A king in love and his loving queen.
“Roslin caught a fine fat trout. Her brothers gave her a pair of wolf pelts for her wedding.”
— Walder Frey to Tywin Lannister
As the wars between the factions of Westeros continue apace, strategy and strength in numbers remain two of the greatest factors in the chances for success. After beheading Lord Karstark for insubordination, Robb Stark has lost his bannermen, weakening his numbers. Determined to press his advantage while his victories are still fresh, Robb plans to bring his forces to the Lannister’s door at Casterly Rock—an audacious move that, if successful, could end the conflict for the Starks and see Robb as king. To do this he needs one thing, the forces belonging to Walder Frey, Lord of the Twins, whom he snubbed when he reneged on the deal brokered by Catelyn Stark when the campaign began.
“It often comforts me to think that even during war’s darkest days, in most places in the world, absolutely nothing is happening.”
—Ser Brynden “Blackfish” Tully
Robb stands with his mother, wife, and uncle at the funeral of his grandfather.
with a noble history stretching back to the age of heroes, House Tully has held the seat of Riverrun at the fork of the Trident in the Riverlands for more than a thousand years. The Tullys have never held the title of king, but since the Wars of Conquest each lord of the house has been known as Lord Paramount of the Trident.
During his reign, the much-despised tyrant Harren the Black of House Hoare ruled over Riverrun. When Aegon the Conqueror swept north with his dragons, Lord Edmyn Tully was the first to join his forces and rebel against Harren. After Aegon’s victory, Lord Edmyn was granted the title of Lord Paramount, with all the other lords of the region owing him fealty.
The Tullys have always made strong alliances through marriage. At the age of twelve, Catelyn Tully, the eldest child of Hoster Tully, was promised in marriage to Brandon Stark to strengthen the ties to Winterfell, from where the Starks governed the North. However, Brandon Stark and his father were killed by the “Mad King” Aerys Targaryen, which sparked the war known as Robert’s Rebellion. To maintain the ties between the great houses, Catelyn was married instead to Brandon’s younger brother, Eddard Stark. Meanwhile, Catelyn’s sister, Lysa, was wedded to Jon Arryn, Lord of the Vale.
More recently, after the murder of Jon Arryn and the execution of Eddard Stark, as well as the ascendance of the Lannisters to the throne, House Tully finds its alliances strained and in flux. They have pledged to support Robb Stark, Catelyn’s son, who has been dubbed the new “King in the North,” thus sacrificing any connection to the Lannisters’ court.
House Tully family tree.
“People have been calling me ‘Blackfish’ for so long, they don’t know my real name.”
—Ser Brynden Tully
Blackfish in costume, each doublet made of 1000 hand-cut and sewn leather scales.
Brynden Tully (Clive Russell), better known as Blackfish, is the younger brother of Hoster Tully and uncle to Catelyn, Edmure, and Lysa. Known as an excellent commander and strategist, he has little patience for the ineptitude of his nephew, Edmure, but despite his frustration, his love is steadfast and he honors his family above all else.
After Lord Hoster dies, Blackfish acts as a military advisor to Robb Stark. Most significantly, he brings Lord Rickard Karstark before Robb for the murder of two Lannister prisoners whom Robb had pledged to protect, despite direct orders that they were to remain unharmed. Robb is urged to reconsider his sentence of death, but ignores the advice and beheads Karstark, and in doing so, he loses the allegiance of Karstark’s bannermen, who make up half of the forces of the North.
Later, to help Robb Stark repair his alliance with House Frey, Blackfish is instrumental in pressuring Edmure to marry Roslin Frey in Robb’s place. Blackfish steadfastly reminds Edmure of his previous mistakes and need to support his king. Unaware that this alliance will be betrayed at the Red Wedding, Blackfish leaves before the massacre begins. His current whereabouts remain unknown.
MICHELLE FAIRLEY (CATELYN STARK): Clive Russell is just the most incredibly wonderful, caring, and shy guy, but also a spectacularly experienced actor. I had the advantage of working with Clive before, so welcoming him to such an established show became very easy. I think it also helped with the relationship Catelyn has with her family, which I believe is quite troubled. There’s a good deal of acceptance from Cat that her family members are the way they are and they should just get on with it, but an uneasy history, too. I loved my scenes with Clive, particularly when they are discussing Hoster’s death. He’s the sort of actor you trust implicitly, to talk when you need to talk or wait when you need to wait. He’s a very wise and honest man.
