A Game of Thrones
Chapters - George R. R. Martin
Prologue
Three rangers of the Night's Watch venture beyond the Wall to investigate a camp of slain wildlings, only to find the bodies have vanished. In the haunted silence of the forest, pale figures wielding blades of living ice emerge from the darkness, and young Ser Waymar Royce falls beneath their swords. Will survives long enough to descend from his hiding place, but the dead do not rest easy in these woods, and the slain ranger rises with eyes turned an impossible blue.
Mentioned: Jon Snow
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 1: Bran I
Lord Eddard Stark executes a deserter of the Night's Watch before his young sons, teaching Bran that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. On the ride home, the party discovers a dead direwolf with a broken antler lodged in her throat and five living pups beside her, one for each of Eddard's trueborn children. Jon Snow, ever the outsider, finds a sixth pup set apart from the others - an albino runt with red eyes and open eyes, the only one already seeing the world.
POV: Bran Stark·On page: Robb Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 2: Catelyn I
Catelyn finds her husband in the godswood after the execution, cleaning his greatsword beneath the heart tree as he always does. She brings him dark tidings from the south: Jon Arryn, their foster father, is dead, and King Robert rides north to Winterfell with the queen and her Lannister kin. The dead direwolf and the stag's antler buried in her throat trouble Catelyn as an omen, though Ned dismisses such fears as he contemplates the reunion with his old friend.
POV: Catelyn Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 3: Daenerys I
In the free city of Pentos, the exiled Viserys Targaryen prepares to sell his young sister Daenerys to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo in exchange for the promise of an army. Daenerys, who has never known a true home and has spent her life fleeing from city to city with her increasingly bitter brother, dreads the feast where she must win the khal's favour. At the manse of Drogo, she meets Ser Jorah Mormont among the guests and looks upon her future husband's cold, hard face for the first time, while Viserys reminds her that he would let forty thousand men and their horses have her if it won back his throne.
POV: Daenerys Targaryen·On page: Khal Drogo, Viserys Targaryen
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 4: Eddard I
King Robert arrives at Winterfell, grown so fat that Ned barely recognises his old friend, and immediately insists on descending to the crypts to pay his respects at Lyanna Stark's tomb. Standing before her statue, Robert still burns with hatred for Rhaegar Targaryen and speaks of how he killed the prince at the Trident, while Ned remembers his sister's dying words. Robert offers Ned the position of Hand of the King and proposes a marriage between Prince Joffrey and Sansa, binding their houses together as Robert and Lyanna were meant to be.
POV: Eddard Stark·On page: Robert Baratheon, Cersei Lannister
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 5: Jon I
At the welcoming feast, the bastard Jon Snow sits apart from the royal family and watches the proceedings with a sharp and bitter eye, noting Queen Cersei's false smile and Prince Joffrey's disdain. His uncle Benjen speaks of the Wall and the hard life of the Night's Watch, planting the first seeds of Jon's desire to take the black. Later, in the deserted yard, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister offers Jon a piece of advice that will follow him north: never forget what you are, for the world certainly will not.
POV: Jon Snow
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 6: Catelyn II
After a secret letter from her sister Lysa arrives, accusing the Lannisters of murdering Jon Arryn, Catelyn convinces Ned that he must accept the position of Hand to protect the king and uncover the truth. Ned reluctantly agrees but insists that Catelyn remain in Winterfell to govern in his absence and teach Robb to be a proper lord. The couple decide that Sansa and Arya will travel south while Bran must also go, though Catelyn begs to keep her youngest boy at home.
POV: Catelyn Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 7: Arya I
Arya chafes at her crooked needlework while Sansa whispers about handsome Prince Joffrey, and the sisters' rivalry deepens as Arya flees to watch the boys sparring in the practice yard. She finds Jon Snow perched on a windowsill with Ghost, and together they observe Bran fighting Prince Tommen and Joffrey's haughty refusal to spar with Robb using practice swords. Jon tells Arya that nothing is fair, a truth that cuts deeper than any blade.
POV: Arya Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 8: Bran II
Young Bran, unable to resist climbing despite his mother's fears, scales the walls of the First Keep and stumbles upon Queen Cersei and her twin brother Jaime in a compromising embrace. The boy is discovered at the window, and after a moment of terrifying stillness, Jaime murmurs the words that will reshape the fortunes of an entire kingdom and pushes Bran from the tower into empty air.
POV: Bran Stark·On page: Jaime Lannister
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 9: Tyrion I
Tyrion reads through the night in Winterfell's library while Bran lies broken and dying in his bed, the direwolves howling ceaselessly outside. He slaps young Joffrey into showing proper respect to the Starks, catches a telling glance between his siblings when Bran's survival is mentioned, and announces his intention to visit the Wall. His exchange with Jaime, in which he wonders aloud what tale the crippled boy might tell should he wake, carries a weight that neither brother acknowledges openly.
POV: Tyrion Lannister
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 10: Jon II
Jon climbs to Bran's sickroom for a final farewell before departing for the Wall, enduring Catelyn's vigil and her devastating words that it should have been him who fell. He says goodbye to Robb at the gate, and then visits Arya's chamber to give her a secret parting gift: a slender sword forged for her small hands, which she names Needle. His first lesson is simple and will save her life: stick them with the pointy end.
