Westerlands

Nothing survives from the age before the First Men, but as elsewhere in Westeros the Children of the Forest presumably already lived here, and fought the newcomers as they began felling and plowing the land. After the pact sealed on the Isle of Faces they withdrew into the woods, and some likely settled near what is now Crakehall.

Legend places the origin of House Lannister in the Age of Heroes: Lann the Clever is said to have taken Casterly Rock from the house that gave it its name, and the family has claimed that piece of cunning as its founding act ever since.

The Andals crossed the sea some six thousand years ago and subdued both First Men and Children of the Forest across the whole south of the Neck. Out of that conquest rose the Kingdom of the Rock, ruled presumably from Casterly Rock itself. One of its kings, Lancel IV, tried to push into the Reach and was stopped short; and given how hard that open coastline was to watch, his predecessors almost certainly had to fight the Ironborn more than once.

When Aegon Targaryen landed, King Loren mustered every soldier the west could raise and joined forces with King Mern IX of the Reach. Together they raised a host so large it is remembered as the Army of the Two Kings.

It counted for nothing against dragons. Loren fled the field and eventually surrendered to Aegon, who let him keep the title Warden of the West in exchange, now as a vassal. From that point on the Westerlands stopped being a kingdom of their own and became one of the Seven Kingdoms.

When the Blackfyre Rebellion broke out, more than one western house chose not to bet everything on a single side and kept a foot in each camp. Some lords are known to have backed Daemon Blackfyre; none, on the other hand, is recorded fighting for Daeron II, and there is no way to tell whether that means the west as a whole leaned toward the rebellion.

The Great Spring Sickness did not arrive alone in the west: while the plague ravaged the kingdom, Dagon Greyjoy took the chance to raid the western coastline again and again, exploiting a shoreline that, flat and all but undefended, had always been the region's weak point.