Wars of Westeros

The cause

A winter fell that would not lift, and out of the killing cold came the Others, the pale things that hate all warmth and life. The tale is older than any true record, and the maesters keep it at arm's length.

The course

Legend holds a generation of darkness in which the dead walked and the living starved, until the Last Hero sought the children of the forest through the frozen wood. At the Battle for the Dawn the Others were broken and driven back into the uttermost north. Whether by dragonsteel, sorcery, or a hero's sacrifice, no two singers agree.

The outcome

The Wall was raised and the Night's Watch sworn to hold it forever. How much of the tale is history and how much a story to frighten children in the dark, the Citadel declines to say.

The cause

Driven from Andalos across the narrow sea — by the Valyrians, some say, or by their own restless gods — the Andals came with the seven-pointed star cut into their flesh and steel in their hands, a metal the First Men could not match.

The course

Kingdom by kingdom the south was taken: the Vale first, at the Battle of the Seven Stars, and then the riverlands and the west. The Andals burned the weirwoods, put the children to the sword wherever they found them, and married their steel into the old First Men lines. Only the North, sealed behind the swamps and the ruined towers of Moat Cailin, threw back every host sent against it.

The outcome

The Faith of the Seven took root everywhere south of the Neck, and a new order of kingdoms rose from the ashes of the old. The maesters count these millennia so loosely that any single date is a scholar's guess dressed as fact.

The cause

Valyria's hunger for empire reached the Rhoyne at last, and the free cities of the great river — ancient, proud, and rich — would not bow to the Freehold as their neighbours had.

The course

Prince Garin of Ny Sar raised a host a quarter-million strong and won victory upon victory, until Valyria answered the way Valyria always answered: with fire. Three hundred dragons burned the river cities to the waterline. Garin was caged and made to watch his people die, and with his last breath cursed the conquerors — a curse men still blame for the greyscale in those waters.

The outcome

The Rhoynar were broken as a people on their own river. Rather than see the survivors enslaved, Princess Nymeria gathered ten thousand ships and fled west to Dorne, where she wed Mors Martell and forged a kingdom that outlasted Valyria itself.

The cause

Aegon Targaryen, lord of a rock in the narrow sea, judged the quarrelsome Seven Kingdoms ripe for a single crown — and kept three living dragons to press the argument.

The course

He landed at the mouth of the Blackwater and threw up an earthen holdfast where King's Landing now stands. Two kings burned together on the Field of Fire beneath Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes; the towers of Harrenhal ran molten with its king still inside. Only Torrhen Stark, marching south to the same fate, weighed his men's lives against his pride and chose to kneel.

The outcome

Six kingdoms were welded into one realm and the Iron Throne hammered from the surrendered swords of the fallen. Dorne alone slipped the leash, and the count of years began at Aegon's crowning in Oldtown.

The cause

Dorne had never knelt at the Conquest, and Aegon meant to finish with fire what fire had begun — but the Dornish would not give him a battle he could win.

The course

They abandoned their castles and melted into the deserts and red mountains, bleeding the dragon's men with ambush and raid. Meraxes and Queen Rhaenys were brought down by a scorpion bolt through the eye above the Hellholt; in the fury that followed — the Dragon's Wroth — Aegon burned every Dornish seat again and again, and still could hold none of the ground beneath them.

The outcome

After years of blood on both sides and a dragon dead, the war guttered out into a sullen peace with nothing settled. Dorne remained unconquered — a lesson the dragons would be made to learn twice more.

The cause

When Prince Maegor took a second wife in open defiance of the Faith, and gentle King Aenys proved too weak to master the fury it loosed, the militant orders of the Seven rose in armed revolt against House Targaryen.

The course

Aenys died with the realm aflame, and Maegor the Cruel seized the crown over the heads of his own nephews. Beneath Balerion he broke the Warrior's Sons and put the Poor Fellows to the sword by the thousand — the Faith reckoned its dead in the tens of thousands — yet the resistance would not die while he ruled by terror alone.

The outcome

Maegor was found dead upon the Iron Throne in 48 AC, by whose hand no man knows. His successor Jaehaerys I ended the war with a pardon and a bargain: the Faith laid down its swords forever in return for the crown's protection.

The cause

Viserys I named his daughter Rhaenyra his heir, but at his death in 129 AC his council crowned his son Aegon II in her place. Two claimants, two courts, and nineteen dragons meant the matter could be settled only in fire.

The course

It opened with Blood and Cheese in the queen's own nursery and widened into slaughter — Rook's Rest, the Gullet, the storming of King's Landing, the treachery at Tumbleton. Dragon met dragon in the sky and both came shrieking down. By the end the greatest beasts in the world lay dead, Rhaenyra had been fed to Sunfyre before her son's eyes, and Aegon II was poisoned soon after.

The outcome

The boy Aegon III inherited a throne set over a realm of ash, and the age of dragons was mortally wounded — the last of them would die within a generation. No war ever did House Targaryen half the harm it did itself in the Dance.

The cause

Daeron I, the Young Dragon, came to the throne a boy of fourteen and set out to do what the Conqueror could not — take Dorne, and take it with no dragon at all to do the work.

