Regent Unwin

A thousand years ago.

Back then, House Manderly had used the advantages of the Mander River to seize a share of Highgarden's trade. Its strength had grown rapidly, and its power had come close to rivaling House Gardener.

Wary of their influence, the reigning King of the Reach, Perceon Gardener III, had ordered Earl Lorimar Peake of Starpike to drive House Manderly out.

Lorimar had clearly had no intention of passing up such a chance to deal with the Manderlys once and for all. He had mustered his entire force and successfully expelled House Peake's greatest rival in the Reach.

Not only that, he had also seized their castle along the way: Dunstonbury, the third castle on the Peake sigil, and House Peake's first port on the Mander River.

Together with their existing holdings of Starpike and Whitegrove, House Peake now held three castles, along with their associated lands, making them indisputably one of the most powerful houses in the Reach.

Aside from the royal house of the Reach, only the Hightowers barely warranted their respect.

Later, Earl Lorimar's daughter had married Garwin Gardener, the son of Perceon Gardener III. She had been the seventh queen of the Reach to come from House Peake, making the Peakes the powerful royal in-laws with the most marriage ties to House Gardener among the Reach's lords, and Highgarden's most important ally.

Until the Field of Fire.

The three great dragons of Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters had taken flight together and set the battlefield ablaze. The last King of the Reach, Mern IX, and all his sons had perished in the flames. House Gardener had died out, and only then had the Peakes ceased to be a house that supplied queens to the Reach.

After all, House Tyrell, the new masters of Highgarden, had no blood ties to House Peake, and their ancestors had even had disputes. They clearly had no reason to grow close to them...

The first three Peakes had clearly all done quite well. Their descendants had carved them into the highest cliff face on Starpike's southern side to commemorate their indisputably great achievements.

As for this fourth one...

Tsk, tsk.

Titus gazed at the fourth portrait, that of Earl Unwin Peake. Only half the face had been carved, and it was clearly unfinished.

For a moment, he found it hard to pass judgment on this fellow's many "achievements."

This lord had been far more than the Earl of Starpike, ruler of Whitegrove and Dunstonbury, and a major warlord of the Dornish Marches.

He had also been a leader of the Briars, the little dragon-slaying group at Dunksfield;

The leader and representative of the Reach's noble faction during the final days of the downfall of House Hightower, leaders of the Greens.

Once he had joined the young king's regency council, Earl Unwin's fortunes had truly soared, and he had transformed into-

Aegon III's chief regent;

The esteemed Hand of the King;

The Protector of the Realm, who governed the country in the little king's stead and held military authority;

He had almost even become the "king's father and regent"!

Despite his contempt for the character Unwin had later revealed, Titus had to admit:

Ever since Aegon I, Westeros's "Dragon Taizong," and his two queens had ridden their dragons to conquer the continent and establish the Targaryen Dynasty...

Of all the Earls of Starpike, Unwin Peake had indeed held the most titles.

For a time, he had even given people the impression that-

After House Gardener's line had died out, House Peake had found its feet again and taken another path back to the top.

Who could have imagined it?

By the final stages of the war of succession known as the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen royal house had certainly been badly weakened, with nearly all its dragons dead.

The Velaryons and Hightowers, who had once competed for the title of the continent's richest house, had also shed their blood and sacrificed their lives for the Blacks and Greens in that civil war, suffering a drastic decline in strength.

The Velaryons had lacked deep reserves, and the key figures of their house had died one after another. They had never recovered. The Hightowers had possessed a far stronger foundation and could still dominate the southwestern Reach, though they too had clearly kept a much lower profile afterward.

House Tyrell of the southern Reach had been no more than servants to the Kings of the Reach, stewards by origin. As newcomers among the Reach's nobility, they would have done well just to look after the Highgarden King Aegon I had granted them. They had yet to earn a seat at the table, much less afford to play the games of power at court.

Duke Cregan Stark of the North had reaped the benefits of the Winter Wolves led by Rodrik Dustin, "the Ruin." After throwing his weight around in the kingdom's capital of King's Landing for a few days and leaving behind the legend of the Wolf Hour, he had returned north to hole up for the winter.

