House Hayford

A house reduced, by the time of the War of the Five Kings, to a single infant ÔÇö a cradle-lady whose lands were folded into the lion's holdings before she could walk.

The fuller tale

House Hayford's misfortune was to have its men die faster than it could raise new ones, until the whole of its name and its lands rested on Lady Ermesande, a baby still in swaddling clothes. The Lannisters, ever alert to a heiress with no one to guard her, wed the child to Tyrek Lannister, so that her castle and title would pass quietly into their own reach the moment a Lannister spoke for her.

It is a small, cold illustration of how the great houses feed on the small: no battle, no betrayal, just a marriage arranged over a crib. Tyrek himself vanished during the bread riots in the capital and was never certainly found, leaving even that neat arrangement tangled ÔÇö an infant lady wed to a missing boy, her lands held in trust by lions.