Casterly Rock is no ordinary castle.

Imagine a single building that spans the width of San Francisco, a distance of approximately seven miles (2 leagues). For anyone familiar with the city, imagine a stone fortress stretching from the Cliff House in the west, to the Embarcadero in the east, which gives a rough approximation of Casterly Rock’s colossal base. The largest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, Casterly Rock is almost a city unto itself, complete with its own docks and shipyards distinct from those of Lannisport.

The Lannister’s ancestral fortress must be considered vertically as well as horizontally, for Casterly Rock digs deep into the bowels of the earth, even as it reaches high into the sky. If it existed in the real world, Casterly Rock would be taller than almost every skyscraper mankind has ever built. According to The World of Ice and Fire, the Casterlys built a ringfort at the Rock’s peak to survey their kingdom; their surveys must have proven as short-sighted as Tywin Lannister’s preparations for the coming winter, as the summit of Casterly Rock is literally in the clouds.

View images larger on deviantart: 1, 2, 3

Under the cut, I attempt a comprehensive analysis of Casterly Rock, along with some wild speculation. Well-reasoned counterarguments and discussion are most welcome. Please feel free to point out any inaccuracies so that I may edit and correct them.

NOTE: The horizontal and vertical scales are not meant to be compared across images. In the first image, only the horizontal scale is relevant.

In the third image, only the vertical scale is accurate. The horizontal scale in the third image is basically meaningless, hence the reason I put no numbers horizontally. See here.

CONTENTS

I) The Size of Casterly Rock

II) The Gold Mine

III) Life at Casterly Rock

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THE SIZE OF CASTERLY ROCK

The Rock has been measured as thrice the height of the Wall or the Hightower of Oldtown. Almost two leagues long from west to east, it is riddled throughout with tunnels, dungeons, storerooms, barracks, halls, stables, stairways, courtyards, balconies, and gardens. There is even a godswood of sorts […]. The Rock even has a port inside it, complete with docks and wharves and shipyards, for the sea has carved great caves into its western face, natural gates deep and wide enough for longships and even cogs to enter and off-load their cargoes. […] No castle in the Seven Kingdoms is larger, richer, or better defended. –The World of Ice and Fire

Casterly Rock is the largest castle in the Seven Kingdoms.

At approximately 2100 feet tall (or 640 meters tall), Casterly Rock puts even New York’s Empire State Building to shame. The Rock meets the modern definition of a mountain. The ringfort atop the Rock may sometimes be shrouded in clouds, given that the base of cumulus clouds can form as low as 2000 feet (600 meters). [source]

In our modern world, the only building that would stand taller than the Rock would be Burj Khalifa in Dubai. However, Burj Khalifa is only about 575 feet (or 175 meters) wide at its base. As I said in my introduction, Casterly Rock is a single skyscraper the size of an entire city.

It is significantly larger than any real medieval castle. For example, Colchester Castle “is the largest Norman castle ever built in Britain (and the largest surviving in Europe), […] and is still only 152 x 112 feet (46 x 34m). In ASoIaF terms it might just about pass muster as something like Darry. I get the impression that most ASoIaF castles, even Riverrun and the Eyrie, are supposed to be larger” [source].



The entrances to the Rock are appropriately large.

The Lion’s Mouth— the huge natural cavern that forms the main entrance into the Rock— arches two hundred feet high from floor to ceiling. Over the centuries it has been widened and improved upon, and it is now said that twenty horsemen can ride abreast up its broad steps.

The Lion’s Mouth is visible on the right of Ted Nasmith’s artwork of Casterly Rock, with the broad steps leading up to the large opening, protected by oak and iron: “oaken gates and iron portcullises guarding its every means of egress” (TWOIAF).

The waters of Casterly Rock’s port are “deep and wide enough for longships and even cogs to enter and off-load their cargoes.” The wiki page for ASOIAF ships describes a longship as 100 oarsman, while a cog is a merchant ship with sails that would sit low in the water when loaded with goods to be delivered to Casterly Rock.

In A Storm of Swords, Jaime Lannister describes what happened when his inappropriate behavior with Cersei was discovered:

Once their mother’s maid had caught them at it … he did not recall just what they had been doing, but whatever it was had horrified Lady Joanna. She’d sent the maid away, moved Jaime’s bedchamber to the other side of Casterly Rock, set a guard outside Cersei’s, and told them that they must never do that again or she would have no choice but to tell their lord father. They need not have feared, though. It was not long after that she died birthing Tyrion.

