House Footly

House Footly was the ruling house of Tumbleton, and its seat became the setting for one of the Dance of the Dragons’ most devastating betrayals and sackings. The town’s destruction ruined the family’s principal home and left later Footlys to rebuild amid the memory of the catastrophe.

Seat and Setting

Tumbleton, on the headwaters of the Mander, was a thriving market town and the seat of House Footly. Its castle was stout but small, with a garrison of no more than forty men. By the time armies converged there, however, thousands of soldiers had come upriver from Bitterbridge, Longtable, and farther south, while a strong force of riverlords added to the defenders.

House Footly in the War

The forces gathered at Tumbleton fought under Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen’s banners. Ser Garibald Grey and Longleaf the Lionslayer arrived after the victory at the Butcher’s Ball, and other prominent arrivals included Red Robb Rivers, the last of the Winter Wolves, and landed knights and lesser lords from along the Blackwater. The assembled host numbered nearly nine thousand according to the True Telling, though other chroniclers give totals ranging from six thousand to twelve thousand; whatever the exact figure, the defenders were greatly outnumbered by Lord Ormund Hightower’s army.

The town’s defense was undermined from within. Some newcomers fleeing before Lord Ormund’s forces appear to have been infiltrators, and Lord Owain Bourney and Ser Roger Corne were secret supporters of King Aegon II. Their treachery coincided with Ser Ulf White and Ser Hugh Hammer changing sides. As the attack unfolded, Corne’s men cut down defenders at the gates and opened them to the attackers; within the castle, Bourney killed Ser Merrell the Bold. The evidence leaves much about the betrayals disputed, but the consequences for Tumbleton were unmistakable.

Destruction and Rebuilding

The sack reduced Tumbleton to ash and embers. Thousands died, and the surviving defenders under Lord Footly’s command surrendered, only to be taken captive and killed. The town never recovered its former prosperity or size. Later generations of House Footly tried to rebuild over the ruins, but the new settlement never reached a tenth of the old town’s scale; the smallfolk said that the ground itself was haunted.

Significance

House Footly’s surviving presence is recorded chiefly through the fate of its seat: first as the market town and castle around which a large royalist host gathered, then as a place shattered by betrayal and war. The attempted rebuilding preserved the family’s connection to Tumbleton, but the reduced size of the new town marked the lasting cost of the sack.