Ashford

A castle and market town on the Cockleswhent, where Lord Ashford calls a great tourney in honor of his daughter — the field where a hedge knight's whole life turns.

The fuller tale

Ashford is a modest river seat on the Cockleswhent, and its lord — a man history otherwise has no cause to remember — did the one thing that guaranteed his name would outlast his castle: he threw a tourney for his daughter and let the whole of the Seven Kingdoms show up. For a fortnight in 209 AC the little town below Ashford’s walls swelled past bursting, its inns doubled and trebled their custom, and its lord watched from the best seats in the realm as three of the blood royal, a future Hand of the King, and a hedge knight nobody had heard of before that week rearranged the succession in his honor.

The castle itself stayed mostly a backdrop — the tourney’s business was done across the river, on the meadow that took the name and the legend — but Ashford’s hospitality is the thread that holds the story together administratively, if not emotionally. It was Lord Ashford’s law that ran during the fortnight, Lord Ashford’s master-of-games who set the lists, and Lord Ashford’s hall, presumably, where the ugly business of a prince’s broken fingers and a hedge knight’s blow was first argued over before anyone thought to call for seven champions a side. Afterward the castle went back to being what it had always been: a comfortable river seat that had, once, hosted the end of an age.

In the first season

Lord Ashford calls a tourney in his daughter's honor, and half the chivalry of the Reach answers — along with three princes, a puppet show, and a hedge knight seven feet tall.

The chronicle here

• Dunk takes Ser Arlan's arms, armor, and horses, and rides for Ashford Meadow, where Lord Ashford has called a great tourney. (S1·E1)
• Ashford Meadow opens before them: a hundred pavilions, a painted viewing stand, and the fair maid of Ashford's five champions to come. (S1·E1)
• The champions take the field: Lord Ashford's two sons, Ser Humfrey Hardyng, Ser Tybolt Lannister, and Prince Valarr Targaryen, the Young Prince. (S1·E2)
• At an inn on the road to Ashford, Dunk's plans meet a bald, sharp-tongued stableboy who washes up in a bucket, minds horses like a lordling's groom, and follows him out the door refusing to be sent home. (THK 2)
• Ashford Meadow: a hundred pavilions on the banks of the Cockleswhent. Dunk camps beneath a great elm, meets the Dornish puppeteers and the tall girl Tanselle, and watches her wooden dragon die to a wooden hero's lance. (THK 3)
• The tourney opens: Lord Ashford's two sons, Ser Humfrey Hardyng, Ser Tybolt Lannister, and Prince Valarr hold the field as champions. Prince Baelor remembers an old knight named Arlan who once unhorsed him. (THK 5)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

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

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground — or none the maesters have set down.