Edmure Tully: |
“He’s getting me. A Tully of the Trident, Lord of Riverrun.” |
Brynden Tully: |
“Hero of the Stone Mill.” |
Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies), the youngest son and heir of Hoster Tully and now Lord of Riverrun, remains something of an irritation to his uncle Blackfish. Edmure has been fighting for Robb Stark, his nephew and also his king, but he is arrogant and foolish and lacks strategic skill. After an important battle in which he impulsively gives up a key strategic position for a minor victory and low-grade Lannister prisoners, Edmure is compelled to make amends to Robb for this miscalculation by marrying Roslin Frey in his king’s place. Edmure resents this, but he capitulates under strong pressure from his family.
When the Stark and Tully forces arrive at the Twins for Edmure’s wedding, Walder Frey makes a great show of reconciliation. Until now, Edmure has not seen his bride, and Frey’s unattractive brood makes his sacrifice seem all the more daunting. However, when Roslin is revealed, Edmure is delighted with her beauty. After much celebration, and following custom, Edmure and his bride are eventually whisked from the main room for the ceremonial bedding. But once the doors are bolted, locking them inside, the carefully planned massacre of Robb Stark and his bannermen begins. All information suggests that Edmure, Lord of Riverrun, spends his wedding night in a cell, at the Twins, and that he is likely to remain a prisoner for some time to come.
Edmure Tully takes aim for the second time.
MICHELLE FAIRLEY (CATELYN STARK): I loved the writing for Edmure. I adored the way that David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] wrote him to be so arrogant, petulant, and stupid. At the same time, I think if you are a forward-thinking person, you know not to attack someone like that. You try and give them room to grow. Instead of the black sheep, he is the weak sheep. It’s an easier dynamic between Robb and Blackfish. They understand each other, have a similar mind-set. For Edmure, I think most of the acceptance is coming from Catelyn, who just wants to encourage him to be better than he is.
“Let’s get ready. The wine will flow red, and the music will play loud, and we’ll put this mess behind us.”
—Walder Frey
Walder Frey has a villainous plan, but a beautiful child.
in the riverlands, straddling the trident at the green fork, is the dual tower castle known as the Twins. Its two tall, gray towers embrace over the crossing—and form the only available river bridge for hundreds of miles in either direction. The strategic position of this fortress has allowed the Frey family to grow wealthy and strong from the tolls they have collected from travelers for more than six hundred years. The current Lord of the Crossing is Walder Frey, an old man now married to his eighth wife and father to more children than he can count. Walder Frey knows that control of this confluence is a priceless military asset to anyone with designs on the Iron Throne. Initially, he agrees to form an alliance with Robb Stark, the King in the North, after Catelyn promises that Robb will marry Frey’s daughter Roslin.
When Robb betrays this promise and marries Talisa Maegyr instead, Walder is beside himself with rage and humiliation at the perceived slight. He withholds his forces from Robb’s campaign. Later, when Edmure Tully is offered as a replacement husband for Roslin, Walder is apparently mollified; he agrees to the marriage and to repairing the alliance. Walder even invites the Stark forces to the Twins for the union, offering them a brief respite from their constant battles and a chance to renew their strength in numbers against the Lannister armies.
In fact, the wedding is a trap, planned by Walder Frey to punish the Starks and the Tullys and to change the balance of power in Westeros forever.
House Frey family tree.
The banquet hall at the Twins, as Walder Frey plays host to the Red Wedding.
“I haven’t shown you the hospitality you deserve. My king is married and I owe my new queen a wedding gift.”
—Walder Frey
A king stands betrayed.
The “Red Wedding” begins as a rare moment of happiness that, ultimately, becomes one of the most devastating sequences in the show’s history. Initially, the wedding of Edmure and Roslin is filled with much hope. Edmure is overjoyed to discover that Roslin is a woman of remarkable beauty, and the strained relationship between Walder Frey and the Starks seems to ease. For the Stark family, it’s a chance to imagine a more peaceful future. Robb and Talisa discuss raising their unborn child, and Catelyn is relieved by the renewal of the Frey alliance. The bride and groom leave the hall to complete the bedding ceremony in a raucous parade of well-wishers. After discussing the quirks of family, Blackfish Tully excuses himself to find another kind of relief after too many flagons of ale.
Then, ominously, the doors are closed. Catelyn notices that Roose Bolton is wearing armor hidden under his clothing, a clear indication that the wedding is not what it seems. Walder Frey speaks, offering his king the hospitality he deserves and his queen a gift, and with these mocking double entendres, the carnage begins. Catelyn screams a warning as Talisa is brutally stabbed in the stomach, killing both her and the baby in her womb. As Robb tries to reach her fallen body, crossbow bolts rain down, and the haunting chords of “The Rains of Castamere” play among the echoes of fighting and murder.
