The Reach

House Tyrell is the ruling house of the Reach, Lords Paramount of the Mander and Wardens of the South, seated at Highgarden — the ancient heart of the Reach and the seat that was not theirs to begin with. The Tyrells did not win Highgarden by conquest or by blood. They were stewards. For generations the Tyrells served House Gardener, the ancient Kings of the Reach, as hereditary high stewards of Highgarden — capable, loyal, and carefully positioned at the center of Reach power without ever quite being at the top of it.

 

When Aegon the Conqueror came with his dragons and burned King Mern IX Gardener and all his heirs on the Field of Fire, Harlan Tyrell — the steward left holding the castle — surrendered Highgarden without a fight. Aegon rewarded the pragmatism by making Harlan Lord of Highgarden and Lord Paramount of the Reach, elevating a steward over houses with stronger claims and older blood. House Florent has never entirely forgiven this, tracing their own descent from the Gardeners through the male line while the Tyrells claim only through the female. It is a grievance with deep roots in the Reach and it has never fully gone away.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Lyonel Tyrell was an infant, with a regent mother initially judged likely to align Highgarden with the Hightowers and the greens. As the war progressed and the Reach's bannermen split between both sides, the regents reconsidered. With the realm dividing beneath them and no clear path that would not cost them dearly, the mother, castellan, and steward of young Lord Lyonel chose to sit out the war entirely. It was a calculation more than a conviction, and it held — though not without cost. After the First Battle of Tumbleton, Ser Ulf White declared that the Tyrells should be attainted as traitors for their failure to take part, and that Highgarden should be given to him. He was poisoned before the threat could be pressed. Highgarden remained.

 

By 140 AC, House Tyrell rules the most fertile and populous region in Westeros, commanding vast wealth, the largest armies in the realm, and the most elaborately courteous noble culture in the Seven Kingdoms. The Reach is the heart of chivalry, and Highgarden is its beating center. Members of the house tend toward curly brown hair and brown eyes, with the well-fed, well-dressed look of people who have never known genuine want.

House Beesbury is a small and ancient house sworn to House Hightower, their seat at Honeyholt sitting north of Oldtown along the Honeywine. They claim descent from Ellyn Ever-Sweet, a daughter of Garth Greenhand said to love honey so much she made a pact with the King of Bees himself and became the first beekeeper in the Reach. It is the kind of origin story that suits a modest house — sweet, old, and not entirely taken seriously by their neighbors.

 

Lord Lyman Beesbury served as master of coin under two kings, Jaehaerys I and Viserys I both, a tenure of extraordinary length that made him one of the most experienced men on any small council in living memory. When Viserys died and the greens gathered in the council chamber to crown Aegon II, Lyman Beesbury was the only man present who spoke for Rhaenyra's claim. The only one who said aloud what every black in the realm believed — that the king had named his daughter his heir and that ought to mean something. He did not survive the meeting. Whether Criston Cole killed him outright or whether he died later in the black cells is a matter the chroniclers dispute. What is not disputed is that he was the first man to die in the Dance of the Dragons, and that he died because he told the truth in a room full of people who had decided the truth was inconvenient.

 

His heir did not forget. Ser Alan Beesbury took up the black cause in his grandfather's name, and together with Lord Alan Tarly of Horn Hill — the pair remembered by history as the Two Alans — harassed Lord Ormund Hightower's host as it marched north through the Reach. Their campaign ended at the Battle on the Honeywine, where Prince Daeron arrived on his dragon Tessarion and turned the battle for the greens. Both Alans were captured. Neither finished the war in the field.

 

By 140 AC, House Beesbury is a small house with a story larger than its station — sworn still to the Hightowers who killed their lord, carrying a history of backing the right side at great personal cost, and possessed of a particular distinction: a Beesbury girl was among the maidens presented at the Maiden's Day Ball as potential queen candidates for Aegon III. The house carries its history quietly, which is perhaps the only way a small house survives having been right when everyone else in the room was wrong.

