Harren Hoare (Harren the Black)

Last of the Kings of the Isles and the Rivers and the final member of House Hoare to rule, a proud and bloody tyrant whose cruelty was famous throughout the Seven Kingdoms. Grandson of Harwyn Hardhand and son of Halleck Hoare, he commanded the building of Harrenhal on the shores of the Gods Eye, draining the riverlands and the Iron Islands alike to raise its five great towers over nearly forty years, with thousands of captives dying in the quarries and weirwoods felled for its beams. The castle was completed the very day Aegon Targaryen landed in Westeros. When the river lords under Edmyn Tully turned against him and two of his sons were burned crossing the Gods Eye after their victory at the Wailing Willows, Harren shut himself within his walls and rejected Aegon's offer of vassalage, boasting that stone does not burn. Aegon loosed Balerion upon Harrenhal and roasted Harren and his surviving sons alive in the tallest tower, ending the black line; his ghost is said to haunt the castle still. He appears across The World of Ice & Fire, Fire & Blood, and the novels.