50 pages • 1 hour read
George R. R. MartinA Feast for Crows
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Prologue”
Pate is training to be a “maester” in Old Town, a city in the southwest of Westeros. Maesters are men of learning who, once confirmed in the role, have the right to practice medicine and advise Lords on matters of state. He drinks with the other apprentices in a tavern while waiting for an “alchemist.” This man promised to give Pate a golden coin in exchange for a skeleton key that Pate stole from one of the maesters. Pate wants this so that he can afford to marry a local girl, Rosey, whom he loves. However, when Pate meets the alchemist on his way home and receives the coin, a strange poison on it kills him.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Prophet”
Aeron Greyjoy, a priest for the maritime people of the “Iron Islands,” is partially drowning men in the sea then reviving them as part of a religious ritual. As he does this, a local lord informs him that Balon Greyjoy, King of the Iron Islands and Aeron’s older brother, has died. He was swept off a bridge during a storm. There is now a problem of succession. Of Balon’s two children, one is Theon, a hostage in a rival kingdom, and the other is Asha, a female which precludes her from ruling by Iron Island custom. Meanwhile, Balon’s next oldest brother, Euron, is according to Aeron a “godless man” (25) not fit to rule. As such, Aeron proposes a “kingsmoot” (32) to decide their new king. This is a process whereby contenders for the throne put their cases before an audience of local warriors and lords to determine who is most suitable.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Captain of Guards”
In the southern Westerosi kingdom of Dorne, in the small town of “the Water Gardens,” Dorne’s ruler Doran Martell listens to an appeal by his niece, Obara Sand, the illegitimate daughter of his brother, Prince Oberyn. Obara wants Doran to take action over the murder of her father in King’s Landing, the capital of Westeros, by a knight known as “the mountain.” She urges war with the Lannister family, whom the mountain served. After Obara leaves, Doran travels to the main city of Dorne, Sunspear. He then has Obara and his other two nieces arrested to avoid fomenting further conflict with the Lannisters.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Cersei”
In King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister, mother of the boy king Tommen Baratheon, awakes to news that her father Tywin has been murdered. Cersei correctly suspects that her brother Tyrion is responsible. Tyrion escaped his cell after being imprisoned for killing Cersei’s other son, Joffrey. Tywin’s death creates a power vacuum in King’s Landing. He had been “Hand” to Tommen, a position nominally implying the role of chief adviser and prime minister to the King, but given Tommen’s youth, Tywin was the de facto ruler of the kingdom. With Tywin gone, Cersei seizes power, declaring, “I shall rule until my son comes of age” (59). She also quarrels with Jaime, her twin brother and commander of the Kingsguard, when he refuses to serve as her Hand.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Brienne”
Brienne of Tarth, a female knight, is on a quest to find Sansa Stark. Sansa is one of the daughters of Eddard Stark, who had been executed on the orders of Cersei and Joffrey for uncovering that Jaime is the biological father of Cersei’s children. Brienne made a promise to Catelyn Stark, the now dead mother of Sansa, to keep Sansa safe. However, Sansa disappeared the night of King Joffrey’s murder, and her whereabouts are unknown. She vanished at the same time as a “fool,” Ser Dontos the Red from Duskendale. Thus, Brienne hopes that by heading to Duskendale and locating Dontos she will also find Sansa.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Samwell”
Samwell Tarly is a soldier in “the Nights Watch,” a garrison of men stationed at “the Wall.” The Wall is a defensive fortification in the far north of Westeros designed to protect the Kingdom from attacks by the Wildling people who live beyond it. He is summoned by Jon Snow, the commander of the Night’s Watch, and ordered to travel by sea to Old Town and train to become a maester. This is because the current maester on the wall, Maester Aemon, is now too old. He is also told to take Aemon and Gilly, a Wildling woman he saved, along with her baby. Sam is reluctant to go because his father was opposed to him becoming a maester. Nevertheless, he accepts the order.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Arya”
Arya Stark, the younger sister of Sansa Stark, escaped King’s Landing when her father Eddard was executed. At present, she is on a ship headed to the city of Braavos. Braavos is a set of politically independent islands to the east of Westeros. On arrival, Arya goes to a strange temple, “The House of Black and White.” There, she sees a priest who asks for her real name. He also asks, “Do you fear death?” (110), before pulling back his hood to reveal the face of a corpse. Arya grabs and eats a worm from his eye socket, and the corpse transforms into the face of a kindly old man.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Cersei”
At her father’s wake, Cersei snubs the Tyrells, a powerful family whose daughter Margaery is to marry Tommen. When discussing appointments for the new governing “small council,” she revokes promises that key Tyrells will be on it. After the wake, she offers the position of Hand to Ser Kevan, her uncle and Tywin’s brother. However, Kevan says that he will only accept the role if he is also made regent, de facto ruler, until Tommen comes of age. Cersei flatly rejects this proposal. Instead, in the face of her uncle’s objections, she reiterates her desire to rule as regent herself.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The beginning of A Feast for Crows is defined by the untimely deaths of three powerful men: Tywin Lannister, Oberyn Martell, and Balon Greyjoy. Tywin is murdered by his son Tyrion. Oberyn is killed in a trial by combat defending his family’s honor. Balon is swept off a bridge during a storm. Yet despite the differences in cause, location, and deservedness, all these deaths leave power vacuums in their wake. Whether in King’s Landing, Dorne, or the Iron Islands, the unexpected removal of these figures creates the problem of who now is to govern. It also raises the fundamental and related issue of who has the right to govern.
