Collapse of the Rogare Bank

The Collapse of the Rogare Bank was a financial failure turned political crisis: Lysaro Rogare tried to use the family bank to buy military security and propel himself to the highest offices in Lys, but a run on deposits left the institution empty and its ruling family exposed. The consequences spread beyond Lys, as Westerosi depositors discovered their money was gone and officials moved to seize the Rogares and their records.

Inheritance and Control

Lysandro Rogare’s death distributed property among his children, but not the offices he had held: those could not pass to them. Lysara received his palace, Drako his ships, Fredo his pillow house, and Marra his library. All of Lysandro’s children also shared in the wealth represented by the Rogare Bank. His bastards received shares too, though smaller ones than his trueborn sons and daughters. The distribution of the family’s assets therefore did not amount to a transfer of the bank’s command. Effective control went to Lysandro’s eldest son, Lysaro, whose ambitions, the account observes, far exceeded his ability.

That distinction made the bank both the foundation of Lysaro’s power and the resource he would put at risk. His siblings had access to shares of the family wealth, but his control of the institution gave him the means to pursue a political project on a far greater scale. The bank’s later collapse would consequently implicate the family as a whole, even though the evidence centers on Lysaro’s decisions.

Lysaro’s Bid for Power

Lysaro aspired to rule Lys, but was unwilling to follow the slow accumulation of wealth and influence attributed to his father. With rivals dying around him, he first sought to secure himself by purchasing one thousand Unsullied from the slavers of Astapor. Their reputation for discipline and obedience made them an imposing personal guard, and their presence reduced the danger of defiance or betrayal from within his own protection.

He then secured election as gonfaloniere, using lavish entertainments to win popular support and bribes to persuade the magisters. The expense exhausted his personal fortune. Rather than abandon his ambitions, Lysaro began diverting gold from the bank. His intended solution was a short, victorious war against Tyrosh or Myr: conquest would bring him the glory needed to win the office of first magister, while the captured wealth would replenish the bank’s funds and make him richer still. The scheme depended on victory arriving before the diversion of deposits became a crisis. It did not.

The Run and the Flight

The collapse began with talk that the Rogare Bank might be unsound. One account attributes the first rumors to agents employed by the Iron Bank of Braavos, but the source of the talk is left uncertain. What followed is clear: Lys’s magisters and merchant princes began demanding their deposits. At first only a few sought their money back; then the demands multiplied, and gold poured from the vaults until none remained. The withdrawals exposed the bank’s inability to meet its obligations, turning rumor into a self-reinforcing run.

Lysaro was already gone by the time the crisis reached its end. He fled Lys at night with three bed slaves, six servants, and one hundred of his Unsullied, leaving behind his wife, his daughters, and his palace. The city’s magisters seized what remained of the Rogare Bank and found only an empty shell. The failure was not simply the loss of a ruler’s private fortune: the institution on which depositors had relied had been drained to support an ill-conceived campaign for power.

The Family and the Wider Consequences

The fall of House Rogare was swift. Drako escaped to Volantis aboard one of his galleys, while Marra fled in men’s clothing to a temple of Yndros and claimed sanctuary. The other siblings were seized and put on trial, including the bastards. They said they had played no part in the bank’s despoiling, but their claims were widely doubted. Their exposure shows how Lysaro’s control of the bank did not shield his relatives once the institution failed; instead, their inheritance and family name made them targets of suspicion.

The damage reached Westeros when news arrived that money entrusted to House Rogare had been lost. In Gulltown, Moredo Rogare relinquished his command to Alyn Velaryon and sailed for Braavos. In King’s Landing, Lotho Rogare was arrested as he tried to leave; his letters and ledgers were seized, along with all the gold and silver still in the vaults atop Visenya’s Hill. Ser Marston Waters and fellow Kingsguard, accompanied by guardsmen, also descended on the Mermaid, drove its patrons into the street, and marched Lord Roggerio Rogare through a hostile crowd. The banker and brothel keeper were imprisoned in the Tower of the Hand. Their kinship to Prince Viserys Targaryen’s wife spared them, for the time being, from the black cells.

At first, many assumed the Hand had ordered the arrests. That explanation collapsed when Lord Rowan, one of the remaining regents, was also taken into custody that same evening, while the Fingers offered no resistance. The episode thus extended beyond a bank’s insolvency into a wider struggle over authority and accountability. The Rogare collapse revealed how quickly a family’s international wealth and political reach could become liabilities when its chief used deposits to finance personal ambition, and how far the consequences could travel once confidence in the bank gave way.