The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire)

by George R. R. Martin

  House Justman ruled the riverlands for close on three centuries, the chronicles tell us. Their line was ended when Qhored Hoare, King of the Iron Islands, murdered the sons of King Bernarr II whilst they were held captive in Pyke. Their father did not long survive them, provoked into a hopeless war for vengeance against the ironborn.

  Another period of anarchy and bloodshed followed. The realm that Benedict the Bold had knitted together was torn asunder once again, and a hundred years of conflict saw petty kings from the Houses Blackwood, Bracken, Vance, Mallister, and Charlton contending with one another for supremacy.

  The unlikely victor in these struggles was Lord Torrence Teague, an adventurer of uncertain birth who seized a fortune in gold in a daring attack upon the westerlands and used the wealth to bring sellswords across the narrow sea in great numbers. Seasoned warriors all, their blades proved the difference, and Teague was crowned King of the Trident at Maidenpool after six long years of war.

  It is said, however, that neither King Torrence nor his heirs ever sat securely on their thrones. The Teagues were so little loved by those they ruled that they were forced to keep the sons and daughters of all the great houses of the Trident at their court as hostages, in case of treason. Even so, the fourth Teague monarch, King Theo the Saddle-Sore, spent his entire reign ahorse, leading his knights from one rebellion to the next whilst hanging hostages from every tree.

  As with the First Men, the dynasties of the Andal river kings oft proved short-lived, for enemies surrounded their realms on every side. Ironmen from the isles raided their coasts to the west, whilst pirates from the Stepstones and Three Sisters did the same to the east. Westermen rode down from the hills across the Red Fork to pillage and conquer, and the wild hill tribes emerged from the Mountains of the Moon to burn, plunder, and carry off women. From the southwest, the lords of the Reach sent iron columns of knights across the Blackwater whenever it pleased them; to the southeast lay the domains of the Storm Kings, ever eager for gold and glory.

  In all the long history of the Trident, under hundreds of rulers, there was hardly ever a time when the riverfolk were not at war with at least one of their neighbors. Sometimes they were forced to fight upon two or even three fronts at once.

  Worse, few of the river kings ever enjoyed the full support of his own lords bannermen. Memories of ancient wrongs and bygone betrayals were not oft put aside by the lords of the Trident, whose enmities ran as deep as the rivers that watered their lands. Time and time again, one or more of these riverlords would join with some invader against their own king; indeed, in some cases, it was these very lords who brought the outsiders into the riverlands, offering them lands or gold or daughters for their help against familiar foes.

  King Benedict of House Justman. (illustration credit 102)

  Many a river king was toppled by such alliances, and each new battle only served to set the stage for another to follow. With hindsight, it is plain to see that it was only a matter of time until one of the invaders chose to stay and claim the riverlands for his own.

  The first to do so was the Storm King, Arlan III Durrandon.

  Humfrey of House Teague was King of the Rivers and the Hills in those days. A pious ruler, he founded many septs and motherhouses across the riverlands and attempted to repress the worship of the old gods within his realm.

  This led Raventree to rise against him, for the Blackwoods had never accepted the Seven. The Vances of Atranta and the Tullys of Riverrun joined them in rebellion. King Humfrey and his loyalists, supported by the Swords and Stars of the Faith Militant, were on the point of crushing them when Lord Roderick Blackwood sent to Storm’s End for aid. His lordship was tied to House Durrandon by marriage, as King Arlan had taken one of Lord Roderick’s daughters to wife, wedding her by the old rites beneath the great dead weirwood in Raventree’s godswood.

  Arlan III was quick to respond. Calling all his banners, the Storm King led a great host across the Blackwater Rush, smashing King Humfrey and his loyalists in a series of bloody battles and lifting the siege of Raventree. Roderick Blackwood and Elston Tully both fell in the fighting, along with Lords Bracken, Darry, Smallwood, and both Lords Vance. King Humfrey, his brother and champion, Ser Damon, and his sons Humfrey, Hollis, and Tyler all perished in the campaign’s final battle, a bloody affray fought beneath two hills called the Mother’s Teats on land claimed by both the Blackwoods and the Brackens.

