Game Of Thrones: Which Is The Safest Castle In Westeros?

If you had a horde of ice zombies coming for your blood, where in the Seven Kingdoms would you want to hole up?

Game of Thrones white walkers

The most recent episode of Game of Thrones ended on our protagonists finally – finally – stacking up to do battle with the army of the dead. They’re making their stand at Winterfell, because when all’s said and done that’s home for the most protagonisty of our protagonists, the Starks, the bluff, honest, salt-of-the-earth, trouble at mill, image of the good nobles. They’re not prone to the vicey decadence of the Lannisters, nor the grandiose delusions of the Targaryens, nor even the sexually charged resentments of the Greyjoys. No, the Starks are where it’s at.

So coming into episode three, we have a fairly clear idea of where we’re starting from. But if sports fans can wring out some hypothetical material through the totally-not-nerdy pursuit of fantasy football, I see no reason not to indulge in a bit of fantasy fantasy. Of the major castles in the Seven Kingdoms, how does Winterfell really compare as a defensive strongpoint against the ice zombies?

 

Winterfell

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It’s heartwarming to see the Starks back home, yes, but that’s as much warming as you’re likely to get there. The thing about Winterfell is that it’s missing the advantages it had in the books which made it the North’s most primo real estate, its political and metaphysical heart. One, the hot springs, whose water gets piped all through the castle walls keeping everyone toasty warm, and two, the greenhouses, keeping the residents in fresh fruit all through the winter. Because of these, most of the North tend to flock to Winterfell over winter even without the threat of being maimed and zombified.

Game of Thrones really has no excuse for not including these – especially in the case of the hot springs, which could be covered in one line of dialogue. Nor does it have the suggestion of something mystical at work in the stones from having been constructed by the legendary Bran the Builder. As it is, the show’s given us an ordinary castle, nothing more than a construction of rock and mortar, and worse yet, one which doesn’t even have a good track record. Of the times we’ve seen Winterfell attacked in the show (Theon creeping in, the Battle of the Bastards), both occasions saw the defending side being roundly trounced in short order.

5/10 – and mainly for the morale bonus.

 

The Eyrie

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On paper, it’s the perfect defensive position. It can proudly boast of having never been conquered, and given its positioning up a mountain with a single narrow access road, it’s easy to see why. Anyone trying to have a pop at the Eyrie has a dangerously literal uphill struggle ahead of them, ice zombies or not.

The Eyrie is, however, more of a vanity project than a serious fortification, very much like our world’s Neuschwanstein. Now, this isn’t a great disadvantage in and of itself, mitigated largely by its elevated position, but that brings up the other issue: it’s way up a mountain, and it gets cold up there. Canonically, the lords of the Vale simply clear out each winter and head somewhere you could lick the metal furnishings without getting stuck. That in mind, it’s easy to imagine the White Walkers simply materialising out of thin air up there once the thermometer drops far enough, and even without that, anyone trying to hold out at the Eyrie might simply freeze to death before the army of the dead even arrives.

3/10

 

Riverrun

In the same way as the Eyrie, Riverrun makes the most of its position, at the fork of two of Westeros’s major rivers. It’s a classic-model castle with a moat, and through an intricate system of gates and sluices it can turn into an island at at a moment’s notice. While it didn’t show up much in Game of Thrones, it does hold the major street cred of having held out as the last bastion of Robb Stark’s rebellion for three full seasons, so it would be a mistake to doubt its defensive capabilities, or its siege preparations.

Even when the Lannisters bore down on it at the height of their powers, they didn’t take it by force, instead choosing to make Edmure Tully an offer he couldn’t refuse to go back on and open the gates, and you can be pretty sure the Night’s King won’t try anything like that. That said, though, for all Riverrun’s advantages, it’s leaning fairly heavily on the moats – and up against invaders who freeze everything around them, you probably can’t rely on water being any sort of a barrier.

6/10

 

Pyke

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A string of castles joined together with rope bridges, it’d never make it through health and safety standards today, but it does hold the major advantage of being on an island. As with Riverrun, this is only so much of an advantage against enemies whose whole thing is freezing everything, but it does offer a good deal more time to prepare for when they eventually get there. And there is the very minor advantage that saltwater has a slightly lower freezing point.

There’s been no direct engagements on Pyke over the course of Game of Thrones, but there was one during the previous Greyjoy rebellion (the one that first landed Theon at Winterfell as a hostage). This saw the dream team of Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, Jorah Mormont and Thoros of Myr rolling over it fairly handily. However, this was a basically-unified Westeros up against a crumbling rump administration – and a key factor in their victory was their siege engines. The nearest thing we’ve ever seen the white walkers use is a big icicle.

