Harrenhal

The greatest castle ever raised and a ruin since Aegon's dragons melted its towers — held in this age by the ill-rumored Lothstons, mad Danelle of the black bat last of all.

The fuller tale

Harrenhal was built to be the largest castle in Westeros and became, on the very first night it mattered, a monument to the folly of building anything too large to defend against a dragon. Harren the Black spent forty years of slave labor and a river of gold raising walls meant to outlast every enemy he could imagine; Aegon’s dragons burned him, his sons, and his garrison alive inside those walls in a single evening, and every family that has held the ruin since has come, sooner or later, to a bad end that the smallfolk are only too glad to blame on the castle itself rather than on ordinary bad luck.

In Dunk and Egg’s age that grim tenancy belongs to House Lothston, and Lady Danelle — called, not affectionately, the Lady of the Black Bat — does nothing to discourage the whispers that cling to Harrenhal like damp. Whether the rumors of witchery are true matters less than the fact that they are believed without much argument; a castle with Harrenhal’s history does not get the benefit of the doubt, and neither, by association, does whoever is unlucky enough to hold it.

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.