CATELYN: On the shores of the Gods Eye, due north of the lsle of Faces,
rises a monument to arrogance and cruelty.
Harrenhal.
For a people who prided themselves on their ships,
the ironmen of old seized any chance to leave them,
and carved out a vast kingdom from the peaceful river lords.
Their empire reached its zenith under King Harren Hoare,
called "the Black" by those he terrorized, and by his own men,
though they meant it proudly.
King Harren enslaved the Riverlands
to raise the mightiest fortress Westeros had ever seen.
A castle that could garrison a million men, with walls so vast
that winters would come and go and besieging armies grow old and gray
before the castle fell.
"Five towers," he ordered, "reaching into the heavens like grasping fingers."
A monstrosity, which he forced our people to build for their own subjugation.
But the very day the slaves laid the last stone,
Aegon Targaryen and his sisters arrived in the South.
When they arrived with their small army,
Harren laughed and shut the gates.
Harrenhal would have its first test, and an easy one at that.
lt failed.
Harrenhal could have withstood an assault from all the armies in Westeros combined.
But Harren learned that the tallest and thickest walls meant little to dragons,
for dragons fly.
With Harren and his sons dead, Harrenhal quickly surrendered to Aegon.
House Tully then raised the river lords in rebellion against the lron lslands,
and with Aegon, we flushed the ironmen to the sea.
We should have torn down the castle stone by stone then,
but Harrenhal seemed such a magnificent prize
that Aegon gave it to one of his commanders, whose line then withered to extinction.
As would every family to hold it thereafter.
When many speak of Harrenhal, their voices drop to whispers.
About mad Lady Lothston, who was said to send a giant bat to collect children
for her crock pots, and to bathe in blood and serve feasts of human flesh.
About the ghosts of Black Harren and his sons,
who still walk the castle at night, all aflame.
Of the servants who went to bed in full health,
and were found in the morning burned to ash.
Mere stories to frighten wayward children and excite young girls, you may say.
You would not be entirely wrong.
Harrenhal is a prize, a nigh-impregnable castle with enough land and enough income
to make a man, at a stroke, one of the greatest lords in Westeros.
But you would not be entirely right, either.
Say, by a king's grace, Harrenhal became yours.
Now you must garrison it. You must repair it and maintain it.
Even stretched to the ends of your means, you cannot fill and manage the whole castle.
So, you retreat your household to four of the five towers.
Then three, then two, then only the bottom thirds of those.
You close the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, and take your meals in your rooms.
Even then, you can't shake the feeling of desolation,
that Harrenhal and its vastness is devouring you.
ln later years, as you bury a grandson or a great-grandson, the last of your line,
you will know it has.