Chapter 10: The Betrothal of Miss Sansa Starkton to Prince Joffrey

The court assembly at which King Robert Barroway chose to announce the betrothal of Miss Sansa Starkton to His Royal Highness Prince Joffrey Barrowmere was held on a Thursday, which was either a coincidence or was not, and which Sansa — standing in her best white muslin with her hair dressed by a maid borrowed from Lady Marbrand's household, because their own girl had twisted her ankle on the servants' stair that morning in circumstances nobody had satisfactorily explained — did not have occasion to consider either way.

The assembly rooms at Whitehall Palace were of a magnificence calculated to make northern drawing rooms feel provincial in retrospect. The ceiling soared to a height that suggested whoever commissioned it had wished to remind its occupants of their smallness, and had succeeded so thoroughly that the chandelier alone cost more than Wintermere Park's annual provision accounts. Every mirror was framed in gilt. Every surface that could be polished had been polished into a facsimile of permanence. The flowers were hot-house roses, blood red against the white tablecloths, and their fragrance was of the concentrated, aggressive sort that announces wealth rather than nature.

Lady Catelyn stood beside her husband near the east wall and breathed through it.