A Clash of Kings

What's inside (9 sections)

1. Five kings and no peace after Robert
2. Tyrion in King's Landing as acting Hand
3. Jon beyond the Wall with Qhorin and Ygritte
4. Bran holds Winterfell while Theon turns
5. Arya at Harrenhal and Sansa in the court
6. Daenerys in Qarth and the House of the Undying
7. Blackwater and what the ending costs
8. Key takeaways
9. FAQ

I picked up A Clash of Kings because I wanted to see what happens when no one agrees who is king. First published in 1998 by Bantam Spectra, it runs 761 pages and feels much bigger than the first book. Robert Baratheon is dead. Ned Stark is dead. Robb Stark has been hailed King in the North. Joffrey sits the Iron Throne in King's Landing. And out on Dragonstone, Stannis Baratheon has sent letters saying Joffrey is no true son of Robert at all.

That setup hooked me fast. The first book felt like a family falling into war. This one feels like a whole country splitting into pieces, with each piece shouting its own king.

Martin keeps the rotating point of view chapters. This time we get Tyrion, Jon, Bran, Arya, Sansa, Catelyn, Davos, Theon, and Daenerys. No Robb chapters and no Stannis chapters, which matters. You see Robb through his mother. You see Stannis through his smuggler. That distance makes both men stranger and harder to trust, which fits a book about rumor and claim.

Five kings and no peace after Robert

The war starts with Robb Stark holding Riverrun. He is young, maybe sixteen, and his lords have crowned him King in the North and King of the Trident. He has beaten Jaime Lannister in the Whispering Wood and taken him prisoner. He has broken the siege of Riverrun. His men love him. His direwolf Grey Wind fights beside him and scares prisoners into talking.

But Robb cannot stay on offense forever. He holds Jaime, which protects Sansa a little in the capital. He needs the Freys to hold the crossing at the Twins. He needs his father’s bannermen to stay loyal while he marches far from home. Catelyn watches all this with a mother’s worry and a lord’s daughter’s eye for supply lines and pride.

Joffrey in King’s Landing is the opposite problem. He is a boy king with a cruel streak and a crown he does not understand. He ordered Ned’s death against his own council’s advice. Now he beats Sansa with his Kingsguard when Robb wins a battle. He mocks his uncle Tyrion. He trusts his mother Cersei when it suits him and ignores her when it does not. The smallfolk hate him because bread costs too much and gold cloaks hit too freely.

Stannis Baratheon is the third claim, and the coldest. He has held Dragonstone for years. He knows about Cersei and Jaime because Jon Arryn found the proof before he died. Stannis has fewer swords than his enemies. What he has is a sense of right and a new priestess from Asshai named Melisandre. She burns the old gods on the beach and tells him he is promised. His men call her the red woman. His maester Cressen tries to poison her in the prologue and dies for it. That scene sets the tone. Old counsel fails. New fire talks.

Renly Baratheon is the fourth king, and for a long stretch the strongest. He has the Reach behind him through the Tyrells. He has Loras Tyrell at his side and Margaery Tyrell as his new wife. He holds tournaments while others bleed. His host feasts outside Bitterbridge and laughs at Stannis. Catelyn goes to treat with him because Robb hopes for alliance. She finds a handsome man who thinks wars are won by being loved.

Balon Greyjoy crowns himself last. He rules the Iron Islands and still hates the Starks and Lannisters for his failed rising years back. Robb sends Theon Greyjoy home to Pyke to ask for ships against the Lannisters. Theon has lived with the Starks since he was a boy hostage. He hopes to come home as a prince and a bridge between sides. His father shames him instead. His sister Asha mocks his fine clothes and soft speech. Balon will not serve a Stark boy. He will take a crown of his own and raid the north while Robb fights in the south.

That is the five-way split. Joffrey holds the throne and the capital. Robb holds the riverlands and the north for now. Stannis holds Dragonstone and a claim by blood. Renly holds the south with food and numbers. Balon holds the sea and a grudge. It cannot hold.

Stannis meets Renly under the walls of Storm’s End. Davos Seaworth rows Melisandre into the castle in the dark. What comes out is a shadow with Stannis’s face. It slips past guards and kills Renly in his own tent while Catelyn and Brienne of Tarth watch. I remember closing the book for a minute when I first read that. No duel. No trial. Just cold murder by sorcery.

