[House Lannister — Houses]
The Red Wedding was a massacre that took place during the War of the Five Kings , arranged by Lord Walder Frey as revenge against Robb Stark , ruling King in the North , for breaking the marriage pact between House Stark and House Frey . The massacre was authorized by House Lannister , who sought to put an end to Robb's rebellion against the Iron Throne .
Brynden Tully had been present for the wedding but incidentally, he had left the keep to relieve himself on a tree outside before the massacre in the main hall began. He then managed to fight his way out of the assault on the camps and slip away from the Twins during the confusion of the night-time ambush. Roose Bolton ruefully notes to Lord Walder the next day that he had escaped. Lord Walder is dismissive and says he won't get far, but Bolton is clearly concerned that the Blackfish will manage to reach the safety of Riverrun before he can be found. Although the Blackfish is able to take back Riverrun, House Frey, with the aid of House Lannister, takes Riverrun back in the second siege of Riverrun . The Blackfish is killed during the siege.
With the Karstarks and Umbers having declared for Ramsay due to their anger toward Robb and Jon, respectively, Jon and Sansa are forced to rely on the support of the the meager forces of the minor Northern Houses to aid them. They manage to persuade the Free Folk , House Mazin , House Hornwood , and House Mormont to join them. However, Lord Robett Glover , head of House Glover , refuses to declare for them, citing both his hatred for the wildlings and his anger at Robb for failing to protect them from Balon Greyjoy 's invasion . Similarly, House Manderly also declines to support the Starks, with Lord Wyman Manderly refusing to have more Manderlys die for a cause he believed was lost. Sansa sends Brienne to the Riverlands to treat with her great-uncle, Brynden Tully , who is under siege at Riverrun . Unfortunately, Brynden refuses to leave his home and is later killed when the castle falls to House Frey and House Lannister. Brienne and Podrick, however, are able to escape Riverrun's fall through the river.
Although Robb continues to win every battle that he fights, House Lannister secures an alliance with House Tyrell that effectively leads to victory over Stannis at the Battle of the Blackwater . As Robb continues to march further in the Westerlands, many of his bannermen begin to lose faith in him since he breached his pact with Lord Walder Frey by marrying Talisa Maegyr .
House Lannister of Casterly Rock is one of the Great Houses of Westeros , one of its richest and most powerful families and one of its oldest dynasties. It was briefly the royal house of the Seven Kingdoms until their defeat in the Last War .
The Lannisters rule over the Westerlands . Their seat is Casterly Rock, a massive rocky promontory overlooking the Sunset Sea which has had habitations and fortifications built into it over the millennia. They are the Lords Paramount of the Westerlands and Wardens of the West. As the new royal house, they also ruled directly over the Crownlands from their seat of the Red Keep in King's Landing , the traditional seat of the royal family. House Lannister's heraldry consists of a golden lion on a crimson background, and their house words are "Hear me roar!", which are rarely mentioned. Their unofficial motto, which is more well known than the official one, is "A Lannister always pays his debts" - which is used much more often and mostly in negative context, though it can also be used in the original, literal sense.
House Lannister is one of the Great Houses of Westeros . Their lands are in the far west of the continent. Their seat is Casterly Rock , a castle on a rocky promontory overlooking the Sunset Sea. It overlooks the thriving city of Lannisport and sits atop the most productive gold mine in the Westerlands. They are the wealthiest family in the realm.
Tywin Lannister is the current head of the family. His father Tytos Lannister presided over a period of decline for the house, to the point that their vassals House Reyne rebelled against Lord Tytos. Tywin put down the rebellion personally, extinguishing their house and re-establishing the fearsome reputation of House Lannister. His ruthlessness gave darker meaning to the common phrase "A Lannister always pays his debts" and was immortalized in the song " The Rains of Castamere ."
At the Dragonpit , the Lannisters gather with their enemies. Cersei seemingly agrees for a truce, but has no intention to honor her promise. She hires the Golden Company . Jaime resigns as a commander of the Lannister armies and rides to the North alone. House Lannister is effectively divided into two factions: one under Cersei and one under Jaime and Tyrion.
Due to its wealth, House Lannister is capable of fielding thousands of troops (it is not mentioned how many of the 60,000 men, which Tywin rallies from the Westerlands in " You Win or You Die ", belong to House Lannister). As the richest House, the Lannisters' forces are among the best-equipped in the Seven Kingdoms.
Lannister armor and robes, also use vast quantities of scarlet red and blood red dye, across the Lannister military forces, universally. Cloaks, robes and under layers padding the armor, the best that money could buy. They are well-protected by ovate and rounded kite shields. Adorning these are intricately carved lions, and painted blazons/sigils of House Lannister; red and yellow-gold being the main color palette. The ubiquitous style of the Lannister garments and armor and the spectacular marching formations as seen at Highgarden indicates a well-organized system of military procurement, to militarily efficient standards.
