STANNIS: My brother, Robert Baratheon had raised the banners of Storm's End,
our ancestral castle, against the Mad King, Aerys.
Jon Arryn of the Vale and Eddard Stark of the north stood with him,
and Hoster Tully of the Riverlands would join.
But their lands were far from ours,
and separated by the combined strength of The West, The Reach
and King's Landing itself.
Even Robert's own Lords were against him.
It was the hardest choice have ever made
My Brother or My King,
Blood or Honor
Aerys rules by right of all the Lords in Westros.
Everyone Knew the prize of defiance,
But there were deeper older laws,
The younger brother bows before the elder.
I followed Robert.
Early in the war, Mace Tyrell's indecisive victory at Ashford
cut Robert off from Storm's End.
lnstead of pursuing Robert and risking his record,
Mace Tyrell turned east and laid siege to our home.
His vast army and navy encircled us and prevented any resupply by land or sea.
lf a wagon tried to reach us, it was burnt. lf a ship tried to land, it was sunk.
We were locked in Storm's End to starve,
but Robert commanded me to hold the castle no matter the cost.
He could ill afford to lose his ancient seat which had never fallen.
While Robert smashed Rhaegar on the Trident,
my men ate the dogs,
because the horses had already been devoured.
While the Lannisters sacked King's Landing, we ate the rats.
lf the smuggler Davos had not slipped through the Tyrell blockade with his onions,
we'd have eaten our own dead.
But l held the castle
until Lord Eddard remembered us and marched to lift the siege.
The Tyrells didn't even put up a fight.
And Robert threw a feast to celebrate Lord Eddard's victory.
l was sent to the royal island stronghold of Dragonstone
to deal with Viserys and Daenerys, the last surviving Targaryen children.
Before l arrived, however, they escaped across the narrow sea.
Robert was furious. He stripped me of Storm's End
and gave it to that prancing fool, Renly, my younger brother.
l could keep Dragonstone.
Now, Robert is dead and a bastard pretender soils my throne
while the realm fills with schemers and traitors.
But the rightful king is coming for them all.
And l will not stop until l have scoured this land clean of abomination.
The Baratheons say, "Ours is the fury." l will show them fury burns.
DAVOS: ln King's Landing, if you leave the Red Keep and aren't careful,
you may find yourself in Flea Bottom.
ln such a cesspool did House Seaworth have its glorious start.
l got out as soon as l could, finding work on a smuggler's ship.
Soon, every port on the Narrow Sea had a bounty on me,
which they would collect if l didn't pay a percentage
to the right people or pick the right tides.
You know how to tell a good smuggler?
When you talk to one, there's a head that talks back.
l was very good.
Davos of Flea Bottom had run with orphans and beggars,
but Davos the smuggler was received by merchants and lords,
when nobody would catch them.
Oddly, the only honest work came from pirates,
like the notorious, bloodthirsty Salladhor Saan,
an old friend.
All he ever wanted was someone to buy his cargo quickly before the tide left
and sell it without telling where l got it.
ln time, l saved enough to buy a small plot of land,
and found a woman who was kind enough to overlook my trade.
She gave me a son, Matthos.
And we dreamt of the traders' circle around the Jade Sea.
Just one trip, and l could settle us and our family for life.
Then some Storm lord revolted against the lron Throne.
Wars are not as good for smugglers as you'd think.
Every harbor fills with guards and inspectors,
and the sea is filled with blockades and pirates
paid by each side to prey on the other.
Though l had no love for the Mad King,
l had grown up around the power of King's Landing.
l figured this Robert Baratheon would end the same as the other rebel lords,
burned to ash.
But he didn't.
The North, the Riverlands and the Vale joined him.
And in the taverns, people drank to Robert's health openly.
"Brave fools," l thought.
But l had a family who'd be left in the cold if l lost my head.
When Mace Tyrrell marched on Robert's home at Storm's End,
l spied the end of the rebellion.
The castle was garrisoned by Robert's younger brother Stannis
and a small guard, and would not hold out for long.
When it fell, Robert would be homeless,
and his support would bleed away.
This l knew from experience.
Months later, Stannis was still holding the castle.
Nobody cared.
But on voyages, l had seen what famine does,
and l thought of all those men in Storm's End
who would die unmourned and forgotten.
No better than Flea Bottom orphans.
l told my wife and myself
that l'd get a high price for the onions and salt beef.
ln truth, l knew l'd be captured by the Tyrell galleys or drowned.
But l was too stubborn.
Later that night, in the dark, in a tiny boat with a black sail,
l cursed myself and the moonlight as l waited for the tide to turn.
When it did, the wind beat the sail so hard, l ripped it down,
fearing that Tyrell ships would hear.
Luckily, they had grown lax.
With muffled oars, alone, l steered my cargo
through the treacherous currents and snarls of rock
that gave Shipbreaker Bay its name.
The waves finally carried me, soaked and near blind from seawater,
through the mouth of the cavern beneath the castle.
Then Stannis Baratheon arrived.
The siege had left him gaunt, but not weak, never weak.
He greeted me and accepted my onions with cool courtesy,
betraying no emotion even as all wept.
He doled out the food to his wife and each of his men
before he ate himself, a portion no larger than any other.
When he finally thanked me,
l could see his mind had already returned to the castle's defense,
his duty.
