aegon v targaryen Archives - History of Westeros

House Blackwood: Part 2 – Ravens, Dragons, Stags & Wolves

Part 2 of our House Blackwood series continues – you can find House Blackwood: Part 1 – The Time of the Tree here. It’s clear GRRM has placed the Blackwoods carefully; they are an important part of several of the most important houses’ ancestry, with strong associations with mystical elements.

In this episode, we take a look at all the heroes of House Blackwood since the coming of the Targaryens. We have lots of thoughts and ideas of what’s coming next for them as Winter and the Dragons come. They are tied to both…

North/River Shipping

Lord Stark had marched south with a great host, made up in large part of men unwanted and unneeded in the North, whose return would bring great hardship and mayhaps even death for the loved ones they had left behind. Legend (and Mushroom) tells us that it was Lady Alysanne who suggested an answer.

The lands along the Trident were full of widows, she reminded Lord Stark; women, many burdened with young children, who had sent their husbands off to fight with one lord or another, only for them to fall in battle. With winter at hand, strong backs and willing hands would be welcome in many a hearth and home. In the end, more than a thousand northmen accompanied Black Aly and her nephew Lord Benjicot when they returned to the riverlands after the royal wedding.

“A wolf for every widow,” Mushroom japed, “he will warm her bed in winter, and gnaw her bones come spring.”

Yet hundreds of marriages were made at the so-called Widow Fairs held at Raventree, Riverrun, Stoney Sept, the Twins, and Fairmarket. Those northmen who did not wish to marry instead swore their swords to lords both great and small as guards and men-at-arms.

A few, sad to say, did turn to outlawry and met evil ends, but for the most part, Lady Alysanne’s matchmaking was a great success. The resettled northmen not only strengthened the riverlords who welcomed them, particularly House Tully and House Blackwood, but also helped revive and spread the worship of the old gods south of the Neck.

GOAT Black Aly Blackwood

Huntress, horse-breaker, and archer without peer, Black Aly had little of a woman’s softness about her. Many thought her to be of that same ilk as Sabitha Frey, for they were oft in one another’s company, and had been known to share a tent whilst on the march. Yet in King’s Landing, whilst accompanying her young nephew Benjicot at court and council, she had met Cregan Stark and conceived a liking for the stern northman. And Lord Cregan, a widower these past three years, had responded in kind.

To him gathered Benjicot Blackwood of Raventree, already a seasoned warrior at three-and-ten; his fierce young aunt, Black Aly, with three hundred bows; Lady Sabitha Frey, the merciless and grasping Lady of the Twins, Lord Hugo Vance of Wayfarer’s Rest, Lord Jorah Mallister of Seagard; Lord Roland Darry of Darry; aye, and even Humfrey Bracken, Lord of Stone Hedge, whose house had hitherto supported King Aegon’s cause.

Missy Blackwood

Aegon the Fourth had died long before Jaime had been born, but he recalled enough of the history of his reign to guess what must have happened next. “Only later he put the Bracken girl aside and took up with a Blackwood, was that the way of it?”

“Lady Melissa,” Hoster confirmed. “Missy, they called her. There’s a statue of her in our godswood. She was much more beautiful than Barba Bracken.”

– Jaime I, ADWD

Images

The Three-Eyed Bloodraven

The third of our THREE (1, 2) Bloodraven episodes. This one has a deep dive into the life of Brynden Rivers beginning from the point at which he took the Black. Was he a ranger? What did he and Maester Aemon talk about? Who is Coldhands? What’s up with the Raven’s Teeth, and much more in this episode on the Three-Eyed Bloodraven!

Thanks to guest producer Zack of Game of Owns!

The Last Greenseer

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child. His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him.

