A History of 徒利家族

The riverlands have the unhappy distinction of being the most conquered country in Westeros. Rich, fertile, and cursed with no natural borders, the lands of the Trident have been fought over and ruled in turn by the First Men, the Andals, the Storm Kings, and the kings of every neighboring realm, never long able to hold themselves as a kingdom of their own. Amid this endless changing of masters, the Tullys were simply one river house among many — lords of Riverrun, a strong-sited castle at the fork of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork, but never kings, and never claiming to be.

Unlike the Starks with their Bran or the Lannisters with their Lann, the Tullys boast no legendary founder gilded by the singers. They are an old and respectable line without pretension to greatness, and there is a certain honesty in that. When the last conquerors of the riverlands, the ironborn kings of House Hoare, ruled the Trident with a heavy hand, the Tullys were counted among their many resentful vassals — and it was resentment, in the end, that would raise them up.

When Aegon the Dragon came against Harren the Black, the river lords saw their chance to be free of ironborn rule at last. Lord Edmyn Tully of Riverrun was among the first to renounce Harren and declare for the Conqueror, calling his fellow rivermen to Aegon's banner. It was a shrewd wager, and it paid as few wagers ever do. Harren and his sons burned inside Harrenhal, and House Hoare's grip on the Trident died with them.

For his early loyalty, Aegon raised Edmyn Tully to Lord Paramount of the Trident, granting the leaping trout dominion over all the riverlands and all its lords. It was a dizzying elevation, and not one the older river houses accepted gracefully. The Blackwoods and Brackens, the Freys and a dozen prouder lines, found themselves bending the knee to a house they reckoned no better than their own — a grievance that has soured the riverlands' loyalty to Riverrun ever since. The Tullys had been made great by choosing the winning side at the right moment, and their vassals never let them forget the smallness of the merit in it.

The Tullys govern by their words, and their words put family first — a fitting creed for a house that has always understood the power of a well-made marriage better than the power of a well-fought battle. Nowhere was this clearer than in Lord Hoster Tully, who wove his own daughters into the web that would topple the Targaryens. He promised Catelyn to the Stark heir and Lysa to Jon Arryn of the Vale, binding Riverrun to Winterfell and the Eyrie, and turning three great houses into a single alliance of blood before ever a sword was drawn.

When the rebellion came, the riverlands became its cockpit, as they have been the cockpit of every war in Westeros. The Battle of the Bells was fought in the Tully town of Stoney Sept, and the decisive clash of the whole war came at the Trident itself, on Riverrun's own doorstep. Hoster Tully spent his strength and his sons-in-law's cause freely in the rebels' service, and when it was won, the trout had chosen the winning side once again — and once again through marriage rather than conquest, exactly as a Tully should.