The effect is instant. Half of Renly’s foot goes to Stannis. His horse goes to the Tyrells and runs back to Highgarden. Brienne swears to Catelyn for shelter because men blame her for the killing. Catelyn flees with her. Stannis takes Storm’s End by threat after its castellan bends. He looks bound for King’s Landing with wind at his back.

Balon moves at the same time. While Robb pushes west into Lannister lands and takes Ashemark and the Crag, Balon sends Asha to Deepwood Motte and Theon to the Stony Shore. The north is thin because Robb took its strength south. That choice will cost him more than any lost battle.

Tyrion in King's Landing as acting Hand

Tyrion Lannister rides into King’s Landing as acting Hand for his father Tywin. Tywin stays in the field in the riverlands. Tyrion brings Bronn and a hill tribe guard and a long list of debts to his family name. No one greets him with joy. Cersei hates him on sight. Joffrey mocks his height. The council smiles and waits for him to fail.

He does not fail. His chapters were my favorite in this reread because they move like a man patching holes in a sinking boat.

He starts by taking control of the council piece by piece. He removes Janos Slynt from command of the City Watch and sends him to the Wall. He puts his own men in key posts. He tests Pycelle and Littlefinger and Varys to see who tells Cersei his plans. When Pycelle proves to be Cersei’s creature, Tyrion has him thrown in a black cell. It is harsh, but it shows how fast Tyrion learns the shape of the court.

He also tries to fix Joffrey. He slaps the boy when Joffrey acts cruel in front of men. He sends Myrcella to Dorne to win the Martells and get one child out of danger. He sends Tommen away to Rosby to keep him safe. Cersei fights him on both moves. Their war of letters and guards and whores and spies runs through the whole middle of the book.

Shae enters here too. Tyrion hides her in the city because his father has told him never to bring a camp follower to court. He sets her up with Lollys and then with Sansa’s maids. He likes her laugh and her plain talk. He tells himself it is control. It reads more like need. Varys helps arrange rooms. Bronn guards doors. The whole setup feels tender and doomed at once.

Tyrion also finds the wildfire plot. Cersei has ordered the Alchemists’ Guild to cook huge pots of the green stuff. The pyromancer Hallyne shows Tyrion vaults full of jars. The stuff burns green and clings and cannot be put out with water. Old stores from the Mad King’s day sit under the city. Tyrion sees a weapon and a hazard in one. He takes charge of it for the defense and plans a welcome for Stannis on the water.

Cersei keeps working against him in her own chapters seen through others. She arms the gold cloaks. She builds catapults on the walls. She scorns Tyrion’s chain plan until it is too late to stop him. She drinks more as the siege nears. She tells Sansa hard truths about love and power that sound like confession. You can hate her choices and still see her fear. She has three children in a city about to be stormed, a son she cannot control, and a brother who outthinks her in council.

Tyrion’s answer is work. He forges a great chain across the Blackwater Rush. He fills hulks with wildfire and plans to loose them into Stannis’s fleet. He drills men at the Mud Gate. He eats little and sleeps less. For a stretch he is the only Lannister who seems to grasp that hate will not hold walls.

Jon beyond the Wall with Qhorin and Ygritte

Jon Snow rides out with Lord Commander Mormont on the great ranging. The Watch has left Castle Black in force for the first time in memory. They camp at the Fist of the First Men, an old ringfort in the high cold. Ghost is restless. The food runs low. Craster’s Keep offers shelter but no comfort. Craster is a wild man who keeps wives and gives sons to the cold. Mormont looks away because he needs the roof.

Jon is still torn between kin and vow. News of Robb’s crown reaches him. News of Ned’s death still burns. He wants to ride south. He stays because his friends hold him to his words and because the dead walk in the wood. Sam finds old dragonglass blades in a cache at the Fist. That detail will matter later, but here it feels like a small sign that the old war is waking.

Mormont sends Qhorin Halfhand out with picked men to scout the Skirling Pass. Jon goes with them. Qhorin is a legend in black, grim and calm, with maimed fingers from a wildling axe. He teaches by doing and says little. On the heights they take wildling watchers. Jon is told to kill a prisoner named Ygritte, a young spearwife with red hair and a sharp tongue. He cannot do it. He lets her go and then is caught with her when she returns with men.

That mercy traps him. His party is killed or scattered. Qhorin takes a wound. When capture seems sure, Qhorin orders Jon to yield and join the wildlings as if turned. He tells Jon to live with them and learn their plans. To make the lie hold, Jon must fight Qhorin and kill him. They duel with swords while the wildlings watch, and Jon slays the Halfhand with Ghost’s help.

