In a side note from your analysis of Jaime I in ASOS, you include the Brackens in a list with the Freys and Peakes as “asshole families”. What did the Brackens do? I know they don’t get along with the Blackwoods, or but I’ve always thought of that as feud without a clear antagonist or protagonist. Am I wrong?

So I use that term to suggest what the author’s feelings are, not necessarily my own.

But you just have to look at how GRRM has described the two houses to see which side he comes down on: the Blackwoods worship the Old Gods and have a cool weirwood tree for their sigil, the Brackens converted to the New Gods and have…a horse; Missy Blackwood is loved by all, but Barba Bracken is a callous schemer who gets exiled from court and her poor sister meets an even worse fate; Otho Bracken is a “brute” and won’t help Dunk; Jonos Bracken is a womanizing tool who sides (or is it “sides”?) with the Lannisters while Tytos Blackwood is an honorable Stark loyalist (with a kickass ravenfeather cloak); hell, when GRRM wants to have the Three Stooges enter his series, they show up as Bracken sworn swords!

So while I think the thematic argument that GRRM is trying to make is that both sides are equally to blame for the feud, his aesthetics aren’t matching up. Poets being of the devil’s party and so forth.

Do the Brackens, like the Ryswells, breed horses or is their sigil related to something else

According to the Blackwoods:

“It goes back to the Age of Heroes. The Blackwoods were kings in those days. The Brackens were petty lords, renowned for breeding horses. Rather than pay their king his just due, they used the gold their horses brought them to hire swords and cast him down.”

The Brackens disagree.

Would the vassals and smallfolk under the Brackens and Blackwoods share their liege lords’ rivalry due to border raids?

Good question! If I had to guess, there’s probably two simultaneous phenomena going on.

For the folks who are definitively on one side of the border or the other, you’re going to get mirroring of the feud, because those smallfolk see their liege lords as “their” lords, their protectors, and the other side as the thieving, murdering bastards who keep raiding their lands. Indeed, a lot of these people are going to be the folks who the lords turn to first to make up their feudal levies, they’re going to have been involved in a lot of the fighting and raiding, so there’s a strong element of selective hypocrisy here, similar to how the border reivers from the 13th through the 17th centuries had their clan feuds on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border, despite the fact that these clans were basically indistinguishable.

For the folks who are in the middle, things are going to be more complicated. Since the land shifts back and forth so much between Bracken and Blackwood, you’re not going to get clear-cut divisions of loyalty. Rather, there’s likely to be a lot of mixed loyalties, both inside families and between generations. Here, I’m reminded somewhat of a lot of the German peasants during the Thirty Years War who made sure to own a picture of both the Pope and Martin Luther and then swap them on the wall depending on which marauding army was passing through.

Anon: House Bracken’s history

The Brackens have a history of being opportunists. They even kind of remind me of the Campbells.

When the Ironborn attack, Lord Bracken betrays his fellow riverlords to join them in hopes of a reward. He was an idiot to think it would be a crown. They also fought for the Blackfyres thanks in no small part to Bittersteel who was using Daemon to secure a place at the royal court. Now we see Jonos Bracken fighting his former ally on behalf of the Lannisters who attacked his fief without provocation, and burned his castle and raped one of his daughters. Something tells me he’ll join Aegon.

On top of that, Bracken was responsible for “they lay with lions,” and isn’t loyal to his wives or his fellow riverlords.

What do you think?

Honestly, I kind of feel bad for the Brackens, because GRRM has clearly picked them out to be an family of heels (in the wrestling sense), similar to the Peakes, Florents, etc. Compared to the Blackwoods, who are clearly his special favorites – they follow the Old Gods, they’ve got a special weirwood tree, they’ve got magic in their background, etc. The Brackens almost always end up on the losing side of any conflict – whether it’s the Dance of Dragons, Aegon IV’s mistresses, the Blackfyre Rebellions, etc.

And honestly? I think the Brackens are probably in the right, to the extent that anyone can be in the right of a blood feud. Let’s take the origin of their dispute:

“The Blackwoods say they were kings and the Brackens little more than petty lords set on betraying and deposing them, while the Brackens say much the same about the Blackwoods.”

Given that the Blackwoods were originally a Northern House who had to immigrate to the South (”the Blackwoods of Raventree, whose own family traditions insist they once ruled most of the wolfswood before being driven from their lands by the Kings of Winter”), it’s a lot more likely that the Brackens were the kings and the Blackwoods the disloyal vassals than vice versa. Sort of puts the whole dispute in a different light, doesn’t it?

And if you look deeply, there’s always two sides to the same story – the Brackens backed the Ironborn because the Blackwoods had invited the Storm Kings to invade the Riverlands to make Lord Rodrick Blackwood King of the Rivers and Hills, which makes the Blackwoods rather horrendous traitors to their liege lords the Teagues. (Although they’d say they were fighting for their faith)