I don’t do House Words Wednesdays as a regular thing anymore, but if I get a request to come up with words for a House and I feel like I have enough to say then I’ll come back to it from time to time.  @deafchild2000 requested words for House Varner, so as with House Elesham I say fuck it, here we go. (The list of Houses I’ve done, as always, can be found here.)

House Varner is a noble House of the Reach. We don’t have a ton of information on the family’s foundation or background, but Yandel mentions that the Varners were among those “[m]any noble houses of the Reach [which] trace their ancestry back to Andal adventurers given lands and wives by Garth IX, Merle I, and Gwayne V” (like the Cuys and Roxtons, also prior HWW families). Nor do we know of any historical Varner figures, or moments in which the Varners appeared or impacted certain historical events (apart from a brief mention in Fire and Blood Volume 1, that a Varner maiden was among one of those “thirty-one other nubile maidens” (ugh, F&B) that Lady Samantha Tarly had suggested as suitable potential queens to the young King Aegon III). The Varners do play a somewhat (emphasis on somewhat) larger role in the main novels, although not necessarily in a very positive light: Catelyn notes in ACOK that at the feast for Renly’s lords and knights at Bitterbridge, “Lord Varner dandled a serving girl on his lap, nuzzling at her neck while one hand went exploring down her bodice”. Still, this same Lord Varner certainly does not seem to have been unwilling to fight: he is one of the captured pro-Stannis lords marched before the Iron Throne after the Blackwater, sporting a shattered knee which he doubtless received during the battle and yet proudly refusing help to walk.

The Varner sigil is a white weasel on ermine. If the sigil feels somewhat familiar (in a specifically Westerosi context, even beyond real-world inspiration), it should: House Florent’s sigil is a red-gold fox head encircled by blue flowers on ermine, while prior HWW entry House Rosby uses for its sigil three red chevronels on ermine. As I mentioned before, ermine can be used in heraldry to represent purity, given the ermine’s white winter fur. That the Varners would double down on the ermine in their sigil - not only having the base of their shield be ermine-patterned, but sporting a white weasel on top of this base - may suggest that the Varners even more prided themselves on a sense of purity, an unwillingness to be soiled.

So for the Varner words, I went with Honor without Stain. Perhaps the Varners would have seen such words as a play or pun on their initial inheritance from the Sage Kings of House Gardener. They would receive the honor of lands and aristocratic standing without “staining” themselves with the dirt of the Gardener kingdom King Gwayne V joked had been given to these adventurers; they would not abandon their faith in the Seven with their marriage to a native Reach maiden, but presumably would have insisted on the adoption of the Faith, as indeed the Sage Kings did). Similarly, if a Varner maiden was considered suitable for King Aegon III by Samantha Tarly, perhaps this maiden would also have reflected honor without stain, unimpeachable purity suitable for the bride of the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. Of course, the motto works on an ironic level for our modern Lord Varner: far from embodying a strong sense of personal or political purity, Lord Varner took the opportunity at Bitterbridge to use a servant for his own sexual pleasure and adopted three successive kings as his liege during the the War of the Five Kings.

I don’t do House Words Wednesdays as a regular thing anymore, but if I get a request to come up with words for a House and I feel like I have enough to say then I’ll come back to it from time to time. @ravensinthedaylight requested words for House Elesham, so fuck it, here we go. (The list of Houses I’ve done, as always, can be found here.)

House Elesham of the Paps is a noble House from the Vale, though very little is known about its past (or present, for that matter). We don’t have a solid idea of when the Eleshams settled on their island, or from whence they came - whether they were, say, early-arriving Andals, drawn by the supposed divine promise to Hugor of “great kingdoms in a foreign land” but planting their flag even before they arrived to continental Westeros, or a First Men dynasty which, as the Upcliffs of Witch Isle appear to have done following the death of King Robar II Royce, held out as independent insular magnates until being conquered (that their name seems drawn from a variant on the English town of Aylsham - itself derived from “Aegel’s Ham”, denoting the settlement of an Anglo-Saxon thegn - hardly provides more clarity). Frustratingly, the Elesham sigil is only described as “a black star between an inverted stone-colored double-pile, on a pink field”, without noting whether or not the star is seven-pointed (as with, say, the Sunglasses and Tarbecks) and thus more obviously Andal in origin. About the only conclusion the Elesham sigil can provide (as confirmed in the WOIAF app) is the presence on the island of its namesake hills (which, if the Eleshams were Andals, might have been seen by the family as the fulfillment of the Faith’s prophesied “golden land amidst towering mountains” reserved for the Andal people).

