The Riverlands

The Riverlands is one of the constituent regions of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Historically, it was ruled by a succession of various River Kings until being conquered by the Durrandon Storm Kings and later the Iron Kings of House Hoare. After the conquest, they were organized into their own kingdom, headed by House Tully.

Geography
The riverlands encompass a region of plains, forests, hills, and endless rivers, and borders on every single kingdom except Dorne. Their northern border is near the swamplands of the Neck, the southernmost region of the north. To the east, the riverlands extend to the Vale of Arryn's Mountains of the Moon and Crackclaw Point in the crownlands. A stream forms part of the boundary between the riverlands and the crownlands, with the hills of House Wode in the former and the lands of House Hogg in the latter. To the south the riverlands border the crownlands and the Reach. The riverlands extend west to Ironman's Bay and the mountainous westerlands. The heavily fortified Golden Tooth guards the entrance to the riverlands but belongs itself to the westerlands.

The riverlands are named for the number of rivers which are present. The Red Fork runs from its source in the western mountains to Riverrun where it combines with the Tumblestone and then runs to the east. The Blue Fork flows southeast from its sources near Seagard, while the Green Fork runs south from swamps in the Neck, near the kingsroad. The three forks come together a short distance from Lord Harroway's Town to form the Trident, which then pours into the Bay of Crabs at Saltpans. The northern Blackwater Rush and a river from the Gods Eye run through the southern riverlands.

People and Economy
The riverlands are rich and fertile and populous. The numerous rivers that run across their expanse are used for trading and the transport of goods. In times of peace fisherfolk in skiffs and grain barges pole downstream and merchants on floating ships sail on the rivers. With so much trade on the rivers, villagers will haul their grain and other goods to it to see it sold and carried elsewhere by the merchants. Wine can be made from small, tart grapes grown in the riverlands.

Although they are Lords Paramount of the Trident, the Tullys have historically fielded fewer men than the Blackwoods, Brackens, Freys, and Vances. The Mallisters have a more prestigious lineage, while the Mootons are wealthier and the Darrys are more closely tied with the royal family.

Military Strength
While the riverlands are rich, fertile and populous, the region lacks natural borders and suffers from divided leadership. This affects the military strength House Tully of Riverrun can field. The riverlands can allegedly field perhaps some forty-five thousand men, with an estimated infantry-to-cavalry ratio of three to one. However, the number of soldiers who have been described in the field have been far less. When Aegon I Targaryen marched against the Reach during the Conquest with a host of eleven thousand men, most of these soldiers came from the riverlands. During the Dance of the Dragons, more than a hundred years later, the Lords of the Trident raised an army on two occasions: one of sixty-six hundred men, and one of nearly four thousand. It is unknown whether the same men made up part of the armies in battle on both occasions, or just one.

House Frey alone is capable of raising at least four thousand men, including one thousand knights and three thousand infantry.

First Men
During the Dawn Age the First Men settled in the riverlands, coming into conflict with the native children of the forest. After centuries of fighting, a pact was signed at the Isle of Faces, the children withdrew to their forests, while the First Men raised their kingdoms in the lands ceded by the mysterious folk.

During the thousands of years that followed, various families ruled the riverlands as river kings, claiming the titles King of the Trident or King of the Rivers and the Hills. Many dynasties claimed these lands during the Age of Heroes, including Fishers, Brackens, Blackwoods, and Mudds, who were the last of the First Men to claim the riverlands as their own.

The time of the First Men river kings came to an end with the coming of the Andals. Remembered in song are the Fall of Maidenpool, the Widow's Ford, the White Wood, and the Battle of Bitter River. King Tristifer IV Mudd raised his armies and met the Andal invaders. Tristifer was said to have won ninety-nine out of his hundred battles against the Andals, but in the final battle he was killed. His son and successor, Tristifer V, was not as successful as his father and the kingdom fell.

Andals
The victorious Andals raised their own kingdoms and dynasties. House Justman united the riverlands for almost three centuries, and King Benedict II Justman expanded their realm east to Duskendale, Rosby, and the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. However, the sons of King Bernarr II Justman were murdered by Qhored Hoare in the Bloody Keep of Pyke in the Iron Islands, and the riverlands fell into anarchy when Qhored sacrificed Bernarr to the Drowned God, ending the Justman line.

The riverlands were then disputed by Houses Blackwood, Bracken, Vance, Mallister, and Charlton for a century. The Hooks were also river kings of old who claimed the mouth of the Blackwater. The various kings were pressured by the Kings of the Iron Islands, the Kings of the Rock, the Vale mountain clans, the Kings of the Reach, the Storm Kings, and pirates from the Stepstones and the Three Sisters. Torrence Teague finally reunited the riverlands, but he and his heirs were disliked by their rebellious subjects. According to a semi-canon source, House Teague may not have had an uninterrupted rule, instead being contested by other river dynasties for generations.

