2.3. Customs
- Every noble house has a motto (I: 19)
- Eleven is seen as old enough for a girl to be betrothed, but marriage tends to wait a few years (I: 39)
- Fools in motley entertain nobility. Many are misshapen, dwarves or the mentally deficient (I: 47, etc.)
- If a nobleman dies before he can go through with contracted marriage, custom decrees that a sibling or heir should take on the obligation (I: 50)
- Boys might be as young as seven or eight when they are sent out to be fostered by some other noble house (I: 54)
- Noble girls are taught womanly arts, such as knitting, singing, dancing, and playing instruments (I: 57, 59)
- Noble boys begin weapons practice as early as the age of seven (I: 60)
- It is customary for lords to cover the cost if the king and his entourage choose to stay for a time at his seat (I: 107)
- Fifteen is considered almost a man grown (sixteen is age of majority) (I: 150. SSC: 44)
- Boys are apprenticed to various trades, including singing (I: 219, 226, etc.)
- The baseborn have few rights under the law and custom, when it comes to claims (I: 267)
- Commoners might be addressed as goodwoman or goodman (I: 389)
- Clothes for mourning are always black (I: 455)
- Burial or entombment are customary in the Seven Kingdoms, although some houses send their dead into the sea. The Targaryens always cremated their dead (THK: 529)
- Fratricide is seen as an evil thing (II: 14)
- Sitting at the right hand of a lord is seen as a high place of honor (II: 19)
- When someone of the Faith is buried, a crystal is left on their grave (II: 61)
- Feasts are held to celebrate the harvest (II: 179)
- Nobles and knights can often be ransomed, so it's common to take them prisoner rather than to slay them in battle (II: 216)
- At a large feast presided over by a lord, he would receive the first choice of all dishes. If the dish is especially choice, he might send some of it down to some of his guests as token of friendship and respect (II: 238, 239)
- A champion (whether in war or in tournament) might salute his liege with an upraised weapon (II: 251)
- A noble bridegroom wears a mantle of expensive fur and cloth, such as miniver and velvet, even for some days after the marriage to make it known (II: 295)
- A girl is not considered a woman until her first menstruation, or flowering as the folk of the Seven Kingdom say. More precisely, she is a maiden who is both still a child and a woman at the same time (II: 360. SSC: 44)
- Noble prisoner tend to be treated with honor, unless they make serious offense (such as breaking an oath to not attempt escape) (II: 338, 415, 577)
- Marriage contracts can be broken (II: 388)
- In accepting the oath of a liegeman, one way to respond is: "I vow to you that you shall always have a place by my hearth and meat and mead at my table, and pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you into dishonor. I swear it by the old gods and the new" (II: 411)
- A challenge to a duel can be issued by throwing a glove or gauntlet down (II: 445)
- A soldier's tent would be of heavy canvas (II: 449)
- Men (besides maesters and perhaps husbands) are not supposed to be present in birthing rooms (II: 555)
- Menstrual blood is referred to as moonblood (II: 620)
- A peace banner can be shown to signal a wish to parley (II: 672)
- Coz is used as a diminutive for cousin (III: 18)
- Smallfolk often name their daughters after flowers and herbs (III: 29)
- The guest right protects a guest who has eaten his host's food from harm, at least for the length of the stay. It is a sacred rule as old as the First Men (III: 83)
- Houses can show unspecified marks of mourning after the deaths of family members (III: 116)
- Tipping the cap in deference to women (III: 117)
- For a great wedding, all manner of entertainments may be made available: a singers' tourney, a fools' joust, tumblers, dancing bears, and more (III: 139)
- Being set at a table below the salt is a place for the lowborn and the little regarded (III: 139, 432)
- A toast: "Seven save the king!" (III: 150)
- Young ladies of high status often share their beds with one or two of their lady attendants (III: 182; IV: 173)
- Noblewomen wear a maiden's cloak when they're to be wed, bearing their family's colors and sometimes their arms (III: 317)
- A father, a man who stands there in his place, removes the noble maiden's cloak from about her shoulders so that her husband may place a cloak of his colors there in its place to signify her passing into his protection (III: 319)
- Marriage feasts have many toasts and dancing. The bedding is seen to afterwards, where the men will carry the bride up to the wedding bed, undressing her along the way and making rude jokes about her fate, while the women do the same for the groom. Though they'll leave them alone in the bedchamber after bundling them both naked into bed, they'll stand outside the door shouting ribald suggestions (III: 320)
- Kin by marriage are referred to as "good [relation]", such as good uncle (III: 408, 423)
- Dowries are paid by a bride's family to the groom (III: 422)
- Dornish custom gives a special status to mistresses, or paramours as they name them, that places them above mistresses in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms but beneath wives (III: 431. SFC2)
- Boys who share a wetnurse, even at a few years remove, are considered to be milk brothers (III: 494)
- The peace banner of the Seven is a rainbow-striped flag with seven long tails, a seven-pointed star topping the stave is hangs from (III: 503)
- The most proper way of receiving the guest right is to eat bread and salt (III: 556, 562)
- It seems only maids and mothers take part in the bedding ceremony, stripping the groom as they lead him to his wedding chamber (III: 579)
- A bridgegroom being bedded can throw back jests and attempt to unclothe the women trying to strip him (III: 772)
- A passing reference to chastity belts, suggesting that they exist (TSS: 121)
- In Dorne, brothels are called pillow houses (IV: 31)
- 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)
- It's bad luck for a man to sleep apart from his bride on their wedding night (IV: 174)
- While marriages to women who have not reached their majority or even their first flowering have happened, they are rare. Moreover, bedding these girls before they are at the least flowered is seen as perverse. Generally, weddings are postponed until the girl has passed into maidenhood with he flowering, although betrothals may happen earlier (SSC: 44)
- There is a stigma attached to homosexuality everywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, save in Dorne (SFC)
Last revised September 25, 2008
