The Riverlands

House Blackwood is older than the Riverlands itself. Ancient records and runic translations both support what the Blackwoods have always claimed: that they were once kings of the Wolfswood in the North, driven south by the Kings of Winter long before the Andals came to Westeros. They settled in the Riverlands, ruled as kings themselves, and have been there ever since, one of the few houses south of the Neck that still worships the old gods rather than the Seven, a distinction that has defined their identity and their feuds in equal measure.

 

The great dead weirwood at Raventree Hall is the heart of the house's story. Ancient beyond reckoning, it died long ago. The Blackwoods say the Brackens poisoned it, and they have not forgiven it. Every dusk, hundreds of ravens descend from the sky to perch on its pale dead branches, a sight that has unsettled visitors to Raventree for as long as anyone can remember. The sigil of House Blackwood, a dead weirwood surrounded by ravens on black on a scarlet field, is drawn from it directly.

 

The feud with House Bracken predates the Andal invasion. Both houses ruled the Riverlands as kings during the Age of Heroes, both lost, and both blamed the other for it. When the Brackens converted to the Faith of the Seven and the Blackwoods did not, what had been a political rivalry became something more personal. It has not cooled in the intervening centuries.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Blackwood backed the blacks without hesitation. Lord Samwell Blackwood was killed in single combat by Ser Amos Bracken at the Battle of the Burning Mill. Eleven years old at the time, his son Benjicot inherited in the middle of a civil war and led his house through the rest of it. Bloody Ben, his men called him, and the name was earned. He fought at the Battle by the Lakeshore, the Butcher's Ball, and both Battles of Tumbleton, where he had his best archer Billy Burley put three arrows through the eye of the dying dragon Tessarion as she lay helpless on the ground. At the Battle of the Kingsroad, Benjicot's rivermen broke the flank of Lord Borros Baratheon's army, earning the title that followed him the rest of his long life. After the war, he kept the bones of Ser Addam Velaryon at Raventree Hall for eight years, an act of quiet loyalty to a man who had died proving it, until Lord Alyn Velaryon finally came to claim his brother's remains in 138 AC.

 

The Dance left one unexpected legacy in the region. Many of the northmen who marched south with Cregan Stark had no homes to return to. Lands lost, families gone, ties severed by the war. Black Aly Blackwood, Benjicot's aunt, proposed that these men be matched with the widows of the Riverlands rather than sent back north with nothing. Widow Fairs were held at Raventree and other river castles, and the marriages that followed seeded northern blood and old gods worship into the Riverlands in ways still visible two generations later, a cultural shift the Blackwoods regard with quiet satisfaction.

 

By 140 AC, the Blackwoods are well-regarded by the crown, faithful to their Tully liegelords, and still locked in a feud with the Brackens that shows no sign of resolution. A Blackwood at court is a rare thing, their faith and their temperament both pulling toward Raventree, but when they come, they tend to make an impression.

House Bracken is as old as House Blackwood and tells the story of the ancient Riverlands rivalry entirely differently. By the Bracken account, it was the Blackwoods who rose against them — petty lords who hired swords to usurp rightful Bracken kings. By the Blackwood account, it was the reverse. The truth, assuming it still exists somewhere beneath a thousand years of grievance, is known to neither house. What is certain is that both ruled as kings along the Red Fork in the Age of Heroes, both lost that kingship when the Riverlands were consolidated, and neither has forgiven the other for anything that happened before or since.

 

When the Andals came and the Blackwoods held to the old gods, the Brackens converted to the Faith of the Seven. That choice calcified what had been a political rivalry into something more personal — a difference of blood, faith, and memory that has outlasted every attempt at resolution. A bastard born of both houses once became King of the Trident. The peace did not last.