Not one to fuck around, Joanna Lannister moved Jaime’s bedchamber almost 2 leagues (~7 miles, or ~11 kilometers) away from Cersei’s in order to separate her children. Jaime, who “could never bear to be long apart from his twin,” must have been fearful indeed, prior to Joanna’s death. (This of course assumes only a lateral movement, from West to East (or vice versa). If Joanna also moved Jaime up or down n number of floors, he would have been an even greater distance away from his sister.)

How does Casterly Rock compare to the Eyrie?

The Eyrie – described in AGOT as “Seven towers, […] like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds” – was built “on a shoulder of the great mountain” known as the Giant’s Lance. This reddit thread speculates that the Eyrie sits about 10,000 feet up, but in any case, the Eyrie was built at a much higher altitude than the ringfort atop Casterly Rock (2100 feet). However, the Eyrie is the smallest of the great castles, while Casterly Rock is the largest. (Casterly Rock has less marble in its floors and walls than the Eyrie, though.)

Casterly Rock vs. Harrenhal: which is bigger?

Pia rode with Jaime’s squires, on the gelding Peck had found for her. “[Darry is] like some toy castle,” Jaime heard her say. She’s known no home but Harrenhal, he reflected. Every castle in the realm will seem small to her, except the Rock. –A Feast for Crows

Harrenhal is the only castle in the Seven Kingdoms that’s even in the same league as Casterly Rock. Harrenhal is 10 times the size of Riverrun, or 3 times the size of Winterfell. The castle of Winterfell “sprawls across several acres of land, encompassing many freestanding buildings. […] And its vastness not only encompasses buildings but open areas as well. In fact, three acres alone are given over to an ancient godswood” (TWOIAF).

From A Clash of Kings:

Harrenhal was vast, much of it far gone in decay. […] Harrenhal covered thrice as much ground as Winterfell, and its buildings were so much larger they could scarcely be compared. Its stables housed a thousand horses, its godswood covered twenty acres, its kitchens were as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall, and its own great hall, grandly named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths even though it only had thirty and some (Arya had tried to count them, twice, but she came up with thirty-three once and thirty-five the other time) was so cavernous that Lord Tywin could have feasted his entire host, though he never did. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall.

I was unable to find any precise numbers measuring Winterfell or Harrenhal in my research. However, after consulting with racefortheironthrone and BryndenBFish, both men agree that Tywin’s host numbered under 18,000 men by the time Tywin arrived at Harrenhal. Consider San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H, which seats over 6000 people. The Hall of a Hundred Hearth’s must be about three times the size of SDCC’s Hall H.

A lot of people have argued that Harrenhal is bigger than Casterly Rock, but that was before The World of Ice and Fire was released: "Casterly Rock has never been taken by storm or siege. No castle in the Seven Kingdoms is larger, richer, or better defended.“ I would argue that Casterly Rock is larger than Harrenhal, knowing the Rock’s colossal height and length. Harrenhal is said to be "The largest castle ever raised in Westeros” (TWOIAF), but Casterly Rock wasn’t “raised” or “built”, it was carved out of the living rock.

“In his pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros.” (ACOK)

The towers of Harrenhal are undoubtedly taller than the individual “towers and turrets and watchtowers” that were built on top of the Rock, and the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, said to be big enough to feast an army, is surely bigger than any single hall the Casterlys carved out – something like LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring’s Mines of Moria hall seems like it would be difficult and dangerous to the Rock’s structural integrity – but overall the mountainous Casterly Rock is bigger.

So why was the Great Council of 101AC held at Harrenhal, if the Rock is bigger?

Jaehaerys called the first Great Council in the year 101 AC, to put the matter before the lords of the realm. And from all corners of the realm the lords came. No castle could hold so many save for Harrenhal, so it was there that they gathered. The lords, great and small, came with their trains of bannermen, knights, squires, grooms, and servants. And behind them came yet more— the camp followers and washerwomen, the hawkers and smiths and carters. Thousands of tents sprang up over the moons, until the castle town of Harrenton was accounted the fourth largest city of the Realm.

While Casterly Rock is larger, Harrenhal is emptier. As explained in AFFC, “Black Harren built too big.” Harrenhal is huge, but its size is excessive, built for giants. The parts of the castle that aren’t burned are mostly empty, hence Harrenhal’s ability to hold so many. In the past, Harrenhal has been used like a Westerosi convention center, hosting many of the Realm’s major gatherings like the tourney during the Year of the False Spring. Casterly Rock, on the other hand, is very full: “The Lannisters were a damnably large and fertile house.” Asking the Lannisters to host one of these major events is like having London host the Olympics; sure, it’s possible, but it would be very, very crowded.

