The Three Sisters

In the old days the islanders did not worship the Old Gods of the Children of the Forest: they prayed to the Lady of the Waves and the Lord of the Skies, and it is said they threw dwarfs into the sea as offerings. The arrival of the Andals and the Faith of the Seven put an end to that practice.

Before that, the islands were free and ruled by their own kings, who sent longships to raid the Bite, the Narrow Sea and the Shivering Sea, and to take slaves. They once seized the Wolf's Den in the north and held it as a base, and struck the eastern shore of the Riverlands too. It was King Theon Stark who finally brought the three islands to heel.

The maesters say that, some two thousand years ago, the North invaded the islands in revenge, in an episode remembered as the Rape of the Three Sisters. The islanders submitted to the Eyrie to be rid of the northmen, and that ended the age of native kings. Villahermana, the largest port, still keeps that memory, and some there still resent northmen for it.

For a thousand years, the Arryns — Kings of Mountain and Vale — and the Starks — Kings in the North — fought over the islands in what is called the War Across the Water, and left the Sisters' coffers and resources spent. Pirate lords from the islands and slavers out of the Stepstones also struck at the Wolf's Den more than once. In time, rather than go back to piracy, the islanders turned to wrecking other men's ships and to smuggling, a trade they have kept up for centuries.

When Aegon Targaryen set foot in Westeros, the islands turned their backs on Ronnel Arryn — the King of Mountain and Vale — and raised up a queen of their own instead, Marla Sunderland.

The rebellion did not hold: House Stark, at Aegon I's request, paid for a Braavosi fleet, and once those ships neared the islands, it all fell apart. Lord Steffon Sunderland knelt to the Targaryens and put an end to it; his sister Marla lived out her days as a Silent Sister.

The year 54 AC brought the Sweating Sickness down on the islands.

Decades later, during the Dance of the Dragons, the Three Sisters backed Rhaenyra Targaryen against Aegon II, standing with the Arryns. At the end of 132 AC, the Winter Fever struck them too.

When the Vale fell into civil war after Lady Jeyne Arryn's death, the Three Sisters backed Ser Arnold Arryn.

Later, the Sunderlands twice dragged the islands into failed Blackfyre Rebellions against the Targaryens, and the Sisters paid the price. A Sunderland lord even attended the tourney at Whitewalls.

In White Harbor, Ser Rodrik Cassel raises the idea of hiring a Sisters fishing boat to get himself and Catelyn Tully to King's Landing.

Later in the war, Stannis Baratheon sends Davos Seaworth out with a chest full of letters declaring that Joffrey is not Robert's true son, and that errand takes him through the Three Sisters, among other Narrow Sea ports.

Further into the war, when Salladhor Saan leaves Stannis's service, he sets Davos adrift in a boat that ends up ashore at Hermana Dulce.

Lord Godric Borrell could have handed him over to Lord Triston Sunderland; instead, he lets Davos carry on toward White Harbor.

On paper the Sisters answer to the Eyrie; in practice they obey House Sunderland, to whom houses like Torrent have sworn their own loyalty, and the Arryns' actual hold on the islands is thin. Ships never stop running between the Sisters and White Harbor: crab and fish go out, along with goat cheese, and wood, wool and furs come back.

Every inn and tavern on the three islands serves the same white shellfish stew, the Sisters' stew. Beacons burn along the shore to warn ships of danger — the best known, the Night Lamp, is kept by House Borrell — though some Sisters of poorer repute light false fires to lure ships onto the rocks and take their cargo. Their fishermen also sometimes work the fishing grounds at the far western edge of the Shivering Sea, waters Braavos controls.

"The Three Sisters were fickle whores, loyal only to themselves," Davos Seaworth once said of them.