THE AGE OF HEROES

THE AGE OF HEROES lasted for thousands of years, in which kingdoms rose and fell, noble houses were founded and withered away, and great deeds were accomplished. Yet what we truly know of those ancient days is hardly more than what we know of the Dawn Age. The tales we have now are the work of septons and maesters writing thousands of years after the fact—yet unlike the children of the forest and the giants, the First Men of this Age of Heroes left behind some ruins and ancient castles that can corroborate parts of the legends, and there are stone monuments in the barrow fields and elsewhere marked with their runes. It is through these remnants that we can begin to ferret out the truth behind the tales.

What is commonly accepted is that the Age of Heroes began with the Pact and extended through the thousands of years in which the First Men and the children lived in peace with one another. With so much land ceded to them, the First Men at last had room to increase. From the Land of Always Winter to the shores of the Summer Sea, the First Men ruled from their ringforts. Petty kings and powerful lords proliferated, but in time some few proved to be stronger than the rest, forging the seeds of the kingdoms that are the ancestors of the Seven Kingdoms we know today. The names of the kings of these earliest realms are caught up in legend, and the tales that claim their individual rules lasted hundreds of years are to be understood as errors and fantasies introduced by others in later days.

Names such as Brandon the Builder, Garth Greenhand, Lann the Clever, and Durran Godsgrief are names to conjure with, but it is likely that their legends hold less truth than fancy. Elsewhere, I shall endeavor to sift what grain can be found from the chaff, but for now it is enough to acknowledge the tales.

And besides the legendary kings and the hundreds of kingdoms from which the Seven Kingdoms were born, stories of such as Symeon Star-Eyes, Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, and other heroes have become fodder for septons and singers alike. Did such heroes once exist? It may be so. But when the singers number Serwyn of the Mirror Shield as one of the Kingsguard—an institution that was only formed during the reign of Aegon the Conqueror—we can see why it is that few of these tales can ever be trusted. The septons who first wrote them down took what details suited them and added others, and the singers changed them—sometimes beyond all recognition—for the sake of a warm place in some lord’s hall. In such a way does some long-dead First Man become a knight who follows the Seven and guards the Targaryen kings thousands of years after he lived (if he ever did). The legion of boys and youths made ignorant of the past history of Westeros by these foolish tales cannot be numbered.

I t is best to remember that when we speak of these legendary founders of realms, we speak merely of some early domains—generally centered on a high seat, such as Casterly Rock or Winterfell—that in time incorporated more and more land and power into their grasp. If Garth Greenhand ever ruled what he claimed was the Kingdom of the Reach, it is doubtful its writ was anything more than notional beyond a fortnight’s ride from his halls. But from such petty domains arose the mightier kingdoms that came to dominate Westeros in the millennia to come.