Harrenhal

The greatest castle ever raised — and a ruin since Aegon's dragons melted its towers. Every house that holds it comes to grief.

The fuller tale

Harrenhal enters the Dance already cursed by its own history — no house that has held Aegon’s ruin has ever kept it long or well — and the Dance adds one more grim chapter. In these years it belongs to House Strong: Lyonel Strong sits as Hand of the King to Viserys I, and it is his son Harwin, ‘Breakbones,’ whom court gossip names as the true father of Rhaenyra’s sons — the rumor that gives the greens their sharpest weapon and Rhaenyra’s children their enemies’ favorite insult. Fire finds the family before the war does: Lyonel and Harwin both die when Harrenhal’s own halls burn, in flames the smallfolk are quick to blame on Otto Hightower’s convenient timing and quicker still to whisper Larys Strong arranged himself.

The castle passes afterward through hands that fare no better. Daemon Targaryen takes it for the blacks with a bluff and a bit of theater rather than a siege — walking in through a postern gate and letting the garrison’s own fear of dragons do the fighting — and holds the vast, half-empty ruin as his base for the war’s middle years, its five hollow towers sheltering a prince who was never much for staying still. Even occupied, Harrenhal keeps its old trick of ruining whoever sits its throne: Aemond Targaryen takes it after Daemon rides for the Gods Eye, and finds only Alys Rivers and the castle’s cold, echoing halls for company, the loneliest command of the entire war.

By the war’s end Harrenhal has done what Harrenhal always does — outlasted every family foolish enough to think they had tamed it, dragonflame and civil war alike leaving it exactly as ruined and exactly as cursed as it was the day Aegon’s dragons first melted its towers.

In the first season

Spoken of at court with a shudder — the cursed prize Lord Whent can barely afford to keep. Its melted towers loom over the God's Eye.

The chronicle here

• The Old King's council at Harrenhal chose Viserys over Princess Rhaenys — a woman would sit no throne. The realm remembers. (S1·E1)
• Ser Harwin breaks his fist on Ser Criston's face defending his... the princess's sons, and is dismissed from the Watch to Harrenhal. (S1·E6)
• Larys Strong arranges a fire at Harrenhal: his father the Hand and his brother Harwin burn, and no one owes him anything he can't collect. (S1·E6)
• Daemon flies Caraxes to Harrenhal and takes the greatest castle in Westeros without a blow; Ser Simon Strong yields it with supper. (S2·E3)
• Daemon holds a ghost-ridden Harrenhal, dosed by Alys Rivers's draughts, dreaming of everything he broke. (S2·E4)
• Daemon's Harrenhal dreams deepen; the riverlords test him, and Willem Blackwood's brutality against the Brackens does his recruiting. (S2·E5)
• At Harrenhal, Daemon's visions end in the one that matters — the Song of Ice and Fire — and when Rhaenyra lands, he kneels: her king consort, her army, hers. (S2·E8)
• The Old King's council at Harrenhal passes over Rhaenys for Viserys; a generation later Viserys passes over precedent for Rhaenyra. Aemma dies of the birthing bed, Alicent weds the king, and two courts grow inside one castle — the blacks and the greens, named for the gowns worn at a tourney. Daemon wins the Stepstones, weds Laena, loses her, and weds Rhaenyra over Laenor's convenient corpse — though the book's Laenor is truly murdered, cut down at Spicetown by his own favorite, Qarl Correy. Harrenhal burns its lord and his heir; the king rots slowly on his throne and dies whispering to no one the maesters record. (F&B 1)
• Blood and Cheese come over the walls of the Red Keep with a purse of Daemon's gold and instructions that fit in five words. Queen Helaena is made to choose among her sons; they take Jaehaerys's head regardless. The greens answer with a mummer's Cargyll: twin meets twin at Dragonstone's gates and both die of it. Daemon takes Harrenhal without a blow; Bracken and Blackwood open the war of the rivers at the Burning Mill; and Ser Criston Cole, Hand and kingmaker, marches the green host into the crownlands. (F&B 3)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

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

• Daemon Targaryen — Fell with Caraxes and Vhagar above the Gods Eye (the books' telling)
• Aemond Targaryen — Dark Sister through the eye, above the Gods Eye (the books' telling)
• Lyonel Strong — Burned at Harrenhal
• Harwin Strong — Burned at Harrenhal