The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Blackwood — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Raventree Hall
Region
The Riverlands
Founder
kings of the Age of Heroes, by the Blackwoods' own telling — the Brackens tell it otherwise, and no third witness survives to settle which
House Blackwood ruled the upper Trident as river kings before the Andals came, and alone among the great riverlands houses has kept the old gods ever since, worshipping at the vast dead weirwood of Raventree Hall that gives their sigil its ravens. Their history is inseparable from an ancient feud with their neighbors at Stone Hedge, House Bracken — a grudge old enough that neither house agrees how it began, sharpened further when the Brackens took the Faith of the Seven the Blackwoods never would. It has produced kings, a king's favorite mistress, a Kingsguard-toppling sorcerer of a bastard son, and, in the present war, a lord who chose Robb Stark and found his rival besieging his gates for it.
I
Kings Before the Andals
The Blackwoods' claim to have been kings before the Andals came is not idle boasting alone; the one surviving episode the sources consulted give in any detail shows a Blackwood lord, Roderick, making and nearly keeping a king's power rather than merely claiming it. Roderick rose against his own overlord, King Humfrey I Teague of the Trident, with the Storm King Arlan III Durrandon — his son-in-law by a daughter's marriage — at his side, and the two of them broke the Teagues at the Battle of Six Kings. Roderick did not live to enjoy the victory as a Blackwood one; his heir was a child of eight, and Arlan, trusting none of Roderick's brothers to hold the Trident steady, kept the riverlands under his own crown instead of restoring them.
What the sources cannot settle is how much further back the Blackwoods' kingship reaches, or whether the Brackens' inverted version of the same legend — that Bracken kings ruled first, and Blackwood pretenders usurped them — carries any more truth. No third chronicle survives old enough to referee between them.
II
The Weirwood and the Seven
When the Andals crossed the narrow sea and began converting the riverlands' First Men lords one castle at a time, House Bracken took the Faith of the Seven and House Blackwood did not — a decision that hardened an already ancient rivalry into a religious line as much as a territorial one. The great dead weirwood at Raventree Hall, ringed by the ravens that give the Blackwood sigil its ravens still today, remains the last object of old-gods worship the upper Trident's noble houses kept once every other riverlands lord had taken new gods.
Blackwood accusation holds that Bracken hands once poisoned that same weirwood to finish what conversion alone could not — a charge the sources consulted present as belief rather than confirmed event, and the Chronicle repeats accordingly. The tree, whatever was done to it, stands dead but standing, which either house might read as proof of its own case.
In the chronicle
III
Six Centuries of Grudges
Two episodes, centuries apart, illustrate the feud better than any single origin story could. When Harwyn Hardhand Hoare invaded the riverlands, Lady Agnes Blackwood led an army against him and was betrayed in the field by her Bracken neighbor, Lord Lothar Bracken, who chose to fight for the invader rather than for a Blackwood-led defense; Agnes's army broke, and Harwyn is reported to have offered the captured lady a place as his salt wife and killed her when she refused him. Centuries later, during the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Samwell Blackwood sent raiders into Bracken lands and drew Ser Amos Bracken's host into a surprise battle at a riverside mill; Amos killed Blackwood's own lord in single combat before falling himself, by Blackwood family telling, to a weirwood arrow loosed by Samwell's sister Alysanne — a claim the sources consulted record as Blackwood legend rather than settled fact, and this chronicle does not present it as more.
The mill burned that day along with whatever chance either house had of letting the matter rest. Six hundred years, by some tellings, and the grudge has yet to run its course.
The people of House Blackwood
The lords, ladies, and branches of Blackwood the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Roderick Blackwood
Lord of Raventree Hall
unrecorded; roughly three centuries before Arrec Durrandon's fall
Rose against his overlord, King Humfrey I Teague of the Trident, with his son-in-law Arlan III Durrandon of the stormlands at his side, and broke the Teagues at the Battle of Six Kings. His victory profited House Durrandon rather than House Blackwood in the end — Roderick's heir was a child of eight, and Arlan chose to keep the riverlands under his own crown rather than hand a boy's inheritance back unguarded.
