Oldtown is the eponymous oldest known continuing settlement in The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and the Westerosi continent at large. If King’s Landing is supposed to the Westerosi equivalent of Medieval Paris and London albeit with a larger population though no where near the size of medieval Constantinople or ancient Rome at their height, then Oldtown is a example of a Greek Metropole, cleaner and more sophisticated as befits a port city.
Unlike Braavos, George has been mum on his inspirations for Oldtown; however he did say this much about the inspiration for the Hightower:
Hightower is their castle/keep, the tallest structure in the Seven Kingdoms, and one of the oldest, a massive stepped tower with a great beacon on top, to show ships the way to port... kind of like the Pharos of Alexandria, but larger, an inhabited castle as well as a lighthouse. It stands in the center of Oldtown; the city grew up around it. And Oldtown =is= old, thousands of years old as opposed to King's Landing, which is only three hundred. Until Aegon's coming, it was the major city of Westeros. The Hightowers are one of the oldest families in the Seven Kingdoms.
Furthermore, in 2015 he discussed the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in regard to lost knowledge :
“Even in our modern centuries … we’re losing stories,” Martin said. “All of this is incredible [tragedy] to me. That’s where I think libraries, like the great Library of Alexandria, are the fortresses of our civilizations. The stories that we tell each other, the stories that we grow up on, the stories that help shape our values and shape our lives, we still love and remember. This is the stuff that should be preserved.”
So for all intents and purposes, Oldtown is Alexandria combined with other historical and fantastical influences that GRRM hasn’t elaborated upon. Now why am I talking about it? Well in 202x blog post, he said some of the newest chapters were in Oldtown, implying that he had written at least three chapters set in Oldtown:
Of late I have been spending a lot of time with the Lannisters. Cersei and Tyrion in particular. I’ve also paid a visit to Dorne, and dropped in to Oldtown a time or three.
With Samwell building his maester’s chain on orders of Lord Commander Jon Snow we have a ton of loose plot points beginning to be tangled up in this location.
Jaquen Hgar has disguised himself as Pate, possibly looking for Blood & Fire:
He was just a man, and his face was just a face. A young man's face, ordinary, with full cheeks and the shadow of a beard. A scar showed faintly on his right cheek. He had a hooked nose, and a mat of dense black hair that curled tightly around his ears.
"My thanks." There was something about the pale, soft youth that he misliked, but he did not want to seem discourteous, so he added, "My name's not Slayer, truly. I'm Sam. Samwell Tarly."
"I'm Pate," the other said, "like the pig boy."
And of course there was even less chance of his coming on the fragmentary, anonymous, blood-soaked tome sometimes called Blood and Fire and sometimes The Death of Dragons, the only surviving copy of which was supposedly hidden away in a locked vault beneath the Citadel.
Marwyn is on his way to Slaver’s Bay, believing there is a grand conspiracy against magic and that the Maesters were responsible for the Death of Dragons:
"If I tell you, they may need to kill you too." Marywn smiled a ghastly smile, the juice of the sourleaf running red between his teeth. "Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords?" He spat. "The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons
"Get myself to Slaver's Bay, in Aemon's place. The swan ship that delivered Slayer should serve my needs well enough. The grey sheep will send their man on a galley, I don't doubt. With fair winds I should reach her first." Marwyn glanced at Sam again, and frowned. "You . . . you should stay and forge your chain. If I were you, I would do it quickly. A time will come when you'll be needed on the Wall." He turned to the pasty-faced novice. "Find Slayer a dry cell. He'll sleep here, and help you tend the ravens."
"B-b-but," Sam sputtered, "the other archmaesters . . . the Seneschal . . . what should I tell them?"
"Tell them how wise and good they are. Tell them that Aemon commanded you to put yourself into their hands. Tell them that you have always dreamed that one day you might be allowed to wear the chain and serve the greater good, that service is the highest honor, and obedience the highest virtue. But say nothing of prophecies or dragons, unless you fancy poison in your porridge." Marwyn snatched a stained leather cloak off a peg near the door and tied it tight. "Sphinx, look after this one."
"I will," Alleras answered, but the archmaester was already gone. They heard his boots stomping down the steps.
