#house whent

[gothgleek]

Minisa Whent my love

[atopvisenyashill]

Harrenhal will be the new seat of what’s left of the Seven Kingdoms at the ending.

I know a few people have already said bits and pieces of this but I wanted to get everything in one post for my own sanity lmao. There’s three kind of main branches to this theory: geographical reasons, historical reasons, and reasons specific to King Bran theories.

Geography surrounding Harrenhal

It’s the center of everything! Let me show you on the map because i’m a visual learner:

Ignore the North and Dorne and probably the Iron Islands too, bc the first two are not gonna be part of The Seven Kingdoms anymore and the Iron Islands is…gonna be a fucking mess lmao. Lemme zoom in:

It’s a very centralized point in the Riverlands but it’s also fairly centralized to the Crownlands (which will probably get absorbed into the others), the Stormlands, the Eyrie, the Reach, and the Westerlands. It makes sense, from a geographical standpoint, that if the lords need to choose a new ruling seat - and they will no matter what, because King’s Landing is gonna go boom - that a more centralized location for easier access to the capital would be their decision.

The Riverlands is also an excellent choice in general because geographically, they are always getting screwed due to being right in the middle of everyone. They get fucked during the Dance, the Blackfyre Rebellions, Robert’s Rebellion, AND the War of the Five Kings. The only area that really gets screwed over more during the various wars is probably the Dornish Marches, because of the conflicts between the stony Dornishmen and the Storm and Reacher Lords but you can’t really set up there because it’s too far from the Eyrie and Riverlands.

And the thing about the Riverlands is that part of why it gets fucked up is that it’s right in the middle of everything and has no natural defenses. The Eyrie has the mountains, the North has their snow, the Dornish has their desert. The Reach manages to stay out of a lot of fighting because that’s where the food is (although the Iron Islands are about to screw them, but that’s because the war has spiraled out of control) and while both the Stormlands and the Westerlands have seen big battles, they have some protection in their coasts, which gives them ships that the Riverlands just can’t quite access. Having the King set up in the Riverlands gives the smallfolk of the Riverlands some much needed protection and potentially, a break from all the fighting.

So the Riverlands is a good place to set up shop, but Harrenhal specifically? Well, that’s because it’s huge:

Every child of the Trident knew the tales told of Harrenhal, the vast fortress that King Harren the Black had raised beside the waters of Gods Eye three hundred years past, when the Seven Kingdoms had been seven kingdoms, and the riverlands were ruled by the ironmen from the islands. In his pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow on the shore of the lake while Harren's armies plundered his neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Thousands of captives died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in summer. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King's Landing.

If it’s going to be the capital, it has to be somewhere that can hold a whole lot of people and Harrenhal is ginormous and perfect for holding lots of people. It’s even happened before; part of why Lord Whent stages his big tourney where Lyanna is crowned queen of love and beauty is because likely because Ser Oswell Whent, his brother on the Kingsguard, asked him to stage an excuse to get all the Lords together so Rhaegar could discuss with them what to do about his father and Harrenhal is the biggest castle they can do that in outside of King’s Landing. From The Kingbreaker chapter:

Old Lord Whent had announced the tourney shortly after a visit from his brother, Ser Oswell Whent of the Kingsguard. With Varys whispering in his ear, King Aerys became convinced that his son was conspiring to depose him, that Whent's tourney was but a ploy to give Rhaegar a pretext for meeting with as many great lords as could be brought together.

It’s also built up to be sturdier than King’s Landing. Whereas King’s Landing was kind of haphazardly thrown together as it built up over the years, Harren the Black had always meant for a lot of people to be housed there. We see how many people can live in it during Arya’s chapters as she runs around inside of it and Harrentown and this is with a ruler who has no interest in keeping a lot of people in it. With a King or Queen living there, it opens itself up to growing in a much more easily defensible way than King’s Landing.

