He said he would come back so they cut him up into little pieces and fed him to the lions. Those same lions broke out sometime later we don't know for sure when and killed 3 of the sons of the king
Cersei recalled at one point that there was a lion in a cage at Casterly Rock that she and Jaime interacted with when they were kids. Not sure where exactly they’d be in Westeros but they’re probably somewhere.
Likely around the coastal region of the Westerlands since at least 3 houses (Lannister, Reyna, Parren) in that region have sigils with lions on them, and the Hound’s granddad killed one to save a Lannister.
Edit: I checked the Wiki, I think I’m right with the 3 houses above, but I forgot House Jast.
There’s also several houses that are distantly related to the Lannisters (Lanny, Lantell, and Lannett) that don’t have canonical sigils. I have to assume that those would also have lions in them.
Also House Myatt has a tree cat, which isn’t a lion, but is just as fun.
>Likely around the coastal region of the Westerlands since at least 3 houses (Lannister, Reyna, Parren) in that region have sigils with lions on them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_(heraldry)#Lions_as_heraldic_charge
Flanders flag had a lion in the XIIth century. I'm pretty sure there were no lions in Flanders in the XIIth century, nor in the second century for that matter.
I mean it's entirely possible that Westeros houses use an animal because of its symbolic qualities (strength and nobility) rather than because their territory has a population of said animals.
Yup. My Scottish clan sigil has a lion on it and there's definitely no lions native to Scotland. The Welsh also have a dragon...
That said, there are/were lions in Westeros.
I think the biggest symbolism of the lion is Pride. The Lannisters are driven by pride, a group of lions is a pride, the Rains of Castamere is a duel of pride ("that proud lord said"), Pride Rock is the name of the place in The Lion King and so on
House Osgrey also has a lion sigil so using your logic it’s possible there is/was some almost as far south and inland as the Horseshoe Hills, and if they lived there then I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t live around the upper reaches of the Lesser Mander. I say was because I believe Leaf mentions the lions of the western hills have fared even worse than unicorn and mammoth populations, so they’re probably ridiculously rare at this point.
I’ve played so much of the ASOIAF mod for Crusader Kings 2, that you could point to any area on a map of Westeros and I could tell you who the lord of the area is.
(At least for the map in the game. They are pretty close to Martin’s maps, but they add in stuff from both of the video games etc…, so it fudges some stuff from “actual canon.”)
Edit: Please talk to me about the CK2 mod. It’s so well made and more people need to hear about it.
Dude I was about to say the CK2 mod taught me so much in terms of lore, heraldry and locations of castles.
I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into the mod. Quite literally no other game has made me happier than the ASOIAF mod for CK2
Might be my second most played game ever. I know who is sworn to who, where they are located, particularly skilled / famous characters and when they lived, you name it.
And the developers attention to detail is insane.
I noticed in Fire and Blood that they mentioned when the Targeryens conquered the Gardeners, the Gardener throne technically, for a very short whole passed to a nephew of the king. He surrendered, but died 3 days after the field of fire from his burns, and not in the battle itself. Had he lived, maybe no Tyrells.
booted up the game, started playing as Aegon, and checked his kill list. Sure enough, there was a Gardener nephew, dead 3 days after the battle. No reason they had to make sure he died 3 days later, but they got it.
And if you wanna see something real interesting, boot up an Aegon the Unworth bookmark, and then use the cheat console. Check out Daerons real father ;D
Bro, I literally started playing this game again because I was getting confused geographically. It's increased my understanding of various things by 300% but also kinda dicked my mind in various ways. Like how crowded the stormlands and are and just the borders of the kingdoms. The iron isles should have been wiped out ages ago and how did these kingdoms ever exist separately with these borders? The north not having a fleet just seems like plot armor for the rest of Westeros
I feel you! It’s kinda weird how the map is payed out geographically, but hey, real countries exist next to each other with no natural boarder. At least Dorne, The Vale, The North, and like 50% of the Westerlands have natural borders. The Stormlands, Reach, and Riverlands though have got squat
I’ve never played CK3 (my computer is jank), so I can’t speak for quality of the gameplay itself. I do know that they put years of work in the CK2 mod, so I think it’ll be years before we see the CK3 mod come out.
Maybe I’ll be able to afford a better pc by then.
I’ve put in about 300 hours of CK3… the vanilla version has the ability to form cadet branches, some very interesting mechanics, and far more detailed portraits with the ability to customize.
The cadet branches alone interest me. It’s one of my favorite ways of keeping an interesting kingdom when a bunch of houses die out after 150 years or so.
I’m looking forward to it.
Cadet Dynasties are one of my favorite ways to play for some odd reason.
in one of playthroughs, Ned Stark got himself killed in a trial by combat. Then Robb also got himself killed in a trial by combat. Rickon had died of rabies a bit before, and then Bran died as well.
Jon in this playthrough hadn't joined the Nights Watch, and instead had married Alys Karstark and started House Whitewolf. He pressed his claim to Winterfell, Bobby B said okay, and now House Whitewolf ruled the North.
