The Twins

Seat of House Frey

Two matched castles bridging the Green Fork, whose tolls have made cranky old Walder Frey rich and proud.

The fuller tale

The Twins are a toll booth that grew into a power. Six hundred years ago the first Frey threw a bridge over the Green Fork at its narrowest crossing and charged for the privilege; the matched castles that grew at either end ÔÇö squat, ugly, identical, joined by the arched Water Tower over the span ÔÇö have been collecting ever since. It is the only crossing of the Green Fork for leagues in either direction, which means every army, merchant and season pays the Freys eventually. Six centuries of tolls bought wealth beyond most great houses and respect beyond none, and the gap between the two is the whole psychology of House Frey.

Old Walder Frey has outlived seven wives and every social nicety, breeding a small nation of descendants in his double castle and nursing a precise ledger of every slight the older houses ever paid him. The war makes his bridge briefly the most valuable object in Westeros: Robb Stark must cross, and Catelyn negotiates the toll ÔÇö two marriages, promised under the TwinsÔÇÖ towers. The whole tale that follows hangs on the difference between what a Frey bargain costs and what it is worth.

What happens when the bargain breaks needs no retelling beyond its name. Under the roof of the Twins, behind the bread and salt of guest right, the war of the Five Kings is ended at a wedding feast ÔÇö a slaughter planned in the castleÔÇÖs own halls, with the crossingÔÇÖs garrison as the executioners and the Rains of Castamere for a signal. In one night the Twins buy back every century of condescension at the price of every law the old gods and new agree on. Guest right was the load-bearing custom of a lawless age; the Twins are where it died, and the whole realm ÔÇö enemies of the Starks included ÔÇö never forgives the place.

The castles spend the rest of the tale as the storyÔÇÖs haunted house: rich, defended, and cursed in the only way that matters, in reputation. The reckoning, when it comes, arrives wearing a familiar face and serving the Freys a feast of their own ÔÇö the taleÔÇÖs tidiest cruelty, delivered exactly where the debt was contracted.

The page and the screen

The Red Wedding differs in its casualties and its aftermath. Book Robb leaves his queen behind and she survives; the show marries him to Talisa and murders her, unborn child first, at the feast. Book CatelynÔÇÖs last act is killing the lackwit hostage Jinglebell when Walder laughs off her bargain; the show gives her FreyÔÇÖs young wife. And the vengeance divides cleanly: the show sends Arya to cut WalderÔÇÖs throat and poison his sons at a second feast, while the books answer with Lady Stoneheart hanging Freys from riverland trees and Lord ManderlyÔÇÖs wedding pies ÔÇö slower justice, same address.