 

The Brackens are renowned horse breeders, their stables producing some of the finest animals in the Riverlands, and their sigil — a red stallion on gold — reflects an identity built around martial capability and the land they work rather than ancient mystery.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Ser Amos Bracken declared for the greens while his neighbors the Blackwoods backed the blacks — a perfect expression of a feud that predates Targaryen rule entirely. Bracken men attacked Blackwood lands during the conflict in what became known as the Burning Mill, adding fresh blood to a grudge already measured in centuries. The greens lost. The Brackens backed the wrong side and came out of the war having gained nothing, while handing the Blackwoods another grievance to carry.

 

By 140 AC, the feud continues exactly as it always has. The Brackens are on the wrong side of both the war's outcome and their neighbors' long memory. They are aware of this. It has not made them more inclined toward humility.

House Darry is one of the oldest houses in the Riverlands, First Men in blood and stubbornly loyal in character. They are not a house that ruled as kings or built legends in the Age of Heroes. What they built instead is a reputation for choosing a side and holding it at whatever cost the holding requires. Under the Targaryens that loyalty found its fullest expression, and the house grew in prominence and lands accordingly, acquiring much of the former Harroway holdings when Maegor I exterminated that house and rewarded those who had stood by him.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Darry backed the blacks. When Prince Aemond raged through the Riverlands on Vhagar, Castle Darry was among his first targets. The lord, his son and heir, and forty Darry men died burning on the battlements. Lady Darry and the younger children survived by hiding in the castle's vaults and emerged to find their home in ruins, their lord dead, and the succession fallen to children. The house was not finished with the Dance even then. Lord Derrick Darry gathered what men he could and fought at the Second Battle of Tumbleton, and Lord Roland Darry died at the Battle of the Kingsroad alongside Lord Jorah Mallister, killed by the unhorsed Lord Borros Baratheon in the Dance's final engagement. Three lords lost across the war's span, and the house still standing when it was over.

 

It is the kind of loss that might break a family's loyalty. It did not break the Darrys. They came out of the war with their devotion to the Targaryen crown if anything more entrenched than before, a house that had paid in blood more than once and knew exactly what they had paid for.

 

By 140 AC, Castle Darry has been rebuilt and the house is in the hands of a new generation. Their attachment to the crown is institutional at this point, woven into the family's sense of itself as thoroughly as the plowman on their banner.

House Frey is four centuries old, young by the standards of the Riverlands, where some families trace their blood to the Age of Heroes. The first Lord Frey was granted lands and noble status, built a bridge across the Green Fork of the Trident, and charged everyone who needed to cross it. His grandson added keeps on both banks. The timber was eventually replaced by stone, and the Twins became one of the most formidable fortified crossings in Westeros. The wealth that followed was considerable. The respect that followed was more complicated.

 

Older houses have never quite forgiven the Freys for being what they are, toll collectors elevated by geography rather than valor, upstarts who grew rich while ancient families bled for their kings. The Freys are aware of this. They have not found it particularly limiting. Control the only crossing for leagues in either direction and the armies of the realm will come to you regardless of what they think of your lineage.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Forrest Frey backed the blacks and committed his strength in earnest. This was the same man history called Fool Frey for boldly asking the hand of Princess Rhaenyra in open company when she toured the Riverlands in 112 AC, a slight that had followed the house for seventeen years before Forrest had a chance to answer it with deeds. When the Winter Wolves stopped at the Twins on their march south, Forrest received them in person alongside his wife Sabitha and marched with them to the Gods Eye. He died there at the Battle by the Lakeshore, his two hundred knights and six hundred infantry fighting the westermen to the last. Lady Sabitha did not grieve quietly. A sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman who wore mail instead of silk and was fond of killing men, she seized Harrenhal three days after Aemond and Cole abandoned it and joined the host of Ser Addam Velaryon for the Second Battle of Tumbleton. She remained more formidable than most lords for the rest of the war, and long after.

 

By 140 AC, House Frey holds the Twins, the crossing, and a great deal of money. They are powerful enough to field more men than their Tully liegelords and wealthy enough to do almost anything they want. What they want, as always, is to be taken seriously by people who have spent centuries looking down at them. Whether that will ever fully happen is another matter.

