House Ryswell

Horse-lords of the Rills in the western North, a house of many branches and many colours whose daughters married cannily into greater power.

The fuller tale

House Ryswell holds the Rills, the rolling horse country of the western North, and breeds some of the finest mounts north of the Neck. The house is oddly fond of variety ÔÇö its members fly the running horse-head in different colours according to their branch, red, grey, brown, black and gold, as if unable to agree on a single banner.

The Ryswells' real weapon has always been marriage. Lord Roose Bolton took a Ryswell to wife, and the shrewd, bitter Lady Barbrey Dustin was born a Ryswell of the Rills ÔÇö which places the horse-lords quietly at the elbow of the North's most dangerous schemers during the ruin of the Starks, a middling house punching well above its weight through the beds of its daughters.