The Peakes are an ancient Marcher line whose roots reach back to the Age of Heroes, when First Men holdfasts kept watch on the broken country where the Reach pinches against Dorne. By the time the green hand of Garth Greenhand's heirs held court at Highgarden, the Peakes ruled three castles (Starpike, Dunstonbury, and Whitegrove) and bore three black castles upon orange in token of them. It was the Peakes who broke the power of House Manderly in the Reach at the bidding of the Gardener kings, hounding that proud merman banner from their southern holdings until the Manderlys fled north to claim White Harbor at the sufferance of the Starks.
After the Conquest the Peakes bent the knee with their new overlords of Highgarden, but their pride proved an heirloom kept polished through the generations. When Daemon Blackfyre raised the black dragon against his half-brother Daeron II in 196 AC, House Peake rode beneath that banner; the rebellion broke on the Redgrass Field and cost them dear, for two of their castles, Dunstonbury and Whitegrove, were stripped from them by royal decree, leaving only Starpike. Their grievance outlasted defeat. Lord Gormon Peake conspired in the second Blackfyre attempt at the Whitewalls wedding tourney of 212 AC and was beheaded for treason, and a generation later the Peake Uprising of 233 AC was crushed in turn, ending the last of their ambitions. By the close of King Robert's reign the Peakes still hold Starpike and the memory of three castles, if little else of the marcher might they once commanded.