House Hightower of the Hightower

Before the Seven Kingdoms existed, the Hightowers already ruled Oldtown as petty kings, and tradition traces them back to the Age of Dawn. Maester disagree on their origin: some hold them for First Men, others believe they descended from traders and sailors who settled the upper Whispering Sound. They lived first in a black-stone stronghold, Battle Isle, at the mouth of the Honeywine, and only later raised four wooden beacon towers above it.

King Uthor of the Hightower commissioned a fifth tower, this one built wholly of stone — some say by Brandon the Builder, or perhaps his son — and Uthor's own sons, Urrigon and Peremore, helped found what would become the Citadel. The city endured constant raids, from the Iron Islands, from Dorne, from the Reach's own Gardener kings, and each attack left behind higher walls and sturdier towers. Oldtown never fell to the Gardeners by conquest: it passed to them by marriage, when King Lymond wed his daughter to Garland II's heir, who set aside his other wives for Lymond's daughter.

When the Andals invaded, the Hightowers backed the right side and kept their lands, wealth and privileges. Sheltered afterward by Highgarden, they favored trade over war and grew richer with every generation. They were among the first great lords to embrace the Faith of the Seven, and their money raised the High Septon's settlement and later the Starry Sept. Centuries afterward, a Lord Commander of the Night's Watch from their line, Runcel Hightower, tried and failed to pass the command to his bastard son.

When Aegon the Conqueror landed in the Reach, Lord Manfred Hightower listened to the High Septon before his own liege, Mern IX Gardener, and did not march to the Field of Fire. When the conqueror reached Oldtown's gates, Manfred opened them without a fight.

Aegon left the city untouched. In return, the High Septon anointed him and recognized House Targaryen as rightful rulers of the Seven Kingdoms, a gesture that smoothed the conquest as much on the religious front as on the military one.

The High Septon opposed Prince Maegor marrying his own sister Rhaena and proposed a Hightower instead: his niece Ceryse, Lord Manfred's daughter. Maegor and Ceryse wed in 25 AC. Fourteen years later, when Maegor decided to take a second wife, claiming Ceryse could not give him children, Lord Manfred openly opposed the match.

Maegor eventually left Westeros for exile, and not even Septon Murmison could get Ceryse with child. She returned to her family in Oldtown. In 43 AC, after the High Septon died in circumstances never explained, Lord Martyn Hightower — who had succeeded his father Manfred two years earlier — handed the city over to the Targaryens, and his brother Ser Morgan was the only Poor Fellow Maegor spared. That same year the king and Ceryse reconciled; she returned to King's Landing, where she died in 45 AC.

In 47 AC King Maegor sent the young princess Rhaella, daughter of the late Prince Aegon and Queen Rhaena, to Oldtown to be raised as a septa. The following year, when Rhaena fled Maegor in the night, the king sent a rider to Oldtown ordering the girl beheaded as punishment for her mother's flight. Lord Hightower refused, imprisoned the messenger, and declared for Prince Jaehaerys.

In 56 AC, of the three ships that sailed with Elissa Farman across the Sunset Sea, only Eustace Hightower's returned. In 85 AC Lord Hightower sent men to search for the runaway Princess Saera Targaryen. In 89 AC he held a tourney in Oldtown to honor King Jaehaerys I during one of his royal progresses.

After being widowed by her first husband, Rhaena herself married Garmund Hightower, with whom she had six daughters.

When the crown split between the Greens and the Blacks, the Hightowers did not hesitate: the dowager queen Alicent and her father Otto, King Aegon II's first Hand, led the Green cause from King's Landing. One of Otto's sons, Ser Gwayne, was second-in-command of the City Watch. Otto and Gwayne both died when the capital fell, and Alicent was taken prisoner by Rhaenyra.

From the Reach, Lord Ormund Hightower — Otto's nephew — led the other Green army, with his cousin Hobert at his side. Three of the Hightowers' bannermen houses, the Costaynes among them, fought for the other side. Ormund knighted Prince Daeron after the Battle of Honeywine, and his host later fought at Grey Gardens and Bitterbridge. Ormund fell at the Battle of the Slope to Lord Roderick Dustin; Hobert, a poor commander but no coward, sacrificed himself during the poisoning of Ser Ulf the White at the second Battle of the Slope, and it was Lord Unwin Peake who led the remnants of the Hightower army out.

Ormund's son, Lord Lyonel, inherited the lordship and soon caused a scandal by announcing he would marry his own widowed stepmother, Lady Samantha Tarly, which the High Septon denounced as incest. After the collapse of the Rogare Bank in 136 AC, it was she who founded the Bank of Oldtown.

During the Blackfyre Rebellion the Hightowers could not agree among themselves: some fought for the king, others for the pretender. Generations later, Ser Abelar Hightower challenged Prince Valarr Targaryen in the first tilt of the Ashford tourney, and lost.

Prince Oberyn Martell and his sister Elia passed through Oldtown on their way to Casterly Rock, where their mother was negotiating Elia's marriage to the Lannister twins. There they met Baelor Hightower, whom Oberyn laughed at after he broke wind in front of him. Years later, Lord Tywin Lannister offered his youngest son, Tyrion, as a husband for one of Leyton Hightower's daughters; Leyton refused.

During Robert's Rebellion, the Hightowers stayed loyal to King Aerys II and House Targaryen until there was nothing left to defend. Ser Gerold Hightower, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, died fighting at the Tower of Joy. When the Targaryens fell, the house swore fealty to the new king, Robert Baratheon, along with the rest of the realm.

Lord Leyton later attended a tourney at Lannisport to watch his sons joust, bringing his daughter Lynesse with him. There Lynesse met Lord Jorah Mormont, whom she married shortly after.

When the War of the Five Kings broke out, the Hightowers followed the lead of their liege lords, the Tyrells, and backed Renly Baratheon. After Renly was murdered, they did not switch their allegiance to Stannis.

After the Battle of the Blackwater, King Joffrey's small council parceled out some of the losers' lands among the victors, and Lord Leyton Hightower received his share. With the Tyrells now allied to the Lannisters, Alerie Hightower traveled to King's Landing for Margaery's wedding to Joffrey, the night the king died poisoned. She later returned to the capital for Lord Tywin Lannister's funeral and to see Margaery married again, this time to the young King Tommen.

When the ironborn seized the Shield Islands, Hightower caution turned into preparation. Old Lord Leyton shut himself in his tower with Malora, absorbed in his books, and divided tasks among his sons: Baelor built ships, Gunthor strengthened the harbor defenses, Garth drilled men, and Humfrey sailed for Lys to hire sellsails. A first attack on Oldtown's harbor was beaten back, but the city remained under threat.