Red Keep

The **Red Keep** is a castle on Aegon's Hill in King's Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms. The Red Keep contains the Iron Throne and is the seat of King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men.

## Layout

The Red Keep is made of pale red stone and overlooks the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. The Red Keep has seven massive drum-towers crowned with iron ramparts. The castle is smaller than Winterfell and is patrolled by gold cloaks. Much of the Red Keep is connected underground.

Massive curtain walls surround the castle, with nests and crenelations for archers. Thick stone parapets, some four feet high, protect the outer edge of the wall ramparts, where the heads of traitors are traditionally placed on iron spikes between the crenels at the gatehouse. The walls have great bronze gates and portcullises, with narrow postern doors nearby. The castle also has great cornerforts. The immense barbican has a cobbled square in front of it. Behind the walls are small inner yards, vaulted halls, covered bridges, barracks of the City Watch of King's Landing, dungeons, granaries, kennels, and stables.

The Red Keep has serpentine steps which can be strenuous to climb. Maegor's Holdfast, the small council chambers, the Tower of the Hand, the lower bailey, a small sunken courtyard, and the black cells are located below the steps. The Great Hall with the throne room is found above the steps, and the outer yard or ward is found near the main gate. The Great Yard can be seen from the windows of the Tower of the Hand. Also above the steps are the godswood, the river walk, the small kitchen, and the pig yard. The royal sept and the Maidenvault are located above the serpentine steps as well.

Relics of the Targaryen dynasty, such as suits of black armour, sit in some corridors. Doors are made of oak banded with black iron. Sweet-smelling rushes can be spread on floors. The Red Keep is full of cats, including those kept as pets as well as strays.

### Great Hall

The Great Hall contains the throne room of the king. The Iron Throne sits on a raised iron dais with high and narrow steps. A long carpet stretches from the throne to the hall's great oak-and-bronze doors. The cavernous Great Hall can feast a thousand people. The hall is oriented north to south, with high, narrow windows on the eastern and western walls. Located behind the Iron Throne is the king's door, a private exit.

The second-largest chamber in Westeros after Harrenhal, more than a thousand maidens and their family members and servants overcrowded the Great Hall during the Maiden's Day Ball. Small council sessions are sometimes held in the throne room.

### Maegor's Holdfast

Maegor's Holdfast is a massive square fortress inside the heart of the Red Keep. The castle-within-a-castle is situated behind walls twelve feet thick and a dry moat lined with iron spikes. Maegor's Holdfast includes the royal apartments, and the king's bedchamber contains a canopied bed and twin hearths. The holdfast also contains the Queen's Ballroom.

### Tower of the Hand

The Tower of the Hand contains the chambers of the Hand of the King and the Small Hall. The building has a solar and a garderobe, as well as tall windows. Below the tower is the chamber of the dragon mosaic.

### Other Buildings

The council chamber hosts meetings of the small council. It contains a long table, at the head of which may sit the king. The chamber is richly furnished with Myrish carpet. The chamber's door is flanked by two Valyrian sphinxes. The door can be guarded by a knight of the Kingsguard when the council is in session.

The White Sword Tower, located near Blackwater Bay, contains the chambers of the Kingsguard.

The castle also has a library.

The Kitchen Keep is located at a courtyard across from the castle's main kitchen. There are spacious apartments above the Kitchen Keep, including a large bedchamber, a solar, a bath, a dressing room, and small adjoining chambers for servants. The Red Keep also has a small kitchen and a pig yard.

The godswood of the Red Keep is an acre of elm, alder and black cottonwood trees that overlook the Blackwater Rush. The heart tree is a great oak with limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines.

The rookery is the home of the ravens used by maesters of the Citadel. The Grand Maester has his chambers beneath the rookery.

### Dungeon

The Traitor's Walk is a pathway leading to a squat, half-round tower. The top floor holds cells for prisoners kept in a degree of comfort, such as knights or lordlings who might be ransomed, while the entrance to the dungeons sits on the ground floor. The other floors between contain rooms for the King's Justice, the Chief Gaoler, and the Lord Confessor. The dungeon entrance consists of a door of hammered iron and another door of splintered grey wood.

King Maegor I Targaryen ordered that the dungeons below the squat tower have four levels. The uppermost level has cells with high narrow windows where common criminals are confined together. The second level has smaller, personal cells without windows for highborn captives. Torches in the halls cast light through the bars. The third level cells, the black cells, are smaller still and have doors of wood so that no light enters them, but they have not been used in recent years. The lowest level is used for torture. It is supposedly safer to go through the fourth level of the dungeons in darkness, because there are things one would not wish to see. The dungeon has twisting turnpike stairs and iron gates. A path from the lowest level leads to the chamber of the dragon mosaic below the Tower of the Hand and to the Blackwater Rush.

