House Tarbeck of Tarbeck Hall was an ancient and honorable line of the westerlands, sworn to Casterly Rock since the days of the Andal kings. Their seat, a modest castle near the Crag, reflected a house of respectable lineage but modest fortune; the seven-pointed star upon their silver and blue banner spoke to the faith the Andal conquerors carried west when they first carved their lordships from the hills. Maester Yandel numbered them among the older families of the region, and their name appears in the records of Casterly Rock long before the Targaryen Conquest. Lord Alyn Tarbeck was wed to the Lady Jeyne Westerling before she was taken to wife by King Maegor I Targaryen, a match that speaks to the house's standing in that era even if it brought them no lasting advantage.
By the reign of King Aegon V Targaryen the Tarbecks had fallen into slow decline, their castle grown crumbling and their treasury thin. That course reversed when Lord Walderan Tarbeck wed the widowed Ellyn Reyne, sister-in-law to the Lord of Casterly Rock and a woman of fierce ambition. Ellyn secured loans from the indulgent Lord Tytos Lannister to rebuild Tarbeck Hall's walls, strengthen its towers, and deck its keep in finery, intertwining the fates of her new house and her birth house, the Reynes of Castamere. Together the two houses grew bolder than any Lannister vassal had right to be, treating their liege lord as a debtor rather than a master. When the young Ser Tywin Lannister moved against them in 261 AC, Lord Walderan was caught in the open with only his household knights; he and his sons were taken and beheaded before they could be ransomed. Lady Ellyn seized Lannister hostages in retaliation, but Tywin's march to Tarbeck Hall was relentless. A boulder cast over the battlements brought the aged keep down upon Ellyn and her son within, and Tywin had what remained put to the torch. By the time the flames died, House Tarbeck was extinguished entirely, its ruins left to stand as a monument to the cost of defying Casterly Rock.