A History of Casa Lannister

The Lannisters trace their line to Lann the Clever, a trickster of the Age of Heroes who is said to have won Casterly Rock from House Casterly without ever drawing a sword. How he managed it the tales cannot agree upon: some say he smuggled himself into the Rock and crept about by night until the Casterlys believed the place haunted and fled; others that he filled its halls with vermin, or seduced the daughters of the house one by one until he had married his way into the walls. The maesters take Lann for a figure of fable, but the mountain of stone he supposedly stole is real enough, and honeycombed with more gold than any other place in the known world.

From that golden hill the Lannisters ruled the westerlands as Kings of the Rock, and Lann's fair hair passed down the generations — for it was said he pulled gold from the sun to gild his children. They grew rich beyond the dreaming of other houses, and the wealth bred both the family's pride and its enemies' envy. A lion does not concern itself with the opinions of sheep, the saying goes; but a lion sitting on a mountain of gold learns to keep its claws well sharpened.

When Aegon the Dragon came, King Loren of the Rock did not kneel as Torrhen Stark would. He rode instead to join King Mern of the Reach, and together the two kings brought fifty-five thousand men against the invaders on a plain in the Reach. It was the largest host Westeros had ever seen, and against three dragons it burned. Four thousand men died in the flames of what the singers named the Field of Fire; King Mern died with his whole line, ending House Gardener in an afternoon.

Loren Lannister did not die. He looked upon the burning field, judged the day lost, and fled — and lived to bend the knee the following year, giving up his crown to keep his Rock. Aegon named him Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, and the lions have been Lannisters, not kings, ever since. Gold, they had learned, could buy a great many things, but not the outcome of a battle against dragons.

For a time the golden lion grew fat and toothless. Lord Tytos Lannister was a genial, weak-willed man who forgave every insult and forgave debts more freely still, and under him the great vassals of the west grew insolent. The Reynes of Castamere and the Tarbecks of Tarbeck Hall, rich and proud, came near to lording it over their own liege lord, laughing at Casterly Rock and its foolish master. They should have remembered that Tytos had sons.

His eldest, Tywin, was not yet twenty when he answered their contempt. When the Reynes and Tarbecks rose in open defiance, he crushed them utterly — cast down Tarbeck Hall, and when the Reynes fled into their mines beneath Castamere, he sealed the entrances and let in the waters until every man, woman, and child of the line had drowned in the dark. Two ancient houses were extinguished root and branch, and the realm learned a song. 'And now the rains weep o'er his halls, and not a soul to hear' — men sing 'The Rains of Castamere' still, and lords who hear it played by a Lannister's musicians tend to grow suddenly agreeable.

Tywin Lannister ruled the Seven Kingdoms in all but name for twenty years as Hand to King Aerys II, and the realm prospered under his cold competence as it had not in living memory. He weathered the Defiance of Duskendale, where a rebel lord held the king captive and Tywin sat siege rather than see Aerys freed too cheaply. But the king's growing madness and jealousy — of Tywin's wealth, his wife, his very success — at last drove the Hand to lay down his chain and return to the Rock, waiting.

When Robert Baratheon rose against the Targaryens, Tywin Lannister waited, and watched, and made no move — until the rebels had won the Trident and the war was as good as decided. Only then did he bring his host to the gates of King's Landing, professing loyalty to the crown. Mad King Aerys, who never learned wisdom, opened his gates to his old Hand, and the lions sacked the city they had sworn to defend.

It was a butcher's work, and Tywin meant it to be. His man Ser Gregor Clegane dashed out the brains of the infant Prince Aegon and murdered Princess Elia of Dorne beside him, while Amory Lorch put his blade through the little Princess Rhaenys — three bodies Tywin laid at Robert's feet as a gift and a warning. His own son Jaime, sworn to the Kingsguard, opened the mad king's throat. In a single day the Lannisters ended a dynasty and bound the new one to themselves, for Tywin's daughter Cersei was soon Robert's queen. A Lannister always pays his debts — and, it seemed, collects them too.