House Mallister is older than their Tully liegelords and carries the awareness of it with quiet but consistent pride. They were petty kings of the Riverlands before the Tullys were Lords Paramount of anything, and their seat at Seagard predates Aegon's Conquest — a fortress built specifically to defend the coast against ironborn reavers, its Booming Tower housing an immense bronze bell that has warned the townsfolk of approaching longships for centuries. When ironborn sails appear on Ironman's Bay, it is the bell of Seagard that rings first.

 

That purpose has defined the house as much as any battle or marriage. The Mallisters are the iron shield on the Riverlands' western coast, and they take the responsibility seriously. Their silver eagle on purple is a banner the ironborn have learned to respect.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Jorah Mallister backed the blacks. He did not survive the war — slain at the Battle of the Kingsroad, the Dance's final engagement, by Lord Borros Baratheon himself. Borros had been unhorsed in the fighting and was killing on foot when Jorah and Lord Roland Darry fell to him, both cut down before Kermit Tully rode up and put an end to Borros in turn. It was not a celebrated engagement — the chroniclers call it the Muddy Mess — but it cost Seagard its lord. The house weathered the loss and held their seat through the war's end.

 

By 140 AC, the Mallisters keep their watch as they always have. The ironborn are quiet for now, but the bell of the Booming Tower is always ready, and the Mallisters are always watching the horizon. It is simply what they do.

House Mooton holds Maidenpool, one of the main ports on the Bay of Crabs and historically one of the wealthier houses in the Riverlands — wealthier, in fact, than their Tully liegelords. The town takes its name from legend: it was here, by Jonquil's Pool just inside the Fool's Gate, that Florian the Fool is said to have first seen the girl Jonquil bathing with her sisters, and fallen in love with her on the spot. The Mootons have held the pool and the port and the memory of that story ever since.

 

They are an old family, former petty kings reduced to lordship long before the Targaryens arrived, and their Dance of the Dragons story is one of the more complicated in the Riverlands. Lord Walys Mooton backed the blacks and led a hundred knights in the retaking of Rook's Rest. He then died trying to kill Sunfyre. His brother Manfryd inherited, hosted Prince Daemon Targaryen and the dragonseed Nettles at Maidenpool, and received a letter from Queen Rhaenyra ordering him to execute Nettles — but not to harm Daemon, only to send him back to the capital. Nettles was a guest beneath his roof. Killing her would mean breaking the sacred laws of hospitality and facing Daemon's wrath. Refusing the order would mean attainder. When Manfryd expressed to his maester Norren that he wished he had never read the letter, Norren replied that perhaps he never had — and that same night showed the letter to Daemon and Nettles himself, telling Manfryd he had shown it to no one else. Daemon called Norren a bad maester but a good man. By morning both dragonriders were gone. When Caraxes screamed as Daemon departed, the windows of Jonquil's Tower shattered. That same night, Manfryd took down Rhaenyra's quartered standard from the gates of Maidenpool and replaced it with the golden dragons of King Aegon II. Rhaenyra had already drawn up a decree of attainder against the Mootons before she lost power. It was never enforced.

 

By 140 AC, the Mootons occupy an awkward position — they backed the blacks until their maester's conscience intervened, ended on the greens' side while the blacks won, and navigated the aftermath well enough to earn Manfryd a seat among Aegon III's original seven regents. The port at Maidenpool is still prosperous, the pool still beautiful, and the house still standing.

House Piper holds Pinkmaiden Castle on the Red Fork, near the border with the Westerlands, a position that has put them in the path of Westerlands aggression more than once over the centuries. They are an old family, loyal Tully bannermen, and the proud bearers of one of the more distinctive sigils in the realm: a pink naked maiden dancing in a swirl of white silk on blue, a banner that has provoked commentary from rival knights for as long as anyone can remember. The Pipers have heard every joke. They have not changed the sigil.