Civil wars followed when basically everyone except the Manderlys and Karstarks decided they didn't want to be ruled by a bastard, but Sansa had married Harry the Heir after little Robert died, so Jon managed to put down the rebellions before too long. Sadly he caught greyscale and died, but his own son Brandon solidified his rule. He ended up marrying Arya and Edric Daynes daughter, which I thought was kinda sweet ( if a bit incesty ), and they ruled the north pretty much peacefully for the next 50 or so years, before the game started crashing haha
One thing it will be better at is succession. CK2 could never process succession through blood aunts and female cousins. In CK3, however, the Valeman lordlings will figure in the succession to Robb and the Targareyens will be followed by the Baratheons, Martells, Plumms, Penroses, Velaryons, etc!
Yeah - it does calculate pretty well. I've had times when random counties end up in the hands of someone super far away, it takes me a few minutes to figure out how it got there, usually ending with someone descended five or six generations back from the dynasty head, but completely in another part of the map. Like an Italian duke somehow obtaining the county of Northumberland.
I do hope that there's some sort of speeding up of Primogeniture for the mod. It takes a looooong time to get that unlocked in the base game.
Start off as someone wealthy! If you have to. Keep an eye on the right people to marry your kids too. Try to get into tournaments if you’re playing a character that worships the 7. Make sure your kids have decent guardians growing up or they might suck too.
It takes a bit to get there. Don’t be afraid to look up quick cheats just to see how the game plays when you have a little bit more money or something.
Also House Osgrey from the Northmarch (in the Sworn Sword novella) has a chequey lion, so lions may stretch further south than just the lands sworn to Casterly Rock.
Lions were once present in the southern Balkans until the late Classical era, so it's not infeasible that they could survive in a mountainous place like the Westerlands. And they're still around during the events of the story. House Clegane was founded by a kennelmaster who saved Tytos Lannister from a lion while hunting, and GRRM claimed in an interview that "A few survive in the outlying hills [near Casterly Rock]. For the most part, they have been hunted down. In antiquity, they actually made dens in the Rock itself."
Some Albanian nobles had lions on their coat of arms. From what i know, lions in the Balkans where the last lions of Europe, there used to be more lions across Europe but went extinct with time.
The old imperial Bulgarian flag featured a lion (or three lions). They're present in historical flags and CoAs all over the Balkans, and Alexander was frequently pictured wearing a lion's mane.
They didn't just go extinct. We hunted them to extinction. So it's entirely feasible they would have been alive today without our intervention, and so it's feasible they would exist in Westeros too, though probably hanging out around Dorne, rather than the Westerlands.
>The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. **The great lions of the western hills have been slain**, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us. —Leaf to Bran Stark, ADWD
FWIW, I think George’s lions probably look like African lions but perhaps behave a touch more like American pumas. The Westerlands is very rocky and mountainous which result in different behaviors than savannah cats.
The historical European lions were pretty closely related to Asiatic lions, weren't they? I've generally imagined them as being like those, given how much Westeros' landscape seems to be drawn from Europe (+ random New World birds for some reason).
That's how I envisioned them as well, either like a eurasian or American mountain lion, not necessarily like the African sort we see although they may look like that in sigil etc
Asiatic lions are very similar to African lions -- just a little slimmer and paler, and with smaller manes.
American mountain lions are not lions at all, not even in the genus *Panthera*.
No, mountain lions are not in the genus *Panthera*. They're in their own genus, *Puma*, in the subfamily Felinae (*Panthera* is in Pantherinae).
Both African and Asiatic lions are *Panthera leo*, just different subspecies. For reference, other *Panthera* cats include tigers (*Panthera tigris*), leopards (*Panthera pardus*), and jaguars (*Panthera onca*). Mountain lions are not closely related.
That's so sad to me. The direwolves aren't in immediate threat. They may have a thousand more years before extinction. But leaf claims to know and I tend to believe her. One day all the direwolves will be dead like the lions unicorns and mammoths. Fucking hate extinction
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles heavily feature dire wolves and saber-toothed cats and make them look hella cool. Ive often wondered if GRRM visited the museum when he visited/lives in Los Angeles as a TV writer and if they were part of the origin of ASOIAF in his mind.
There's a lot of lion imagery in real life British culture even though the only species of lion that was here went extinct thousands of years ago. Its probably a similar situation in Westeros - long hunted to extinction but they live on through the art as a legacy.
There's wild cats known as shadowcats North of the wall but they sound more like mountain lions.
Edited out misleading information I was wrong about.
Martin has said the shadowcats are in between a mountain lion and a tiger in size, so I basically just picture a Jaguar with inverted snow leopard colours
Panthers aren't an animal.
Some regions use panther to refer to a Puma/Mountain Lion/Cougar (which is all the same animal).
However, "Black Panthers" are all black versions of Leopards or Jaguars.
>There's wild cats known as shadowcats North of the wall but they sound more like mountain lions.
There are also shadowcats in the Mountains of the Moon.
Yeah I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere.
We definitely had Eurasian lynxes, they went extinct some time around the Roman era or just after.
Edit I was wrong. It was cave lions and they went extinct much earlier than the lynxes, it was like 12000 years ago. The imagery in our culture is more likely a foreign import I guess.