After Aerys fell and Lord Stark lifted the siege,
Stannis summoned me.
For my salvation of Storm's End,
l was to be granted a knighthood, a keep of my own
and my son taken into Stannis's personal service.
Davos of Flea Bottom had become Ser Davos of House Seaworth,
and his son would serve the King's own brother.
But, for my previous crimes as a smuggler,
l was to have the fingertips of one hand taken off above the highest joint.
Stannis held that l had flouted the laws of the land for years
and a good act does not wash out the bad.
ln one fell swoop, or five,
Stannis gave my son a future and my family a name
that l could never have imagined, nor earned, on my own.
l still keep the finger bones in a bag around my neck
to remind me what l was and what l owe to Stannis.
For during my many years as a smuggler,
l visited many ports, taverns and back alleys,
and saw many things in this world,
but never justice
until Stannis.
MARGAERY: Some Great Houses call us upstarts, but the truth is
that while the Starks and Lannisters fell to the Targaryens in defeat,
House Tyrell rose.
For thousands of years,
our family served as loyal stewards to the kings of the Reach,
until the last of their line unwisely burned to death,
resisting the Targaryen invaders.
To save the Reach from a similar fate,
we yielded the castle of Highgarden to Aegon and his sisters.
ln gratitude, the Targaryens gave House Tyrell dominion over the Reach,
and we became lords of the castle in which, for generations, we had served.
Under the Targaryen dynasty, Westeros prospered.
Gone were the petty wars of Seven Kingdoms
and the endless thirst for minor glories that drove them.
The Westerlands enriched the realm, the North guarded it,
and the Reach and Riverlands fed it.
This harmony is what Robert Baratheon shattered
with his rebellion against Aerys Targaryen.
When the call to arms came, though, we did not want to answer.
The Reach is a gentle land,
and, honestly, the Mad King was not much loved.
But we owed peace and status to his family.
My father, Mace Tyrell, called his banners
and marched north to battle the rogue Storm Lord, Robert,
who had already defeated three forces in a single day.
And, at Ashford,
my father won.
Some chasten my father for not pursuing Robert after the battle.
We had cut him off from the Stormlands, the seat of his power,
and he had fled north,
within easy grasp of Lord Tywin Lannister, the Hand of Aerys for 20 years.
My father moved instead to lay siege to Robert's ancestral stronghold
of Storm's End.
The rose would strangle the stag, as the lion pounced.
So we waited,
but the lion slumbered and Robert slipped past the King's forces
to join Ned Stark.
We could have lifted the siege and deployed our armies north
to aid the crown.
We could have stormed the walls of the castle and made Robert homeless,
but we had ample supplies, control of land and sea,
and, most of all, patience.
Our siege would succeed, eventually,
at little cost of life to us.
lf Robert prolonged the war with minor victories,
our capture of Storm's End would hasten his downfall.
And if Robert won the war,
well, it would not do for him to find us in his halls
with the bodies of his brother Stannis and his sworn men.
When the lion finally showed his colors and purged King's Landing,
we knew our cause was lost.
My father chose the peaceful route and bent the knee to Robert,
who heartily pardoned us.
Strange, considering how we'd beaten him and starved his brother to the brink of death.
We were to keep our lands, castle and title.
But we knew that we would never be welcome at court.
lt didn't matter.
The Reach was still the most fertile of the Seven Kingdoms
and under our hand.
Every flower, even the rose, needs pruning.
Then it grows strong.
CATELYN: Family, duty, honor.
Every Tully child learns our words,
but l was a woman before l understood them.
Years before,
my father had taken to foster the son of a wartime friend,
a minor lord on the Fingers.
The boy had arrived at our castle as Petyr Baelish.
Due to his home and size, my brother soon named him Littlefinger.
When l came of age,
Brandon Stark of Winterfell sought and won my hand.
To my father, Brandon was heir to the North
and a suitable match for a daughter of House Tully.
To me,
Brandon was wild and terrifying, never far from laughter or trouble.
l loved him with all the fire of a first passion,
much, l came to realize, as Petyr loved me.
When Petyr heard of my engagement, he challenged Brandon to a duel.
Petyr survived only because l begged Brandon not to kill him.
l still thought of Petyr as family.
Now,
l wish l had let him die.
Only days before my wedding, when l thought to be happy forever,
Prince Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Brandon's sister, Lyanna.
Hot-blooded as always,
Brandon immediately rode for King's Landing to demand justice,
which the Mad King Aerys Targaryen gave him
in his own twisted fashion.
The day the raven arrived with the news of my Brandon's death,
l locked myself in a room and refused to eat for days
until my father reminded me of my duty.
l was to marry Eddard, Brandon's younger brother.
A man whom l had never met, though of whom none spoke ill,
or spoke anything at all.
Our union would cement an alliance of the North, Vale,
Stormlands and Riverlands in rebellion against the Mad King.
l was a Tully.
l did my duty.
We were married quickly
and were spared only one night before he had to return to the field.
l spent the war by the windows,
waiting for a raven to hear if my son would grow up fatherless or at all.
We knew the price of defeat.
l scoured the kitchens and washing rooms for any and all gossip.
Robert had won and crushed the Mad King.
Robert had lost, but Jaime Lannister was now king.
Robert had almost won,
but the Mad King had become a dragon and burned King's Landing to ash.
