Tumbleton

A market town on the upper Mander, remembered for an old dance of dragons.

The fuller tale

Tumbleton earns its place in the Dance’s history twice over, in two battles fought for the same stretch of the upper Mander within weeks of each other. The town falls first to a black-aligned force holding it against Lord Ormund Hightower’s advancing green host — and it is here, camped near Tumbleton, that Ormund’s army meets the war’s strangest ambush: not knights or infantry but dragons, ridden by baseborn ‘dragonseeds’ newly claimed from Rhaenyra’s vast, unridden hoard, who fall on the sleeping camp by night and burn it where it stands.

The dragonriders who win that victory do not keep their prize honorably. Ser Hugh Hammer and Ser Ulf White, the two dragonseeds who broke Ormund’s army, promptly turn on the town they were sent to hold — the Second Battle of Tumbleton sees the pair burn the very market town they had just saved, earning themselves the name history remembers them by: the Two Betrayers. It falls to Ser Addam Velaryon, a dragonseed still loyal to Rhaenyra’s cause, to retake the smoking ruin and put an end to Hugh Hammer’s treachery — Hammer cut down by Lord Jon Roxton while running for his own dragon, Ulf White found asleep in a tavern, having missed the entire battle for his own life.

Few single places in the Dance change hands, change sides, and change reputations as fast as Tumbleton does in the span of a single season — a market town on the Mander, remembered for a much older dance of dragons in local memory, that ends up hosting one of the newest and ugliest chapters of this one.

The chronicle here

• The queen's arithmetic: the Red Sowing gives dragons to bastards and boasters — Hugh Hammer on Vermithor, Ulf White on Silverwing, Addam of Hull on Seasmoke — and the sky belongs to the blacks. The price is paid in the Gullet, where the Triarchy's ninety ships break the blockade and Prince Jacaerys falls with Vermax into the sea. But King's Landing cannot be held against six dragons: the gates open, Rhaenyra takes her father's throne — and the Hightower host coming up the roseroad meets betrayal at Tumbleton, where the Two Betrayers burn the town they were sworn to. (F&B 5)
• Rhaenyra, sold by the garrison of Dragonstone, is given to Sunfyre in front of her son: the king watches his sister eaten, and thinks it justice. It buys him half a year. Second Tumbleton kills a Betrayer and the young Prince Daeron; Addam of Hull dies proving a bastard's honor at Second Tumbleton; and with the Wolf of the North marching south and no dragons left worth the name, Aegon II drinks poisoned wine poured by his own council. 'Let there be an end,' the lords agreed — and made one. (F&B 7)

Souls the story brings here

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

• Daeron Targaryen — Fell in the fires of Second Tumbleton (the books' telling)
• Addam of Hull — Fell at Second Tumbleton, proving a bastard's honor (the books' telling)
• Ormund Hightower — Cut down at First Tumbleton (the books' telling)
• Hugh Hammer — Knifed at Tumbleton before his crown arrived (the books' telling)
• Ulf the White — Poisoned in his sleep for treasons past counting (the books' telling)