Samantha Tarly

Samantha was born in 113 AC, the eldest child of Lord Donald Tarly and Lady Jeyne Rowan. She had a younger sister, Sansara, with whom she would later exchange letters on matters of state.

As a young woman she crossed the Reach to Oldtown to marry Lord Ormund Hightower, a widower considerably older than her who already had several children from an earlier marriage. Among them was Lyonel, the eldest, only two years younger than Samantha herself, who was smitten with his new stepmother from the day she arrived at the Hightower.

When the Dance of the Dragons broke out, the civil war between the supporters of Aegon II and those of Rhaenyra Targaryen, her parents' houses sided with the queen, while her husband kept his loyalty to the king. The couple thus found themselves on opposite sides without the marriage itself appearing to suffer for it.

In 130 AC Lord Ormund fell at the Battle of Ladera, and his stepson Lyonel inherited the lordship of the Hightower. With the throne now held by the boy king Aegon III and his regents, Samantha stopped resisting the siege Lyonel had been laying for years. Before giving in, she set one condition: that he swear loyalty to the new king, for she could not bear to bury a second husband over a war not her own. Lyonel severed his house's old ties to the Greens and bent the knee.

Soon after, Lyonel announced he would marry his father's widow. The news spread through Oldtown like wildfire. The High Septon forbade the marriage as incestuous and decreed that Samantha join the Silent Sisters to atone for her sin.

Neither of them obeyed. Lyonel gave up the marriage but not Samantha, who stayed at his side without the title of wife for thirteen years; they had six children before a new High Septon, chosen at the Starry Sept, lifted the ban and allowed them to marry.

In 131 AC, Lyonel and Samantha arrived in King's Landing with two score men of the Hightower to pay homage to the new king Aegon III and attend his coronation. Their relationship, forbidden by the Faith though it was, was already an open secret, and the scandal ran so deep that the High Septon refused to travel with them, arriving three days later escorted by Lords Redwyne, Costayne, and Beesbury, and on the return journey again sought a party separate from theirs.

The years did nothing to soften the standoff between Samantha and the Faith. The High Septon eventually condemned her as an indecent fornicator and barred her from the Starry Sept until she repented.

Samantha answered by riding a warhorse straight into the sept while the septon led the prayers. When he demanded an explanation, she pointed out that they had only barred her own feet from the sept, nothing had been said of a horse's hooves, and ordered her knights to bar the doors: if she could not enter, no one would. The High Septon cursed and called her a "whore on horseback," but gave in in the end.

In 133 AC the young queen Jaehaera Targaryen died in King's Landing. The Hand of the King moved to put forward his own daughter as her replacement, but half the court rushed to propose rival candidates. Samantha wrote a letter championing her sister Sansara, calling her "lively and strong" and noting that she "has read more books than half the maesters of the Citadel."

She also described her sister-in-law Bethany Hightower as "very beautiful, with soft skin, glossy hair, and exceedingly delicate manners," though she did not hold back that she thought her "lazy and a bit simple." She suggested the king marry both: one to rule at his side as Queen Alysanne once had beside Jaehaerys, and the other for "bed and breeding." For good measure, she added thirty-one more maidens of the Reach to the list, and did not rule out proposing male candidates if that was the king's inclination.

When Lord Alyn Velaryon passed through the Hightower on his way to Lannisport and the Westerlands, he treated Samantha with a courtesy Lyonel never forgot. Out of that meeting grew a friendship between the two young men that went a long way toward mending old grudges between the former Blacks and Greens.

In 136 AC, Lyonel and Samantha rode from Oldtown to King's Landing with six hundred vassals for an assembly called to settle the regency of the still-young Aegon III. Around that same time, the collapse of the Rogare Bank ruined many Westerosi houses and put the Lysene family that had run it on trial.

The Hightowers, who had never deposited gold in the Lysene bank, emerged unscathed and remained among the wealthiest houses in the realm. Samantha took under her wing Lotho Rogare, one of the condemned men, left handless by the trial, and with his help learned to put the family fortune to work. Out of that grew the Bank of Oldtown, which swelled the Hightower coffers even further.