At night, l told myself the war would end soon and bring peace.
Either a victory or the grave.
l was wrong.
Robert won,
and my husband avenged his brother and my love.
But when he came home to me,
he could not meet my eyes.
l saw the reason by his side.
Many men have bastards, l know.
And under the strain of war,
any man, no matter how honorable, may forsake his vows for a night of warmth
that he may never know again.
But Ned Stark was not built like other men.
His Northern honor would not let him sequester his shame
in some distant holdfast.
He brought this boy, this Jon Snow,
home to raise with his trueborn children.
My children.
Yet even these bitter memories are sweet now.
They are all l have left of my Ned.
Our family is broken and scattered.
And our son must wage a war for the pieces.
We need to go home.
The Starks are of the North,
and like the snows of winter, when they come south,
they melt away.
ROBB: Dark wings, dark words.
l was only a boy when the raven came to call my father, Lord Eddard Stark, to another war.
Balon Greyjoy had raised the lron lslands in revolt,
and burned the Lannister fleet at anchor.
King Robert Baratheon again needed his old friend.
My mother, Catelyn, was not happy to lose her lord husband to Robert again.
Six years before, he had left her to avenge his father and brother
against the Mad King.
But now, he had sons and daughters of his own, and, unspoken,
Another son who wasn't her's from the last time he went to war.
My Brother.
Jon Snow.
But she knewed they are marring My father, She would married the North.
We hold our Honor and Duty as dear as our own Gods.
When the time came, My Father march South to restore Peace and Order to the Realm.
My Father always told me the Iron Islands were strange and dangerous place,
its people the Iron-Born keep neither the Old Gods nor the Seven.
and despise all Honest and Loyals
Their Ancestors ravage the western shores,
Raping and slaving and putting it to the torture.
and their songs still ring through the halls of the ironborn
while everywhere else, they're whispered to wayward children at bedtime.
Perhaps Lord Balon thought Westeros had not healed from the war against the Mad King,
and was as fragmented and suspicious as the ancient kingdoms
his forebears had terrorized.
Robert's navy corrected him at Fair lsle when they smashed the proud lron Fleet.
Robert and my father corrected him at Pyke, his own castle,
when they pulled down his towers and breached his walls.
My father never liked to speak of his battles, but from other men l learned what transpired.
Thoros of Myr was first through the breach with his flaming sword.
Not far behind him was Jorah Mormont of Bear lsland,
my father's bannerman, who earned the knighthood he would later shame,
and lords from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms.
All day, through every passage in the castle, they fought side by side.
My father with our ancestral sword, lce, and King Robert with his war-hammer,
against a horde of ax-wielding ironborn.
ln the end, Lord Balon bent the knee.
King Robert generously allowed Lord Balon to retain his title and castle.
The price of peace was custom, the only son of Balon's to survive his foolish rebellion
would be taken as a hostage against future treasons.
My father even volunteered to foster the boy himself,
l suspect, to make Theon Greyjoy a different man than his father,
who would bring honor and duty to the lron lslands when he returned as heir.
So my mother's silent fear came true, and my father returned with another child.
Theon ate with us, played with us, and fought with us.
Once, the great bond between my father and Robert Baratheon united the realm
against the Mad King, and brought him to justice for his crimes.
Now, another monster sits on the lron Throne, and another debt of blood is owed my family.
Theon is my murdered father's ward, l am my murdered father's son.
Like my father, and Robert, bound in blood, if not by blood,
we are brothers.
THEON: When Aegon and his dragons burned Harren the Black
and all his sons at Harrenhal,
the days when men feared the sight of our longships were over.
Aegon would not permit marauders and raiders in his Seven Kingdoms.
With Harren died our empire and the old way that forged it.
But what is dead may never die.
Six years after Robert Baratheon won his crown,
my father, Balon Greyjoy, sought to restore our ancient rights.
He declared the lron lslands independent and himself its king,
and sent the lron Fleet in a daring raid on Lannisport,
where they burned the Lannister ships at anchor,
making us unchallenged in the Sunset Sea.
This was the seed of our undoing.
My eldest brother, Rodrik, led a frontal assault on Seagard,
a town built to protect the mainland from us.
After furocious fighting beneath the city walls,
He was slain by Lord Jason Lannister and his men defeated.
And this time Stannis Baratheon had brought his fleet around Westros.
and some how manage to trap the Iron Fleet at Fair Isle, Smashingly.
Robert's Victory was now over to showed,
If we made him bleed for each island.
Stannis Baratheon captured Warewick the largest of the Iron Islands.
and Ser Barristan Selmy met himself Ser Old Wyk.
Robert and Lord Eddard Stark led the main assault against the island of Pyke.
They razed the town of Lordsport to the ground
before Robert turned his full fury on our family's stronghold.
When they breached the walls, the first through
was Thoros of Myr with his ridiculous flaming sword,
followed by every minor lord of Westeros hungry for glory.
My other brother, Maron, was killed
when the siege engines brought down a tower on his head.
l was now my father's only living son
and heir to the lron lslands.
When my father saw his cause was lost, he wisely conceded defeat to Robert,
who otherwise would have pulled down our castle stone by stone
with us in it.
As my father said to me then,
"No man has ever died from bending his knee."
He who kneels may rise again, blade in hand.
He who will not kneel stays dead,
stiff legs and all.
