Daughter of House Blackwood of Raventree Hall, sister of Lord Benjicot Blackwood, and the most quietly powerful figure of the early regency of Aegon III. Black Aly had ridden with the Winter Wolves down from Winterfell during the Dance of the Dragons, fought through the Battle by the Lakeshore and Tumbleton at her brother's side, and was at King's Landing when Cregan Stark held the city as Hand of the King for a single day. On the second day of the Hour of the Wolf, when Cregan had ridden the murderers of Aegon II to the block, she offered her own hand in marriage in exchange for Lord Corlys Velaryon's life; the bargain was struck on the steps of the Iron Throne, and she rode north as Lady of Winterfell that same week.
She was Cregan's second wife and bore him four daughters: Sarra, Alys, Raya, and Myriah. After her marriage she remained at Winterfell, where for thirty years she was the chief of Cregan's council and the keenest of his judges of men; the maesters of the Citadel who saw her in old age wrote that the Old Man of the North leaned more on Black Aly than on any sword in his hall. She outlived him by no great span, and the daughters she gave him would, with the Pact of Ice and Fire, draw the Starks toward the Targaryens for the rest of the century.