  King Humfrey was the first to die that day, it is written. His heir, Prince Humfrey, took up his crown and sword, but died a short time later, whereupon the second son, Hollis, did the same, only to be killed in turn. And so it went, the bloody crown of the last river king passing from son to son, and finally to King Humfrey’s brother, all within the space of a single afternoon. By the time the sun went down, House Teague had been entirely extinguished, along with the Kingdom of Rivers and Hills. The fight in which they died has hereafter been known as the Battle of Six Kings, in honor of Arlan III the Storm King and the five river kings his stormlanders slew, some of whom reigned for minutes, not even hours.

  Certain letters found by maesters in service at Storm’s End and Raventree Hall in later centuries suggest that Arlan III did not intend to claim the riverlands for himself when he marched north but rather planned to restore the crown to House Blackwood, in the person of his good-father Lord Roderick. His lordship’s death in battle twisted those plans awry, however, for the heir to Raventree was a boy of eight, and the Storm King neither liked nor trusted Lord Blackwood’s surviving brothers. It appears that King Arlan briefly considered crowning his good-daughter Shiera, Roderick Blackwood’s eldest child, with his own son ruling at her side, but the riverlords spoke out against being ruled by a woman, and His Grace decided to add the riverlands to his own domains.

  And so they would remain for more than three centuries, though the riverlords rose against Storm’s End at least once each generation. A dozen pretenders from as many houses would adopt the style of River King or King of the Trident and vow to throw off the yoke of the stormlanders. Some even succeeded … for a fortnight, a moon’s turn, even a year. But their thrones were built on mud and sand, and in the end a fresh host would march from Storm’s End to topple them and hang the men who’d presumed to sit upon them. Thus ended the brief inglorious reigns of Lucifer Justman (Lucifer the Liar), Marq Mudd (the Mad Bard), Lord Robert Vance, Lord Petyr Mallister, Lady Jeyne Nutt, the bastard king Ser Addam Rivers, the peasant king Pate of Fairmarket, and Ser Lymond Fisher, Knight of Oldstones, along with a dozen more.

  When Storm’s End’s grasp upon the riverlands was finally shattered, it was no riverlord who broke it but a rival conqueror from beyond the lands of the Trident: Harwyn Hoare, called the Hardhand, King of the Iron Islands. Crossing Ironman’s Bay with a hundred longships, Harwyn’s force landed forty leagues south of Seagard and marched inland to the Blue Fork, carrying their ships with them on their shoulders in a feat the singers of the isles still celebrate.

  As the ironborn moved up and down the rivers, reaving and raiding as they pleased, the riverlords fell back before them or took shelter in their castles, unwilling to risk battle in the name of a king many of them reviled. Those who did take up arms were savagely punished. A bold young knight named Samwell Rivers, a natural son of Tommen Tully, Lord of Riverrun, assembled a small host and met King Harwyn on the Tumblestone, but his lines shattered when the Hardhand charged. Hundreds drowned attempting to flee. Rivers himself was hacked in two, so that half his body might be delivered to each of his parents.

  Lord Tully abandoned Riverrun without a fight, fleeing with all his strength to join the host gathering at Raventree Hall under Lady Agnes Blackwood and her sons. But when Lady Agnes advanced upon the ironborn, her belligerent neighbor Lord Lothar Bracken fell upon her rear with all his strength and put her men to flight. Lady Agnes herself and two of her sons were captured and delivered to King Harwyn, who forced the mother to watch as he strangled her boys with his bare hands. Yet Lady Agnes did n
ot weep if the tales are true. “I have other sons,” she told the King of the Iron Isles. “Raventree shall endure long after you and yours are cast down and destroyed. Your line shall end in blood and fire.”

  Likely this prophetic speech is a later invention, added to the tale by some singer or storyteller. What we do know is that Harwyn Hardhand was so impressed by his captive’s defiance that he offered to spare her life and take her as a salt wife. “I would sooner have your sword inside me than your cock,” Lady Agnes replied. Harwyn Hardhand granted her wish.

  The rout of Lady Blackwood’s host spelled the end of the riverlords’ resistance to the ironborn, but not the end of the fighting, for word of the invasion had finally reached King Arrec Durrandon at distant Storm’s End. Assembling a mighty host, the Storm King raced north to meet the foe.

