House Wyl of the Boneway holds the castle of Wyl in northern Dorne, guarding the pass that takes its name from theirs. The Wyls are an old line, and from the dawn of their long memory they have warred against the lords of the Stormlands and the Marches at the head of the Boneway. The warrior-maid Wylla of Wyl rode beside Yoren Yronwood against King Durran the Young at the Battle by the Bloody Pool in the Age of Heroes; centuries later, when Aegon's sister Rhaenys came south, it was the Wyl of Wyl who ambushed and broke Lord Orys Baratheon's host at the mouth of the pass and took the king's brother captive.
The Wyls earned a darker name for their conduct of that first war. Lord Wyl fell upon the wedding of Ser Jon Cafferen and Alys Oakheart, gelded the groom, gave the bride to his men and the slavers thereafter, and put Lord Oakheart and most of the guests to the sword. His son Walter Wyl rode with the Vulture King against King Aenys I, and in the final reckoning of the conquest of Dorne it was a Wyl who slew King Daeron I beneath a peace banner and took Prince Aemon the Dragonknight captive, forcing King Baelor I to walk barefoot across a pit of vipers to ransom him back. The black adder still flies over Wyl, sworn to House Martell of Sunspear, and the family burrows beneath its castle through chambers and tunnels of its own digging, so that no host that enters the Boneway may ever be certain of the ground beneath its feet.