Storm Kings
The last native river kings were Humfrey I Teague and his kin. Humfrey founded numerous septs and motherhouses in his kingdom, and he repressed worship of the old gods. A rebellion began by Lord Roderick Blackwood led to the deaths of the Teagues in the Battle of Six Kings and their replacement by the Storm King, Arlan III Durrandon.

The Storm Kings of House Durrandon ruled the riverlands for more than three centuries. Several leaders such as Lucifer Justman, Marq Mudd, Lord Robert Vance, Lord Petyr Mallister, Lady Jeyne Nutt, Ser Addam Rivers, Pate of Fairmarket, and Ser Lymond Fisher, rose in rebellion and even reigned, albeit for a short time, before being put down by the might of Storm's End.

House Hoare
The Storm Kings in turn were defeated by the Iron King, Harwyn Hardhand, who established his own kingdom from the Iron Islands to the riverlands. The era of the Kings of the Isles and the Rivers is included in The Iron Chronicle. Harwyn's son, Halleck Hoare, made his seat in Fairmarket instead of the Iron Islands.

Harwyn's grandson, Harren the Black, ordered the construction of an immense castle, Harrenhal, as a display of his wealth and power. Construction of Harrenhal took forty years and a huge amount of resources and money to build. Feuding between the Blackwoods and the Brackens during the construction led Harren to punish both houses. Ironically, the same day the most immense castle in history was finished, Aegon Targaryen, the Lord of Dragonstone, landed in Westeros with his dragons.

The Conquest
Harren the Black was unpopular within the riverlands when Aegon's Conquest began. Rather than support House Hoare, the river lords rose in rebellion and joined House Targaryen. The first to do so was House Tully, followed by the Blackwoods, Mallisters, Vances, Brackens, Pipers, Freys, and Strongs.

Harren thought if he refused battle to Aegon I Targaryen, the invaders would have to besiege Harrenhal with the river lords. Instead, Aegon let his dragon attack. The heat produced by Balerion was so great that much of Harrenhal burned and melted, killing Harren and his children. After the burning of Harrenhal Aegon raised Lord Edmyn Tully to dominion over the riverlands, below the sovereignty of the Targaryens, as the Lord Paramount of the Trident.

Rivermen made up the bulk of Aegon's army at the Field of Fire. The Inn of the Kneeling Man on the Red Fork was built where Torrhen Stark, King in the North, is believed to have submitted to Aegon.

Targaryen Dynasty
Having never been river kings, House Tully has sometimes been overshadowed by their bannermen. Lord Edmyn Tully, however, repaired much of the damage caused by the rule of Harren the Black. In 31 AC Prince Maegor Targaryen slew the Giant of the Trident, a robber knight. Shortly after his coronation, King Aenys I Targaryen visited Riverrun. Harren the Red rebelled against Aenys and killed Gargon Qoherys, the Lord of Harrenhal.

During the reign of Maegor the Cruel, several river lords joined the king in the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye against his nephew, Prince Aegon Targaryen.[4][36] Ser Joffrey Doggett led former Warrior's Sons in the riverlands and the westerlands.

Dance of the Dragons
When the Dance of the Dragons began in 129 AC, the notoriously-quarrelsome river lords were nominally under the rule of House Tully. Most supported Rhaenyra Targaryen and the blacks against Aegon II Targaryen and the greens. Prince Daemon Targaryen led the assault on Harrenhal and followed up with the Battle of the Burning Mill and the taking of Stone Hedge.

The green army from the westerlands was victorious in the Battle of the Red Fork and at Acorn Hall in 130 AC, but was then destroyed by rivermen and northmen in the Battle by the Lakeshore. Prince Aemond Targaryen and his dragon, Vhagar, burned much of the riverlands in response, but Aemond was eventually killed in the Battle Above the Gods Eye by Daemon. Ser Criston Cole, the Kingmaker, led an army of greens through the riverlands, but they were hampered by scorched earth tactics. Rivermen and their northern allies crushed Criston and his greens in the Butcher's Ball, an ambush south of the Gods Eye. Riverlords, northmen, and crownlands men from the Blackwater Rush continued south, but the blacks were defeated in the First Battle of Tumbleton. Ser Addam Velaryon led near four thousand rivermen to the Second Battle of Tumbleton.

Lords Kermit Tully and Benjicot Blackwood led the rivermen who defeated Lord Borros Baratheon in the Battle of the Kingsroad in 131 AC. Supporters of Aegon III Targaryen, the Lads were welcomed when they marched into King's Landing after Aegon II's death. In the aftermath of the war, more than a thousand northmen settled in the riverlands, marrying women in Widow Fairs and taking service as guards and men-at-arms. The northmen strengthened the riverlords and led a partial revival of worship of the old gods in the region.

The Great Council (233 AC)
In the Great Council, the Riverlands, as usual, presents much less than a united front. House Blackwood backs Aegon, House Darry backs Aemon, and House Bracken votes for Maegor, though one can imagine they intended to vote for Aenys before his "unfortunate accident." House Tully does not speak one way or another until is is clear the majority is for Aemon, after which they throw their support behind him. This pleases no one.

