A total fucking idiot who should really know better woefully underprepares all his children for life in a crapsack world, and when his "But all the good guys have plot armour!" reasoning fails (as a paramecium could have told him it would) their lives turn to custard in short order.

It's still an absorbing read, even second time through as this is for me, but my impressions of it haven't changed much since I last read the series. Ned is still as dense as weirwood, Bran is still dull as ditchwater, but I do enjoy all the other characters, and the world-building is excellent if a little overdone for my tastes (fantasy bloat strikes again).

This first book isn't Sansa's greatest outing, but she's still the character here that interests me most. True, she's got a bitchy streak, but that doesn't excuse her parents using her as an 11 year old meat shield ("We can't let the Lannisters know we suspect them, we've got to keep our pre-teen daughter's betrothal going and dump her, totally unprepared, into a pit of murderous vipers where she will be easily manipulated because we haven't bothered to teach her - the current future queen! - how to recognise danger of this kind.") Not that she's a perfect child by any means, but can you see Margaery Tyrell allowed to be so ignorant of the world around her? I just find Sansa fascinating - and it's as much the reaction to her on the part of readers (and show watchers) as the character herself that fascinates me. She's kind of a misogyny-mirror, that girl, in a far more subtle way than her sister.

Talking of, I'm also very fond of Arya, though my utter boredom with the Not Like Other Girls, I'm So Much Cooler Because I Have Typically Masculine Interests! trope does limit my interest in her (I feel I've read that trope approximately 10K times already, and it's just as insulting each time). Still, the relationship between Arya and Sansa is the one I'm most invested in in this entire series, and I really hope they meet back up again one day, learn to appreciate and exploit their different talents, and thereafter together rain hell down on the thugs and idiots of the world - Westeros has plenty of them. I don't care if every other main character dies as long as I can have that.