House Arryn of the Eyrie

Before the Andals crossed the Narrow Sea, the Vale answered to mountain kings descended from the First Men. Ser Artys Arryn's victory in what the Vale still calls the Battle of the Seven Stars broke that order — the defeated swore themselves to him, and over the centuries his name blurred with a winged knight from song said to have struck down a griffin king while riding a giant falcon.

From that victory came a crown of their own, the falcon crown, passed down through generations while the Eyrie rose on the slope of the Giant's Lance. The Vale also remembers harsher reigns, among them Osgood Arryn's, who marched his son to war against the Starks of Winterfell.

When Aegon Targaryen launched his conquest of Westeros, the Vale was the one kingdom to fight him at sea: the Arryn fleet killed Daemon Velaryon off Gulltown before Visenya, riding Vhagar, burned the victorious ships to ash. The Three Sisters used the naval disaster to throw off the Eyrie's rule.

The crown still belonged to a child, Ronnel Arryn, ruled in his name by his mother Sharra. She offered her hand to Aegon and marched an army to the Bloody Gate, but it was Visenya who settled the matter without a sword — she landed her dragon in the castle yard. When the boy king asked her, "Mother, may I fly with the pretty lady?", Sharra understood there was nothing left to say. She handed her house's three crowns to the queen, and her son went on ruling the Vale as Warden of the East, no longer as a king.

During Maegor Targaryen's reign, rumors reaching his Mistress of Whisperers, Tyanna of Pentos, placed the Arryns in secret contact with the widowed queen Alyssa Velaryon, who wanted her son Prince Aegon on the throne in his uncle's place. The prince died in his first battle before that support was ever tested.

After Maegor married Elinor Costayne, one of the new queen's sons was sent to the Eyrie as a ward. But the house soon broke with the king outright — when his nephew was proclaimed at Storm's End, the Arryns declared for him openly.

A century later, with the Targaryens split by the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon flew north seeking allies for his mother's cause. One stop was the Eyrie, where Lady Jeyne Arryn declared for Rhaenyra, her cousin through Aemma Arryn, the late king's first wife.

Snow closed the mountain roads through the Mountains of the Moon, so Jeyne sent her men by sea instead. When Rhaenyra was forced to flee King's Landing, she was urged to take shelter with her cousin in the Vale; she chose another path.

Generations later, in another Targaryen civil war — the Blackfyre Rebellion — House Arryn stood with King Daeron II. Lord Donnel Arryn's men broke against Daemon Blackfyre at the Redgrass Field, and only Brynden Rivers, arriving with his Raven's Teeth, managed to stop him.

The Arryns fared no better on the tourney field: at the tournament of Maidenpool, held before the one at Ashford, their lord fell to Ser Humfrey Hardyng.

Lord Jon Arryn raised at the Eyrie two wards who would shape the realm: Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. When King Aerys II demanded they be handed over, Jon put the Vale's strength behind Robert instead.

Before that war ended, Jon Arryn married young Lysa Tully while Eddard married her sister Catelyn. Once Robert sat the Iron Throne, Lord Jon was named Hand of the King, a post he held for fourteen years.

The Vale's recent history opens with Jon Arryn's sudden death. His widow Lysa fled to the Eyrie with their only son, Robert, and there Catelyn Stark arrived too, bringing a prisoner, Tyrion Lannister — enough to send Lysa into a panic at the thought of being dragged into the quarrel between Starks and Lannisters.

When the war turned real after Robert Baratheon's death, neither her own sister's pleas nor Robb Stark's moved Lysa out of her silence. The Vale's strength stayed home while the other kingdoms bled.

Lysa kept ignoring the Starks' pleas for help, and eventually married Petyr Baelish, sent by the Lannisters to win the Vale to their side. Littlefinger had already smuggled Sansa Stark out of King's Landing, passing her off as his bastard daughter to keep her safe.

With Lysa dead, Littlefinger declared himself Lord Protector of the Vale and Robert Arryn's guardian. The lords of the Vale did not take it well — they signed a letter demanding his removal, joined forces, and laid siege to the Eyrie, though in the end they gave him a year to prove he could raise the boy and rule the region.