Summary: Sansa
Joffrey makes Sansa kiss his new sword before he goes out to watch the battle. The noblewomen of the city gather in the sept at the castle. Sansa sees Ser Ilyn Payne, the executioner, standing with her father’s sword. Cersei tells her that Ilyn is there to protect them from treason and that Cersei’s own guards may turn on them. Sansa says that true knights would never harm women, and Cersei tells her to wait for some to show up.
Summary: Davos
Davos sails his ship into the bay at King’s Landing and up the river, where they will launch their attack. He is skeptical of the strategy that Stannis’s captains have decided to employ. Davos sees the winch towers for a giant underwater chain at the mouth of the river leading into the city. He realizes that the Lannisters mean to let Stannis’s ships enter the river, then close it off behind them, but he isn't sure what their strategy is and cannot understand why the Lannisters’ best ships are not present. The battle ensues. It is chaos as ships ram each other, arrows fly, and catapults fire stones down from the castle. The Lannisters launch wildfire onto the ships, which take fire. It looks to Davos like Stannis’s men are winning until one of Stannis’s ships rams an unmanned Lannister ship full of jars of wildfire. The resulting explosion and fire sweep across the ships, and Davos notices with horror that the chain has been raised, trapping the boats. The entire river is ablaze.
Summary: Tyrion
Tyrion watches from the castle as the wildfire burns through the Lannister and enemy ships. Some of Stannis’s men make it across the river to King’s Landing and fighting begins on land. Joffrey goes to the catapults, where they have rigged up traitors to fling at Stannis’s men. Tyrion tells Ser Osmund Kettleblack, a member of the Kingsguard, to keep Joffrey safe. Tyrion rushes to the King’s Gate, which Stannis’s men are trying to breach with a battering ram. He orders the Hound to take some men and attack them. The Hound refuses, afraid of the fire. Tyrion resolves to lead the sortie himself and convinces the other men to join him.
Summary: Sansa
The women wait in the Queen’s Ballroom as the battle rages outside. Cersei tells Sansa that they will all be raped and possibly tortured and killed if Stannis’s men reach them before Stannis himself can arrive to impose order. Low-born people from the city ask for sanctuary, but Cersei has her men drive them off. Cersei orders Joffrey brought back into the castle, in spite of Tyrion’s orders. Cersei tells Sansa that the real reason Ilyn is there is to kill them before Stannis can get his hands on them.
Summary: Tyrion
Tyrion and his men attack Stannis’s force. They charge while everything burns around them, and Tyrion feels the battle fever that Jaime described to him. As they fight, the Lannister forces begin to cheer for Tyrion. The boats in the river are so closely packed that Stannis’s men are able march across them to the shore. Tyrion and his men move in, but Tyrion gets thrown from his horse. Tyrion loses track of what's happening and it seems that Stannis’s men are fighting two battles. Ser Mandon Moore, a member of the Kingsguard, moves as though he's going to help Tyrion but then slices him across the face. Tyrion realizes Mandon means to kill him. Then he sees Mandon disappear into the river and hears the voice of Podrick Payne, his squire, comforting him.
Summary: Sansa
Lancel tells Cersei that when the men saw Joffrey returning to the castle, they lost heart. No one can figure out what is happening, as it looks like Stannis’s forces are fighting the Lannisters and each other. Cersei orders Joffrey brought inside despite Lancel’s objections. She storms out. Sansa comforts the wounded Lancel and some of the other women. Sansa returns to her chambers and finds the Hound waiting for her. He tells her his life there is over and says he could take her with him and protect her. The Hound puts his knife to Sansa’s throat and demands that she sing. She sings and gently strokes his face, finding it covered with tears. The Hound leaves, discarding his Kingsguard cloak. Dontos arrives and tells her that the city has been saved, that Tywin Lannister and Mace Tyrell and a huge army arrived to crush Stannis from the rear. Dontos claims that Renly's ghost led the army.
