The Trident

The greatest river of Westeros, gathered from its three branches — the Red Fork, Green Fork and Blue Fork — and running to the Bay of Crabs. Its Ruby Ford is named for the stones struck from Rhaegar Targaryen's breastplate when Robert's warhammer ended a dynasty there. Every war in the realm's memory has been fought across its crossings.

The fuller tale

The Trident is the riverlands’ reason and their ruin: the great three-branched river — Red Fork, Green Fork, Blue Fork — that gathers the region’s waters and its wars alike, running down to the Bay of Crabs past every ford and ferry an army could want. The land it drains is the richest and least defensible in Westeros, which is why the riverlords have knelt to five different crowns and hosted everyone’s battles; whoever marches on anyone, the Trident is generally in the way.

One ford owns the river’s name in history. At the Ruby Ford, Robert’s warhammer caved in Rhaegar Targaryen’s breastplate and scattered its rubies in the shallows — the single stroke that ended three centuries of dragon kings, remembered so vividly that smallfolk still pan the crossing for gemstones. The story’s wars keep returning to the same waters: armies racing for the crossings, a girl and a hound moving through its burned hinterland, and the river collecting its tolls impartially, as it has from every king since the First Men.

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

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