The Twins

Two matched castles bridging the Green Fork. Lord Frey of the Crossing brings his daughter to Whitewalls to wed Lord Butterwell — and his sharp-tongued little heir along with her.

The fuller tale

The Twins are two matched castles joined by a single bridge across the Green Fork, and House Frey has made an entire family fortune out of controlling the crossing — every merchant, army, and wedding party that wants to move quickly between the riverlands’ north and south pays the toll one way or another, in coin if not always in courtesy. It is to Whitewalls that the current Lord Frey travels in the Mystery Knight, delivering a daughter to wed Lord Butterwell and, tagging along for the occasion, a small and startlingly sharp-tongued heir who spends the wedding making a thorough nuisance of himself among guests considerably more important than a four-year-old has any right to irritate.

That child is worth a second look, because the tales are quietly, deliberately introducing him: the same boy who mocks his betters at Whitewalls without a flicker of shame will grow, across the coming decades, into the Lord Frey the realm eventually learns to fear rather than laugh at — a man whose sense of a slight, once earned, is never, ever allowed to lapse. The Twins in this era are simply a well-tolled bridge; what the family becomes, the wedding at Whitewalls has already shown a glimpse of, to anyone paying attention to the noisy little boy underfoot.

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.