"Show them how it feels to lose what they love.”
The House Tully sigil is a silver trout over a red and blue background.
The two wavy silver lines make the fish appear to be leaping out of a river,
evoking House Tully’s region, the Riverlands.
Like the Tyrell’s Reach, the Riverlands are a fertile region
but they have very few natural defenses, which make them an easy target.
“Unlike the North,
we don’t have the neck to keep invaders waist deep in muck.
Unlike the Vale, we don’t have mountains
with narrow passes easily defended by stable boys with slings.”
Sandwiched between the Northern Starks of Winterfell
and the capital at King’s Landing,
with the Lannisters’ home Casterly Rock on their west,
the Riverlands are the unwilling battleground
in pretty much every major civil war in Westeros.
“The Riverlands are and always have been
the middle child of Westeros,
caught up in every fart from one Lord at another.”
And they bear the brunt of the carnage.
“They burned most everything in the Riverlands –
our fields,
our granaries,
our homes.”
So this middle child of Westeros has learned to survive
through making strategic alliances, usually via arranged marriages.
“If you refuse, our alliance with the Freys is dead.”
Matriarch Catelyn Stark, a Tully by birth,
showcases her house’s personality as she tries to broker partnerships
and negotiate to help her son Robb Stark’s army.
“What does he want in return?”
“You will be taking on his son, Oliver, as your personal squire.
He expects a knighthood in good time.”
Going into Season 8, Catelyn,
her sister Lysa,
and her uncle Brynden, the Blackfish,
are dead.
But there is still one major Tully in play --
Catelyn’s younger brother, Edmure.
"Edmure Tully, son of Hoster Tully,
and the rightful Lord of Riverrun."
After he was married to Roslin Frey at the Red Wedding,
he was taken captive by the Freys.
“Why do you think the people who murdered his king at the Red Wedding
would decide to let him come home?
Because it's a trap, you idiot.”
Now that Arya has wiped out the Freys, it’s unclear where Edmure is
and he could factor into the climax ahead.
While their lot is often tragedy
the Tullys represent the underestimated strengths of many a middle child:
adaptability, worldliness, diplomacy, family values, and sensitive emotion.
“Killing Jaime Lannister would not buy life for your children
but returning him to King's Landing may buy life for mine.”
So let’s take a look at how House Tully and the much-beleaguered Riverlands
offer a different perspective
than the other Great Houses on Game of Thrones.
Instead of broadcasting their fearsome power,
they take pride in their ability to go with the flow.
And they remind us that
when you’re facing down enemies on all sides,
it’s important to get your priorities in order.
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When young Bran says the words of House Tully during his lessons,
“Family, Duty, Honor.”
he draws our attention to the order of these three values –
“Family, Duty, Honor?
Is that the right order?”
“You know it is.”
“Family comes first.”
for a Tully, family always comes first.
Here Bran is angry at his mother for being gone
after he’s recovering from the attack
that left him without the use of his legs.
“How can she protect the family if she’s not WITH her family?”
But his mother is away
BECAUSE she’s trying to look out for the safety of her family.
And Catelyn is the character
who best illustrates what devotion to family truly means.
“The love she had for her children, I was a little awed by it.”
This woman is a mother to the core of her being.
“My own mother died on the birthing bed
when I was very young.
It's a bloody business.
What comes after is even harder.”
We see her dispensing motherly advice in vain,
to the warring Baratheon brothers, Stannis and Renly.
“If you were sons of mine,
I would knock your heads together and lock you in a bedchamber
until you remembered that you were brothers.”
Even her one shortcoming as a mother –
not loving the boy she believes to be her husband's bastard son --
“So I prayed to all Seven Gods, let the boy live.
Let him live and I'll love him.”
is something that pains her deeply.
“All this horror that's come to my family,
it's all because I couldn't love a motherless child.”
She does everything she can to help, Protect, and pull together her family.
“What are we fighting for if not for them?”
“It’s more complicated than that!
You know it is!”
Her noble actions are all the more heart-wrenching
given that they’re so futile,
as she can’t save her Stark children
from being held prisoner and hunted down.
[Screams]
She dies believing that all of her sons are dead.
“I wonder how many times did Bran or Rickon
stare across the moors of Winterfell,
waiting for me to return.
I will never see them again.”
