6.2.2. Ancestors and History
- A dozen armies had dashed themselves against the Bloody Gate in the Age of Heroes (I: 303)
- Alyssa's Tears are ghostly waters that plunge over the shoulder of the Giant's Lance. The story has it that 6,000 years ago Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, brothers, and children slain and yet never shed a tear. The gods decreed that she would not rest until her tears reached the valley floor below (I: 361)
- It has been hundreds of years since the clans have threatened the Vale with anything more than occasional raids (I: 508)
- The Kings of Mountain and Vale are ancestors to the Arryns, who are among the oldest and purest lines of Andal nobility (I: 682)
- Lord Jon Arryn's gallant cousin, Ser Denys Arryn, was killed in the Battle of the Bells by Lord Connington the Hand (III: 32, 327)
- 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)
- The Fingers were one of the places where the Andals first landed, to wrest the Vale from the First Men (III: 770)
- Lord Arryn's van was smashed by Daemon Blackfyre at the Redgrass Field (TSS: 111)
- The Vale closed its ports and the high pass during the Great Spring Sickness, thereby sparing itself from the plague (TSS: 121)
- Legends claim that the Winged Knight, Ser Artys Arryn, drove the First Men from the Vale and flew to the top of the Giant’s Lance on a huge falcon to slay the Griffin King. There are hundreds of stories about his adventures (IV: 150, 606)
- The Gates of the Moon were raised by the Arryns when they wore the Falcon Crown and ruled the Vale. The Eyrie was their summer castle, but when the seasons turned colder, they would reside at the Gates. For many years, the post as Keeper of the Gates were granted to kinsmen of the Arryn kings and lords, but it was never hereditary (IV: 155)
- Lord Jasper Arryn was Lord Jon Arryn's father. His younger son Ser Ronnel married a Belmore woman and died as his son Elbert was born. His younger daughter Alys had nine children by Ser Elys Waynwood, but the only boy died at the age of three when a horse kicked him in the head; two of his sisters died of the pox, as well. One of them, however, wed Ser Denys Arryn, a distant cousin; but he died during Robert's Rebellion and his bride and newborn child died soon after. Of the rest of Alys's children, one was scarred by the pox that killed her sisters and became a septa, another was cast out after being seduced by a sellsword and eventually became a silent sister after her bastard child died as an infant, yet another was carried off by the Burned Men when travelling to the riverlands to wed a Bracken, another married the Lord of the Paps but proved barren. One daughter, however, wed a landed knight of House Hardyng, and their only son stands in line as a possible heir to the Vale after Lord Arryn's son Robert (IV: 626-627)
- There are several cadet branches of House Arryn in the Vale, as poor as they are proud, except for the Gulltown Arryns, who had the wisdom to wed wealthy merchants (IV: 626)
- As youths, Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon would have occasionally visited their homes or travelled outside of the Vale with Jon Arryn. When they reached their majority, their stays at home would be more frequent, but they would have visited the Vale often as it had become a second home to them, and Jon Arryn a second father (SSM: 1)
- Rhaenyra Targaryen was the first-born child of Viserys I, and was almost ten years older than her next sibling, Aegon II. She was Viserys's only living child by his first wife of House Arryn (SSM: 1)
Last revised May 12, 2012
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