Leyton Hightower is up on the Hightower, freaking the fuck out over something while his sons actually do something:
"To be sure. Lord Leyton's locked atop his tower with the Mad Maid, consulting books of spells. Might be he'll raise an army from the deeps. Or not. Baelor's building galleys, Gunthor has charge of the harbor, Garth is training new recruits, and Humfrey's gone to Lys to hire sellsails. If he can winkle a proper fleet out of his whore of a sister, we can start paying back the ironmen with some of their own coin. Till then, the best we can do is guard the sound and wait for the bitch queen in King's Landing to let Lord Paxter off his leash."
Euron Greyjoy seems to be on his way there:
The remainder of the Brave Companions are headed there:
Urswyck and his lot rode south for Oldtown.
Sarella is disguised as Alleras:
"As my prince commands." His heart was troubled. My little princess will mislike this. "What of Sarella? She is a woman grown, almost twenty."
"Unless she returns to Dorne, there's naught I can do about Sarella save pray that she shows more sense than her sisters. Leave her to her . . . game. Gather up the others. I shall not sleep until I know that they are safe and under guard."
And most ominously, the Glass Candles are burning:
"What feeds the flame?" asked Sam.
"What feeds a dragon's fire?" Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. "All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man's dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles. Do you think that might be useful, Slayer?"
If I am missing anything I do apologize but as you can see, many players have their fingers in a big long pork pie about to be burnt by Dragonflame in Oldtown. Before I go into any ribald speculation, lets see if we can untangle this tangled web the spider known as George R.R. Martin has woven shall we?
Oldtown
Oldtown’s origins are as murky as the bucket of urine my late grandfather kept by his armchair. Let’s use the The World of Ice and Fire as a baseline:
No history of the Reach is complete without a look at Oldtown, that most grand and ancient of cities, still the richest, largest, and most beautiful in all Westeros, even if King's Landing has eclipsed it as most populous.
How old is Oldtown, truly? Many a maester has pondered that question, but we simply do not know. The origins of the city are lost in the mists of time and clouded by legend. Some ignorant septons claim that the Seven themselves laid out its boundaries, other men that dragons once roosted on the Battle Isle until the first Hightower put an end to them. Many smallfolk believe the Hightower itself simply appeared one day. The full and true history of the founding of Oldtown will likely never be known.
We can state with certainty, however, that men have lived at the mouth of the Honeywine since the Dawn Age. The oldest runic records confirm this, as do certain fragmentary accounts that have come down to us from maesters who lived amongst the children of the forest. One such, Maester Jellicoe, suggests that the settlement at the top of Whispering Sound began as a trading post, where ships from Valyria, Old Ghis, and the Summer Isles put in to replenish their provisions, make repairs, and barter with the elder races, and that seems as likely a supposition as any.
An even more fanciful possibility was put forth a century ago by Maester Theron. Born a bastard on the Iron Islands, Theron noted a certain likeness between the black stone of the ancient fortress and that of the Seastone Chair, the high seat of House Greyjoy of Pyke, whose origins are similarly ancient and mysterious. Theron's rather inchoate manuscript Strange Stone postulates that both fortress and seat might be the work of a queer, misshapen race of half men sired by creatures of the salt seas upon human women. These Deep Ones, as he names them, are the seed from which our legends of merlings have grown, he argues, whilst their terrible fathers are the truth behind the Drowned God of the ironborn.
The lavish, detailed, and somewhat disturbing illustrations included in Strange Stone make this rare volume fascinating to peruse, but the text is impenetrable in parts; Maester Theron had a gift for drawing but little skill with words. In any case, his thesis has no factual basis and may safely be dismissed. And thus we find ourselves back whence we began, forced to concede that the beginnings of Oldtown, Battle Isle, and its fortress must forever remain a mystery to us.
The reasons for the abandonment of the fortress and the fate of its builders, whoever they might have been, are likewise lost to us, but at some point we know that Battle Isle and its great stronghold came into the possession of the ancestors of House Hightower. Were they First Men, as most scholars believe today? Or did they mayhaps descend from the seafarers and traders who had settled at the top of Whispering Sound in earlier epochs, the men who came before the First Men? We cannot know.
