242 AC brought the birth of a baby boy to Lord Tytos Lannister and his young wife, Lady Jeyne Marbrand. The fair babe, Tywin, he was christened, was named heir to the Westerlands within two years of his birth, following the death of his Grandfather, Lord Gerold "The Golden" Lannister. Years passed, and the boy grew into a man who possessed great intelligence and cunning. He became a skilled warrior, and was knighted on the eve of the War of the Ninepenny Kings (or the Fifth Blackfyre Rebellion) at the age of sixteen. Tywin fought in the retinue of his best friend Prince Aerys (who later became King Aerys II the Mad), and at the end of the war was given the honor of personally dubbing Aerys as a knight.

Hardened and battle-tested by fighting in the War of the Ninepenny Kings, on returning home to Casterly Rock Tywin and his brothers were determined to set the Westerlands back to order, which had been falling apart under the inept reign of their father Tytos. In 261 AC, when he was ten-and-nine years of age, he shrewdly put an end to a rebellion within the Westerlands by his Father's bannermen, which gave a much darker meaning to the phrase "A Lannister pays his debts," and inspired the bone-chilling song, "The Rains of Castamere."

After Prince Aerys became King Aerys II in 260 AC following the passing of his Father, King Jaehaerys II, he named his friend Tywin Hand of the King, a position he held for twenty years, providing the nation with much needed peace and prosperity. In 263 AC, Tywin married his cousin, Joanna Lannister, in a lovely wedding at the Sept of Baelor. It is said that in all of his life, this was one of the few times he smiled. Before that, he smiled when Castamere fell, and when King Aerys named him hand. The next time he smiled was at the birth of his twin children, Jaime and Cersei. Over the next seven years, the twins grew, and Joanna fell pregnant again. In 273 AC, she gave birth to a dwarven child, and died soon after from blood loss. Tywin, consumed with loneliness, and grief, blamed the newborn babe for the death of his wife, leading the child, named Tyrion, to be dubbed "Lord Tywin's Bane."

By 278 AC, the twins were 15 years of age, and Tyrion was 8.. It was this year that Tywin, after being prodded several times, made a political union with the daughter of a wealthy Earl, to produce another possible heir, and in the event of an uprising against the Mad King, to provide him with an auxiliary army.

*To read about the political union, see Appendix III

*To read about the Earl's Daughter, see Appendix II

*To read more background about the Reyne Rebellion, click HERE.