Nevertheless, the Eleshams do not seem to be too socio-politically lowly, at least as far as Westerosi aristocrats go. King Hugo “the Hopeful” Arryn was said to have taken the Paps only after a “long” struggle, which may suggest that the Eleshams and/or the Paps had considerable resources or defenses to resist royal conquest by the Arryns. Henrietta Woodhull, last of the prospective brides presented to the young King Aegon III, was said to have been the daughter of a landed knight from the Paps, so clearly the family has (or had, at the time of Aegon II’s reign) its own knightly bannermen, and thus some level of feudal standing. The Lord of the Paps was evidently considered aristocratic enough to marry one of the (unnamed!) daughters of Elys Waynwood and Alys Arryn - a meaningful dynastic match when Lord Jon Arryn had no surviving child before the birth of young Robert and none of the other Waynwood-Arryn children had surviving legitimate children of their own (save the (unnamed!) mother of Harry Hardyng), (No Eleshams have yet appeared in the main novels, though I would give a gold star if GRRM had as one of the guests at the Tourney of the Winged Knights Harry’s maternal aunt and/or her lord husband.)

So I made the Elesham words Fertile and Free. Whether or not the Paps as an island is a bountiful one is unclear, though the presence of multiple noble families (and the suggestion from Yandel that the Paps is one of those “quite large and oft inhabited” islands off the coast of the Vale) may indicate as much; in any event. the hills which give the island its name certainly evoke a sense of maternal fertility. (Too, if the Eleshams were Andals, such an emphasis on fertility might recall the land spiritually envisioned by Hugor of the Hill, full of the Seven’s gilded bounty.) Likewise, the “freedom” of these words works whether the Eleshams were First Men or Andals: either the Eleshams would boast of their independence from any of the native kings of the continental Vale (the foundation of that same disunity which Robar II tried vainly to correct), or the Eleshams would praise the freedom from Valyrian enslavement which their immigration to Westeros provided. Yet these words would be ironic in both senses: the Eleshams would have to bend the knee to the Arryn kings after their struggle, while the Waynwood-born Lady Elesham would “prove barren”, denied the potential of continuing the Arryn line through her children. 

(Also don’t @ me if this sounds similar to the Tallhart “Proud and Free” because I’m not GRRM who made three separate mottoes “None So Wise”, “None So Fierce”, and “None So Dutiful” and two other ones “We Light the Way” and “We Guard the Way”.)

Bonus House Words Wednesdays: House Cockshaw

I knew I ended House Words Wednesdays as a regular thing a while back, but since this project is my baby I figured I can return anytime I want. I was rereading “The Mystery Knight” and decided that since I had never done the Cockshaw words, I would do a short post about them.

To be sure, we know very little about House Cockshaw. We know the Cockshaws are from the Reach (which seems to have been the major basis for Daemon Blackfyre’s support in the First Blackfyre Rebellion), and we know the family sigil, but nothing else. I had once speculated that the Cockshaw lands were in the far northeast of the Reach, close to the crownlands, since Alyn Cockshaw spent a good amount of time with Daemon Blackfyre’s children in his youth (which would make sense if the Cockshaw keep was near wherever Daemon’s keep was in the Crownlands), but that’s at best a guess. Likewise, we have only ever met one Cockshaw, Lord Alyn, a “plump, pasty-faced, perfumed lordling” who had grown close to Daemon the Younger during their childhoods. Daemon’s waning interest in Alyn, however - combined with Daemon’s immediate, intense attraction to Dunk - inspired Alyn to attempt to have Dunk murdered, though neither attempt ended successfully - first because Ser Uthor Underleaf resented the low bribe offered him to do so, second because Dunk bested Alyn in a short, bloody scuffle and sent him tumbling down a well. It’s unclear what happened to the Cockshaws thereafter: while the family was still a lordly one after the First Blackfyre Rebellion, Roland Crakehall’s prediction that “it will go harder for those who took pardons after the Redgrass Field”, who would “be imprisoned or attainted” (with “[t]he worst … [losing] their heads”) might suggest that House Cockshaw did not do too well after the abortive Second Blackfyre Rebellion.