As it stands, Robert allowed my father to keep his lands and title
as Lord of the lron lslands, King of Salt and Rock,
Son of the Sea Wind, Lord Reaper of Pyke.
For a price.
His last son and heir shipped off to Winterfell as an honored guest.
l would eat at the Starks' table and play with the Stark children.
And if my father rebelled again,
Lord Eddard Stark would take his sword and cut off my head.
lt would be his duty.
STANNIS: Though Robert had risked all our lives to win it,
the lron Throne bored him.
He cared little for justice, and less for rule.
lf it weren't women or wineskin, he had no use for it.
Without the stalwart Jon Arryn as Hand of the King,
the challenge to Robert's crown would have come much earlier than it did.
The lron lslands have never lacked for treachery.
They respect only strength.
And honor is as foreign to them as the Seven.
After 6 years their Ruler Lord Balon Greyjoy
wages that King Robert hadn't won the support of the Great House of the Westros.
Many of them still name them Usurper.
Lord Balon declared the Iron Islands independent
and send his Iron fleet to Lannisport.
Lord Tywin Lannister was careless and the iron borns caught and burnt his ships at anchor.
Lord Balon and his reavers controlled the Sunset Sea.
Robert then ordered me to succeed
where his father-in-law, Lord Tywin, had failed.
Beneath Robert's fury, l sensed relief.
War he could understand.
He would smash Lord Balon as he had Rhaegar.
l raised Robert's fleet and sailed around Westeros
to the lron lslands.
l set a trap for the lron Fleet off Fair lsle.
As sailors and warriors, the ironborn are unparalleled.
But they are not soldiers.
They have no discipline, no strategy, no unity.
ln a battle, each man fights only for his own glory.
And their longships are built for lightning strikes and shore raids.
When the captains rushed in, l smashed their longships
with our larger war galleys.
The strength of the ironborn is in their ships.
With the lron Fleet broken, l had assured Robert's victory.
He could now transport troops and siege weapons
to invade the lron lslands.
And contrary to Balon's hopes, Robert had plenty of both.
l've never seen such allegiance as Robert could inspire in war.
Enemies who tried to kill him one day would be drinking with him the next
under their own fallen banners.
ln rebelling against the lron Throne,
Lord Balon did more than Robert ever could to cement his rule.
When Robert came to the lron lslands,
he brought with him the full power of Westeros.
Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard lead the assault on Old Wyk
while l subdued Great Wyk, the largest of the lron lslands.
But Robert saved the seat of House Greyjoy, Pyke, for himself and Lord Eddard.
Robert would later boast of the battle's bloodiness
and how he could have torn down the island into the waves
if Lord Balon hadn't bent the knee.
But if l'd have led the assault, Balon's neck would have bent.
Under a sword.
Because l do not forget. l do not pardon.
His time will come.
All their times will come.
MARGAERY: House Tyrell trace our descent to Garth Greenhand,
the legendary first king of the Reach, who made the land bloom.
But so, too, does every noble House around us.
lt seems dear ancestor Garth planted as many flowers as he plucked.
A king should have more consideration for his line, don't you think?
For over a thousand years, the Greenhand sons and grandsons
ruled the Reach as House Gardener.
The offshoots of his daughters
grew into vast and powerful houses in their own right.
Except for House Tyrell.
We chose, instead, to serve our Gardener cousins faithfully as stewards,
to manage their stronghold of Highgarden and the daily affairs of the Reach.
Our words are, "Growing strong."
And under our stewardship, the Reach did just that.
As did we,
until a blundering king almost cost us everything.
Aegon Targaryen had landed in Westeros.
King Mern allied us with the Rock to repel the upstart's army.
One can only marvel that King Mern did not reconsider
when he saw the living dragons against him.
Perhaps he should have sought counsel from his trusted stewards before he set out.
Then again, perhaps he did.
At the Field of Fire, Aegon, and let us not forget, his sisters,
burnt the combined armies of the Reach and Rock.
King Mern paid for his misjudgment with his life,
and that of his ancient family.
ln a day, the Reach had lost its king, its ruling house and most of its army.
Thankfully for everyone, my ancestor, Harlen Tyrell, had better sense.
Until the maesters sorted out the entail among Mern's cousins,
Harlen the steward was acting lord of Highgarden.
To ensure peace and life in the Reach, he would yield the castle to Aegon.
The other castles and families would then follow,
as they had since the Dawn Age.
Aegon had a continent to conquer,
and the fertile Reach was too valuable to raze.
He accepted Harlen's proposal, and welcomed our lands into his kingdom.
To show his gratitude, Aegon entitled Harlen to Highgarden,
the castle his family had served for a thousand years,
and made House Tyrell his Wardens of the South,
choosing us over older, greater families in the Reach.
Our House thus owed everything to the Targaryens.
So is it any wonder we stay true to King Aerys, even during his madness?
And even after Robert Baratheon rebelled?
Some may question my father for laying siege to the Baratheon's home,
instead of marching to aide Prince Rhaegar,
before Robert could kill him and scatter the royal army.
But let us not forget that we had already dealt Robert
his only defeat of the war at Ashford.
lf Lord Tywin Lannister had not vanquished the Mad King so suddenly,
our siege would have destroyed Robert's home and his brothers,
and won the war for Aerys.
