The Stormlands

House Baratheon is the youngest of the great houses and the most direct continuation of the old Storm Kings, a dynasty that ruled the Stormlands for thousands of years before Aegon's Conquest ended it. Orys Baratheon, Aegon's rumored bastard brother and his most trusted commander, slew Argilac the Arrogant, last of the Storm Kings, in the battle known as the Last Storm. He took Argilac's daughter Argella to wife, and took Argilac's sigil and words for his own. The crowned black stag on gold, the fury in the words, both are older than House Baratheon itself, inherited from the Durrandons who held Storm's End since the Age of Heroes. Through Argella's blood, the ancient line of the Storm Kings runs in Baratheon veins still.

 

Storm's End itself is one of the most formidable castles in Westeros, a great drum tower of fused stone on the shores of Shipbreaker Bay, built to withstand the savage storms that batter the Stormlands coast. It has never fallen.

 

The Dance of the Dragons produced one of the house's more consequential decisions. Lord Boremund Baratheon had supported the blacks and had family ties to Rhaenyra through his sister Jocelyn, who had married into the Targaryen line. He died before the war began. His son Borros was a different man entirely, blustery, ambitious, and unimpressed by sentiment. When Prince Aemond Targaryen flew to Storm's End and offered a betrothal to one of Borros's daughters in exchange for the Stormlands' support, Borros took the deal. The Stormlands went green. Borros then marched to King's Landing during the Moon of the Three Kings, seized the city, and ended its chaos. He was promised his eldest daughter Cassandra would wed the widowed King Aegon II. He marched north up the kingsroad to confront the riverlords led by the Lads, discounted them as youths and women, and died there at the Battle of the Kingsroad when Kermit Tully rode him down. His widow Elenda gave birth to a posthumous son seven days later. Borros had told her to name the boy Aegon after the king. She named him Royce, after her father.

 

The regency years seemed at first to offer the house a second path to the crown. When Queen Jaehaera died in 133 AC, Lady Elenda wrote formally to the court offering her daughters Cassandra and Ellyn as candidates for Aegon III's hand. Cassandra came to the Maiden's Day Ball as the eldest of the Four Storms, a serious candidate from the most powerful house in the Stormlands, and she knew it. Then the doors of the throne room flew open, and Baela and Rhaena Velaryon rode in on horseback and presented the king with a six-year-old girl. The king smiled at her. Cassandra did not become queen that day, but neither, technically, did Daenaera. Lord Unwin Peake's law barred the marriage for years. The succession question remained open. The crown, wishing to honor both the king's choice and the families who had come in good faith, gave Daenaera a proper court household, treating her with the dignity her position implied even while the law prevented its fulfillment. Cassandra was placed among Daenaera's companions, a posting that reflected the crown's regard for Storm's End and kept her close to the girl she had watched take the future she had planned for herself.

 

Whether Cassandra ever accepted that gracefully is answered by what happened in 135 AC. Poison was baked into the apple tarts at one of Daenaera's suppers. Gaemon Palehair died. Daenaera survived. The conspiracy that emerged at the trials in 136 AC implicated Cassandra directly. She had been a companion of the girl she tried to kill, trusted with her household, and she had spent that trust on treason. Her high birth spared her the harsher fates dealt to lesser-born conspirators. Elenda sent three stormlords to speak for Storm's End at the trials, being too ill to attend herself, and arranged Cassandra's marriage to Ser Walter Brownhill, a widower with thirteen surviving children. The reasoning was transparent and widely appreciated: the demands of that household would leave her no time for scheming. The poisoning was also what finally settled Daenaera's situation. With the conspiracy exposed, the argument for keeping her at court collapsed. She was sent home to Driftmark with honor and gifts, her future technically still open, the question of when as uncertain now as the question of whether had ever been.

 

By 140 AC, Storm's End is held by a lord still finding his footing after the Dance's consequences, in a region that bled for the greens and received little in return. The Baratheons are tall, powerfully built, dark of hair and blue of eye, with the strong square jaws and mercurial tempers the family has been known for since Orys first put on Argilac's colors.

House Buckler is an old house of the Stormlands, their seat at Bronzegate sitting at what may have been the northern gate of the old Kingdom of the Storm in the days of the Durrandon kings. They opposed Orys Baratheon during the Conquest alongside Lords Errol and Fell, retreating only when Rhaenys Targaryen loosed Meraxes on the southern kingswood. They bent the knee, as all did eventually, and have been Baratheon bannermen since.

