The Arbor

Off the southwestern coast of Westeros, washed by the Sunset Sea, lies a fertile island that belongs to the Reach and is ruled by House Redwyne from its seat. Its slopes yield a red wine famous across half the continent, alongside a golden vintage with a reputation of its own, and its shores hold the town of Villaparra and a handful of smaller ports. Around the main island floats a scatter of islets, among them the Palacio de la Sirena.

That same agricultural wealth carries commercial weight: a good share of the ships sailing Westerosi waters are built or launched from its harbors. And from there comes something rarer still — a war fleet so large that only the king's own surpasses it, naval strength that counts for as much as the harvest when ranking the island among the great powers of the Reach.

Long before the Reach existed in the shape it has today, the ironborn ruled the whole coast of the Sunset Sea, from the Frozen Shore down to this very island. That grip lasted for generations, until Gerold Lannister, lord of Casterly Rock known as the Great, dealt them a defeat that broke their hold on these waters. Even so, peace did not fully follow: an ironborn king, Joron Blacktyde the First, put the island to fire and sword and carried off every woman under thirty he could seize.

For a time the island had its own crown and its own kings. That line ended when the last of them was lost at sea without an heir, and it was his cousin, Meryn Gardener, third of his name and then ruler of the Reach, who claimed the island and folded it into his kingdom.

While Aegon and Visenya Targaryen were still young, they traveled to the Arbor as guests of Lord Redwyne and spent time there hawking, long before either of them had conquest on their minds.

Years later, in the middle of the war for the Seven Kingdoms, Aegon meant to head south and subdue Oldtown, this island and Dorne as soon as Harlen Tyrell surrendered Highgarden to him. But word that Torrhen Stark was marching down from the north made him change course, and the Arbor was spared, for the time being, a landing by the conqueror.

Once he was king, Aegon spent a good part of every year traveling his realm, and the Arbor became a regular stop on those progresses, journeys to which he came to give half his time.

In the year 54, while waiting in Oldtown for septon Alfyn to arrive and be consecrated as the new High Septon, King Jaehaerys Targaryen used the free time to fly to the Arbor on Vermithor. He spent the visit tasting some of the island's most praised wines.

A year later, when Princess Aerea Targaryen vanished and the widowed queen Rhaena searched the length of Westeros for her, sightings of her dragon Dreamfyre were reported over the Arbor, one of the many places that search passed through.

Lord Alyn Velaryon also stopped at the Arbor, a guest of Lord Redwyne, when the first of his great voyages carried him toward the Iron Islands.

Later, during the reign of Aerys I, the island suffered a drought so severe that the grapes withered on the vine before they could be picked, and in those same years the ironborn took the chance to harry its shores.

Generations after that, Prince Oberyn Martell and his sister Elia passed through the Arbor on their way to Casterly Rock, where their mother hoped to marry them off to the Lannister twins.

After the fall of the Shield Islands, the ironborn carried the war to the Arbor itself. The fleet the Redwynes had left behind to defend the island could not hold against the attack and was destroyed.

With that defense swept away, the iron fleet pushed through the Whispering Sound and struck at Oldtown, carrying the siege far beyond where anyone had expected it to reach.