Catelyn seizes Walder’s young wife, Joyeuse, and asks for Robb, now struggling to stand, to be granted mercy. Walder mockingly refuses, and Roose Bolton, saying “the Lannisters send their regards,” drives a dagger into Robb’s heart. Catelyn can only watch in helpless agony. Then, in retribution, she kills Joyeuse, slitting her throat. As the last to fall, Catelyn bears witness to the horror of seeing her worst fears realized—until her own throat is opened by Black Walder, one of Frey’s great-grandchildren, and she slips into darkness.
A moment of peace for the Stark family.
DAVID NUTTER (DIRECTOR): Toward the end of season two, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] started to whisper in my ear about being involved with the Red Wedding. I had deliberately not read the books. I wanted to be led by the scripts when it came to storytelling, and I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Once I had agreed to be involved, I started to read about it, to get a sense of the sequence. Then, this weight appeared above my head, and I had all this trepidation and nervousness for about nine months before we even started on it. My initial feeling was simply fear. When the scripts arrived, that’s when it became about breaking down how it was going to work.
Meeting Walder Frey initially, that scene was pretty clear-cut for me, as was the wedding—but the feast, well, that was more complicated. It was important for me, like a coach at a football game, to figure out what all the plays were going to be and how best to manipulate that. Where the characters were going to be and the interactions: Robb and Talisa and Catelyn watching them, where was Walder and Lothar Frey, and the importance of Roose Bolton. I sat down with [production designer] Gemma Jackson to discuss the sets, how the tables should be. That, to me, once I could get that figured out, was one of the biggest challenges. It was written so very well. It had to be joyous and raucous, but there also had to be a sense of ease—finally something nice is going to happen. It was so important to have that lull, with Robb and Talisa talking about their baby and Catelyn starting to see that and thinking they are going to be all right before the tables are turned.
It was very important to me that it was shot in sequence. I come from a musical background, and in a way this is like a piece of music. It was key that we had very little wasted time. I wanted to shoot it in sequence so the actors could give it their all, that there would be no holding back in those final moments.
The royal couple, before the tragedy.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND AUTHOR): I knew years before I got to the scene that Robb was going to die. From the beginning he was marked for death. People have said that he should have been a POV character and in retrospect maybe he should have been, because then it would have been even more of a shock, but I always knew he was going to die. I wanted to deconstruct the usual fantasy thing and I had already killed Ned. In 90 percent of fantasies the father is murdered and the son picks up his mantle and avenges him. I wanted a switch, where you seem to be getting the heroic son, but whoops—he’s dead, too. While writing, I made some other decisions about that scene. Catelyn was going to have to die and the army needed to be destroyed, too. It’s very loosely based on two incidents in Scottish history. One was the Black Dinner, where Black Douglas was promised safe passage to the royal place at Stirling to meet with the King and settle their differences, but at the dinner both he and his brother were murdered. The other is, of course, the famous massacre of Glencoe where the guests who were protected by guest-right killed their McDonald hosts in the middle of the night. I used that as a basis, but added my own fantasy elements.
MICHELLE FAIRLEY (CATELYN STARK): [Filming the scenes] in chronological order was incredibly difficult because there was an emotional crescendo. But, honestly? It was one of the best weeks of my working life. You are surrounded by completely wonderful craftspeople, the crew, who after three years are your friends. It’s a time for saying good-bye, but you keep in mind what you are here to do. It’s the best thing in the world to be trusted with material like that, to be able to do it. It was exhausting on the final wrap. It was a palpable thing—there was a surge of energy at the end. I think we all felt it.
DAVID BENIOFF AND D. B. WEISS (CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS AND WRITERS): David [Nutter] came into this knowing full well how powerful the scene could be if done right. He prepared accordingly. He is a Terminator—a man who can shoot the hell out of a battle in two days and wrap early. He showed up at the first story meeting with reams of charts and diagrams—he had the whole thing staged in his head from the get-go. This degree of organization gave him the efficiency needed to do full justice to every single moment. And there are many, many little moments.
David worked so well with the actors, who all brought everything they had to this one. Everyone: Oona, Michael, David, Maisie, Rory . . . and Richard and Michelle. It almost seems redundant to talk about the strength and perfection of their performances in this scene. There was something very emotionally honest in their sadness, and in everyone’s sadness at seeing them go. [They were surrounded by a tough, Northern Irish crew who were tearing up at the monitors. The makeup department needed their own makeup department.] From the pilot, Richard and Michelle have been lodged at the beating heart of the show, so beautifully and powerfully embodying the complex and ultimately loving relationship between mother and son. The idea that they’re not still on the show hasn’t sunk in yet, and probably never will.
