Awesome / A Feast for Crows

• Sam walks into a brothel and punches Dareon in the face for being a deserter. When a second person interferes, Sam fights him too, and only stops when he is thrown out. The Other-killing may have been a fluke and the election more a result of cunning rather than courage (Sam himself points out that he is smart, even if he is craven, a fact also admitted by Mormont) but this is one occasion in which he throws his cowardice to the winds and starts a fight.
  • Apparently, what Sam really needs to overcome his cowardice is someone to fight for. He's too scared to defend himself, but when someone is threatening Gilly or selfishly leaving Maester Aemon to die, he goes (quite literally) medieval on them.
• Euron Greyjoy's ascent to the Seastone Chair: "EURON KING!"
  • It may not have worked, but Asha's attempt was pretty cool as well. While the other would be kings pass out riches to win support, she tips over chests full of pebbles, pinecones, and turnips, the "spoils" of raiding Westeros, and makes her case that the war has been utterly fruitless for the Ironborn. And she has the brass to do this as a girl, when no woman has ever claimed the Seastone Chair before. Though she had less support than her uncles Victarion and Euron, she astounded many by actually gaining any support as a woman vying for the Seastone Chair.
• Littlefinger running rings around the Lords of the Vale, who want to kick him out of the Eyrie. It is also quite satisfying to see Sansa finally picking up on his methods.
• Kevan Lannister's Refuge in Audacity telling off of Cersei after she asks him to become the new King's Hand. Then he leaves her with a hint that he believes the accusation of incest between her and Jaime.
  • Ser Kevan also flat out calls her a poor ruler and when she argues that Joffrey was alive she ruled through him and intends to do the same through Tommen he simply points out that she is also a bad mother. Cersei is so enraged that she throws her wine in his face.
• Give Cersei some credit, while in the long term it does blow up in her face, arming the Faith Militant in the books allows for her to secure The High Septon's blessing for Tommen, wipe away the debt the crown owes to the Faith and deals with the sudden influx of refugees. It's a shocking contrast to the show where Cersei only does it to deal with the Tyrells.
• At the Inn at the Crossroads, Brienne is all the stands between seven bloodthirsty outlaws and several defenseless orphans. Does she cut and run? Of course not:
  Seven, Brienne thought again, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.
  She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand.
  • What makes this even more impressive is that earlier in the book, Brienne hears about how the Lord Mooton sat safe behind his walls while outlaws raided and burned Maidenpool. Brienne thinks to herself that a true knight would have defended his small folk despite the risk to himself. With her defense of the children, Brienne proves to be a true knight indeed.
• When Brienne is down on the ground, pinned down by Biter, Gendry runs to him with a spear and kills him (remember, we're talking about Biter). It's one of the few moments, especially this late in the books, that we remember that he is not only the bastard but the physical legacy of Robert Baratheon. Gives us another look at just how powerful Robert, who had been trained and well-fed all of his life, must have been in his prime, or even just as a boy.
  • Also Brienne killing Shagwell the fool - "Laugh!" but Shagwell could only moan and cry.
    • Props to Podrick Payne's timely assistance in getting Shagwell to yield to Brienne via chucking stones at him while she's busy taking down Timeon and Pyg, and for warning Brienne when Shagwell suddenly attacks after he finishes burying the murdered Dick Crabb.
  • Brienne thinks of the knight who trained her back home on Tarth, who feared that for all her strength she may not have the will to kill that a knight must have:
    He jerked his broken blade up to protect his face, but as he went high she went low. Oathkeeper bit through leather, wool, skin, and muscle, into the sellsword's thigh. Pyg cut back wildly as his leg went out from under him. His broken sword scraped against her chain mail before he landed on his back. Brienne stabbed him through the throat, gave the blade a hard turn, and slid it out, whirling just as Timeon's spear came flashing past her face. I did not flinch, she thought, as blood ran red down her cheek. Did you see, Ser Goodwin? She hardly felt the cut.
  • "Sapphires." Finally, Rorge gets what is coming to him.
• Margaery Tyrell gets an amazingly satisfying moment after Cersei, in a fit of staggering paranoia, frames her for adultery and treason and has her arrested by the Faith. She goes to visit Margaery in her cell to show support (i.e., stealth gloating), but once Margaery realizes what her game is she makes it clear she's having precisely none of Cersei's bullshit:
  Cersei donned a look of hurt. “You wrong me, daughter. All I want—”
  “—is your son, all for yourself. He will never have a wife that you don’t hate. And I am not your daughter, thank the gods. Leave me.”
  “You are being foolish. I am only here to help you.”
  “To help me to my grave. I asked for you to leave. Will you make me call my gaolers and have you dragged away, you vile, scheming, evil bitch?”
  • This is especially fun, as it utterly deflates the previous Cersei POV chapters that she's spent congratulating herself for being a Chessmaster supreme and shows her up for the Smug Snake she truly is.
• Doran Martell reveals his master plan to destroy the Lannisters and put the Targaryens on the throne, complete with those chilling words: Vengeance. Justice. Fire and Blood.
  • In the next book, he gets wind of Cersei's plan to kill his son, with himself as a witness that she wasn't involved, and quickly alters his years-long plan by sending three of the Sand Snakes out to further keep an eye on everything in King's Landing. Not bad for someone who's long been crippled by gout.
  • Oberyn may be the deadly viper, but as Doran rightly boasts, he is the grass that hides the snake, and thus far more dangerous. He's been patiently plotting against the Lannisters for years, hiding this even from his own family.
• Bronn's ever more jaw-droppingly brazen rise to power.
