House Mallister

Seagard was raised, long before Aegon's dragons made lordship on the Trident a matter of one family's grant, to hold the Cape of Eagles against the ironborn reavers who had made the coast their hunting ground. The Mallisters who built it, and the river kings who briefly wore Trident crowns of their own before House Tully's rise ended such ambitions for every house on the river alike, were never especially awed by the Tullys' later paramountcy — a seniority of blood the family has nursed, quietly and at length, ever since it was made to answer to Riverrun rather than to a crown of its own.

When Balon Greyjoy's rebellion sent ironborn longships against the western shores of the riverlands, Rodrik Greyjoy — Balon's own eldest son and heir — led the storming of Seagard in person, confident enough in the attempt that the castle's ancient warning bell, silent for three centuries, was rung for the first time in living memory to summon its defenders. Jason Mallister met the assault at his own gates and killed Rodrik Greyjoy there, a stroke that broke the attack on Seagard outright and, combined with his brother Maron's death soon after, broke a good deal of the ironborn rebellion's momentum with it. Few lords of any house in the Seven Kingdoms can claim to have personally ended a king's heir's ambitions on their own doorstep; House Mallister, characteristically, does not let the point go unmentioned.

Jason Mallister rode to Robb Stark's cause as a loyal bannerman of Riverrun throughout the War of the Five Kings, and paid for that loyalty when his son Patrek, taken captive in the slaughter at the Twins, became a hostage Black Walder Frey used to pry Seagard's gates open — Lord Jason surrendering the castle his ancestors built against the ironborn rather than see his son hanged for it. Whether the surrender bought Patrek's life outright or merely delayed its ending is a question this chronicle's sources do not answer with confidence.

Far to the north, a cousin of the main line has come nearer to Mallister glory of a different sort: Denys Mallister, commander of the Shadow Tower since a year this chronicle can date with unusual precision — 267 AC — stood twice before as a candidate for Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and yielded both times to older claims. In the election that followed Jeor Mormont's death, Denys came closer than ever before, carrying the Shadow Tower's full garrison and, in the race's later rounds, more votes than all but one man standing against him — before losing, in the end, to a steward's bastard son half his age.