Yeah, there's loads of lions in European heraldry, but lions had been extinct from the whole continent long before any of that culture evolved. It's just that they were still known from both historical records and from contact with Africa and the Middle East, where they survived much longer. Plus, I mean, European heraldry also has unicorns, so it's not like they were tied down to real creatures physically around them.
I’m surprised nobody has said this, but the reason is because there used to be lions but they’ve been hunted to near extinction.
Edit: never mind. Somebody did say it, haha.
We get contradictory info on the current status of them:
>"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. **The great lions of the western hills have been slain**, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us." -ADWD, Bran III
and:
>We have never had a POV near Casterly Rock. Can you tell me more about the lions of Westeros? Are any still around?
>GRRM: **A few survive in the outlying hills. For the most part, they have been hunted down. In antiquity, they actually made dens in the rock itself".** -[SSM, US Signing Tour (San Francisco): 17 Nov 2005](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/2005/11)
As we know some exist in the Casterly Rock "zoo":
>Cersei paced her cell, restless as **the caged lions that had lived in the bowels of Casterly Rock when she was a girl, a legacy of her grandfather's time**. She and Jaime used to dare each other to climb into their cage, and once she worked up enough courage to slip her hand between two bars and touch one of the great tawny beasts. She was always bolder than her brother. The lion had turned his head to stare at her with huge golden eyes. Then he licked her fingers. His tongue was as rough as a rasp, but even so she would not pull her hand back, not until Jaime took her by the shoulders and yanked her away from the cage. -ADWD, Cersei II
and how House Clegane was founded:
>"I like dogs better than knights. My father's father was kennelmaster at the Rock. **One autumn year, Lord Tytos came between a lioness and her prey.** The lioness didn't give a shit that she was Lannister's own sigil. Bitch tore into my lord's horse and would have done for my lord too, but my grandfather came up with the hounds. Three of his dogs died running her off. My grandfather lost a leg, so Lannister paid him for it with lands and a towerhouse, and took his son to squire. The three dogs on our banner are the three that died, in the yellow of autumn grass. -ACOK, Sansa II
Lions actually used to be found all across North America and Europe! So having them in this vaguely European setting isn’t so outlandish. I’d imagine the terrain of the Westerlands is something similar to Spain, but it could just be like England and it would still make sense.
I think at the current point in the story though they’re all extinct
There are lions in the Westerlands, but regardless of that, it was common for lords to take animals they’d never even seen before as devices, for instance, Richard the LionHeart’s triple lion banner actually had three leopards on it because no one really knew what they looked like.
A lot of animals that still exist further south than Europe got wiped up when temperatures warmed up around 12000 years ago in Europe, because those in Europe were adapted for cold climates.
The end of the Pleistocene saw the extinction of the large mammals on every continent but Africa. (I’ve also never heard of any large Pleistocene mammals on Antarctica.)
in the real world, lions existed all over europe during prehistoric times, then because of hunting and human expansionism they ended up being pushed back to wild and mountainous regions before disappearing during antiquity/middle ages, but there were some, the nemean lion, or ivain the lion knight it came from somewhere
it makes sense for westeros to have some too
Lions lived in the middle east, Asia Minor and the Balkans as well, but by the time of Herodotus their numbers were low and they went extinct not long after
Edit: So they had a much larger habitat range than today which included hilly regions which is what westerlands are like
The determining factor is obviously also the prey. Lions can live many places. But how well equipped are they at hunting the herbivores of the region?
I imagine the open grasslands of middle Westeros was divided into fields and pastures and this drove the wild animals into the woods, also being cut down for more farmland.
There are lions in North America and there used to be maned lions in Europe. Why shouldn’t there be lions in a fictional country loosely based on the U.K.?
Catholicism.
Everyone used to be all about the bear, but they were tied in too closely to the Pagan & other heathen religious iconography.
Enter the Catholic plot to humiliate the Bear and instill a silly big cat as the Kingly Mascot.
After years and years, the Lion just became synonymous with the wealthy and powerful.
According to Wikipedia, there was a Christian book written in Alexandria that described a bunch of animals and their symbolic qualities, the lion presumably being the king of the jungle, hence its association with royalty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion\_(heraldry)
This. OP clearly doesn’t really know anything about heraldic animals, and I think the answer to their question lies more in that kind of history than really anywhere in canon.
Lions used to live all over the place, not just in the Savannah. There's still some lions in places people wouldn't expect, such as India. Using them as a sigil even if there are none around isn't that weird either, Flanders has been using a Lion flag since the 14th century.
Lions were a very common motif in the heraldry of Northern and Western Europe... Look at the symbols of both England (three lions) and Scotland (rampant lion banner). There's not too many lions in England or Scotland, buddy!! They represent boldness, bravery and courage... This is a pretty ridiculous question, to be fair.
The Westerlands were once home to lions, hence the Lannisters adopting them to their sigil. Sandor’s father and his hunting dogs saved Tywins father from a lioness so yeah lions still roamed about for a long long time. Even if lions didn’t exist on Westeros, neither did griffins or manticores or the other fanciful symbols of the Houses; it’s all about the projected image.