It is a brutal passage. I had to sit with it. Qhorin gives his life so Jon can spy, and Jon must bear the shame of seeming an oathbreaker.

Ygritte leads Jon to Mance Rayder. Mance was once a crow who left the Watch and became King Beyond the Wall. He has joined tribes that have fought each other for ages. Giants ride with mammoths. Skinchangers run with wolves and eagles. Tormund Giantsbane jokes and boasts. The Lord of Bones clacks and threatens. Jon tells a tale of wanting the wild life and hating his bastard place. Mance accepts him, warily. Ygritte stays close and teases him and tells him he knows nothing. Her line lands because it is true in this country. Jon knows castle rules. He does not know snow hunger or free folk pride.

His chapters end with the wild host moving toward the Wall and Jon moving with it, sick at heart and playing a part. The cold feels real on every page. Boots rot. Hands crack. Horses die. The blue eyes in the dark come closer.

Bran holds Winterfell while Theon turns

Bran Stark stays at Winterfell while Robb fights south. He is a boy of nine with dead legs and live dreams. He rules in name with Maester Luwin’s help and Ser Rodrik’s swords. Rickon is small and wild with his wolf Shaggydog. The Walders Frey foster and quarrel. Meera and Jojen Reed arrive from the Neck and change the air. Jojen sees green dreams that come true. He tells Bran about the three eyed crow.

These chapters are quiet at first, full of harvest feast and stores and rain. Then Theon returns.

Theon Greyjoy has chosen his blood over his foster home. Balon gave him a few ships and orders to raid the Stony Shore. Theon wants more to prove himself to his father and his crew. He takes Winterfell by surprise with a small picked force while Rodrik is drawn away. He climbs the walls at night and opens the gates. He names himself Prince of Winterfell. For a few days he plays lord, holding court and bedding the captain’s daughter and trying to sound like Robb.

Bran and Rickon flee with Hodor and Osha and the Reeds into the crypts and then out to the wolfswood. Theon cannot find them. To hide the failure, his man Reek, who is really Ramsay Bolton’s creature in disguise, urges him to kill two miller’s boys and dress the bodies as the Stark boys. Theon agrees. The castle mourns. Luwin knows the truth by the size of the bones but stays silent to protect the living.

That lie breaks Theon more than any sword. His men lose respect. Asha comes with a few score and tells him to burn the castle and go back to the sea. He refuses from pride. Rodrik returns with northmen. Ramsay brings Bolton men as allies and turns on all sides. Winterfell burns. Luwin dies in the godswood after telling Osha to take the boys north and split them for safety. Bran heads toward the Wall with Hodor and the Reeds. Rickon goes with Osha toward White Harbor. Theon is knocked senseless and dragged away.

I found these chapters painful in a way battle scenes are not. Bran loves Theon as a big brother. Theon loves Winterfell as the only home that fed him well. Both truths fail. Martin lets Theon be vain and cruel and also lost. He wants a father who will never praise him. He burns the place that raised him to win a nod from a man who despises asking leave.

Arya at Harrenhal and Sansa in the court

Arya Stark flees King’s Landing with Yoren and the Night’s Watch recruits. She calls herself Arry the orphan boy. Her companions include Hot Pie, Lommy, and Gendry, who may be Robert’s baseborn son. They march north and run into war. Lannister men under Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat hunt Beric Dondarrion’s outlaws and burn villages to starve them. Yoren dies holding an inn. Arya is taken with the other orphans to Harrenhal, the huge black ruin built by Harren the Black and melted by dragons.

Harrenhal is a prison that changes masters. First Tywin Lannister holds it and rules from the Kingspyre Tower. Arya serves as a cupbearer and hears councils she barely grasps. She hates Gregor and the Tickler, who asks the same questions while men scream. She wishes them dead by name each night.

Then comes Jaqen H’ghar. Arya saved him from a fire in a cage on the road north with Rorge and Biter. In Harrenhal he repays her with three deaths. He is a faceless sort of man, calm and strange, who changes his face and voice. Arya names the Tickler first. He dies. She names a guard next. He dies. She wants to name Tywin before he marches, but time runs short. In a sharp move she names Jaqen himself to force his help. To free himself of the debt, he aids her in loosing the northmen prisoners when the Brave Companions turn the castle over to Roose Bolton. Then he gives her an iron coin and the words Valar Morghulis and tells her to say them to any man from Braavos if she wants to find him again.