Historical Reasons Harrenhal is Significant

As you can see on the map, it’s built right on the edge of a very important place: The Isle of Faces and the lake that surrounds it, called the Gods Eye.

It’s a key place for the history of Westeros because it’s where the First Men and the Children of the Forest made peace:

Inexorably, the war ground on across generations, until at last the children understood that they could not win. The First Men, perhaps tired of war, also wished to see an end to the fighting. The wisest of both races prevailed, and the chief heroes and rulers of both sides met upon the isle in the Gods Eye to form the Pact…

It’s also notable for being the only place the Andals never managed to conquer:

It is possible that a few [Children of the Forest] survived on the Isle of Faces, as some have written, under the protection of the green men, whom the Andals never succeeded in destroying.

It’s a place associated with peace and negotiations between people, a place to stand strong against war and untouched by its horrors. A monument to what could be, if you will. And Harrenhal sits on its shore; it would add a very rich layer to setting up King’s Landing in a place associated with peace. And this isn’t the only time a succession crisis of sorts is settled there. The Great Council of 101 AC was held there.

To resolve the matter of his heir once and for all, Jaehaerys called the first Great Council in the year 101 AC, to put the matter before the lords of the realm. And from all corners of the realm the lords came. No castle could hold so many save for Harrenhal, so it was there that they gathered. The lords, great and small, came with their trains of bannermen, knights, squires, grooms, and servants. And behind them came yet more—the camp followers and washerwomen, the hawkers and smiths and carters. Thousands of tents sprang up over the moons, until the castle town of Harrenton was accounted the fourth largest city of the Realm.

Once again, we have Harrenhal associated with peace and negotiation in its history. However, that’s not all it’s associated with; there are several very significant battles that take place near the Gods Eye - again, it is in the middle of everything. It’s a place with lots of history and lots of ties to everyone in Westeros. There’s the Battle Beneath the Gods Eye between Maegor and Aegon the Uncrowned, The Battle of the Lake Shore and The Battle Over the Gods Eye during the Dance, as well as the story of Addam Velaryon landing Seasmoke on the Isle of Faces to take counsel from the green men after being accused of treason. It is, all in all, a very significant place in Westeros.

But that’s not the only reason Harrenhal is talked about. Basically every single time Harrenhal is brought up, someone will mention that it’s haunted. This belief comes because of Aegon the Conquerer and Harren the Black. While Orys Baratheon and Rhaenys march for the Stormlands & Daemon Velaryon and Visenya left for the Vale, Aegon himself first turns towards Harren the Black and the Riverlands. All three face opposition but Aegon conquers the Riverlands first because Harren is so ill loved:

So now the riverlands rose against him, led by Lord Edmyn Tully of Riverrun. Summoned to the defense of Harrenhal, Tully declared for House Targaryen instead, raised the dragon banner over his castle, and rode forth with his knights and archers to join his strength to Aegon’s. His defiance gave heart to the other riverlords. One by one, the lords of the Trident renounced Harren and declared for Aegon the Dragon. Blackwoods, Mallisters, Vances, Brackens, Pipers, Freys, Strongs … summoning their levies, they descended on Harrenhal.

And he makes very quick work of Harrenhal, making it the first Kingdom to become part of the Seven Kingdoms:

The riverlords outside the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night, like five great candles … and like candles, they began to twist and melt, as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.

Ever since the burning of Harrenhal, no House has been able to hold it without going extinct soon after. For House Targaryen’s rule in Westeros to start with Harren the Black’s hubris and the fall of Harrenhal, and end with Harrenhal becoming the new seat of the King of the Four (??) Kingdoms is a really neat connection.

Reasons Why It Works With King Bran

But wait! you say. Didn’t you just say that Harrenhal is cursed??

Why yes I did. HOWEVER. There is one family that the Curse of Harrenhal supposedly never touched: The Whents.

You see, from Harren the Black up until the Whents, every other House in charge of it has gone extinct.

House Hoare? That’s Harren’s house and we all know what happened there - they don’t call him Balerion the Black Dread for no reason.