  • To elaborate, Cersei arranges for Bronn to have an unfortunate accident with his underlings, Ser Balman and Lady Falyse. Instead, Balman challenges to a jousting match on horseback (thinking that Bronn, not having any jousting experience, will get knocked off his horse and can be killed while he's lying stunned on the ground), only for Bronn to kill Balman's horse instead and kill him while he's lying stunned on the ground (though only after getting Balman to admit Cersei put him up to it, giving Bronn leverage against her should she try again). Bronn then expels Lady Falyse from her castle, declaring it belongs to him and his new wife, Falyse's younger sister...and when she demands her guards arrest Bronn, they just laugh and reveal that they're loyal to Bronn now. Note that this is after Bronn has named his adopted son "Tyrion" when it would be suicide to do so, and has gotten away with it.
    • There is a reason why this moment appears on the Funny Moments page as well as this one.
  • Even earlier than that, Bronn begins life as just a normal sellsword, smart enough to believe that when Tyrion says A Lannister always pays his debts he means it. He then kills a seasoned knight in single combat, traverses bandit-filled country unscathed (in no small part with Tyrion's help, granted), fights in several battles, saves a city, THEN does the above jousting trick then, to top it all off, declares himself lord protector of his wife's lands with no protest from anyone.
• Jaime gets a moment when talking to Ryman Frey who has been threatening to hang Edmure Tully over and over again:
  "Only a fool makes threats he's not prepared to carry out. If I were to threaten to hit you unless you shut your mouth, and you presumed to speak, what do you think I'd do?"
  "Ser, you do not unders-"
  Jaime hit him. It was a backhand blow delivered with his golden hand, but the force of it sent Ser Ryman tumbling backward into the arms of his whore.
• Speaking of Jamie and backhands, how about earlier when he pimp-smacks Ser Ronnet the same way for calling Brienne a freak? Especially since Jamie used to call her "wench" all the time, it makes his reaction even more freakin' golden (no pun intended):
  "You are speaking of a highborn lady, ser. Call her by her name. Call her Brienne."
  • The build-up to the blow is classic; from the first time Ronnet jokes about Brienne's ugliness Jaime (who'd never hesitated to insult Brienne himself before now) becomes very calm, not expressing any outward disapproval as Ronnet continues to brag about how he mocked Brienne to her face when they were being betrothed, as if he's finally understanding exactly how difficult Brienne's life has been, until Ronnet refers to her as a "freak" and Jaime splits his lip with gold.
  • Jaime, who we've never really seen slap anyone in the first few books, suddenly seems to be finding lots of excuses to teach terrible people what the five golden fingers say to the face. You get the feeling he's happy he's finally found something that the useless hand is good for.
• Later, he makes a threat to Edmure. Following a very To the Pain-esque speech about the extent to which Edmure's home and retainers will suffer if he does not relent (including diverting a river over the ruins of his castle so that no one will ever know anything had once stood there), he ends with "You wife may whelp before then. You'll want your child, I expect. I'll send him to you when he's born. With a trebuchet." Practically a Moment of Awesome for the author, seeing as Jaime opened the series with a very similar act, and yet we root for him. He himself admits mentally that he wouldn't do it and is disgusted with himself, after having just chastised Ryman for the same thing, but still good writing.
  • The best part of his To the Pain speech is arguably after the threats have finished. Jaime walks out and leaves Edmure in the bath, casually telling a bard to stay with him and serenade him... with The Rains Of Castamere^note the song describes the fate of a lord who defied Tywin Lannister (Hint: It didn't involve puppies and roses). Gulp.
    • He also gets credit for which bard he unintentionally picked. He just so happens to have selected the bard who used to hang around writing insulting songs about Edmure.
    • That bard's name? Tom o' Sevens. Of the Brotherhood Without Banners. And Jaime has given him complete, unsupervised access to Lady Stoneheart's brother. Wonder what sort of song Tom played him.
  • The threat works, too. While even Jaime thinks of it as a Kick the Dog moment, in real terms he did what he had to do in order to make Edmure Tully realise that fighting to the end and dying for a lost cause would cost a lot more than just his own life, and Jaime's rightly proud of himself for managing to capture Riverrun without breaking his oath to Catelyn to never bear arms against Tully or Stark again.
  • His final line in "A Feast for Crows", in which he definitively leaves Cersei to her own doing, realising that she's been using him all their lives.
    No. Put this in the fire.
• Jaime gets another MOA when he calls Jeyne Westerling's mother, who actively prevented her daughter from siring a heir to the throne and plotted the death of her son-in-law, out for her general sliminess.
  • He even says that Jeyne is worth ten of her mother, although Jeyne's true loyalty is with her late husband King Robb Stark who she's defiantly mourning and not with the Lannisters.
• The latest High Septon gets one when talking to Cersei:
  High Septon: No.
  • Cersei proceeds to get imprisoned and unable to invoke a trial by combat she might actually win, guarded by the militant orders of the church against any rescue attempt. Her own actions are directly responsible for the restriction on her champions and the existence of said militant orders.
• The Blackfish verbally abuses Jaime Lannister when the latter tries to parley during the siege of Riverrun, pointing out that Jaime's position isn't as strong as he thinks, and admitting that he only came out to parley because he was bored. And then he escapes the siege by swimming down a river. For least 10 miles. At night. Did we mention that he's 60 years old?
• While Edmure does surrender the castle to the enemy, he firsthand helps Blackfish escape, knowing that his uncle is the real threat to the Freys and that as long as he's alive and loose, the resistance lives on. And because Freys&Lannisters understand that too, Edmure put himself in grave danger by letting him out - Jaime threatens to stuff him into an oubliette and let rats gnaw him alive just for that act alone, and that is to say nothing of any actual damage Blackfish might cause the Freys, for which Edmure would most certainly have to suffer.