House Harlaw of Harlaw rules the whole of that green isle from the castle of Ten Towers, and is reckoned the richest and most populous of the Iron Islands save only Pyke itself. In antiquity the Harlaws were rock and salt kings, and the Myres, Kennings, and Stonetrees who once contested them upon the island in the end bent the knee; Erich V Harlaw was hailed High King of the ironborn and won back Fair Isle, and his son Harron slew Gareth II Gardener, King of the Reach, before the walls of Oldtown. So numerous and so ancient is the line that it has thrown off branch upon branch — the Harlaws of Grey Garden, of Harlaw Hall, of Harridan Hill, and of the Tower of Glimmering — each bearing the silver scythe upon sable, differenced after its own fashion, so that the doings of the kin are set down in a great roll the maesters name the Book of the Harlaws. The keep of Ten Towers was the work of Lord Theomore, a man much given to changing his mind, who raised ten several halls and joined them after by wallwalks and covered bridges when the damp of old Harlaw Hall had carried off three sons of his in the cradle.
In the latter days of the third century the house is held by Lord Rodrik Harlaw, called "the Reader" for that he loves books above the axe and the longship — a man whose library at Ten Towers has no equal in all the isles, and who holds, as is whispered against the temper of his folk, that "a man might own a map of the world and never need set foot beyond his own door." His elder sisters are the Lady Gwynesse and the Lady Alannys, the latter wed to Lord Balon Greyjoy and mother to Rodrik, Maron, Asha, and Theon, so that the Reader is uncle to the Lord Reaper's children. When Balon fell and Euron seized the Seastone Chair, Lord Rodrik summoned the lords of the isles to Ten Towers and offered to name his niece Asha heir to his seat; and though she put the driftwood crown above it, he gave her his full voice at the kingsmoot upon Old Wyk, his designated heir Ser Harras standing as one of her three champions. After Euron's claim was shouted out, Rodrik would set neither sword nor scythe of his house against its own — "I will not set Harlaw against Harlaw," he told her — and so the Reader kept his counsel and his books while the krakens went to war.