  So eager was this young king to come to grips with the ironmen that he soon outpaced his own baggage train—a grievous mistake, as Arrec learned when he crossed the Blackwater and found every castle shut against him and neither food nor fodder to be found, only burning towns and blackened fields.

  Many of the riverlords had joined the ironmen by then. Under the command of the Lords Goodbrook, Paege, and Vypren, they slipped across the Blackwater and fell upon the slow-moving baggage train before it reached the river, putting King Arrec’s rear guard to flight and seizing his supplies.

  Thus it was a stumbling, starving host of stormlanders who finally faced Harwyn Hardhand at Fairmarket, where Lothar Bracken, Theo Charlton, and a score of other riverlords had joined him. King Arrec had half again as many fighters as his foes, but his men were weary from days of marching, confused and dispirited, and their king soon showed himself to be both headstrong and indecisive. When battle was joined, the result was a shattering defeat for the stormlanders. Arrec himself escaped the carnage, but two of his brothers died in the fighting, and the rule of Storm’s End over the lands of the Trident came to a sudden, bloody end.

  Across the riverlands, it is said, many smallfolk rejoiced to hear the tidings, whilst their lords, emboldened, rose against the few small garrisons of stormlanders that remained scattered across the region, casting them out or putting them to the sword. The bells at Stoney Sept rang for a day and a night, the chroniclers tell us, and singers and begging brothers went from town to town to proclaim that the men of the Trident were their own masters once again.

  These celebrations proved short-lived, however. It has been said, particularly about Stone Hedge, that Lord Lothar Bracken had made common cause with the ironborn in the belief that the Hardhand would make him king once the stormlanders had been expelled, but there is no written evidence that supports this claim. It seems unlikely: Harwyn Hoare was not the sort of man to give away crowns. Just as Arlan III Durrandon had done three centuries earlier, Harwyn claimed the riverlands for himself. Those riverlords who had fought beside him had done naught but exchange one master for another … and their new master was harsher, crueler, and more exacting than the old one.

  Lothar Bracken himself was amongst the first to learn that lesson when he sought to rise against the Hardhand half a year later. Only a few minor lords rallied to his banners, and King Harwyn crushed him utterly, sacking, then slighting Stone Hedge and hanging Lord Bracken from a crow cage for the best part of a year whilst he slowly starved to death.

  In later life, King Arrec twice attempted to cross the Blackwater and take back what he had lost, but without success. His eldest son and successor, King Arlan V, tried as well, and died in the attempt.

  Harwyn Hardhand would rule the riverlands until his own death (he died abed at the age of sixty-four, whilst taking carnal pleasure of one of his many salt wives), and his son and grandson would succeed him each in turn, continuing the brutal domination of the ironborn over the peoples of the Trident. Harwyn’s grandson, King Harren the Black, spent most of his life in the riverlands building the gigantic fortress that would bear his name, returning to the Iron Islands only infrequently.

  Such was the state of affairs when Aegon the Conqueror came ashore and put an end to Harren and House Hoare. The rule of the ironborn over the riverlands ended in the holocaust that engulfed Harrenhal. Afterward, Aegon named Edmyn Tully of Riverrun, first of the riverlords to declare for the Targaryens, the Lord Paramount of the Trident, reducing the other riverlords to vassals. Kingship he retained for himself; there would be no kings in Westeros but Aegon.

  The Storm King Arrec overlooking the battle at Fairmarket. (illustration credit 103)

  HOUSE TULLY

  The Tullys of Riverrun were never kings, though the books of lineages will show any number of connections to the dynasties of the past. It may have been these old connections that started House Tully on its path to becoming Lords Paramount of the Trident under Aegon I.

  The arms of House Tully (center) and some houses of note, past and present, (clockwise from top): Mallister, Mooton, Darry, Mudd, Piper, Strong, Vance, Bracken, Blackwood, Whent, Lothston, and Frey. (illustration credit 104)

  Tully names appear in many chronicles and annals of the Trident, back unto the days of the First Men, when the first Edmure Tully and his sons fought beside the Hammer of Justice, Tristifer IV Mudd, in many of his ninety-nine victories. After Tristifer’s death, Ser Edmure went over to the mightiest of the Andal conquerors, Armistead Vance. It was from him that Edmure’s son Axel received a grant of lands at the juncture of the Red Fork and its swift-running vassal the Tumblestone. There Lord Axel established his seat, in a red castle he named Riverrun.

