(Edit) Author's Note: Hey, I just wanted to add a note to say that this doesn't quite follow the story of The Hunger Games, so there's no volunteering and no love story (please don't get the wrong idea at the reaping scene... please. XD). Also, I decided maybe I should add a warning of character deaths, and I did take a few liberties with character ages so I could get as many characters in as possible.
Thanks to Borg Colective for pointing out that the Prologue needed some work. Hope it's explained better now. :)
Prologue - The Past (Arya)
Nineteen years ago, the people of Westeros staged a rebellion against King Aerys II Targaryen, called the Mad King. They failed. Their leader, Robert Baratheon, was killed by Aerys' son, Rhaegar, in a battle on the great river known as the Trident. The Lannister horde broke themselves on the walls of King's Landing and their leader, Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, was executed. My father, Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, was among the lords who were spared because they surrendered, as was Tywin's heir, Jaime Lannister, a knight of the Kingsguard at the time, stripped of that honour because of his father's treason. They and others were allowed to return to their homes and retain the title 'lord', but it is a mockery. The next blow fell on all of Westeros, whether they had rebelled or not, and it was the heaviest of the Mad King's reign. Even his allies suffered for his fury, but it was too late to turn on him then.
To punish the rebels Aerys split what had been the Seven Kingdoms into twelve Districts. Some of the borders remained more-or-less the same, and so The Vale, The Stormlands and The Iron Islands retained their old names. The rest of the borders shifted randomly, changing according Aerys' random whims, and they were named after a major town, city or holdfast within their borders. My District is Winterfell, and it stretches across the Wolfswood to Deepwood Mott and down past Torrhen's Square. There's no-one out on Bear Island anymore. They live in Deepwood Mott. The only other District north of the Neck is Whiteharbour, which covers Moat Cailin, too.
The District of Seagard covers The Twins and Greywater Watch. The District of Riverrun covers most, but not all, of what used to be the Riverlands. The Crownlands shrank, and became known as Casterly Rock because that was the ancient Lannister seat, and Jaime Lannister became the so-called 'lord' of the District. Likewise, the borders of the Reach were compressed, and the District was called Highgarden. Horn Hill is part of that District. Aerys turned the peninsula just south of Shipbreaker Bay into a a District called Cape Wrath - the only change he made to The Stormlands. Dorne broke down into the District of Starfall, which covers Blackmont and Sandstone, and the District of Sunspear, which covers most of the southern peninsula. No-one really knows what Aerys was thinking when he split the Districts like that, or why he bothered at all. Then again, no-one really knows what goes on in his mind most of the time. I suspect that he just wanted to divide us more.
After that, it was decreed that each year, each of these Districts would offer up a tribute of one young man and one young woman between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to be trained in combat and to fight to the death. Each year there's a different arena, and each year there's only one victor. Only one comes out alive. These massacres are known as the Red Games.
Between the Districts there is only wilderness, the empty woods and wastes. North of Winterfell, there's wilderness as far as the Wall, and even there not a soul lives. Aerys emptied Queenscrown, the Last Hearth and Karhold. Then he deposed the Night's Watch, returning the black brothers to the Districts to help with the jobs that we carry out. Some Districts have specific tasks - Casterly Rock mines gold for King's Landing, Highgarden grows fruit for them in their legendary orchards, Starfall on the summer sea is in charge of trade with merchants from other lands, and in The Vale they mine stone - but most just carry out all the typical labour like smithing, farming, hunting. Most of our produce goes to King's Landing.
According to the tales there's only one free House: House Bolton. The Dreadfort lies north of even Winterfell, and it's said that the Boltons have escaped the Games, though how, no-one knows. There are whispers of terrible things being done by the Boltons, flaying and cannibalism and such. I don't know if those rumours are true. It doesn't matter really.
I was born six years after the rebellion, in Winterfell. We're not the poorest, but we're not far off. I was four when Aerys changed things. He extended the age range, so it included eleven- and nineteen-year-olds. Then he kicked all the poor of King's Landing, who had been safe from the Games, out of the city to scatter among the Districts. I remember the day they came, the ones sent to Winterfell. A host of ragged refugees who had been driven up the Kingsroad on foot, day and night. They were a hopeless looking bunch, most of them already at the point of giving up, even the adults in the prime of life - except one, a boy the same age as my eldest brother Robb and my bastard brother Jon Snow. He stood out in the crowd even at only nine, taller than others his age, strong, and with sullen, defiant blue eyes. I remember noticing him, but I had no idea at the time that our lives would end up so entwined.
Aerys brought a new plague down on Westeros that year, too. Before that, it was only soldiers who kept us in the Districts. Another few years and we might have been strong enough to rebel. The Mad King got himself a pet from Asshai, a shadowbinder they call the Red Woman. She fashioned domes of red energy that hang over us, each enclosing a whole District. I don't know what would happen if we stepped into that swirling red light. I've never tried, and I don't want to. She's also the one who pens in the arena, and who broadcasts the Games to the Districts. Via her 'viewers' we are watched all the time, and when the Games play out we must watch our people die. During the Games, she can kill a tribute on a whim if Aerys is displeased. She can burn them to ash in seconds. If I had the kind of power that Melisandre does I'd overthrow the damn Targaryens and free Westeros. She helps them create their Games. There are no words for how much I hate her.
The Red Games rip families apart. I've watched members of the same family thrown in there together, brothers and sisters, even a newly-wed couple once. He was nineteen, she eighteen. Most people don't get married until they're too old for the Games, but they'd survived so many Reapings I guess they thought they were safe. They were from Starfall, if I remember rightly. Anyway, they knew they couldn't both win, so they killed themselves, died together in the centre of the bloodbath. There were two friends another year, from Cape Wrath, or Sunspear, possibly, I'm not sure now. Anyway, they thought they could get the crowd on side and both win. They faked this whole romance thing - I was only nine at the time, I didn't notice if it was faked, but Sansa was eleven, and she swore that the boy might be genuine, but the girl was pretending. At the end of the Games they were the last two, and they had some poisonous berries. They decided they were going to die together, and I remember the look in their eyes when they swallowed the berries. They thought Aerys needed a victor, that was their mistake. They thought he'd save them both so he'd have at least one. They were wrong. I think their names were Katniss and Peeta, or something like that, I really don't remember for sure.
The fact is, Aerys doesn't care about a victor. Some people say the royals engineer who wins, but I doubt it. Aerys II Targaryen, the Mad King, only cares about one thing: reminding the Districts of Westeros that he is the king, and we are powerless.