I HAVE ONLY ONE ITCHING DESIRE: The night is dark and full of spoilers for Game of Thrones:
So Stannis is finally done dicking around, building, buying, and renting a fleet; pushing chess pieces around his Thomas Table with a croupier's stick, sailing to Cape Horn to smoke Renly, only to find that you can be right about everything and still be wrong. Because Stannis had King Renly, King Robb, and King Joffrey pegged, but forgot to look past the other would-be kings to the smart people around them. The imp was beneath his notice, but it was the imp who handed Stannis's stern to him on the water; Loras Tyrell was barely on Stannis's radar, but, out of revenge, it was Loras whose cavalry finished Stannis off on land.
Stannis's reversal wasn't the only one. Most of the people in power -- including Joffrey -- still treat Tyrion as a joke, but he proved to be the hero of the Blackwater, in deed if not in the conventional wisdom. The Hound saw the fire and had the fight singed right out of him.
And with all that shifting ground, consider the precarious position of our characters. Tyrion is lying in the mud outside the city walls, bleeding from his face. There's Tywin, back in King's Landing, presumably to assume governance and clean up the mess left by his petulant grandson, inept daughter, and embarrassment of a son. Shae is as good as found out; Bronn's patron is either dead or demoted; Sansa's protector is on his way out of town; and even Arya, had she access to the Internet, would realize that Tywin was smart enough to lie to her about where he was going when he left Harrenhall. Hey everybody, sleep with one eye open, willya?
But seriously, how sharp is that Valyrian steel?
MIA: Non-Sansa Starks (Catelyn, Arya, Robb, Jon, Bran, Rickon, and maybe Theon counts?); Littlefinger; Melisandre.