 

Pinkmaiden has history beyond its sigil. It was at Pinkmaiden that the host of Prince Aegon the Uncrowned gathered before marching against Maegor I, and Princess Rhaena Targaryen and her dragon Dreamfyre sheltered there afterward. The castle sits at a crossroads of Riverlands history, and the Pipers have been present for more of it than most.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Petyr Piper declared for the blacks and fought the westermen advancing through the Riverlands. At the Battle at the Red Fork, his forces helped bring down Jason Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock. It was a squire named Pate of Longleaf who dealt the mortal blow, and Petyr knighted him on the field, dubbing him Longleaf the Lionslayer. Petyr himself did not long outlast it. At the Battle at Acorn Hall, fighting the westermen's continued advance, he fell. Mushroom records that his heart gave out at the sight of his favorite grandson's head upon a spear. His successor Lord Stanton Piper scraped together what levies remained, greybeards and green boys by his own account, and led them to the Second Battle of Tumbleton, where Vermithor raging riderless burned him alive on a low rise alongside Lord Lyonel Deddings. The Pipers lost two lords to the Dance of the Dragons, not one.

 

By 140 AC, House Piper holds Pinkmaiden and watches the western border as they always have. They paid in blood for the blacks and know it. The sigil remains unchanged.

House Vance of Atranta shares its descent from Armistead Vance with their kin at Wayfarer's Rest, and shares their pride in that lineage and their irritation at the other branch's claims of seniority. Atranta is one of the older stone fortifications in the Riverlands, and the Vances who hold it are no less powerful than their cousins -- wider domains, larger armies, and a name as old as the Andal conquest of the Trident.

 

Their sigil -- a green dragon and white tower quartered -- has attracted a certain amount of wry commentary since the Dance of the Dragons, given that Atranta backed the greens. Whether the dragon's color on their banner was destiny, coincidence, or simply unfortunate timing is not a question the Atranta Vances enjoy being asked.

 

The greens in the Riverlands yielded when Stone Hedge fell, and Atranta yielded with them. The blacks won. Wayfarer's Rest has not let their cousins forget it, and given the existing temperature of the relationship between the two branches, they are unlikely to start forgetting any time soon.

 

By 140 AC, House Vance of Atranta holds its seat, manages its estates, and endures both the political consequences of backing the wrong side and the social consequences of sharing a surname with a branch of the family that will not stop mentioning it.

House Vance of Wayfarer's Rest traces its descent from Armistead Vance, called the Dragon, the mightiest of the Andal warlords who invaded the Riverlands, the man who defeated Tristifer IV Mudd, last of the old River Kings, and broke the power of the First Men kingdoms of the Trident. Their kin at Atranta trace the same descent from the same ancestor, and which branch holds the elder claim is a question both houses have debated at length without resolution. Wayfarer's Rest does not concede the point. Neither does Atranta.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Wayfarer's Rest declared for the blacks. Lord Tristan Vance fought alongside Lord Petyr Piper at the Battle at the Red Fork, where the rivermen pushed the westermen back three times before Ser Adrian Tarbeck's knights circled upstream and flanked them from the rear. Tristan died in the rout, killed by Tarbeck. His successor Lord Hugo Vance carried the black cause forward. His Myrish sellswords under Black Trombo harassed and ambushed Cole's host in the prelude to the Butcher's Ball, contributing to the conditions that left the greens exposed when the riverlords fell on them. The sigil, a black dragon and golden eyes quartered on black and white, has been noted with some satisfaction since the Dance, given where Wayfarer's Rest stood. Whether the dragon's color was prophecy or coincidence, the Vances are content either way.

 

By 140 AC, House Vance of Wayfarer's Rest holds its seat in the western Riverlands on the better side of the Dance's outcome, and on the same side of the feud with Atranta they have always occupied.

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.