The Grant of the New Gift

No reign is remembered more fondly than that of Jaehaerys I, the Conciliator, and his sister-queen Alysanne: five and fifty years of peace in which the Faith was reconciled to the Iron Throne, the realm's laws were made one, and the kingsroad and its sisters bound the Seven Kingdoms together. When Good Queen Alysanne flew Silverwing to the Wall, she was so moved by the black brothers' vigil that she persuaded the king to grant the Watch a second swath of land, twenty-five leagues deep below the Gift that Brandon the Builder had given of old — the New Gift, whose rents and harvests would sustain the Watch in its long decline. The Starks of Winterfell, it is said, were less than pleased to see northern land pass from their domain, but the queen's will prevailed, as it commonly did.