House Cole is a knightly house of the Dornish Marches, that hard and contested country where the stormlands meet the red wastes of Dorne. They are men of small estate and ancient marcher stock, sworn to the Dondarrions of Blackhaven, and for long years they were known to no chronicle and sung of in no hall — a steward's family, keepers of another lord's keys, who held neither broad lands nor high titles of their own.
All that was changed by one man. Ser Criston Cole, the common-born son of a steward in service to Lord Dondarrion, rose by the strength of his arm and the favor of King Viserys I to a white cloak in the Kingsguard, and in the war the singers call the Dance of the Dragons he set the iron crown of the Conqueror upon the brow of Aegon II with his own hands, so that the realm thereafter named him the Kingmaker. As Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and Hand of the King he led the green armies through the riverlands until his death at the Butcher's Ball in 130 AC. He took no wife and left no trueborn heir, being sworn to the white; yet through his deeds the name of Cole was lifted from a marcher steward's hall to the very making of kings, and the black stones of their arms are remembered now where once they were unknown.