House Bywater

A small Crownlands house that gave the City Watch one of its rare honest commanders when the capital needed one most.

The fuller tale

House Bywater is a minor Crownlands family, but it earned a place in the chronicle through Ser Jacelyn Bywater, called Ironhand for the iron hand he wore in place of one lost at the Trident. When Tyrion Lannister needed a commander of the gold cloaks he could actually trust after Janos Slynt's corruption, he found one in Bywater.

Ironhand held the walls during the battle on the Blackwater with a rare and unfashionable integrity ÔÇö and was murdered for it by his own mutinous men in the chaos of victory, which is roughly what an honest man's loyalty was worth in King's Landing in those years.