House Caswell holds Bitterbridge, where the Roseroad crosses the river Mander — one of the most strategically important crossing points in the Reach, and the reason the Caswells carry the title Defender of the Fords. Control the bridge at Bitterbridge and you control movement between the Reach and the Stormlands. The Caswells have understood this for as long as they have held it, and the castle's history reflects the violence that strategic value attracts. It was not always called Bitterbridge — it was Stonebridge once, before a battle between Maegor's forces and a host of Poor Fellows in the castle's shadow was so vicious it soured the name forever.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Caswell backed the blacks. Lord Caswell was at court when the greens seized power, was captured, and was beheaded by Aegon II for refusing to bend the knee. His heir was still a young child, so Tom Flowers — the Bastard of Bitterbridge — took command of the Caswell men in the field. Lady Caswell ruled Bitterbridge in the name of her young son and, when Lord Ormund Hightower's host arrived after the Battle on the Honeywine, hoped for mercy. Prince Daeron refused it. His nephew Maelor had died in the streets of Bitterbridge, torn apart by a mob in the chaos of his smuggled flight to safety, and Daeron burned the town with Tessarion in retaliation. Tom Flowers died at the Honeywine, burned by that same dragon before the sack ever came. Lady Caswell, having watched her town put to the torch for something that had happened in her streets but not by her hand, hanged herself from the gatehouse afterward. In the aftermath, Prince Daeron stripped the young Lord Caswell of his lordship and sent him and his siblings to Oldtown as hostages of House Hightower.

 

Bitterbridge carries one more shadow from the Dance that has not faded. It was there, as the green royal children were being smuggled out of King's Landing to safety, that a mob tore the infant Prince Maelor apart in the street — the very act that brought Daeron's fire down on the town. Whether they were blacks who hated the greens or simply people driven to madness by the war is a question that has no clean answer. The castle's lord did not order it. It happened at Bitterbridge regardless, and the house has lived with that ever since.

 

By 140 AC, the current lord is a young man who inherited a seat with a great deal of history attached to it — some of it honorable, some of it merely grim. House Caswell endures as loyal Tyrell bannermen, holding their bridge and their title as they always have.

House Crane is a principal house of the Reach, their seat at Red Lake in the northern marches, a territory that has seen enough Lannister invasion attempts over the centuries to make vigilance something of a family tradition. They are old blood — their founding traced by legend to Rose of Red Lake, a daughter of Garth Greenhand said to have been a skinchanger who could slip into the skin of a crane at will. The women of House Crane have carried that legend ever since, and the rumors that the gift still surfaces from time to time in certain daughters of the house have never entirely gone away.

 

They joined the Kingdom of the Reach not by conquest but by pact, through mutual friendship and defense with King Garth III Gardener, and have been reliable Tyrell bannermen since.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Crane followed their liege lords at Highgarden and took no part in the war. The aftermath brought something rather more difficult to ignore. When Silverwing — riderless and wild after the Second Battle of Tumbleton — circled the battlefield for hours before finally taking wing, she flew northeast and made her lair on a small stony isle in Red Lake itself. A wild dragon nesting in their own lake is not a thing the Cranes can politely overlook, and when Lord Torrhen Manderly arranged a royal progress for the young Aegon III, he routed it deliberately to avoid Red Lake, knowing the dragon-hating king would not thank anyone for the detour. Silverwing has not been driven off. The Cranes have learned to live with her, after a fashion.

 

By 140 AC, the Cranes are a well-regarded presence in the Reach. They are not the most powerful of Tyrell's bannermen, but distinguished by ancient blood, a striking seat, and daughters who are watched quietly and with great interest by those who know the old stories. The dragon in the lake is another matter, and one the family has largely stopped discussing with outsiders.

House Florent is one of the oldest and proudest houses in the Reach, and they will tell you so themselves. Their seat at Brightwater Keep sits near the source of the Honeywine, and their blood -- by their own insistent accounting -- is older and better than the house that rules above them. The Tyrells claim descent from House Gardener through the female line. The Florents claim it through the male, tracing their lineage to Florys the Fox, a daughter of Garth Greenhand whose three husbands -- each kept unaware of the others -- became the founding lines of Houses Florent, Peake, and Ball. The Florents have never been quiet about what this means: by blood, they believe Highgarden should be theirs, not the Tyrells', and they have never entirely made peace with Harlan Tyrell's pragmatic surrender giving away what the Florents consider their birthright.

 

They are recognizable. Members of House Florent are known throughout the Reach for their prominent ears -- a trait that runs through the family with remarkable consistency and is remarked upon by neighbors with varying degrees of tact.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Florent followed their Tyrell liegelords and took no part in the war -- a neutrality that preserved Brightwater Keep while doing nothing to resolve the house's long-standing grievances.