Analysis
After a build-up of hundreds of pages, battle finally erupts in King’s Landing. In this series of six rapidly moving chapters, the battle is shown from a variety of viewpoints in a way that emphasizes the ambiguity and uncertainty of warfare. In battle, chaos reigns and no one, not even Tyrion perched high on the walls of the castle overlooking the battle, can completely understand what is happening. So confused are matters that it even appears as though Stannis's men are suddenly fighting each other (though of course it is clear later that another Lannister-allied force arrived and began fighting Stannis's forces on their flank). Moreover, people do things and see sides of themselves that they never would have imagined, as Tyrion experiences when he leads the men out into battle. The battle episode also shows that, while strategy is extremely important, evident in the vicious effectiveness of Tyrion’s plan to trap Stannis’s ships, it also has its limits because of how chaotic events become. Despite Tyrion's brilliant plan, the tide of the battle still appears to turn against him at one point, at least until the other Lannister-allied forces arrive. The war itself is analogous to use of the magical wildfire. It can be rigorously planned, but once it is loose it becomes nearly impossible to control.
The battle and the events leading up to it underscore the importance of chance events. Throughout the book, Tyrion has been worried that Stannis will sail to King’s Landing before the Lannisters have time to develop their defenses. And in fact, characters such as Davos and Catelyn have urged Stannis to do just that. Stannis, however, has dallied, refusing to go to war until he has Edric Storm under his control and has taken Storm’s End. In terms of military strategy, this decision is a foolish one. Storm’s End is of no consequence to the war, and Stannis actually had to sail past King’s Landing to get there. Even with this delay, however, Stannis could still make it to King’s Landing before Tyrion has the defenses up, but a storm delayed the fleet, leaving Stannis’s land forces stuck on the other side of the river from King’s Landing with no way to cross. This delay winds up costing Stannis terribly, not only because the city is better defended, but because now the reinforcements of Tywin Lannister and Mace Tyrell can intercept Stannis. Thus a string of seemingly minor events wind up changing the course of the battle.
In addition to showing the physical chaos of war, the book illustrates war’s moral and psychological disarray in Sansa’s chapters. Despite all that she has learned about not viewing the world romantically, Sansa is totally unprepared for the depths of cruelty and depravity that Cersei tells her is in store for them if the Lannisters lose. Sansa believes that knights value loyalty and chivalry and thus will not turn on the women or harm them in any way. It is little wonder that she is so shocked by Cersei’s claim that the knights will abandon them and that Stannis’s men will rape and murder them. Like the other young people in the book, Sansa is a child of the “long summer,” someone who has never known the hardship of winter and thus how cruel and desperate life can be. She, unlike Cersei, doesn't understand what sort of brutality people, even knights, are capable of.
Though Sansa is confronted with humanity's ugliness in this section, she maintains her own sense of right and wrong and demonstrates the essential goodness of her character. The figurative ugliness she confronts is, of course, the horror of the war and what she and the others may suffer is Stannis's forces win. While Cersei abandons her people at the moment of greatest crisis, Sansa unhesitatingly steps into Cersei’s place and calms the crowd. Her action shows that although she may be losing her romantic view of the world, Sansa is not so cynical and self-interested as Cersei. Rather than use the world's ugliness as an excuse to act selfishly, as Cersei does, Sansa instead tries to help those around her through the crisis. She thus embodies herself the chivalry she has so often sought in others.
Sansa’s confrontation with ugliness becomes literal in the moving scene between her and the Hound, as he seems to want to persuade her of his nihilistic worldview. His own actions, however, suggest that there is tenderness in even the most cruel of people. Sansa always has difficulty looking at the Hound because of the scars on his face and because he is unremittingly brutal toward all around him. As his actions have demonstrated, the Hound seems to despise Sansa and her romantic delusions, but he also wants to protect her, and by extension, those romantic delusions. When the Hound forces Sansa to look upon his scarred face, it is clear that is not just so that she will be shocked, but so that she will see the world more clearly. He, like Cersei, believes the world to be cruel, and though he is harsh toward Sansa as he tries to make her take his point of view, he seems to do so in order that she will not be fooled by it and may protect herself. Then, when he violently demands a song from Sansa and she strokes his face as she sings, he is genuinely moved. Sansa evidently touches part of his humanity beneath his scars and fearsome demeanor. That the most unrepentant and vicious character in the novel tears up at such tenderness suggests that the worldview of people like Cersei and the Hound, rather than being truthful, is itself a pretense, and that the empathy and compassion of characters like Sansa do have a rightful place in the world.
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