The deep history of Casa Arryn, told as a maester would tell it: the founding legend held at arm's length, the long ages of kings, the coming of the dragons, and the road that led to the present. Dates follow the records; where the songs outrun them, the chronicle hedges the tale as a tale.
Seat
o Ninho da Águia
Region
o Vale
Words
“Alto Como a Honra”
I
The Winged Knight
When the Andals crossed the narrow sea in their ships, fleeing the growing power of Valyria, the Vale of Arryn was among the first lands they took — and there they took it utterly. The songs give the honor to Ser Artys Arryn, the Winged Knight, who is said to have flown to the summit of the Giant's Lance upon a great falcon and slain the Griffin King who dwelt there. Strip away the falcon and the legend, and the maesters find beneath it a real and decisive war: the Andal warlords of the Vale broke the last First Men king, Robar the Second of House Royce, at the Battle of the Seven Stars, and from that victory House Arryn rose to rule.
The Arryns styled themselves Kings of Mountain and Vale, blending the blood of the vanquished First Men into their conquering Andal line, and made their seat the Eyrie — a slender castle of pale stone perched impossibly high upon the mountainside, reachable only by a long and perilous climb. The falcon and the crescent moon have flown over the Vale ever since, and the Arryns have guarded their honor as jealously as their heights.
In the chronicle
II
As High as Honor
No army has ever taken the Eyrie. It is too high and too narrow; a handful of men can hold its gates against a host, and winter seals the mountain roads for half the year. This is a house that has never needed to be clever, only patient and unassailable, and the Arryns cultivated a pride to match their impregnable seat — proud of their pure Andal blood, prouder still of the honor they wear like a second crown.
That impregnability spared them the fate of prouder kings when Aegon came. The Vale was held for a boy, Ronnel Arryn, by his mother the Lady Regent Sharra, reckoned the fairest maid in the Seven Kingdoms — and when Queen Visenya flew her dragon Vhagar to the Eyrie's very windows, the boy king was less interested in defiance than in a ride upon the dragon's back. The Vale yielded without a drop of blood spilled, its lord an eager passenger rather than a corpse. The Arryns kept their heights, their honor, and their lives, and traded a crown for a wardenship, as the wiser kings all learned to do.
III
The Foster Father
For three centuries the falcon kept the Vale in quiet loyalty, and the Arryns might have passed through the histories as they had always lived — high, honorable, and aloof — but for Jon Arryn, who fostered two boys who would remake the realm. Into his care at the Eyrie came Eddard Stark of Winterfell and Robert Baratheon of Storm's End, and the old lord raised them together as though they were his own sons, until the bond between his wards was as strong as blood.
So when the mad king Aerys, having burned Ned's father and brother, sent to the Vale demanding the heads of both young men, Jon Arryn gave his answer without hesitation: he raised his falcon banners in revolt rather than surrender the boys he had raised. The rebellion that toppled a dynasty three hundred years old began, in truth, in the Vale, with an old man's refusal to betray his foster sons. When it was won, Jon Arryn stood as Hand of the King to Robert, wed to Lysa of Riverrun, the second most powerful man in a realm his loyalty had made.
In the chronicle
The present tale
This last chapter carries the fates of the novels' own war. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
§
The Hand That Fell
Jon Arryn served as Hand for the whole of Robert's reign, the steady hand behind an unsteady king — until he began to ask questions about the parentage of the queen's golden children, and died soon after of a sudden illness that was no illness at all. His murder was the first move in a game that would consume the realm, and his widow Lysa, poisoned in her mind by the man who had poisoned her husband, fled the capital with her sickly son and a lie she whispered in her sister's ear.
The old lord's death set everything in motion: it brought Eddard Stark south to his own doom, and cracked open the peace Jon Arryn had spent a lifetime keeping. His heir, the frail boy Robert Arryn, kept the Vale aloof from the War of the Five Kings, huddled safe atop his mountain while the realm bled below — its swords intact, its loyalties for sale, and a whispering master of coin risen to steward its fortunes. As high as honor, the Arryns say. But honor, in the Vale as everywhere, had grown perilously easy to counterfeit.
In the chronicle
Estas separações nomeiam mortes, desfechos e estradas ainda não percorridas nos livros. Desvele-as apenas se ambas as estradas te forem conhecidas — ou se não temes saber.
House Arryn keeps the Vale from the Eyrie, an impregnable castle set high among the Mountains of the Moon, and holds one of the oldest and purest lines of Andal nobility in Westeros. Descended in legend from Ser Artys Arryn, the Winged Knight, they took the Vale from the First Men at the Battle of the Seven Stars. As high as honor, their words run — and it was Jon Arryn, foster father to Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon, who lit the rebellion that cast down the Targaryens.
How far back does the history of Casa Arryn go?
This chronicle traces Casa Arryn from the Winged Knight, where the singers run ahead of the maesters, down through Aegon's Conquest and the long centuries after, to the eve of the present tale. Where a claim rests on legend rather than record, the text says so plainly rather than dressing a song up as a certainty.
Are there book spoilers in this Casa Arryn history?
The open chapters keep to the settled past and close before the events of A Game of Thrones. The final chapter — Casa Arryn's part in the present war — sits behind the spoiler veil and is revealed only if you choose to lift it, so the deep history can be read safely without knowing how the current tale unfolds.
Is this Casa Arryn history from the books or the show?
Book canon. It follows George R. R. Martin's novels first, then the histories — Fire & Blood and The World of Ice & Fire — and marks legend as legend throughout. Where the television series diverges from the books, this chronicle does not follow it.