But when the Targaryens fell,
House Tyrell again chose peace and prosperity over war and devastation,
and bent the knee to King Robert Baratheon, first of his name.
We returned to Highgarden to manage the affairs of the Reach,
as we had for thousands of years, and will for a thousand more.
Other great houses take lions and wolves for their sigils,
and draw their power from the gold in their mountains,
or the cold of their winters.
But mountains run dry,
winter yields to spring,
and the rose blooms once more.
THEON: Where the North has its honor, and the South its chivalry,
the lron lslands has its strength.
YARA: We call ourselves the ironborn, and we are warriors
feared throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
THEON: Or so we used to be.
Unlike their mainland cousins,
the First Men of the lron lslands never bowed to the Old Gods.
YARA: Theirs was the Drowned God, who made the ironborn to reave and sack
and write their names in salt, steel, and song
that his enemy, the Storm God, could not wash away.
We raised our kings from our own ranks,
and used beaten foes as thralls to work our mines and farm our land.
THEON: Or as salt wives, if a woman was pretty enough.
Such was the old way,
and while we followed it, we held sway wherever the waves were heard.
When Aegon came demanding fealty,
King Harren the Black ruled as far east as the Trident.
YARA: Other kings, like the Starks, could kneel, but Harren was ironborn,
and the ironborn must be beaten.
ln Harrenhal he had the mightiest castle in Westeros and the army to defend it.
THEON: But Aegon did not intend a siege.
He mounted his dragon and roasted Harren and all his sons in their tower,
and the old way with them.
Because of Harren's defiance, Aegon pushed the ironborn back to our islands,
and gave the Riverlands to the Tullys,
but he did allow the ironborn to choose who would lead them.
YARA: House Greyjoy had always been one of the greatest houses of the lron lslands.
We trace our descent from the Age of Heroes, and the legendary Grey King,
who took a mermaid to wife and made war upon the Storm God for 1 ,000 years.
THEON: Blessed by the Drowned God, the Grey King fought and slew Nagga,
the great sea dragon, and took her fire for his own.
YARA: This history made our ancestor, Vickon Greyjoy, the natural choice
to lead the ironborn after Aegon's conquest.
For 300 years, House Greyjoy ruled the ironborn.
We styled ourselves Lord of the lron lslands, King of Salt and Rock, Son of the Sea Wind,
Lord Reaper of Pyke.
THEON: ln truth, we were thralls.
Our people still chanted, "What is dead may never die."
But the old way had died.
YARA: Until the Targaryens followed their dragons into the grave,
and our lord father, Balon Greyjoy, rose against the new king, Robert Baratheon.
He seized our ancient crown and sent our lron fleet against the Lannisters at Lannisport
burning all their ships before any could weigh anchor.
THEON: Though Robert and Eddard Stark would later defeat him,
they understood us no better than Aegon.
The Greyjoy's sigil is the kraken, what it grasps once, it will never surrender.
BOTH: What is dead may never die,
but rises again, harder and stronger.
HOUND: Honor, glory,
lies to make idiot boys want knighthood,
and idiot girls spread their legs for it.
Let me tell you what makes a knight.
Killing. Either enough men, or the right man.
Us Cleganes should know, we're very good at both.
Most families claim some great ancestors so far back
that nobody can prove them liars.
Not us.
My grandfather kept the kennel for Lord Tytos Lannister of Casterly Rock,
the father of Lord Tywin.
Lord Tytos was a weak man who didn't know it.
One day, while hunting, he stumbled on a lioness.
lnstead of embracing the man who wore her on his banners,
she tried to tear out his throat.
Lucky my grandfather came up with the dogs
and drove the big cat away.
As a reward the Cleganes got lands, and a keep,
and a son to squire for the Lannisters.
We took the three hounds who died for them as our new sigil.
When Tywin Lannister became Lord of Casterly Rock,
he wanted more from his former kennel master than fealty.
He bet that training hounds to kill isn't far from training boys to kill.
ln just two generations, my brother Gregor and l proved him right.
l gutted my first man at 1 2.
Years after, servants started disappearing in our keep.
And even a sister l don't remember.
But nobody could prove anything against Gregor,
or dared if they caught him at it.
For my father wanted a knight in our family
and thought he'd found one in Gregor,
who at 1 3, towered over enough men that they called him The Mountain.
Sure, Gregor looks quite the champion from a distance,
but a mountain can't cleave a man in half with one blow,
and won't break a wench's face if she talks.
Through Lord Tywin's influence,
Prince Rhaegar Targaryen kindly anointed my brother personally.
A great honor for our family, everyone said.
One year later, Ser Gregor chivalrously sacked the Prince's city,
brained the Prince's baby, and raped and murdered the Prince's wife,
winning our family yet more honor from the new King and Queen.
Soon after, my father died,
they say, in a hunting accident.
The same day that Gregor became lord of the Clegane lands,
gold and anything under his roof,
l left our home to take service at Casterly Rock.
Lord Tywin is not like his father,
neither is King Joffrey,
or the likes of me would never be on the Kingsguard
with all those true knights.
Between them, a man who serves the Lannisters will never lack for killing.
l'll guard this king, such as he is.
Gregor will kill the other ones, such as he does.
When we're done,
we'll see how many people still believe in songs and fairy tales.
