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Hoster Tully

The family cost in an alliance ledger

Contains spoilers through A Dance with Dragons. Television events and unfinished preview chapters are outside this collection.

The character in context

Hoster Tully uses marriage to bind Riverrun to the Arryn, Stark and Baratheon alliance during Robert's Rebellion, arranging for Catelyn to wed Eddard after Brandon's death. He also forces the pregnant Lysa to drink an abortive potion and then marries her to the much older Jon Arryn, a trauma Catelyn does not understand for years. Hoster is gravely ill when the War of the Five Kings begins. His dying repetitions of tansy and pleas for forgiveness expose private guilt to Catelyn, but she dies without learning the full story of her sister's ordeal.

A reading path

These are editorial starting points, not a complete appearance list or a claim that the character narrates every chapter.

  1. 1. Catelyn returns to a sickbed and an old alliance

    A Game of Thrones, Chapter 71, Catelyn XI

  2. 2. A father's silence weighs on wartime counsel

    A Clash of Kings, Chapter 7, Catelyn I

  3. 3. Tansy exposes unresolved private guilt

    A Storm of Swords, Chapter 2, Catelyn I

Sources and chapter references

Our original summaries use named novel chapters and the A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index. The links lead to that secondary index, not the full novel text. Coverage is selective, not exhaustive line-by-line verification.

  1. 1. A Game of Thrones, Chapter 71, Catelyn XI — A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index
  2. 2. A Clash of Kings, Chapter 7, Catelyn I — A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index
  3. 3. A Storm of Swords, Chapter 2, Catelyn I — A Wiki of Ice and Fire reference index
Data methods, coverage and corrections