 

Their Dance of the Dragons story is one of almost complete devastation. Lord Buckler was at court in King's Landing when the greens seized power at Viserys's death. He was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Red Keep alongside other black loyalists and given the same choice the greens offered every man they captured -- swear to Aegon II or face the King's Justice. Lord Buckler refused. He was beheaded, his head mounted on a spike above the city gates. Lady Buckler and their two daughters then drowned when their ship sank in the Blackwater while en route to the Maiden's Day Ball, and the circumstances of the sinking were never fully explained. Some have noted that a Buckler daughter would have been a serious candidate before the king, given the house's black loyalist history, and that the Hand of the King at the time was not a man known for leaving such things to chance. Nothing was ever proven nor was it ever investigated.

 

By 140 AC, House Buckler has rebuilt around whoever survived -- younger sons, cousins, collateral lines -- holding Bronzegate and carrying the weight of what the Dance cost them. They backed the right side. They paid more for it than most.

House Caron is one of the oldest marcher lord families in the Stormlands, their seat at Nightsong sitting in the Dornish Marches north of the Prince's Pass, where the Red Mountains press closest to the Stormlands coast. They and House Swann both claim to be the oldest of the marcher lords, a dispute neither has resolved and neither intends to. The Carons hold the title Lord of the Marches, though it grants no dominion over the other marcher lords — Nightsong is first among equals on that frontier, not above it. The nightingales on their sigil have flown in a thousand battles, and given Nightsong's position on one of the most contested frontiers in Westeros, the claim is not an implausible one.

 

The castle has seen its share of fire. During the First Dornish War, Lord Fowler burned Nightsong and took Lord Caron and his family captive. The first Vulture King later besieged it with a Dornish host and failed to take it, defeated in the Vulture Hunt by Lady Ellyn Caron, Lord Harmon Dondarrion, and Lord Samwell Tarly. Nightsong has been taken, burned, besieged, and rebuilt, and it is still standing. The Carons are the kind of family a castle like that produces.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Caron backed the greens alongside their Baratheon liegelords. After the war, Lord Royce Caron was chosen as one of the original seven regents of Aegon III, a mark of considerable trust from the new regime toward a house that had backed the losing side. He resigned in 132 AC and returned to Nightsong to deal with Dornish incursions on the marches. Those incursions were not accidental. Princess Aliandra Martell, the new ruler of Dorne, was encouraging her bannermen to raid the marches as a way of earning her favor, a deliberate strategy that made the frontier uglier than it had been in years. Whether Royce's resignation was principled duty or a quiet exit from a regency already consuming itself in factional scheming is a question reasonable men have disagreed on. What is certain is that Nightsong needed him, and he went.

 

By 140 AC, House Caron holds Nightsong and watches the Prince's Pass as they always have. The Dornish border is never entirely quiet, and the nightingales on their banner have not run out of battles yet.

House Connington is one of the oldest houses in the Stormlands, their seat at Griffin's Roost perched on a high and jagged crag south of Storm's End. Fifty generations of Conningtons have sat the gilded Griffin Seat, which by any accounting puts their origins somewhere in the deep past of the Kingdom of the Storm. Their battle cry -- A griffin! A griffin! -- is as old as the sigil, two griffins combatant counterchanged on red and white, and both have been heard on enough Stormlands battlefields to have earned their place in the region's memory.

 

The house has produced notable warriors across the centuries. Ser Alyn Connington, called the Pale Griffin, served as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard -- one of the most celebrated men to hold that office.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Connington followed their Baratheon liegelords and backed the greens. They came out of the war on the losing side but with their seat and their name intact. It is worth noting that Griffin's Roost sits close enough to the Dornish Marches that the house had every reason to keep its men at home regardless of which dragon they preferred -- a border left unguarded during a civil war is an invitation the Dornish have never been shy about accepting.

 

The years since have drawn the house into closer proximity to Storm's End than before. When Lord Borros Baratheon died at the Battle of the Kingsroad, his widow Elenda was left regent for a son too young to rule. She took Ser Steffon Connington as her second husband, hoping the match would bring stability to both households. It did, briefly -- Steffon was killed in 133 AC pursuing a small band of Dornish raiders across the marches, cut down by Ser Wyland Wyl before the chase was done. Lady Elenda now manages both her regency and her grief, and the ties between Griffin's Roost and Storm's End are closer and more complicated than they have ever been.

