The Reach is watered by the immense River Mander and its many tributaries. People of the Reach are collectively known as Reachmen. Bastards born in the Reach are given the surname Flowers. Ser Bronn of the Blackwater offers to join Jaime and Tyrion with the forces of Queen Daenerys Targaryen should he be named Lord of Highgarden due to its vast size in comparison to Riverrun, a deal to which Tyrion reluctantly agrees. The Reach was ruled from the castle of Highgarden by House Tyrell until the castle was sacked by Lannister and rebel forces in the Sack of Highgarden.Īfter the battle and the ultimate death of Lady Olenna Tyrell, House Tarly was made Warden of the South for its betrayal of its liege lords for what Jaime Lannister had described as allying with "foreign barbarians and eunuchs." Thus the Reach was presumably briefly controlled by the Lannister-Tarly houses, before their host was smashed in the Battle of the Goldroad, leaving the region in an ambiguous status and likely a power vacuum.
The Reach withdrew from the sovereignty of the Iron Throne due to the deaths of virtually all its liege lords in the destruction of the Great Sept of Baelor, an act perpetrated by Cersei Lannister, who quickly became Queen due to the resulting suicide of King Tommen Baratheon. This vast supply of manpower, land, and food production gives the Reach enormous strategic value during the War of the Five Kings. Due to this, the Tyrells could traditionally field the largest army in the Seven Kingdoms, almost as large as the armies from two of the other populous kingdoms combined. However this claim is suggested to be rather outdated as Lannister gold mines-the source of their wealth-have dried out, and have been weakened by the War of the Five Kings, thus making the Reach actually the wealthiest region. The Reach is also the most heavily-populated part of Westeros and is one of the richest, second only to the Westerlands, ruled by House Lannister. It is the most fertile part of Westeros, blessed with vast, blooming fields of crops and flowers, and numerous and well-populated villages and towns it traditionally helps supply other less fertile parts of the Seven Kingdoms (most notably King's Landing) with grain, fruit, wine and livestock. It has been ruled by House Tyrell since the Conquest, and earlier than that by the Kings of House Gardener. Geographically, it is one of the larger regions of the Seven Kingdoms, ranking as the second largest in area, behind only the vastness of the North. The Reach is one of the administrative regions of the Seven Kingdoms, and was formerly a sovereign nation known as the Kingdom of the Reach before the Targaryen conquest. Map showing the location of the Reach on the continent of Westeros.
As the most fertile region of the Seven Kingdoms, we grow the lion's share of the grains and fruit that feed this country." ― Margaery Tyrell We're the ones who give your hand something to do at the table.