“Cockshaw”, as a family name, seems like a straightforward play on the word “cocksure” - that is, overconfident, presumptuous, and unduly assured of oneself. It is a word perfectly fitting for the only Cockshaw we have ever known, Alyn - an arrogant lordling who obsessed over being close to Daemon, as his exclusive lover and commander of his Kingsguard, but whose attempts to eliminate his assumed rival Dunk only ended in his own death by drowning. But I’m more curious about the family sigil - three feathers, red, white and gold, on black. It is a sigil which bears a striking resemblance to the symbol of the Prince of Wales - originally three white ostrich feathers on black (now usually depicted as three white ostrich feathers within a coronet). If the probable origins of the badge are less romantic and more dynastically punny - a nod to Edward the Black Prince’s Hainault connections (whose county heir was the “Count of Ostrevent”, similar to the French for “ostrich”, “autruche” or “ostruce”) rather than a means of honoring the dead King John of Bohemia after Crécy - it is nevertheless too familiar as an ongoing symbol of the Prince of Wales for me to believe GRRM is unfamiliar with it (and note that his beloved The Accursed Kings repeats the legend of the Prince of Wales’ feathers in The King without a Kingdom). Perhaps giving Alyn Cockshaw this symbol was a way for GRRM to hint that Alyn’s companion was a sort of Prince of Wales among the Blackfyres; perhaps GRRM meant to contrast the arrogant, murderous, distinctly unchivalrous Alyn with what Maurice Druon calls the “noble demise” of the blind King John of Bohemia, the “model of chivalry”, who according to the legend had insisted on fighting (and dying) at Crécy despite his disability.

Whatever his intent, the symbol gave me an idea for the Cockshaw words - We Serve. The Prince of Wales’ badge is usually depicted with a ribbon bearing the German phrase “Ich dien”, “I serve”. While the phrase may sound positive on its face, I thought that in Alyn its very simplicity and meaning would reflect his negative qualities. Alyn not only looked down on Dunk from the first - calling him a “brigand” and “the largest lout I have ever seen”, confidently predicting “[w]hat a mighty crash he’ll make when he comes tumbling down”, and only asking for Dunk’s forgiveness at Daemon’s insistence, without actually sticking around to hear the answer - but, observing Daemon’s obvious attraction to Dunk, tried twice to have Dunk killed, sneering at him that “Daemon’s mine. I will command his Kingsguard. You are not worthy of a white cloak”. Alyn insisted, very nearly to the point of murder, on reminding Dunk that he alone would serve Daemon, sexually as well as martially (that is, as the commander of his Kingsguard). Arrogance and service go together rather poorly, of course, as Alyn learned to his cost; in trying to enforce what he saw as his exclusive position of service toward Daemon, Alyn only found himself falling right into the very trap he had tried to set for Dunk. The Cockshaws might have served the Blackfyres loyally in the First Blackfyre Rebellion, but Alyn fared rather worse in his attempt to secure what he saw as service to the second Blackfyre claimant.

Well, here it is - the last entry in House Words Wednesdays (you can take a look at the schedule of other posts here).  After over three years (!) and over a hundred and fifty Houses (!!), I’ve come to the end. I’ll admit, House Flint is not exactly the most show-stopping family to cap off a project of this, but that’s the way the schedule worked out, I suppose.