The Fourth Blackfyre Rebellion (238 AC)
The Riverlords did not, en masse, participate greatly in the Fourth Blackfyre rebellion. They massed troops and marched them, of course, but these saw little combat, as the Riverlands did not want to leave Maidenpool and Saltpans open to incursions from the East and felt that moving the troops too far was a certainly surefire path to such.

Their main contribution, as it turns out, was post-war squabbling. House Blackwood, after the death of Brynden Rivers, requested that his body be returned to Raventree Hall so that he could be buried alongside his family. As it turns out, Aemon had already burned him in the Targaryen fashion, something that upset House Blackwood rather immensely.

An All Too Brief Golden Age (283 AC - 288 AC)
Lord Whent, the somewhat aged Lord of Harrenhal, was naturally competent, good with people as well as numbers. It was little surprise, then, that he was eventually chosen by King Aemon as his Master of Laws, once an opening in the position came about in 283. His service in the position did a great deal to strengthen the Riverlands, both in actual influence and in the eyes of the realm at large. Collaboration between the two regions were never much higher, and the King and House Tully frequently feasted one another on visits to each's respective fief.

This came crashing down, of course, when Lord Whent was implicated in the Name Day plot. The influence of the Trident in court dropped as quickly as the Lord of Harrenhal's head. While there was no evidence that any other Rivermen were involved in any capacity, the prospect of such was never fully dismissed. As such, Aemon and his small council decided to raise to Harrenhal a figure decidedly loyal to neither Tully nor Whent: The brusque uncle of Lord Hardy, a man who had served in court as Master-At-Arms of the Red Keep for sometime and Aemon felt confident in the loyalty of.

Now, instead of Riverlander influence in the Crownlands, it seemed that the die had turned on its head. A Crownlander took Harrenhal as his seat, and the Riverlanders began to grumble. Some began to whisper that Whent's bastard, a boy of fourteen, had fled across the waters to the Isle of Faces to avoid capture. Other said he had merely been hanged.

A Tide of Red (302 AC - 304 AC)
Some would, almost two decades of seemingly unsubstantiated, come to see that they (or their fathers) had supposedly been right about House Hardy. Upon hearing of King Aemon's death and Viserys's ascension to the Throne, House Hardy promptly converted to the Red God. It is unclear whether the conversion was made in order to gain political power, or if Hardy was simply revealing long held beliefs now that he had an ally upon the Iron Throne. Regardless of the reason, it did not go over quite too well with many riverlords.

With Hardy's conversion came hope for many followers of R'hllor, and missionaries abound swept to the Riverlands, hoping to spread seeds of faith in fertile ground. Over the next few years, they found some success. House Darry, alongside some others, would join the Hardys in the Red Faith that their king worshipped. Not all people found the new religion so charming however. Notably, Houses Bracken and Blackwood, oftentimes enemies, found themselves alike in hatred towards the King's red men, and were known for executing missionaries on... less than solid grounds, though never without some sort of excuse for it. House Tully wavered between viewing R'hllor as a threat and a pest, and wandering septons and red priests often came to fisticuffs.

The Lords Declarant (308 AC)
It is unknown what had drove Melissa Blackwood to take a ride through Bracken lands with such a small party, except that she was supposedly "on her way to visit a friend". What is known, however, is what befell her thereafter. While travelling through a particularly brambly pass, she was seized from her horse by a group of Red Priests, angered at House Blackwood's execution of one of their comrades earlier that month for little more than examining the castle's silverware. For the sins of her House, it was deemed, she would be sent to the pyre. Her travelling companions, however, were spared such a fate. They were sent back to Lord Blackwood, to warn him of what fate befell those who sought war with R'hllor.

Once the news was spread, however, any reservations House Blackwood may have had about such a war were swept away. He began an ever more fervent (if somewhat quiet) campaign to drive the followers of the Red God from the Riverlands, or at least from Tully's favor. He was joined in his efforts by an unlikely companion: The Lord Bracken. There were many theories about why the ancestral enemies now worked together. Some figured him a friend of Melissa's, others a lover. Many believed he was appalled the priests had committed such crimes on his own land, an insult to either his pride or his people's safety. And some believed they thought the threat posed by R'hllorites and the King's Men truly that great.

Principal Houses of the Riverlands

 * House Tully of Riverrun


 * House Hardy of Harrenhal


 * House Blackwood of Raventree Hall


 * House Bracken of Stone Hedge


 * House Cox of Saltpans


 * House Darry of Darry


 * House Frey of the Crossing


 * House Mallister of Seagard


 * House Mooton of Maidenpool


 * House Piper of Pinkmaiden


 * House Roote of Lord Harroway's Town


 * House Ryger of Willow Wood


 * House Smallwood of Acorn Hall


 * House Vance of Atranta


 * House Vance of Wayfarer's Rest