Lys

An island Free City of perfumed gardens, famed for its pleasure houses and its poisons.

The fuller tale

Lys the Lovely drowses on its islands in the warm southern sea, all perfumed gardens and colonnaded bathhouses, founded by Valyrians as a retreat for the FreeholdÔÇÖs wealthy and never quite done being one. The old blood runs purest here ÔÇö pale skin, silver-gold hair, eyes of purple and blue ÔÇö and the city has made its inheritance its industry: the pleasure houses of Lys are famed across two continents, their most beautiful slaves bred, the traders say, like prize horses, and sold for the price of manors. Lysene worship centers on a love goddess whose service and the cityÔÇÖs commerce are not easily told apart. It is a soft city with a hard ledger ÔÇö everything lovely in Lys is owned.

Its other export is quieter. Lysene alchemists brew the tears of Lys, a poison without color, taste or trace that dissolves the bowels and reads as a natural death ÔÇö and it is a dose of the tears, administered to Jon Arryn, that kills the Hand of the King and sets the entire story moving. The city seeds the tale with its children, too: Varys, the realmÔÇÖs master of whisperers, was born a slave in Lys before a sorcererÔÇÖs knife and his own genius remade him, and the merry pirate Salladhor Saan, self-styled prince of the narrow sea, lends Stannis his fleet at Blackwater and Davos his friendship at a price. Pleasure, poison and intelligence ÔÇö Lys deals in everything that works best unseen.

The chronicle here

• King Robert rides to Winterfell and asks Ned to be his Hand; the letter from Lysa accuses the Lannisters of murder. (S1┬ÀE1)
• Lysa Arryn marries Littlefinger within the hour of his arrival ÔÇö and shrieks the truth of Jon Arryn's murder. (S4┬ÀE5)
• Lysa sees a kiss in the snow and holds Sansa over the Moon Door; Littlefinger holds Lysa over it longer. (S4┬ÀE7)
• Lysa's secret letter arrives accusing the Lannisters of murdering Jon Arryn; Ned resolves to go south, and Jon will go to the Wall. (AGOT 7)
• Up the mountain road to the Eyrie, through the Bloody Gate ÔÇö where Lysa's welcome is madness, and Tyrion is given to the sky cells. (AGOT 35)
• Tywin's council reorders the realm like a ledger: Littlefinger is priced at the Vale and Lysa Arryn, and Tyrion inherits a wedding's bills and a city's drains. (ASOS 13)
• The Fingers and a wedding: Lysa Arryn gets her Petyr at last, shrieking joy through the night, and Sansa becomes Alayne Stone, the Lord Protector's bastard daughter. (ASOS 69)
• Snow falls in the Eyrie's garden: a castle built of memories, an unwanted kiss witnessed ÔÇö and Lysa raving at the Moon Door until Petyr's ÔÇ£only CatÔÇØ sends her through it. (ASOS 81)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

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.