House Flint - or, to be more specific, House Flint of the mountains - is a noble House of the North, though that may give the Flints more nobility than they themselves would want. The Flints are one of the northern mountain clans, among the oldest of old northern nobility (hence their self-identification as the “first Flints”). Like their mountain clan neighbors, such as the Wulls and the Liddles, the Flints eschew the formality of even other northern Houses (and certainly Houses south of the Neck), with Torghen Flint, the current head of the family, being known simply as “the Flint”. Still, the Flints are not entirely immune to the marital politicking of their fellow Westerosi aristocrats: Rodrik Stark, the “Wandering Wolf”, married Arya Flint, the great-grandmother and presumable namesake of our Arya, and Maester Luwin thinks in ACOK that the Flints might try to press a claim to the Hornwood because of their connections to House Hornwood in the female line.

Given the family’s ancientness in the North, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Flints should feature prominently in northern history and legend. The first Flints may be the same family as (and at the very least are likely descendants of) the royal Flints of Breakstone Hill, who bent the knee to the Stark Kings of Winter, and Flints helped Cregan Stark hunt down the wildling raider Sylas the Grim in 133 AC. The Flints also feature in the history of the Night’s Watch, though unfortunately only (to our knowledge) in negative ways: Old Nan repeats (though disagrees with) the legend that the Night’s King was a Flint, Lord Commander Rodrik Flint is regarded as one of the worst commanders the Watch ever saw, and brave Danny Flint - the girl who dressed as a boy to join the Night’s Watch - was raped and murdered at the Nightfort. 

For the Flint words, I settled on Unshaken. The Flints live in the high places of the northern mountains, and according to Old Nan it was Bran’s Flint blood which drove his love of climbing. For a family associated with heights and climbing, the ability to be unshaken would doubtless be a welcome quality - being able to hold on to their elevated position whatever winds would try to shake them off. Too, the Flints might take pride in being unshaken from their ancestral home in the far part of the North, despite the omnipresent threat of wildling raids from beyond the Wall. As part of the first line of defense for the North (after the Wall and the Night’s Watch, of course), the Flints would have to hold fast against any wildling raiding parties hoping to press into the realm of the Starks. I could see where the Flints would take pride in their unshaken courage against any wildling threat. They are old northern blood, among the earliest who bent the knee to the Starks, and neither weather nor wildling nor any other threat would shake them from their position.

And with that, we’ve reached the end of House Words Wednesdays, for now. It’s been a really good run, and while I won’t say ever House motto of mine has been amazing, I’ve welcomed the opportunity to flex some creative muscles and challenge myself to think about this series in a different way. Hopefully, you all have enjoyed reading these as much as I have enjoyed writing them. If there’s a House I haven’t done that you think could use words, let me know; my only rule is that I have to feel like there is something to work with - some combination of sigil/history/character/placement - so that I’m not just flailing in the dark (so, you know, no words for House Graves, for example, or House Keath without knowing more). I’ll always be glad to revisit House Words Wednesdays in the future; it’s a project I’ve really loved and I hope you’ve liked too

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me an ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see done

House Dayne of High Hermitage is a noble House of Dorne, sworn bannermen to their kinsmen the Daynes of Starfall. It is unclear when the Daynes of High Hermitage broke off from their cousins of Starfall, though we do know that the current head of the House, Ser Gerold, is the Knight of High Hermitage, so presumably this is (and perhaps has always been) a landed knightly branch of the family. Maps show High Hermitage as northeast of Starfall following the Torrentine, while the AWOIAF app clarifies that the castle is “high in the red mountains of Dorne”, which makes complete sense to me (not only because of the name, but because where else would you expect Gerold Dayne to brood than in some lonely mountain fastness?). A “hermitage”, for what it’s worth, is a secluded place in which an individual (usually an individual, at least) sequesters himself, often (and certainly in the original meaning of the word) for religious reasons (and indeed, it’s fitting that Gerold Dayne fled into the desert after brutally maiming Myrcella, given that the word “hermit” derives from the Greek “eremites”, designating one who lives in the desert). To what extent that has any bearing on the foundation of High Hermitage as a castle or the Daynes of High Hermitage as a cadet branch is fun to speculate, but unknowable (though sometimes I like to imagine that High Hermitage was originally a sort of retreat/test for the Sword of the Morning - that the new choice for the honor would go on a sort of spiritual journey up the high mountains and spend time alone there in solitary contemplation, and that if he returned and was willing to do so, he would be given Dawn).

