2.1.3.3. The Hand of the King
- The Hand is the second most powerful man in the kingdom. He speaks with the king's voice and wields his authority, leads his armies and drafts his lays, and can sit on the Iron Throne to pass judgement when the king is absent. (I: 39)
- It is said 'What the king dreams, the Hand builds.' The lowborn put it: 'The king eats, and the Hand takes the shit.' (I: 39)
- Tywin Lannister was Hand of the King for twenty years (I: 103)
- The Hand is quartered in the Tower of the Hand in the Red Keep (I: 160)
- The Small Hall of the Tower of the Hand is a long room with a high vaulted ceiling and bench space for two hundred (I: 181)
- The household guard of the Hand bear the emblem of the hand on their garb (I: 181)
- The Hand has a solar (I: 182)
- The Hand wears a badge of office, fashioned in the shape of a hand (I: 297)
- Aerys Targaryen's last Hand was killed n the Sack of King's Landing, although he had been appointed only a fortnight earlier. The Hand before him had burned to death. The two before them had died landless and penniless in exile. Lord Tywin Lannister was the last Hand of the King to depart King's Landing safely (II: 41)
- The Hand's private audience chamber is not so large as the king's, nor anywhere near the size of the throne room, but its Myrish rugs, wall hangings, and golden-tinted round window give it a sense of intimacy (II: 172)
- The Tower of the Hand has rushes on the floors at need (II: 326)
- The Hand's rooms include a garderobe (II: 326)
- The secret entrance into the Hand's chambers in the Tower of the Hand is reached by a strange passage. One goes down a ladder (from some unknown beginning point), walks a long distance that turns in many directions, meets an iron gate. Past the iron gate is a room in which a dragon is done in a mosaic of red and black tiles on the floor. Then another ladder is taken, this time going up, with a tunnel to left being reached after climbing 230 rungs in which a full-grown man must crawl. Sixty feet on is a secret door (II: 472, 570. III: 876)
- It seems that the Hand picks his own particular way of showing his office - a chain made up for a Hand is called his chain of office, while an earlier Hand used a less extravagant badge to show the same rank (II: 564)
- While Hand, Lord Tywin had had hopes to make a royal marriage between his daughter Cersei and one of the Targaryen princes, either Prince Viserys when he matured or Prince Rhaegar should his wife have died in childbed. He kept her with him at court to further this end (III: 128)
- Lord Tywin gave up his office on a thin pretext and removed himself and his daughter to Casterly Rock because of his anger at King Aerys for choosing his son and heir Ser Jaime for the Kingsguard (III: 128)
- Of Aerys's Hand's after Lord Tywin Lannister, Lords Owen Merryweather and Jon Connington had been exiled, Lord Qarlton Chelsted had been dipped in wildfire and burned alive, and Lord Rossart the Pyromancer was gutted by the Kingslayer (III: 129, 130, 327, 418, 752. IV: 184. SSM: 1)
- The Hand of the King, Lord Jon Connington led the royalists at Stoney Sept during the Battle of the Bells, personally wounding Lord Hoster Tully and killing Ser Denys Arryn, cousin to Lord Jon Arryn and the darling of the Vale. He lost the battle however and was forced to flee. Aerys then exiled him for his failure (III: 327, 418, 752. SSM: 1)
- Jon Arryn came to Sunspear the year after Robert took the throne, and was questioned closely, along with a hundred others, about what happened during the Sack and who was responsible for deaths of Elia and her children (III: 436)
- Ser Ryam Redwyne was the greatest knight of his day, and one of the worst Hands ever to serve a king (III: 604)
- Septon Murmison's prayers are said to have worked miracles, but as Hand he soon had the whole realm praying for his death (III: 604)
- Lord Butterwell was renowned for wit, Myles Smallwood for courage, Ser Otto Hightower for learning, yet every one of them failed as Hands (III: 604)
- The Targaryens often chose Hands from their own blood, with results as various as Baelor Breakspear and Maegor the Cruel (III: 604)
- Septon Barth, the blacksmith's son plucked from the Red Keep's library by the Old King Jaehaerys I, gave the realm forty years of peace and plenty. He understood the changeable genders of dragons (III: 604. IV: 520)
- Lord Tywin became Hand when he was no more than 20 years of age (III: 745)
- Lord Rivers, better known as Bloodraven was named Hand to King Aerys I on his ascension to the throne (TSS: 81, 121)
- Lord Hayford was a noted loyalist who was appointed Hand by King Daeron II just before the Redgrass Field, as Lord Butterwell had done such a terrible job in that office that some questioned his loyalty. Lord Hayford was killed during the battle (TSS: 110)
- It was rumored that King Aerys I was ensorceled by his Hand, Lord Bloodraven, who was thought to be the true power behind the throne (TSS: 112)
- Brynden Rivers, Lord Bloodraven, was considered unlikely to put a halt to a private war between the Blackwoods and Brackens that was formenting in 211. In fact, he was a Blackwood on his mother's side and was thought capable of assisting his cousins against the hated Brackens (TSS: 121)
- Bloodraven ordered the pyromancers to burn the many bodies that had collected in the Dragonpit during the Great Spring Sickness. The light of their wildfire could be seen as a glow throughout the city during the night (TSS: 121)
