House Baelish of Harrenhal

King Joffrey I rewarded Petyr Baelish with the lordship of Harrenhal, payment for quietly arranging the king's own marriage to Margaery Tyrell. With that appointment, in the year 299 after the Conquest, a new house was born, split off from the old line of the Fingers.

The title came without an army or any standing among the river lords: Baelish inherited stone and name, not loyalties already built. Harrenhal passed into the hands of a lord from the Fingers, a house far lesser than the great lines that had once held that castle.

The fall of House Tully opened the door to a second title: once that family was driven from Riverrun, the crown split their lands and handed Baelish command of the whole Trident, under the name Lord Paramount. Harrenhal stopped being a single prize and became the seat of an entire region.

That power carried no generations of sworn bannermen behind it: only weeks before, those lands had belonged to the Tullys. The lord from the Fingers now ruled a whole territory without the custom that time gives, only the still-warm favor of the court.