The only known Dayne of High Hermitage is Ser Gerold. I’ve talked before about how Gerold Dayne is the Ghirahim of Westeros, an unfortunate failure in GRRM’s attempt to make a “bad boy” character people would love, but that’s not to say that Gerold Dayne has no point in the story. My belief is that GRRM realized he had sort of screwed over the Daynes in abandoning the five year gap; the Daynes are supposed to be important, with their mythical blade and their connections to the Tower of Joy, but the current head of the House is, well, 12. To quote myself, “Enter Darkstar: a Dayne who is Very Clearly Bothered by the fact that he is a lesser cousin, a bannerman of little Lord Edric, destined to be forgotten in favor of the storied Ser Arthur”. With Lord Edric having gone with Beric Dondarrion and probably at best presumed missing, at worst assumed dead, Gerold Dayne might well try to take Starfall, and/or Dawn, for himself; if we have Obara Sand, Areo Hotah, and Balon Swann hunting him down in TWOW, that’s a perfectly acceptable vehicle (with Hotah as a POV) for the author to convey information about the Daynes, Dawn, and/or the Tower of Joy.

For the Dayne of High Hermitage words, I settled on Nearer to the Heavens. The main-line Daynes, of course, are strongly associated with celestial and astral imagery: their seat is Starfall, established at the place where the first Dayne was said to have “followed the track of a falling star”; their famed sword Dawn, moreover, was “forged from the heart of a falling star”, and its bearers wear the title “Sword of the Morning”. These cadet-line Daynes would still have those associations, but their seat’s position high in the Red Mountains would put them even nearer, literally, to the stars from which the first Daynes gained their seat and their sword. Gerold Dayne, of course, is eager to distance himself from his kinsmen of the main line: he is “Darkstar”, “of the night”, someone who resents greatly that Ser Arthur is the Dayne people remember, rather than Gerold himself. For him, these words would be a smug note of self-importance: the main-line Daynes might have the pretty sword and the famed title, but he is and should be above them, in talent, ambition, and fame as much as in physically lofty position

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me a tweet or ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see done.

House Norridge is a noble House of the Reach, though our knowledge of the family is pretty slim. We don’t know where the family seat is, or whether the Norridges are a lordly or landed knightly family. Indeed, the only member of the family we have in the main series (which is to say, mentioned in the ASOS Appendix, and never having shown up in the narrative) is Elyn Norridge, the wife of Luthor Tyrell (nephew and presumable namesake of Mace’s father, Luthor); her granddaughter (and, again, possible namesake) is Elinor Tyrell, one of Margaery’s cousins and much-beloved lady companions. We do, at least, have the Norridge sigil: a flight of flaming arrows rising bendwise on a blue field.

The only historical Norridge we have is Ser Jeremy Norridge, a knight of the era of Aegon V. A “dashing young knight” who squired at Highgarden, Ser Jeremy became the special favorite of Prince Daeron Targaryen, the youngest son of King Aegon V and Betha Blackwood. Given that Daeron repudiated his match with Olenna Redwyne in 246 AC, and that he “remained unwed throughout the remainder of his short life” and “preferred the companionship” of Ser Jeremy (the same sort of euphemism and scenario GRRM used for Laenor Velaryon), it seems probable that Daeron and Jeremy were lovers. The two of them appear to have remained dedicated only to tournament, battle, and one another, though their time together seems to have been short-lived. In 251 AC, both Prince Daeron and Ser Jeremy were slain as Prince Daeron led an army against the second iteration of the Rat, the Hawk, and the Pig - though as Yandel notes with some sense of grim triumph, “the rebellion was quashed, and the rebels slain or hanged” thereafter. 

