#house cargyll

Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I’ll take a House without known canon/semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me an ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see. 

House Cargyll is an extinct noble House of the Crownlands ... and that's about where our knowledge of the House ends. We don't know when it came into existence, who founded it (Andals, First Men, or some combination?), what rank it held (lordly or landed knightly), or when it went extinct. We know it was in existence at least until 209 AC, because in that year Ser Duncan the Tall spotted the arms of House Cargyll among the competitors at the Tourney of Ashford, but past that, who knows. Speaking of which: the sigil of House Cargyll was a golden goose on bendy sinister, black and red.

The only known members of House Cargyll were twin brothers, Arryk and Erryk. The brothers were made members of the Kingsguard, though when is something of a mystery: in 104 AC, Gyldayn notes, Ser Criston Cole "unhorsed both of the celebrated Cargyll twins, Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk of the Kingsguard", but whether that statement means that only Ser Erryk was "of the Kingsguard", or that both the brothers had been given white cloaks by that point, who knows. Suffice to say that they were both Kingsguard knights of Viserys I’s reign, and although we know little of the brothers' careers and virtually nothing of their personalities, the line seems to have been drawn between them during the factionalism of Viserys' court. Ser Arryk was said (by the pro-Aegon chronicler Septon Eustace) to have been the one who discovered Rhaenyra abed with her uncle Daemon in or around 111 AC, prompting Daemon's exile; later, Arryk would support King Aegon II during the Dance. By contrast, in 120 AC Viserys I named Ser Erryk his daughter's sworn shield, to replace the much-rumored-about Ser Harwin Strong; later, Erryk would join Rhaenyra's forces during the Dance. Of course, this divide came to a head when Ser Arryk infiltrated Dragonstone (to kill Rhaenyra or her children) and met his brother in mutually fatal combat. (I agree with Mushroom that the brothers’ end was probably not the poetic tragedy of later songs, but an emotionally charged fight to the death between two fervent partisans.)

With this admittedly limited history, I made the Cargyll words Devoted to Our Cause. I was thinking of a few stories from antiquity: Pliny the Elder, perennial HWW favorite, once recounted the story of a goose devoted to the philosopher Lacydes, which would follow him wherever he went; in another legend, when Gauls attempted to invade Rome, the sacred geese of the Capitoline Hill made such a noise at their presence that they awoke Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who then threw back the Gauls. Geese seeming in these stories to be symbols of devotion, I liked the idea of words which reflected devotion to a cause. As both Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk proved - each willing, despite the bond of blood between them, to kill and be killed by his brother to defend the monarch to whom he was sworn - the Cargylls seemed to keep devotion to their cause paramount, whatever that cause may have been.