Harrenhal

Before Harren the Black, the kings of the Isles and the Rivers lived in a modest tower-house on Fair Isle. Harren wanted something else: a castle so vast that no lord in Westeros could match it. It took forty years to raise beside the Gods Eye, and the cost fell on thousands of prisoners, who froze in winter and choked in summer while dragging stone in chains. Weirwoods three thousand years old were felled for timber, and the effort left both the Riverlands and the Iron Islands drained dry.

Harren moved into his fortress the very day Aegon Targaryen landed on the other side of the realm. When the dragons reached his gates, Harren trusted in his thick walls; he had given no thought to anything that could fly over them. He and his whole line burned to death in the castle's tallest tower, and the fire left the stone twisted and blackened just as it still looks today. Ever since, Harrenhal has been too big to garrison and too costly to keep, and some swear Harren mixed blood into the mortar — that the castle, like him, was left cursed.

After Harren's fall, several houses took their turn holding the castle, and none of them took root. When the impoverished Lord Maegor Towers could barely manage one of the five towers, King Jaehaerys I sent his widowed sister, Rhaena, to look after him. Rhaena ended up running his household until he died, and she herself died at Harrenhal in the year 73; the king had her remains burned and buried within the castle.

Jaehaerys then granted the fortress to Ser Bywin Strong, and under his house Harrenhal had its moment of real political weight: in the year 101 it hosted the great council that chose Prince Viserys as heir to the Iron Throne. Two decades later, in 120, a fire in one of the towers killed Lord Lyonel Strong, his heir, and fifteen more people of his household. Some called it an accident; others, the curse again.

When the Dance of the Dragons broke out, Ser Simon Strong handed Harrenhal over without a fight to Prince Daemon Targaryen, who turned it into a base for striking his enemies across the region. When Prince Aemond and Ser Criston Cole marched to retake it, they found the castle empty — Daemon's men were already gone. Aemond killed Simon Strong and his kin before moving on.

After the battle on the lakeshore, Criston led his troops south along the Gods Eye, while Aemond, riding Vhagar, ravaged the Riverlands and burned whatever wood still stood inside Harrenhal. Lady Sabitha Vypren, who was holding the castle at the time, survived by hiding in a privy as the dragon passed overhead. Daemon and Aemond later met above the Gods Eye: both princes died in the duel, along with Caraxes and Vhagar, and Daemon's body was never found.

With the realm still ruled by regents in the name of the boy king Aegon III, a woman named Alys Rivers seized Harrenhal and called herself the Witch Queen. She claimed to be Prince Aemond's widow and mother to his rightful heir. Knowing the truth did Ser Regis Groves no good — he did not survive the meeting. Ser Damon Darry, who had gone with him, fled back to his own castle.

Word later spread that a dragon had been seen inside Harrenhal, and in King's Landing there was even talk of raising an army to retake it. The winter fever that struck the realm in 133 put an end to those plans before they began.

In the year 281, House Whent held the most remembered tourney ever staged in Westeros, at Harrenhal. Prince Rhaegar Targaryen won it, and instead of crowning his own wife, named Lyanna Stark Queen of Love and Beauty. At that same tourney, Jaime Lannister swore his vows as a brother of King Aerys II's Kingsguard.

There was also a smaller mystery, overshadowed by Rhaegar and Lyanna: an unknown knight who fought under the device of a laughing tree and vanished from the tourney as suddenly as he had appeared, with no one ever learning who wore the armor.

When the war began, Lady Shella Whent still held Harrenhal as a vassal of the Tullys, though in truth she only occupied the ground floors of two of the five towers and left the rest empty. She fled the moment Lord Tywin Lannister marched in with his army and took the castle. From King's Landing, the regent queen Cersei tried to hand it to Janos Slynt, though her brother Tyrion overturned the grant almost at once and sent him to the Wall.

When the battle at the Blackwater was over, Tywin gave Harrenhal to Petyr Baelish, who held the title without ever actually taking possession of the place. Inside its walls, meanwhile, the castle kept changing hands, and horrors piled up with every change. On withdrawing, Tywin put Ser Amory Lorch in charge of the castle. Arya Stark got Jaqen H'ghar to free the northern prisoners who had arrived with Vargo Hoat's Brave Companions: the captives rose against the Lannisters, the Brave Companions switched sides yet again, and the castle ended up with Lord Roose Bolton, now fighting for the Starks.

Roose Bolton did not hold the castle for long. When he left, he handed it to Vargo Hoat, the mercenary captain who had helped deliver it to him, as payment for his treachery. Hoat amused himself by forcing prisoners to fight in the bear pit.

Ser Gregor Clegane took Harrenhal back for the Lannisters: old servants of Lady Whent's opened a postern gate for him, and his men poured in through it. He tortured Vargo Hoat, mutilated him — fed him his own cooked limbs — and killed him, and with that ended the Brave Companions as well. Afterward the regent queen named him her champion for a trial by combat, so he had to leave, putting Polliver in charge of the castle. With no one else in command, Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark killed Polliver at the inn by the crossroads, and the garrison was left with no master.

When Jaime Lannister finally reached Harrenhal, it was Raff the Sweetling who let him through the gates without a fight. Jaime left Ser Bonifer Hasty ruling in the crown's name, until such time as Lord Petyr Baelish chose to take possession of what was already his on paper.