For the Norridge words, I settled on No Less Worthy. In the deeply chivalric culture of (at least most of) Westeros, archers are held in some contempt, their role considered far less glorious than that of the knights. However, as has been proven in both Westerosi and real-world history, archers can certainly have a place on a knightly battlefield, and can even change the course of a battle. The flaming arrows on the Norridge sigil are no less worthy of importance than the knight’s lance; each can serve a special role in the business of war. Likewise, though the Norridges may not have the mythical reacher ancestors of some neighboring families, they are no less worthy of importance and dynastic marriages in the Reach, including with the mighty House Tyrell. Too, I think these words fit nicely with Ser Jeremy Norridge: although he could never have made the sort of dynastic marriage Aegon V certainly wanted for his youngest son, he was no less worthy of a relationship with Daeron based on their personal feelings for one another. Just as well, being the prince’s lover made Jeremy no less worthy as a soldier, as the two of them demonstrated by their willingness to sacrifice everything in battle against the rebellious forces of the Rat, the Hawk, and the Pig.

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me an ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see done.

House Norcross is a noble House of the Reach, though its rank in the Reach is somewhat unclear. My best guess is that the Norcrosses are landed knights, for the same reason I think the Roxtons are; Ser Tyler Norcross was one of the “eleven other lords and landed knights” summoned by Unwin Peake and Hobert Hightower to form the Caltrops at the tail end of the Dance of the Dragons. That being said, we have never heard of a seat for House Norcross, or a head of the House (other than, possibly, the historical Ser Tyler); besides Ser Jeffory “Neveryield” Norcross, a knight of the Kingsguard (perhaps one of the three Kingsguard, alongside Olyvar Oakheart and a nameless third, who were said to have died beside Daeron I in Dorne?), the only members of the House we’ve heard about are household knights to other reachlords. That may suggest instead that the Norcrosses are considered lower-ranking than the lordly Houses, but still noble for the purposes of Westerosi society. 

In any event, there are two adult Norcrosses in the main narrative of ASOIAF: Ser Hosman and Ser Bayard. Ser Hosman is a household knight at Brightwater Keep, most famous for being married to Delena Florent. A granddaughter of the Lord of Brightwater Keep would ordinarily be far too high for a landless household knight to wed, but Delena had already been rather publicly deflowered by King Robert, and had given birth to his only formally acknowledged bastard. To remedy the scandal (and to avoid marrying Delena to Tyrion, whom Tywin offered - it says everything about the ableism of Westerosi culture that Ser Colin chose a landless household knight for his daughter than the son and arguable legal heir of Lord Lannister), Ser Colin had Delena married off to Ser Hosman, and together, they had two further children, Alester and Renly (headcanon on their names here).  The other Norcross is Ser Bayard, a household knight of Highgarden; a favorite of Margaery’s court as queen, Ser Bayard is unfortunately caught in the Anne Boleyn/Tour de Nesle-esque accusations against her favorites, and as of the end of ADWD he remains imprisoned with the rest of her supposed lovers.

For the Norcross words, I settled on Virtue Fears No Slander. This motto was based less on the Norcross sigil - a black embattled cross on white, perhaps a strange symbol for non-Christian Westeros - than on its current members. For Ser Hosman, all that likely mattered in regards to his wife is that he was able to marry a Florent of Brightwater Keep, hitherto untouchable for one of his rank; whatever was said of Delena in regards to her extremely brief relationship with Robert or her giving birth to young Edric, I think he might have concluded, had no bearing on him, since he had engaged in what was by Westerosi standards a perfectly acceptable marriage - one agreed upon between the bridegroom and the bride’s father (and presumably lord uncle), which had produced two sons in its duration. As for Ser Bayard, he might well believe himself that he has nothing to fear from his arrest and eventual trial. As unlikely as it probably is that Margaery engaged in casual sex with minor knights of her household while knowing the dangers of doing so in a Cersei-ruled court, Ser Bayard may now be resting on his own virtue to endure whatever has been and will be said of him. (Whether that proves true, of course, is a matter for TWOW.)

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me a tweet or ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see done.