 

By 140 AC, Griffin's Roost holds its crag and watches the Stormlands from its high seat as it has for fifty generations. The Conningtons are proud in the way that very old houses tend to be -- quietly, and without needing to explain it.

House Dondarrion holds Blackhaven in the Dornish Marches, a castle sitting near the Boneway -- the pass through the Red Mountains that connects the Stormlands to Dorne. Controlling the Boneway is not a ceremonial responsibility. It is a constant, grinding, unglamorous necessity, and the Dondarrions have been doing it since before the Targaryens arrived.

 

Their founding story suits the location. The first Dondarrion was a messenger for the Storm King, ambushed by two Dornishmen on a stormy night -- his horse killed by an arrow, his sword broken in the fall. When he thought he was doomed, a purple lightning bolt struck both Dornishmen dead. He delivered his message. The Storm King raised him to lordship. The family has carried the purple lightning on black ever since, and has spent every generation since fighting the very people who tried to kill their founder.

 

The house's history with the Vulture Kings and Dornish raiders is long. Lord Harmon Dondarrion had his nose cut off by one Vulture King, who also burned Blackhaven. He helped Lady Ellyn Caron and Lord Samwell Tarly put the outlaw down. The Dondarrions gave refuge to King Baelor I and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight when they returned from Dorne through the Boneway. It is also worth noting that House Cole began as stewards in service to the Dondarrions at Blackhaven -- a piece of history that gives the name a certain resonance in the years after the Dance.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Dondarrion followed their Baratheon liegelords and backed the greens. Like Connington and Caron, they had every practical reason to keep their strength at home -- a civil war is precisely when the Dornish test the passes.

 

By 140 AC, Blackhaven watches the Boneway as it always has. The lightning on their banner has seen a thousand storms, and the marches are never quiet for long.

House Errol is among the principal bannermen of Storm's End, their seat at Haystack Hall sitting in the Stormlands east of the kingsroad and south of the kingswood. Their arms are a yellow haystack on orange, a sigil that reflects the agricultural character of their lands rather than martial glory, though the family's history has never lacked for the latter.

 

Their loyalty to the Storm Kings, and later to the Baratheons, traces back to Aegon's Conquest itself. Lords Errol, Buckler, and Fell ambushed Orys Baratheon's host as he crossed the Wendwater, then retreated into the kingswood when Rhaenys Targaryen set the forests ablaze with Meraxes. Lord Errol was killed before the Last Storm was fought. His successors bent the knee and have held Haystack Hall as Baratheon bannermen ever since, loyal in the way of families whose history with the ruling house begins in defeat and endures because the alternative is worse.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Errol followed their Baratheon liegelords and backed the greens. They came out of the war on the losing side but with their seat and their standing intact, which for a house of their size in a war of that scale is no small thing.

 

By 140 AC, House Errol holds Haystack Hall as it always has, a steady and unshowy presence among the Stormlands bannermen.

House Estermont holds the island of Estermont east of Cape Wrath -- a small, mountainous, damp, and windswept place that one maester memorably described as poor even by the standards of island seats. Greenstone, the family castle, has inspired equally uncharitable commentary from visitors over the years. What the island lacks in comfort it makes up for in position, sitting in the Narrow Sea where it can watch the shipping lanes and remind anyone sailing past that the Stormlands extend further than the mainland coast.

 

The Estermonts have been Baratheon bannermen since the Storm Kings held the Stormlands, and their loyalty to Storm's End has been consistent enough to earn them a place among the principal houses of the region despite their modest means.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Estermont backed the greens alongside their Baratheon liegelords. Ser Leon Estermont served as a knight of Aegon II's Kingsguard and was killed in a riot in King's Landing -- a casualty of the chaos that accompanied the greens' tumultuous hold on the city rather than any battlefield, which is perhaps fitting for a war that killed as many people in the streets as on the field.

 

By 140 AC, House Estermont holds its damp island and its modest seat, watches the sea, and maintains the kind of steady, unshowy loyalty to Storm's End that has kept them in good standing for generations despite never having the wealth or position to make a more dramatic mark.

House Penrose is the scholarly house of the Stormlands, their seat called Parchments, their sigil two silver quills crossed on russet, their words a direct statement of what the family values above martial glory. In a region defined by marcher lords and storm-hardened fighters, the Penroses have carved out a different kind of distinction. Their castle has historically been a haven for scholars and historians, their lords patrons of learning in a land that tends to produce warriors.

