Duskendale

An old harbor town on the north shore of Blackwater Bay, seat of House Darklyn, who were petty kings here before the dragons came.

The fuller tale

Duskendale’s Darklyns were petty kings on this harbor before the dragons ever crossed the narrow sea, and by the Dance they are simply another crownlands house whose declared loyalty follows whichever claimant currently holds King’s Landing — the old harbor town’s location on Blackwater Bay’s northern shore puts it near enough to Rook’s Rest and the capital to feel every shift in the war’s fortunes without ever quite becoming a battlefield itself.

The port’s real role in the Dance is logistical rather than martial: Duskendale sits along the coastal route between the crownlands and the more contested ground to the north, and its harbor sees the ordinary, unglamorous traffic of a kingdom at war — supplies, messengers, and refugees moving along a coastline that dragons occasionally set alight but that soldiers, mostly, simply pass through.

The chronicle here

• Criston Cole takes Duskendale — Lord Darklyn keeps his loyalty and loses his head — then marches on Rook's Rest by night. (S2·E4)
• Cole takes Duskendale and Rook's Rest by march and treachery; the trap at Rook's Rest is the war's first dragonfall. Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, answers the castle's ravens and finds two dragons waiting: Aegon on Sunfyre the Golden and Aemond on Vhagar. Meleys the Red Queen dies with her teeth in Sunfyre's throat; the king falls with her, burned half to nothing, and the realm passes to the regent Aemond — one eye, one dragon, no restraint. (F&B 4)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

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

• Criston Cole — Three arrows at the Butcher's Ball (the books' telling)
• Gunthor Darklyn — Beheaded by the Hand at Duskendale