Knights jousting at a tilt, a popular event at a tournament.
A tournament or tourney is a great social event, thrown by a noble house to celebrate honor, chivalry and martial skill. However, they also allow a noble house to flaunt their wealth and status, as tournaments are enormously expensive. It can take a smaller house years to pay for one tourney.
There is no set format or length for a tournament, with modest ones lasting perhaps only an afternoon and consisting of a few events, whilst larger ones may sprawl across a week and feature many different contests and challenges.
A tourney may consist of one or more of the following events:
- The jousting lists: mounted knights charge one another with lances, with the aim of dismounting one another. The knight who remains mounted the longest is the winner.
- The melee: a number of men engage in combat using swords, maces and axes. Opponents have to be knocked over and made to yield.
- Archery: archers compete with one another to show who has the greatest accuracy and consistency.
- Axe-throwing: similar to the archery contest, but with axes.
- Horse-racing: Unarmored riders compete in a simple horse race around a track.
Tournaments also attract large numbers of side-events, including puppet shows, mummer performances and so on. Vast quantities of food and drink are consumed at a tourney, and blacksmiths can find plenty of work repairing damaged armor or buying the armor and weapons of defeated knights.
Whilst tourneys are non-lethal and some safety precautions are taken, accidental deaths or injuries at a tournament are not unusual.
In the books
Noted tournaments in the history of Westeros include:
- The great tourney at Ashford in the year of the Great Spring Sickness, when the king's heir died in a melee.
- The great tourney at Whitewalls which served as the catalyst for the Second Blackfyre Rebellion, crushed by the king.
- The great tourney at Harrenhal in the Year of False Spring, a year before Robert's Rebellion.
- The tourney at Lannisport to celebrate Robert Baratheon's victory in the Greyjoy Rebellion. Ser Jorah Mormont was festooned with honors during the tournament.