Another question from the riverlander AH guy. Throughout its history, the kings of the riverlands have used 3 different titled. King of the Trident, King of the Rivers and Hills, and simply River King. After millenia of rule under house justman, Should i have only one of these remain, or should i have all three still in use(similarly to how house stark is still known as the kings of winter) at the same time?

Here’s my thinking…

King of the Trident is probably the oldest title, a bit like Kings of Winter. It represents a claim to the defensible interior of the Riverlands, the part that would have been the hardest for the Westerlands or the Vale or the Reach etc. to conquer.

King of the Rivers and Hills is a more expansive title. The Hills portion represents a claim to the hill country that runs from Pinkmaiden to Harrenhal, the portion I’ve described as the “southern Riverlands,” which is the vulnerable underbelly of the kingdom because it’s not sheltered behind the riverrine walls of the Trident. The Rivers portion is not only a repetition of the claim to the Trident, but also a maximalist claim to all the rivers of the Kingdom, including the God’s Eye River and the Blackwater Rush, and thus might well represent a claim on the northern Crownlands, since King’s Landing and Rosby (and Duskendale, conquered by Benedict II, who may have been the first to use that title) are quite close to the Rush, Cracklaw Point is quite close to Maidenpool and borders on the Trident as it opens into the Bay of Crabs, etc.

River King is the colloquial term. If the two above are the titles that a Justman monarch’s court would use, I imagine River King would be the term used by the smallfolk or by foreigners to differentiate these kings from the many other kings of Westeros.

a worldbuilding question about house justman. What would you name their fortress/seat, its corresponsing city(if the castle has one) and where would you place it/them? around the place where the trident forks or where harrenhall was build seems like the two best possible places.

Good question!

As discussed here, I would guess based on the story that the Justman seat and lands would be on the Red Fork between Stone Hedge and Raventree Hall, both because Benedict Justman’s support was initially from the houses of his mother and father, and because putting himself physically in between the Brackens and Blackwoods is probably the only way to keep them from fighting.

So I would imagine that the castle proper is on an island in the middle of the river overlooking a major ford over the Red Fork, but also controls lands on both banks. As for the name, I kind of like Scales – it follows from House Justman’s sigil, but it also works to allude to the fishes in the Red Fork and that general Trident vibe.

Anon Asks: House Justman

How different would things have been if House Justman hadn’t been wiped out by the Ironborn?

Very, very different. While still making a lot of the same mistakes w/r/t city charters as other regimes, the Justmans were probably the strongest of the Riverlands dynasties.

If they hadn’t died out, then:

Right off the bat, the Riverlands avoid a hundred years of bloody civil war which restarts the Bracken-Blackwood feud.
They avoid the instability under House Teague, and the eventual religious civil war that brings about the conquest of the Riverlands by the Stormlands.
As a result, the Stormlander empire in the Riverlands never gets off the ground. This has a lot of ripple effects: first, the Riverlands is spared ~360 years of rebellions and repressions and having to fight in Stormlander wars. Second, the Durrandons don’t get over-extended and probably stand a better chance against the Gardeners and Martells.
Next, the Hoares aren’t going to be conquering squat. 3,000 men against 35-55,000 isn’t even a concern. Not only does this spare the Riverlands 140 years of really brutal rule, but it also means the Ironborn mythos of superiority isn’t going to get the shot in the arm it gets in OTL. Maybe Qhorwyn’s New Way gets a chance to sink in and the Ironborn continue as a nation of traders and strictly overseas pirates/mercenaries.

Now what happens when the Targaryens come, I don’t know. But if the Justmans survive, they’re going to be much stronger and more stable than the Tullys, that’s for sure.