House Ironstag

House Ironstag is the royal house of the Ironcastle realm, the world's center in name. The Throne, the household army, the coronation rite, the right to mint coin — all are in their hands; for four hundred years, every King has come from this one house.

Their deepest belief is that ritual can overrule truth: so long as the coronation drums are beaten as before, the idols raised as before, the liturgy chanted as before, the world will go on believing that the King is the King, the wall is the wall, and nothing at all is the matter in the North.

Now the 105th King is dead, the body not yet buried, the Throne empty. What House Ironstag is most anxious about is not why the King died, but to get the next person onto that chair as fast as possible — as if, so long as there is someone in the chair, the names flaking off the wall and the glyph grown out of a tongue can all be treated as if they never happened.