The course

By bold marches and cleverer generalship he overran Dorne in a single summer, and wrote a book to boast of it. But conquest and keeping are different trades: the Dornish rose the moment his back was turned, and the garrisons he had scattered across the sands were butchered in their beds.

The outcome

Fourteen thousand men died holding a country that would not be held, and Daeron himself was cut down under a peace banner in 161 AC — by treachery, the loyal say; for his own broken word, the Dornish answer. Dorne was lost again, to be won at last only by marriage, a lifetime later.

The cause

Aegon IV legitimised his bastards on his deathbed, and the finest of them — Daemon Blackfyre, gifted the Conqueror's own sword — came to believe the throne fit his hand better than that of his bookish half-brother Daeron II.

The course

Half the chivalry of the realm rose for the warrior over the scholar. The rising broke on the Redgrass Field, where Bloodraven's archers shot down Daemon and his twin sons as he paused to spare a fallen foe. His half-brother Bittersteel led a doomed charge over the bodies, but the day — and ten thousand lives with it — was already lost.

The outcome

Daeron II kept his throne. Bittersteel fled to Essos with Daemon's surviving sons and founded the Golden Company in exile, seeding four more rebellions across the next three generations.

The cause

Sixteen years after the Redgrass Field, disaffected lords gathered at Lord Butterwell's wedding at Whitewalls, meaning to crown one of Daemon's exiled sons and raise the black dragon's banner anew.

The course

The plot never grew into a war. Bloodraven's informers were everywhere, and the tourney meant to muster the rebels became a snare instead. The conspiracy fell apart before a single battle was joined, the would-be king was taken captive and kept a hostage of the Iron Throne for the rest of his days — Bloodraven knew a live Daemon barred Bittersteel from crowning a brother — and Whitewalls was pulled down stone by stone.

The outcome

It ended as quietly as the first had ended in blood — a rebellion strangled in its cradle. Bloodraven's thousand eyes, and one, had spared the realm a second Redgrass Field.

The cause

Bittersteel, greying in exile, brought the Golden Company and another of Daemon's sons — Haegon I — back across the narrow sea to press the black dragon's claim a third time.

The course

The chronicles of this war are thin, but its ending is well remembered: Haegon was slain after he had already yielded, cut down by treachery, and Bittersteel himself was taken alive upon the field.

The outcome

Brought before the throne in chains, Bittersteel was spared and sent to take the black — then freed by comrades on the voyage north and away to Essos, to plot a fourth war. The black dragon, men said, could be beaten in the field but never in the blood.

The cause

With Bittersteel dead in exile, the Golden Company crossed the narrow sea once more to set Daemon III Blackfyre upon the throne — a leaner, poorer effort than any that had gone before.

The course

The invasion was met and broken at the Wendwater Bridge. Daemon III was killed, and the rising collapsed almost as soon as it touched Westerosi soil. The accounts are sparse and the year not firmly fixed; the Citadel places it around 236 AC, in the reign of Aegon the Unlikely.

The outcome

Aegon V held his throne without much trouble. The male line of the Blackfyres was running thin now — a single pretender remained to try the realm's patience, and his war would be the last of them.

The cause

Nine adventurers and sellsword captains carved up the map of the world between them before they had conquered a foot of it. One of the nine was Maelys the Monstrous, last male Blackfyre, and the portion he claimed was Westeros — the fifth and final rising of the black dragon.

The course

The realm did not wait to be invaded. King Jaehaerys II sent his host across the water to meet the Band of Nine in the Stepstones, on ground of the enemy's choosing. There a young knight named Barristan Selmy cut his way through the melee and slew Maelys in single combat, ending the male line of House Blackfyre with a sword-stroke.

The outcome

With Maelys dead the Band of Nine came apart, and the last Blackfyre war died with him. A whole generation of the men who would shape the century to come — Tywin, Aerys, Barristan, Steffon Baratheon — earned their names in that campaign, the final act of a feud five wars long.

The cause

Prince Rhaegar carried off Lyanna Stark, betrothed to Robert Baratheon; when her father and brother rode to King's Landing for justice, the Mad King burned them both, then demanded the heads of Robert and Eddard Stark. The great houses chose war over their own executions.

The course

Robert won three battles in a single day at Summerhall and slew Rhaegar himself upon the Trident, his warhammer scattering a breastplate of rubies into the river. As the rebels marched on the capital, Tywin Lannister cast off his feigned neutrality and sacked King's Landing, and the Mad King died on his own throne by the blade of his own Kingsguard.

The outcome

Aerys's surviving children fled across the narrow sea, and Robert Baratheon took the throne he had won with a hammer. Three centuries of Targaryen rule were ended — though a promise kept at the Tower of Joy would trouble the peace for years to come.

The cause

Six years after Robert took the throne, Balon Greyjoy crowned himself King of the Iron Islands and set the Old Way of reaving against a realm grown unwarily used to peace.

The course

The ironborn burned the Lannister fleet at anchor in Lannisport, but overreached at Fair Isle, where Stannis Baratheon shattered their navy on the water. Robert's host then crossed to the islands and stormed Pyke itself; in the breach of its walls a knight named Jorah Mormont won his renown and the rebellion its end.

The outcome

Balon bent the knee and kept both his life and his seat, but surrendered his last living son, Theon, as a ward and hostage to Winterfell — a boy who would carry his father's grievance into the wars to come.