House Peake of Starpike

Legend traces the house back to the line of Florys the Fox, one of the fabled daughters of Garth Greenhand, in the Age of Heroes; the family tree that follows reads more like a song than a chronicle, full of names such as Urrathon Shieldbreaker and Lord Emerick the Avenger. Over the centuries the Peakes fell out with the Manderlys, a feud old enough that King Gwayne III had to force both houses into a royal trial rather than let them settle it with swords.

The dispute flared again generations later, as Garth X's long reign drew to a close without a son to inherit. His two daughters had married, one into House Manderly and one into House Peake, and each lord pressed his wife's claim to the throne through treachery, plotting, and murder. Other lords of the Reach picked a side, and the fighting dragged the region into nearly a decade of anarchy.

It was Ser Osmund Tyrell, Steward of Highgarden, who ended the chaos, rallying the region's other lords against Peakes and Manderlys alike and placing a distant cousin of Garth Greybeard, Mern VI, on the throne. The Peakes came out defeated but not destroyed: they kept their lands and would matter again in the kingdom's politics.

Generations later, King Perceon III, wary of the Manderlys' growing power in the Reach, ordered Lord Lorimar Peake to drive them from their lands. Lorimar obeyed, and claimed Dunstonbury for his own house in the bargain, the third seat that would join his family's arms.

The arrangement was sealed by marriage too: one of Lorimar's daughters wed Perceon's heir, the future King Gwayne. It was only one of many such matches that, across the centuries, carried Peake women to thrones and to the halls of other great houses of the Reach.

Seven Peake women sat the Reach's throne as queens consort over the years, and others married into House Redwyne, House Rowan, House Costayne, House Oakheart, House Osgrey, House Florent, and House Hightower. The Peakes became a fixture at the side of Highgarden's kings, serving them as councillors.

That closeness to the crown ended abruptly at the Field of Fire, where Lord Armen Peake and his sons died defending the kings they served. When Aegon the Conqueror gave Highgarden to the Tyrells, the new rulers, with no blood tie to the Peakes, pushed them out of the place of honor they had held for generations: they kept their three castles, but not their standing.

In the year 43 after the Conquest, a Lord Peake led an army to crush Prince Aegon's rebellion against his uncle, King Maegor I Targaryen. Loyalty came at a price: the following year, the Warrior's Sons killed his son and heir for that same service to Maegor.

Decades later, at the Great Council of 101, another Lord Peake backed Prince Viserys's claim to the Iron Throne, adding his house's voice to the majority that settled the succession without a war.

Lord Unwin Peake threw his lot in with the Greens during the Dance of the Dragons and raised a thousand swords of his own; ambition drove him more than loyalty, the wish to restore his house to the standing it had lost generations before. He led the Briars, a group of lords who plotted against the so-called Two Traitors, and after the second battle of Tumbleton he took command of the battered Reach army and led its retreat.

The war ended without him winning a seat on young King Aegon III's council of regents, which enraged him, but Lord Corlys Velaryon's death opened the door he wanted: he became a regent and, in time, Hand of the King. He resigned the office when the king refused to marry his daughter; some of the men he had left behind at court would later plot against Aegon III, though Unwin's part in it was never proven.

Lord Gormon Peake was among the most celebrated knights of Daeron II Targaryen's reign and one of Daemon Blackfyre's staunchest supporters. When House Blackfyre lost the First Rebellion, Gormon came out of the wreck with only one of his castles, but never gave up the cause.

He rode in Daemon II Blackfyre's retinue at the Tourney of Whitewalls in 211, a gathering that would later unravel into a fresh conspiracy. Gormon was executed for treason.

In 233, the house lent its name to a rebellion of its own. The revolt cost King Maekar I Targaryen his life.

Lord Robert Reyne and Ser Tywald Lannister died alongside the king, two names that stand as a reminder of how far the house's ambition could still reach when it raised its head again after centuries of decline.