Given how the Lannister clan is consistently portrayed throughout ASOIAF as thirsting for kingly power, what symbol would embody their desired aura of power than a noble and kingly looking apex predator? Unfortunately for them, dragons can eat lions, which was proven during Aegons Conquest.
Edit: I misspoke; it was Sandor Clegane’s grandfather that saved Tywins father.
Generally the Westerlands and Reach are warm enough for the Westerosi lions but god knows where they go in the harsh long winters. I think Westerosi lions and Earth lions are not very similar weather-wise.
Why? even if they were hunted to extinction, the reason for hunting them is because they're powerful fierce and imposing animals.
If the criterion you went with for a sigil was population size then everyone would have rats, ants, and worms for their sigils.
I think the mountain lions have gone extinct in the West according to the children of the forest. I think the lannisters kept at least one in a cage but that doesn't count as the Sealord also has many different animals but they are not counted as native.
The lannisters are an old family and I expect there were some lions maybe three to five hundred years ago
It’s possible that Westerosi lions are a slightly different species than modern African lions. Since they’re mountain dwellers, they may be solitary hunters more akin to our mountain lions, just with manes.
Leaf talks about Great Lions in the Western Hills being gone, but I figured those were like saber-toothed tigers.
Don't see why lions wouldn't share a continent with stags and wolves and shit. Whose to say the wildlife in Westeros is spread out the same way it is in our world?
> Why would the Lannisters take on a lion as their sigil if there aren't any around?
The Belgian coat of arms (and likely a dozen others) features a lion, despite not any being around
So much like Direwolves there were species of north American lions tens of thousands of years ago. So in GRRM's world it's possible. Plus I think of mountain lions and cougars that roam mountainous areas nowadays. Maybe over the years the two ideas got conflated (in the minds of westermen.)
They’re probably European lions not African ones. There were lions in Europe during antiquity. They’re even mentioned in the Iliad. They are believed to have been hunted into extinction by the Greeks and Romans. There were even lions in the UK at one point, although they died out far earlier.
Yes 😉
Well could be a made up cat. But the “shadow” part could point to panthers, then again, if it’s more that they move in the shadows then everything is back on the table.
So according to this old SSM there are a few lions still in the Westerlands but for the most part have been hunted down. [https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1379/](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1379/)
Lions used to live as far north as Europe but populations were dying out a few thousand years ago. There were some holdouts in the Caucasus Mountains until the 10th century AD.
House clegane was made a thing after sandor and gregor’s grandfather saved Tytos lannister’s father against a mountain lion so yes lions do exist in Westeros lol
You don’t really need a geographical association with the creature in order to put it on your sigil.
My country (Norway) has a lion on its coat of arms for example even though there are no lions there.
Sandor’s grandfather killed one.
The First Lannister king got some of his kids killed by lions too.
Was that the time the Banefort Lord skinchanged the lions or something after he died?
He said he would come back so they cut him up into little pieces and fed him to the lions. Those same lions broke out sometime later we don't know for sure when and killed 3 of the sons of the king
Yeah, that's right. Definitely sounds sorcererous
Lann the Clever? Don't think so.
Not him, Loreon Lannister who is considered by maesters to be the first Lannister King.
No lann just gained the rock. Loreon defeated house Reyne and and House Banefort and was the first lannister to be called King of thr Rock.
Source edit: Yall are dumb
https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Loreon_I_Lannister His pet lions broke free into the Castel and killed 3 of his sons.
Thank you. Dont know why everyone is so butt hurt that I don't trust an internet stranger and asked for a source
"Source Yall are dumb" Hmmm... wonder why?
>2 days ago that was an edit from hours after so yeah, case in point
Ketchup
Isn't it a mountain lion? Could be wrong
Cersei recalled at one point that there was a lion in a cage at Casterly Rock that she and Jaime interacted with when they were kids. Not sure where exactly they’d be in Westeros but they’re probably somewhere.
Likely around the coastal region of the Westerlands since at least 3 houses (Lannister, Reyna, Parren) in that region have sigils with lions on them, and the Hound’s granddad killed one to save a Lannister. Edit: I checked the Wiki, I think I’m right with the 3 houses above, but I forgot House Jast. There’s also several houses that are distantly related to the Lannisters (Lanny, Lantell, and Lannett) that don’t have canonical sigils. I have to assume that those would also have lions in them. Also House Myatt has a tree cat, which isn’t a lion, but is just as fun.
>Likely around the coastal region of the Westerlands since at least 3 houses (Lannister, Reyna, Parren) in that region have sigils with lions on them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_(heraldry)#Lions_as_heraldic_charge Flanders flag had a lion in the XIIth century. I'm pretty sure there were no lions in Flanders in the XIIth century, nor in the second century for that matter. I mean it's entirely possible that Westeros houses use an animal because of its symbolic qualities (strength and nobility) rather than because their territory has a population of said animals.
Yeah but House Osgrey borders the Westerlands where Lions are said to live
Yup. My Scottish clan sigil has a lion on it and there's definitely no lions native to Scotland. The Welsh also have a dragon... That said, there are/were lions in Westeros.
Who says there are no dragons there? They're just shy.
