ASOIAF: How was the Red WEdding kept secret?

The whole society is built on the oath you make to your liege lord. You swear to do his bidding; in return he promises to protect you.

It’s not the best system in the world, but it is what you got. At least you’re not a slave in Essos.

You might argue that Robb was the King so his will mattered more than your liege lord.

But then you might argue that Robb was not a legitimate king, but that Joffrey was the legitimate king and Robb was an accursed rebel.

This would, of course, get tied up in the courts for years, as counter-suits followed suits. And it takes a keen legal mind to parse out what is legally right and wrong, and then you realize the court system in Westeros is pretty crap, so you have wasted all this thought on it for nothing.

But these people are not a collection of the finest legal minds WEsteros has to offer. They are a bunch of superstitious illiterates with crotch-rot so they don’t even think about it too much. Hell, they’d just as soon have Mad King Aerys in charge.

So you just do whatever the guy above you says, because after all there are repercussions if you don’t. Plus you hear that weird Stark kid is one of them wargs.

You don’t mess with Roose Bolton when he is your liege lord.

Seriously. That guy flays people for the hell of it. He rapes his subjects’ wives and has their husbands killed. If you talk to him when he doesn’t want you to he will just rip your tongue out. And he doesn’t even get off on it. He is mean, yes but he just doesn’t care. He would yawn while your tongue was getting ripped out. He’d probably just toss it in the fire when he was done.

He holds meetings in bed with leeches hanging from him. He has eyes like chips of ice. He speaks so quietly you have to strain to hear him and he says things like “I am not a man to be undone.” Which is creepy in and of itself.

The Freys, by contrast, just smell bad, because their clothes are always damp, but they doesn’t mean they won’t hang your ass if you disobey them. Worse — Old Man Frey might get a hankering for your daughter.

Heh, heh, heh.

The good Freys, like Olyvar, were kept away…possibly sent to another castle so that they wouldn’t snitch on their damp-clothed brethren.

The rest of the Freys were just following orders. Who knows, some of them might have hung back and watched instead of comitting the vile crime. Maybe a few even did snitch.

Not enough.

Written Feb 21