In the eastern Vale, the duchess of House Arryn had preferred dalliances with women to managing affairs.

The Westerlands had lost battle after battle, performing abysmally on the main battlefields. They had put on the poorest showing of anyone in the civil war. They had plenty of money and well-equipped soldiers, yet their fighting strength had exemplified the saying that the worst students had the most stationery.

The Riverlands had never amounted to much, let alone during that period, when the "Lads" had held power.

The new leader of the Stormlands had still been a baby wrapped in swaddling by his mother in the nursery at Storm's End.

Dorne? They had their own local circumstances, with distinctive customs and laws. They submitted to the Iron Throne in name alone, ordinarily answering neither its orders nor its summons.

Perhaps Earl Unwin back then had muttered the same thing to himself as Titus:

Looking across the great nobles of the Seven Kingdoms after House Targaryen's civil war, not a single one could put up a fight!

No wonder House Peake, with its military aristocratic background, had spotted an opportunity and ridden its great "dragon-slaying" achievement to prominence.

After all, Unwin Peake had initially sent only a hundred knights and two battalions totaling just a thousand Peake soldiers to join the Greens' forces in the Reach. House Peake had clearly not committed its full strength at the time.

Still, Unwin, who had been deeply involved in both battles of Tumbleton, had not escaped without sacrifice. He had lost the only one of his seven sons to reach adulthood and become his heir, a fellow also named Titus.

After the war, Unwin Peake had become a member of Aegon III's regency council.

As soon as the previous Hand of the King, Ser Tyland Lannister, had died, Unwin had seized the opportunity presented by fellow regents Jeyne Arryn and Royce Caron returning to their own lands. On the grounds that a twelve-year-old child could not decide important matters alone, he had taken sole control of the government.

He had served as both regent and Hand, using those positions to install his cronies at court and take control of King's Landing alongside his family members. For a time, his power had been immense.

Lord Unwin Peake seemed to have found manipulating the little king rather too easy after becoming Hand.

Once he held supreme power, he had made no adjustments at all and immediately begun indulging himself. Building a faction and swaggering about had been merely the basics. He had acted unilaterally and refused to hear dissenting opinions, just like Chancellor Dong.

Titus felt sorry for Unwin and House Peake. He had been handed such a good position, only to turn the whole game into a mess.

Unwin had pulled far too many outrageous stunts. He had pocketed Orphan-Maker, the ancestral sword of House Roxton, which had fought on the same side, and refused to return it, bullying them because they were merely a knightly house. That much could be let slide. It barely fell within the bounds of overlooking minor proprieties without compromising major principles.

But berating the young king, plotting to murder the queen, drawing his sword in public, spreading rumors, forcing a marriage on the king, besieging the royal family... all that nonsense had gone much too far and been handled far too crudely.

The Judgment of the Father's Day, the Curse of the Maiden's Day, and even the later Siege of the Forbidden City had all been Unwin's handiwork.

Good grief.

Over the course of that chain of events, he had successively offended the king, the queen, the prince, the princess, the nobles from across the kingdom seeking marriage matches, and the other ministers on the Small Council.

In the end, Lord Unwin's days of hoarding power and wielding influence at court and beyond had ended because he had rushed things and made too many enemies. The new regency council had simply joined forces and brought him down.

At the head of that new council had been none other than Torrhen Manderly, a member of the rival house the Peakes had driven out of the Reach.

The kingdom had freed itself from Peake's control.

Work on Unwin's statue had naturally come to an abrupt halt as well.

Titus had carefully examined this cliff face behind Starpike. There was ample room; with the portraits side by side, it could accommodate them through the rise of a "seventh."

Though he called it Hokage Rock, both Starpike's cliff and its statues were white, so it actually looked more like America's Mount Rushmore.

He wondered when he, the fifth with destiny on his side, would get his own enormous portrait carved up there.

Titus was quite confident.

He imagined it would not be too difficult. Recovering the two castles lost decades ago and ensuring that House Peake's sigil was no longer mocked should qualify him.

Starpike's Hokage Rock: