King Aerys II condemns the Darklyns. (illustration credit 84)
Ser Jaime was also Lord Tywin’s heir, however, and carried all his hopes for the perpetuation of House Lannister, as his lordship’s other son was the malformed dwarf, Tyrion. Moreover, the Hand had been in the midst of negotiating an advantageous marriage pact for Ser Jaime when the king informed him of his choice. At a stroke, King Aerys had deprived Lord Tywin of his chosen heir and made him look foolish and false.
Yet Grand Maester Pycelle tells us that when Aerys II announced Ser Jaime’s appointment from the Iron Throne, his lordship went to one knee and thanked the king for the great honor shown to his house. Then, pleading illness, Lord Tywin asked the king’s leave to retire as Hand.
King Aerys was delighted to oblige him. Lord Tywin accordingly surrendered his chain of office and retired from court, returning to Casterly Rock with his daughter. The king replaced him as Hand with Lord Owen Merryweather, an aged and amiable lickspittle famed for laughing loudest at every jape and witticism uttered by the king, no matter how feeble.
Henceforth, His Grace told Pycelle, the realm would know for a certainty that the man who wore the crown also ruled the Seven Kingdoms.
Aerys Targaryen and Tywin Lannister had met as boys, had fought and bled together in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and had ruled the Seven Kingdoms together for close to twenty years, but in 281 AC this long partnership, which had proved so fruitful to the realm, came to a bitter end.
Shortly thereafter, Lord Walter Whent announced plans for a great tourney to be held at his seat at Harrenhal, to celebrate his maiden daughter’s nameday. King Aerys II chose this event for the formal investiture of Ser Jaime Lannister as a knight of the Kingsguard … thus setting in motion the events that would end the Mad King’s reign and write an end to the long rule of House Targaryen in the Seven Kingdoms.
Prince Rhaegar presenting the crown of winter roses to Lyanna Stark. (illustration credit 85)
THE Y EAR of the F ALSE S PRING
IN THE ANNALS of Westeros, 281 AC is known as the Year of the False Spring. Winter had held the land in its icy grip for close on two years, but now at last the snows were melting, the woods were greening, the days were growing longer. Though the white ravens had not yet flown, there were many even at the Citadel of Oldtown who believed that winter’s end was nigh.
As warm winds blew from the south, lords and knights from throughout the Seven Kingdoms made their way toward Harrenhal to compete in Lord Whent’s great tournament on the shore of the Gods Eye, which promised to be the largest and most magnificent competition since the time of Aegon the Unlikely.
We know a great deal about that tourney, for the things that transpired beneath the walls of Harrenhal were set down by a score of chroniclers and recorded in many a letter and testament. Yet there is much and more that we shall never know, for even whilst the greatest knights of the Seven Kingdoms vied in the lists, other and more dangerous games were being played in the halls of Black Harren’s accursed castle and the tents and pavilions of the lords assembled.
Many tales have grown up around Lord Whent’s tournament: tales of plots and conspiracies, betrayals and rebellions, infidelities and assignations, secrets and mysteries, almost all of it conjecture. The truth is known only to a few, some of whom have long passed beyond this mortal vale and must forever hold their tongues. In writing of this fateful gathering, therefore, the conscientious scholar must take care to separate fact from fancy, to draw a sharp line between what is known and what is simply suspected, believed, or rumored.
This is known: The tourney was first announced by Walter Whent, Lord of Harrenhal, late in the year 280 AC, not long after a visit from his younger brother, Ser Oswell Whent, a knight of the Kingsguard. That this would be an event of unrivaled magnificence was clear from the first, for Lord Whent was offering prizes thrice as large as those given at the great Lannisport tourney of 272 AC, hosted by Lord Tywin Lannister in celebration of Aerys II’s tenth year upon the Iron Throne.
Most took this simply as an attempt by Whent to outdo the former Hand and demonstrate the wealth and splendor of his house. There were those, however, who believed this no more than a ruse, and Lord Whent no more than a catspaw. His lordship lacked the funds to pay such munificent prizes, they argued; someone else must surely have stood behind him, someone who did not lack for gold but preferred to remain in the shadows whilst allowing the Lord of Harrenhal to claim the glory for hosting this magnificent event. We have no shred of evidence that such a “shadow host” ever existed, but the notion was widely believed at the time and remains so today.
But if indeed there was a shadow, who was he, and why did he choose to keep his role a secret? A dozen names have been put forward over the years, but only one seems truly compelling: Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone.
If this tale be believed, ’twas Prince Rhaegar who urged Lord Walter to hold the tourney, using his lordship’s brother Ser Oswell as a go-between. Rhaegar provided Whent with gold sufficient for splendid prizes in order to bring as many lords and knights to Harrenhal as possible. The prince, it is said, had no interest in the tourney as a tourney; his intent was to gather the great lords of the realm together in what amounted to an informal Great Council, in order to discuss ways and means of dealing with the madness of his father, King Aerys II, possibly by means of a regency or a forced abdication.
If indeed this was the purpose behind the tourney, it was a perilous game that Rhaegar Targaryen was playing. Though few doubted that Aerys had taken leave of his senses, many still had good reason to oppose his removal from the Iron Throne, for certain courtiers and councillors had gained great wealth and power through the king’s caprice and knew that they stood to lose all should Prince Rhaegar come to power.
The Mad King could be savagely cruel, as seen most plainly when he burned those he perceived to be his enemies, but he could also be extravagant, showering men who pleased him with honors, offices, and lands. The lickspittle lords who surrounded Aerys II had gained much and more from the king’s madness and eagerly seized upon any opportunity to speak ill of Prince Rhaegar and inflame the father’s suspicions of the son.
Chief amongst the Mad King’s supporters were three lords of his small council: Qarlton Chelsted, master of coin, Lucerys Velaryon, master of ships, and Symond Staunton, master of laws. The eunuch Varys, master of whisperers, and Wisdom Rossart, grand master of the Guild of Alchemists, also enjoyed the king’s trust. Prince Rhaegar’s support came from the younger men at court, including Lord Jon Connington, Ser Myles Mooton of Maidenpool, and Ser Richard Lonmouth. The Dornishmen who had come to court with the Princess Elia were in the prince’s confidence as well, particularly Prince Lewyn Martell, Elia’s uncle and a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard. But the most formidable of all Rhaegar’s friends and allies in King’s Landing was surely Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
To Grand Maester Pycelle and Lord Owen Merryweather, the King’s Hand, fell the unenviable task of keeping peace between these factions, even as their rivalry grew ever more venomous. In a letter to the Citadel, Pycelle wrote that the divisions within the Red Keep reminded him uncomfortably of the situation before the Dance of the Dragons a century before, when the enmity between Queen Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra had split the realm in two, to grievous cost. A similarly bloody conflict might await the Seven Kingdoms once again, he warned, unless some accord could be reached that would satisfy both Prince Rhaegar’s supporters and the king’s.
Had any whiff of proof come into their hands to show that Prince Rhaegar was conspiring against his father, King Aerys’s loyalists would most certainly have used it to bring about the prince’s downfall. Indeed, certain of the king’s men had even gone so far as to suggest that Aerys should disinherit his “disloyal” son, and name his younger brother heir to the Iron Throne in his stead. Prince Viserys was but seven years of age, and his eventual ascension would certainly mean a regency, wherein they themselves would rule as regents.
In such a climate, it was scarce surprising that Lord Whent’s great tournament excited much suspicion. Lord Chelsted urged His Grace to forbid it, and Lord Staunton went even further, suggesting a prohibition against all tourneys.
Such events were widely popular with the commons, however, and when Lord Merryweather warned Aerys that forbidding the tournament would only serve to make him even more unpopular, the king chose another course and announced his intention to attend. It would mark the first time that Aerys II had left the safety of the Red Keep since the Defiance of Duskendale. No doubt His Grace reasoned that his enemies would not dare conspire against him under his very nose. Grand Maester Pycelle tells us that Aerys hoped that his presence at such a grand event would help him win back the love of his people.
If that was indeed the king’s intent, it was a grievous miscalculation. Whilst his attendance made the Harrenhal tourney even grander and more prestigious than it already was, drawing lords and knights from every corner of the realm, many of those who came were shocked and appalled when they saw what had become of their monarch. His long yellow fingernails, tangled beard, and ropes of unwashed, matted hair made the extent of the king’s madness plain to all. Nor was his behavior that of a sane man, for Aerys could go from mirth to melancholy in the blink of an eye, and many of the accounts written of Harrenhal speak of his hysterical laughter, long silences, bouts of weeping, and sudden rages.
Above all, King Aerys II was suspicious: suspicious of his own son and heir, Prince Rhaegar; suspicious of his host, Lord Whent; suspicious of every lord and knight who had come to Harrenhal to compete … and even more suspicious of those who chose to absent themselves, the most notable of whom was his former Hand, Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock.
At the tourney’s opening ceremonies, King Aerys made a great public show of Ser Jaime Lannister’s investiture as a Sworn Brother of his Kingsguard. The young knight said his vows before the royal pavilion, kneeling on the green grass in his white armor as half the lords of the realm looked on. When Ser Gerold Hightower raised him up and clasped his white cloak about his shoulders, a roar went up from the crowd, for Ser Jaime was much admired for his courage, gallantry, and prowess with a sword, especially in the westerlands.
The Mad King, Aerys II. (illustration credit 86)
Though Tywin Lannister did not himself deign to attend the tourney at Harrenhal, dozens of his lords bannermen and hundreds of knights were on hand, and they raised a loud and lusty cheer for the newest and youngest Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard. The king was pleased. In his madness, we are told, His Grace believed that they were cheering for him.
Scarce had the thing been done, however, than King Aerys II began to nurse grave doubts about his new protector. The king had seized upon the notion of bringing Ser Jaime into his Kingsguard as a way of humbling his old friend, Grand Maester Pycelle tells us. Only now, belatedly, did His Grace come to the realization that he would henceforth have Lord Tywin’s son beside him day and night … with a sword at his side.
The thought frightened him so badly that he could hardly eat at that night’s feast, Pycelle avows. Accordingly, Aerys II summoned Ser Jaime to attend him (whilst squatting over his chamberpot, some say, but this ugly detail may have been a later addition to the tale), and commanded him to return to King’s Landing to guard and protect Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys, who had not accompanied His Grace to the tourney. The lord commander, Ser Gerold Hightower, offered to go in Ser Jaime’s stead, but Aerys refused him.
For the young knight, who had no doubt hoped to distinguish himself in the tourney, this abrupt exile came as a bitter disappointment. Nonetheless, Ser Jaime remained true to his vows. He set off for the Red Keep at once and played no further part in the events at Harrenhal … save perhaps in the mind of the Mad King.
For seven days the finest knights and noblest lords of the Seven Kingdoms contended with lance and sword in the fields beneath the towering walls of Harrenhal. At night, victors and vanquished alike repaired to the castle’s cavernous Hall of a Hundred Hearths, for feasting and celebration. Many songs and stories are told of those days and nights beside the Gods Eye. Some are even true. To recount every joust and jape is far outside our purpose here. That task we gladly leave to the singers. Two incidents must not be passed over, however, for they would prove to have grave consequences.
The first was the appearance of a mystery knight, a slight young man in ill-fitting armor whose device was a carved white weirwood tree, its features twisted in mirth. The Knight of the Laughing Tree, as this challenger was called, unhorsed three men in successive tilts, to the delight of the commons.
