House Bar Emmon of Sharp Point is a small Andal house seated on the cape that thrusts out into the narrow sea where Blackwater Bay meets the open water. Their founder Togarion, an Andal warlord of the long invasion, carved out a petty kingdom on those windswept downs and warred for most of his days against the more powerful Darklyn kings of Duskendale, who held the harbour and the trade his road would have needed. The blue swordfish has flown over Sharp Point ever since, though it has never overleapt the storm-walls of its neighbours.
When Aegon the Dragon crossed from Dragonstone to forge the Seven Kingdoms, the Bar Emmons broke with their nominal liege Argilac the Arrogant, last of the Storm Kings, and bent the knee to House Targaryen with such other small lords of the Blackwater as could be persuaded. For the breaking of their old oaths they were spared the dragonfire and confirmed in their seat: when the crownlands were carved out of the stormlands and the riverlands after the Conquest, Sharp Point passed under the dragon banner of Dragonstone, and the Bar Emmons have answered to the master of that island ever since. In the year A Game of Thrones opens, that master is Lord Stannis Baratheon, and Lord Duram Bar Emmon is a feeble boy too young to bear his own steel.