Tumbleton

Tumbleton, sixty leagues southwest of King’s Landing, is the setting for one of the Dance of the Dragons’ starkest reversals. After the town falls to King Aegon II’s supporters, their divided leadership allows it to suffer a prolonged sack; later, a sudden assault devastates their forces outside its walls but cannot dislodge them from the town itself.

Tumbleton during the Dance

The town became a royalist stronghold while King’s Landing was in turmoil. Yet the force assembled there had no commander with sufficient authority to restrain its rival claimants. Ormund Hightower and his cousin Ser Bryndon were dead; Ormund’s sons were far away at the Hightower, and Prince Daeron Targaryen, though praised for courage, was still young and more accustomed to taking orders than giving them. Hobert Hightower, entrusted previously with the baggage train, asserted command through his kinship to Queen Alicent.

Unwin Peake, Jon Roxton, and Owain Bourney also pressed claims to leadership. The commanders disputed precedence and plunder while their soldiers looted and ravaged the town. Daeron was said to have been appalled and to have ordered Hobert to stop the abuses, but Hobert’s efforts failed. The sack included robbery, killings, torture, sexual violence, and the abandonment of the dead without burial. Disputes among the leaders further exposed how little authority remained: Roxton killed Lord Sharis Footly’s husband after claiming Sharis as a prize, and Peake later stabbed Bourney during an argument at a war council.

The plot and the surprise attack

The command crisis continued as the royalists considered how to retake the Iron Throne. Some argued that their dragons gave them an advantage; others proposed killing Hugh Hammer and Ulf White after victory, while Roxton urged killing them before the campaign and claiming their dragons. The conspirators, known as the Caltrops, sought Daeron’s consent. Though absent from their council, he agreed to the plan and sealed warrants for Hugh and Ulf’s executions.

Two days later, on the very day the Caltrops intended to act, Tumbleton woke to an attack from the north and west. Camps outside the walls were burning as armored forces advanced under a storm of arrows, with Seasmoke overhead. Addam Velaryon, Seasmoke’s rider, had gathered an army by moving swiftly between castles whose lords remained loyal to the queen. His attack turned the threatened executions and the royalist preparations into a battle for the town’s approaches.

The Second Battle and its cost

The fighting ended by dusk, but not with the town taken. Tumbleton’s walls remained intact, and the royalist defenders withdrew behind the gates. The attackers lacked both siege equipment and dragons to force a breach. They had nevertheless inflicted a severe defeat in the field: fewer than a hundred riverlords died, compared with more than a thousand men from Oldtown and the Reach. They burned camps, destroyed or captured almost all the royalists’ wagons and provisions, took three-quarters of their warhorses, and killed Prince Daeron.

The battle also ended the lives of three dragons. Vermithor killed Seasmoke, then collapsed and died when his damaged wings could not lift him. Tessarion survived until sunset; unable to take flight, she was killed while helpless on the ground. Silverwing, the only dragon left alive at the scene, had circled above the fighting before descending after dark. The following morning, the defenders looked out from Tumbleton’s walls at the scattered dead and the carcasses of the dragons.

Aftermath and significance

At moonrise, the riverlords abandoned the field and withdrew into the hills. Addam’s broken body was found beside Seasmoke and carried away by Ben Blackwood. Addam’s bones rested at Raventree Hall for eight years before his brother Alyn returned them to Driftmark for burial in Hull. His tomb bore the word LOYAL, a final counterpoint to the treachery that had stained the campaign and to the plot that the surprise attack interrupted.

Tumbleton thus marks both the limits and the cost of victory in the war. The attackers could shatter the royalist host’s supplies, kill its prince, and destroy two of the king’s dragons, yet the town’s walls held and its defenders remained inside. The battle changed the balance of power outside Tumbleton without bringing the place itself under the attackers’ control.