King Aerys II was not a man to take any joy in mysteries, however. His Grace became convinced that the tree on the mystery knight’s shield was laughing at him, and—with no more proof than that—decided that the mystery knight was Ser Jaime Lannister. His newest Kingsguard had defied him and returned to the tourney, he told every man who would listen.
Furious, he commanded his own knights to defeat the Knight of the Laughing Tree when the jousts resumed the next morning, so that he might be unmasked and his perfidy exposed for all to see. But the mystery knight vanished during the night, never to be seen again. This too the king took ill, certain that someone close to him had given warning to “this traitor who will not show his face.”
Prince Rhaegar emerged as the ultimate victor at the end of the competition. The crown prince, who did not normally compete in tourneys, surprised all by donning his armor and defeating every foe he faced, including four knights of the Kingsguard. In the final tilt, he unhorsed Ser Barristan Selmy, generally regarded as the finest lance in all the Seven Kingdoms, to win the champion’s laurels.
The cheers of the crowd were said to be deafening, but King Aerys did not join them. Far from being proud and pleased by his heir’s skill at arms, His Grace saw it as a threat. Lords Chelsted and Staunton inflamed his suspicions further, declaring that Prince Rhaegar had entered the lists to curry favor with the commons and remind the assembled lords that he was a puissant warrior, a true heir to Aegon the Conqueror.
And when the triumphant Prince of Dragonstone named Lyanna Stark, daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, the queen of love and beauty, placing a garland of blue roses in her lap with the tip of his lance, the lickspittle lords gathered around the king declared that further proof of his perfidy. Why would the prince have thus given insult to his own wife, the Princess Elia Martell of Dorne (who was present), unless it was to help him gain the Iron Throne? The crowning of the Stark girl, who was by all reports a wild and boyish young thing with none of the Princess Elia’s delicate beauty, could only have been meant to win the allegiance of Winterfell to Prince Rhaegar’s cause, Symond Staunton suggested to the king.
Yet if this were true, why did Lady Lyanna’s brothers seem so distraught at the honor the prince had bestowed upon her? Brandon Stark, the heir to Winterfell, had to be restrained from confronting Rhaegar at what he took as a slight upon his sister’s honor, for Lyanna Stark had long been betrothed to Robert Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End. Eddard Stark, Brandon’s younger brother and a close friend to Lord Robert, was calmer but no more pleased. As for Robert Baratheon himself, some say he laughed at the prince’s gesture, claiming that Rhaegar had done no more than pay Lyanna her due … but those who knew him better say the young lord brooded on the insult, and that his heart hardened toward the Prince of Dragonstone from that day forth.
And well it might, for with that simple garland of pale blue roses, Rhaegar Targaryen had begun the dance that would rip the Seven Kingdoms apart, bring about his own death and thousands more, and put a welcome new king upon the Iron Throne.
The False Spring of 281 AC lasted less than two turns. As the year drew to a close, winter returned to Westeros with a vengeance. On the last day of the year, snow began to fall upon King’s Landing, and a crust of ice formed atop the Blackwater Rush. The snowfall continued off and on for the best part of a fortnight, by which time the Blackwater was hard frozen, and icicles draped the roofs and gutters of every tower in the city.
As cold winds hammered the city, King Aerys II turned to his pyromancers, charging them to drive the winter off with their magics. Huge green fires burned along the walls of the Red Keep for a moon’s turn. Prince Rhaegar was not in the city to observe them, however. Nor could he be found in Dragonstone with Princess Elia and their young son, Aegon. With the coming of the new year, the crown prince had taken to the road with half a dozen of his closest friends and confidants, on a journey that would ultimately lead him back to the riverlands. Not ten leagues from Harrenhal, Rhaegar fell upon Lyanna Stark of Winterfell, and carried her off, lighting a fire that would consume his house and kin and all those he loved—and half the realm besides.
Rhaegar Targaryen, the Prince of Dragonstone. (illustration credit 87)
But that tale is too well-known to warrant repeating here.
