House Slynt

A jumped-up house of a single generation, raised from the gutter to a lordship and the ruin of Harrenhal — 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 — and betraying Eddard Stark — 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 — heraldry for a family that never should have had any.