“If my father,” said the King, “killed the Queen of Orkney’s father, then I think she has a good reason for wanting her husband to rebel against me.”
T. H. White, The Queen of Air and Darkness
Keeping track of who this or that NPC was is hard, so my solution is a 2 foot by 2 foot1 relationship map.
Each player house and major NPC house gets one of the 16 shields2 representing involvement in the situation3. When there’s a meaningful connection between two houses, the line between them can be drawn in, and a description added. As that changed (from actions in the adventures or during the winter) you could try to adjust the relationships (including between other houses - mend a fight that you were getting stuck in the middle of, or break up an alliance that threatens you).
Each coat of arms has a small circle at the top to clarify what the colors/design of their Presence is, so you can find them on The Map.
I think the basic one-line descriptions would be something like:
- Friend
- Marriage Alliances
- Liege/Vassal
- Rival
- Feud/Enemy but additional details could be marked as well.
Footnotes
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i.e. this is a pretty big sheet meant to be in the middle of the table for everyone to look at and comment on at once. ↩
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The smaller shields are like wormholes for indicating connections that would have to wrap around the page or otherwise get blocked - think of them as “wormholes” making it easier to draw the links. ↩
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While I think you start with one (and don’t need to populate all families in advance), I could see needing new ones over time as certain families faded out of relevance and players started pushing into other spheres of interest. This is more ephemeral than The Map ↩