 

By 140 AC, the Florents are exactly what they have always been: wealthy, ancient, proud, and quietly furious about Highgarden. They are useful allies and prickly enemies, and they never forget which is which.

House Fossoway of Cider Hall is an old house of First Men blood, their seat at the confluence of the Mander and the Cockleswent surrounded by the apple orchards that have defined the family's identity since the Age of Heroes. They claim descent from Foss the Archer, a son of Garth Greenhand renowned for shooting apples off the heads of maids that caught his eye — a founding myth that tells you something about the house's character.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Fossoway backed the greens. Lord Owen Fossoway marched with Lord Ormund Hightower's host and, after Tumbleton, became one of the thirteen Caltrops — the conspiracy of green lords who planned to quietly remove the dragonseed betrayers Ulf White and Hugh Hammer before their ambitions grew any larger. Owen Fossoway was among those who brought Prince Daeron to the Caltrops' cellar meeting and secured his seal on the warrants for the Two Betrayers' deaths. The plot never reached its conclusion. When Ser Addam Velaryon's attack opened the Second Battle of Tumbleton, the conspirators were swept into the fighting. Owen Fossoway was among the eight Caltrops killed in the battle before a single stroke of the plan could land.

 

By 140 AC, House Fossoway holds Cider Hall on the wrong side of a war that the blacks won, navigating the careful work of demonstrating loyalty to a regime they opposed without surrendering the pride that makes them Fossoways in the first place. The orchards still grow. The apples are still sweet. The house endures.

House Hightower is one of the oldest families in the known world, their origins lost so deep in the past that scholars still debate whether they descend from the First Men, from ancient seafarers, or from something older still. Their seat, the Hightower, rises from Battle Isle at the mouth of the Honeywine — a tower so tall it can be seen from ships far out at sea, its beacon fire a landmark for sailors across the Sunset Sea. Beneath it, the foundation stones are ancient black rock of unknown origin that no maester has ever satisfactorily explained.

 

They founded Oldtown itself, permitted the building of the Starry Sept that made the city the heart of the Faith for a thousand years, and helped establish the Citadel that trains every maester in the realm. Wealth, faith, learning, and trade — the Hightowers have always understood that power built on those foundations outlasts power built on swords. They possess Vigilance, a Valyrian steel longsword, though its whereabouts since the Dance are uncertain.

 

Their role in the Dance of the Dragons was total and catastrophic. Ser Otto Hightower served as Hand of the King and was the chief architect of the greens' cause. Queen Alicent was his daughter. Ser Gwayne Hightower served as second-in-command of the City Watch of King's Landing — and died when the city fell to Rhaenyra, alongside Otto himself. Lord Ormund Hightower commanded the greens' army marching from the Reach, knighting Prince Daeron with Vigilance after the Battle on the Honeywine before dying at the First Battle of Tumbleton at the hands of Roddy the Ruin. Ser Bryndon Hightower died in the same charge. The house put everything behind Aegon II and lost.

 

The situation at Oldtown in 140 AC is not simple. Lord Lyonel Hightower was fifteen when his father died at Tumbleton. He has spent the years since in a prolonged scandal that has defined his lordship as much as the war did. His father's widow, Samantha Tarly — barely older than Lyonel himself — allegedly persuaded the furious young lord to accept Corlys Velaryon's peace terms, and Lyonel kept her as his paramour for years afterward, fathering six children on her. The High Septon has denounced the union as a form of incest and commanded it end. It has not ended. Lyonel and Samantha attended Aegon III's own coronation together, causing such scandal that the High Septon refused to travel with them. Relations between the Hightowers and the Faith remain poor. Samantha, for her part, has founded the Bank of Oldtown in the wake of the Rogare Bank's collapse, which has done more for Oldtown's prosperity than any number of septries could manage. The Hightowers are still enormously wealthy, still the lords of Oldtown, still the patrons of the Citadel — but they backed the wrong side, the new reign has not forgotten, and their own household is a subject of active religious controversy. Members of the house tend toward tall, fair builds with pale or light brown hair, grey or green eyes, and the polished, measured bearing of a family that has survived a very long time by being very careful.

