• Stay away if you haven't read all five books of the series, and the published chapters of the Winds of Winter. Light use will be made of the Dunk and Egg short stories.
• Our subject consists in the chapters in Winterfell mediated by Theon in ADwD, and their ramifications. The Prince of Winterfell, The Turncloak, A Ghost in Winterfell, Theon. They will collectively be called the Four Chapters or the Huis Clos. A single place, a determinate time period, and a known list of agents make for a rare episode when our story has the (false) allure of respecting the classical unities.
• Even if I have tried to present my thinking in an organized way, I can only offer a draft, that would take too long to be edited properly. All this started as a set of notes, and the study grew in the studying. In its present form, it is a set of 1995-looking web pages. But I have not plan to give them a more congenial shape. So here they are, warts and all. (Added: I have updated the site twice.)
• The Four Chapters appear to be too complex to be discussed in any linear manner. I have tried to separate elements of background from the drama itself, without having any illusion that it could be done properly. In the preparatory analyses of all involved parties there will be discussion of events in Winterfell, and in the examination of events we will occasionally return to the background. 
• In particular, I could not organize well enough to avoid overlaps and repetitions. For instance, Roose's maneuvering prior to the Red Wedding is discussed in the same terms at least four times. My approach has the benefit that each part of my analysis is reasonably self-contained.
• A second reason might excuse my inability to organize linearly: what we see in Winterfell is a superposition of stories. Threads are interwoven, and the same passage has sometimes meaning within several threads. We can read the Four Chapters in a dozen different ways.
• I haven't been raised in the English language, and I don't speak it every day. But it is the language of the books, and hence, is appropriate. Indulgence for my awkward writing!
  
• After my first reading of the books in the Fall of 2011, I was mostly clueless, but intrigued. Internet forums enlightened me a bit, and inspired some ideas. What is here comes in small part from my old contributions to online discussions, and mostly from the many notes accumulated during a second reading of the books in the Fall of 2012. I have borrowed a few ideas seen online, I wish I could credit properly their originators.
  
• I have tried to give a reference for every quote. It gives a serious air to my writing, and is perhaps a good trick to impress (or discourage) the reader. It has the side benefit of keeping me disciplined in my thinking. But it has been quite tedious to recover the correct chapter numbering for each the passages I reproduced. I have certainly slipped a few times in my count. Another side benefit of the method: making me intimately familiar with the organization of the books. I am able to recite what happens in each of the thirteen Jon chapters of ADwD after having looked them up so many times.
• The four chapters have a companion story: the fourteen chapters mediated by Jon Snow and Melisandre that happen at the Wall. A thorough look at this part of the story might be the most glaring omission in my study. Indeed the denouement of our Huis Clos happens at the Wall, and the two stories eventually converge. But those fourteen chapters would require as much attention as I have already given. There are limits to my available time and energy.
• I regret also to have insufficiently employed reasoning by analogy: comparison with similar situations at the other end of the world, consideration of remarks in passing of a distant character, use of symmetry and differentiation.
• The Four Chapters are made of 24057 words. We are going to discuss them in about three hundred thousand words (half of them or more are quotes). It has been asked what is the Kolmogorov complexity of War and Peace. Such a count would let me think that the Kolmogorov complexity of the Four Chapters is low, the hallmark of a dense and structured story. Of course the standard objection applies: any text (or for that matter anything) is inexhaustible as a source of meaning and there is no end in the interpretations that devoted exegetes can produce, as the history of various sacred texts illustrates.
• Why so long? I presume I could have presented my views in a more compact form. But there is some advantage in showing all the articulations of one's thinking: dispel misunderstanding etc. 
• Here are the sources I have used: the five published novels, the three Dunk and Egg stories, the two chapters of the Wind of Winter available online. I made indirect use of the wikis, but always went back to the source. The little encyclopedia that can be read on smartphones has been useless. (It appears to contain contradictions with the novels, and I lost all faith in its accuracy on fine points.)
• Even the novel themselves might not be reliable. This is why I have appended a list of confusing passages.
• I have treated the books as if they were a perfect creation, which they are not. They have been written over a long time period, during which the author's idea of his story has evolved. New elements have been introduced and one has to be careful about the connections between the early books and the recent books. We need to forgive the author for being human.
• For those who wonder. Huis Clos: french noun, Etymology: from huis (door) and clos (closed).
  Definition: (Law) meeting behind closed doors, (Figurative) confrontation between persons isolated from the external world.