POV: Jon Snow·On page: Jeor Mormont
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 11: Daenerys II
Daenerys weds Khal Drogo beneath the open sky before forty thousand Dothraki, enduring a day of violence and revelry that leaves a dozen men dead at the feast. Among her wedding gifts are three petrified dragon eggs from Illyrio Mopatis and a fine silver mare from Drogo himself, upon which she rides with a freedom she has never known. That night, alone on the grass beside a stream, the great khal surprises her with unexpected tenderness as the stars wheel overhead.
POV: Daenerys Targaryen·On page: Jorah Mormont
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 12: Eddard II
Ned rides out before dawn with King Robert, who shares the troubling news that Daenerys Targaryen has wed a Dothraki khal with a hundred thousand warriors at his command. Robert's hatred for the Targaryens burns as fierce as ever, and he speaks of assassination, but Ned refuses to countenance the murder of a child. Their argument over the appointment of Jaime Lannister as Warden of the East reveals how deeply the Lannisters have entangled themselves in Robert's court, and Ned rides on with a growing sense of despair.
POV: Eddard Stark·On page: Robert Baratheon
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 13: Tyrion II
Tyrion rides north with Jon Snow and Benjen Stark, reading about dragons by firelight while the kingsroad narrows to a wild track through endless forest. Over a campfire meal, he shatters Jon's romantic illusions about the Night's Watch, describing it as a midden heap for the realm's unwanted, and is knocked flat by Ghost for his trouble. The two share wine afterward and begin an unlikely friendship, bound by the understanding that comes from being bastards in their fathers' eyes.
POV: Tyrion Lannister
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 14: Catelyn III
Catelyn has kept vigil at Bran's bedside for a fortnight, barely eating or sleeping, until Robb shames her into remembering her other children. A fire in the library tower draws Robb away, and a would-be assassin slips into Bran's chamber with a Valyrian steel dagger, slashing Catelyn's hands to the bone before Bran's direwolf tears out the man's throat. When Catelyn wakes from her injuries four days later, she examines the assassin's weapon, too fine for a common footpad, and resolves to sail secretly to King's Landing to warn Ned that someone pushed her son and wants him dead.
POV: Catelyn Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 15: Sansa I
Sansa rides out with Prince Joffrey along the Trident, giddy with romance, until they come upon Arya sparring with the butcher's boy Mycah. Joffrey draws his sword on the unarmed boy, and Arya's direwolf Nymeria savages the prince's arm before Arya hurls his sword into the river. Sansa, torn between her family and her prince, tells the king she does not remember what happened, a betrayal that costs her sister's direwolf its freedom and her own gentle Lady its life.
POV: Sansa Stark·On page: Joffrey Baratheon, Sandor Clegane
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 16: Eddard III
Four days after Arya's disappearance, Ned faces Queen Cersei and King Robert at Castle Darry, where Joffrey's lies and Sansa's silence doom the innocent direwolf Lady to death. Ned insists on performing the killing himself rather than let the king's headsman do it, and sends the body north to Winterfell so Cersei will never have the skin. As he leaves, Sandor Clegane returns from the hunt and drops a body at his feet - not Nymeria, but the butcher's boy Mycah, run down from horseback.
POV: Eddard Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 17: Bran III
Bran falls through a fever dream, plummeting endlessly until a three-eyed crow appears and tells him he must fly or die. The crow shows him visions of the entire realm: his mother on a ship clutching a bloody knife, his father pleading with the king, shadows gathering around his family, and dragons stirring in the far east. He looks beyond the Wall into the heart of winter and sees something that makes him weep, and then the crow pecks him between the eyes and he wakes at last, broken but alive, naming his direwolf Summer.
POV: Bran Stark
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 18: Catelyn IV
Catelyn and Ser Rodrik arrive in King's Landing by ship, hoping to investigate the Valyrian steel dagger in secret, but Petyr Baelish's spies find them within hours. Littlefinger identifies the blade as one he lost in a wager to Tyrion Lannister, and Varys materialises to confirm his knowledge of the assassination attempt. The web of intrigue tightens around Ned's family, and Catelyn is left to wonder whether the man who once loved her enough to duel for her hand can truly be trusted.
POV: Catelyn Stark·On page: Tyrion Lannister
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire
Chapter 19: Jon III
Jon arrives at Castle Black to find the Night's Watch nothing like the noble brotherhood of his uncle's stories, but a crumbling ruin manned by criminals, debtors, and broken men under the cruel instruction of Ser Alliser Thorne. His superior swordsmanship earns him no friends among the recruits and the mocking title Lord Snow, until the armourer Donal Noye calls him a bully for shaming boys who never had his advantages. News that Bran has woken transforms Jon's bitterness into joy, and he offers to help the very boys he humiliated, making a lifelong enemy of Ser Alliser with a jest that sets the entire hall laughing.
POV: Jon Snow
Source: A Wiki of Ice and Fire