House Inchfield is a noble House of the Reach, though unfortunately we know very little about its rank. My guess would be that the Inchfields are a very minor noble family, probably of the same vassal-of-vassal rank as the Webbers of Coldmoat (if not even maybe a step lower). The only modern Inchfield we have is Ser Owen Inchfield, one of the many reacher knights who joined Renly when the latter declares himself king. Owen Inchfield is notable only as an entrant in the horrific misogynistic “game” dreamed up by Ser Hyle Hunt and others at Highgarden; more forceful than some of the other competitors, Ser Owen seized Brienne and attempted to kiss her - only to find himself knocked ass-backwards into a cookfire as a result. (Go Brienne!)

The only historical Inchfield is Ser Lucas, a major character in the second of the Tales of Dunk and Egg, “The Sworn Sword”. Ser Lucas was made castellan of Coldmoat during the tenure of Lord Wyman Webber, and continued in that position for Lady Rohanne. Very tall - though furious to find a man in Dunk taller than he was - very ugly, and very fierce, “the Longinch” was charged by the dying Lord Wyman to protect Rohanne from all unworthy suitors (after Wyman Webber was unsuccessful in trying to wed Rohanne to Lucas himself); Ser Lucas, as the septon at Coldmoat revealed, had taken it upon himself as a result to scare away any possible suitor, so that Rohanne would be forced to marry him. At the final showdown between Eustace Osgrey and Rohanne Webber, Lucas Inchfield stood as champion for Lady Webber, and engaged in a one on one duel with Dunk. Like his probable great-granddaughter did with her Inchfield, though, Dunk used his size to his advantage, pushing Lucas down into the stream and killing him.

For the Inchfield words, I decided on Proved by Strength. The two Inchfields we’ve seen have both been eager to prove themselves by their physical strength - but in both cases, the only thing that’s been proven is that they could (and should have) been beaten by those stronger in both physical and personal ways. Ser Lucas Inchfield prided himself on his imposing stature and cruel demeanor, relying on these to isolate the already culturally disadvantaged Rohanne Webber - but eventually found that he did not have the strength to match the (quite literally) upstanding Duncan the Tall. As for Owen Inchfield, he decided that he would bypass the more romantic avenues his fellow misogynistic knights did with Brienne and force himself on her, hoping his brute physical strength would force Brienne to give way - but instead, Brienne used her own strength to prove that she would not be taken by anyone against her will. 

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me an ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see done.

House Fossoway of New Barrel is a noble House of the Reach, sworn bannermen of the Tyrells of Highgarden. Despite their ancient reacher blood, however - claiming descent from Garth Greenhand’s mythic son Foss the Archer - the Fossoways of New Barrel are not an old reacher House. Indeed, House Fossoway of New Barrel arose only in the last century, the family’s origins captured in “The Hedge Knight”. In 209 AC, Raymun Fossoway was simply a minor member of House Fossoway of Cider Hall, squire to his cousin Ser Steffon Fossoway. While Steffon made empty boasts about aiding Dunk during his trial by combat, and eventually sided with Prince Aerion, Raymun stuck by Dunk’s side, even having Lyonel Baratheon knight him so he could be one of Dunk’s champions (after, of course, Dunk refused to do it). In testament to breaking with his cousin, Raymun adopted a personal sigil - a green apple, instead of the red apple of the Cider Hall Fossoways, since the false Steffon had claimed Raymun was “not ripe yet”.

It’s unclear what exactly happened to Raymun and his descendants thereafter (or, more precisely, how they went from a Fossoway of Cider Hall with a personal sigil to House Fossoway of New Barrel). My headcanon is that during the Third Blackfyre Rebellion, Ser Raymun fought under the royalist flag, and that after the war was won, Prince Aegon used the cachet he had won in battle to convince his father and King Aerys to redistribute some of the pro-Blackfyre reacher lands (since the Blackfyres had found much support in the Reach during the First Blackfyre Rebellion) to his old ally Ser Raymun Fossoway, making him a landed knight. Certainly, the green apple Fossoways were exalted enough by the middle of the third century AC that Mace Tyrell’s sister Janna married Ser Jon Fossoway, head of the green-apple Fossoway branch; too, Gunthor Hightower, third son of the Old Man of Oldtown, is wed to Lady Jeyne of the New Barrel Fossoways. 