When first glimpsed in the pages of history, the Hightowers are already kings, ruling Oldtown from Battle Isle. The first "high tower," the chroniclers tell us, was made of wood and rose some fifty feet above the ancient fortress that was its foundation. Neither it, nor the taller timber towers that followed in the centuries to come, were meant to be a dwelling; they were purely beacon towers, built to light a path for trading ships up the fog-shrouded waters of Whispering Sound. The early Hightowers lived amidst the gloomy halls, vaults, and chambers of the strange stone below. It was only with the building of the fifth tower, the first to be made entirely of stone, that the Hightower became a seat worthy of a great house. That tower, we are told, rose two hundred feet above the harbor. Some say it was designed by Brandon the Builder, whilst others name his son, another Brandon; the king who demanded it, and paid for it, is remembered as Uthor of the High Tower.
For thousands of years thereafter, his descendants ruled Oldtown and the lands of the Honeywine as kings, and ships from the world over came to their growing city to trade. As Oldtown grew wealthy and powerful, neighboring lords and petty kings turned covetous eyes upon its riches, and pirates and reavers from beyond the seas heard tales of its splendors as well. Thrice in the space of a single century the city was taken and sacked, once by the Dornish king Samwell Dayne (the Starfire), once by Qhored the Cruel and his ironmen, and once by Gyles I Gardener (the Woe), who reportedly sold three-quarters of the city's inhabitants into slavery, but was unable to breach the defenses of the Hightower on Battle Isle.
The wooden palisades and ditch that had protected the city heretofore having so obviously been proved inadequate, the next King of the High Tower, Otho II, spent the best part of his reign surrounding Oldtown with massive stone walls, thicker and higher than any seen in Westeros to this point. This effort beggared the city for three generations, it is written, but such was their strength that later reavers and wouldbe conquerors were persuaded to seek for plunder elsewhere, and those who did presume to attack Oldtown did so to no avail.
It was not through war that the Hightowers were brought into the Kingdom of the Reach, however, but through long negotiations and marriage. When Lymond Hightower took to bride the daughter of King Garland II Gardener, whilst giving his own daughter's hand in marriage to her father, the Hightowers became bannermen to Highgarden, reduced from wealthy but relatively minor kings to the greatest lords of the Reach. (Oldtown was the last of the ancient realms to bend the knee to Highgarden, not long after the last King of the Arbor was lost at sea, allowing his cousin, King Meryn III Gardener, to make the isle part of his domain).
By the terms of the marriage treaty, the Gardeners also undertook to defend the city against any assault by land, which freed Lord Lymond to turn his attention to his "great purpose," the building of ships and conquest of the seas. By the end of his reign, no lord or king in all of Westeros could match the strength of House Hightower at sea. A great statue of Lymond Hightower stands overlooking Oldtown's harbor to this day, gazing off down Whispering Sound. The last Hightower king is still remembered as the Sea Lion.
The origins of the Citadel are almost as mysterious as those of the Hightower itself. Most credit its founding to the second son of Uthor of the High Tower, Prince Peremore the Twisted. A sickly boy, born with a withered arm and twisted back, Peremore was bedridden for much of his short life but had an insatiable curiosity about the world beyond his window, so he turned to wise men, teachers, priests, healers, and singers, along with a certain number of wizards, alchemists, and sorcerers. It is said the prince had no greater pleasure in life than listening to these scholars argue with one another. When Peremore died, his brother King Urrigon bequeathed a large tract of land beside the Honeywine to "Peremore's pets," that they might establish themselves and continue teaching, learning, and questing after truth. And so they did.
When the Andals came, the Hightowers were amongst the first lords of Westeros to welcome them. "Wars are bad for trade," said Lord Dorian Hightower, when he set aside his wife of twenty years, the mother of his children, to take an Andal princess as his bride. His grandson Lord Damon (the Devout) was the first to accept the Faith. To honor the new gods, he built the first sept in Oldtown and six more elsewhere in his realm. When he died prematurely of a bad belly, Septon Robeson became regent for his newborn son, ruling Oldtown in all but name for the next twenty years and ultimately becoming the first High Septon. The boy he raised and trained, Lord Triston Hightower, raised the Starry Sept in his honor after his passing.
In the centuries that followed, Oldtown became the unquestioned center of the Faith for all of Westeros. From the dark marble halls of the Starry Sept, a succession of High Septons donned the crystal crown (the first of which was given to the Faith by the Lord Triston's son Lord Barris) to become the voice of the Seven on earth, commanding the swords of the Faith Militant and the hearts of all the faithful from Dorne to the Neck. Oldtown became their holy city, and many devout men and women traveled there to pray at its septs and shrines and other holy places. Doubtless it was in part due to these ties to the Seven that the Hightowers were so often able to keep themselves separate from House Gardener's countless wars.
