Ashford

A castle and market town on the Cockleswhent, once host to a famous tourney.

The fuller tale

Ashford is a neat little castle and market town on the Cockleswhent in the southern Reach, and it owes its place in the histories to a single summer tourney held generations before the tale begins. The great meadow by the river hosted the most consequential joust ever run: a hedge knight's quarrel with a prince swelled into a trial of seven, and when the dust settled the heir to the Iron Throne lay dead of his own brother's mace, killed defending a landless nobody's cause. Every maester's history of the era pivots on that afternoon at Ashford ÔÇö the day the realm's future broke its skull for the sake of a poor man's justice, and a boy called Egg took his first steps toward a throne nobody expected him to sit.

The rebellion gave the town a second, harsher entry. Robert Baratheon's whirlwind campaign met its one check at Ashford, where the Reach's best soldier mauled his vanguard and sent the storm king reeling north toward the battle of the Bells and, eventually, the Trident ÔÇö a defeat that arguably won the war by putting Robert where the war needed him. The town itself keeps its cockleshell quiet either way: fairs on the meadow, tolls at the bridge, and a green field by the river where, if you believe the older smallfolk, a giant of a hedge knight once stood against a prince and the seven watched.

The fallen of this place ÔÇö if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground ÔÇö or none the maesters have set down.