Free Game of Thrones A-Z by Martin Howden

Harrenhal as a captor. After he sinks into a deep depression on realising that the only thing that made him the fearsome man he was was his sword hand, it is Brienne who helps him recover. Eventually, Jaime is freed, but Brienne remains imprisoned. However, while making his way home, Jaime has a moving dream about her and heads back to Harrenhal to rescue his companion. After returning to King’s Landing, and following the death of Joffrey, Jaime meets up again with Cersei and they have sex right in front of their son’s corpse. However, Jaime has returned a changed man, and his relationship with Cersei falls apart soon after. When Tyrion is wrongly accused of murdering Joffrey – and sentenced to death – Jaime rescues him. He also learns that Cersei has been having affairs behind his back, and when, after leaving King’s Landing, he receives a letter from Cersei pleading with him to be her champion in a potential trial-by-combat ruling after she is imprisoned, he orders the letter to be burned.
    JON SNOW
    While season one is played like an old-fashioned murder mystery, with Ned Stark desperately seeking answers as to who killed his mentor Jon Arryn, there is a far deeper mystery at hand that is still to be resolved – who is Jon Snow’s mother?
    The bastard son of Eddard Stark is a tag that Snow has been branded with, and one that makes him bristle from the many remarks that come his way. He wears the insults like a wounded soldier; they keep him in check and make sure he never feels too important.
    Raised by his father, he forms a likeable bond with his brother and sisters but meets resistance from their mother, Catelyn Stark. To her, his presence is a daily reminder of her beloved husband’s infidelity. She treats him coldly, and his warm relationship with her children upsets her.
    Kit Harington, who plays Jon, said about their relationship to  westeros.org , ‘I think he’s given up on it. It’s not a question that goes away, obviously he wants to know, and we want to know who his mother is, but that’s the hard thing about his father’s death.’
    Not only has Jon lost his father; he’s also lost his mother, because the day that Ned died so did his mother’s identity. ‘So unless Catelyn knows – and she’s never going to tell him, and is he never going to see her again – so the question of his mother’s identity is forsaken; he can’t learn anymore,’ Harington explained.
    ‘It’s never going to happen, that they’ll reconcile. I think, from the word go, it was hatred. Well, he didn’t hate her, but she hated him.’
    Believing his calling to be that of the Night’s Watch, Snow had heard tales of a noble breed of warriors who help protect the North from wildings and other creatures. He longed to serve there, seeing it as a chance to carve out his own identity for himself, find a new family and not be tarred with the same brush as his namesake.
    He joins the Watch but takes time to settle in, realising that the notion of noble soldiers was a lie. Delinquents are rounded up and are given the choice of maiming, death or a place at Castle Black to serve as part of the Night’s Watch. Nevertheless, he quickly realises that this is the family he was searching for.
    Snow is assigned to a scouting party in the mountains with a task to kill former Night’s Watch member Mance Rayder – the King-Beyond-the-Wall. While out Beyond the Wall, one of his tasks is to take out a group of wilding sentries, one being a woman. His reluctance to kill her sees her managing to escape. He eventually captures her again, but he has lost the other members of the scouting party.
    However, when the wildings capture him and one of the other scouting party members, Jon is told by the Night’s Watch man to kill him and go undercover to discover the wilding’s plans.
    SPOILER: Separated from his Night’s Watch, Snow meets up with Mance Rayder, and over time he learns of the King-Beyond-the-Wall’s plans to invade