The deep history of Casa Tully, told as a maester would tell it: the founding legend held at arm's length, the long ages of kings, the coming of the dragons, and the road that led to the present. Dates follow the records; where the songs outrun them, the chronicle hedges the tale as a tale.
Seat
Aguasdulces
Region
las Tierras de los Ríos
Words
“Familia, Deber, Honor”
I
River Lords, Never Kings
The riverlands have the unhappy distinction of being the most conquered country in Westeros. Rich, fertile, and cursed with no natural borders, the lands of the Trident have been fought over and ruled in turn by the First Men, the Andals, the Storm Kings, and the kings of every neighboring realm, never long able to hold themselves as a kingdom of their own. Amid this endless changing of masters, the Tullys were simply one river house among many — lords of Riverrun, a strong-sited castle at the fork of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork, but never kings, and never claiming to be.
Unlike the Starks with their Bran or the Lannisters with their Lann, the Tullys boast no legendary founder gilded by the singers. They are an old and respectable line without pretension to greatness, and there is a certain honesty in that. When the last conquerors of the riverlands, the ironborn kings of House Hoare, ruled the Trident with a heavy hand, the Tullys were counted among their many resentful vassals — and it was resentment, in the end, that would raise them up.
In the chronicle
II
The Trout Raised to Lord
When Aegon the Dragon came against Harren the Black, the river lords saw their chance to be free of ironborn rule at last. Lord Edmyn Tully of Riverrun was among the first to renounce Harren and declare for the Conqueror, calling his fellow rivermen to Aegon's banner. It was a shrewd wager, and it paid as few wagers ever do. Harren and his sons burned inside Harrenhal, and House Hoare's grip on the Trident died with them.
For his early loyalty, Aegon raised Edmyn Tully to Lord Paramount of the Trident, granting the leaping trout dominion over all the riverlands and all its lords. It was a dizzying elevation, and not one the older river houses accepted gracefully. The Blackwoods and Brackens, the Freys and a dozen prouder lines, found themselves bending the knee to a house they reckoned no better than their own — a grievance that has soured the riverlands' loyalty to Riverrun ever since. The Tullys had been made great by choosing the winning side at the right moment, and their vassals never let them forget the smallness of the merit in it.
In the chronicle
III
Family, Duty, Honor
The Tullys govern by their words, and their words put family first — a fitting creed for a house that has always understood the power of a well-made marriage better than the power of a well-fought battle. Nowhere was this clearer than in Lord Hoster Tully, who wove his own daughters into the web that would topple the Targaryens. He promised Catelyn to the Stark heir and Lysa to Jon Arryn of the Vale, binding Riverrun to Winterfell and the Eyrie, and turning three great houses into a single alliance of blood before ever a sword was drawn.
When the rebellion came, the riverlands became its cockpit, as they have been the cockpit of every war in Westeros. The Battle of the Bells was fought in the Tully town of Stoney Sept, and the decisive clash of the whole war came at the Trident itself, on Riverrun's own doorstep. Hoster Tully spent his strength and his sons-in-law's cause freely in the rebels' service, and when it was won, the trout had chosen the winning side once again — and once again through marriage rather than conquest, exactly as a Tully should.
In the chronicle
The present tale
This last chapter carries the fates of the novels' own war. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
§
The Trout Gutted
The family that lived by family was destroyed by a mockery of it. When the War of the Five Kings set the realm ablaze, the riverlands burned worst of all, ground between Lannister and Stark armies until the smallfolk starved in the ashes of their fields. The young wolf Robb Stark, grandson of Hoster Tully, made his cause the riverlands' cause — and paid for a broken marriage promise with the foulest treachery in the memory of the realm.
It came, as Tully sorrows so often do, at a wedding. Robb's uncle Edmure was wed to a daughter of House Frey to mend a broken oath, and in the midst of the feast, under the ancient protection of guest-right, the Freys and Boltons fell upon their guests and butchered them — the Red Wedding, in which Robb and his mother Catelyn, a daughter of Riverrun, were murdered among the wreckage of the bread and salt. Riverrun itself was besieged and lost, though the grizzled Blackfish held out to the last. Family, duty, honor, the Tullys say. At the Twins, all three were slaughtered together, and the leaping trout learned the price of the greenlanders' honor in full.
In the chronicle
Estas bifurcaciones nombran muertes, finales y sendas que los libros aún no han recorrido. Desvélalas solo si conoces ambos caminos, o si no temes saber.
House Tully rules the riverlands from Riverrun, raised to Lords Paramount of the Trident by Aegon the Conqueror for turning against Harren the Black. No hero of legend graces their line; their honor is the plainer stuff of their words — family, duty, honor. Lord Hoster Tully wove the marriages that bound the great rebel houses together against the Targaryens, and the leaping trout has ever been quicker to make alliances than war.
How far back does the history of Casa Tully go?
This chronicle traces Casa Tully from the river lords, where the singers run ahead of the maesters, down through Aegon's Conquest and the long centuries after, to the eve of the present tale. Where a claim rests on legend rather than record, the text says so plainly rather than dressing a song up as a certainty.
Are there book spoilers in this Casa Tully history?
The open chapters keep to the settled past and close before the events of A Game of Thrones. The final chapter — Casa Tully's part in the present war — sits behind the spoiler veil and is revealed only if you choose to lift it, so the deep history can be read safely without knowing how the current tale unfolds.
Is this Casa Tully history from the books or the show?
Book canon. It follows George R. R. Martin's novels first, then the histories — Fire & Blood and The World of Ice & Fire — and marks legend as legend throughout. Where the television series diverges from the books, this chronicle does not follow it.