 

This does not mean they are without standing. They are one of the principal houses sworn to Storm's End, and their words have a quiet pride to them. Set down our deeds implies deeds worth the setting down, and the Penroses have had enough of those to justify the claim.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Penrose followed their Baratheon liegelords and backed the greens, a choice that put them on the wrong side of the war's outcome without distinguishing themselves particularly in either direction.

 

The regency years brought the house into sharper focus through Lucinda Penrose, who was among the candidates considered for the king's hand before the Maiden's Day Ball. She was attacked by hired men who slit her nose in the months preceding the Ball, one of several incidents later attributed to Lord Unwin Peake's campaign to clear the field for his daughter. The injury left her disfigured and, in the brutal arithmetic of highborn marriage, diminished. She remained at court afterward as one of Daenaera Velaryon's companions, given a place among the girl's household along with other highborn ladies. At the trials in 136 AC she admitted to having wanted Daenaera dead, saying plainly that if her nose had not been slit, she would be queen and Daenaera would be serving her. She was given a minor punishment on account of her sex. The record does not suggest she found that fair.

 

By 140 AC, the house continues at Parchments in its quiet, scholarly fashion, still watching the court from closer than most Stormlands houses, still setting down its deeds.

House Selmy is counted among the greatest of the marcher lords, their seat at Harvest Hall sitting in the Dornish Marches northeast of Nightsong and northwest of Blackhaven, deep in the frontier country where the Stormlands press against Dorne. Three stalks of yellow wheat on brown is not the sigil of a house that wants to be feared. It is the sigil of a house that knows what it is fighting to protect, and has been protecting it long enough to put that knowledge in their banner.

 

They are not a particularly ancient family by the standards of the great houses, and there is some ambiguity in the historical record about whether the Selmys hold their lands as lords or as landed knights, a question the family has apparently resolved in favor of the former without making much noise about it. What is not ambiguous is their standing among the marcher lords, which is considerable, and their long history of defending the southern border of the Stormlands against Dornish incursions.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Selmy backed the greens alongside their Baratheon liegelords. The war cost them, as it cost most of the Stormlands, and the years since have been spent rebuilding what the conflict took.

 

By 140 AC, Harvest Hall watches the Dornish border as it always has, tending its lands and keeping its swords sharp. The wheat on their banner grows whether or not there is peace, and the Selmys have learned not to count on the peace.

House Swann is one of the oldest and most powerful houses in the Stormlands, probably the second most powerful after the Baratheons themselves, and they would dispute the probably. Their seat at Stonehelm controls the River Slayne, a major route inland through the Dornish Marches, which has given them both wealth and strategic importance for as long as anyone can trace. They and House Caron argue over which of them is the oldest of the marcher lords, a dispute neither has resolved and both take seriously.

 

They are described, consistently and across generations, as proud and cautious, a combination that produces a house that does not overreach, does not make hasty alliances, and does not forget slights. Their sigil, two swans counterchanged on black and white, is deceptively elegant for a family whose history has been written in border warfare.

 

The Stormlands remembers a story about the Swanns that says something about the family's character. Before the Dance, when the Triarchy was extracting tolls from passing ships, they took a niece of Lord Swann as a captive. She was fifteen and her uncle was notoriously tight-fisted. He refused to pay her ransom. She was sold to a pillow house in Lys, became the Black Swan, the most celebrated courtesan in the city, and eventually its ruler in all but name. The Swanns do not speak of this.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, the house backed the greens alongside their Baratheon liegelords. Ser Byron Swann, the lord's second son, did not die in any conventional battle. He set out deliberately to slay a dragon, having conceived a plan to sneak up on it while hiding behind a silvered shield so the beast would see only its own reflection, as Serwyn of the Mirror Shield legendarily slew the dragon Urrax. The dragon stirred on his approach, looked at its reflection, and unleashed its fire regardless. The mirror shield did nothing. Byron Swann died screaming, his squire watching. Whether the dragon was Syrax or Vhagar, the accounts still disagree.

 

By 140 AC, House Swann holds the Slayne, watches the marches, and maintains the cautious, proud authority that has kept them near the top of Stormlands politics for as long as anyone can remember.

Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle, and the name is not an exaggeration. The island sits northeast of Shipbreaker Bay in waters of a striking clear blue, its mountains and waterfalls and high meadows visible from passing ships long before the coast of the mainland is in sight. The waters around it are beautiful in the way that Shipbreaker Bay immediately to the south is not, a lush, luminous place sitting at the edge of one of the most dangerous stretches of sea in Westeros.

 

House Tarth has held the island since before the Storm Kings united the Stormlands. The Tarths were kings in their own right, and they entered the Kingdom of Storm not by conquest but by marriage, when the Storm King Durran the Fair wed the daughter of King Edwyn Evenstar, Tarth coming with her. The family kept their title. The head of House Tarth is called the Evenstar, a style the family claims dates to the dawn of days, and their seat is Evenfall Hall on the island's western coast. Their sigil, yellow suns on rose and white crescent moons on azure, carries the same celestial character as the title, a house that has dressed itself in the imagery of twilight and star-rise for as long as anyone can remember.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Tarth's allegiance was uncertain enough to worry even Ser Otto Hightower, who noted that the Evenstar might side with the blacks despite the Baratheons backing the greens. Whether Lord Bryndemere Tarth ultimately committed to either side is a matter the chronicles leave unresolved. What is clear is how he carried himself in the years that followed. In 133 AC, when Ser Gedmund Peake and Alyn Oakenfist sailed south against Racallio Ryndoon, the self-proclaimed King of the Narrow Sea, Lord Bryndemere joined them at Tarth with twelve longships, materially strengthening the fleet. It was also at Tarth that the fleet learned Racallio had allied himself with the Archon of Tyrosh and the Sealord of Braavos, intelligence that shaped how Oakenfist planned the campaign. A lord who had backed the wrong side of the Dance would not have had that kind of welcome from the regency's forces. Whatever Bryndemere did during the war, what came after suggests he navigated it carefully.

 

By 140 AC, the Evenstar holds the Sapphire Isle and watches the Straits of Tarth, the narrow passage between the island and the mainland that any ship sailing between the Narrow Sea and Shipbreaker Bay must pass through. The beauty of the island is genuine. The strategic value of controlling its waters is equally genuine, and the Tarths have never forgotten either.

House Trant is among the principal bannermen of Storm's End, their seat at Gallowsgrey carved from the grey stone of the Red Mountains along the Boneway -- the pass through which Dornish armies have marched into the Stormlands more than once across the centuries. Gallowsgrey guards that pass. It is not a comfortable posting, and the Trants have never pretended otherwise. Their sigil is a hanged man in black on blue, their seat is named for what they do to those who give them trouble, and their words leave little room for ambiguity. The Trants are not a house that has sought to be loved.

 

They are not among the oldest or most celebrated families of the Stormlands, and their history before the Targaryen era is thin in the records. What distinguishes them is not ancient lineage but a grim and consistent utility -- a house sitting on one of the most dangerous passes in the realm, doing the necessary work of making sure it stays defended.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Trant followed their Baratheon liegelords in backing the greens. Whether they sent men north to fight is another question -- a house watching the Boneway during a civil war has a very practical argument for keeping its garrison where it is. The Dornish have never needed much encouragement to test the passes when the Stormlands are distracted.

 

By 140 AC, Gallowsgrey watches the Boneway as it always has. The hanged man on their banner is a promise to whoever comes through the pass uninvited, and the Trants have always kept their promises.

House Wylde holds the Rain House in the rainwood -- a temperate forest of soaking green along the southern coast of the Stormlands, rich in fur, timber, and amber, and perpetually wet. The Wyldes have taken their homeland to heart in every possible way. Their seat is the Rain House. Their sigil is a blue-green maelstrom on gold. Their words, in semi-canon sources, are Rain Falls on All -- a statement both literal and philosophical, the kind of motto that belongs to a family that believes the same laws and the same consequences ought to apply to everyone regardless of rank.

 

That philosophy had consequences of its own during the Dance of the Dragons. Lord Jasper Wylde, known as Ironrod, served as master of laws under King Viserys I and was a committed green when the civil war broke out. His position was not complicated -- he believed the law of succession favored the male line, that Rhaenyra's claim was invalid on its face, and he said so without apology. When Rhaenyra took King's Landing in 130 AC, she had him executed as a traitor. Ironrod did not recant. The name he left behind tells you what kind of man he was.

 

By 140 AC, the Rain House stands in the rainwood under new lordship, on the wrong side of the war's outcome but possessed of a family reputation for principled stubbornness that survives even the man who most embodied it.

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.