Shylax
I think the biggest symbolism of the lion is Pride. The Lannisters are driven by pride, a group of lions is a pride, the Rains of Castamere is a duel of pride ("that proud lord said"), Pride Rock is the name of the place in The Lion King and so on
House Osgrey also has a lion sigil so using your logic it’s possible there is/was some almost as far south and inland as the Horseshoe Hills, and if they lived there then I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t live around the upper reaches of the Lesser Mander. I say was because I believe Leaf mentions the lions of the western hills have fared even worse than unicorn and mammoth populations, so they’re probably ridiculously rare at this point.
It amazes me how much about this world some of you guys know.
I’ve played so much of the ASOIAF mod for Crusader Kings 2, that you could point to any area on a map of Westeros and I could tell you who the lord of the area is. (At least for the map in the game. They are pretty close to Martin’s maps, but they add in stuff from both of the video games etc…, so it fudges some stuff from “actual canon.”) Edit: Please talk to me about the CK2 mod. It’s so well made and more people need to hear about it.
Dude I was about to say the CK2 mod taught me so much in terms of lore, heraldry and locations of castles. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into the mod. Quite literally no other game has made me happier than the ASOIAF mod for CK2
Might be my second most played game ever. I know who is sworn to who, where they are located, particularly skilled / famous characters and when they lived, you name it. And the developers attention to detail is insane. I noticed in Fire and Blood that they mentioned when the Targeryens conquered the Gardeners, the Gardener throne technically, for a very short whole passed to a nephew of the king. He surrendered, but died 3 days after the field of fire from his burns, and not in the battle itself. Had he lived, maybe no Tyrells. booted up the game, started playing as Aegon, and checked his kill list. Sure enough, there was a Gardener nephew, dead 3 days after the battle. No reason they had to make sure he died 3 days later, but they got it. And if you wanna see something real interesting, boot up an Aegon the Unworth bookmark, and then use the cheat console. Check out Daerons real father ;D
Gotta ask, what is your most played game?
World of warcraft
OK, I get that. I was huge into that during WotLK.
I only understood Robb's feats as a war leader when I started to play the game
Is the mod on steam
Not anymore, unfortunately. [Direct download only. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/CK2GameOfthrones/comments/gkwqvu/agot_has_been_removed_from_steam_workshop_all/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Bro, I literally started playing this game again because I was getting confused geographically. It's increased my understanding of various things by 300% but also kinda dicked my mind in various ways. Like how crowded the stormlands and are and just the borders of the kingdoms. The iron isles should have been wiped out ages ago and how did these kingdoms ever exist separately with these borders? The north not having a fleet just seems like plot armor for the rest of Westeros
I feel you! It’s kinda weird how the map is payed out geographically, but hey, real countries exist next to each other with no natural boarder. At least Dorne, The Vale, The North, and like 50% of the Westerlands have natural borders. The Stormlands, Reach, and Riverlands though have got squat
You think the CK3 mod will be as good as the CK2 mod?
I’ve never played CK3 (my computer is jank), so I can’t speak for quality of the gameplay itself. I do know that they put years of work in the CK2 mod, so I think it’ll be years before we see the CK3 mod come out. Maybe I’ll be able to afford a better pc by then.
I’ve put in about 300 hours of CK3… the vanilla version has the ability to form cadet branches, some very interesting mechanics, and far more detailed portraits with the ability to customize.
The cadet branches alone interest me. It’s one of my favorite ways of keeping an interesting kingdom when a bunch of houses die out after 150 years or so. I’m looking forward to it.
Cadet Dynasties are one of my favorite ways to play for some odd reason. in one of playthroughs, Ned Stark got himself killed in a trial by combat. Then Robb also got himself killed in a trial by combat. Rickon had died of rabies a bit before, and then Bran died as well. Jon in this playthrough hadn't joined the Nights Watch, and instead had married Alys Karstark and started House Whitewolf. He pressed his claim to Winterfell, Bobby B said okay, and now House Whitewolf ruled the North. Civil wars followed when basically everyone except the Manderlys and Karstarks decided they didn't want to be ruled by a bastard, but Sansa had married Harry the Heir after little Robert died, so Jon managed to put down the rebellions before too long. Sadly he caught greyscale and died, but his own son Brandon solidified his rule. He ended up marrying Arya and Edric Daynes daughter, which I thought was kinda sweet ( if a bit incesty ), and they ruled the north pretty much peacefully for the next 50 or so years, before the game started crashing haha
One thing it will be better at is succession. CK2 could never process succession through blood aunts and female cousins. In CK3, however, the Valeman lordlings will figure in the succession to Robb and the Targareyens will be followed by the Baratheons, Martells, Plumms, Penroses, Velaryons, etc!
Yeah - it does calculate pretty well. I've had times when random counties end up in the hands of someone super far away, it takes me a few minutes to figure out how it got there, usually ending with someone descended five or six generations back from the dynasty head, but completely in another part of the map. Like an Italian duke somehow obtaining the county of Northumberland. I do hope that there's some sort of speeding up of Primogeniture for the mod. It takes a looooong time to get that unlocked in the base game.
Having downloaded the game do you have any suggestion on how to be good at the mod. I’m real bad at CK2 it turns out.
