The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Hoare — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Orkmont, later Harrenhal
Region
The Iron Islands, later the Riverlands
Founder
unrecorded; House Hoare is remembered only as the black line, the black blood, that took the Seastone Chair from House Greyiron by means no two chronicles describe alike
House Hoare rose on the Iron Islands as the black line and, under Qhored Hoare, claimed a dominion the singers stretch to the whole western coast of Westeros — a boast a maester is entitled to doubt at its edges even while granting it some truth at its centre. A later Hoare king moved the seat of power to the riverlands entirely, ruling Isles and Rivers together for three hard generations, and the dynasty ended with Harren the Black, who spent forty years and countless captive lives raising Harrenhal, the largest castle Westeros has known, only to burn inside it the same season Aegon Targaryen's dragons found it.
I
Harwyn Hardhand and the Fall of the Storm Kings
The riverlands did not come to House Hoare by inheritance or marriage but by a campaign the sources consulted describe in unusual detail for so distant an age. King Harwyn Hoare, called Hardhand, judged the Trident weakly held by its Storm King overlord Arrec Durrandon and struck at it directly: a hundred ironborn longships put in south of Seagard, and Harwyn had them hauled overland to the Blue Fork rather than risk the coast. His host broke Ser Samwell Rivers at the Tumblestone and then the army of Lady Agnes Blackwood of Raventree Hall, betrayed in the field by her own neighbor, Lord Lothar Bracken. Harwyn is said to have offered the defeated Agnes a place as his salt wife and killed her when she refused him.
Arrec Durrandon met Harwyn's host at Fairmarket with what aid his river lords still owed him, but several of those same lords — Lothar Bracken among them, joined by Theo Charlton and the lords Goodbrook, Paege, and Vypren — fought for the invader instead of their own overlord. Arrec's army broke, and three centuries of Storm King rule over the Trident ended in a single afternoon. Harwyn ruled the Isles and the Rivers together until he died in bed at four-and-sixty, in the arms, the sources note without further comment, of a salt wife of his own.
II
Fairmarket and the Weight of Three Crowns
Harwyn's son and heir, Halleck Hoare, made his own seat at Fairmarket rather than return to the Iron Islands — the 'later Hoare king' this chronicle's own note credits with moving the black line's power into the riverlands entirely. Of Halleck's reign itself the sources consulted record almost nothing beyond that single fact and his name; he is, among the three Hoare kings who ruled the Isles and the Rivers together, the one history all but skipped past on its way to his son.
That son was Harren the Black, who inherited a river-seated crown his grandfather had won by ship and sword and spent the whole of his own reign trying to make it look permanent. Forty years and the labor of thousands went into Harrenhal's five towers — stone hauled from across the riverlands, timber and captives from the Iron Islands, a scale meant, in Harren's own reckoning, to laugh at any siege ever brought against it. It laughed at none, in the end; sieges were not the weapon that found it.
III
The Fire That Needed No Breach
Harrenhal's five towers were finished, by report, in the same season Aegon Targaryen's dragons made landfall at the mouth of the Blackwater — a coincidence of timing that left Harren no years of peace in which to enjoy what forty years of captive labor had built him. River lords who had endured three generations of Hoare rule saw which way the wind was turning and abandoned him for the invader, Lord Edmyn Tully of Riverrun foremost among them.
Balerion the Black Dread needed no siege engine and no breach in Harrenhal's famous walls; dragonfire came down through the towers' own roofs and turned stone to running slag with Harren and his surviving sons still inside. The castle that had been built to outlast every army in Westeros fell to the one weapon its builder never once accounted for, and the black line that Harwyn Hardhand had carried from the Iron Islands to the riverlands and back again ended with it.
In the chronicle
The people of House Hoare
The lords, ladies, and branches of Hoare the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Qhored Hoare
King of the Iron Islands
unrecorded
Ruled at the black line's furthest reach, when — by report — his dominion ran wherever the salt of the Sunset Sea could be smelled or its waves heard, from Bear Island to the Arbor. His banner, quartered with a longship, a pine, a cluster of grapes, and a raven bound in iron chains, is grander than the tribute rolls of Bear Island or Oldtown are ever likely to have supported; the boast was probably real at its edges and considerably embroidered at its centre, which is the size ironborn boasting tends to reach.
Harwyn HoareHardhand
King of the Isles and the Rivers
d. of old age, in bed
Carried the Iron Islands' rule onto the mainland by force, hauling a hundred longships overland to strike the riverlands from the Blue Fork and breaking Storm King Arrec Durrandon's rule over the Trident at the Battle of Fairmarket, aided by river lords who turned on their own overlord. He is reported to have offered the defeated Lady Agnes Blackwood a place as his salt wife and killed her when she refused — a detail the sources set down without apparent unease, and this chronicle repeats without endorsing the ease. He died at four-and-sixty in the arms of a salt wife of his own choosing, the rare Hoare king to die in bed at all.
Halleck Hoare
King of the Isles and the Rivers
unrecorded
Harwyn Hardhand's son and Harren the Black's father, and the middle of the three generations the Hoares held both the Iron Islands and the riverlands together. He made his own seat at Fairmarket rather than rule from the Iron Islands, planting the black line's court in the riverlands for good — but of his reign otherwise, the sources consulted record next to nothing beyond that single fact and his name.
Harren Hoarethe Black
King of the Isles and the Rivers
d. 2 BC
Spent forty years and the labour of thousands of riverlands and ironborn captives raising Harrenhal's five towers, thick enough, he reckoned, to laugh at any siege. He reckoned without dragons. When Aegon's host landed, river lords who had suffered three generations of Hoare rule abandoned him for the invader, Lord Edmyn Tully foremost among them, and Balerion the Black Dread turned Harrenhal's towers to running slag with Harren and his surviving sons inside — a fire that needed no wall breached, only a roof.
What the record disputes
Where the sources disagree or a song outruns the maesters, the chronicle marks the doubt rather than settling it.
The manner of House Hoare's rise to the Seastone Chair over House Greyiron is given differently across the sources consulted, ranging from outright conquest to a decisive kingsmoot; the Chronicle does not adjudicate between them.
Qhored Hoare's claimed dominion over Bear Island and the Arbor is treated with visible skepticism even in the semi-canon material that reports it; the Chronicle repeats the boast without endorsing it as sustained fact.
No House Hoare sigil is confirmed in the novels themselves; the quartered banner attributed to Qhored comes from semi-canon reference material, and the Chronicle marks it accordingly rather than presenting it as settled heraldry.
What is House Hoare known for?
House Hoare rose on the Iron Islands as the black line and, under Qhored Hoare, claimed a dominion the singers stretch to the whole western coast of Westeros — a boast a maester is entitled to doubt at its edges even while granting it some truth at its centre. A later Hoare king moved the seat of power to the riverlands entirely, ruling Isles and Rivers together for three hard generations, and the dynasty ended with Harren the Black, who spent forty years and countless captive lives raising Harrenhal, the largest castle Westeros has known, only to burn inside it the same season Aegon Targaryen's dragons found it.
Where is the seat of House Hoare?
House Hoare holds Orkmont, later Harrenhal, in The Iron Islands, later 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 Hoare 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.