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THE GOLD MINE

According to George R.R. Martin, "Unlike what’s been said in the TV show, the mines haven’t emptied, and are considered the best in the world. Even in Asshai, they ask about Casterly Rock, which they believe to be a ‘palace of gold’.” Forget whatever you’ve heard on Game of Thrones. In the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, the Lannisters are still the gold standard for Filthy Rich. (Check out this post and this post by nobodysuspectsthebutterfly if you want more information on Lannister debts versus the crown’s debts.)

Historically, Casterly Rock has been used as a kind of Fort Knox to store the Realm’s gold, because “Casterly Rock has never fallen.” (Supposedly Visenya Targaryen thought the Rock could not be taken, even with dragons like Balerion the Black Dread.) In The Princess and the Queen, when there was a national surplus in crown incomes, the royal treasury was moved to Casterly Rock during the Dance of the Dragons:

Ser Tyland Lannister was named master of coin in place of the late Lord Beesbury, and acted at once to seize the royal treasury. The crown’s gold was divided into four parts. One part was entrusted to the care of the Iron Bank of Braavos for safekeeping, another sent under strong guard to Casterly Rock, a third to Oldtown. The remaining wealth was to be used for bribes and gifts, and to hire sellswords if needed.

How rich is “rich as the Lannisters”?

From The World of Ice and Fire:

The great wealth of the westerlands, of course, stems primarily from their gold and silver mines. The veins of ore run wide and deep, and there are mines, even now, that have been delved for a thousand years and more and are yet to be emptied. Lomas Longstrider reports that, even in far Asshai-by-the-Shadow, there were merchants who asked him if it was true that the “Lion Lord” lived in a palace of solid gold and that crofters collected a wealth of gold simply by plowing their fields. The gold of the west has traveled far, and the maesters know there are no mines in all the world as rich as those of Casterly Rock.

We unfortunately have no information on how much gold Casterly Rock produces, but the best gold mine in our world, the Grasberg Gold Mine in Indonesia, produces roughly 2 million ounces of gold per year. [source]

Can Casterly Rock be compared to the Grasberg Mine? On the one hand, the world GRRM built is meant to be bigger and bolder than our own; Hadrian’s Wall became a towering, 700 foot wall of ice. On the other hand, the Grasberg Mine uses modern mining technology, while House Lannister is limited to medieval mining techniques (discussed below). Do those two considerations cancel each other out? I honestly don’t know, but Casterly Rock yielding 2 million ounces per year is the figure I’m rolling with until someone gives me better information.

racefortheironthrone estimates that 1 gold dragon roughly equals US $1000. Ph.D economist Ken Mondschein posits that a gold dragon weighs eight-tenths of an ounce: “Since a gold dragon is large enough to walk across one’s knuckles, these must be fairly big coins in a fairly gold-rich world.” [source] Others argue that 1 gold dragon = 1 ounce, which is the conversion rate I’m going to use to make it easy for myself. Under these assumptions, Casterly Rock yields 2 million gold dragons per year. (The Lannisters also presumably receive revenue from Lannisport tariffs, as well as taxing their bannermen with gold and silver mines.)

By A Game of Thrones, the crown was 3 million gold dragons in debt, meaning House Lannister easily loaned Robert 200,000 dragons per year on average.

So how much money do the Lannisters actually have? We don’t know, but I’m going to try to guess. Forbes estimates that House Lannister is worth $2.1 billion, but they don’t explain how they came up with that number. I’ve seen estimates as high as $200 billion.

Shakespeare scholars I’ve spoken with agree that Tywin and Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (the Kingmaker) have much in common, including vast sums of wealth. Based on Alison Weir’s estimates, Warwick would have almost $4 million in today’s dollars. This estimate does little to capture how wealthy Warwick actually was, at a time when he had almost all the money there was to be had. Fantasy author Scott Lynch recently explained the problem of comparing medieval versus modern money, which is very relevant here:

if you look at just one convenient example from actual history, the Anglo-Saxon pound, it’s hard to grasp, from our perspective, just what a phenomenal amount of money it represented at the time (say, 1200s - 1500s). A poundweight of silver in an age when the majority of the populace was paid in very small buckets of absolutely fuck-nothing, and were told to feel grateful for the buckets.