House Lannister has also developed two models of Scorpion ballistae artillery, with the aid of Qyburn . The variant shown in Season 7, was used to injure Drogon. It is a lighter model and fired a more basic bolt as a projectile. Apparently only a single unit of this was built as a prototype, and taken into service for Jaime's field army in S7. After this unit was destroyed by Drogon, Qyburn went back to the drawing board and improved the design considerably; with the second model of Scorpion ballistae being a huge improvement on the previous design.
The Lannisters have held sway with the threat of their potent military since shortly after Robert's Rebellion ended. However, depleted by wars and hardships, the glory days of House Lannister's army are by now already long gone. Queen Cersei has enlisted 20,000 Golden Company mercenaries from Essos , to help augment and boost their forces back up to a healthy level. However, both the Golden Company and the remaining Lannister forces have been decisively defeated - more accurately, brutally massacred - at the Battle of King's Landing, by the combined Targaryen and Stark-Vale forces.
House Lannister is a very old and wealthy family, dating back to the Age of Heroes and the Andal invasion 6,000 years ago. As a result it has produced numerous cadet branches and distant cousins of the main line, who have prospered as members of the minor nobility in the Westerlands for many years. In contrast, while House Stark is even older than House Lannister, due to the harsh conditions of the North (both low economic output and threat of wildling attacks) by the time of the War of the Five Kings , the Starks possess few if any cousins, and only one major cadet branch, House Karstark . Therefore, there are numerous minor members of the extended "House Lannister" who exist in the background of the narrative, but they are so numerous and distantly related that members of the main line wouldn't think to mention them any more than they would their other vassals.
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, House Lannister was established many thousands of years prior to the books' opening by a trickster-hero called Lann the Clever, who tricked the powerful Casterly family into abandoning their stronghold of Casterly Rock , which the Lannisters took for their own. The Lannisters have ruled the region known as the Westerlands ever since, getting rich off the many gold and silver mines in the western hills and mountains.
House Lannister consists of a "main" branch led by Lord Tywin and a junior branch, led by cousins, that controls the city of Lannisport. The Lannisters are a relatively large family, though nowhere near as numerous as the Freys of the Crossing .
A minor change is that in the books the heraldry of House Lannister features a lion passant (striding on all four legs), but in the TV series the lion is rampant (rearing up with its forepaws raised to attack). The variant with the striding, passant lion is still glimpsed on several occasions in the TV series (i.e. Tywin's battle-flags during the battle on the Green Fork ), though it is not the primary version featured in promotional materials.
Martin has said that the War of the Five Kings is based on the Wars of the Roses in England from 1455 until 1485. House Lannister is inspired by the House of Lancaster right down to having a red crest and a lion as their sigil.
In the current generation, House Tyrell is a stable and honestly loving family, with none of the internal rivalries that are to be found in House Lannister and House Baratheon . Thus the relationships between Lord Mace and his children, and between siblings like Loras and Margaery , are genuine and uncomplicated.
Like their Rhoynar ancestors who migrated to Dorne a thousand years ago, Dornish noble houses follow gender-blind equal primogeniture, in which the eldest child is the heir regardless of whether that child is male or female. This is different from the male-preference inheritance laws in all of the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, the laws of the First Men and Andals , in which a younger son succeeds ahead of an older daughter. In House Stark , for example, Bran and Rickon are officially ahead of their older sister Sansa in the line of succession, and in House Lannister , Tyrion was officially ahead of Cersei despite being younger than her.
Due to uniting with the Iron Throne through marriage-alliance on equal terms instead of through conquest, the Martells were allowed to retain several special privileges, among which were continuing to style their ruler as a "Prince", and continuing to practice gender-blind equal primogeniture. While many of the Martells are hot-tempered, especially Prince Oberyn, they are a close-knit and loving family, undivided by internal rivalries such as those in House Lannister and House Baratheon.
In A Dance with Dragons , the presumed-dead Aegon Targaryen , the son of Rhaegar and Elia, and Jon Connington arrive at Westeros. Connington believes it is essential to obtain the support of the Martells, because only they have enough power to to defy House Lannister and its allies. For that purpose, he sends Doran a letter, informing him that his nephew is alive, and offering an alliance. Doran, cautious as ever, regards the contents of the letter dubiously; since he prefers not to act till he knows for a certainty what is happening, he sends his daughter Arianne to find out whether Aegon and Connington are really the people whom they claim to be.
House Bolton answers the summon of Robb Stark , acting Lord of Winterfell , when he calls the bannermen of House Stark to march south to demand the liberation of Ned Stark and answer the aggression of House Lannister against the Riverlands .