The Kingswood

Long before the kingdoms that now border it existed, the Kingswood was part of a far larger forest reaching all the way to the Rainwood, back in the Dawn Age. Over the centuries that expanse broke apart, and what remained south of the Blackwater kept the name it still carries.

For a long time it belonged to the domains of the Storm Kings of House Durrandon, who held it down to the river's mouth. When House Targaryen imposed its rule over Westeros after the Conquest, the border shifted: the southern bank of the Wendwater and the southern half of the Kingswood came to mark the northern edge of the lands kept by House Baratheon of Storm's End, while the northern half of the Kingswood fell within the newly created Crownlands, ruled directly from King's Landing.

At its southern edge stands Bronzegate, seat of House Buckler, and the Wendwater runs through the forest, rising from a hidden lake among the trees. It is thick enough that a man could hide in it for decades and never be found.

The forest also saw disputes of faith and blood. During the Faith Militant uprising, the Poor Fellows clashed there with the forces of King Maegor I Targaryen, and later, in 101 AC, Prince Baelon fell ill while hunting among its trees; he died five days after.

In the years of the Dance of the Dragons, with the city starving, the smallfolk were promised the right to hunt deer, hares and rabbits in the forest, though not boar or elk. The promise did not stop Lord Borros Baratheon from seizing the capital and ending the brief Moon of the Three Kings, and outlaws hiding among the trees remained a problem through Aegon III's regency.

Later, King Aegon IV had siege dragons built to attack Dorne, and when the seven machines caught fire, they took nearly a quarter of the forest with them. The drought of 211 AC brought further fires. For years the Kingswood also sheltered the outlaw band known as the Kingswood Brotherhood, until Ser Arthur Dayne convinced the villagers to turn against them in exchange for wider grazing land, the right to fell some trees, and permission to hunt a few of the king's deer each autumn.

At some point during Robert Baratheon's reign, while the king was hunting in the Kingswood, Queen Cersei Lannister gave birth to Prince Joffrey back in King's Landing.

Years later, Robert returned to the forest to hunt a white hart said to be a wonder. The wolves reached it before the royal party did, and what the king found instead was an enormous boar that gored him badly. Robert died shortly after that hunt.

With war underway, Tyrion Lannister sent the mountain clansmen he had brought to King's Landing to settle in the Kingswood ahead of Stannis Baratheon's arrival, ready to fall on his baggage train and harry his flanks.

Both the clansmen and Stannis's vanguard, led by Ser Guyard Morrigen, set parts of the forest ablaze — one side to cut off supplies, the other to smoke the clansmen out into the open.

After the Battle of the Blackwater, the Stone Crows stayed on in the Kingswood, and what had once been woodland was left a landscape of ash and dead trunks. Sansa Stark and Margaery Tyrell saw it for themselves crossing the river on a hawking trip.

It was also among those burnt trees that Tyrion Lannister met the Dornish party bringing Oberyn Martell to the capital.