Houses Greenwood and Blackwood

[Padraig O'Sullivan]

House Greenwood was a house extinguished by House Stark and House Blackwood claimed to have ruled most of the Wolfswood at one time and were exiled by House Stark.

Both these Houses have wood as the last four letters in their surname and I am wondering if it has something to do with the Wolfswood. Maybe House Greenwood ruled the greener part of the Wolfswood and House Blackwood ruled the blacker part of the Wolfswood.

Just a theory here.

[Ramsay's Penguins]

Ryder to Ryswell I can see. Fisher in the North might have something to do with Fisher in the riverlands (both Towers are unrelated).

And these houses could be related sure, but I find it unlikely. Trees are common. Trees are cool. Yronwood, Blackwood, Greenwood and Hornwood and Waynwood, I sincerely doubt.

So I don't think so.

[aryagonnakill#2]

Maybe they are one in the same, Starks thought they got em all but 1 got away.

[Lost Melnibonean]

Green and black... Now where have I read those two colors before... Hmm...

[The Mountain That Flies]

I mean, The Hedge Knight gives us a precedence for am off-shoot house simply changing one color, though that was just in sigil. It would be cool if the Greenwood's snuck away and became the Blackwood's, but I doubt there's any connection.

[Man of Many Faces]

I think they just both happen to end in wood, maybe they come from a similar relative way, way, way, back but I don't think there's any real connection of value.

[Lord_Pepsi_Cupps]

Ooh I love the Blackwoods. Let me get a hat with the appropriate tinfoil content for this.

Well it's slightly more than just "wood" in their name, since House Greenwood disappeared from the North, and House Blackwood is in the Riverlands and has house legends about how they were expelled from the North.

It could be that the Starks extinguished the Greenwoods, and the Blackwoods were a cadet branch that managed to escape.

As for the forest: it could also be that the wolfswood was called the "greenwood" when it was ruled by House Greenwood (in itself a theory), and then renamed to wolfswood after the Starks took it. Isn't it strange that there's no "greenwood" in all of Westeros, such a common name for a forest in a place where lots of forests are named?

It doesn't even need to have been a cadet branch (in the red/green apple Fossoway sense). Maybe the last lords Greenwoods weren't all killed when the Starks beat them, but the surviving ones (younger kids?) who fled to the Riverlands changed their name to "Black"-wood out of mourning for their exile / shame over their loss of the greenwood for which they were named.

It might also have been a Miss Greenwood that established the Raventree Blackwoods, and the Black name-change might have been about her hair and looks. There are multiple mentions of Blackwood women called "Black" based on their looks; also I realised that the Blackwood women are historically kind of much more relevant than the Blackwood men, it's a pattern; and they are also complete bosses. All this smells like a hint about something to do with House Blackwood itself.

If a raven-haired daughter of the last Lord of House Greenwood called, fittingly, "Black [something]" (Betha, Aly, whatever) led the survivors of her house to the Riverlands and set them up at Raventree, hey they're the Black Greenwoods / Blackwoods.