A Clash of Kings: Notes

Notes I made while reading A Clash of Kings:

• the red comet appears near the time that summer is declared over via the white raven from the Citadel
• this summer lasted 10 years, 2 months, and 16 days
• Shireen is almost 10 years old, has blue eyes, and greyscale across half her cheek and down her neck
• greyscale almost killed her as a baby
• Patchface says, "Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers."
• Shireen has always frequently had nightmares ... she dreams dragons were coming to eat her
• Shireen hears Mel say the comet is dragon's breath
• Patchface says, "It is always summer under the sea.  The merwives wear nennymooans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed ... It snows up and the rain is dry as bone ... Clever bird, clever man, clever, clever fool.  Oh clever clever clever fool ... The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord ... the shadows come to stay, my lord (x3)."
• Shireen says he sings this all the time now
• While Lord Steffon was in Volantis searching for a bride for Prince Rheagar, he found Patchface as a boy and brought him back
• Steffon thought the kids would delight in him, maybe even make Stannis smile
• Steffon and his wife died in the bay on their return to Storms End during a sudden storm
• PF washed up on the 3rd day, white and cold.  He coughed up water and sat up.  People had sworn he was dead before.  
• PF is tattooed from neck to scalp in red and green motley squares.
• Stannis is now 35 with dark blue eyes.
• Renly is 21.
• Robert blamed Stannis for letting Ser Willem Darry escape with Viserys and Dany.
• Stannis confirms that Jon Arryn wanted Robert Arryn fostered at dragonstone.  
• Cressen's poison was made from a plant that only grew on the Islands of the Jade Sea.  Slow and difficult process to make.
• Maesters, alchemists from Lys, and Faceless Men of Braavos know how to make it.
• In the Citadel it's called "the strangler".
• Makes the throat clench and shuts the wind pipe.
• Victims face turn as purple as the little crystals of the poison.
• Cressen left the poison on his desk while he slept.
• PF: "Under the sea, you fall up."
• About Mel: "Around her throat was a red gold choker tighter than any maester's chain, ornamented with a single great ruby.  Her hair ... deep burnished copper ... Even her eyes were red ... but her skin was smooth and white, unblemished, pale as cream."
• Lord Celtigar has mantle patterned with red crabs.  Lord Velaryn had white gold seahorse at his throat.  Bar Emmon a white seal.
• PF: "Here we eat fish ... under the sea, the fish eat us."
• Mel's ruby momentarily glows when Cressen says Rhllor has no power here.
• PF: "Under the sea, no one wears hats." (after Selyse commands Cressen to wear PF's helm)
• Stannis always grinds his teeth when angry.
• To Cressen, Mel's skin felt hot, feverish.  She warns him, but he refuses ... she drinks most of the cup and gives it to him to drink.  Her ruby shimmers.  
• Yoren took 3 from the "black cells" and kep them in chains.  He tells Arya that "a man comes with a boy for me, and a purse of coin, and a message, never mind who it's from.  Lord Eddard's to take the black, he says to me, wait, he'll be going with you."
• The man is Varys.  He intends to send both Gendry and Ned to the Watch.
• Arya goes all water dancer on Hot Pie for all to see, even Jaqen.
• The red comet blazes on Joffrey's name day.
• Joff never tells the Hound to punish Sansa, but has the other knights do it.
• Joff had given Sansa a moonstone hair net to wear.
• It was Littlefinger who suggested making Slynt Lord of Harranhal.
• When Joff insisted on a scapegoat, Varys suggested blaming Selmy for Robert's death.  Varys suggested he be dismissed on grounds of old age.
• Tyrion points out people love Selmy, and what if he goes to Robb or Renly?
• Cersei doesn't know who killed Arryn, but she readily admits to helping Robert kill himself.
• Shaggydog, like Rickon, is restless and misses his mother and siblings.
• Tavern talk of bold wolves @ the God's Eye.  Nymeria's pack.
• Jaqen has red hair on one side, white on the other.  He says he's from the Free City of Lorath.  
• Gendry has deep blue eyes.
• Mormont to Jon about Targs: "Some say Prince Aemon (the Dragonknight) was King Daeron's true father, not Aegon the Unworthy."
• Maester Aemon was sent to the Citadel at 9-10 years old.
• He was the 9th-10th in succession.
• In AFFC, we learn that sending him to the Citadel was his grandfather's idea.  Too many dragons were as dangerous as too few, he said.  His father disagreed with the notion, but Aemon thinks he grandfather had the right of it.
• Aemon's uncle died @ a tourney mishap.  His sons died in the plague. "King Daeron was also taken" so crown went to Arys I.  He "died without issue".  Aemon served @ the keep of his brother Dearon, who died from a pox he got from a whore.  Crown went to Aerion Brightflame (or the MOnstrous) who died drinking wildfire.  Maekar died against an outlaw lord.  The Great Council decided to skip Aerion's baby son and daughter.  Aemon refused the crown because of his maester vows, so it wen tot Aegon ("Egg") the Unlikely.  
• Janos Slynt's father was a butcher.  Tyrion sends him to the wall, but promises Slynt's 3 sons will be fostered and given lands, his daughter's marriage will be determined by the sons.
• Slynt refuses to tell him who ordered him and the City Watch to murder Robert's bastards.
• Tyrion appoints Ser Jacelyn Bywater as Commander, a man who Slynt called rigid and too honor proud.
• The 6 men Slynt suggested as his replacement when he goes to lord Harrenhal are taking the black with him. 