YGRITTE: A long time ago, they say,
some old southern king enslaved our giants by magic
and forced them to build your famous Wall.
Then he kicked all of my kind to the other side and raised an army to keep us there.
And we're the uncivilized ones, wildlings.
lt might be Sir King was wise.
Even a giant can be made to kneel,
but only if he wants a better crack at your head.
The Free Folk don't follow a man because his father tells us.
lf the king's son was brave and strong,
Aayyee,
We would follow his as we did his Father.
If he wasn't
It seems to me as much as wall keeps us out, it keeps you Southerners in.
You follow laws You didn't make,
Kneels to King you didn't choose. Hmm
Pray to god who are never here from
and tried us to talk about your Seven.
Beyond the Wall, the stars shine bright and clear.
Any gods there aren't listening to the likes of men.
Our gods are of the forest,
in the trees that shelter us and the rivers that feed us.
They gave the land for all of us to share.
We'd fish, farm and hunt where we will, when we need.
lf a man wants a woman, he has to prove he'll give her strong and cunning sons.
Now, that's easy.
When she tries to slit his throat, he don't let her.
With the Free Folk, you get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. No more.
l wonder even if my kind didn't hop over your Wall,
would you still set your Night's Watch to guard it?
You Southerners are rich.
You always have more steel, gold and daughters.
l think you're afraid.
lf you've always knelt, then you don't know what freedom is.
And if you've not been beyond the Wall, you don't know what fear is.
You will.
YGRlTTE: Swords in the darkness.
Aye, the black brothers of the Night's Watch are that at least,
as too many of the free folk know.
You Southerners are strange.
A man murders and you train him to kill better.
A man thieves or rapes, and you send him where it's dark and private.
Well, at least you make him promise to be good.
And you make him regret even that.
From the time he's woken to the time he's allowed to sleep,
he walks the frozen Wall, carries frozen stones, or boils frozen food.
When he lies down at night, he can't have nobody to warm his frozen bed.
Well, not unless the crows like to nest together.
You think he remembers the stories they told him then?
About when the White Walkers woke in the Land of Always Winter
and how the Wall and the Night's Watch were raised to stop them the next time.
Never mind trapping us on the other side.
We free folk have our stories, too.
About how one of your king crows found something cold in the woods
with bright blue eyes.
How he brought her home through your wall
and declared himself Night's King.
Thirteen years he and his queen ruled over his brothers,
making sacrifices as black as their cloaks.
Lucky for you Southerners,
the free folk rallied to a King-beyond-the-Wall,
as we will when need be,
and march on the ancient castle he'd taken for his own.
The Nightfort.
With the help of the Starks,
we killed the demon and cleansed your precious watch.
And then they thanked us and kicked us back across the Wall,
as you always have.
Gendel, Raymun Redbeard, the Horned Lord,
each chosen as a King-beyond-the-Wall,
each promising victory,
and all fallen to the Night's Watch and the Starks.
But this time is different.
Our new king knows your tricks.
You called him a brother crow once, but he never forgot his wings.
We know how you think.
We know where you're weak.
Watch for us from your Wall, if you like.
With the cold, you won't even feel the blade slip into your back.
STANNlS: Nobody knows why the Targaryens first came to the island of Dragonstone.
Old Valyria was then at the height of its power in the center of the civilized world,
which ended at the Narrow Sea.
Westeros was a filthy backwater
with seven kings squabbling over borders and minor glories.
So much for progress.
The island itself was and is nothing.
lt had no gold or gems to lure Valyrian nobility.
All it has is rock.
Mostly a shiny black stone, too brittle for war and too sharp for building.
The Targaryens called it Dragon Glass.
l call it useless.
But the Targaryens managed to raise a castle here.
Simpletons claim they used ancient Valyrian sorcery,
forgetting that the Targaryens brought a small army with them from Essos.
There's no magic in strong backs.
Though admittedly, the castle is unlike any in Westeros.
Foreign and strange.
lf the Targaryens ever regretted their barren outpost
and longed for the comforts of home,
the Doom made their folly permanent.
Valyria collapsed into the waves and was no more.
To look east was to see the ruin of their homeland.
The greatest civilization before or since.
But to look west, as Aegon realized,
was to see a fertile land ripe for conquest.
Perhaps even a new Valyria.
Though good for little else,
Dragonstone was the perfect staging point for Aegon's invasion of Westeros.
The Blackwater Bay granted easy access to the continent.
The lands there were disputed by three kingdoms.
The Reach, the lron lslands, and the Stormlands.
But their capitals were far enough away
that none could mount a force before Aegon got a foothold.
Even if their kings had been able to stop bickering over whose problem he was.
Then it was too late.
Aegon had chosen his first camp well.
With the bay to the east, the river to the south,
and open fields to the north and west,
his army would be impossible to take by surprise.
A perfect site for an invasion, and one day, his capital city,
King's Landing.
The Doom had taught the Targaryens the prudence of refuge.
After the conquest, Dragonstone became the seat
of the crown prince and heir to the lron Throne.
lt would serve them well, and me ill, 300 years later
after my brother Robert Baratheon rebelled against the lron Throne
and the Lannisters slaughtered the Mad King Aerys and his royal family.
Robert dispatched me to deal with the last surviving Targaryen children.
But before l arrived,
a loyal knight smuggled them across the Narrow Sea to safety.