The Great Hall at the Twins with a dolly track to catch the murder of the bannermen.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND AUTHOR): I didn’t see the rough edit. I had hoped to come to set for the Red Wedding and be a Stark casualty, having my throat cut in the background, but sadly the press of work did not allow it. When I did see the final cut it was so vividly and viscerally done, I really felt that David and Dan had turned it up to an 11 in some senses. I knew we would get a huge reaction, because I had gotten a huge reaction 13 years ago—I got the emails and letters from people, some saying I was brilliant, some saying they would never read another book, some hoping I would die in a fire. With TV being much bigger and the Internet being prevalent, I knew it would be big, but I didn’t realize just how big. It’s pretty visceral in the books and to be honest I didn’t think that anyone would be able to make it bloodier, but David and Dan brought in Talisa and then made her pregnant. That had an impact even on me, because I wasn’t sure if she would end up at the wedding.
MICHELLE FAIRLEY (CATELYN STARK): I’ve watched it only once. I find it very hard. The speed of it, the way it was cut and edited, you felt you were there. Where would you run if you were in there? Even before Catelyn realizes what’s happening, there is this relentless inevitability to it. I think, in many ways, she was hoping, going against her gut that everything was going to be okay, but the minute the music starts it confirms her fears.
DAVID NUTTER (DIRECTOR): Michelle Fairley is basically one of the greatest actresses. Seriously—she lives Catelyn Stark. There is nothing for me to do. There is a sequence when Black Walder has locked the doors and the music is playing—she knows something is very, very wrong. We played a recording of the music and had the band there so she could react to it. Once she realizes Roose Bolton is in on it, she disregards herself completely. She is a mother trying to protect her son. You can see her lose her will to live before she dies herself. Her performance was magnificent.
RICHARD MADDEN (ROBB STARK): I deliberately didn’t read any books ahead of each season; I didn’t want to know or preempt myself. I liked that each step took him closer to reaching his potential, but I needed it to be a surprise for me.
That said, I was aware of the Red Wedding from the beginning. David and Dan explained just how big the sequence was and how in many ways, the series was about getting to that place. After that, lots of people were more than happy to fill me in before I got to it in the books.
The camera gets the perfect angle.
It was hard to film, but what I tried to do was to block it out while filming during that week. I was keen not to anticipate anything in my actions. I wanted it to be clean, because Robb doesn’t know what is going to happen. I wanted to be able to play those scenes with honest joy and relief, because that is what Robb would have been feeling. In the end, it felt like a surprise to me, because Robb didn’t see it coming. Really, it’s only Catelyn who does.
Working with Michelle [Fairley] was amazing. In every new job as an actor you are put in a situation where you have to throw yourself into it and just trust another actor. We ended up with a friendship that allowed us to start a scene in a place you never could with a person you had only just met. We already have the layers, the history of what we have already been through to build on. Michelle is an actress who you look in the eye and it’s very hard not to tell the truth with because she is so honest in her performance.
Robb and Catelyn have been on such a relentless journey. In many ways, Robb is like his father, which is also partly why their dynamic is so strong. It’s also something that drives the devastation—of all the marriages we have seen in Westeros, only Ned and Catelyn and Robb and Talisa are marriages of love. That’s part of the injustice of the situation. It’s born of something good. Yes, he broke his oath and his vows, but it’s like he was too young for it. I think he ended up there because of what was going on around him, with all the loss and betrayals to then have someone honest and loyal—well, maybe there was a world where things could have worked differently. In the end what we do have is a really great love story between the two characters. I think that’s what makes it harder on Catelyn—she can see that it’s honest and pure and she knows he’s doing the right thing to follow his heart, even if it’s the wrong thing politically.
That’s where the Starks fall down really; they follow their hearts and do what is fair and honest and just and not simply the right political move.
I didn’t go into the scene with any expectations of reaction. All I wanted was for it to be as surprising as it was in the books. I had it in my head that I wanted it to show him never giving up, even when the arrows are in him and Roose comes at him with the knife, that he would just keep fighting until his body stopped working. Then, when I got to that point I realized something about Robb. It wasn’t just about fighting until you can’t go anymore. There was a change in him, when Talisa went and he knew it was over. There was almost a relief to it. When he says “mother,” it’s as if he is saying “we can be at peace now.” They had been in such turmoil, fighting, fighting and never stopping trying to get everyone back. In hindsight I look at Catelyn and Robb and they were only ever fighting to keep each other alive.
It changed for me on set. He didn’t want to fight anymore. What are they fighting for, vengeance? He believes his family is dead. He’s won all these battles and done so well at being a man and this leader. Then he resigns when he’s lost the fight, and it gives him calm.
The pure anguish of Catelyn Stark.
After the mayhem of the Red Wedding, the Hound begins a new stage of his journey, now as Arya’s protector.