R OBERT’S R EBELLION
WHAT FOLLOWED PRINCE Rhaegar’s infamous abduction of Lyanna Stark was the ruin of House Targaryen. The full depth of King Aerys’s madness was subsequently revealed in his depraved actions against Lord Stark, his heir, and their supporters after they demanded redress for Rhaegar’s wrongs. Instead of granting them fair hearing, King Aerys had them brutally slain, then followed these murders by demanding that Lord Jon Arryn execute his former wards, Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. Many now agree that the true start of Robert’s Rebellion began with Lord Arryn’s refusal and his courageous calling of his banners in the defense of justice. Yet not all the lords of the Vale agreed with Lord Jon’s decision, and soon fighting broke out as loyalists to the crown attempted to bring Lord Arryn down.
The fighting then spread across the Seven Kingdoms like wildfire, as lords and knights took sides. Many alive today fought in these battles, and so can speak with greater knowledge of them than I, who was not there. I therefore leave it to such men to write the true and detailed history of Robert’s Rebellion; far be it for me to offend those who yet live by presenting an imperfect summary of events, or mistakenly praising those who have since proved unworthy. So instead, I will look only to the lord and knight who ascended the Iron Throne at the end, repairing a realm nearly destroyed by madness.
King Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name. (illustration credit 88)
Robert Baratheon proved himself a fearless, indomitable warrior as more and more men flocked to his banner. Robert was the first over the walls at Gulltown, when Lord Grafton raised his banner for Targaryens, and from there he sailed to Storm’s End—risking capture by the royal fleet—to call his banners. Not all came willing: Aerys’s Hand, Lord Merryweather, encouraged certain stormlords to rise up against Lord Robert. Yet it was an effort that proved fruitless following Lord Robert’s victories at Summerhall, where he won three battles in a single day. His hastily gathered forces defeated Lords Grandison and Cafferen in turn, and Robert went on to kill Lord Fell in single combat before taking his famous son Silveraxe captive.
More victories were to come for Lord Robert and the stormlords as they marched to join forces with Lord Arryn and the Northmen who supported their cause. Rightly famed is Robert’s grand victory at Stoney Sept, also called the Battle of the Bells, where he slew the famous Ser Myles Mooton—once Prince Rhaegar’s squire—and five men besides, and might well have killed the new Hand, Lord Connington, had the battle brought them together. The victory sealed the entry of the riverlands into the conflict, following the marriage of Lord Tully’s daughters to Lords Arryn and Stark.
The royalist forces were left reeling and scattered by such victories though they did their best to rally. The Kingsguard were dispatched to recover the remnant of Lord Connington’s force, and Prince Rhaegar returned from the south to take command of the new levies being raised in the crownlands. And after a partial victory at Ashford, which led to Robert’s withdrawal, the Stormlands were left open to Lord Tyrell. Bringing the might of the Reach to bear, the reachlords swept away all resistance and settled in to besiege Storm’s End. Shortly afterward, the host was joined by Lord Paxter Redwyne’s mighty fleet from the Arbor, completing the siege by land and sea. That siege wore on until the conclusion of the war.
From Dorne, in defense of Princess Elia, ten thousand spears came over the Boneway and marched to King’s Landing to bolster the host that Rhaegar was raising. Those who were there at court during this time have recounted that Aerys’s behavior was erratic. He was untrusting of any save his Kingsguard—and then only imperfectly, for he kept Ser Jaime Lannister close at all hours to serve as a hostage against his father.
When Prince Rhaegar at last marched up the kingsroad to the Trident, with him were all but one of the Kingsguard who had remained in King’s Landing: Ser Barristan the Bold, Ser Jonothor Darry, and Prince Lewyn of Dorne. Prince Lewyn took command of the Dornish troop sent by his nephew, the Prince Doran, but it is said that he did so only after threats from the Mad King, who feared that the Dornishmen looked to betray him. Only the young Ser Jaime Lannister remained in King’s Landing.