So Warwick’s $4 million isn’t very helpful to me in determining Lannister wealth.

What about a more recent historical figure? People in ASOIAF throw around the phrase “as rich as the Lannisters” the way people in the early 20th century might say “as rich as Rockefeller,” the wealthy American industrialist who passed out dimes to every person he ever met. In 1937, Rockefeller’s fortune represented 1.5% of the American economy.

racefortheironthrone estimates that Westeros has a Gross Domestic Income of 525 million gold dragons, or $525 billion U.S. If the Lannister fortune is to the Westerosi economy what Rockefeller’s was to America’s, then House Lannister would have almost 8 million dragons, or $8 billion US, keeping in mind that having 8 million dragons – in a society where almost everyone has nothing – is a phenomenal amount of money for Westeros, bigger than the crown’s entire debt.

Is 8 million dragons a reasonable number for the size of the Lannister fortune? Probably not.

racefortheironthrone discussed Westerosi incomes here:

Knight: 20-25 dragons a year minimum.

Minor Lord: 300 dragons a year in cash.

Middling Lord: 5,000-10,000 dragons a year in cash.

Major Lord: tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in cash.

King: MILLIONS!

The Lannisters probably have a combined income plus gold mine yield of much more than 2 million dragons per year, and if they saved even just a quarter of that money every year, after mining the Rock for centuries, then 8 million dragons is much too low an estimate for the size of the Lannister fortune. Forbes, you’re way too low. The Lannisters are much richer than Rockefeller.

Suppose I try a different approach to estimate the Lannister fortune. All the gold that has ever been mined in the history of humanity could fit in about 3.42 olympic size swimming pools, more than half of which was only recovered in the past 50 years. So let’s say Tywin is like Scrooge McDuck and he has an olympic size swimming pool of gold in Casterly Rock. How much gold is that?

An olympic swimming pool will hold 48,250 metric tons of gold, or 1.7 billion ordinary ounces. That’s 1.7 billion gold dragons, or $1.7 trillion US. These numbers might be very wrong, but that’s my best guess.

racefortheironthrone has a discussion of how much money the Lannisters have here.

Mining at Casterly Rock

Mining is a very labor-intensive process in a pre-industrial society, which is probably one of the reasons the Lannisters resort to using convicted laborers who don’t have to be paid to work in the mines. From A Game of Thrones:

Tyrion limped closer to where he sat. “My lord father would call that insolence, and send you to the mines for impertinence.” “Good for me you’re not your father,” Bronn replied.

The Lannister mines have been compared to the Dolaucothi mine in Wales:

On the Westeros map, Casterly Rock and Lannisport appear in roughly the same vicinity as the gold mine of Roman Britain: the Dolaucothi mine in Wales. The Romans found the Dolaucothi vein shortly after they invaded; however, archeologists believe gold mining in Dolaucothi dates back to the Bronze age (c. 3300-1200 BCE). Roman slaves toiled in the hazardous mines where lousy ventilation combined to make extraction using fire-setting even more explosive. [x]

Some of the major concerns of medieval underground mining were ventilation and water drainage from shafts and tunnels. Miners worked with iron tools or used a technique called fire-setting (heating rock with fire and then dousing it with cold water) to split the rock. [source]

Castle Black uses a winch elevator to take men and supplies up and down the Wall. The Eyrie also makes use of winches to bring up supplies. Casterly Rock, like mine in medieval times, may use man- or horse-powered winches within the mines and fortress.

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LIFE AT CASTERLY ROCK

This essay started when tumblr user sarellasand asked me back in 2014 if I thought Casterly Rock might have an elevator like at Castle Black, and as you can see by now, it spiraled out of control from there.

According to TWOIAF, Casterly Rock "is riddled throughout with tunnels, dungeons, storerooms, barracks, halls, stables, stairways, courtyards, balconies, and gardens. There is even a godswood of sorts, though the weirwood that grows there is a queer, twisted thing whose tangled roots have all but filled the cave where it stands, choking out all other growth.“

As TWOIAF says, the Rock is thrice the size of the Wall, which "stands more than seven hundred feet tall at its highest point (though its height varies considerably over the hundred leagues of its length, as it follows the contours of the land).” In A Game of Thrones, Tyrion must use the winch elevator to ascend the Wall’s 700 feet, because his legs are “cramping too badly for him to even contemplate the ascent” via the great switchback stair. Given that Casterly Rock is considerably higher, Tyrion must have great difficulty traveling any significant distance in the Rock, if he must rely only on his own power. There must be an enormous number of stairs in Casterly Rock, enough that it would take hours to climb from the Rock’s port up to the Ringfort at the top.