House Qoherys? Dead less than three decades later.

House Harroway? Wiped out a decade later.

House Towers? died out within two decades, ending with sickly Maegor Towers and then old and tired Rhaena Targaryen, until the two odd friends died and the holdings were free again.

House Strong? Well…between the fire that kills Harwin and Lyonel, Larys’ shenanigans getting him merced by Cregan, and Aemond just straight committing a minor genocide in the Riverlands, they all died out (except maybe Alys Rivers’ baby but we don’t have any info there).

House Lothston? Interestingly, they hold the castle for several decades, but they too went completely extinct under King Maekar.

So we come to House Whent. They’ve held it for about 6 ish decades and though they’ve also had some bad luck, they’ve had their people grow old - Walter Whent who threw the tourney is called “Old Lord Whent” by Barristan, and Shella Whent is old when she dies. But the most interesting thing is Minisa Whent.

We don’t know a lot about the Whent line, only that Shella refused to bend the knee to Joffrey, fled Harrenhal when it was attacked, and later died. You could say the curse still got them but in every other case, the whole line dies, not just the main line! Even Janos Slynt has no descendants and Littlefinger will have none to inherit either. But the Whents do: they have House Tully. Minisa Whent married Hoster Tully and had Catelyn and Edmure. The Whents are known for their sharp cheekbones and both Catelyn and Sansa, funny enough, are described as having sharp cheekbones. This very close relation could mean that the Starklings have a claim to Harrenhal through their mother.

This fits with King Bran because we know the lords are perfectly fine fudging things and going through the female line if it fits their needs. They did the same thing with Robert and his grandmother Rhaelle Targaryen, who married Ormund Targaryen, Steffon’s mother. Renly says here:

Oh, there was talk of the blood ties between Baratheon and Targaryen, of weddings a hundred years past, of second sons and elder daughters. No one but the maesters care about any of it.

The maesters love a loophole inheritance.

And remember that the odds of surviving the books for the Baratheons and Targaryens is very, very low. It’s pretty much just bastards all the way down (on both sides lmao, because I do not think either Young Griff or Dany are gonna survive). And whenever the inheritance isn’t clear, a Great Council is called. Catelyn even suggested it while parlying with the Baratheons:

Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them.

Mentioning Bran, of course. A lot of people think it’s far fetched and while I do think him being so young is gonna be a hard sell now that the time jump is gone, I don’t think it’s that far fetched that the lords of the Stormlands, The Reach, the Eyrie, and The Westerlands would be convinced to choose Hoster Tully’s grandson and Ned Stark’s baby boy to rule over them.

And finally, Robb wasn’t called “Robb Stark, King in the North” he was also explicitly called “King of the Trident.” All the talk about who is Robb’s heir but look at how they all think of themselves - “as brave as Robb” “as strong as Robb” or they’ll have sons and name them Robb. Whereas Who Rules The North is all tied up in Robb’s legacy, the Iron Throne isn’t! If King Bran rules from the Riverlands, however, it gives Bran that tie to Robb; he gets to protect and rule from the lands Robb swore to protect, the lands he ultimately fought and died in. For Bran, he still gets to be Robb’s heir, at least in spirit, and I think that would be, to Bran, something very bittersweet.

[daenysthedreamer101]

A ring for a Lady of House Whent

[dyannawynnedayne]

The Eight Ladies of the Crossing

First Row: Perra Royce, Cyrenna Swann

Second Row: Amarei Crakehall, Alyssa Blackwood

Third Row: Sarya Whent, Bethany Rosby

Fourth Row: Annara Farring, Joyeuse Erenford

I tried to do the designs and details based around their houses, with the colors of the Freys. I possibly maybe should have flipped that, but oh well! Here are the girls!

