Harrenhal

The burned giant

The greatest castle ever raised ÔÇö and a ruin since Aegon's dragons melted its towers. Every house that holds it comes to grief.

The fuller tale

Harrenhal is the biggest castle in Westeros and the realmÔÇÖs longest-running cautionary tale. Harren the Black spent forty years and three generations of riverlands misery raising walls too high to storm and towers too big to believe ÔÇö and completed it the day Aegon the Conqueror landed. Stone does not burn, but it cracks, and dragonfire hot enough turned HarrenÔÇÖs towers to candle-wax with the king and all his line inside. What stands over the Gods Eye ever since is a monument to exactly the wrong lesson: five melted towers, galleries built for a garrison no house can afford, and the largest hall in Westeros with nobody in it.

Then there is the curse, which the maesters call coincidence and the evidence declines to. Every house granted Harrenhal has withered ÔÇö Qoherys, Harroway, Towers, Strong, Lothston, Whent, each line extinguished or ruined in its turn ÔÇö until the castleÔÇÖs name became a shorthand: gifts of Harrenhal are gifts you should refuse. Even its brightest hour is a fuse. The great tourney of the false spring, the most splendid ever held, is where Rhaegar Targaryen rode past his own wife to crown Lyanna Stark with winter roses ÔÇö and every war of the storyÔÇÖs generation trails back to that field.

The war makes Harrenhal what it was always going to be: a torture house wearing a crown. Tywin Lannister stables his army in it; the MountainÔÇÖs men fill its cells with the riverlandsÔÇÖ walking dead; and among the servants, invisible, a Stark daughter carries wine and memorizes faces. AryaÔÇÖs Harrenhal chapters are the sagaÔÇÖs descent into the warÔÇÖs cellar ÔÇö the place where the grand strategy upstairs is revealed as bodies downstairs ÔÇö and her exit, with a coin and three whispered names, is the castleÔÇÖs one recorded jailbreak by way of the god of death.

The castle changes hands like a bad debt ÔÇö Lannister to Bolton to whichever sellsword company will garrison a ruin ÔÇö and its title is handed to Littlefinger precisely because the title is the only part of Harrenhal that still works: a paper lordship grand enough to make a jumped-up customs man eligible to marry a great house. That is the castleÔÇÖs final joke. Harren built the largest fortress in the world, and its last useful function is as a line in someoneÔÇÖs marriage negotiation.

In the taleÔÇÖs architecture Harrenhal is the anti-Winterfell and the anti-Wall at once: the castle built for pride rather than purpose. The Wall holds because it means something; Winterfell holds because it is loved. Harrenhal ÔÇö vast, invincible, empty ÔÇö falls to every current of the war because it means nothing to anyone, and the story keeps it standing as the price tag of that nothing.

The page and the screen

HarrenhalÔÇÖs wartime cast differs between tellings. The show promotes Arya to cupbearer for Tywin Lannister himself, spinning a celebrated two-hander of dramatic irony that exists nowhere on the page; book Arya serves the castle under the brutal Weese and later pours wine for Roose Bolton, and engineers the castleÔÇÖs change of hands through the weasel soup ÔÇö freeing northern prisoners to seize it, an entire plot the show drops. The booksÔÇÖ Brave Companions, Vargo HoatÔÇÖs sellsword grotesques who rule the castleÔÇÖs worst chapters, are condensed on screen into the Bolton man Locke.

The chronicle here

Yoren dies defending his recruits; Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie are dragged to Harrenhal as prisoners. (S2┬ÀE3)
Robb wins at Oxcross; the West bleeds and Tywin falls back to Harrenhal. (S2┬ÀE4)
Arya spends her last death buying an exit: Jaqen empties Harrenhal's gate instead. (S2┬ÀE8)
Walder Frey's price arrives at Riverrun: an apology, Harrenhal, and Edmure at the altar. (S3┬ÀE6)
The captives are marched to Harrenhal; when Lommy Greenhands cannot walk, Raff the Sweetling answers his plea for carrying with a spear. (ACOK 20)
A drudge in Harrenhal, Arya whispers her list of names; Jaqen H'ghar owes the Red God three lives, and Chiswyck falls from a wall to pay the first. (ACOK 27)
Weasel soup: Jaqen, Rorge and Biter serve Harrenhal's garrison to the northmen, and the castle changes hands to Roose Bolton without a battle. (ACOK 31)
Harrenhal under Bolton: Arya becomes the lord's cupbearer; Jaqen pays his last debt, offers her the iron coin, and changes his face. Valar morghulis. (ACOK 39)
Roose Bolton's Harrenhal is no kinder than the Mountain's; Arya hears the northmen's plans and weighs Jaqen's lesson ÔÇö a girl can free herself. (ACOK 48)
Arya takes a map, a knife, and two companions out of Harrenhal's postern; the Bolton guard at the gate learns what Needle is for. (ACOK 65)
Victory court: Joffrey sets Sansa aside for Margaery Tyrell to the cheers of both; Dontos whispers patience, and Littlefinger collects Harrenhal. (ACOK 66)
Maimed and fevered, Jaime is dragged to Harrenhal behind the Goat; Qyburn saves the arm, and spite does the rest ÔÇö he will live, if only to be avenged. (ASOS 32)
In Harrenhal's bathhouse the Kingslayer bleeds out the truth at last: wildfire under the city, a mad king's last command, and the oath that broke his oaths. (ASOS 38)
A dream under a weirwood stump turns Jaime's horse around: back to Harrenhal, where a bear pit is singing ÔÇö the bear, the bear, and the maiden fair. (ASOS 45)