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Ygritte: ' Is that how you lot do your fighting? You march down the road banging drums and waving banners?' Jon Snow: ' Most of the time, yes.'
Ygritte: ' How do the men holding the banners fight?' Jon Snow: ' They don't, really. It's a great honor to carry your House sigil.' — explains to the the importance of heraldry in the Seven Kingdoms.The various of the use distinctive heraldry to identify families and individuals. These heraldic devices are also carried by armies on the battlefield as a sign of status, as well as allegiance to those noble houses.Heraldic designs can vary widely. They may consist of a simple pattern of colors, but more often feature animals (either real or mythological) and/or physical objects.
Specific sets of rules govern what form a heraldic design may take.Only members of noble families have the legal right to formally display their own heraldry, though also gain this right after the conferring of their title: When a or lowly gets knighted (even if he is only a poor with no land and no right to sit in judgement), he legally becomes a member of 'the nobility' and can invent his own personal heraldry. The followers of a noble family can also display that family's heraldry (i.e. Foot-soldiers can carry banners with Lannister heraldry), but it is illegal for the smallfolk to simply invent and use their own heraldry.The heraldry of each noble House is accompanied by that is unique to that house. These typically take the form of boasts or battle-cries, such as 's 'Ours is the fury!' , or 's 'Family, Duty, Honor'.
Is a major exception, as its words are not a boast but the ominous warning '. House words do not typically appear on the heraldry itself, in both the books and the TV series.
Contents Heraldry in Westeros and in the real-worldIn the real-life Middle Ages, a formal set of rules governed heraldry designs:The colors used in heraldry are formally known as 'tinctures', and these are divided into three basic categories: 'colors', 'metals', and 'furs'. Red, Green, Blue, Purple, and Black are considered 'colors'.
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Certain other colors, such as Brown, were added in later centuries as new dyes became available to Medieval Europe. The two 'metals' are Gold and Silver, though both of these terms actually encompass a spectrum of hues: gold, orange, and yellow are all considered Gold, while white and grey are both considered Silver. 'Furs' such as Ermine and Vair are technically patterns, not single colors, but are arbitrarily lumped in with colors and metals as a sub-set of 'tinctures'. Ermine is supposed to resemble the tail pattern of a stoat (specifically a stoat's winter fur, known as ermine), and Vair is supposed to resemble the belly coloration of a type of squirrel. Each tincture officially consists of one specific shade with no variations; i.e.
There is only one shade of Blue which can be used, with no variation between light blue and dark blue (which are fairly arbitrary labels in any case).The most important rule of heraldry is the:Metal shall never be put on metal, nor color on color.By this ruling, a design cannot be half red and half blue, or half gold and half silver. For example, the sigil of House Lannister is a gold lion (metal) on a red field (color). It would not be permitted to have a gold lion on a silver background, because silver is also a metal. Ostensibly, this is because heraldry is supposed to help identify different armies on the battlefield, and should be easily distinguishable at a glance.There is a major loophole to the rule of tincture, however: An object may be depicted as 'proper' - using the color it possesses in nature - regardless of what other tinctures it is touching. This explicitly allows the animal or object featured in a heraldic design to break the rule of tincture.
For example, the sigil of House Stark is a grey on a white field, which would normally break the 'no metal against metal' rule (since both white and grey are considered Silver). However, because direwolves are actually grey in nature, this is simply being displayed 'proper'. In contrast, it would still break the rule of tincture to put a purple direwolf on a blue background, because direwolves are never purple in nature, and a purple direwolf cannot plausibly be said to be displayed 'proper'.A problem presented in both the novels and the Game of Thrones TV series is that a specific terminology is officially used in heraldry - describing the different tinctures as well as design motifs - and this terminology only exists in the French language. The official names for the various tinctures are: Gules (Red), Vert (Green), Azure (Blue), Purpure (Purple), Sable (Black), Or (Gold), and Argent (Silver).
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Since French does not exist within this fictional world, it's not particularly logical to use this real-life formal terminology. For example, no one within the narrative would ever say to that the sigil of his House is 'gules, a lion or'.Different versions of heraldic designs may be fitted into the available spaces on various objects, such as flags or armor. However, since these designs were originally painted onto shields, the official shape of an overall piece of heraldry is usually the shape of a shield, known as an escutcheon. This is the practice throughout most of the Seven Kingdoms, with the major exception of: Military tactics in the deserts of Dorne favor quick hit-and-run attacks, as opposed to columns of slow and bulky armored knights, who would soon suffer from lack of available water. Thus instead of using the full shields of heavy knights, the Dornish favor lightly armored and mobile riders who fight with small rounded shields.
This is reflected in the heraldry of Houses from Dorne, which are officially in the shape of a perfect circle, not an escutcheon.Younger sons, variations, and personal sigilsThe personal coat of arms of Brynden Tully.Younger sons of noble Houses may prefer to use their own personal sigils, which are often a slight variation of the official sigil of their House. Sometimes even the oldest son and heir, or even the current lord, may have his own personal sigil - this is simply a matter of preference.For example, while the official heraldry of House Tully is a silver fish on a red and blue field, uses a variant for his personal sigil, which contains a black fish (in reference to his nickname).' S personal heraldry in the TV series has two variations; one is the standard Greyjoy heraldry of a gold kraken on a black field, but with a single red eye inscribed onto the head of the kraken. The other - featured on the trappings of his horse as he rides through the streets of King's Landing - is a silver kraken with a red eye on a black field (this is a simplification of Euron's more complex personal sigil in the books).BastardsAcknowledged children of a noble are not legally permitted to officially carry the heraldry of their noble parent's House. On the battlefield, they may carry a flag displaying the heraldry, or use weapons and equipment that display the heraldic symbol - but only as much as any common footsoldier in their noble parent's army may do so. If an acknowledged noble-born bastard began openly displaying the heraldry of their noble parent's House, specifically as a representation of themselves, they would face legal troubles and punishment.House Targaryen's sigil is a red dragon on a black field.House Blackfyre, founded by a bastard son of House Targaryen, follows the custom for bastards by inverting the Targaryen colors, resulting in a black dragon on a red field.Before he joined the and forsook all family ties, was forbidden from officially 'carrying' and displaying the Stark heraldry of a grey direwolf on a white field.
One of House Stark's bannermen such as Ser might physically hold a flag displaying the Stark heraldry, and even a common Stark footman might carry such a flag, so Jon may have carried weapons or equipment featuring the Stark direwolf. However, he was not allowed to use the Stark heraldry as a representation of himself, because this would essentially be making the false claim that he was a legitimized child who no longer bore the shame of bastardy.Noble-born bastards are in a legal state between highborn nobles and smallfolk, yet unlike the smallfolk, acknowledged bastards are allowed to display their own heraldry - just not the heraldry of their noble parent's House. A very common practice in Westeros is for bastards to use the heraldry of their noble parent's House but with the colors inverted (which is known as 'breaking' the design scheme). Neither the books nor TV series ever portrayed Jon Snow using any kind of heraldry before he joined the Night's Watch, but had he followed this custom, his personal sigil would have been a white direwolf on a grey field, the reverse of the Stark colors. Thus the discovery of the six direwolf pups by and his sons is all the more considered a sign from the: not only were there two female and four male pups (to match the Stark children), but the sixth was an albino - physically resembling the white direwolf design that Jon would use in his personal heraldry. This is further signified when Lord dubs Jon 'the White Wolf' during his election as the new.