Westeros

Westeros is a great continent located in the far west of the known world. It is separated from the continent of Essos by a strip of water known as the Narrow Sea. Most of the action in Game of Thrones takes place in Westeros.

Almost the entire continent, barring only the lands in the furthest north beyond the Wall, is ruled by a single political entity known as the Seven Kingdoms, which holds fealty to the King on the Iron Throne in the city of King's Landing. The terms 'Seven Kingdoms' and 'Westeros' are normally used interchangeably.

Climate and seasons
Westeros's climate shifts from a subarctic wasteland in the furthest north, beyond the Wall, to a desert climate in the furthest south, along the peninsula of Dorne. In the normal course of events, the furthest north still has light snowfalls even in the longest summers whilst Dorne almost never sees snow, even in the most severe winters.

Westeros and Essos both experience extremely long seasons of varying length, usually at least a couple of years each. At the time the series opens, the world has been experiencing a summer that has lasted for nine years, which is unusually long, and the maesters fear that an equally long winter will follow. Westeros extends much further north than Essos, so is much more adversely affected by long winters, whilst Essos, which extends into equatorial regions, is typically warmer.

In the North, the winters are extremely cruel. Lords set aside non-perishable food items for storage against the next winter, whilst many of the North's most notable strongholds are built in favorable areas, such as Winterfell on hot springs or the Dreadfort of House Bolton on volcanic vents. Some castles, like Winterfell, have elaborate greenhouses which permit the growing of vegetables even in the harshest winters. Despite these precautions, famine and starvation is common during Northern winters, and is one of the reasons the North has a small population despite its vast size.

There is a suggestion that the long seasons are not natural in origin, but may have stemmed from a near-mythical event called the Long Night 8,000 years ago, when it is said that the White Walkers used the cover of a winter that lasted a generation and a night that lasted for years to invade Westeros. They were defeated in the War for the Dawn, thrown back into the furthest north and prevented from returning by the raising of the Wall, but the seasons never recovered. Maesters are highly skeptical of this story, dismissing it as folklore, despite the inarguable presence of the Wall.

In the books
Westeros is a vast continent stretching for over 3,000 miles from the Wall to the south coast along the Summer Sea. The Sunset Sea, beyond which no man has sailed and returned, lies to the west, whilst the Shivering Sea lies to the north-east. The continent stretches from polar regions in the north to a desert climate in the far south, along the peninsular of Dorne.

The continent is divided into nine administrative regions: the North, the Vale of Arryn, the Riverlands, the Westerlands, the Iron Islands, the Crownlands, the Reach, the Stormlands and Dorne. The Crownlands are ruled directly by the King, but the other regions are held by the Great Houses. Some of these regions are large - the North is almost the size of the other eight combined - and their rulers hold immense power and authority, answerable only to the King.

The term 'Seven Kingdoms' is a reference to the nations extant in Westeros when King Aegon arrived: the Kingdom of the North, the Kingdom of the Vale, the Kingdom of the Iron Islands (at this time also controlling the Riverlands, which they had conquered), the Kingdom of the Rock, the Storm Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Reach and the Kingdom of Dorne.

Westeros is located further to the north than Essos, and is much more deeply affected by the variable length of the long seasons.

Regions of The Seven Kingdoms
While called 'the Seven Kingdoms', there are actually nine distinct regions of the realm. When the Targaryens conquered and unified Westeros three centuries years ago, there were actually seven independent kingdoms, themselves coalescing out of earlier periods when hundreds of tiny nation-states existed. The Riverlands are held to be the eighth 'kingdom', as they were under the control of the ironborn at the time of Aegon's invasion; the last independent River King, of House Mudd, had died centuries earlier in a war with the Storm King. The newest region is the Crownlands, which are ruled directly by the crown. They were created only 300 years ago when Aegon Targaryen carved them out from lightly-populated pieces of neighboring realms, to form a distinct royal domain around King's Landing. The Crownlands also contain House Targaryen's ancestral holding on the island of Dragonstone, which they ruled for 200 years before Aegon conquered Westeros.


 * The North: Ruled by House Stark from the castle of Winterfell. Bastard name: Snow.
 * The Vale of Arryn: Ruled by House Arryn from the castle known as the Eyrie. Bastard name: Stone.
 * The Riverlands: Ruled by House Tully from the castle of Riverrun. Bastard name: Rivers.
 * The Westerlands: Ruled by House Lannister from the castle of Casterly Rock. Bastard name: Hills.
 * The Iron Islands: Ruled by House Greyjoy from the castle of Pyke. Bastard name: Pyke.
 * The Crownlands: Ruled directly by the King on the Iron Throne from the city of King's Landing. Bastard name: Waters.
 * The Stormlands: Ruled by House Baratheon from the castle of Storm's End. Bastard name: Storm.
 * The Reach: Ruled by House Tyrell from the castle of Highgarden. Bastard name: Flowers.
 * Dorne: Ruled by House Martell from the castle of Sunspear. Bastard name: Sand.

The Wall is held by the Night's Watch in the name of the King in the North and, later, the King on the Iron Throne. The Night's Watch has total responsibility for the Wall, the nineteen castles along its length and a stretch of land to the south, known as 'the Gift', which is used to feed the Watch. This area could be thought to form a tenth 'region' of sorts, but in practice the Watch and the Wall are rarely thought of outside of the North, and are generally considered ethnically and culturally to be an extension of the North.

Note: given that there are nine regions in the kingdom, including the Riverlands and the Crownlands, the line "make the eight" in the episode "A Golden Crown" is something of an oddity.

