“None the Citadel can confirm from any printed page — though a house descended, if the legend is believed, from a woman heartbroken enough to grow gold out of grief hardly needs a motto to make its point.”
The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Rowan — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Goldengrove
Region
The Reach
Founder
Rowan Gold-Tree, held by legend to be a daughter of Garth Greenhand himself — a claim this chronicle repeats with all the caution any story from the Age of Heroes deserves, and no more.
One of the oldest and most golden-blooded houses of the Reach on the strength of a legend no maester can date, House Rowan has spent the centuries since being exactly what its name promises: prosperous, well-connected, and generally on the winning side of whichever war the Reach eventually settles into.
I
The Tree Grown from Grief
The legend the Rowans tell of their own founding is stranger than most houses trouble to claim: Rowan Gold-Tree, a daughter of Garth Greenhand left desolate when her lover chose a wealthier rival, is said to have wrapped an apple in a lock of her own golden hair and planted it on a hill — and from the buried fruit grew a tree whose bark, leaves, and harvest were gold in truth rather than metaphor. Her descendants raised Goldengrove around the grove that followed, and to this day, so the Reach still insists, gold-barked trees grow nowhere in Westeros but within Goldengrove's own walls. The Citadel neither confirms nor denies the arboreal claim; it notes only that the family has never once, in all the centuries since, been under any obligation to prove it to a skeptic's satisfaction.
In the chronicle
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
A Hero of the Blackwater
Mathis Rowan rode to war behind Renly Baratheon along with the rest of the Reach's great lords, and returned to the crown's peace, along with most of them, once Renly's murder ended the question of which Baratheon the Reach's swords belonged to. He did not merely return quietly: joining Lord Tywin Lannister's relief force at the headwaters of the Blackwater Rush, Mathis helped ferry a Reach army downriver by barge to fall on Stannis's besieging host from the rear, a maneuver that broke the siege of King's Landing as decisively as any single stroke of the battle managed, and earned him a hero's welcome in Joffrey Baratheon's own throne room. It did not earn him, when the Hand's seat later fell vacant, the appointment Ser Kevan Lannister thought his service had merited — Queen Cersei, judging Mathis too plainly one of Mace Tyrell's creatures to trust with the crown's business, gave the Handship to a more tractable man instead.
In the chronicle
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.
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
A Daughter's Word Against a Singer's
This chronicle records, with the reluctance such household matters generally deserve, a dispute that sent a singer named Dareon to the Wall: the young man claimed a daughter of Lord Mathis's had invited him to her bed and cried rape only when her father discovered them together, while the household's own account, so far as it survives, holds the opposite. No maester now writing was present to judge between the two versions, and this chronicle declines to render the verdict that Lord Mathis's own justice already settled by other means.
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.
The people of House Rowan
The lords, ladies, and branches of Rowan the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Mathis Rowan
Lord of Goldengrove, hero of the Blackwater relief, later commander at the siege of Storm's End
fl. 298–300 AC
Bethany Redwyne, Lady Rowan
Mathis's wife, of House Redwyne
fl. late 3rd century AC
Explore further
Members
What is House Rowan known for?
One of the oldest and most golden-blooded houses of the Reach on the strength of a legend no maester can date, House Rowan has spent the centuries since being exactly what its name promises: prosperous, well-connected, and generally on the winning side of whichever war the Reach eventually settles into.
Where is the seat of House Rowan?
House Rowan holds Goldengrove, in The Reach. 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 Rowan 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.