Of the famous battle on the Trident, much has been written and said. But all know that the two armies clashed at the crossing that would ever after be called the Ruby Ford for the scattered rubies on Prince Rhaegar’s armor. The opponents were well matched. Rhaegar’s forces numbered some forty thousand, a tenth part of which were anointed knights, while the rebels had somewhat fewer men, but those they possessed were tested in battle, while much of Rhaegar’s force was raw and new.
The battle at the ford was fierce, and many lives were lost in the fray. Ser Jonothor Darry was cut down in the midst of the conflict, as was Prince Lewyn of Dorne. But the most important death was yet to come.
The battle screamed about Lord Robert and Prince Rhaegar both, and by the will of the gods, or by chance—or perhaps by design—they met amidst the shallows of the ford. The two knights fought valiantly upon their destriers, according to all accounts. For despite his crimes, Prince Rhaegar was no coward. Lord Robert was wounded by the dragon prince in the combat, yet in the end, Baratheon’s ferocious strength and his thirst to avenge the shame brought upon his stolen betrothed proved the greater. His warhammer found its mark, and Robert drove the spike through Rhaegar’s chest, scattering the costly rubies that blazed upon the prince’s breastplate.
Some men on both sides stopped fighting at once, leaping instead into the river to recover the precious stones. And a general rout quickly began as the royalists started fleeing the field.
Lord Robert’s wounds prevented him from taking up the pursuit, so he gave that into the hands of Lord Eddard Stark. But Robert proved his chivalry when he refused to allow the gravely wounded Ser Barristan to be killed. Instead, he sent his own maester to tend the great knight. In such fashion did the future king win the fierce devotion of his friends and allies—for few men were ever so open-handed and merciful as Robert Baratheon.
THE E ND
BIRDS FLEW AND couriers raced to bear word of the victory at the Ruby Ford. When the news reached the Red Keep, it was said that Aerys cursed the Dornish, certain that Lewyn had betrayed Rhaegar. He sent his pregnant queen, Rhaella, and his younger son and new heir, Viserys, away to Dragonstone, but Princess Elia was forced to remain in King’s Landing with Rhaegar’s children as a hostage against Dorne. Having burned his previous Hand, Lord Chelsted, alive for bad counsel during the war, Aerys now appointed another to the position: the alchemist Rossart—a man of low birth, with little to recommend him but his flames and trickery.
Ser Jaime Lannister was meanwhile left in charge of the Red Keep’s defenses. The walls were manned by knights and watchmen, awaiting the enemy. When the first army that arrived flew the lion of Casterly Rock, with Lord Tywin at its head, King Aerys anxiously ordered the gates to be opened, thinking that at last his old friend and former Hand had come to his rescue, as he had done at the Defiance of Duskendale. But Lord Tywin had not come to save the Mad King.
This time, Lord Tywin’s cause was that of the realm’s, and he was determined to bring an end to the reign that madness had brought low. Once within the walls of the city, his soldiers assaulted the defenders of King’s Landing, and blood ran red in the streets. A handpicked cadre of men raced to the Red Keep to storm its walls and seek out King Aerys, so that justice might be done.
The Red Keep was soon breached, but in the chaos, misfortune soon fell upon Elia of Dorne and her children, Rhaenys and Aegon. It is tragic that the blood spilled in war may as readily be innocent as it is guilty, and that those who ravished and murdered Princess Elia escaped justice. It is not known who murdered Princess Rhaenys in her bed, or smashed the infant Prince Aegon’s head against a wall. Some whisper it was done at Aerys’s own command when he learned that Lord Lannister had taken up Robert’s cause, while others suggest that Elia did it herself for fear of what would happen to her children in the hands of her dead husband’s enemies.
Aerys’s Hand, Rossart, was killed at a postern gate after cravenly attempting to flee the castle. And last of all to die was King Aerys himself, at the hand of his remaining Kingsguard knight, Ser Jaime Lannister. Like his father, Ser Jaime did as he thought best for the realm, bringing an end to the Mad King.
