More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
When first told this as a boy, I took it to mean he foresaw my destiny as a maester; only much later did I come to learn from Archmaester Ebrose that Edgerran was writing a treatise on the swaddling of infants and wished to test certain theories.
But on Westeros, from the Lands of Always Winter to the shores of the Summer Sea, only two peoples existed: the children of the forest and the race of creatures known as the giants.
the greenseers—the wise men of the children—were able to see through the eyes of the carved weirwoods.
But all the tales agree that the most common skinchangers were men who controlled wolves—even direwolves—and these had a special name among the wildlings: wargs.
the higher mysteries that claim this power also claim that their visions of the things to come are unclear and often misleading—a useful thing to say when seeking to fool the unwary with fortune-telling.
Among the ironborn, it is said that the first of the First Men to come to the Iron Isles found the famous Seastone Chair on Old Wyk, but that the isles were uninhabited. If true, the nature and origins of the chair’s makers are a mystery.
Legend says that the great floods that broke the land bridge that is now the Broken Arm and made the Neck a swamp were the work of the greenseers, who gathered at Moat Cailin to work dark magic.
It is also written that there are annals in Asshai of such a darkness, and of a hero who fought against it with a red sword.
These Asshai’i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals.
The Valyrians had no kings but instead called themselves the Freehold because all the citizenry who held land had a voice.
Braavos is unique among all the Free Cities, as it was founded not by the will of the Freehold, nor by its citizens, but instead by its slaves.
there are still houses in the Vale who proudly proclaim their descent from the First Men, such as the Redforts and the Royces.
It was the North and the North alone that was able to keep the Andals at bay, thanks to the impenetrable swamps of the Neck and the ancient keep of Moat Cailin. The number of Andal armies that were destroyed in the Neck cannot be easily reckoned, and so the Kings of Winter preserved their independent rule for many centuries to come.
“Yield now,” Aegon began, “and you may remain as Lord of the Iron Islands. Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you. I have eight thousand men outside your walls.” “What is outside my walls is of no concern to me,” said Harren. “Those walls are strong and thick.”
“But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.” “I built in stone,” said Harren. “Stone does not burn.” To which Aegon said, “When the sun sets, your line shall end.”
No stranger to battle, he would decide his own fate, sword in hand.
he found the old king holding off half a dozen men, with as many corpses at his feet.
“You may take my castle, but you will win only bones and blood and ashes,”
In her youth Queen Sharra had been lauded as “the Flower of the Mountain,” the fairest maid in all the Seven Kingdoms. Perhaps hoping to sway Aegon with her beauty, she sent him a portrait of herself and offered herself to him in marriage, provided he named her son Ronnel as his heir.
Aegon had noted the absence of rain as well; the grass and wheat that surrounded the armies was tall and ripe for harvest … and very dry.
Aegon, true to his promises, lifted his beaten foe back to his feet and confirmed him in his lands
The king’s bastard brother Brandon Snow offered to cross the Trident alone under cover of darkness, to slay the dragons whilst they slept.
From that day to this day, Torrhen Stark is remembered as the King Who Knelt … but no Northman left his burned bones beside the Trident,
No threats were spoken, no angry words exchanged. The two queens smiled at one another and exchanged courtesies instead.
“I will not fight you,” Princess Meria told Rhaenys, “nor will I kneel to you. Dorne has no king. Tell your brother that.” “I shall,” Rhaenys replied, “but we will come again, Princess, and the next time we shall come with fire and blood.” “Your words,” said Princess Meria. “Ours are Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. You may burn us, my lady … but you will not bend us, break us, or make us bow. This is Dorne. You are not wanted here. Return at your peril.”
If Oldtown took up arms against Aegon the Dragon, His High Holiness saw, the city would surely burn, and the Hightower and the Citadel and the Starry Sept would be cast down and destroyed.
it was this coronation, rather than the Aegonfort crowning or the day of Aegon’s Landing, that became fixed as the start of Aegon’s reign.
Aegon was such a man—a man with vision and determination aplenty.
(It is recorded that when Aegon pointed out his guardsmen, Visenya drew Dark Sister and cut his cheek before his guards could react. “Your guards are slow and lazy,” Visenya is reported to have said, and the king was forced to agree.)
the infamous Lord Gargon (remembered as Gargon the Guest for his custom of attending every wedding in his domain to exercise his right to First Night).
Savage Sam Tarly, whose sword, Heartsbane, was said to be red from hilt to point after the dozens of Dornishmen he cut down in the course of the Vulture Hunt,
To this Daeron famously responded: “You have a dragon. He stands before you.”
But he had one great flaw: he could not rule himself. His lusts, his gluttony, his desires—they all controlled him utterly.
of Lys, the mother of Shiera Seastar—could
Ser Aegor Rivers was sixty-nine years of age when he fell, and it is said he died as he had lived, with a sword in his hand and defiance upon his lips.
Aerys insisted on having his own food taster suckle at the teats of the prince’s wet nurse, to ascertain that the woman had not smeared poison on her nipples.
(The tale, oft told, that Lord Tywin sent his bard to deliver the ultimatum, and commanded him to sing “The Rains of Castamere” for Lord Denys and the Lace Serpent is a colorful detail that is, alas, unsupported by the records).
It is not known who murdered Princess Rhaenys in her bed, or smashed the infant Prince Aegon’s head against a wall.
The Kings of Winter were hard men in hard times.
Queen Rhaenys Targaryen’s efforts to knit together the new, single realm with marriages between the great houses
The Night’s King has been said to have been variously a Bolton, a Woodfoot, an Umber, a Flint, a Norrey, or even a Stark,
Yet Lady Agnes did not weep if the tales are true. “I have other sons,” she told the King of the Iron Isles. “Raventree shall endure long after you and yours are cast down and destroyed. Your line shall end in blood and fire.”
“I would sooner have your sword inside me than your cock,”
Corbray’s famous blade, Lady Forlorn,
The man they chose to lead them was neither king nor prince, nor even lord, but a knight named Ser Artys Arryn.
The Falcon Knight, men called him, then as now.
Seven times the Andals charged, the singers say; six times the First Men threw them back. But the seventh attack, led by a fearsome giant of a man named Torgold Tollett, broke through.
Torgold the Grim, this man was called, but even his name was a jape, for it is written that he went into battle laughing, naked above the waist, with a bloody seven-pointed star carved across his chest and an axe in each hand.
They came together as the battle raged around them, the king in bronze armor, the hero in silvered steel.
It was Qhored who famously boasted that his writ ran “wherever men could smell salt water or hear the crash of waves.”