House Merryweather sits at Longtable, where the Mander meets the Blueburn, in some of the most fertile country in the Reach. Their sigil — a golden horn of plenty spilling apples, plums, carrots, leeks, and fruits of every color over a white field — is less boast than statement of fact. The Reach feeds the realm, and Longtable feeds a good portion of the Reach.

 

They are an old family and, historically, a wealthy one. That wealth has made them a target as often as an asset.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Merryweather was among the blacks at court when Aegon II seized power — and like Lord Caswell, he was brought before the King's Justice and beheaded for refusing to bend the knee. Longtable was besieged by Lord Ormund Hightower's army, yielded by the widowed Lady Merryweather, and stripped of its food and wealth before the greens marched on to Bitterbridge. The Merryweather levies later joined the blacks at the First Battle of Tumbleton.

 

The house paid its price and came out on the right side of history — but the regency brought fresh trouble. Young Jeyne Merryweather was among the maidens presented at the Maiden's Day Ball in 133 AC, and was considered a genuine candidate for the king's hand — which made her a target. Lord Unwin Peake, determined that no rival to his daughter Myrielle should stand, organized a campaign of rumors to defame her before she ever entered the hall. Whatever those rumors contained, they did their work. Jeyne Merryweather never became queen.

 

By 140 AC, Longtable is recovering — the orchards and fields are productive again, the house's loyalty to the crown is unimpeachable, and the memory of what Peake did to Jeyne has not faded. The Merryweathers know exactly who their enemies are.

House Mullendore sits at Uplands, east of Oldtown, sworn to the Hightowers -- which makes their conduct during the Dance of the Dragons all the more striking. When the Hightowers threw themselves behind the greens with everything they had, Lord Mullendore declared for the blacks. It was a deliberate act of defiance against his own overlords, carried out in the shadow of the Hightower itself, and it marked the house as something more complicated than a simple Hightower vassal.

 

Their sigil -- a field of black and orange butterflies on white -- is quintessentially Reacher in its decorative elegance, and rather at odds with the directness of that decision.

 

By 140 AC, House Mullendore holds Uplands in the careful position of a house that backed the winning side against the wishes of a liege lord who is still very much alive and very much their overlord. The Hightowers have not forgotten. The Mullendores have not apologized. The relationship between Uplands and Oldtown is, at best, complicated.

House Oakheart is one of the oldest and most distinguished houses in the Reach, their seat at Old Oak sitting in the west of the region along the Ocean Road. They claim descent from John the Oak, a son of Garth Greenhand said to have been sired on a giantess — a founding myth that accounts for the house's size, its martial tradition, and the tapestries lining the halls of Old Oak that show generations of Oakhearts fighting Dornishmen in the Prince's Pass. The rivalry with Dorne is ancient and genuine. The Reach and Dorne have been bleeding each other along the marches for thousands of years, and the Oakhearts have been at the front of it longer than most. One of their most celebrated lords is remembered in tapestry not for any great victory but simply for the image of him seated with a hundred Dornish heads piled at his feet. The house has never needed much encouragement to press the fight, and Dorne's continued independence at 140 AC has not made them any less watchful.

 

Like the Florents, the Oakhearts are aware that their lineage is older and their blood ties to House Gardener closer than those of their Tyrell overlords. They are not quite as loud about it as the Florents, but they have not forgotten it either.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Oakheart declared for the blacks. The declaration did not survive contact with Prince Daeron the Daring and his dragon Tessarion. When the prince and Lord Ormund Hightower's army arrived at Old Oak, none dared face the dragon, and the Oakhearts submitted. It was not a willing submission, but it was a submission nonetheless.

 

By 140 AC, the blacks won and the Oakhearts are on the right side of history despite their forced capitulation. Lord Torrhen Manderly had even proposed that the young king visit the Oakhearts during his first royal progress, a mark of favor the house has not forgotten. The roots at Old Oak run deep, as they always have, and the Dornish border is still being watched.

House Peake is one of the oldest families in the Reach, their origins traced by legend to Florys the Fox, a daughter of Garth Greenhand himself. They are marcher lords, seated at Starpike in the Dornish Marches, and they hold three castles — Starpike, Dunstonbury, and Whitegrove — all three represented on their sigil of three black castles on orange. Dunstonbury was not always theirs. It was taken from House Manderly centuries ago when Lord Lorimar Peake drove them from the Reach at the behest of King Perceon III Gardener, settling a generations-long rivalry in the Peakes' favor and giving them a seat that a Manderly had held for years before. The Manderlys have not forgotten. The Peakes do not care.

