“None the Citadel can confirm from the printed page. This chronicle has seen a phrase or two attributed to the family in circulation, but none it can point to on a printed page, and will not print what it cannot cite.”
The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Westerling — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
The Crag
Region
The Westerlands
Founder
Unrecorded, and unusually old for it — the Westerlings descend from the First Men and held the Crag before the Casterlys who would later lord over them arrived at all. The Kings of the Rock married Westerling daughters more than once in the centuries before the Iron Throne existed, and another Jeyne Westerling was crowned queen to Maegor the Cruel some three hundred years before this chronicle's own present day.
Old blood and a thin purse — the Westerlings are ancient enough to have supplied the Rock with queens twice over the centuries and modest enough, by the time this chronicle's own war reaches them, to need every advantage a well-placed marriage could still offer.
I
First Men on the Sunset Sea
The Crag stands on the northwestern coast of the westerlands, an ancient First Men holding that predates the Casterlys' rise to overlordship of the region entirely — a fact the Westerlings, this chronicle notes, have never been shy about mentioning to their nominally senior neighbors. Twice in the centuries before this chronicle's own present, Westerling daughters married Kings of the Rock, and a third, an earlier Jeyne Westerling, wore a crown as queen to Maegor the Cruel — a marriage this chronicle records without further comment on that particular king's other domestic arrangements.
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
A King Wounded, A Lady Found
Robb Stark took the Crag from its Lannister-leaning garrison during his campaign through the westerlands and was wounded in the taking of it — an injury nursed, by every account reaching this chronicle, personally and attentively by Lord Gawen Westerling's eldest daughter, Jeyne. What began as a wounded king's convalescence became, within the season, a marriage neither the Crag's modest means nor the young king's own prior promise to House Frey had any right to survive. Robb's broken word to Walder Frey — a debt he had incurred to buy a bridge and an army in the war's earlier days — followed the Westerlings home from that wedding whether they had asked for the consequence or not.
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.
§
The Price of a Crag
What happened next, this chronicle records with the discomfort the record itself seems to share: Jeyne's mother, Lady Sybell Spicer, corresponded with Tywin Lannister in the months that followed her daughter's wedding, and the Westerlings' subsequent conduct — Robb marching to the Twins against Sybell's urging, the family conspicuously absent from the feast where the Red Wedding was sprung — has left this chronicle unwilling to call their survival entirely accidental.
Ser Raynald Westerling, Jeyne's brother, is reported to have freed Robb's direwolf Grey Wind from its pen before the slaughter began, and to have fallen wounded into the Green Fork in the chaos that followed — the last report of him this chronicle can locate, and no confirmation since of whether the river or a Frey blade finished what the crossbow bolt started. Jeyne herself survived the Red Wedding by the simple, damning fact of not having been invited to it, and remains, as of this writing, at the Crag under a family name this chronicle suspects she did not choose to keep quiet about.
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 people of House Westerling
The lords, ladies, and branches of Westerling the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Gawen Westerling
Lord of the Crag
fl. 298–300 AC
Sybell Spicer, Lady Westerling
Gawen's wife, of the westerlands' Spicer family
fl. 298–300 AC
Jeyne Westerling
Gawen and Sybell's eldest daughter, wed to Robb Stark
fl. 299 AC
Raynald Westerling
Jeyne's brother, last reported wounded and fallen into the Green Fork
fate unconfirmed after 299 AC
What is House Westerling known for?
Old blood and a thin purse — the Westerlings are ancient enough to have supplied the Rock with queens twice over the centuries and modest enough, by the time this chronicle's own war reaches them, to need every advantage a well-placed marriage could still offer.
Where is the seat of House Westerling?
House Westerling holds The Crag, in The Westerlands. 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 Westerling 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.