I’m guessing that Casterly Rock might have a series of lifts. Not a single long lift like at Castle Black that takes you straight up to the top, but a system of lifts like so:

(I could be totally wrong about that, tho.)

Another bit of wild speculation, given just how big Casterly Rock is, both vertically and horizontally, is that people ride around on horses within the Rock if they’re going any significant distance. The Lion’s Mouth accommodates 20 horses abreast. Perhaps there are ramps and stairwells that allow people to travel swiftly across the Rock’s two leagues. (Tyrion’s special saddle in AGOT becomes even more of a necessity in this scenario.)

I tried to come up with a wildly speculative (and probably wrong) rough layout for Casterly Rock:

(view larger on deviantart)

So what is it like at Casterly Rock?

In A Storm of Swords, Oberyn describes his visit to Casterly Rock:

The cell they gave me had a featherbed to sleep in and Myrish carpets on the floor, but it was dark and windowless, much like a dungeon when you come down to it, as I told Elia at the time. Your skies were too grey, your wines too sweet, your women too chaste, your food too bland…

Young Oberyn & Elia visited Casterly Rock in the winter of Tyrion’s birth, when grey skies would not be surprising.

However, it is significant that the Lannisters have Myrish carpets on the floor. According to racefortheironthrone:

Historically in this rough equivalent period, rugs were generally hung on walls or used as table coverings more than they were put on the floor, as they were rather expensive luxury imports from Turkey - one of my favorite bits in Wolf Hall is Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and Stephen Gardiner debating whether to hang or walk on a carpet More just purchased. Putting a carpet on the floor was pretty ostentatious, because it meant you could afford to replace it, as the outdoors environment was far less paved and cobbled than later on, so they wouldn’t stay pristine long. Rushes were used both loose and woven - either way, the idea is they’re replaceable - you just pry up or shovel out the old ones and lay down some new ones. In less salubrious times and places, you’d just keep adding layers without getting rid of the old.

The Rock is a place of luxury in Westeros.

“The Lords of Casterly Rock have gathered many treasures over the centuries, and the sights of the Rock— especially the Golden Gallery, with its gilded ornaments and walls, and the Hall of Heroes where the costly armor worn by a hundred Lannister knights, lords, and kings stand eternal guard— are justly famed throughout the Seven Kingdoms, even in lands beyond the narrow sea.”

During Ellyn Reyne’s time as acting Lady of the Rock, she “held a splendid court, staging a series of magnificent tourneys and balls and filling the Rock with artists, mummers, musicians”. It’s usually referred to as the court of the reigning lord, such as “Lord Tytos’s court” or “Lord Tywin’s court”.

From Sandor Clegane, we know there are dog kennels, and from Cersei, we know there were once caged lions deep within. Did Tytos once keep a menagerie for the entertainment of his guests?

In A Storm of Swords, Jaime dreams of “stone walls all around him pressing close. The Rock, he knew. He could feel the immense weight of it above his head. He was home.”

Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. […] The steps ended abruptly on echoing darkness. Jaime had the sense of vast space before him. He jerked to a halt, teetering on the edge of nothingness. […] There were watery caverns deep below Casterly Rock, but this one was strange to him.

Casterly Rock isn’t the place to be for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia, but that’s the tradeoff for the safety of a castle impervious to dragonfire and Ironborn reavers. I’m sure Black Harren would have happily traded:

“Harrenhal had witnessed more horror in its three hundred years than Casterly Rock had witnessed in three thousand.”

–Jaime, A Feast for Crows

But then again, “Only a Lannister can love the Rock.”

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I was going to talk about Lannisport and the Westerlands, but I honestly can’t look at this post anymore, so maybe those are topics for another day. LOL no one probably read this far anyway, and a cookie for you if you did.

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racefortheironthrone wrote a really awesome post in response to this one and you should definitely read it by clicking here!

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A bunch of people pointed out some other topics I could cover, so I will be writing a Part 2 to this essay in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

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CREDITS

Casterly Rock as it appears in my graphics was made using Ted Nasmith’s official artwork, edited and maniped by me. Please do not repost my graphics.

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ADDITIONAL READING

Meta:

Fanfiction:

Other Casterly Rock things that could always use more love:

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REFERENCES