Queenscrown
A deserted tower in a lake in the New Gift, its gilded merlons remembered in its name.
The fuller tale
Queenscrown is a round stone towerhouse on an island in a lake, reached by a hidden causeway just under the water, in the abandoned country of the New Gift. The village around it emptied generations ago as the Watch dwindled and the raids grew bolder, but the tower keeps its name from a gentler century: good Queen Alysanne stayed here on her progress north, and the villagers gilded the merlons in her honor. A crown of gold on a tower of grey, in a land with nobody left to look at it.
The story gives the empty tower one loaded night. Jon Snow shelters in it with the raiding party he has infiltrated, and Ygritte beside him, when the test he cannot pass arrives: an old man, a horse, and an order to cut a strangerÔÇÖs throat to prove himself. His refusal breaks his cover, the storm breaks over the lake, and a boy hiding in the tower above ÔÇö his own brother, closer than either will know for years ÔÇö reaches into a wolf to save him. The tale loves a near-miss, and Queenscrown stages its cruelest: two Starks under one roof, and neither knows.
The chronicle here
- At the Queenscrown the wildlings test Jon with an old man's life; he fails their test and passes his own, and rides for Castle Black with Ygritte's arrow in his leg. (ASOS 42)