### Secret Passages

The Red Keep and Aegon's High Hill have a network of secret passages and tunnels. King Maegor I Targaryen had them built to enable him to make a quick escape, should his enemies ever trap him. The tunnels are supposedly full of traps. Some tunnels are of stone, while others are earth supported by timbers. Some of them are so small that a grown man must crawl through them. Some pass close to other rooms in the Red Keep, allowing a hidden person to eavesdrop on conversations.

One secret passage leads from the bedchamber of the Tower of the Hand to the chamber of the dragon mosaic below. There is also a secret way to get out of the Red Keep onto the cliffs facing the sea. Narrow handholds, impossible to see from the ground, have been cut into the rock so one may climb down to a trail beside the Blackwater Rush. Another passage out of the Red Keep passes by the cellar, and leads to a sewer that empties into the river.

Maegor's Holdfast is the only building in the Red Keep that has no secret passages, as Maegor "wanted no rats in his own walls". There is one escape door, but it does not connect to any other passage in the Red Keep.

## History

### Construction

At the start of Aegon's Conquest, Aegon the Conqueror landed at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. On the highest of the three hills of the area, Aegon's Hill, he built his first fort of earth and wood, the Aegonfort. The new city of King's Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms, developed around the fort. In 35 A.C. King Aegon I tore down the wooden Aegonfort so a more fitting stone castle could be raised for House Targaryen, tasking his sister, Queen Visenya Targaryen, and the Hand of the King, Alyn Stokeworth, with overseeing its construction.

When Aegon died at Dragonstone in 37 A.C., he was succeeded by his son, Aenys I Targaryen, who was crowned at Dragonstone and then traveled to the capital to claim the Iron Throne in the ruins of the Aegonfort. Aenys was obsessed with the new castle, which the people of King's Landing named the Red Keep because of its stone, but the king passed away at Dragonstone during the Faith Militant uprising in 42 A.C. Aenys was succeeded by his brother, Maegor I. The Red Keep and the Sept of Remembrance were seized by Warrior's Sons and Poor Fellows, but Maegor eventually used Balerion to destroy the Faith Militant at the sept and solidify his rule.

Maegor took personal charge of the Red Keep's construction in 43 A.C. He went beyond the plans of Aegon and Aenys by adding a moated redoubt, later known as Maegor's Holdfast, within the walls of the Red Keep. He also commanded that secret passages, false walls, and trapdoors be introduced to the castle and tunnels through Aegon's High Hill. After Viserys Targaryen was tortured to death by Tyanna of the Tower in 44 A.C., King Maegor abandoned his nephew's body in the courtyard of the Red Keep. Many members of House Harroway were thrown onto the spikes below Maegor's Holdfast when the king extinguished the family in 44 A.C.When the castle was completed in 45 A.C., Maegor threw a feast for its builders, carvers, and stonemasons. After three days of feasting, however, Maegor the Cruel had all of the craftsmen killed so that only he would know the Red Keep's secrets. With the Red Keep complete, Maegor then began construction of the Dragonpit. When Maegor the Cruel was found dead on the Iron Throne in 48 A.C., one theory suggested that a mason familiar with the castle's secret passages had escaped Maegor's massacre and assassinated the king.

King Jaehaerys I Targaryen chose Septon Barth, who worked in the Red Keep's library, to serve as his Hand of the King. In 95 A.C., Queen Alysanne Targaryen broke her hip after a fall on the serpentine steps, forcing her to then walk with a cane. The ashes of Jaehaerys and Alysanne were interred beneath the Red Keep after their deaths.

### Dance of the Dragons

*Main article: Dance of the Dragons*

The Red Keep was a place of song and splendour during the reign of the generous King Viserys I Targaryen. The king's trusted friend, Grand Maester Mellos, died while climbing the serpentine steps in 127 A.C. Civil war erupted after Viserys's death with the Dance of the Dragons, and many men were imprisoned in the dungeons once Aegon II Targaryen took the throne. Blood and Cheese infiltrated the Red Keep and assassinated Jaehaerys Targaryen to avenge the death of Lucerys Velaryon at Storm's End. Afterward, the king commanded the city's ratcatchers be hanged. Otto Hightower brought one hundred cats to the Red Keep to take their place.

Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her spouse, Daemon Targaryen, landed in the outer ward of the Red Keep during the fall of King's Landing. Aegon's bride, Queen Helaena Targaryen, threw herself to her death from Maegor's Holdfast. Rhaenyra fled the city after the Storming of the Dragonpit, and Ser Perkin the Flea claimed the abandoned Red Keep for Trystane Truefyre. The king was eventually found dead within the Red Keep after the Battle of the Kingsroad.

Cregan Stark administered justice for King Aegon II Targaryen during the Hour of the Wolf in 131 A.C. During the regency of Aegon III the same year, Aemond the Unspoken arrived in the Red Keep atop Gaelithox, now the eldest and largest dragon left in the world, interrupting the council of seven regents established for Aegon III Targaryen. After claiming himself as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, the council of regents bent the knee, confirming King Aemond Targaryen as Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, while Aegon III was installed as the Prince of Dragonstone until his death, at which point, it was inherited by Aemon Targaryen, the heir to the Iron Throne.