Even if she can’t always protect her children,
where Catelyn has truly succeeded as a mother
is in how genuinely her children love each other.
“I’m your brother.
I have to protect you.”
“Right now, I have to protect you.”
Instead of battling for dominance, the Stark siblings support each other,
long for each other’s victories,
“And what do they say of Robb Stark in the North?”
“They call him the Young Wolf.”
and display a tenderness when they’re together.
The love Catelyn has instilled in them is no small feat,
as we can see here that in most powerful families,
it’s easy for siblings to put their competitiveness and greed
over any affection.
“I never loved my brothers.”
In Season 1, Catelyn and her sister Lysa Arryn
have a very interesting conversation about family.
“Does family mean nothing to you?”
“Family means everything to me.”
Here we can see Lysa interprets ‘family’ very narrowly
to mean only her bond with her son,
which she prioritizes far above any other family loyalty.
“I will not risk Robin's life
to get caught up in another of your husband's wars.”
In fact, we later learn she’s killed her husband,
and she’s happy to abandon the rest of her family
if they get in the way of what she wants.
“My father, my husband, my sister…
they all stood between us, and now they're all dead!
THAT'S what happens to people who stand between Petyr and me!"
In vain, Catelyn calls on her sister to think of her extended family.
“Ned rots in a dungeon and you speak of patience?
He is your brother by law!”
This is an important aspect of Building a strong support network –
if parents think only of their immediate offspring,
that not only spoils and stunts those children,
[Shouts] “I didn’t ruin it!”
but it’s also shortsighted
as it teaches one’s own children
to only care about THEIR immediate offspring
and eventually cast off
those very parents who imparted the wrong values.
“My mother's always had a penchant for drama.
Facts become less and less important to her as she grows older.”
So we can see Lysa’s selfish, limited interpretation of family
is a perversion of the value –
just as her continued breastfeeding of her older son
embodies a twisted excess of a certain aspect of family love.
“Isn't he beautiful?
And strong too.”
While “Family” comes first,
the Tully words also include “Duty” and then “Honor”.
These values support a healthy family.
Because Lysa cares nothing for these, that explains her corruption.
When Brienne of Tarth swears fealty to Catelyn,
Lady Stark makes the point that she would never abuse this oath
by asking Brienne to do anything dishonorable:
“I shall ask no service of you that might bring you dishonor.”
Still, duty and honor comes second and third,
after family in Catelyn’s eyes,
as we see, for example,
when she releases the prisoner Jaime Lannister
behind Robb’s back in hopes of getting her daughters released.
“Bran and Rickon are captive in Winterfell.
Sansa and Arya are captives in King's Landing.
I have five children, and only one of them is free.
Others like Ned Stark or Jon Arryn
might not put family above everything else in this way.
At the very start of the series
we see Catelyn trying to convince Ned to choose family over duty,
and turn down Robert’s request to become Hand of the King.
“l have no choice.”
“That's what men always Say when honor calls.
That's what you tell your families, tell yourselves.”
Ned knows this choice is bad for his family
but feels he must do his duty all the same.
We see that, from the family perspective,
Catelyn was right to try to stop him from going.
And Catelyn is right a lot in this story.
“Walder Frey is a dangerous man to cross.”
“I don’t think Bran fell from that tower.”
“I told you, never trust a Greyjoy!”
But sadly this can’t stop the snowballing
of tragic events that befall her family.
Red is the color of blood and love,
which is fitting for this house that emphasizes
the importance of blood relations.
The fish is on top of the blood of the sigil,
above the blue water,
which might bring to mind the maxim, “Blood is thicker than water.”
The red of their sigil is reflected, too,
in the family’s signature red-brown or auburn hair,
which Sansa Stark inherits from her Tully mother.
“Well, I-I'm half Tully.”
The red also reminds us of the bloodshed the Tullys have endured.
The Riverlands are the first to feel the pain
when any Northern-Southern conflict breaks out,
as we’ve seen throughout the series.
“Ser Gregor will head out with 500 riders
and set the Riverland on fire from God's Eye to the Red Fork.”
The beginning of the War of the Five Kings
is basically Tywin Lannister sending his son Jaime
and the pathological Mountain, Ser Gregor Clegane,
to wreak havoc on the Riverlands
as a prelude to facing off with Robb Stark.
