By Montykins
THEY CUT OFF NED'S HEAD!
Wait. Hang on. We have to cover some things first. Catelyn Stark has to convince the old, cranky Walder Frey to let the Starks use his bridge. He agrees, but only if the Stark children are all willing to marry Frey children. Robb goes along with it. So he sends two thousand soldiers as a feint against Tywin Lannister's army and the rest of his army attacks Jaime's. And they take Jaime Lannister hostage, so it presumably went pretty well.
Up at The Wall, Jon Snow learns about all the shenanigans and appears to be planning on deserting on the grounds that nobody else has ever had to decide between serving in the Night's Watch or participating in a civil war with the rest of one's family. Maester Aemon disagrees and it turns out he's a Targaryen from a couple generations back. So when the Mad King was getting rebelled against and the remaining Targaryens were being hunted down and killed, he was in a very similar situation.
And that cut that Khal Drogo gave himself in the last episode? It's not looking good at all, and he falls off his horse, which is apparently something that a horselord is not supposed to do. As his wound oozes and suppurates (that doesn't happen on screen, but how often do you think I have an excuse to say "suppurate"?), Daenerys gets a little panicky about what's going to happen when he dies. Because it will probably involve the death of both her and her unborn son. So she makes that witch she saved do some kind of spell to save him, which is a logical enough plan, although it apparently involves gallons of fresh horse blood all over everything. And then Dany starts to give birth.
And in King's Landing, Varys comes to visit Ned in prison to tell him that if he's willing to say that Joffrey is king, he'll be allowed to take the black and go join the men of The Wall. He doesn't want to do it, because he's Ned "Honor Honor Honor" Stark, and he probably loves the idea of dying to prove how much honor he's got. But Varys reminds him that Sansa's life is also at stake. So Ned comes out in front of a howling crowd to "confess" that he's a dirty traitor. Joffrey tells the crowd that his mother, Queen Regent Cersei, wants to let Ned live. But he disagrees.
And then THEY CUT OFF NED'S HEAD!