Agnes Blackwood
Lady of Raventree Hall
unrecorded
Led an army against Harwyn Hardhand Hoare's invasion of the riverlands and was betrayed in the field by her neighbor Lord Lothar Bracken, who fought for the ironborn king rather than for her. Captured, she is reported to have refused Harwyn's offer to make her his salt wife and been killed for the refusal — a defiance the sources consulted record without further comment, and this chronicle honors by recording it in turn.
Melissa BlackwoodMissy
mistress to King Aegon IV
fl. 172 AC
Became the sixth and best-loved of King Aegon IV's mistresses in 172 AC, bearing him two daughters and a son before her five years at court ended. Aegon marked the occasion by stripping a stretch of riverlands hills from his previous mistress, a Bracken, and renaming them for Melissa — a small cruelty to one house dressed as favor to another. Her son, Brynden Rivers, would be known to the realm by a darker name: Bloodraven.
Brynden RiversBloodraven
legitimized Great Bastard, Hand of the King, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch
b. 172 AC; vanished ranging beyond the Wall, 252 AC
Melissa Blackwood's son by King Aegon IV, legitimized alongside his half-siblings as one of the Great Bastards in 184 AC, and marked from birth by milk-white skin, red eyes, and a birthmark on his cheek shaped enough like a raven to earn him his name. He served as Hand of the King to two Targaryen kings in turn and built a reputation as spymaster and suspected sorcerer that made him one of the most feared men in the Seven Kingdoms — a reputation he defended in single combat against his own half-brother, Bracken-born Aegor Rivers, at the Battle of the Redgrass Field, where he lost an eye and gained the riddle sung of him ever after: a thousand eyes, and one. Sent to the Night's Watch in his later years, he rose to Lord Commander and vanished ranging north of the Wall in 252 AC; no confirmed report of his fate survives.
Tytos Blackwood
Lord of Raventree Hall
fl. 298–300 AC
Declared for Robb Stark at the start of the War of the Five Kings and sat, at Robb's councils in Riverrun, as far from his old rival Jonos Bracken as the hall's length allowed. Tywin Lannister's promises later turned Jonos's sword against him, and Tytos endured a six-month siege of Raventree Hall before Jaime Lannister talked him into a bloodless surrender — confession, fealty, coin, and some, though less than Jonos wanted, of the disputed land.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
What the record disputes
Where the sources disagree or a song outruns the maesters, the chronicle marks the doubt rather than settling it.
Whether the Blackwood-Bracken feud began five hundred or a thousand years before the Andals crossed the narrow sea is disputed even within the sources consulted; the Chronicle gives both figures rather than choose.
The claim that Bracken hands once poisoned the weirwood at Raventree Hall is presented in the sources as a Blackwood accusation, not a settled fact; the Chronicle records it as belief rather than event.
The identity of the archer who killed Amos Bracken at the Battle of the Burning Mill is given only as Blackwood family legend in the sources consulted; the Chronicle does not present it as confirmed.
What is House Blackwood known for?
House Blackwood ruled the upper Trident as river kings before the Andals came, and alone among the great riverlands houses has kept the old gods ever since, worshipping at the vast dead weirwood of Raventree Hall that gives their sigil its ravens. Their history is inseparable from an ancient feud with their neighbors at Stone Hedge, House Bracken — a grudge old enough that neither house agrees how it began, sharpened further when the Brackens took the Faith of the Seven the Blackwoods never would. It has produced kings, a king's favorite mistress, a Kingsguard-toppling sorcerer of a bastard son, and, in the present war, a lord who chose Robb Stark and found his rival besieging his gates for it.
Where is the seat of House Blackwood?
House Blackwood holds Raventree Hall, in The Riverlands. The chronicle traces the house from its founding down to its part in the present tale, marking legend as legend wherever the songs run ahead of the record.
Is House Blackwood in the books or only the show?
Book canon. This history follows George R. R. Martin's novels first, then the histories — Fire & Blood and The World of Ice & Fire — and does not follow the television series where it diverges.