• Tyrion suggests Deem (who killed Robert's bastard baby and her whore mother) should not be missed if he fell overboard while at sea.
• Tyrion guesses it was Cersei who ordered the bastards killed.
• Varys somewhat confirms, then implies that he took steps to get Gendry out with Ned.
• Varys didn't think a baby bastard girl would have been killed too, since she was no threat.
• Tyrion is satisfied with the explanation that Joff ordered Ned killed. 
• Varys riddles Tyrion so they understand: 
• "Power resides where men believe it resides.  No more and no less."
• "So power is a mummer's trick?"
• "A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill.  And oft times a very small man can cast a very large shadow."
• I think Varys is implying that Tyrion should take control for the good of the realm.
• Tyrion tells Bronn that replacing Slynt with Jacelyn was actually replacing Littlefinger's man with Varys'.
• Tyrion tells Littlefinger about the past Hands: "Aerys Targaryen's last Hand was killed during the sack of Kings Landing, though.  I doubt he had time to settle into the Tower.  He was only Hand for a fortnight."  This is the Hand that Jaime killed, from Jaime's on POV.  "The one before him was burned to death."  This is the one that questioned Aerys about the pyromancers, again from Jaime's POV.  "And before them came two others who died landless and penniless in exile, and counted themselves lucky."  One is Jon Connington. "I believe my lord father was the last Hand to depart Kings Landing with his name, properties, and parts all intact."
• Mel burns the Seven, carved from masts of the ships that carried the first Targs from Valyria.
• Celtigar coughs into a hanky of embroidered crabs.
• The Myrmen joke
• Lord Velaryn "Lord of the Tides was of the blood of ancient Valyria, and his House had thrice provided brides for the Targaryen princes."  Seahorse sigil.
• Mel: "In ancient books of Asshai it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world.  In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword.  And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him."
• PF: "Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flams burn green and blue and black."
• prophecy of the Battle of Blackwater?
• Salladhor Saan to Davos: "It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world.  To oppose it, the hero must have a hero's blade, oh, like none that had ever been.  And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahair labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires.  Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes until the sword was done.  Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder. ... The second time it took him fifty days and fifty nights, and this swored seemed even finer than the first.  Azor Ahai captured a lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast's red heart, but once more the steel shattered and split. ... A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blad, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife.  'Nissa Nissa', he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.'  ... Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart.  It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel."
• Baratheon's mom was Cassana of House Estermount.
• Stannis's proof of Cersei and Jaime's incest is Robert's bastard at Storms End, Edric Storm.  "The one he fathered on my wedding night, in the very bed they'd made up for me and my bride.  Delena was a Florent and a maiden when he took her, so Robert acknowledged the babe.  Edric Storm, they call him.  He is said to be the very image of my brother."
• Pyromancers once powerful guild but in recent centuries the maesters of the Citadel had supplanted the alchemists almost everywhere.  "Only last year, twho hundred jars were discovered in a storeroom beneath the Great Sept of Baelor.  No one could recall how they came there."  Master Pyro says they haven't had a Hand visit them since Lord Rossart of Aerys, the Hand during the sack.  We learn from Jaime's POV that Aerys had been hording caches all around the city, one at every gate, so he could blow it all up if Robert were to be victorious.
• Meera Reed as old as Robb but slim, boy cut.  Jojen has moss colored eyes.  Both slim and scarcely taller than Bran.
• The Reeds vow oths to Bran: "I sear it by earth and water.  I swear it by bronze and iron.  We sear it by ice and fire."
• Bran recollects what he knows of the Crannogmen:  "They were poor folk, fishers and frog-hunters who lived in houses of thatch and woven reeds on floating islands hidden in the deeps of the swamp.  It was said that they were cowardly people who fought with poisoned weapons and preferred to hide from foes rather than face them in open battle." ... "He could not recall ever seeing one before.  His father had sent letters to the Lord of Greywater over the years, but none of the Crannogmen have ever called at Winterfell."  
• Bran recalls Ned talk about awesome knights: "'The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star.  They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed.'  Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more."
• After Renly makes Brienne part of his Rainbow Guard he tells Cat that he had been saving that last cloak for Selmy, who vowed to serve the true king.  He asked is Selmy was with Robb.
• Sam tells JOn that he heard Crster's mother was a wildling and his father was a Ranger from the Night's Watch.  
• Craster says he hasn't seen Benjen in 3 years.
• Gilly says: "He gives the boys to the gods.  Come the white cold, he does, and of late it comes more often.  That's why he started giving them sheep. ...  The cold gods ... The ones in the night.  The white shadows."
• Jon and Mormont talk of Kings Beyond the Wall: "Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my (Jon's) grandfather's grandfather, and before him there was a king named Bael the Bard." "Aye and long before that came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun who blew the Horn of Winger and woke giants from the earth."
• Tyrion sends 4 undercover men back with his cousin along with Cersei's guardsmen.
• Tyrion had Pycelle's manhood cut off by Shagga!  He confesses he's been loyal to Lannister and it was he that bid Aerys to open the gates to Tywin.  He had hoped Tywin would be king, but "Robert was too strong, and Lord Stark moved too swiftly"  He admits he would have done a half-ass job on Robert after the boar if he needed to.  He knew of the plans of Renly having Robert put Cersei aside for Margaery.  He does NOT admit to poisoning Arryn, but he did send Maester Coleman away who was purging the poison.  He knew Cersei wanted Arryn dead but neither of them did it.  He claims his squire Hugh did it.
• Meera tells Bran t