The legendary first king of the ironborn, said to have ruled all the Iron Islands for a thousand and seven years in the Age of Heroes; his given name is not remembered, and he is called the Grey King for the grey of his hair, his beard, and his eyes, which were the color of the winter sea. The legends credit him with slaying the sea dragon Nagga, whose bones the Drowned God turned to stone so that the king might raise his hall from her ribs and warm it with her living fire; with taking a mermaid to wife so that his sons could live on land or in the sea; with carving the first longship from the pale wood of Ygg, the demon tree that fed on men; and with stealing fire from the Storm God by taunting him into striking a tree with lightning. He wore a crown of driftwood, so that all who knelt would know his power came from the sea, and at the end of his long life he cast it aside and walked into the waves to sit at the right hand of the Drowned God. He left a hundred sons who fell to quarrelling, and the sixteen who survived divided the isles between them; every great house of the Iron Islands but the Goodbrothers claims descent from him, the Greyjoys of Pyke among them.
