House Greyiron of Orkmont

Before the kingsmoot existed as an institution, the Greyirons of Orkmont already ruled their island under the old title of Kings of Salt and Rock. When the line of the Grey Kings died out, it was a Greyiron, Urras, who first wore the crown of all the ironborn under the new name of High King.

Urras's son Erich inherited the throne without any assembly behind him, and it cost him: when the prophet Galon threatened to kill him for sitting a throne no kingsmoot had granted him, Erich chose to step aside rather than risk his life. From then on, for generations, it was the lords and captains of the Iron Islands themselves who decided, gathering after gathering, who deserved the crown. Maester Haereg counted thirty-eight High Kings raised that way — nearly twice as many as any other dynasty ever managed on that same throne.

The custom of an elected king broke down when Urragon III died while his eldest son, Torgon, was away raiding along the Mander. Torgon's own brothers kept the kingsmoot from him, hoping one of them might take the crown instead; the assembly picked Urragon Goodbrother, who, once the throne was his, had Torgon's brothers killed one after another.

When Torgon came home to find the crown already given away and his family dead, he refused to accept it: he declared the kingsmoot unlawful and rose in revolt, backed by priests, lords, and even some of Urragon's own captains. The rebellion won him the throne, but not everything his line once held — House Mallister of Varamar took Cabo de Águilas from him, and the name Torgon the Latecomer stuck to him ever after.

Torgon did not stop at winning the war: he passed the crown to his own son without any succession kingsmoot, breaking a custom his ancestors had kept for generations. Father and son both ruled as kings in all but name, backed by the same swords that had won them the throne rather than by the consent of lords and captains.

The chronicles give that son the same name, Urragon, as the king Torgon had overthrown — whether a coincidence or a mix-up in the records, not even Archmaester Haereg's account fully untangles it.

The second Urragon hoped to hand the throne straight to his great-nephew Urron, with no assembly involved. The priests objected and forced a succession kingsmoot at Nagga's Bones, the sacred ground where the ironborn gathered to name a king.

Urron did not wait to see how the vote went: he stormed in among the assembled crowd with his own axemen, killed those who stood against him, and proclaimed himself High King by force. The maesters place this some five thousand years before the War of the Five Kings — a span so vast it says more about how old the ironborn are than it pins down an actual date.

Urron changed the rules for good: he turned the crown into something passed from father to son, so no kingsmoot was needed anymore for the next Greyiron to take it. He also swapped the crown the old High Kings had worn, carved from wood the sea had washed ashore, for one of black iron, and reduced men who had once ruled their own islands by right to mere lords; the houses that refused to bend were wiped out.

His descendants paid for that harshness: Urron Redhand and the kings after him had to put down half a dozen rebellions and at least two slave uprisings. While the ironborn fought among themselves, the lords of the mainland seized the chance to win back, one after another, the footholds the ironborn had once held in the green lands.

Still, the dynasty Urron had founded held the Iron Islands' throne for what the chronicles call "a thousand years." It ended with King Rognar II, brought down by an alliance of Andal pirates and outside sellswords joined by ironborn lords of his own — some of whom would later claim the crown themselves.

The throne then passed to the Hoares, and legend says Harras Hoare won it from Rognar over a game of the Finger Dance rather than on a battlefield. With that defeat the Greyiron dynasty went out, after a thousand years of kings first chosen and later simply born to the crown.