 

For all their ancient blood and three-castle pride, the Peakes have always been, as maesters put it plainly, land poor — rich in stone and soil and pride, chronically short of coin. That gap between lineage and means has driven the house's ambitions for as long as anyone can remember.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Peake declared for the greens. Lord Unwin Peake marched with a thousand men under Ormund Hightower's host, survived the war, and positioned himself deftly in the chaos that followed. After the death of Lord Corlys Velaryon, Unwin maneuvered his way into the regency of Aegon III, eventually becoming Protector of the Realm and Hand of the King — the most powerful man in Westeros for several years.

 

He used that power aggressively. He filled the Kingsguard with his allies. When Queen Jaehaera died and the king required a new wife, Peake moved immediately to place his daughter Myrielle before the throne — working behind the scenes to discredit, threaten, or remove any candidate who might stand between her and the crown. Jeyne Merryweather's name was blackened with rumors. Lucinda Penrose had her nose slit by hired men. A groom was found in Tyshara Lannister's bed. Tessario the Thumb was paid to whisper poison about promising rivals into the king's ear. When the lords of the realm objected too loudly to be ignored, Peake announced the Maiden's Day Ball — letting the king himself choose, confident that with Myrielle at court a month before it, and the competition quietly dismantled, the outcome was assured.

 

He was wrong. When Baela Velaryon and Rhaena Corbray rode the length of the throne room on coal-black chargers and presented six-year-old Daenaera Velaryon to the king, Aegon smiled at her — and the Ball was over. Peake's schemes lay in pieces. Unable to overturn the king's choice outright, he drew a law instead: no marriage in the Seven Kingdoms could be solemnized until both parties had reached their eighteenth year. The logic was sound enough that no man could argue against it without seeming to wish harm on young girls. The council accepted it. Daenaera was sent home to Driftmark. Myrielle remained unmarried. Peake remained Hand — until the return of Prince Viserys resolved the succession without him, and he swept from the council chamber and rode to Starpike in fury.

 

By 140 AC, Unwin Peake is alive and at Starpike, and the house's ambitions are not diminished — merely frustrated. They hold three castles, ancient blood, and a grudge that has not cooled.

House Redwyne holds the Arbor, a large fertile island off the southwestern tip of Westeros, and from it they produce the finest wines in the known world -- Arbor gold in particular is prized at tables from King's Landing to the Free Cities. They claim descent from Gilbert of the Vines, a son of Garth Greenhand who first taught the people of the Arbor to make wine from its grapes, and the island has been making good on that legacy ever since.

 

The Arbor's wealth is not only in wine. The Redwynes maintain one of the largest fleets in Westeros -- warships, merchant carracks, wine cogs, trading galleys, and whalers in numbers that give them genuine strategic weight independent of any land army. Control of the Arbor is control of the southwestern sea lanes, and the Redwynes have always known it.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, the Arbor declared for the greens. The Redwynes saw little of the actual fighting as the Arbor's position kept it largely insulated from the war's worst devastation. They came out of it with their fleet and their vineyards intact. During the regency, Patricia Redwyne was put forward as a potential bride for Aegon III, another sign of how naturally the family gravitates toward royal proximity.

 

By 140 AC, the Redwynes are on the wrong side of a war that the blacks won but they are too wealthy, too well-connected, and too important to the realm's naval strength to be treated as enemies. Members of the house are recognizable for their bright red or orange hair, heavy freckles, and the well-fed look of people who have never been far from a full glass.

