Barba's Teats

Barba's Teats are a pair of grassy hills in the riverlands, a landmark whose very name records a royal love affair and the bitter feud between two ancient houses. The hills were originally called the Mother's Teats, or simply the Teats, for their resemblance to a woman's breasts. Their renaming occurred during the reign of King Aegon IV Targaryen, who took Barba Bracken as his mistress. According to the bookish Hoster Blackwood, the king, while hunting near the Bracken seat of Stone Hedge, saw the hills and named them after his buxom lover.

The King's Favor and the Bracken-Blackwood Rivalry

Aegon the Unworthy eventually put aside Barba Bracken and took up with Melissa Blackwood, known as Missy. When Barba heard that Missy was slender and flat-chested, she mocked her rival. In response, King Aegon gave Missy Barba's Teats, renaming the hills after his new paramour. This act of renaming transformed a geographical feature into a trophy of courtly favor and a perpetual insult. The hills thus became a physical symbol of the long and bloody rivalry between House Bracken and House Blackwood, a conflict that had raged for thousands of years over lands, crowns, and slights both real and imagined.

A Contested Landmark

The hills remained a point of contention. Lord Jonos Bracken, when pressing his claims to lands he believed were stolen by the Blackwoods, specifically demanded the return of the hills, insisting they were Barba's Teats first. Lord Tytos Blackwood, in turn, referred to them as Missy's Teats. The dispute over the name was a microcosm of the larger struggle between the two houses, a struggle that, as Hoster Blackwood explained to Jaime Lannister, had no end in sight. The hills stand as a testament to how the wounds of the past, kept alive by memory and song, can shape the present and poison any hope of lasting peace.