While House Tully’s seat is at Riverrun,
it’s also home to Westeros’ largest castle, Harrenhall,
which Tywin captures and uses as his base of operations,
until he leaves with most of his army
to defend King’s Landing in the Battle of the Blackwater.
The Starks recapture Harrenhall, leaving the Boltons to defend it.
Then after the Boltons and the Freys betray the Starks at the Red Wedding,
Roose Bolton leaves the castle in the care of his man Locke,
who later returns North.
Later, Littlefinger becomes Lord of Harrenhal.
“I declare that you shall be granted the castle of Harrenhal
with all its attendant lands and incomes to be held by your sons and grandsons
from this day until the end of time.”
“I shall have to acquire some sons and grandsons.”
But after he’s executed at the end of Season 7,
Harrenhal is apparently without a lord or owner,
for the time being.
While its size makes it a fearsome prize,
the castle is in fact too big to defend without a giant army
and even the very productive Riverlands region
can’t feed an army of the size that’s needed to hold it.
We even get the sense that
“Harrenhal is cursed.”
The castle was built by the Ironborn Harren the Black
when his people ruled over the Riverlands
“Harren the Black thought this castle would be his legacy.
The greatest fortress ever built.”
but as soon as Harren had finished building his giant castle,
Aegon Targaryen came with his dragons to burn it down.
“What kind of fire melts stone?”
“Dragon fire.”
Harrenhal’s appearance as a giant ruin
and the fact that most of what we witness there
is the Mountain torturing and later killing prisoners
adds to its foreboding feel.
“What’s that smell?”
“Dead people.”
Almost everyone who’s held Harrenhall in the show is now dead.
So this terrible castle at the center of this region serves as a monument
to all the dark carnage the Tullys and their Riverlands have suffered,
for as long as can be remembered.
“When they was done,
they butchered them as if they was animals.
They covered our children in pitch and lit them on fire.”
As shocking as the Red Wedding feels to us,
Catelyn’s fate is in keeping with the tragedy
that has defined much of her people’s history.
Blue is the color of loyalty and fidelity.
We might align the blue of their sigil
with the Tully’s supporting values of duty and honor.
Even though the red blood is on top, the blue occupies equal space,
just as their words mention all three values,
so these priorities must work in conjunction.
As an echo of the Riverlands’ water, the blue in the sigil also evokes emotion.
The people of the Riverlands have shed tears for their lost relations,
and Catelyn compels us through her strength of emotion in the story.
“Do you want to see your girls again?”
Silver reminds us of the moon, and by extension the tides
so the color has mysterious, intuitive connotations.
A feminine answer to the more masculine gold.
Silver is linked to fluidity, feeling, and sensitivity.
“You have courage.
Not battle courage, perhaps, but, I don't know…
a woman's kind of courage.”
We might also think of being silver-tongued,
and the Tullys are skilled negotiators.
“Lord Walder has granted your crossing.”
Silver the metal is malleable,
which makes us think of the Tullys’ adaptability.
Silver is a precious metal, but it’s not the gold of crowns,
and the Tullys have never been kings.
When the Riverlords helped Aegon Targaryen defeat Harren the Black,
Aegon gave House Tully the titles,
Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident.
The House Tully animal is the trout.
“Fish.
The sigil of House Tully.”
It’s a far cry from
the intimidating beasts of other sigils.
“Other houses chose dragons, krakens, and lions for their sigils.
We Tullys took the trout that most terrifying of fish.”
In fact, most would look on a trout as little more than a tasty meal.
So their animal acknowledges that
the Tullys look like easy meat to the rest of Westeros.
To behave like a fish is not to roar and breathe fire,
but to go with the flow.
The Tullys’ sigil boasts of their ability to adapt.
It acknowledges their vulnerability.
“I haven't had a proper sword fight in years.
I expect I'll make a damn fool of myself.”
It shows a knowingness
that if one is a little endangered fish in a tumultuous river,
one survives by being smart,
knowing how to navigate the water,
and finding safety in numbers.
Determined to stay alive and prosper despite their lack of natural defenses,
the Tullys have always maintained their position through strategic marriages.
“While other houses fight with swords, House Tully fights with marriages.”
