Royce as first family to be named meaningless or foreshadowing?

I'm sure it's been discussed but we're all impatiently TWoW and topics are getting recycled so forgive me. But I find it hard to believe a Royce is the first character we meet with a family name yet while a respected house they have relatively small big picture relevance. I mean we know the GRRM's idea for the series didn't originate with the prologue but it's the entire series's prologue... I know there's plenty of red herrings in our story but maybe there's some interesting thoughts

Agreed. All of this. The combination of the words and the armor adds up to one of the important clues about the Royces. Tobho Mott tells the Lannisters that old swords remember. Are the Royces like old swords somehow? (Ser Waymar is described as being slender as a knife.) If you believe in the words / sword wordplay, then the runes on their armor may spell out something that was supposed to be remembered but has been forgotten over the years. As for the sword comparison, there are many