Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident, was head of House Tully and among the great lords to rise with Robert's Rebellion. He wed Lady Minisa Whent, who bore him three surviving children — his daughters Catelyn and Lysa and his son and heir Edmure — before she died in childbed, a loss he mourned for the rest of his days. A proud and restless man in his prime, he fought in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, fostered the young Petyr Baelish at Riverrun, and nursed a bitter, decades-long estrangement from his younger brother Ser Brynden, the Blackfish, whom he had cast out for taking service with Jon Arryn.
Lord Hoster bent his every effort toward marriage and alliance, betrothing Catelyn first to Brandon Stark and then to his brother Eddard, and — after being wounded at the Battle of the Bells in 283 AC — wedding Lysa to the aged Lord Jon Arryn in the same ceremony at Riverrun. His tardy bannerman Walder Frey he ever after mocked as the "Late Lord Frey." Taken by a wasting illness in 296 AC, he lay bedridden and witless through the events of A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings, often mistaking Catelyn for Lysa and muttering of "Tansy" and the blood. He died at Riverrun in 299 AC and was succeeded by Edmure; his body was laid in a funeral boat and set adrift down the Red Fork, the sail kindled at last by his reconciled brother Brynden after Edmure's grief-blind arrows thrice fell short.