And so ended both the reign of House Targaryen and Robert’s Rebellion—the war that put an end to nearly three hundred years of Targaryen rule and ushered in a new golden era under the auspices of House Baratheon.
The Red Keep and King’s Landing. (illustration credit 89)
SINCE THE FALL of House Targaryen, the realm has prospered greatly. Robert, the First of His Name, took charge of a fractured Westeros and swiftly healed it of the many ills inflicted by the Mad King and his son. As his first act, the unwed king took to wife the most beautiful woman in the realm, Cersei of House Lannister—thereby granting to House Lannister all the honors that Aerys had denied it. And though all know Lord Tywin might well have become Hand again, the king, in his graciousness, gave that office to his old friend and protector, Lord Jon Arryn, instead. The wise and just Lord Arryn has indeed helped the king shepherd the realm to prosperity since.
But this is not to say that Robert’s reign has been completely untroubled. Six years after he was crowned, Balon Greyjoy unlawfully rose against his king—not for any harm done to him or to his people but merely out of wanton ambition. Lord Stannis Baratheon, Robert’s middle brother, led the royal fleet against Lord Greyjoy, while King Robert himself rode at the head of a mighty host. Great feats of arms were performed by King Robert when Pyke was eventually taken and subdued. The king then made Balon Greyjoy—the pretender to the crown of the Iron Isles—bend the knee to the Iron Throne. And as assurance of his fealty, his only surviving son was taken hostage.
Now the realm is at peace, and all that Robert’s ascension to the throne once promised has come to pass. Our noble king has overseen one of the longest summers in many years, filled with prosperity and good harvests. Moreover, the king and his beloved queen have given the realm three golden heirs to ensure that House Baratheon will long reign supreme. And though a false King-beyond-the-Wall has recently declared himself, Mance Rayder is an oathbreaker fled from the Night’s Watch, and the Night’s Watch has always brought swift justice to those who have betrayed it. This king will amount to nothing, as have all the other wildling kings before him.
It may not always be so. As this history has shown, the world has seen many ages. Many thousands of years have passed from the Dawn Age to today. Castles have risen and fallen, as have kingdoms. Crofters have been born, grown to work the fields, and died of age or mishap or illness, leaving behind children to do the same. Princes have been born, grown to wear a crown, and died in war or bed or tourney, leaving behind reigns great, forgettable, or reviled. The world has known ice in the Long Night, and it has known fire in the Doom. From the Frozen Shore to Asshai-by-the-Shadow, this world of ice and fire has revealed a rich and glorious history—although there is much yet to be discovered. If more fragments of Maester Gyldayn’s manuscript are located—or if other such incomparable treasures (at least to the maesters’ eyes) are uncovered—more of our ignorance may be sponged away. But one thing can be said with certainty. As the next thousand years unfold—and the thousands beyond that—many more will be born, and live, and die. And history will continue to unfold, as strange and complex and compelling as what my humble pen was able to lay before you here.
No man can say with certainty what the future may hold. But perhaps, in knowing what has already transpired, we can all do our part to avoid the mistakes of our forebears, to emulate their successes, and to create a world more harmonious for our children and their children, for generations to come.
In the name of the glorious King Robert, First of His Name, I humbly conclude this history of the kings of the Seven Kingdoms.
The Vale of Arryn. (illustration credit 90)
illustration credit 91)
THE N ORTH
THE VAST AND frigid realm of the Kings of Winter, the Starks of Winterfell, is generally considered the first and oldest of the Seven Kingdoms, in that it has endured, unconquered, for the longest. The vagaries of geography and history set the North apart from their southron neighbors.
It is often said that the North is as large as the other six kingdoms put together, but the truth is somewhat less grand: the North, as ruled today by House Stark of Winterfell, comprises little more than a third of the realm. Beginning at the southern edge of the Neck, the domains of the Starks extend as far north as the New Gift (itself part of their realm until King Jaehaerys I convinced Winterfell to cede those lands to the Night’s Watch). Within the North are great forests, windswept plains, hills and valleys, rocky shores, and snow-crowned mountains. The North is a cold land—much of it rising moorlands and high plains giving way to mountains in its northern reaches—and this makes it far less fertile than the reaches of the south. Snow has been known to fall there even in summer, and it is deadly in winter.