Under normal circumstances, these would not be problems at all. The law of primogeniture in Westeros, whereby power passes to the next legitimate male child of the king, seems to preclude ambiguity over succession. It also seems to prevent, in the absence of democratic mechanisms, conflict regarding it. But in A Feast for Crows, like the medieval Europe on which it is based, things are not so simple. Instances easily arise when there is no clear heir. This can be seen most explicitly in the case of the Iron Islands. Balon Greyjoy does have a son, Theon, but he is not an Iron Islander, having spent most of his life as a hostage in the rival kingdom of the North. On the other hand, Balon’s second child, Asha, is a woman. The highly militarized nature of Iron Island society makes rule by a woman unpalatable to most residents. This is summed up in Aeron’s remark that “women were made to fight their battles in the birthing bed” (28). Despite her martial prowess, Asha is regarded as weak within that culture and thus not a fully legitimate successor.
A similar problem exists for Doran. Although he is the nominal ruler of Dorne, he is confined to a chair with gout which “reddened his joints grotesquely” (36). For that reason, his daughters see him as unfit to rule. With Oberyn’s death, they seek to provoke a war with the Lannisters and claim power themselves. This is seen when Obara tells Doran that “you need not even leave your chair” (36). She and her sisters hope to assume real control of Dorne via its military and keep Doran as a figurehead. Once again, it is the question of perceived strength, not merely birthright, which determines who governs. Furthermore, it is only when Doran expresses strength by having Oberyn’s daughters arrested that he reclaims this right.
Finally, there is the power struggle involving Cersei and King Tommen. Tommen is in theory the ruler of Westeros, at least if one accepts that his father is Robert Baratheon. However, he is still also a child. This is shown by the fact that he cries at his grandfather’s funeral and is told what to wear by Cersei. It is why Tywin was needed in the first place, which is symbolized by Tommen finding the crown too heavy for his head. There is no clear and immediate heir to the position Tywin has vacated. Cersei is mother to the King and an important Lannister, but it does not necessarily follow that she should rule. As her uncle Kevan points out, “Tywin always regarded Jaime as his rightful heir” (128). Jaime is Tywin’s first-born son and could easily renounce the Kingsguard’s vows preventing him from governing. Likewise, Kevan is an experienced military commander and administrator. He also spent much time working with Tywin. On the other hand, as Kevan reveals, Tywin intended for Cersei to return to the Lannister home of Casterly Rock and marry.
In the end, neither Jaime nor Kevan press the point. Jaime has no appetite for politics, and Kevan is not prepared to battle Cersei for power when he has “a wife I have not seen in two years” at home and “a dead son to mourn” (127). So, Cersei follows Tywin by default. However, insecurity about the legitimacy of her rule and the various threats to it affect her reign from the start. This leads her to use excessive force and intimidation and to eschew compromise. It also causes her to alienate those, like Jaime and Kevan, who might help her rule and provide advice. The emergence of Margaery Tyrell only deepens these tendencies. The imagined threat posed by Margaery, Tommen’s wife to be, will lead Cersei’s reign to slide even further into outright tyranny. This will threaten both the stability of the realm and her family’s future.
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