House Rowan is one of the most prominent families in the northern Reach, their seat at Goldengrove taking its name from the legendary ancestress Rowan Gold-Tree, a daughter of Garth Greenhand who was so heartbroken by a faithless lover that she wrapped an apple in her golden hair and planted it in the earth — and from it grew a tree whose bark, leaves, and fruit were gleaming yellow gold. Whether the story is true or merely old, the golden tree on silver that the Rowans carry on their banner has grown with them ever since. The Lords of Goldengrove hold the title Marshal of the Northmarch, reflecting their seat on the northern borders of the Reach and their historic role in defending it.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Thaddeus Rowan declared for the blacks and led one of the armies that marched against Lord Ormund Hightower's host, helping to trap the greens along the banks of the Honeywine. With another force cutting off retreat toward Oldtown, victory seemed all but assured — until Prince Daeron arrived on Tessarion and reversed the battle entirely. Thaddeus fled the field, Tom Flowers died in the dragonfire, and in the aftermath Prince Daeron extracted submission from Goldengrove itself, the castle yielding to avoid the same fate as the battlefield. It was a humbling end to a campaign that had nearly succeeded. Thaddeus survived it and, when the war ended on the right side, emerged with his reputation intact enough to serve first as a regent and later as Hand of the King during the long regency of Aegon III — a distinction that places House Rowan in a different category from most Reach houses, whose Dance-era choices left them either embarrassed or quietly grateful to have survived.

 

The regency years brought one notable sting to an otherwise successful period. When the regents proposed a match between the widowed Lord Thaddeus and Princess Baela Targaryen — Daemon's daughter, sixteen years old and furiously opposed to the idea — Baela made her feelings known by claiming, loudly and in company, that she had already bedded Thaddeus's son Robert and a brother of his besides. Archmaester Gyldayn notes she was prone to deliberate provocation, and the claim may have been nothing more than that. Whatever the truth, Baela was on the road to Driftmark within a fortnight and wed Lord Alyn Velaryon before anyone could stop her. Whether individual Rowans regard this episode as a slight or simply the consequence of a spirited woman with her own ideas about marriage depends very much on the Rowan in question.

 

By 140 AC, House Rowan is one of the most politically connected houses in the Reach — well-regarded by the crown, respected by their neighbors, and carrying the quiet confidence of a family that backed the right side and was trusted with the realm while it recovered.

House Tarly is the pre-eminent military house of the Reach, marcher lords seated at Horn Hill in the foothills of the Red Mountains where the Reach meets Dorne. They are old in blood and older in reputation -- a family that has been fighting for as long as the Reach has needed anyone to fight for it. Their claim descent from Herndon of the Horn and Harlon the Hunter, twin sons of Garth Greenhand who built their castle atop Horn Hill and took to wife a woods witch who dwelled there, sharing her favors for a hundred years. The brothers did not age so long as they kept their part of the bargain. Whether the story accounts for anything in the Tarlys' notable endurance as a martial house is a question best left to maesters.

 

They hold Heartsbane, a Valyrian steel greatsword, passed from lord to lord as a mark of the house's identity and worth.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Alan Tarly declared for the blacks -- a meaningful choice for a house of their military weight. He was captured after the Battle on the Honeywine, a costly outcome that left Horn Hill in an uncertain position for the remainder of the war. The house survived it. During the regency, two Tarly women were among the thirty-three maidens from the Reach put forward as potential queen candidates for Aegon III -- a sign that despite their Dance difficulties, the house's standing was not diminished.

 

By 140 AC, House Tarly remains what it has always been -- one of the finest fighting houses in the Reach, with a sword worth more than most lords' castles, a keep in the shadow of the Red Mountains, and an institutional culture that measures a man first and foremost by what he can do in a fight.

House Vyrwel is among the principal houses of the Reach, their seat at Darkdell sitting hard against the Dornish border in the shadow of the Red Mountains. They are marcher lords in the most literal sense -- their lands are the last of the Reach before Dorne begins, and what happens across that border is not an abstraction for them the way it might be for a lord seated deep in the fertile heartland. The Dornish Marches have been a frontier of intermittent raiding, old grudges, and uneasy watching for as long as anyone can remember, and the Vyrwels have spent generations on the sharp end of it.

 

Their sigil, a silver wyvern within a red double tressure on black, is striking enough to announce them without requiring a famous name behind it. They are not a house that has sought the histories -- no legendary founder, no celebrated sword -- but a house that has held difficult ground for a long time, which is its own form of distinction.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Vyrwel followed their Tyrell liegelords and sat out the war -- a defensible decision for a house that could not afford to leave its border unguarded.

 

By 140 AC, with Dorne still independent and the relationship between the Targaryens and the Martells complicated at best, the Vyrwels are watching their border with the same careful attention they always have.

The following houses are the remaining vassal houses of the Crownlands. Please click a house's box for additional known information such as existing characters (canon or custom), house words, and who a house's liege lord might be.