Map showing the location of the Crossroads Inn on the continent of Westeros.
The Crossroads Inn (also called the Inn at the Crossroads) is a popular stop for travelers on the Kingsroad. It is so-named for it lies at the meeting point of roads leading to four of the Seven Kingdoms. The Kingsroad runs north to Winterfell and south to King's Landing, whilst another road leads east to the Vale of Arryn and west into the Riverlands. It is also located close to the banks of the River Trident. It is run by Masha Heddle.[1]
History
Season 1
King Robert Baratheon's party rests at the Crossroads Inn on its way from Winterfell to King's Landing. Prince Joffrey Baratheon is wounded in an altercation with Arya Stark's direwolf on the riverbank.[2]
Catelyn Stark and Ser Rodrik Cassel stop at the inn on their way back to Winterfell, where they are accosted by the singer Marillion. Tyrion Lannister then arrives and Catelyn calls on several knights present loyal to her father to help her take him into custody. She loudly tells everyone in the inn that she is taking Tyrion to Winterfell, but instead travels east to the Eyrie.[3]
In the books
In the Song of Ice and Fire novels the Crossroads Inn was located at the intersection of the kingsroad, the river road, and the high road.
It was a large, three-story inn with turrets, walls, and chimneys made of a white stone that glimmered pale and ghostly. It was built during the reign of King Jaehaerys I approximately two hundred years prior to the beginning of the novels. The history of the inn is described by an itinerant septon, Septon Meribald, in A Feast For Crows to Podrick Payne and Brienne.
There had been at least one inn at the crossroads for centuries before the Crossroads Inn was built.
Jaehaerys, the king who built the Kingsroad, and his queen slept there during their journeys. Therefore, it was known as "Two Crowns" for a while. Later, an innkeeper built a bell tower, and changed its to the Bellringer Inn. Later, it passed to a crippled knight named Long Jon Heddle. This knight took up ironworking when he was too old to fight. He forged a new sign for the yard, a three-headed dragon of black iron that he hung from a wooden post. This sign was so big it had to be made in a dozen pieces, held together by rope and wire. When the wind blew the pieces would clank, and the inn become known as the "Clanking Dragon."
About a generation later, the fourth Aegon started a rebellion and used a black dragon as his sigil. Because Lord Darry held this land at the time and he was loyal to the king, he destroyed the sign and cut it into pieces. He threw the pieces into the river. One of the dragon’s heads washed up on the Quiet Isle many years later, red with rust.
The next innkeeper never hung another sign, so the place was called "the River Inn." Before the Trident moved its course (about seventy or eighty years before the books), it flowed beneath the back door of the inn. Half of the rooms were built out over the water and guests could throw a line out their window and catch trout. There was a ferry landing nearby as well, so travelers could cross to Lord Harroway’s Town and Whitewalls.
The inn survived the troubles of Robert's Rebellion intact. Masha Heddle's grandfather ran the inn before handing it down to her.
In the novels, Lord Tywin Lannister's army assembles at the Inn for battle with the Stark host bearing down on them from the north. Tywin hangs Masha Heddle for letting Tyrion be taken prisoner on the premises. Tyrion joins his father's host at the inn and debates strategy with him there.
In the TV series, however, the Lannister army assembles much further to the west, the inn is not involved in the battle and Masha Heddle presumably survives.
References
- ↑ HBO viewers guide, season 2 map, Inn at the Crossroads entry
- ↑ "The Kingsroad"
- ↑ "Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things"
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