Hatred for the Targaryens blinded Robert.
Unjustly, l was blamed, and stripped of our family's castle of Storm's End.
And given Dragonstone in its stead.
Over the years, whenever l demanded my rights restored,
Robert would remind me of the island's royal pedigree
and pretend he was doing me honor.
As if l were one of his tavern girls to be so easily deceived and dismissed.
But Robert is dead, and l, Stannis Baratheon,
am the rightful King of Westeros.
Let the usurpers and traitors sit on the lron Throne.
From Dragonstone, l will be the dagger at their throat.
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.
JORAH: At its height, the Valyrian Freehold ruled over half the known world.
Not bad for former shepherds.
But the Doom fell on them and sank their capital into the sea.
Now Volantis is the ember of old Valyria,
ensuring its flame does not go out from this world,
as any Volantine will tell you.
Pentoshis say the same about Pentos, Lysenis about Lys, and so on.
But after enough time in the nine free cities
it's hard to see them as anything but ashes of glory.
Volantis is the oldest, the first colony of Valyria.
After the Doom,
the Volantines tried to rebuild the empire under their rule.
They failed.
Not least because the last Valyrian with dragons, Aegon Targaryen,
entered the war against them.
Now they are content to dominate only their lower classes.
Or so they say.
Braavos is the strangest.
A city erected not by the Freehold, but against it.
A labyrinth of illusion and deceit to hide the refugees from Valyria's slave lords.
After the Doom, the city emerged from the shadows
to become one of the greatest banking centers in the world.
A man can get anything in Braavos,
for a price.
Especially death.
Your own, if you offend one of the swaggering swordsmen that pollute the city.
Or, if you're very rich, or very desperate,
anyone else's.
Lys is the easiest of the free cities,
full of pleasure houses catering to every taste,
no matter how peculiar.
Many men lose themselves in Lys and they're never found,
at least alive.
When a man runs out of coin,
the Lysenis may grant him their other speciality, on the house.
Poison.
Pentos is the most ruthless.
The Magisters make a great show
of choosing the Prince of Pentos from the great families,
and granting him the powers of trade, justice, and war.
As long as he checks with them first.
On the New Year, to bring good fortune to Pentos,
this prince must deflower the Maid of the Field,
and the Maid of the Seas.
l confess, l don't know how each is chosen
or what becomes of them after serving their purpose.
But if a crop should fail or a war be lost,
the Magisters will slit the prince's throat and choose another.
The other free cities are known for what they make.
Myr has its lenses and finery.
Norvos, its axes.
Qohor, its smiths who can re-forge Valyrian steel.
Tyrosh, its colors.
l'm sure Lorath adds something to the world but l can't think of it.
Frankly, the nine of them are more alike than they would care to admit.
They hire the same soldiers to fight the same wars
for the same rulers, the rich.
Be they called Magisters, Archons, or what have you.
When a Dothraki khalasar approaches,
they gift the same tribute to avoid the same sacking.
For thousands of years,
the disgraced of Westeros have drained east to pool in the free cities,
where a man of honor counts for less than nothing unless it raises his price.
Better men than l have learned that what a man sells for gold,
he can never buy back.
He must earn it by fire and blood.
XARO: Qarth has always and only belonged to the Qartheen.
We were never part of Valyria's empire.
Nor have we ever fallen to a Dothraki horde.
Our walls and the Red Waste outside them, guard us from such annoyance.
Many call the approach to our city the Garden of Bones.
lt needs little tending to grow.
Our city, however, would be quite a prize for any empire.
Qarth straddles two worlds.
A greedy and curious west, and a rich and mysterious east.
The marvels of Yi Ti and Asshai pass through our markets
and share berths with the riches of the Free Cities and Westeros.
Our ports have fulfilled many a trader's dreams.
Almost as many as they have broken.
We call Qarth, "The greatest city that ever was or will be."
An easy claim to make
if one knows only the docks and customs houses of our other cities.
An easy lie to swallow
if the people see only the gold and jewels of their rulers,
which we, the Thirteen who govern the city, are careful to ensure.
The proud Qartheen shook off the yoke of unjust kings long ago.
So they are told at festivals by the Pureborn,
the king's direct descendants who have controlled the Thirteen ever since.
Only now, instead of scepters, they use ships.
A merchant only remains on the Thirteen
until the others are no longer afraid to deny him.
Or too afraid to deny his replacement.
Except for the Warlocks - they alone hold a hereditary seat.
A relic from when they had powers,
or, at least, from when the world was younger
and more easily duped.
Over the years we have developed an understanding with them.
They shall always be welcome on our councils
and at affairs of state,
provided they never come.
Rare is the civic problem that can be solved
by cryptic nonsense and shade of the evening.
Thankfully, they need little encouragement to confine themselves
to their House of the Undying.
Yet, perhaps, we Qartheen are too confined ourselves.
We feel safe behind our walls and our laws which no visitor can hope to follow.
And by which any citizen who vouches for a guest
always pays with his life.
But like a ship in the summer seas,
a city grows becalmed without fresh wind.
"The greatest city that ever was or will be," an epitaph.
l would prefer, "The greatest city that is."
YARA: The Seven are gods of weakness and defeat,
pretty chains that the First Men kindly put on after the Andals crushed them,
except in the lron lslands.