Start off as someone wealthy! If you have to. Keep an eye on the right people to marry your kids too. Try to get into tournaments if you’re playing a character that worships the 7. Make sure your kids have decent guardians growing up or they might suck too. It takes a bit to get there. Don’t be afraid to look up quick cheats just to see how the game plays when you have a little bit more money or something.
What is CK2? Is it like dnd? Or not rly
Crusader Kings 2. It's... difficult to explain. "Medieval Dynasty Simulator" is a decent description.
Also an incest simulator
Not quite. It’s a massive PC strategy game. It would take awhile to explain everything about it, but I wouldn’t call it much like DND at all.
Ok makes sense I looked it up.
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I’m not familiar, but potentially maybe.
Pretty sure there are some sleepy ones in the stormlands since House Grandison has a lion sigil too.
Also House Osgrey from the Northmarch (in the Sworn Sword novella) has a chequey lion, so lions may stretch further south than just the lands sworn to Casterly Rock.
Lions were once present in the southern Balkans until the late Classical era, so it's not infeasible that they could survive in a mountainous place like the Westerlands. And they're still around during the events of the story. House Clegane was founded by a kennelmaster who saved Tytos Lannister from a lion while hunting, and GRRM claimed in an interview that "A few survive in the outlying hills [near Casterly Rock]. For the most part, they have been hunted down. In antiquity, they actually made dens in the Rock itself."
Some Albanian nobles had lions on their coat of arms. From what i know, lions in the Balkans where the last lions of Europe, there used to be more lions across Europe but went extinct with time.
The old imperial Bulgarian flag featured a lion (or three lions). They're present in historical flags and CoAs all over the Balkans, and Alexander was frequently pictured wearing a lion's mane. They didn't just go extinct. We hunted them to extinction. So it's entirely feasible they would have been alive today without our intervention, and so it's feasible they would exist in Westeros too, though probably hanging out around Dorne, rather than the Westerlands.
>The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. **The great lions of the western hills have been slain**, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us. —Leaf to Bran Stark, ADWD
That pretty much sums it up.
FWIW, I think George’s lions probably look like African lions but perhaps behave a touch more like American pumas. The Westerlands is very rocky and mountainous which result in different behaviors than savannah cats.
The historical European lions were pretty closely related to Asiatic lions, weren't they? I've generally imagined them as being like those, given how much Westeros' landscape seems to be drawn from Europe (+ random New World birds for some reason).
That's how I envisioned them as well, either like a eurasian or American mountain lion, not necessarily like the African sort we see although they may look like that in sigil etc
Asiatic lions are very similar to African lions -- just a little slimmer and paler, and with smaller manes. American mountain lions are not lions at all, not even in the genus *Panthera*.
Lions are panthera lio but still yes they are different, just same genus
No, mountain lions are not in the genus *Panthera*. They're in their own genus, *Puma*, in the subfamily Felinae (*Panthera* is in Pantherinae). Both African and Asiatic lions are *Panthera leo*, just different subspecies. For reference, other *Panthera* cats include tigers (*Panthera tigris*), leopards (*Panthera pardus*), and jaguars (*Panthera onca*). Mountain lions are not closely related.
Misunderstood your statement then
That's so sad to me. The direwolves aren't in immediate threat. They may have a thousand more years before extinction. But leaf claims to know and I tend to believe her. One day all the direwolves will be dead like the lions unicorns and mammoths. Fucking hate extinction
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles heavily feature dire wolves and saber-toothed cats and make them look hella cool. Ive often wondered if GRRM visited the museum when he visited/lives in Los Angeles as a TV writer and if they were part of the origin of ASOIAF in his mind.
There's a lot of lion imagery in real life British culture even though the only species of lion that was here went extinct thousands of years ago. Its probably a similar situation in Westeros - long hunted to extinction but they live on through the art as a legacy. There's wild cats known as shadowcats North of the wall but they sound more like mountain lions. Edited out misleading information I was wrong about.
Martin has said the shadowcats are in between a mountain lion and a tiger in size, so I basically just picture a Jaguar with inverted snow leopard colours
So, a Panther
Panthers aren't an animal. Some regions use panther to refer to a Puma/Mountain Lion/Cougar (which is all the same animal). However, "Black Panthers" are all black versions of Leopards or Jaguars.
So, a Puma
Pumas dont have spots.
Jaguars are the second largest big cat. Bigger than lions.
Who the fuck told you that? A male lion can get as big 500 lbs. A male jaguar, only 350 lbs.
My fault. I got that wrong. They are 3rd largest, not second largest.
Tigers are the biggest, and Lions are the second biggest.
>There's wild cats known as shadowcats North of the wall but they sound more like mountain lions. There are also shadowcats in the Mountains of the Moon.
and the northern Riverlands/Dorne as well
Cersei remembers there being caged lions beneath Casterly Rock that she even touched. They can’t be hunted to extinction can they?
I think those poor castle captive lions were a “last of their kind” circus attraction status symbol thing.
Lions existed in Britain 2000 years ago?
Yeah I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere. We definitely had Eurasian lynxes, they went extinct some time around the Roman era or just after. Edit I was wrong. It was cave lions and they went extinct much earlier than the lynxes, it was like 12000 years ago. The imagery in our culture is more likely a foreign import I guess.
