The Mander

The broadest, laziest river in Westeros, watering the endless fields of the Reach from Highgarden down to Oldtown's straits. Its banks feed half the realm ÔÇö which is why whoever holds the Mander holds the granary of the Seven Kingdoms.

The fuller tale

The Mander is the Reach's slow silver spine ÔÇö the broadest river in Westeros, rising near the Blackwater's headwaters and looping unhurried past Bitterbridge, Longtable, Cider Hall and Highgarden itself before spending into the sea among the Shield Islands. Its valley is the realm's granary: the wheat, fruit and wine that feed King's Landing and half the kingdoms travel its barges, and the tale's power politics keep rediscovering the same fact from new directions ÔÇö Renly's host eats because it camps on the Mander, Margaery arrives in the capital with the river's bounty in wagons, and every faction that courts Highgarden is really courting the water.

A river that rich has always drawn the wrong sails. The ironborn have come reaving up the Mander since the age of the old kings ÔÇö the Shield Islands at its mouth were fortified and manned for precisely that reason, four rocks of vigilance guarding the soft green interior ÔÇö and in the books the old nightmare returns on schedule: a new-crowned king of the isles takes the Shields in a stroke, and suddenly longships row where the wine barges went, deep in the garden of Westeros. The Mander's lesson is the Reach's own, learned and relearned: wealth that flows is wealth that can be boarded, and the realm's gentlest river has needed guarding more than most of its castles.

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.