7/10

 

Harrenhal

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It’s the biggest castle in Westeros, but that’s about the best you can say of it – and even this has its sting in the tail. The place is simply too big to be easily garrisoned or maintained, and it shows, being overgrown and having fallen into disrepair long ago. Even if the living were a united faction, which they’re not, they’d be battling against the clock to get the place up to code before the army of the dead reach them.

Harrenhal’s colourful history is also relevant – not for the amount of various atrocities and war crimes it’s played host to, but because of its vulnerability to attack from the air. In medieval warfare this usually isn’t a danger, but when dragons are involved it’s a different story, and true to form Aegon the Conqueror literally melted down big chunks of the place when he took over the Seven Kingdoms. As the White Walkers now have a dragon of their own, Harrenhal probably wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for a secure air raid shelter.

4/10

 

Dragonstone

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All the same advantages as Pyke, with none of the drawbacks (ludicrously unsafe, the unfriendliness of the Iron islands, etc.). Plus, it’s sitting bang on top of vast deposits of obsidian, which is White Walker kryptonite. And if that wasn’t enough, Melisandre had a fairly kooky theory that there’s a stone dragon lying dormant beneath the castle, who in a pinch could be woken with a human sacrifice or two.

It’s harder to say how the castle itself would hold up under siege conditions. When Daenerys returned to Westeros, Dragonstone had been completely abandoned, and the doors were left unlocked. One would hope nobody’s about to make that mistake when the ice zombies turn up.

8/10

 

King’s Landing

We’ve seen the capital weather a siege before, through the Battle of the Blackwater, but it was a close-run thing, finally decided when the cavalry turned up at the last minute (quite literally). There’s no backup waiting in the wings this time – and of course, King’s Landing is still Cersei’s territory, who seems to be under the impression she can play the army of the dead and the Starkgaryen coalition off against each other.

King’s Landing’s huge population, usually a ready source of fresh bodies for the meat grinder, turns into a double-edged sword against the army of the dead, since every person who falls rises again on the other side. Its one advantage is any leftover stocks of wildfire, which at best means a Pyrrhic victory and at worst would end up as a suicide-bombing on a grand scale.

5/10

 

Casterly Rock

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The Lannister homestead’s one onscreen appearance was being handily sacked, so it doesn’t seem like great odds off the bat. However, it was Tyrion in charge of that, a man who grew up there and knows the lay of the land. Crucially, he knows the Rock’s sewer network inside and out, a weak point of many castles for those who don’t mind, ahem, getting their hands dirty.

Before Tyrion happened along, like the Eyrie it boasted of having never been taken by a hostile force. The nearest thing to that for thousands of years was a maybe-myth about the legendary figure Lann the Clever tricking his way inside. This, though, is mainly down to the Rock’s sheer size and labyrinthine interiors, two factors more useful against armies of living beings capable of getting discouraged.

6/10

 

Highgarden

Basically in the same boat as Casterly Rock, only without the background information of a specific weakpoint. It, too, only has one onscreen appearance in Game of Thrones – in the same episode as the Rock falling, having essentially the same thing done to it by the other side in a sequence of events that could have easily been whittled down into a montage.

It’s not a vanity project in quite the same way as the Eyrie, but the name tells you all you need to know. This is a place of hedge mazes and attractive patches of ivy up the walls, not of sieges against frost demons coming for your blood. The most damning thing for both Highgarden and the Rock is that, despite being regional capitals, neither got their own clockwork model in the opening credits. For shame.

5/10

 

Sunspear/The Water Gardens

They called it ‘Dorne’ in the opening credits, even though that’s the name of the region, which is really emblematic of the show’s disdain for the place. Defensively the Water Gardens leave a lot to be desired, as Jaime, Bronn, and the Sand Snakes crept in without any bother – and in the Snakes’ case, this was literally to try and assassinate a member of the royal family – but, to be fair, it’s more of a luxurious retreat than a fortification. Sunspear itself, even though we don’t see it onscreen, is an actual castle. However, their structures and defences pale into insignificance next to the fact that they’re literally in the desert. The hot, ice-melting, corpse-rotting desert.

This is where Sunspear gets its name, from the Dornishmen’s weapons of choice – and as they’ve always said, the sun is the more deadly of the two. Huge parts of the army of the dead would literally be reduced to foul-smelling puddles before they even got there. Plus, given that the entire Martell line were wiped out in fairly stupid circumstances, nobody’s going to object to the protagonists rolling in and setting up shop there.

10/10

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