During Robert’s Rebellion,
Cateyn’s father Hoster Tully married her to Ned Stark,
and her sister Lysa to Jon Arryn,
to solidify House Tully’s bonds with Houses Stark and Arryn.
“She confessed to me she never loved Lord Arryn.
She did as her father commanded, as so many of us have.”
In fact, before Catelyn married Ned,
she was betrothed to his older brother, Brandon.
Littlefinger, who was her father’s poor Ward,
fell in love with Catelyn and dueled Brandon for her,
which got him cast out of the house.
“Your Uncle Brandon.
Your handsome, arrogant, cruel Uncle Brandon.
He almost killed Petyr in a duel.
And your mother loved him anyway.”
But Brandon Stark, along with his and Ned’s father Rickard,
were put to death by the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen.
So it was only then that Hoster Tully promised Catelyn to Ned.
It might be easy to forget that the Stark Lord and Lady
have an arranged marriage,
as over the years their bond has grown into one of steady and deep affection.
“Love didn’t just happen to us.
We built it slowly over the years, stone by stone.”
Catelyn falls back on her Tully assumption that marriage is a crucial tool in war.
But her children are wolves, not fish,
“I love her.”
“I know that seems important to you.”
“It is important to me.”
“Your father didn’t love me when we married.”
and these Tully tactics prove to be quite a disaster for the Starks.
When Robb falls in love with Talisa,
"And you're marrying her for a bridge?"
"An important bridge."
his reneging on his mother’s deal with the Freys
(if it isn’t the full, real reason for the Red Wedding)
at least offers the pretense and justification
for the Freys and Boltons to turn to the Lannisters’ side.
“Things were different when Hoster Tully ruled the Riverlands.
We had good years and bad years, same as anyone.
But we were safe.”
Hoster’s brother Brynden Tully
also rejected the Tullys’ assumption of arranged marriages.
After he fought in the War of the Ninepenny Kings,
he came home to find his brother had promised him to Bethany Redwyne.
But Brynden refused
and he became known as “the Blackfish”.
he altered the Tully sigil,
adopting a darker, more “intimidating” trout
(insofar as a trout can be intimidating).
“The Blackfish is a legend.
His support would mean a great deal.”
The Blackfish survives the Red Wedding due to luck
“I need to find a tree to piss on.”
and he manages to take back Riverrun from the Freys for a time.
“You've lost it?”
“Yes, Father.”
“It's a castle, not a bloody sheep.”
But the Blackfish is eventually killed when Jaime Lannister takes over Riverrun.
“I've run before from the Red Wedding.
I'm not running again.
This is my family home.”
Since they do so often have to marry other houses and leave home,
the trout on the sigil is a fish out of water,
which is what we might say of Catelyn in Winterfell.
Even though she appears the image of the poised yet fierce northern
“Bind him with every chain you can find!”
“You’ve become she-wolf in your later years…
there’s not much fish left in you…”
“And gag him!”
on some level, even after all these years,
she still feels out of place.
"All these years and I still feel like an outsider when I come here."
The Tully’s trout seems to be passing in and out of the water,
and this house has a transitional feeling about it –
a sense of being in-between categories.
Catelyn repeatedly reminds people that she's not from the North.
"I remember how scared I was when Ned brought me up here for the first time."
Yet she's not as southern
as someone from King’s Landing, the Reach, or Dorne.
Likewise, throughout the show we hear the Free Folk north of the wall
say the Starks and the Night’s Watch aren’t really from the North.
“All you lot from south of the Wall, you're Southerners.
But now you're in the North, the real North.”
so we see characters constantly
defining themselves in relation to the others around them,
only to have those definitions be questioned as their horizons broaden.
The transitional Tullys understand very well
that we are always defined in relation to others.
"I was still Catelyn Tully, the last time I stayed here.”
While we might feel bad for the tragic Tullys,
we can admire the way they bring alternative strengths into play,
in a world that so often emphasizes only might and brutality.
“It often comforts me to think that even in war's darkest days,
in most places in the world absolutely nothing is happening.”
We might learn from the fact that
these little trouts have managed to thrive for so long.
Their underrated skills of adaptation, negotiation, and feminine intuition
are far more powerful than first meets the eye.
“It was Catelyn Tully.
A woman worth fighting for, I'm sure you'll agree.”
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