Long ere the coming of the dragons the ironborn were the terror of the sunset sea, and in their black-sailed longships they carried fire and sword the length of the western coast, from Bear Island in the north to the Arbor in the south, taking gold and thralls and salt wives by the old way. In the early age their kings were chosen at kingsmoot, until Urron of Orkmont, called Urron Redhand of House Greyiron, put an end to the moot by slaughtering the other captains where they stood and made the driftwood crown his own by right of blood. For near a thousand years the Greyiron kings ruled the Iron Islands, until the Andals came to the islands as they had come to the green lands, and the line of House Greyiron was ended; thereafter the crown passed among the greatest of the ironborn houses in turn.
In the last centuries before the Conquest the black-blooded kings of House Hoare rose to the driftwood throne, and under them the reaving reached its farthest flood. Where the Greyirons had raided the coasts, the Hoares set out to hold the mainland outright. Harwyn Hoare, called Harwyn Hardhand, wrested the riverlands from the Storm Kings of House Durrandon and made himself lord of all the lands watered by the Trident, so that for three generations the rivermen bent beneath the black sails and paid their taxes to Pyke and Great Wyk. The greatest and last of that line was Harren the Black, Harren Hoare, who bled the riverlands white and worked their smallfolk to death raising the vast castle of Harrenhal upon the shore of the Gods Eye, the largest hall ever built in Westeros. It availed him nothing, for on the very day his monstrous seat was finished Aegon the Conqueror came against it with his dragons, and Harren and all his sons burned within its towers when Balerion's fire made the stone itself run like candle wax. So ended the dominion of the ironborn over the green lands, and the rivermen were freed to bend the knee to a new king.