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.
In 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.
If 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.
It 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.