  Placed as it was, Riverrun soon proved to have great strategic value, and the petty kings contending during the age of anarchy soon began to vie for the support of House Tully. Axel and his descendants grew wealthy and powerful, and in time became the bulwark of many a river king, for they defended the Trident’s western marches against the Kingdom of the Rock.

  HEREWITH A LIST OF HOUSES THAT HAVE AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER RULED THE RIVERLANDS, AS ASSERTED IN THE HISTORIES

  HOUSE FISHER, of the Misty Isle

  HOUSE BLACKWOOD, of Raventree

  HOUSE BRACKEN, of Stone Hedge

  HOUSE MUDD, of Oldstones (last dynasty of the First Men to rule the riverlands)

  HOUSE JUSTMAN

  HOUSE TEAGUE (last of the Kings of the Rivers and Hills native to the riverlands)

  HOUSE DURRANDON, of Storm’s End

  HOUSE HOARE, of the Iron Islands

  The Tullys were accounted amongst the foremost lords of the riverlands by the time that the Storm Kings won their final war against the last King of the Rivers and Hills. Some noble houses were destroyed in those wars, but most bent the knee to the Storm Kings once the Teagues were dispossessed, and the Tullys were amongst them. Soon Tullys began to appear in prominent offices and trusted positions.

  Riverrun weathered the reigns of the Storm Kings and survived the subsequent ironborn conquest largely intact. Other powerful houses of the riverlands were not so fortunate. A decade before Aegon’s Conquest, the Blackwoods and Brackens had entered into a new private war in their ancient feud. Previously their ironborn overlords had largely ignored such conflicts amongst their vassals—indeed, if the Iron Chronicle can be believed, Harwyn Hardhand oft seemed to pit his bannermen against one another to keep them weak.

  But this time the feuding disrupted the construction of Harrenhal, and that was enough reason for Harren the Black to deal with them harshly. So it was that, when Aegon the Conqueror marched upon Harrenhal, the Tullys of Riverrun were the most powerful of riverlords still remaining.

  The feud of the Blackwoods and Brackens is infamous, and rightly so, for it stretches back thousands of years to before the coming of the Andals. The origins of it are contested and shrouded in legend. The Blackwoods say they were kings and the Brackens little more than petty lords set on betraying and deposing them, while the Brackens say much the same about the Blackwoods. That they were both royal houses on the Trident seems true enough, and none can doubt that their enmity sprang fr
om some cause, so entrenched that it has become legendary. Powerful as they were, they have maintained their feud despite the many kings who have attempted to make a peace between them. Even the Old King, Jaehaerys the Conciliator, failed in his attempt to halt this ceaseless war, for the peace he forged did not long outlast the end of his reign.

  Forty years of Black Harren’s rule, which brought penury and the deaths of thousands, had won him no love in the riverlands. Consequently, Aegon’s arrival was heralded by lords great and small flocking to his banner, keen to overthrow their cruel foreign king—and chief amongst them was Edmyn Tully. When Harrenhal burned and Harren the Black’s line was ended, Aegon gave the rule of the riverlands to Lord Edmyn. Some even proposed that Lord Tully be granted dominion over the Iron Islands as well, though that did not come to pass.

  Lord Edmyn did much to repair the damage that Harren had left behind him. New ties were forged, as when the new-made Lord Quenton Qoherys—once master-at-arms at Dragonstone, and by then lord of ruined Harrenhal and its sizable lands—took Lord Tully’s daughter to wife. (Though in later years this would prove a troublesome connection, alleviated only by the swift, sad end of House Qoherys). It was in 7 AC, as well, that Lord Edmyn began his two years as Hand of the King, ending when he resigned the office and returned to Riverrun and his family.

  In the years to come, men of House Tully would play a role in many of the chief events of the early Targaryen kings. When King Aenys I guested at Riverrun and Harren the Red slew Gargon the Guest, it was to the Tullys and their bannermen that His Grace turned to try to wrest Harrenhal away from the outlaw king. In later years, the Tullys—together with the Harroways, who at that time ruled Harrenhal—fielded part of the army that surrounded and defeated Prince Aegon and his dragon, Quicksilver, in his war against his uncle, Maegor the Cruel.