Not really. The hill clans also have a strong belief that, if they’re going to set foot outside their hills, you need to come and ask them in person. And with Winterfell completely discombobulated in the wake of Theon’s sneak attack, no one ever asked for their help.

That being said, there is that one Liddle…

Well, some of them stuck with Stannis, most of them bent the knee to Joffrey. Then again, a lot of them never sided with either Stannis or Renly and stayed home, so we don’t know what their loyalty will be, especially now that Aegon VI has landed. 

Well, magical abilities I dunno about, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gardeners had a bit of the Fisher King fertility god going on.

To begin with, I love that the truly successful Gardener kings are not the warlords like “Garth V (Hammer of the Dornish), Gwayne I (the Gallant), Gyles I (the Woe), Gareth II (the Grim), Garth VI (the Morningstar), and Gordan I (Grey-Eyes).” A lot of those guys ended up very very dead, usually at the hands of the Ironborn (interesting that anti-Ironborn sentiment isn’t a bigger thing in the Reach).

Rather, the really successful Gardener kings are the politicians like Garth the Great, who established the northern boundaries of the Reach with mutual defense pacts, Garland the Bridegroom, who married into House Hightower and brought Oldtown into the Reach after Gyles the Woe failed to sack it, Gwayne the Fat who brought the Peakes and Manderlys into the realm peacefully by acting as a fair judge, and John the Tall, who expanded the Reach through trade and exploration. And when you look at how the Gardeners reacted to the Andals, it’s a complex mix of military preparation, cultural adaptation, intermarriage, and recruiting, so that by the time that the Andal kings attacked the Reach in force, the Gardeners had Andal knights and Andal lords ready to fight them. 

And of course, you have Garth the Goldenhand, who’s an underrated memetic badass. Here’s a man who handily whups the Ironborn and the Dornish, then turns around and defeats an alliance of the Westerlands and the Stormlands through espionage and psychological warfare, then convinces their kings to marry his daughters and sign a peace deal that gives the Reach everything it wants, who rules for **81 years,** with more than 70 of them going by without fighting a war, and dies with all of his marbles intact. If Jaehaerys is the best king that the Targaryens put up, Garth the Goldenhand might just be the best monarch in Westerosi history. 

At the same time, though, you definitely see that House Gardener got hit by a bad case of victory disease. They were so rich and so powerful that they tried to grab all of it – hence Gyles III trying to conquer the Stormlands and fighting the Reach and the Dornish and the Riverlands at the same time and getting a lot of people killed for nothing, leading to the civil war that almost ended the Reach during the reign of Garth X. 

But then, you have to be impressed by the resilience of the Gardeners. Despite losing land to the Westeralnds and the Stormlands, despite having the Dornish sack Highgarden, burn the Oakenseat, and kill their king, Mern VI and his Tyrell advisors manage to win everything back, just in time for Garth the Painter to wreak such a terrible vengeance on the Dornish that he painted the Red Mountains green.

In short, I find the Gardeners both a fascinating example of but also a complete undermining of the entire chivalric culture of the Reach, permanently poised halfway between the seductive and deadly appeal of la gloire and the patient, hardheaded work of realpolitik. 

Well, I’m Team Smallfolk 4 Life. 

But I do find House Gardener interesting.

A couple reasons. Firstly, Aerys was holding Elia as a hostage, so Doran withdrawing his support for the crown means his sister dies. Secondly, regardless of any insult, Rhaegar is still the crown prince and Aegon, Doran’s nephew, is his heir. Doran’s going to fight for his nephew’s rights even if he thinks his brother-in-law is an adulterous asshole. 

I think mostly an easter egg. You don’t want to over-egg the pudding – ASOIAF is about ice (White Walkers) and fire (dragons). Throwing in Deep Ones and Cthulhu, to say nothing of people’s speculation about a Grey Plague bringing about a zombie apocalypse on top of everything else, just muddles the story and reduces the impact of the main event.

For Aeron specifically, the reason why I don’t think he’ll cause Cthulhu to rise from the depths is that **Aeron is a false prophet**. He’s not a charlatan, he completely believes in his own connection to the divinity, but he’s not actually in communion with the Drowned God. We know what being a true prophet of the Drowned God looks like – it’s Patchface, and it’s terrifying divine madness and Cassandraic prophecies that no one understands. 

Absolutely, but only those houses that have kept the faith – the Freys were always uncertain in their loyalties (look how they bolted from Whitewalls and managed to get away clean) and now they’re joined at the hip to the Lannisters. The Yronwoods fought in three separate rebellions, so I think their loyalties are rock-solid. 

Keep in mind, the number of Blackfyre loyalists has been on the decline in the long run – they had half the kingdom in the 1st Rebellion, but the 2nd Rebellion was limited to the hardcore and even then a lot of former Blackfyre supporters wisely stayed away. The 3rd Rebellion seems to have been the highwater mark – much of the realm was deeply alienated from King Aerys’ neglect and Bloodraven’s police state, and Bittersteel was able to land in force and wage a full-scale war with multiple battles. He even had enough supporters at court to help him escape after his capture. 

Likewise, Aenys Blackfyre must have had some base of support to even contemplate making the trip to Westeros, and Bloodraven wouldn’t have had him killed if there wasn’t a significant group of Blackfyre loyalists who needed to be threatened into obedience. 

However, the 4th Rebellion showed far less support on the mainland. When the Golden Company landed on Massey’s Hook, only a few lords rose with them and they were easily bottled up on the peninsula and badly beaten at Wendwater Bridge. By the time that Maelys the Monstrous attempted his invasion of the Stepstones, his only support came from Essos. 

The original essays are the same, but I wrote a new essay (quite long essays, as it turned out) for each series, taking a look at the new information that the World of Ice and Fire had provided and adjusting my arguments accordingly.

To begin with, the court wasn’t “Dornish-influenced” – Aerys was openly bigoted towards the Dornish and treated Elia as a virtual hostage. Rhaegar was a bit better, but his abduction of Lyanna would have been a sign that he didn’t particularly feel bound to his Martell kin.

Second, I don’t see how a royal rebellion would have shored up the Tyrell claim – if the Blackfyre Rebellion is any example, rebellions tend to be a time when lesser houses begin to get ideas about replacing their higherups.

Ultimately, I think the Tyrells sided with the crown because Mace thought he could get ahead by being a loyalist. Aerys was known for rewarding cronyism, and with the Lannisters out of the picture, the Tyrells would be the most prominent loyalist house around. Compare that to the Rebel Alliance, where the Tyrells would have been Johnny come latelys, not part of the original network of marriages and fosterages, and thus likely having to wait their turn behind the Starks, Baratheons, Arryns, and Tullys.

We don’t know, exactly. Oldstones, for example, seems to have remained in ruins ever since the fall of House Mudd, which is kind of odd given that viable land is something of a premium. We also don’t know who the lords of Fairmarket were/are after the Hoares were chucked out. It does seem like a lot of the land between the Red Fork and the Blue Fork is underutilized. 

As for Harrenhal, I think it’s a bit of a white elephant thing. If you’re the lord of Harrenhal, so much of your income is tied up with maintenance that you can’t really afford to buy real estate.