Arya refuses Bolton service and flees with Gendry and Hot Pie. They take Harrenhal’s back ways and run hungry through burned fields. Her arc here is about names and power. She holds a prayer list of men she wants dead. She learns that killing has a price even when it feels just. She is still a child, maybe eleven, and Martin never lets you forget it when her shoes break or her belly aches.

Sansa stays in the capital as Joffrey’s hostage and Cersei’s lesson board. Her chapters are small rooms and great fear. She is beaten by Meryn Trant and Boros Blount when Robb wins. She bleeds for the first time on the day of a riot and nearly dies in the streets when the mob turns. The Hound, Sandor Clegane, saves her more than once. He is burned and bitter and drunk, and he speaks plain to her when others lie. On the night of the Blackwater he finds her in the godswood and begs her to flee with him. She refuses from duty and fear. He leaves his cloak and goes.

Sansa also finds a strange friend in Dontos Hollard, a fool knight she saved from Joffrey’s cruelty. He promises her a way home by ship and tells her to wait for a sign. She clings to songs and courtesy because they are all she has. Her faith in tales breaks by inches. I ached for her in these pages. She does nothing wrong and pays daily for her brother’s victories.

The two sisters mirror each other without meeting. Arya learns to hide and to hurt. Sansa learns to smile and to endure. Both lose every shield but wit.

Daenerys in Qarth and the House of the Undying

Daenerys Targaryen crosses the Red Waste with a small khalasar and three young dragons. The waste nearly kills them. Horses fall. Men drink their own blood from veins. Dany sends scouts in three directions. Jhogo returns with word of Qarth, a rich port on the strait. She leads her people there because there is nowhere else to go.

Qarth dazzles and starves her at once. The walls are high. The merchants are proud. Xaro Xhoan Daxos offers her a palace and many promises and wants her dragons in return. The Pureborn receive her and offer nothing. The warlock Pyat Pree smiles and waits. Jorah Mormont warns her that fine words hide chains. Her dragons Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal grow fast and eat much. Doreah dies of sickness. Bloodriders quarrel. Dany begs ships to take her west to claim the Iron Throne and learns no one gives ships for pity.

Quaithe of the Shadow speaks in riddles and tells her to go east to go west, to go south to go north, to touch the light she passed by shadow. Dany does not grasp it. Neither did I on first pass. I took it as warning that easy doors in Qarth lead to cages.

The House of the Undying is the heart of this thread. Dany enters with Drogon to seek counsel and maybe aid. Inside she walks through visions that feel like memory and omen at once. She sees a feast of corpses with a wolf’s head on a king’s body. She sees her brother Rhaegar with a woman and a babe, speaking of a song of ice and fire. She sees her father the Mad King crying burn them all. She sees a red door from her childhood in Braavos. The Undying whisper and clutch and try to feed on her life. Drogon burns them with hot flame. The house shakes. Dany walks out through ruin while the warlocks wail.

After that Qarth turns. Xaro declares her a curse. An assassin tries to kill her with a manticore in a jewel box. Jorah saves her. Her dragons have grown bolder and burned a man’s face in anger. Dany steals back her goods, locks Xaro’s gifts away in his own vault by leaving him with what he valued, and takes ship with Jorah, her bloodriders, her maids, and the knight Barristan Selmy in disguise as Arstan Whitebeard, though his true name is not spoken plain yet in her hearing. She means to find soldiers and pay with plunder, not with her children.

Her chapters drag in the middle and then burn bright at the close. I will admit I grew tired of refusals in Qarth. Door after door, no after no. But the visions repay patience. They tie her line to the Starks and to old sins in King’s Landing. They hint that dragons alone will not win her a home.

Blackwater and what the ending costs

Stannis sails for King’s Landing after taking Storm’s End. Davos Seaworth, once a smuggler, now a knight, leads part of the fleet up the Blackwater Rush. His sons sail with him. The fleet is brave and green. The river narrows. The chain waits.

Tyrion springs the trap. A single hulk full of wildfire drifts into the fleet and is lit by archers. The blast lifts ships and men. Green flame runs on water and climbs sails and cooks men in armor. More hulks follow. Then the chain rises behind the fleet and locks it in the burning river. Davos sees his ships die around him and is thrown into the water. His son Matthos dies. Davos wakes on a rock, half drowned, sure the Mother spoke to him.

