Lamentation

A Valyrian sword held by one of the oldest First Men houses in the Vale.

The blade itself

Lamentation is a Valyrian longsword and almost nothing about its appearance survives in any account worth trusting. What can be said is generic and true: dark steel with the drowned-water ripple running through it, a weight that surprises anyone who picks it up expecting a normal sword, an edge that has outlived every man who ever admired it, and a name that suggests its earlier owners were not sentimental people.

It cannot be replaced. That sentence is the whole of Valyrian steelÔÇÖs meaning in Westeros ÔÇö the Freehold is a poisoned ruin, the craft is gone, and the number of blades in the world only ever goes down. It is why a sword like this ends up meaning more to a family than most of their land does.

The bronze house

House Royce of Runestone are First Men to the bone and have never let anyone forget it. They wear ancient bronze armour carved over with runes that nobody now living can properly read, they hold a seat older than the Andal invasion, and their pride is a byword even in the Vale, which is a region built out of pride. Yohn Royce ÔÇö Bronze Yohn ÔÇö is the head of the house in living memory and one of the few lords in the Vale whom everyone, including his enemies, takes entirely seriously.

That such a house carries a sword out of Valyria is a small monument to how thoroughly the two cultures eventually mixed. The Royces resisted the Andals, lost, absorbed them, and ended up holding an Andal-era luxury alongside the runed bronze of the people who were there first. Nobody at Runestone appears to find this contradictory.

Very little else

It would be padding to pretend Lamentation has a story. It does not. There is no famous duel, no theft, no disappearance, no king who carried it into a ruin ÔÇö only a very old family holding a very old sword in a mountainous corner of the realm that has spent most of the recent wars deliberately sitting them out. If the Vale ever commits its considerable strength to something, the blade will presumably be at the front of it. Until then, the most interesting thing about Lamentation is that it exists at all, in the hands of the one house in Westeros least likely to have bought it from anyone.

What became of it ÔÇö if an ending is written, it is here. Spoilers.

The chronicle records no ending here ÔÇö or none the maesters have set down.