Well wasn't that the best wedding Westeros has ever had?
Good grief.
I'm still reeling.
I'm going through the seven stages...
I need a nice cup of tea and a sit down.
Ok, post mortem: Things had just started to look up for Robb. With the Greyjoys weak, he had a decent plan to capture Moat Cailin and start to recapture the north. Winterfell was abandonded and there was a chance he would soon be able to recapture his home.
Arya was about to be reunited with her mother. Catelyn would have been very relieved to have at least one extra child back. She still thought Bran and Rickon were dead, but in time she would have found out the truth and the Starks could have been reunited in Winterfell once more, and lived happily ever after.
But that's not how GRRM rolls. Instead, Catelyn died thinking that all her children were dead or lost. The North is in chaos. I honestly don't know who is on whose side at this point. I'm not even completely certain who is dead and who is still alive. There's probably about to be a big battle outside the castle and Arya is in the middle of that.
And now Arya will not be reunited with her mother or her brother. Just when she thought she was home, all is lost.
Not quite all: there is still Jon Snow, Bran, Rickon and Sansa. Maybe Jon, recently named Robb's heir, though he does not know it, will one day take up residence in Winterfell with the rest of them. But I'm sure there is a lot more left to go wrong.
Arya has a few more names to add to her list of people to kill. She will be a vengeful queen when she gains the Iron Throne, as I suspect.
Is Edmure going to stay married to Roslin? He might as well, I suppose, if he likes her. Can he write the other Freys out of his will?
The wildlings (and worse) are coming. The Watch is all but destroyed. The North is in no fit state to defend itself. Dany and her dragons are coming. Will there be any Westeros left for her to conquer?
What will become of the Freys for that matter? He has surely broken all kinds of unbreakable customs. Murdering wedding guests (who have eaten his bread and salt!) is very impolite. Will the Freys suffer for it, or will they become strong, as baddies so often do in these books?
Also part of my shock and horror is due to my attachment to The Way Things Were. All the Starks living happily in Winterfell. All the Starks as the good guys against the bad. But I have a feeling the Starks and Robert's rebellion against Mad King Aerys might not turn out to be so morally straightforward. We still have a lot to learn about that. We will see.
More thoughts: the man who murdered Robb (who wins all his battles, so was never going to die nobly in battle) said something like "best wishes from Jaime Lannister". So clearly the Freys have joined the Lannisters who are behind this plot, which is actually pretty clever of them. Hard to see how it is specifically to do with Jaime, though. But a lot of time has passed since we last saw him in Harrenhal having just rescued Brienne.
Also: at some point I want to figure out how long GRRM has been signalling this wedding slaughter. My impending sense of doom was largely based on things going smoothly for a few chapters, but it's more than that. Walder Frey's jokes. The nice rooms. The missing Freys. Well before all that: the reaction to Arya of the old fortune teller woman. Before that are the chapters with Tyrion and Tywin -- was this being plotted back then? And were there clues from the original wedding invitation chapter when Edmure decided to go to the Twins? I need to re-read some stuff.
