The four-year winter of 131–135 AC

The four-year winter of 131–135 AC was more than a stretch of severe weather: arriving as the Dance of the Dragons had left villages, towns, and castles destroyed, it prolonged the realm’s crisis and exposed how unevenly its people could withstand hunger, isolation, and war. Across the Seven Kingdoms, trade and food supplies were strained; in the North, famine and cold carried off thousands, while the crown and regional lords struggled to provide relief. Spring finally came in 135 AC, but the return of better weather did not erase the losses accumulated during four hard years.

A Winter Following War

By the end of 131 AC, winter had descended on Westeros and was expected to endure for four years. The kingdom entered it already badly weakened. Trade had collapsed during the Dance, and countless settlements and strongholds had been slighted or destroyed. Outlaws and broken men haunted the roads and woods, making movement through an already damaged realm more perilous. The cold therefore arrived not as an isolated calamity, but as a further pressure on communities whose transport, stores, and security had been disrupted by war.

The season also coincided with conflict beyond Westeros. In the east, fighting among Tyrosh, Myr, Lys, and the alliance of Braavos, Pentos, and Lorath, together with Racallio Ryndoon’s control of the southern narrow sea, obstructed commerce. The port cities of King’s Landing, Duskendale, Maidenpool, and Gulltown suffered as trade with the east withered. At the same time, the North faced dwindling food stores and repeated wildling incursions beyond the Wall. Winter made these problems more acute, while the struggle to move goods and defend territory limited the means of responding to them.

Famine and Unequal Hardship

The North endured the winter’s most severe effects. By 134 AC, hundreds of starving villagers had gathered beneath the closed gates of Barrowton, where Lord Dustin refused them entry. White Harbor was better placed to receive food from the south because of its port, but supplies there cost so much that some men sold themselves into bondage to feed their families; others sold their wives and children. Beneath Winterfell’s walls, people resorted to eating dogs and horses. Cold and hunger killed a third of the Night’s Watch, while thousands of wildlings crossed the frozen sea east of the Wall and hundreds of the black brothers died in battle.

The crisis was not confined to the North. In 132 AC, the Winter Fever swept through the Three Sisters and killed half the population of Sisterton. Survivors, believing the disease had arrived aboard a whaler from the Port of Ibben, killed Ibbenese sailors and burned their ships. The violence did not stop the contagion: it crossed the Bite to White Harbor, where the prayers of septons and potions of maesters proved powerless. Thousands died, including Lord Desmond Manderly and, four days later, his son Ser Medrick. Because Medrick had no children, the lordship passed to his brother Ser Torrhen, who had to leave the council of regents to rule White Harbor. Disease thus compounded hunger and altered the political balance at court as well as devastating northern communities.

Rule, Relief, and the Cost of Recovery

The crown faced a damaged economy and a kingdom in need of rebuilding. Tyland Lannister abolished the taxes imposed by Rhaenyra and Bartimos Celtigar, measures that had burdened trade and ordinary city life. He also set aside a million golden dragons in loans for lords whose lands had been ruined during the Dance. Many borrowed from this fund, although the arrangement created a rift between the Iron Throne and the Iron Bank of Braavos.

Tyland also ordered three large fortified granaries to be built in King’s Landing, Lannisport, and Gulltown, with grain bought to fill them. The effort to build reserves offered a practical response to the danger of future shortages, but the purchases had an immediate cost: grain prices rose sharply. Lords and towns with grain to sell benefited, while innkeepers, pot sellers, and the poor and hungry faced greater expense. The measures show the limits of relief in a crisis of scarcity: securing stores for the future could itself make food harder to afford in the present.

Spring and Partial Renewal

In early 135 AC, the Conclave at Oldtown sent out white ravens to announce that winter had ended. The event gave the period its name among those who had lived through it: the Lysene Spring. The term carried the promise of renewal, yet recovery was uneven. The war in the Iron Islands ended, and Lord Cregan Stark borrowed heavily from the Iron Bank of Braavos to buy food and seed for his starving smallfolk. In the Vale, meanwhile, fighting continued when Lord Thaddeus Rowan sent a thousand men to Gulltown under Ser Corwyn Corbray to enforce the King’s Peace and settle a succession dispute.

King’s Landing entered a period of prosperity, helped by the banking and trade of House Rogare. Other ports, including Duskendale, Maidenpool, Gulltown, and White Harbor, also saw trade expand. These signs of renewed circulation mattered after years in which commerce had withered and communities had struggled to obtain food. But the winter’s end was not a simple restoration: the North had suffered extreme hunger, the Winter Fever had killed thousands, and relief depended on borrowing, stores, and the uneven recovery of trade.

Significance

The winter’s four-year duration links environmental hardship to the consequences of civil war without making cold the sole cause of the realm’s suffering. War had damaged settlements and commerce; winter worsened shortages and made already fragile conditions more dangerous. Disease, military conflict, and disrupted trade further shaped the crisis, while access to ports, stored grain, money, and protection determined who could endure it. The accounts of closed gates, costly food, exhausted black brothers, and costly loans make the season a measure of the realm’s vulnerability—and of the unequal resources available to survive it.