The five most interesting characters from Fire & Blood
Cregan Stark
There was a time in Westerosi history when House Stark could have taken control of King’s Landing and sat the Iron Throne as rulers of the Seven Kingdoms. This time was known as the Hour of the Wolf, and it is the story of Lord Cregan Stark of Winterfell, the Warden of the North. He pledged support to Rhaenyra Targaryen’s Blacks during the Dance of the Dragons, and eventually marched on King’s Landing with a very large army of Northerners and took control of the city.
Lord Cregan was a seasoned warrior and masterful swordsman. He once fought Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, and later, Aemon claimed he never faced a finer swordsman.
Lord Cregan’s decision to march was based on a pact he made with Rhaenyra’s son Prince Jacaerys Velaryon. Called the Pact of Ice and Fire, it provided that when Rhaenyra or her sons took the Iron Throne from Aegon II’s Greens, marriages would take place between Houses Targaryen and Stark. In fact, according to the fool Mushroom, while he was at Winterfell, Prince Jacaerys fell in love with and married Lord Cregan’s bastard half-sister.
Anyway, when Lord Cregan and his army arrived at King’s Landing, Aegon II had been killed, and Aegon III had already been crowned as the new king. Known as Aegon the Younger, he was the fourth-born son of his mother, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and ascended to the Iron Throne because all of his older brothers were killed in the Dance of the Dragons.
However, because he was only 11 years of age, Aegon III ruled through a regency until he turned 16. When Lord Cregan arrived at the Red Keep, he let Aegon III know that he was there to support him, but wanted to know what happened to Aegon II (Aegon the Older), and how he was killed without anyone having besieged the city.
When Cregan learned that Aegon II was poisoned, a dishonorable act, he convinced the young king to make him Hand of the King, so he could find and punish those involved in King Aegon II’s murder.
Lord Cregan held King’s Landing in his grasp for six days, wherein many Lords feared he would take control and become regent or even King himself. The Septons of the Faith feared Cregan and his Northerners would tear down the Septs and force the realm to worship the old gods and their weirwood trees.
However, Lord Cregan had no such aspirations. He only wanted to serve justice, and since he and his army marched on King’s Landing looking for a fight, his men were itching to help him bring justice to the Red Keep. As Hand of the King, Lord Cregan threw every member of Aegon II’s Small Council in the dungeons, along with his remaining Kingsguard and even his Septon and Maester.
After all was said and done, 22 men were arrested for the late king’s death, and after a day of deliberation in the throne room, where Lord Cregan sat on a wooden bench at the foot of the Iron Throne (such a Stark thing to do), most of the men were found guilty of treason. The penalty was death. Only Lord Corlys Velaryon was pardoned after Aegon III and Lady Aly Blackwood spoke on his behalf.
When Lord Cregan unsheathed House Stark’s ancestral Valyrian steel blade Ice to behead the guilty (the Lords of Winterfell held to the custom that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword), all but Ser Gyles Belgrave of the Kingsguard and Larys the Clubfoot chose to take the black of the Night’s Watch, and since Lord Cregan knew how important it was to keep adding men to that ancient order, he allowed it to happen.
Ser Gyles chose death because he believed no Kingsguard should outlive their king, and Larys the Clubfoot knew he was doomed, as he was the man mainly responsible for poisoning Aegon II. He asked Lord Cregan to hack off his clubfoot as well, since he didn’t want to drag it around in the afterlife, and Cregan agreed. Larys Strong the Clubfoot was buried at Harrenhal, without his clubbed foot.
Lord Cregan then stepped down as Hand of the King and returned to Winterfell, but not before securing the hand of Lady Aly Blackwood in marriage. As for his army, many of them formed a company of sellswords, aptly named the Wolf Pack, and others followed Lady Aly Blackwood back to the Riverlands to marry the many widows who lost their husbands during the Dance of the Dragons.
After making sure her lands were once again safe and that homes and castles were being reconstructed and repaired by the Northmen she helped to settle there, Lady Aly went to Winterfell and married Lord Cregan in front of Winterfell’s weirwood tree, as House Blackwood was and still is one of the few southron Houses to keep the old gods.
One final note: King Aegon III granted many rewards to Lord Cregan, but a Targaryen princess never did marry into House Stark. The Pact of Ice and Fire was never fulfilled…not yet, anyway.