House Words Wednesdays: House Lorch
Welcome to 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 an ask if you have another House you’d like to see done.
House Lorch is a family of landed knights from the Westerlands, sworn bannermen to the Lannisters. We don’t know the family seat (or where it is in the west), but we do have the sigil: a black manticore on a white field, beneath a crimson chief with three gold coins. To what extent it can be extrapolated from the coins on this sigil that House Lorch, like House Payne, earned its knightly lands through management of payments to House Lannister, is debatable. Certainly, the sigil of the Lorches is not as obviously Exchequer-themed as that of House Payne, but I don’t think it unreasonable to conclude that the Lorches were associated with payments and gold in some fashion - if not in a formal role as tax collectors, perhaps as a shakedown force for those who delayed making payments to Casterly Rock.
The most famous, or rather infamous, member of House Lorch is certainly Ser Amory, one of the most vile and reprehensible characters in the whole series. During the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion (at least in the unabridged version of the Westerlands chapter, though that isn’t strictly speaking canon), Ser Amory threw the three-year-old “last Lord Tarbeck” down a well; his thorough and cruel handling of the last Tarbeck-blooded male likely guaranteed him a place after that as one of Tywin’s “pet hellounds”. When Tywin found himself in a similar position during the Sack of King’s Landing, Amory Lorch must have seemed a natural choice for the job: here was a man who had no qualms about killing dynastically troublesome children. If Tywin later claimed to bemoan the “bestial” manner in which Amory handled Princess Rhaenys - stabbing her “half a hundred times” - he nevertheless loosed the sadistic Ser Amory on the Red Keep with the intent that he and Gregor should rid the world of Rhaegar’s children (while admitting to Tyrion that, if confronted by Oberyn Martell about the deaths of Elia and her children, he planned to place all the blame on the then-dead Ser Amory).
Ser Amory is, of course, no less horrific in his actions in the main novels. When Tywin decides to ravish the Riverlands at the beginning of the War of the Five Kings, he orders that Ser Amory lead one of the reaving parties, alongside Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat, with the express direction that he wished “to see the riverlands afire from the Gods Eye to the Red Fork”. After Yoren holes himself and his Night’s Watch recruits in a Riverlands holdfast and refuses Ser Amory entry, Lorch storms it and kills many of them (including poor Yoren himself). Still searching for Beric Dondarrion and the brotherhood without banners, Ser Amory captures an innocent beekeeper and his wife and demands Beric surrender himself or see them hanged; Beric does so, but Amory hangs all three anyway. Ser Amory even attacks Ser Roger Hogg’s seat at Sow’s Horn, though House Hogg is sworn to House Hayford, one of the major Crownlands vassals of the Lannister-Baratheon regime. At the acme of his power, Ser Amory is made castellan of Harrenhal, but his violent and cruel life soon comes to a violent and cruel end: when Vargo Hoat and his Brave Companions betray their Lannister allies and turn the castle over to Roose Bolton, Ser Amory is captured, paraded naked before Vargo and Roose, and sent down to the bear pit to be torn apart by the animal.
For the Lorch words, I decided on For Blood and Gold. The coins at the top of the Lorch sigil hint to a past where the Lorches were rewarded in monetary form by their Lannister overlords, or took an active part in securing wealth for the Lannister lords and kings. If Amory Lorch is any indication (and the manticore, a creature whose single sting is enough to kill a human, being featured so prominently certainly argues for this), the members of House Lorch dive enthusiastically into opportunities for pain; in these two words, “blood” and “gold”, House Lorch summarizes its primary motivations. Moreover, blood and gold are, in a manner of speaking, the colors of House Lannister (crimson, more specifically, but the difference between blood and crimson is a small one), and House Lorch has been, if nothing else, eager in its support of House Lannister. Given bills of destruction and sadism by Tywin Lannister, Amory Lorch is more than willing to execute his orders with as much viciousness as he is capable (which is to say, quite a bit). Ser Amory takes great pride in being Tywin Lannister’s man, appointed and rewarded by his great and terrible liege for the horrible deeds Amory is willing to do in his name. Of course, the irony here is that Tywin views Amory as no more than a dog he uses to sic on his foes, savage as a dog can be and, importantly, as disposable as a dog; for all the loyalty Amory has for House Lannister, and all the horrible deeds he will do in its name, Tywin is more than willing to sacrifice his memory in order to preserve himself.