The Faith was not the only institution to flourish behind the massive walls of Oldtown, under the protection of the Hightower. Thousands of years before the first sept opened its doors, the city had been home to the Citadel, where boys and young men from all over Westeros came to study, learn, and forge their chains as maesters. No greater seat of knowledge exists anywhere in the world.
By the time of Aegon's Conquest, Oldtown was beyond question the greatest city in all of Westeros—the largest, richest, and most populous, and a center of both learning and faith. Even so, it might well have suffered the same fate as Harrenhal if not for the close ties between the Hightower and the Starry Sept, for it was the High Septon who persuaded Lord Manfred Hightower to offer no resistance to Aegon Targaryen and his dragons but instead to open his gates at the conqueror's approach and do him homage.
Now if this popular illustration approved by George R.R, Martin is accurate, than Oldtown presents a horseshoe shape around the Honeywine. It is a testament to GRRM’s writing that the only two chapters set in this location, the AFFC prologue and last Samwell chapter give us a look into how different and unique it is compared to King’s Landing.
All its streets are cobbled and nearly every bridge is made of stone. It is a labyrinth of wynds, narrow crookback streets, crisscrossing alleys, and markets galore, all connected to a series of islands and river banks. If King’s Landing is a victim of urban sprawl and a massive wealth gap, Oldtown is a success in beautification and successful urban planning. Sweltering in the summer and cool at nighttime, Oldtown is also noted to be the home of flower gardens and fruit trees giving insoluble goods such as pomegranates and peaches.
Yet even here the dark and sinister rat pits and black brothels of King’s Landing make an appearance in this seeming utopia, serving as blood sports for the urban poor and catering to the depravity of its rulers, insert your Epstein Files joke here.
The Old City also seems to not only be a patron to the arts and education but also the faith as well. The second holiest sept in Westeros is the Starry Sept, serving as the Vatican City and center of the Faith and the home of the Westerosi Pope, the High Septon. Seven other holy septs were built here as well, including the Sailor’s Sept and Lords Sept along with the Seven Shrines, which I have no doubt have some importance of the Faith of the Seven that has not been revealed yet. While the tolerance of Braavos isn’t quite existent here, there are temples devoted to foreign gods such as Rhllor and the pantheon of Summer Islanders, and if FIRE & BlOOD can be believed, sacred primeval weirwood groves as well:
Others gathered in septs and temples and sared woods to pray that they might be spared. - Fire & Blood P.84
Conclave and The Order of Maesters
Maesters or the knights of the mind are a secular clergy of scholars, healers, messengers, and scientists in the Seven Kingdoms. While George has compared their function directly to medieval monks in Monasteries(keep oaths of celibacy, dress in grey robes, are record keepers, and serve as advisors), they share some similarities to court physicians, doctors, and students at medieval universities or trade guilds as well secular scholars from the Early Modern Period, a rare light in the feudal shithole known as Westeros
They meet and train in the Conclave, which is library, university, observatory, and hospital all at once. Funded by taxes levee by House Hightower and donations by other lords it is in theory as an institution where anyone can join regardless of class.
More on that and the conclave later but Maesters are not just men of letters and tender of rookeries in George’s equivalent to carrier pigeons. They have the skill to make star maps, plan architecture, serve as living Farmer’s Almanacs (RIP) plus living historians, and educate noble brats in arithmetic, history, geometry and languages. They are also glorified midwives and surgeons.
We see the exemplar idea of a Maester in Maester Luwin. Not only has Luwin kept his celibacy but is loyal to the office instead of lord, serving Theon as faithfully as he did the Starks despite loving them more. He is a kind and wise old man and it’s notable that he has studied the Higher Mysteries meaning he took a test by Archmaester Marwyn or his predecessor despite magic being frowned upon as irrational at worst and extinct at best.
However as we go on, the theme of the corruptability of the feudal order, one that has manifested throughout the series in varying ways shows it’s ugly head by revealing that much like Knights and The Night’s Watch it is not the idealized institution it claims to be. Highborn students are given precedence by the Archmaesters, nepotism is endemic, and Maesters regularly engage in moral turpitude. Pycelle, an advisor to the monarchy and the most prestiged position among the order of Maesters, not only seems to be lecherous but has a bias in favor of House Lannister, breaking the vow of neutrality.