- Lord Bloodraven controlled the throne for a number of reasons. King Aerys I kept to his apartments by 211 and no man could see him without Bloodraven's leave. Aerys's queen, Alienor, prayed daily that the Mother might bless her with a child. Prince Maekar Targaryen sulked at Summerhall, nursing grievances against his brother King Aerys, while Prince Rhaegel was both meek and mad and children were too young to be of any use in dislodging Brynden Rivers (TSS: 122)
- Baelor Breakspear was known to argue that rebels should have the hope of recieving a pardon, so as to encourage them to bend the knee. Lord Bloodraven, on the other hand, believed that pardoning rebels sowed the seeds for future rebellions (TSS: 131)
- When Lord Bloodraven was named Hand, Prince Maekar refused to be a part of the king's small council (in part because he felt he should have been named to that office) and removed himself to Summerhall (TSS: 132)
- Brynden Rivers was a lord only by courtesy (TSS: 132)
- House Butterwell, whose lord had been Hand to King Daeron I before being dismissed for his suspicious incompetence, kept a foot in both camps during Blackfyre's Rebellion (TSS: 135)
- A grand funeral for a Hand of the King might include morning services for the deceased with nobles in attendance, afternoon prayers for the commons, and evening prayers open to all (IV: 100)
- A dead Hand might be shown in full armor on the stepped marble bier of the Great Sept, with knights standing vigil (IV: 101-102)
- Lord Merryweather appears to have been on the small council before he succeeded Lord Tywin as King Aerys's Hand (IV: 102)
- The Tower of the Hand has crenellated battlements and looms over the outer ward (IV: 183)
- After burning Lord Chelsted, Aerys visited Queen Rhaella's bedchambers and abused her (IV: 232)
- Tywin Lannister was not even twenty-one when Aerys named him his Hand (IV: 235)
- While Hand, Tywin Lannister planned to wed his daughter to Prince Rhaegar, and promised her this when she was six. When Rhaegar was a new-made knight, he visited the west with King Aerys. Lord Tywin hosted a grand tourney, which Rhaegar won, and it was at the feast afterwards where the betrothal was to be announced. King Aerys rejected the proposal, however, saying that kings do not wed their sons to their servants (IV: 360-361)
- Lord Jon Connington was sent into exile by King Aerys, with his castle, wealth, lands, and more stripped from him. When Robert became king, he restored the castle and a small portion of the lands to a cousin who had remained loyal, but did not name him a lord while also retaining the gold and gave most of the rest of the land away to other supporters (IV: 408)
- During the reign of Baelor the Blessed, King Baelor caused a stone mason to be made High Septon despite his being utterly unable to carry out the duties, being unable to read, write, or even remember simple prayers. It's rumored Baelor's Hand, the future Viserys II, had the man poisoned to spare the realm humiliation. (IV: 412)
- Baelor the Blessed ordered the writings of Septon Barth to be burned (IV: 522)
- Bloodraven was reputed to be able to change the appearance of his face, turn himself into a one-eyed dog, turn into a mist, command packs of grey wolves to hunt down his enemies and carrion crows to spy on the people of the realm. Hated and feared, there were those who spoke treason against him and the king, and some of these were executed (TMK: 650-651)
- Lord Butterwell was Master of Coin when Aegon IV sat the throne, and then was made Hand for a time by Daeron II, but not for long. During the first Blackfyre Rebellion, his second son fought with the rebels, his eldest with the king, while he kept out of the fighting (TMK: 658)
- Lord Butterwell's own grandfather had also been Hand of the King at one time, serving Aegon IV, and apparently gave him great leeway in the use of both his property and his daughters (TMK: 662-663)
- The Seven Kingdoms were seemingly left to fend for themselves against Lord Dagon Greyjoy and his ironborn reavers troubling all the lands on the western coast, as King Aerys I ignored the trouble so he could be closeted with his books, while Prince Rhaegel was said to be so mad as to dance naked in the halls of the Red Keep and Prince Maekar so angry at his brother and his advisors that he sat and brooded at Summerhall. Some blamed Lord Bloodraven, the Hand of the King, for this state of affairs, while others claimed his attention was focused on Tyrosh where the sons of Daemon Blackfyre and Bittersteel plotted another attempt to seize the Iron Throne (TMK: 664)
- The initial replacement for Lord Tywin as Hand as the elderly, amiable Lord Merryweather, famed for throwing lavish feasts and flattering the king shamelessly. When the rebellion began, he declared the rebels outlaws and sent commands to various minor lords to deliver them or their heads but he himself never stirred from King's Landing. His methods proved so ineffectual that he was exiled by the king and stripped of all his lands and wealth. Robert later restored the title of lord and the castle and the lands, but not most of the wealth. (SSM: 1, 2)
- Lord Jon Connington was Aerys's second hand after Tywin, and was chosen for his youthful vigor, courage, and fame as a warrior (SSM: 1)
- Lord Jon Connington was stripped of lands, titles, and wealth before being exiled across the narrow sea. A cousin of his, however, supported Robert and after the war was rewarded by having the castle given to him to hold as Knight of Griffin's Roost, less most of the lands and treasury (IV: 408. SSM: 1)
Last revised September 04, 2012
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