[mejcinta]

How can I make this about Aemond's son with Alys and the House Whent fan theory? 🤭

[goodqueenaly]

Hello! I hope you are well. I'm back with another weirdly specific question/topic I'd love to read your thoughts on. I was looking at the Frey family tree (as one does) and a detail that I hadn't really paid attention to before- there seem to be a few instances of sisters from the same house marrying into the Freys? Sallei and Sylwa Paege, possibly Sarya and Wynafrei Wheat? And--sorry this is going to be weird!--I thought Corenna and Cyrenna Swann might be sisters and I think Walder is (continue

(continued) I think Walder Frey is a person who...would not have hesitation to marry his son's sister-in-law (if Cyrenna and Corenna were sisters). Do you think that's possible at all? And do you think that--if these examples were actually all sisters--there would be a political or dynastic explanation for it, that there would be this kind of pattern? Sorry for the long question. I love your analysis of this kind of marriage/family tree in ASOIAF and would love to hear your thoughts.

While it's certainly not guaranteed that any two female characters are sisters as opposed to cousins or other relations (a point I mentioned with Betha and Melantha Blackwood), I think it is entirely possible that these pairs of Frey brides were in fact sisters in each case. I also think it is entirely possible that Walder would have married the sister of his son's own bride (which, to be sure, was not entirely unheard of in history: Catherine de' Medici schemed to wed her younger daughter Margaret to Carlos, son of Philip II of Spain, after her older daughter Elisabeth), given Walder's own focus on expanding his personal dynasty. Indeed, this was a point I made when I created a speculative family tree for House Whent: since it appears Sarya and Wynafrei married their Frey husbands at roughly the same time, it’s possible that Walder tried to arrange for an advantageous betrothal with the proud Whents (as had Hoster Tully or his father) by offering himself, as a lord in his own right, as well as his eighth son.

As for the Swanns, while it certainly appears that Corenna and Cyrenna married Stevron and Lord Walder, respectively, in roughly the same period of time (given that Stevron’s son by Corenna, Ryman, and Walder’s elder son by Cyrenna, Jared, were both born somewhere in the late 240s), we cannot even begin to guess why father and son married women who might have been sisters, still less why the Swanns agreed to to the double marriage. Did the Swanns, Baptista Minola-like, refuse a marriage for Corenna unless Cyrenna was found a suitor too? Did Walder offer himself, with all the status and advantage of a lordly marriage not perhaps otherwise guaranteed to Cyrenna Swann, if he could secure a match with the proud and ancient Swanns for his heir? Did Walder secure an otherwise unattainable double match with House Swann because, perhaps, the Swanns may have been out of favor with the crown in the aftermath of Lyonel Baratheon’s rebellion? Any or none of these might have explained the double Frey-Swann marriage.

This lack of explanation holds even more true for Sallei and Sylwa Paege, married to the full brothers Jammos and Whalen Frey. Again, while their children are roughly of an age (with Sylwa's son and daughter being four and three years old, respectively, than Sallei's eldest child), there is no evidence whatsoever as to whether these (possible) sisters married their Frey husbands at the same time, still less why they might have done so (or married these brothers at all). These daughters/nieces/cousins of a mere landed knight may have simply married the sons of a lordly neighbor House for lack of better dynastic options, and Walder Frey in turn may have seen these two sufficiently aristocratic sisters/relatives as being an easy means of getting rid of two of his own extraneous sons. But again, until and unless GRRM decides to provide more detail, we're left with the most vague level of speculation.

[rikakore]

Minisa Whent-Tully

The Whents are such a fun house, they live in a HAUNTED CASTLE and their sigil is a BAT. The Whents are vampires headcanon confirmed (there's a Lady Stoneheart vampire theory here somewhere) .

I didn't really want to portray Minisa as sweet or diminutive. I can't see anyone who grew up in Harrenhall of all places to not have some fangs. You can be a beloved wife and mother and also be creepy AF.

