploy to see her safely brought to him, but her coming is in secrecy, lest the Lannisters find out she traveled all the way from the North to come see her husband and guess the reason for her coming.

So she and her master-at-arms find an inn to stay in as normal travelers come to the capital, while Ser Rodrik goes to find Ser Aron Santagar, Robert’s master-at-arms, who is sure will see to it that they set up a discreet meeting with her husband.

The wounds on Catelyn’s hands which she sustained in the murder attempt on her son Bran are so deep that they left the two last fingers on her right hand completely useless, and she only has to look at those deep gashes as well as the Valyrian steel dagger that caused them to draw courage and remember why exactly she must warn her husband about the danger surrounding him and his friend the King.

Catelyn has to wait till nightfall for her knight, and even when someone does show up, it isn’t him or the knight he had gone to bring. Instead, it is Petyr Baelish, now Lord Petyr Baelish, the boy who had fostered with her father Lord Hoster and had spent his entire childhood with Catelyn and her siblings. Petyr was a slight boy all those years ago, and had grown into a slight man, not much taller than Catelyn herself. He was lord of one of the Fingers now, one of the three islands beyond Riverrun which is also the smallest of those three, a fact which earned him the nickname Littlefinger when he was growing up.
He came with another man, a plump, hairless man with soft slippers on his feet and soft, powdered hands whom Catelyn recognizes as the eunuch Lord Varys, Robert’s Lord of Whisperers.

Petyr, who sat on Robert’s council as Master of Coin, tries to rekindle their old friendship and urge her to reveal to him the reason for her visit and why she tried to keep her presence in the capital a secret, but Lady Stark finds it hard to do so on account of a lack of trust which was the result of an incident that happened when Petyr was still her father’s ward and which caused his abrupt dismissal from Riverrun.
It had to with the issue of Catelyn’s hand.
Remember I said Catelyn was betrothed to Brandon Stark, Ned Stark’s elder brother? Well, Petyr had grown fond of her as well then, had even come to love her and had hoped to marry her. So when he found out she was to marry the heir to Winterfell instead, jealousy brought him into a fit of anger and madness that led him to challenge Brandon to a duel to determine who would get to marry her.

That was a huge slight, with Petyr no more than a scrawny teenager and Brandon already a man in his twenties, but her betrothed still accepted to teach him a lesson. Catelyn still remembered how Brandon had hounded him with blows from his sword all the way across Riverrun’s court, shouting at him to yield. But Petyr had been stubborn, and even though it was plain he was going to lose, he hadn’t yielded.

Eventually, Brandon had to put an end to it by giving a savage blow to his ribs that cut through Petyr’s chainmail, resulting in a grievious injury. When her father heard about what happened, he had waited only long enough for Petyr’s wound to heal before carting him back to his father.
She had not seen or heard from him since, and even now, with that incident still in her mind, relations between the both of them were more than a little strained. It was Lord Varys who had found out where she was through uncanny means that seemed like sorcery to Catelyn, but Petyr promised to see that her husband came to meet her, and seeing as they both sat on the same council as her husband, she told him.
Petyr moved her to a brothel he owned, and the next day, he made good on his promise and brought her husband to see her. Catelyn repeated her story to her husband and showed him the dagger that had caused her wounds. They both puzzle over which highborn lord or lady would send a tramp after a seven-year-old boy with a Valyrian steel dagger, and for what reason.
And then they learn a shocking revelation when Petyr admits that the dagger belongs to him.


As you can understand, Catelyn and her husband Ned were finding it a bit difficult to follow Littlefinger’s story, so he explained. On Joffery’s last name day— his birthday —his father had organized a tourney in his honor.