House Words Wednesdays: House Locke

Good to see you again, readers!

I have started a feature on the Tumblr called House Words Wednesdays. Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me a tweet or ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see done.



Holy fuck. I try not to curse too much on here, but holy fuck. You have no goddamn idea how long the Locke words took me. As a little behind-the-scenes info: I have a master list of the schedule of House words and the mottos I’ve come up with, so when someone requests a new House I put it on the schedule and leave the spot next to it blank. Usually, I can come up with, at the very least, a placeholder motto pretty quickly and put that next to the House, while I think of something better (and sometimes, like House Whent’s words, the placeholder just grows on me). House Locke? Nothing. I had fucking nothing to say about the Lockes. Every attempt at a placeholder just wound back up with a stupid key pun - “The Key to the North” bounced around my head a few times. I felt so embarrassed by the puns I wouldn’t even put them down as placeholders. They were just dumb.

Well, I struggled, and I consulted, and I rejected a lot, and finally - finally - I came up with something. I looked at House Locke’s seat: Oldcastle, on the northern shore of the Bite, just southeast of White Harbor and north of the Three Sisters. It’s basically on the very edge of that water entrance into the North, and I imagine that in centuries past the Lockes were the primary guardians of this important gateway into the North (and, just as importantly, a potentially powerful tool to keep the North bottled up in this port, if the Locke kings had a powerful enough fleet). Indeed, the Lockes were granted temporary dominion over the Wolf’s Den in the centuries after the Greystarks were exterminated, though they did not hold the castle as long as that Stark cousin branch did.

My words for the Lockes, then? Enter with Our Leave. It’s sort of a key pun, but not a very obvious one (or, at least, less obvious). If you’re given a key to a house, you’re being granted leave to enter that place; if you’re locked out without a key (presuming the people inside don’t want you in), you lack the homeowner’s leave to enter the home. The Lockes are, in their small way, the key to the North: they watch out for that important harbor, and if they find an entrant is friend, not foe, they allow him to enter the North via White Harbor. I like as well that it works in a sort of ironic way for Sybelle Glover, born a Locke, who surrendered Deepwood to Asha’s ironborn, and allowed Asha to enter the castle as its conqueror (albeit a relatively gentle one). These words might fit future Locke action as well: Manderly claims (perhaps swaggeringly, though I’m inclined to believe him in part) that old Lord Locke will follow where he leads, and together Locke and Manderly (and perhaps Hother Umber, if he’s still inside) may throw open the gates of Winterfell from the inside to victorious Stannis. Of course, boy Rickon will probably come through White Harbor to return to Winterfell (a Manderly-backed rescue mission? Where else would Eddard’s youngest land?), passing by Oldcastle saluting his return.



Let me know what you think, because you know I want to hear other Locke words if you got em. Another kind-of-random request next week.

The Queen Regent (NFriel)