House Slynt

A jumped-up house of a single generation, raised from the gutter to a lordship and the ruin of Harrenhal ÔÇö and cut down almost as fast at the Wall.

The fuller tale

House Slynt is the whole cynical machinery of King's Landing in one small, sordid story. Janos Slynt was a butcher's son who climbed the City Watch of the capital to its command, and learned early that gold cloaks answer to gold. For selling his loyalty ÔÇö and betraying Eddard Stark ÔÇö at the right moment, he was raised to lordship and granted Harrenhal itself, a beggar handed a castle for a well-timed treachery.

The Lannisters found him too crude to keep, and shipped the new-minted lord off to the Wall to be rid of him. There his habit of buying and bullying met a different kind of authority: when Janos Slynt refused a direct order and sneered at a boy commander, Jon Snow took his head with his own sword. The house rose and fell inside a single lifetime ÔÇö heraldry for a family that never should have had any.