Since the Dawn Age, the ironborn have followed the Drowned God,
who plucked fire from the sea
and made us to reave and sack and carve our names in blood and song.
When the Andals landed on the lron lslands,
they found a god who was father, warrior and stranger,
who took mother, maiden and crone when he would
and held the smith in thrall.
His priests are the Drowned Men,
who are clothed and armed by the sea itself.
They consecrate us to the Drowned God through our most sacred right,
the drowning,
and ask the god to raise us from the sea as he was, harder and stronger.
The ironborn do not fear the bloodiest battles or the roughest waves,
for the Drowned God taught us long ago that what is dead may never die.
When an ironborn falls,
we say the Drowned God needed a strong oarsman
and took him below to feast in the gods' watery halls,
attended by mermaids.
But even in death, an ironborn is a warrior.
We fight against the Storm God, who holds a castle in the clouds
and sends the winds to lure the ironborn off course or wreck our ships.
lt's said my legendary ancestor, the Grey King,
waged war upon the Storm God for a thousand years.
With the Drowned God's help,
he slew the great sea dragon, Nagga, and used her bones for his hall.
After his death, the Storm God tried to wash away any memory of this terrible foe,
but his songs fill our halls to this day.
lt was the Storm God who first blew the Andals to the lron lslands,
to subdue us and turn us from our faith.
True, they conquered and killed our king.
But, in time, they forsook their septs for the shore,
and their fat septons for the Drowned Men.
The Andals came to us as conquerors.
ln the end, they drowned.
The ironborn are of the sea, as our god made us,
and given to it, as our god taught us.
We do not fear the Storm God's winds or his waves,
but you should,
for they bring us to you.
HALLYNE: Dragons conquered the Seven Kingdoms,
but to rule them, the Targaryens needed a less temperamental tool.
When the great King Maegor saw the power of the Alchemists' Guild,
he blessed us with his patronage.
ln those days, we commonly transmuted metals and other wonders,
but the king was most interested in our mastery of the substance
which those not of our order dub "wildfire."
A slight misnomer.
To the uninitiated, the substance indeed seems uncontrollable.
Water will not extinguish it,
nor plate of steel repel it.
Our order alone knows its secrets.
ln bare stone cells beneath the Guildhall,
our acolytes prepare the substance with utmost care and ancient magic.
Apprentices then remove the jars to a secure storage.
Overseeing its purity are the wisdoms,
such as myself,
who are adept in the alchemical mysteries.
Should an acolyte prove unworthy and allow the substance to ignite,
the ceilings are spelled to collapse and fill the room with sand.
For once lit, only smothering or starvation will quench the fire.
Many years did the Alchemists' Guild serve the Targaryens faithfully,
until we were beset on all sides by the envious,
the Order of Maesters,
who dismissed all learning but their own,
and the charlatans who hawked green paint and worse in our names.
After the unfortunate Prince Aerion Targaryen,
drunk with wine,
boasted that a draft of the substance would transmute him into a dragon,
we lost our royal favor.
Then came the wise King Aerys, second of his name.
l was merely an acolyte when he restored our guild to its former glory.
As had his great forefathers,
he appreciated our secret arts,
even naming Wisdom Rossart as Hand of the King.
Together, they punished his enemies as befits a true Targaryen.
During the War of the Usurper, l heard whispers
that King Aerys had engaged our greatest wisdoms
for an ultimate weapon against his foe.
But, sadly, King's Landing must have fallen before it could be used,
and many of our wisdoms disappeared in the sack of the city,
victims of ignorance and envy, as ever, l'd wager.
Yet our order perseveres.
Like the substance, which grows ever more potent as it ages,
we perfect our ancient arts in darkness, forgotten by the world.
We are masters of the fire,
but we live only to serve.
All we need is the right, uh, spark.
XARO: The East is plagued with mystics who claim many dread powers,
but prove only one -
separating the foolish from their purses.
Not so with the renowned Warlocks of Qarth.
They demand a much dearer coin in return for their parlor tricks.
Respect.
Once, the Warlocks truly were mighty,
or so they would have us believe.
l do not doubt they have many secrets.
They are an old order
and one does not obtain a seat on the Thirteen,
the governing council of Qarth,
without making 1 2 of our most powerful citizens afraid to forbid it.
Thankfully for Qarth,
the Warlocks exert little influence in our politics.
They rarely leave the confines of the House of the Undying.
A pompous name, but, l admit, a strange and dark tower.
lt is said that none who enter ever leave.
Of course, since there are no visible doors,
l have to believe none ever enter either.
We can only imagine what the Warlocks do inside.
l wager we do not have to imagine much.
They read dusty scrolls detailing their lost glory,
they sip shade of the evening,
a foul concoction brewed from the nearby trees,
until their lips turn blue,
the better to frighten children and the ignorant.
Stewing in their fantasies like an old soldier
who drinks alone so no one may challenge their prowess.
Whatever the Warlocks may wish,
their magic, like all magic, is dead in the world if it ever existed.
Though, one does hear strange whispers of late.
Glass candles that have been cold for a hundred years
now burning.
Ghost grass, found far from the Lands of the Shadow.
A khalasar led by a woman
with three heads.
Traders' nonsense, most likely.
But should the Warlocks' vaunted magic ever return,
that would be a dangerous day for Qarth.
l shall need to keep my eyes on them.
lndeed.