For centuries it has been the custom to speak of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. This familiar usage derives from the seven great kingdoms that held sway over most of Westeros below the Wall during years immediately preceding Aegon’s Conquest. Yet even then, the term was far from exact, for one of those “kingdoms” was ruled by a princess rather than a king (Dorne), and Aegon Targaryen’s own “kingdom” of Dragonstone was never included in the count.
Nonetheless, the term endures. Just as we speak of the Hundred Kingdoms of yore, though there was never a time when Westeros was actually divided into a hundred independent states, we must bow to common usage and talk of the Seven Kingdoms, despite the imprecision.
White Harbor, the North’s sole true city, is the smallest city in the Seven Kingdoms. The most prominent towns in the North are the “winter town” beneath the walls of Winterfell and Barrowton in the Barrowlands. The former is largely empty in spring and summer but filled to bursting in autumn and winter with those seeking the protection and patronage of Winterfell to help them survive the lean times. Not only do townsmen arrive from the outlying villages and crofts, but many a son and daughter of the mountain clans have been known to make their way to the winter town when the snows begin to fall in earnest.
The rusted crown upon the arms of House Dustin derives from their claim that they are themselves descended from the First King and the Barrow Kings who ruled after him. The old tales recorded in Kennet’s Passages of the Dead claim that a curse was placed on the Great Barrow that would allow no living man to rival the First King. This curse made these pretenders to the title grow corpselike in their appearance as it sucked away their vitality and life. This is no more than legend, to be sure, but that the Dustins share blood and descent from the Barrow Kings of old seems sure enough.
Barrowton, too, is somewhat of a curiosity—a gathering place built at the foot of the reputed barrow of the First King, who once ruled supreme over all the First Men, if the legends can be believed. Rising from the midst of a wide and empty plain, it has prospered thanks to the shrewd stewardship of the Dustins, loyal bannermen to the Starks, who have ruled the Barrowlands in their name since the fall of the last of the Barrow Kings.
The men of the North are descendants of the First Men, their blood only slowly mingling with that of the Andals who overwhelmed the kingdoms to the south. The original language of the First Men—known as the Old Tongue—has come to be spoken only by the wildlings beyond the Wall, and many other aspects of their culture have faded away (such as the grislier aspects of their worship, when criminals and traitors were killed and their bodies and entrails hung from the branches of weirwoods.)
In the North, they tell the tale of the Rat Cook, who served an Andal king—identified by some as King Tywell II of the Rock, and by others as King Oswell I of the Vale and Mountain—the flesh of the king’s own son, baked into a pie. For this, he was punished by being turned into a monstrous rat that ate its own young. Yet the punishment was incurred not for killing the king’s son, or for feeding him to the king, but for the breaking of guest right.
But the Northmen still retain something of the old ways in their customs and their manner. Their life is harder, and so they are hardened by it, and the pleasures that in the south are considered noble are thought childish and less worthy than the hunting and brawling that the Northmen love best.
Even their house names mark them out, for the First Men bore names that were short and blunt and to the point; names like Stark, Wull, Umber, and Stout all stem from the days when the Andals had no influence on the North.
One notable custom that the Northmen hold dearer than any other is guest right, the tradition of hospitality by which a man may offer no harm to a guest beneath his roof, nor a guest to his host. The Andals held to something like it as well, but it looms less large in southron minds. In his text Justice and Injustice in the North: Judgments of Three Stark Lords, Maester Egbert notes that crimes in the North in which guest right was violated were rare but were invariably treated as harshly as the direst of treasons. Only kinslaying is deemed as sinful as the violations of these laws of hospitality.