On the walls the battle grinds. Stannis lands men at the Mud Gate and beats at it with rams. Sandor Clegane holds the post for a time and then breaks when fire takes his nerve. His face was burned as a boy, and wildfire wakes that pain. He quits the wall and quits the city. Lancel Lannister is wounded. The gold cloaks waver. Cersei hides in the Red Keep with the highborn women and drinks and tells Sansa that brave men die and cowards live to father more sons.

Tyrion leads a sortie through a sally port when all seems lost. He takes a wound to the face from a Kingsguard knight in the press, almost certainly at Cersei’s order through her creature. He falls and would have died in the mud if not for his squire Podrick Payne, who kills the attacker. At dawn Tywin Lannister arrives with the Tyrell host and strikes Stannis from the rear. Loras wears Renly’s armor to scare Stannis’s men with a ghost. Stannis will not flee until his guards drag him to his last ships. He leaves hundreds dead and his hopes burned green on black water.

The cost spreads in the last chapters. Tyrion wakes scarred and stripped of power. Tywin takes the Handship and gives Tyrion no thanks. Cersei smiles again. Sansa is promised to Loras in talk and then promised elsewhere in truth as Tywin plans marriages to bind the Reach and the north. Tyrion is wed to Sansa by his father’s order to claim Winterfell through her, a cruel stroke that neither wants. Shae is kept close and kept secret. Bronn takes a knight’s name and a wife with land.

In the north Robb wins in the west but loses at home. He takes the Crag and is wounded and comforted by Jeyne Westerling, whose father holds the castle. Word comes that Bran and Rickon are dead by Theon’s hand, though we know they live. Catelyn frees Jaime in grief to trade for her daughters, and Robb’s lords turn cold toward her. Robb beds Jeyne and then weds her for honor, breaking his pledge to the Freys. Roose Bolton holds Harrenhal for him but watches with pale eyes. Theon’s prize has soured into ash.

Jon stays with the wildlings and climbs toward the Wall with them. Bran slips north toward the Wall with cold dreams guiding him. Arya runs loose in the riverlands with outlaws rising again under a lightning lord who will not stay dead. Dany sails from Qarth with small dragons now breathing true flame. Davos washes up alive and learns Stannis blames him little and Melisandre not at all.

I closed the book tired in a good way. No one has won. Every gain has a wound under it. Robb has glory and a broken pledge. Tyrion has a saved city and a ruined face. Stannis has a true claim and a burned fleet. Dany has living dragons and no army. Jon has a mission and a lie that may eat him.

Fair faults need plain speech. The middle sags with travel and feasts. Catelyn retreads the same fears about Jon and about Robb’s pride. Theon’s chapters pile slights until pity thins. Davos speaks in plain duty so often that his goodness blurs. Qarth says no in many fine rooms. New names crowd every council, from river lords to Qartheen merchants, and I kept a list to track who owed whom.

The violence also grows heavier. The Tickler’s game, Chiswyck’s boasts, miller’s boys in Stark clothes, wildfire cooking sailors alive. Martin does not glory in it, but he does not turn away. Readers who struggled with the first book’s cruelty should know this one keeps that weight.

Still, the design holds. Five kings enter. One dies by shadow. One loses the north while winning the west. One burns on the water. One sits a throne built on debt and fear. One sails away from a dead city with dragons. Tyrion’s defense alone would carry a lesser book. Jon’s killing of Qhorin and Bran’s flight from a burning home lift it past that. If you want clean heroes, pass by. If you want men and women choosing under weight with bad maps and short bread, this is the middle book that earns its size.

FAQ

Do I need to read A Game of Thrones before A Clash of Kings?

No. You will be lost on Robb, Theon, Stannis, and Tyrion. The first book sets Ned's death, the dragons, and the Wall, and this one builds straight on all three.

Who are the five kings in A Clash of Kings?

Joffrey Baratheon on the Iron Throne, Robb Stark in the North, Stannis Baratheon on Dragonstone, Renly Baratheon in the Reach, and Balon Greyjoy in the Iron Islands. Renly dies early and Balon crowns himself later.

What happens at the Battle of the Blackwater?

Stannis sails into the Blackwater Rush with a large fleet. Tyrion burns many ships with wildfire and holds the Mud Gate with a chain boom, then Tywin Lannister and the Tyrells strike Stannis from behind.