House Westerling of the Crag

Before dragons crossed the sea, the Kings of the Rock more than once sought a wife among the daughters of the Crag. The custom left the Westerlings with royal blood in their veins, though never a crown of their own.

The house's founding is said to reach back into the Age of Heroes, when the First Men still divided the west with no king's name carved in stone. From those years they kept their pride; from the centuries that followed, less and less land.

The lord of the Crag was among the few great lords who stood with prince Aegon when he rose against his uncle, King Maegor I Targaryen. Maegor fell in 49 AC, and the crown passed to his nephew, Jaehaerys I.

As payment for that loyalty, the regent queen Alyssa Velaryon proposed the new king take a wife from among the Westerlings, the Vances, the Corbrays, or the Pipers, a gesture that placed the Crag alongside the realm's great houses.

Ten years later, in 59 AC, the sickness known as the shivers took the lord of the Crag. His liege lord, Lord Lyman Lannister of Casterly Rock, died of the same illness at nearly the same time.

With the realm split by war, one marriage changed the house's course: King Robb Stark wed Jeyne Westerling, daughter of the Crag. The marriage pulled the Westerlings out of the Lannisters' orbit and into fealty to the Starks.

Overnight, the house that for generations had served Casterly Rock rode instead within the King in the North's own retinue.

After the slaughter known as the Red Wedding, House Westerling stood marked for its part in the conspiracy against the Starks.

Even so, the Iron Throne chose to pardon them, and the Crag kept its lands, once again under the shadow of the Lannisters.