Cities of Westeros
Listed in decreasing order of size:
 * King's Landing, the capital of Westeros with a population of half a million. Ruled by the King.
 * Oldtown, the principal city and port of the Reach, formerly the largest city in Westeros and almost as large as the capital. Much less squalid than the rapidly-built King's Landing. Ruled by House Hightower for the Tyrells.
 * Lannisport, the principal city and port of the Westerlands. The Lannister seat of Castlery Rock sits a few miles to the north of the city, dominating the skyline. Ruled by a junior branch of House Lannister.
 * Gulltown, the principal city and port of the Vale. Ruled by House Grafton for the Arryns.
 * White Harbor, the principal city and port of the North. Ruled by House Manderly for the Starks.

According to author George R.R. Martin, there are three rough categories these cites can be divided into: King's Landing and Oldtown are both 'large' cities, Lannisport is the only 'medium' city, while Gulltown and White Harbor are 'small' cities (to the point that it could be argued that they are closer to large towns). In the sense that medieval 'cities' were quite small when compared with modern metropolises, it could be argued that in a technical sense King's Landing and Oldtown are the only 'cities' in a strict usage of the term. Most, if not all, of the Free Cities are larger than any city in Westeros, given that each of them is its own independent city-state.

Religions of Westeros

 * The Faith of the Seven, worshipping the seven-faced god of the Andals. The dominant religion of the continent.
 * The Old Gods of the Forest, worshipped in the North and some parts of the Riverlands.
 * The Drowned God, the religion of the Iron Islands, which favours martial prowess and the ability to survive a drowning by breathing water and being 'restored to life' by priests afterwards.
 * The Red God, also known as the Lord of Light or R'hllor, a deity who has a very small following in Westeros but is much more popular in Essos, particualarly in Volantis, Lys and Braavos.
 * Mother Rhoyne - a small minority of the Rhoynar of Dorne still practice their original religion, consisting of a pantheon of river-gods. In this pantheon Mother Rhoyne is considered the dominant deity, ruling over a brood of unruly daughters, each representing one of the Rhoyne's tributary rivers.

Peoples of Westeros
The people of the Seven Kingdoms are a mixture of several ethnic groups which have migrated to the continent over the centuries and intermarried. As such these ethnicities are more of a blurred trend than firm political units.
 * The First Men, descended from the original human inhabitants of Westeros who came to the continent more than twelve thousand years ago.
 * The Andals, descended from a huge swathe of migration and invasion beginning over six thousand years ago.
 * The Rhoynar, a race of people from the eastern continent who fled to Dorne during a war with Valyria and intermingled with the Andal population there.
 * The ironborn, the inhabitants of the Iron Islands. Like the other Kingdoms in the south, they are of mixed First Man and Andal descent, however they hold themselves different from the other people of Westeros.  This is due to cultural and religious, not ethnic, differences.  Unlike other regions where the invading Andals spread their Faith of the Seven, the Andals that conquered the Iron Islands adopted the local religion of the Drowned God.

Non-human races of Westeros
Both Westeros and the eastern continent of Essos are populated almost exclusively by humans, to the point that other non-human races are mostly thought to be mythical. Many believe that the Children of the Forest and the White Walkers are the stuff of legend, and even those few that believe they did exist believe that they were driven to extinction thousands of years ago.


 * The Children of the Forest, a friendly race held to have allied with the First Men. The original worshippers of the old gods of the forest. Held to have been wiped out or forced to flee by the Andal invasions.
 * The White Walkers, a race of ice-creatures from the furthest north. Held to have fought a war against the First Men and the Children of the Forest eight thousand years ago before being defeated and driven from Westeros, with the Wall raised against their return. Held to be extinct.
 * Giants, towering man-like beings of great stature, occasionally claimed by wildlings to still be extant beyond the Wall, but believed to be myths by the people of Westeros.

Animals and Plants of Westeros
The world of Westeros does not contain many magical creatures like in other fantasy stories, though it does posses a few species of megafauna that did exist in our world as recently as the last Ice Age:


 * Aurochs - a larger, prehistoric bovine animal. Used as a beast of burden and domesticated livestock. In real life, the Aurochs actually survived well into the Middle Ages and was well documented, before overhunting drove them to extinction in the 1600's.
 * Dragons, winged reptiles of tremendous age and ferocity, capable of breathing fire. Originated in the east and enslaved by the Valyrians, who used them as weapons of war and transport to forge their empire. Most dragons were destroyed in the Doom four centuries ago, leaving the few possessed by House [Targaryen]] as the only surviving Dragons in the world, which they used in their invasion of Westeros. The last Targaryen dragons died out over 150 years ago. They were real - the skulls of more than a dozen dragons are still kept in the Red Keep - but are now held to be extinct.
 * Direwolf - a larger cousin of regular wolves, only found north of the Wall. In the South, they are considered near-mythical. In the North, it is acknowledged that they are a real animal and there have been confirmed sightings beyond the Wall, but there has not been a recorded sighting even in the North (south of the Wall) for centuries.
 * Kraken - a massive cephalopod that stalks the world oceans. So rare that they are largely held to be mythical, though sailors occasionally report seeing them. Taken as the sigil of House Greyjoy.
 * Lizard-lion - some form of aquatic reptile that lives in the swamps of the Neck, between the North and Riverlands. Apparently some form of crocodilian, it is not clear if 'lizard-lion' is just the Westerosi term for these animals, or if like direwolves they are actually a larger pre-historic cousin of the modern alligator.
 * '''Shadowcats - a large feline apex predator, found throughout Westeros. It has no one-for-one correspondence with any Big Cat species from real life. Author George R.R. Martin has stated that while they are bigger than cougars, they are not as big as tigers.