House Lyon

The Lyons are rumoured to be the true heirs to the throne of the old Kingdom.

The story goes that Alisdair’s great ancestor Prince Armand Lyon was quelling an uprising in the south when his father the King died sick in his bed. The young Prince, devastated by the news of his father’s death insisted on fighting in the vanguard and clouded by wroth played right into a rebel trap. With the battle lost, what stated as a small uprising exploded into a full scale rebellion and the kingdom fell into chaos. With his army smashed, Armand was thought to be dead and so the throne passed to the Kings illegitimate bastard Borin. The bastard monarch styled himself “King Borin Leon” in the southern tradition after his mother and led the Kingdom through five difficult years of bloody conflict. Finally, King Borin managed to barter peace with the southron rebels but not without forfeiting a long list of lands and lordships to the treacherous upstarts.

Some bolder Lyons still like to think that Borin had a hand in the rebellion from the start and say that he wanted to sell half the lordships in the land to any southron merchant or bastards with enough coin.

When the rebellion ended, it was revealed that Armand had been brutally injured in the battle but had not died. After being nursed back to health by a lowly milk maid, he returned with the maid as his wife to claim the throne and his Kingdom.

But when Armand faced Borin, it was clear that any challenge between them would quickly descend into a long and bloody conflict. Tamed and bound by the love of his young wife Armand knelt to King Borin and recognised him as the legitimate lord and sovereign. Hence forth the Lyons where known more commonly as de Lyon. King Borin was generous to Armand and granted him Lyontine as his seat of power but had a new capital built some one hundred leagues away. Future Kings threatened by House de Lyon claim to the throne were not so kind. Lyontine’s major trades were moved to the new capital and the sons of House de Lyon were forced to fight in the more bloody battles for the throne.

Slowly over the years House de Lyon’s power dwindled until all that remained was a shadow of its former glory. The only thing it had left where a few finely trained Knights.