The youngest and richest of the Free Cities, raised in a hidden lagoon by slaves who fled Valyria and never bent to a master again. Here is Braavos as the books give it — the Titan at its gate, the Sealord in his palace, the canals and the bravos, and the two great powers that keep the lagoon.
The Secret City
Braavos is the youngest of the Nine Free Cities and by far the richest — a city of a hundred islands strung across a foggy northern lagoon, roofed in mist and threaded with canals in place of streets. Alone among the daughters of Valyria it was not founded by the Freehold but against it: raised by slaves who had escaped their masters and hidden themselves at the edge of the world. Alone among all the cities of the earth, therefore, Braavos has never known a slave, and holds the buying and selling of people to be the one unforgivable sin.
How it was founded
The escaped slaves, so the Braavosi tell it, seized the very ships that carried them, and their moonsingers led the fleet north to a hidden lagoon walled in fog and salt marsh, where no Valyrian dragonlord would think to look. There the Secret City grew for a hundred years and more before it dared to unmask itself to the world. The precise year of its founding the Braavosi guard as jealously as any of their secrets — the maesters reckon it some five or six centuries before Aegon's Conquest, but even that is a scholar's guess dressed as a date, and the Braavosi rather enjoy the argument.
Guarding the sea-gate to the lagoon stands the Titan, a colossus of bronze and black stone bestriding a channel between two islands, one leg on each, so that ships must pass beneath his gauntlet to enter. He is fortress as much as monument — his legs and lower body are stone studded with murder-holes and boiling oil, his upper works armour over a garrison — and when an unknown sail approaches he looses a great groaning roar that carries across the water and shivers the bones of every traveller who hears it. Sailors say a man is not truly come to Braavos until the Titan has bellowed him in.
SourcesAFFC · Arya IAFFC · Samwell III
The Sealord
Braavos owns no king. It is ruled by the Sealord, first among its merchant princes, chosen rather than born and holding office for life from a palace on the lagoon. His household guards the trade and the peace of the city, and the First Sword of Braavos — the deadliest water dancer of the day — serves as his sworn shield and champion, chosen less for swordwork than for a rarer gift: the clarity to see a thing exactly as it is and say so, even to the Sealord's own face. Syrio Forel won the post that way. Summoned before the Sealord on the day the old First Sword died and shown a cat dozing in his lap, dressed up by flattering courtiers as some fabulous foreign beast, Syrio looked past the flattery and answered plainly that he had seen a thousand common toms just like it in the alleys of the city — an ordinary cat, fat and battle-eared, nothing more. That plain sight, not swordsmanship, was what the office wanted, and Syrio held it nine years before a new Sealord chose a First Sword of his own. When a Sealord lies dying the whole city holds its breath, for the choosing of the next is a season of quiet knives and quieter bargains — a reckoning this chronicle keeps veiled, where the particulars of the current choosing belong.
SourcesAGOT · Arya IIIADWD · The Blind Girl
The lagoon and its harbours
There are no horses in Braavos and few straight streets; one goes everywhere by water, poled along the canals in slim boats the Braavosi call serpents, under bridges and past drowned squares. Foreign ships dock at the Ragman's Harbor, but the Purple Harbor at the city's heart is kept for Braavosi keels alone. Between them lie the moon pool and its mummers, the courtesans in their pleasure barges, the temples of a hundred gods — the Sept-Beyond-the-Sea for exiles of the Faith among them — and, on its own dark island, the House of Black and White.
SourcesAFFC · Cat of the CanalsAFFC · Samwell III
Water dancers and bravos
The Braavosi fight with a slender blade and a sideways stance in a style they name the water dance — swift, precise, contemptuous of the heavy Westerosi hack. A water dancer does not block a cut so much as decline to be where it lands, trading the Westerosi shield-and-parry for footwork, and treating the blade's point as a needle rather than an axe. Its young masters, the bravos, swagger the canals by night and cross swords over points of honour real or invented, and the finest of them all bears the title First Sword. One such, Syrio Forel, once First Sword to the Sealord, taught a small northern girl to hold a blade as a needle and to move calm as still water — for fear, he told her, cuts deeper than swords. Where that training led her once she crossed the narrow sea a fugitive, this chronicle treats behind its veil below.
SourcesAGOT · Arya IIIAFFC · Cat of the Canals
The two powers of the lagoon
The Iron Bank of Braavos
The city's true power is not the Titan but its ledger. The Iron Bank banks the kings of the world, and ruins those who fail to pay.
The exact year is one of the city's guarded secrets. Braavos was raised by slaves who escaped Valyria and hid in a fog-bound lagoon, keeping the city secret for over a century before revealing it. The maesters reckon its founding some five or six hundred years before Aegon's Conquest, but even that date is an educated guess.
What is the Titan of Braavos?
The Titan is a colossal statue of bronze and stone that straddles the sea-gate to the Braavosi lagoon, one leg on each of two islands, so ships must sail beneath it to enter. It is also a fortress and a lighthouse, garrisoned and armed, and it looses a great roaring warning when an unknown ship approaches.
Who rules Braavos?
Braavos has no king. It is governed by the Sealord, the first among its merchant princes, chosen for life rather than born to the office. The First Sword of Braavos — the deadliest water dancer of the day — serves as the Sealord's sworn shield and champion.
What is a water dancer, and who was Syrio Forel?
A water dancer practises the Braavosi style of swordfighting — fast and precise, fought with a slender blade in a sideways stance. Syrio Forel was First Sword of Braavos, sworn shield to the Sealord, who in the books trains a young Arya Stark, teaching her to treat her blade as a needle, to move calm as still water, and that fear cuts deeper than swords.