For the green apple Fossoway words, I decided on Ripened by Trial. Steffon Fossoway had joked that his cousin was “not ripe yet” to delay knighting him, but at the trial combat the newly minted Ser Raymun turned the joke into his personal symbol; he might still not have been ripe yet, he claimed, but “better green than wormy”, as he declared to Dunk. For Ser Raymun, the trial allowed him to come into his own, not merely giving him the opportunity for knighthood but the chance to prove that he understood the true meaning of knighthood better than his “ripe” but false cousin. Of course, if I’m correct, then House Fossoway of New Barrel also came into its own as a separate dynasty in a great trial - that is, the Third Blackfyre Rebellion. Proving his bravery and loyalty to the Targaryen dynasty, Ser Raymun may well have seen his new line “ripened” into a noble House in its own right, with its own lands and castle distinct from its Cider Hall origins. The red apple Fossoways might boast that they have “A Taste of Glory”, but the green apple Fossoways would with their words show that they would earn their glory through hard struggle.

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me an ask if you have another House you’d like to see done

House Hetherspoon is a noble House of the Westerlands, sworn bannermen of Casterly Rock. The Hetherspoons are a landed knightly family, though whether they were always landed knights (or whatever the pre-Andal equivalent of that was) remains to be seen. Indeed, we have extremely little on the background of the family: we don’t know whether they were always in the Westerlands or came over with the Andal adventurers, we have no historical record of them prior to about the mid-third century AC, and apart from it possibly being close to Casterly Rock itself, we have nothing on where the Hetherspoon seat is (or what it’s called). Pretty much all we do have is the Hetherspoon sigil - an oak spoon within a white cartouche, on a field of orange and black diamonds.

The only two known Hetherspoons are Ser Tybolt, the current head of the family, and his daughter, the late Melara. Anyone who has read AFFC, of course, will be familiar with Melara, one of Cersei’s childhood bedmates and companions. Cersei has no fond thoughts about these girls now, and particularly about Melara; despite thinking with regards to Taena that she “had not had a friend she so enjoyed since Melara Hetherspoon”, she also remembers Melara as “a greedy little schemer with ideas above her station”. Worse, though - at least for Melara - was that she, at least according to one part of Cersei’s POV, was the one who had encouraged Cersei (and their fellow companion Jeyne Farman, though she fled) to visit Maggy the Frog, and had been the only other person to hear the prophecies that would come to haunt Cersei’s life. It’s strongly implied - and I think entirely accurate - that Cersei killed Melara that night, pushing her into a well and listening to her drown, to stop her ever revealing what Maggy the Frog had prophesied. Ser Tybolt and his wife (assuming she were still alive), I think, were eager to hush up their daughter’s death lest there be some scandal falling on them as a result (though I’d be curious what Ser Tybolt might be like or might have to say, if we meet him in TWOW or ADOS).

For the Hetherspoon words, I settled on Served As We Serve. The Hetherspoons’ role, as bannermen and particularly as landed knight bannermen of the Lannisters, is to serve their overlords of Casterly Rock, to give them fealty, homage, taxes, and arms whenever required. As the Hetherspoons give loyal service to the Lannisters, then, they might expect to be rewarded by the Lannisters in turn - that the Lannisters would dole out to their waiting spoon the favors that sustain the Hetherspoons as minor Westerlands nobility. Doubtless Ser Tybolt (himself named, presumably, to honor the late Lord Tytos Lannister) thought it quite a coup to have his own daughter be named a companion to the only daughter of the Lord of Casterly Rock - a reward, he might have thought, for the faithful service of the Hetherspoons. Unfortunately for Tybolt and Melara, though, Cersei deeply distrusted Melara’s ambitions toward marrying Jaime, and feared Melara’s role as knowledge-keeper toward what Maggy the Frog had predicted. To Cersei, Melara served only as a reminder of her own foretold doom - and for that, Cersei would kill her.