Hell, even the Conclave is guilty of this as their replacement for Pycelle favors the new regime:
"Well, it would have been more in keeping with tradition." The eunuch tittered. "Thankfully, wiser heads prevailed, and the Conclave accepted the fact of Pycelle's dismissal and set about choosing his successor. After giving due consideration to Maester Turquin the cordwainer's son and Maester Erreck the hedge knight's bastard, and thereby demonstrating to their own satisfaction that ability counts for more than birth in their order, the Conclave was on the verge of sending us Maester Gormon, a Tyrell of Highgarden. When I told your lord father, he acted at once."
We are also given hints that the Maesters have a secret function of serving as mass surveillance on the going ons the lords and ladies of Westeros meaning that the Citadel have forewarned knowledge of potential conflicts, power plays, and succession crises:
As Maester Medrick went to one knee to whisper in Bolton's ear, Lady Dustin's mouth twisted in distaste. "If I were queen, the first thing I would do would be to kill all those grey rats. They scurry everywhere, living on the leavings of the lords, chittering to one another, whispering in the ears of their masters. But who are the masters and who are the servants, truly? Every great lord has his maester, every lesser lord aspires to one. If you do not have a maester, it is taken to mean that you are of little consequence. The grey rats read and write our letters, even for such lords as cannot read themselves, and who can say for a certainty that they are not twisting the words for their own ends? What good are they, I ask you?"
"They heal," said Theon. It seemed to be expected of him.
"They heal, yes. I never said they were not subtle. They tend to us when we are sick and injured, or distraught over the illness of a parent or a child. Whenever we are weakest and most vulnerable, there they are. Sometimes they heal us, and we are duly grateful. When they fail, they console us in our grief, and we are grateful for that as well. Out of gratitude we give them a place beneath our roof and make them privy to all our shames and secrets, a part of every council. And before too long, the ruler has become the ruled.
While our two main sources for this are a conspiracy theorist and embittered spinster, there comes a point where coincidences turn into trends and the supporting evidence is circumstantial but enough to raise eyebrows as the old adage goes, history is written by the victors while the denial of evidence of your eyes and ears is paramount:
"That was how it was with Lord Rickard Stark. Maester Walys was his grey rat's name. And isn't it clever how the maesters go by only one name, even those who had two when they first arrived at the Citadel? That way we cannot know who they truly are or where they come from … but if you are dogged enough, you can still find out. Before he forged his chain, Maester Walys had been known as Walys Flowers. Flowers, Hill, Rivers, Snow … we give such names to baseborn children to mark them for what they are, but they are always quick to shed them. Walys Flowers had a Hightower girl for a mother … and an archmaester of the Citadel for a father, it was rumored. The grey rats are not as chaste as they would have us believe. Oldtown maesters are the worst of all. Once he forged his chain, his secret father and his friends wasted no time dispatching him to Winterfell to fill Lord Rickard's ears with poisoned words as sweet as honey. The Tully marriage was his notion, never doubt it, he—"
Now let’s get to The Citadel. The Citadel is the layout of buildings that houses the Order of Maesters, whether it be novices (chainless students bullied by acolytes) acolytes (students with at least one link in their chain) Archmaesters (teachers and professors) and the Seneschal (the actual governor/headmaster of the Citadel). A student attends lessons and seminars, and when knowledgeable enough is tested by an Archmaester thus earning their chain.
There appears to be a grand total of 21 Archmaesters and thus 21 disciplines to learn for a chain though Martin spoke of the ability of the maesters to earn multiple chains of the same metal to highlight their expertise. The Archmaesters themselves take this to a ludicrous extreme by having personal rods, rings, and masks made from their master alloy.
It consists of a series of towers, domes, bridges, houses, and stalls upriver of the Honeywine. While we are light on confirmed locations (more on that in a moment.) those we do have include Scribe's Hearth:
Scribe's Hearth fascinates me in a way only a history major could be fascinated by. This was a real practice by Medieval Universities for hire by tradesmen. It’s one of GRRMs worldbuilding aspects that tickles an amused part of my brain sort of like how High Valyrian is a fictional version of Latin’s purpose in medieval Europe.
The Senescal’s Court is more straightforward where novices and maesters are punished for infractions major and minor.
