Tourney at Harrenhal

Ser Barristan Selmy later traced the tourney's origin to a visit: his brother, Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard, arrived at Harrenhal, and soon after Lord Walter Whent announced ten days of jousting, framed as a tribute to his daughter.

King Aerys II Targaryen chose to attend in person, unusual for him by then. Varys had warned him that his son Rhaegar meant to use the gathering of so many lords to talk of overthrowing him, and the king preferred to watch it happen up close rather than brood alone on the Iron Throne.

The jousting filled five of the ten days. A boy of barely fifteen, Jaime Lannister, took his Kingsguard oath there on the spot, and the lists saw the arrival of an armored knight bearing no house colors, only a smiling tree upon his shield, fighting in the name of Howland Reed, a minor lord from Greywater Watch few took seriously. That knight beat three opponents and rode off without giving his name.

Lord Whent's four sons fell one after another to riders no one expected. Higher up the bracket, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen worked through everyone put in front of him: Lord Yohn Royce, Brandon Stark, Ser Arthur Dayne, and finally Ser Barristan Selmy. When the last pass ended, the heir to the Iron Throne stood as champion.

There was room for everything else too: an old-style melee among seven men, with Robert Baratheon among them, an archery contest, a horse race, an axe-throwing match, even a competition among singers. Little of it is remembered next to what happened when Rhaegar had to choose whom to crown.

As champion, the crowning of the Queen of Love and Beauty fell to Rhaegar, and everyone assumed the flower crown would land on his wife, Princess Elia Martell of Dorne, seated among the crowd. Instead Rhaegar rode past her and set the crown of winter roses on Lyanna Stark, the daughter of Winterfell.

The gesture was anything but innocent. Lyanna was betrothed to Robert Baratheon, and Rhaegar was a married man with children, his wife watching from the stands when it happened. No one at Harrenhal needed it spelled out twice — this was a scandal, the kind that doesn't fade.

A year later Lyanna vanished, and word spread that Rhaegar had taken her. The war that followed split the realm in two and ended with the Targaryens off the Iron Throne. The tourney at Harrenhal, and its crown of roses, stood afterward as the first step on a road that no one in the lists could see whole in 281.