House of the Dragon: The Bracken and Blackwood Feud Explained

This House of the Dragon article contains spoilers for season 2 episode 3.

War is ready to break out on House of the Dragon. All the Dance of the Dragons needs to catch fire is a spark of violence to set off the kindling. House of the Dragon season 2 episode 3 provides that spark thanks to the enmity between two noble Houses: the Blackwoods and the Brackens.

“The Burning Mill” kicks off with the titular Battle of The Burning Mill from Westerosi history. Some young members of House Blackwood and House Bracken accost one another about a territorial dispute in the Riverlands. That disagreement quickly evolves into an argument over the respective monarchs that each family has chosen to back – Queen Rhaenyra for the Blackwoods and King Aegon II for the Brackens. Next thing you know, hundreds of young men are dead, their bodies bloating in the Red Fork.

What we just witnessed on House of the Dragon is the latest sad chapter in a needless blood feud that has gone on for centuries in George R.R. Martin’s Westeros. Like many other elements of both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the saga of House Bracken and House Blackwood borrows from real world events to create a more realistic and lived-in Medieval fantasy world. Here is what you need to know about who the houses are and why they hate each other.

What Are House Bracken and House Blackwood?

House Bracken and House Blackwood are two ancient families from Westeros’s middle Riverlands region. And when we say ancient, we mean ancient. Similar to House Stark and many other noble families from The North (and some from the Riverlands and Vale), both House Bracken and House Blackwood were part of the First Men who arrived in Westeros countless centuries ago. Though an ethnicity known as the “Andals” now make up the vast majority of Westeros, the First Men and their traditions carry on in the form of weirwood trees and the “Old Gods.”

House Bracken hails from Stone Hedge, with much of their domain lying across the fertile lands of the Red Fork. House Blackwood is in Raventree Hall, located north of the Red Fork. As Lord Baratheon mentioned, both houses are quite powerful, In fact, both families can assemble larger armies than their regional wardens, House Tully. The Targaryens merely chose the Tullys to be wardens of the Riverlands since they had the good sense to bend the knee to Aegon the Conqueror first.

Though both House Bracken and House Blackwood are formidable enough on their own the best known thing about each of them is how much they absolutely loathe each other. Brackens and Blackwoods have been at one another’s throats for centuries if not millennia. Their hatred dates back to before the arrival of the Targaryens, before the arrival of the Andals, and perhaps back to the beginning of time itself.

Why Are House Bracken and House Blackwood Feuding?

Here’s the fun part of the whole thing: nobody really even knows! The Brackens swear that they were Kings of the Red Fork during the legendary Age of Heroes until they were usurped by their vassals, the Blackwoods. The Blackwoods swear the exact same thing.

Pretty much every house that can trace (or claim to trace) its line back to the prehistorical Age of Heroes likes to declare themselves kings though. Given that the Blackwoods and Brackens’ holdings are relatively close on the Red Fork, it’s more likely that the feud started with something no more complicated than a land dispute.

However unremarkable the beginnings of the feud were, its intensity and longevity is notorious across the realm. Countless times throughout Westerosi history, Brackens and Blackwoods have feuded and ultimately killed one another in petty disputes as seen during the Rhaenyra incident in Storm’s End.

The key word here is “petty.” Because interestingly enough, the Brackens and Blackwoods tend to agree on the big political matters in the Seven Kingdoms. Both houses were united under the banner of Aegon I Targaryen during his conquest. Later on during the events of Game of Thrones, both House Bracken and House Blackwood join Robb Stark’s cause to establish a new kingdom in the North and the Riverlands, divesting themselves from the Iron Throne once and for all.

But even amid all of that relatively stability, members of the two houses absolutely cannot get over this inciting event from centuries ago that no one can even begin to remember. Honor and history are everything to the noble houses of Westeros and the eternal beefing between the Brackens and Blackwoods reveals what happens when that multi-century commitment to keeping it real goes wrong.

Are There Real Life Examples of Feuding Noble Families?

You betcha! The historical family feud that will likely sound the most familiar to American audiences is that of the Hatfields and McCoys. Though it did not run nearly as long as the feud between the Brackens and the Blackwoods, the reported origins of this feud are equally as silly.

The Hatfield and McCoy feud technically started during the American Civil War, but what really kicked it off was a dispute over the ownership of a hog in 1878. That argument led off a multi-decade string of violence between the two families and to this day “Hatfields and McCoys” is American shorthand for two feuding parties. Kevin Costner actually starred in a Hatfields & McCoys miniseries for the History channel in 2012.

Another, more era-appropriate feud that Martin likely drew from in creating the Brackens and Blackwoods, was the one between the Campbell and MacDonald clans of Scotland. That heated multi-century rivalry culminated in a massacre more bloody than any Bracken-Blackwood squabble.

New episodes of House of the Dragon premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max in the U.S. and Sky Atlantic in the U.K.