What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. His white hair was fine and thin as root hair and long enough to brush against the earthen floor. Roots coiled around his legs like wooden serpents. One burrowed through his breeches into the desiccated flesh of his thigh, to emerge again from his shoulder. A spray of dark red leaves sprouted from his skull, and grey mushrooms spotted his brow. A little skin remained, stretched across his face, tight and hard as white leather, but even that was fraying, and here and there the brown and yellow bone beneath was poking through. – Bran II, ADWD

The last greenseer, the singers called him, but in Bran’s dreams he was still a three-eyed crow. When Meera Reed had asked him his true name, he made a ghastly sound that might have been a chuckle. “I wore many names when I was quick, but even I once had a mother, and the name she gave me at her breast was Brynden.” – Bran III, ADWD

Three-Eyed Bloodraven Images

Bloodraven's sigil by Abjiklam — Bloodraven’s sigil by Abjiklam

Eastwatch — Bloodraven’s sigil by Abjiklam

Blackfyre Rebellions: Part 8 – Bloodraven 2

The second of THREE Bloodraven episodes and part 8 of our Blackfyre Rebellions series. This one covers Bloodraven’s time as Hand up to the point where he takes the Black. A full accounting of the reigns of Aerys I and Maekar, plus Aerion Brightflame, Daeron the Drunkard, Egg, Maester Aemon, Blackfyres and so much more including the discovery of the Prince That Was Promised prophecy. Big thanks to Camille S and Valkyrist (who you can catch on the Vassals of Kingsgrave pod) for the voices, and to all the art contributors, particularly Klaradox for the maps, as always.

Bloodraven proved to be a capable Hand, but also a master of whispers who rivaled Lady Misery, and there were those who thought he and his half sister and paramour, Shiera Seastar, used sorcery to ferret out secrets. It became common to refer to his “thousand eyes and one,” and men both high and low began to distrust their neighbor for fear of their being a spy in Bloodraven’s employ.

Yet Aerys had need of spies, given the trouble that followed the Great Spring Sickness. Summer came, and with it a drought that lasted more than two years. Many blamed the king, and many more accused Bloodraven. There were poor brothers who preached treason, and knights and lords as well. And amongst those were some who whispered a specific treason: that the Black Dragon must return from across the narrow sea and take its rightful place.

– The World of Ice and Fire.

Bloodraven Images

Bloodraven by Eliyadoodles — Brynden Rivers by Eliyadoodles

Bloodraven & Shiera Seastar by hubsher — Brynden Rivers by Eliyadoodles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMigsZx30uQ

Blackfyre Rebellions: Part 8 – Bloodraven 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMigsZx30uQ)

The Tragedy of Summerhall

The Tragedy of Summerhall was a spectacular attempt by Aegon V to hatch dragon eggs, and it failed spectacularly, killing most to all of the participants plus at least some, probably most of, the witnesses. Summerhall has some really surprising aspects to it, and explains quite a lot more than we could’ve hoped it would, despite so much of it still remaining mysterious. Not just in what happened, but in how it impacts the more recent, and even the current, ASOIAF storyline.

This episode will have a second (shorter) part focusing on the aftermath of Summerhall, examining the effects on Aerys, Rhaegar, and the realm… Listen to part 2 here!

The primary topics in this episode:

History of Summerhall
The Realm of Aegon V, Treason & Turmoil
Dragon Dreams
Enablers: The Wisdom & the Ghost
The Ritual

What became of the dream of dragons was a grievous tragedy born in a moment of joy. In the fateful year 259 AC, the king summoned many of those closest to him to Summerhall, his favorite castle, there to celebrate the impending birth of his first great-grandchild, a boy later named Rhaegar, to his grandson Aerys and granddaughter Rhaella, the children of Prince Jaehaerys.

“Treason and turmoil followed, as night follows day, ending at Summerhall in sorcery, fire, and grief.”

The last years of Aegon’s reign were consumed by a search for ancient lore about the dragon breeding of Valyria, and it was said that Aegon commissioned journeys to places as far away as Asshai-by-the-Shadow with the hopes of finding texts and knowledge that had not been preserved in Westeros.

Dreams

“My brothers dreamed of dragons too, and the dreams killed them, every one.”

As he grew older, Aegon V had come to dream of dragons flying once more above the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. In this, he was not unlike his predecessors, who brought septons to pray over the last eggs, mages to work spells over them, and maesters to pore over them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK25XfDFsIM

The Tragedy of Summerhall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK25XfDFsIM)

The dragons are done. The Targaryens tried to bring them back half a dozen times. And made fools of themselves, or corpses.