The Riverlands pre-rebellion to me are the epitome of Post-Roman Pre-Anglo Saxon fashion in the Scottish isles. Gallic influences mingling with drapery, rich dyes, and fine metalwork. Post-Rebellion, there's less of an anti-Targ backlash style-wise, simply because there's less of a stark (ha) difference between the Riverlands and KL. Nobles begin to prefer less draping in favour of tighter tailoring and heavier embroidery, but that's about it.

I feel like if anyone would preserve a stylistic time capsule like Druidic face paint for centuries after the conquest, it would be vassal houses surrounding a superstitious and mystical place like Harrenhall.

Rickard-Lyarra Brandon Ned Lyanna Benjen Jon Arya

Minisa Hoster Catelyn Edmure Lysa Robb Sansa Bran Rickon Robin

[housetullysource]

The Tullys drew their strength from the river, and it was to the river they returned when their lives had run their course.

[nanshe-of-nina]

Unseen Characters GIF Sets → Shella Whent

Lady Whent, last of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts in the cavernous vaults of Harrenhal…

[game-of-style]

House Whent with their sigil, the bat - Rodarte Fall 2023

[president-and-godemperor-forlife]

Wait why did no one tell me there’s a theory about how Aemond’s line became House Whent?! Catelyn Tullys mother is from House Whent and the Cat married into the Starks…

That’s wild lol.

[gothgleek]

The research that led me to my Baratheon escoiffin post also let me discover a style resembling bat ears that would be perfect for House Whent. I can imagine her wearing this in the Riverlands when she feels homesick. She just colors it with the House Tully colors (that she gives a goth edge because House Whent is the local goth chapter of the Riverlands).

Credit goes to @15-lizards inspiring the Riverlands clothing.

[lemonhemlock]

What do you think will hapen with Alys (and her son) in F&B II?

I honestly don't know where George is going with this. To my eyes it looks like an abandoned plotline or something intentionally vague and shrouded in mystery, so as to make the reader ponder. I don't think he intends to explain every manifestation of the supernatural, some things are just meant to remain enigmas.

Harren's curse is pretty real within the books. Those who hold Harrenhal never do so indefinitely. So what could that mean for Alys, to become the next subject of this curse, alongside her son? Some link her son to House Whent in the current timeline. Catelyn's mother was a Whent. Now, I have to ask, what purpose would it serve for the Stark children to have Aemond's diluted Targaryen blood? More than a century and a half has passed. I doubt any potent magical ability could still be relevant. Same thing for Lysa's and Edmure's lines.

IDK, I just don't think the books are going to end with any kind of Targaryen restoration. I don't see Dany or fAegon living past the series' end. For that reason, I'm not entirely convinced Jon is going to survive either. IMO, it makes more sense that the special magical Targaryen blood that gives you access to controlling dragons be wiped out, because dragons are weapons of mass destruction that should not exist in the world after the next Long Night has been averted.

Or, to account for the existence of Targaryen bastards, become sufficiently diluted throughout the ages that it's rendered "useless".

[foxoftamriel]

I hope the theory that Aemond’s son founds House Whent is true just so that it will calm down both Black and Green fans like hey! The Blacks have an epic bloodline but so do the Greens! Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Rickon are related to Aemond just like Dany, Viserys, Aegon, and Jon are related to Rhaenyra

[mejcinta]

So, there's a theory on Reddit about Aemond and Alys's son, Harrenhal, House Whent and potential descendants linking them to the present Starks, through Catelyn, that's really getting to me lately. But that's all it is, a theory. That I really like.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Does house Whent have a pun in their name?? I mean english isn't my mother lenguage but it sounds similar to Went or When

Whent is an actual British surname; however, considering the “curse” on Harrenhal where every house that occupies it goes extinct, how the Whent women appear to have fertility problems (at least Wynafrei and Sarya had no living children) and all the men are dead, and Lady Shella “last of her line” mysteriously disappears/maybe dies after she was dispossessed of Harrenhal by Tywin Lannister…I like to think their surname is a pun on “Went”, as in they came to rule Harrenhal, but they went (aka they’re gone) now.