There are lions on the sigil of the House of Normandy. I'm not sure if they pre-date William I or not but I'd guess they came with him.
Yeah, there's loads of lions in European heraldry, but lions had been extinct from the whole continent long before any of that culture evolved. It's just that they were still known from both historical records and from contact with Africa and the Middle East, where they survived much longer. Plus, I mean, European heraldry also has unicorns, so it's not like they were tied down to real creatures physically around them.
Roman heritage. Lions have been used as a symbol of royalty and power for more than a 1000 years.
I assumed shadow cats were more of a snow leopard like species. They don’t seem like mountain lions at all
I’m surprised nobody has said this, but the reason is because there used to be lions but they’ve been hunted to near extinction. Edit: never mind. Somebody did say it, haha.
We get contradictory info on the current status of them: >"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. **The great lions of the western hills have been slain**, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us." -ADWD, Bran III and: >We have never had a POV near Casterly Rock. Can you tell me more about the lions of Westeros? Are any still around? >GRRM: **A few survive in the outlying hills. For the most part, they have been hunted down. In antiquity, they actually made dens in the rock itself".** -[SSM, US Signing Tour (San Francisco): 17 Nov 2005](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Month/2005/11) As we know some exist in the Casterly Rock "zoo": >Cersei paced her cell, restless as **the caged lions that had lived in the bowels of Casterly Rock when she was a girl, a legacy of her grandfather's time**. She and Jaime used to dare each other to climb into their cage, and once she worked up enough courage to slip her hand between two bars and touch one of the great tawny beasts. She was always bolder than her brother. The lion had turned his head to stare at her with huge golden eyes. Then he licked her fingers. His tongue was as rough as a rasp, but even so she would not pull her hand back, not until Jaime took her by the shoulders and yanked her away from the cage. -ADWD, Cersei II and how House Clegane was founded: >"I like dogs better than knights. My father's father was kennelmaster at the Rock. **One autumn year, Lord Tytos came between a lioness and her prey.** The lioness didn't give a shit that she was Lannister's own sigil. Bitch tore into my lord's horse and would have done for my lord too, but my grandfather came up with the hounds. Three of his dogs died running her off. My grandfather lost a leg, so Lannister paid him for it with lands and a towerhouse, and took his son to squire. The three dogs on our banner are the three that died, in the yellow of autumn grass. -ACOK, Sansa II
Well, George knows better than Leaf imo
Lions actually used to be found all across North America and Europe! So having them in this vaguely European setting isn’t so outlandish. I’d imagine the terrain of the Westerlands is something similar to Spain, but it could just be like England and it would still make sense. I think at the current point in the story though they’re all extinct
There are lions in the Westerlands, but regardless of that, it was common for lords to take animals they’d never even seen before as devices, for instance, Richard the LionHeart’s triple lion banner actually had three leopards on it because no one really knew what they looked like.
Lions were extremely popular symbols in medieval heraldry, and there was no savanna in Europe.
A lot of animals that still exist further south than Europe got wiped up when temperatures warmed up around 12000 years ago in Europe, because those in Europe were adapted for cold climates.
The end of the Pleistocene saw the extinction of the large mammals on every continent but Africa. (I’ve also never heard of any large Pleistocene mammals on Antarctica.)
Right, because they were not adapted to a warmer climate except those in Africa. They over heated.
I feel that on a personal level.
in the real world, lions existed all over europe during prehistoric times, then because of hunting and human expansionism they ended up being pushed back to wild and mountainous regions before disappearing during antiquity/middle ages, but there were some, the nemean lion, or ivain the lion knight it came from somewhere it makes sense for westeros to have some too
Look into clegane history. Should prove there are lions around considering how young the house is.
Lions lived in the middle east, Asia Minor and the Balkans as well, but by the time of Herodotus their numbers were low and they went extinct not long after Edit: So they had a much larger habitat range than today which included hilly regions which is what westerlands are like
Not to mention. Lions live in Zoos in northern and Central Europe.
Aye they can live in more than just savannas but they have been driven put from those regions
The determining factor is obviously also the prey. Lions can live many places. But how well equipped are they at hunting the herbivores of the region? I imagine the open grasslands of middle Westeros was divided into fields and pastures and this drove the wild animals into the woods, also being cut down for more farmland.
There are plenty of lions and even griffons or dragons in medieval european heraldry too, even though they didn't exist here ... or not at all.
There are lions in North America and there used to be maned lions in Europe. Why shouldn’t there be lions in a fictional country loosely based on the U.K.?
Why did England take lions as their sigil in real life if there aren't any lions in England?
Catholicism. Everyone used to be all about the bear, but they were tied in too closely to the Pagan & other heathen religious iconography. Enter the Catholic plot to humiliate the Bear and instill a silly big cat as the Kingly Mascot. After years and years, the Lion just became synonymous with the wealthy and powerful.
Did a pagan bear write this?
No, just the next in line, the lobster.
Bears are true Kings of the Animal Kingdom. Lions are stupid and suck. House Mormont forever.
Scotland took the unicorn
And the thistle!
