In-character or not, that whole scene did indeed strike me very strongly as Sansa being carefully manipulated by Cersei with the participation of the others.

Stannis makes an excellent point that didn't even occur to me- there is an entire House of Baratheon not heard from. Not only the Raven but Renly Baratheon took off and probably went to tell Stannis what was going down after Robert's death, and from Varys' suggestion to Ned, his death was not really an accident so…

I don't think Syrio would have extricated himself from the fight or surrendered. Remember what he told Arya when she tried to get him to escape with her: "the First Sword does not run". I can't vouch for it, but others have seen the big knight he was fighting later in the throne room scene. So unless that knight ran…

Very plausible but I bet there is more drama around him coming up than that. Remember he is the one that's hooked into the spies in Dothraki country- he could be a double agent for the them and the one instigating Stark-Lannister war in preparation for their invasion.

How will they get it in the end?
Ok, we had a guy that basically did nothing worse than treat his sister like a piece of meat, whine about his crown all the time and generally be a total asshole. He got a molten-gold induced scrambled-brain omelet.

Ok I'm going way out on a limb here with my guess how the battles play out next week. I haven't read the books or got a copy of the next episode or anything so it's a prediction, not a

I'll yield to the point that the fighting style did not look like broadswords, and that perhaps he is primarily a rapier man being from the land-of-fancy-dancing-men across the sea.

Arya's Needle, not to be confused with Hodor's Noodle.

Ok I'm tired of this sword debate. I'm no expert and haven't read the books but I'll point out a few things that may settle it, as well as Syrio's fate:

How about this scenario:

That kid should just be glad it was Arya and not Hodor that swung around and stuck him with the pointy end of something.