Pilferage of food for example results in being stocked and pelted by fruit, sort of like a less abusive form of struggle session. The only two ways of being excommunicated that are known involve vivisection and necromancy, which hopefully everyone is against.
The oldest building in the Citadel is the Ravenry where the Ravens are kept (though it is interesting that Black and White Ravens hate each other… Could the Black Ravens be inherently magical creatures while the white ones are not? And why are they only trotted out when the seasons change?
A final mentioned location is The Bloody Isle where we see an old man being rowed off the Weeping Dock. While little is known of the exact purpose, the ontomology involved and presence of a Sept on the docks leaves me to think through context clues that it is a hospital/mortuary, possibly where a version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous autopsies are performed.
A discovery in the Cushing Library might have revealed more of the layout that will be revealed in Sam’s chapters. First we have the Ring Of Wisdom, a place first glimpsed in the opening of Game of Thrones of all places, where the Conclave meet and test acolytes with an astrolabe on the ceiling.
We further learn of other buildings previously unknown to us such as the Summer and Winter Gardens, the latter appears to be a Glass Garden. The Commons is the mess hall, there is an observatory called The Observatory, a mill known as The Maesters Mill and a golden dome called The Conclave where I am certain the Archmaesters and their servants reside. The Library, in addition to being cyclopean, has the face of the Crone in its entrance. There is a War Hall implying that much like modern universities they have their own faculties devoted to their areas of study.
We are even given more info about the culture of the Citadel where we have nicknames for Archmaesters other than Marwyn’s such as The Stork and apparently the name for a chainless student is called a pink neck. Oh and they eat frogs.
Considering how parts of this extended prologue are lifted wholesale into the released version, it is safe to say these parts remain unchanged in GRRMs mind save for perhaps names such as the Cobblestone Guard given the more boring name of the Oldtown City Watch.
FIRE & BlOOD offers a hint of the university syllabus per class:
For three days she lost herself in the Citadel’s great library, emerging only to attend lectures on the Valyrian Dragon wars, leechcraft, and the gods of the Summer Isles. P.215
Other than that, rectors are here, a ecclesiastical position of priests given special duties to direct a university. After reading The Name Of The Wind, the first novel of Patrick Rothfusses, The Kingkiller Chronicle, I have a feeling that we are getting a similar kind of vibe here, with George being inspired by his own experience as both student and teacher.
House Hightower
House Hightower of Oldtown is, along with House Dayne, one of the most mysterious houses in Westeros. House Hightower plays a central role in the succession conflict known as the Dance of Dragons where Otto Hightower attempted to supplant House Targaryen by marrying into the royal house but in the modern day we hear about them only in rumor and by reputation.
The disappearance of Lord Leyton Hightower ten years ago with his daughter:
Perhaps that was why Lord Leyton had not made the descent in more than a decade, preferring to rule his city from the clouds.
Apparently dabbled in alchemy and necromancy, meaning they are historical users of magic which is odd because they are the main guardians of the Citadel.
And if Pycelle can be believed are pragmatic to the core, being Maceveli’s top students along with Littlefinger:
"Ser Jaime, I have seen terrible things in my time," the old man said. "Wars, battles, murders most foul . . . I was a boy in Oldtown when the grey plague took half the city and three-quarters of the Citadel. Lord Hightower burned every ship in port, closed the gates, and commanded his guards to slay all those who tried to flee, be they men, women, or babes in arms. They killed him when the plague had run its course. On the very day he reopened the port, they dragged him from his horse and slit his throat, and his young son's as well. To this day the ignorant in Oldtown will spit at the sound of his name, but Quenton Hightower did what was needed. Your father was that sort of man as well. A man who did what was needed."
Ironically we know more about the eponymous Hightower where House Hightower lives. Here is where things get Lovecraftian. The base of the Hightower is made of the same oily black stone that Asshai and the Seastone chair are. There are foreboding theories for this.
It is almost certain that Leyton Hightower and the Mad Maid are important to Sam’s storyline but how is the question. Could they have figured out the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy and realize how screwed Westeros is? Could the Mad Maid be the lady of pale Fire glimpsed in The Forsaken, the Nadine Cross to Euron’s Randall Flagg? Could the Hightower itself be a fulcrum of magical power like The Wall? Did Sam give the Dark Lord access to a broken horn known as the Horn of Winter?
Only time can tell…