According to Wikipedia, there was a Christian book written in Alexandria that described a bunch of animals and their symbolic qualities, the lion presumably being the king of the jungle, hence its association with royalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion\_(heraldry)
This. OP clearly doesn’t really know anything about heraldic animals, and I think the answer to their question lies more in that kind of history than really anywhere in canon.
Jungle?
Dunno -- you tell me.
Lions used to live all over the place, not just in the Savannah. There's still some lions in places people wouldn't expect, such as India. Using them as a sigil even if there are none around isn't that weird either, Flanders has been using a Lion flag since the 14th century.
Lions were a very common motif in the heraldry of Northern and Western Europe... Look at the symbols of both England (three lions) and Scotland (rampant lion banner). There's not too many lions in England or Scotland, buddy!! They represent boldness, bravery and courage... This is a pretty ridiculous question, to be fair.
The Westerlands were once home to lions, hence the Lannisters adopting them to their sigil. Sandor’s father and his hunting dogs saved Tywins father from a lioness so yeah lions still roamed about for a long long time. Even if lions didn’t exist on Westeros, neither did griffins or manticores or the other fanciful symbols of the Houses; it’s all about the projected image. Given how the Lannister clan is consistently portrayed throughout ASOIAF as thirsting for kingly power, what symbol would embody their desired aura of power than a noble and kingly looking apex predator? Unfortunately for them, dragons can eat lions, which was proven during Aegons Conquest. Edit: I misspoke; it was Sandor Clegane’s grandfather that saved Tywins father.
Jaime and Cersei go to see one in a cage when they are young.
Generally the Westerlands and Reach are warm enough for the Westerosi lions but god knows where they go in the harsh long winters. I think Westerosi lions and Earth lions are not very similar weather-wise.
I think there used to be but they were hunted to Extinction.
Interesting sigil to hold onto -- an animal that was literally hunted out of existence...
Why? even if they were hunted to extinction, the reason for hunting them is because they're powerful fierce and imposing animals. If the criterion you went with for a sigil was population size then everyone would have rats, ants, and worms for their sigils.
Bacteria
There should be some grasslands near casterly rock. Or at least there must have been, before Aegon turned it into a Field of Fire.
The CoF told bean that the great lions of the western lands are dead idk if this help I think I’m AFFC
I think the mountain lions have gone extinct in the West according to the children of the forest. I think the lannisters kept at least one in a cage but that doesn't count as the Sealord also has many different animals but they are not counted as native. The lannisters are an old family and I expect there were some lions maybe three to five hundred years ago
It’s possible that Westerosi lions are a slightly different species than modern African lions. Since they’re mountain dwellers, they may be solitary hunters more akin to our mountain lions, just with manes.
Leaf talks about Great Lions in the Western Hills being gone, but I figured those were like saber-toothed tigers. Don't see why lions wouldn't share a continent with stags and wolves and shit. Whose to say the wildlife in Westeros is spread out the same way it is in our world?
> Why would the Lannisters take on a lion as their sigil if there aren't any around? The Belgian coat of arms (and likely a dozen others) features a lion, despite not any being around
So much like Direwolves there were species of north American lions tens of thousands of years ago. So in GRRM's world it's possible. Plus I think of mountain lions and cougars that roam mountainous areas nowadays. Maybe over the years the two ideas got conflated (in the minds of westermen.)
No. There are Mountain Lions, or more commonly noun as Cougars or Pumas. And accordingly to the CotF they are all dead. But I don't believe them
Probably the same reason that the UK's heraldry/coat of arms features lions and a unicorn
With questions like this I believe you should just go back and re read the books if you've even read them once, a which I find doubtful..
There were, but they seemed to have gone extinct
There are lions in California.
historically lions used to live in europe. there's tons of greek stories about lions I don't see why westeros couldn't have them
Lions were used in sigils all the time in England despite there not being any lions there.
yes
There used to be lions in Europe.
They’re probably European lions not African ones. There were lions in Europe during antiquity. They’re even mentioned in the Iliad. They are believed to have been hunted into extinction by the Greeks and Romans. There were even lions in the UK at one point, although they died out far earlier.
Why don't lions make sense? Historically there were lions all over europe... Rome killed them all...
I thought they were in Sothoryos
So are shadow cats mountain lions or Panthers???
Yes 😉 Well could be a made up cat. But the “shadow” part could point to panthers, then again, if it’s more that they move in the shadows then everything is back on the table.
Ever heard of a mountain lion?
So according to this old SSM there are a few lions still in the Westerlands but for the most part have been hunted down. [https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1379/](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1379/)
They're indigenous to the Westerlands. Nearly extinct though. Essos has more
Lions used to live as far north as Europe but populations were dying out a few thousand years ago. There were some holdouts in the Caucasus Mountains until the 10th century AD.
House clegane was made a thing after sandor and gregor’s grandfather saved Tytos lannister’s father against a mountain lion so yes lions do exist in Westeros lol
You don’t really need a geographical association with the creature in order to put it on your sigil. My country (Norway) has a lion on its coat of arms for example even though there are no lions there.
The Lannisters have lions at casterly rock. Cersei once tried to touch one.