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“His palace was a tent, his throne a saddle,”
A girl known to us only as Tess opened Lord Dalton’s throat with his own dagger as he slept
The sea is always moving, always changing, the ironborn like to say, and yet it remains, eternal, boundless, never the same and always the same.
“You may dress an ironman in silks and velvets, teach him to read and write and give him books, instruct him in chivalry and courtesy and the mysteries of the Faith,” writes Archmaester Haereg, “but when you look into his eyes, the sea will still be there, cold and grey and cruel.”
Lord Tytos Lannister had many virtues. Slow to anger and quick to forgive, he saw good in every man, great or small, and was too trusting by half. He was dubbed the Laughing Lion for his jovial manner, and for a time the west laughed with him … but soon enough, more were laughing at him instead.
“His lordship wants only to be loved. So he laughs, and takes no offense, and forgives, and bestows honors and offices and lavish gifts on those who mock him and defy him, thinking thereby to win their loyalty. Yet the more he laughs and gives, the more they despise him.”
“The lion has awoken,” said Ser Harys Swyft, the Knight of Cornfield,
The earth and stone that sealed the mine had no gaps large enough to allow a squirrel to pass, let alone a man … but the water found its way down.
With her death, Grand Maester Pycelle observes, the joy went out of Tywin Lannister, yet still he persisted in his duty.
“When a wolf descends upon your flocks, all you gain by killing him is a short respite, for other wolves will come,” King Garth IX said famously. “If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening.”
The people of the stormlands are like unto their weather, it has oft been said: tumultuous, violent, implacable, unpredictable.
In their wroth, they sent howling winds and lashing rains to knock down every castle Durran dared to build, until a young boy helped him erect one so strong and cunningly made that it could defy their gales. The boy grew to be Brandon the Builder; Durran became the first Storm King.
Princess Rhaenys—“the Queen Who Never Was” as the glib jester Mushroom called her—and
his son Davos always said he died content, smiling at the rotting hands and feet that dangled in his tent like a string of onions.
“One is hot and one is cold, yet these ancient kingdoms of sand and snow are set apart from the rest of Westeros by history, culture, and tradition.
Yet there are always a few who walk the roads that others shun, seeking after fortunes in the bleaker corners of the world.
The wielder of Dawn is always given the title of Sword of the Morning, and only a knight of House Dayne who is deemed worthy can carry it.
It is the sandy Dornish who are the chief breeders of the famed sand steeds, considered the most beautiful horses in the Seven Kingdoms.
Worse occurred at the hands of the Wyl of Wyl, whose deeds we need not recount; they are infamous enough and still remembered, especially in Fawnton and Old Oak.
“Dorne has danced with dragons before,” he was reported to have said in response to Ser Otto Hightower’s letter. “I would sooner sleep with scorpions.”
“The man who honors all the gods honors none at all,”
And because they had risked their lives in the name of freedom, the mothers and fathers of the new city vowed that no man, woman, or child in Braavos should ever be a slave, a thrall, or a bondsman. This is the First Law of Braavos, engraved in stone on the arch that spans the Long Canal.
These great bows far outranged the recurved bows of horn and sinew the slavers carried, and could throw a yard-long shaft hard enough to pierce through mail and boiled leather and even good steel plate.
only bows of dragonbone are known to surpass them, and those are exceedingly rare.
there are said to be apes that dwarf the largest giants, so powerful they can slay elephants with a single blow.
caverns full of pale white vampire bats who can drain the blood from a man in minutes.
Tattooed lizards stalk the jungles, running down their prey and ripping them apart with the long curved claws on their powerful hind legs.
The Sothoryi are big-boned creatures, massively muscled, with long arms, sloped foreheads, huge square teeth, heavy jaws, and coarse black hair.
Sothoryi women cannot breed with any save their own males;
Known as Zhea the Barren, Zhea Zorseface, and Zhea the Cruel, and famed even then for her cunning, she is remembered to this day in the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, where mothers whisper her name to frighten unruly children into obedience.
