Raventree Hall

Behind the castle's old stone walls, green with moss, lie a muddy yard, a deep woodshed, and a godswood that is really the heart of the place. Two square towers once flanked the gate, with another at each corner of the wall; little remains of those defenses now, less even than what's left of the tree that gives the castle its name.

At the center of the godswood stands a colossal weirwood, dead for generations, yet still the reason hundreds of ravens settle in its branches every night, a custom the Blackwoods say has held for thousands of years. Rumor blames the Brackens for poisoning the tree, a charge never proven but one that has kept centuries of bad blood alive between the two houses.

In 79 AC, Queen Alysanne Targaryen came to Raventree Hall with her daughter Daella. The queen hoped to see Daella married to Royce Blackwood, heir to the house, but the girl refused: her devotion to the Old Gods mattered more to her than any dynastic match.

When Aegon III's reign was still young, after the end of the Dance of the Dragons, Raventree Hall hosted one of several Widows' Fairs held around that time. Women of the region who had lost their husbands to the war ended up married to northmen who had stayed on in the south.

In 137 AC, Lord Torrhen Manderly, then Hand of the King, planned a progress through the realm for young Aegon III and his queen. After leaving the Twins, the party would stop at Raventree Hall as guests of Lord Benjicot Blackwood before moving on to Stone Hedge, taking care not to slight the Brackens.

The plan never happened: once Aegon came of age, he stripped Lord Torrhen of the Handship, and the planned journey went with it.

With Lord Blackwood away from the castle, House Lannister seized the chance to take Raventree Hall during the War of the Five Kings, and the stronghold stayed in enemy hands as the war ground on through the Riverlands.

Among the prisoners held there in those years was Ser Garth Greenfield.

Lord Jonos Bracken laid siege to Raventree Hall, set on destroying the Blackwoods while the rest of the realm bled itself dry in the war. Lord Karyl Vance begged Ser Jaime Lannister to step in, certain that Lord Tytos Blackwood would never surrender to a Bracken on his own.

Ser Jaime Lannister finally reached Raventree Hall and achieved what Bracken's siege had not: he talked Lord Tytos Blackwood into laying down his arms. As surety that Lord Tytos would keep the peace, Jaime took his son Hoster with him as a hostage.

With that surrender, Raventree Hall became the last holdout in the Riverlands to bend the knee to King Tommen, after the Red Wedding broke the Stark cause and Riverrun and Fairmarket had already yielded to the crown.