Riverrun

A three-sided castle at the meeting of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork, ancestral seat of House Tully.

The fuller tale

Riverrun in 129 AC is nominally held by Lord Grover Tully, an old man well past governing, which leaves the real weight of a Tully declaration to fall on younger hands within the house — and House Tully declares for Rhaenyra, dragging most of the riverlands with it by simple force of who its bannermen answer to. The Red Fork sees real fighting before the Dance is through: a battle is fought near Riverrun’s own waters, and the westerlands’ Lord Lannister, marching east at the head of a green army to punish Tully disloyalty, is among the dead left on the field.

Riverrun’s war is fought less with dragons than with the oldest currency of the riverlands — who a house’s neighbors already hate. The Brackens defy their liege lord and declare green precisely because the Tullys and Blackwoods are black; the rest of the region falls in behind Riverrun largely because that is what riverlands houses have always done, dragons or no dragons, since the Andals first crossed the narrow sea.

In the first season

Catelyn Stark's birthplace. By season's end the northern host camps beneath its walls — and lifts Robb Stark up as King in the North.

Souls the story brings here

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

• Jason Lannister — Fell at the crossing of the Red Fork (the books' telling)