Benjicot Blackwood

When House Blackwood chose to back Rhaenyra Targaryen in the war that split the realm in two, Ben was barely eleven and had no lands to govern. It was his father's death that put him at the head of Árbol de los Cuervos: Lord Samwell Blackwood fell in single combat against Ser Amos Bracken during the battle of Molino Quemado, and the boy inherited the lordship without choosing the moment.

The Blackwood men of the Tridente found themselves answering to a thin, quietly mannered boy who, by the accounts of those who knew him, turned into someone else entirely once he had his armor on.

At the battle of the lakeshore, the men of the north and of the Tierras de los Ríos beat back the westermen, but the cost of that victory left Ben in tears before the piles of dead left on the field.

Not long after, Prince Aemond Targaryen began burning riverland villages from atop Vhagar. Lord Blackwood asked Rhaenyra to send her own dragons to stop him, but his call went unanswered.

Weeks later, Ben joined Addam Velaryon's march on Ladera and commanded the center of that army. There he saw up close something few men ever witnessed: the dragons Vermithor, Bruma and Tessarion clashing in the sky, a scene he would recount decades later to Maester Munkun.

Once the fighting ended, he ordered one of his archers, Billy Burley, to put the dying Tessarion out of its pain. Back at Árbol de los Cuervos he also carried the body of Addam Velaryon, killed in that same battle, and buried him on his own lands.

Toward the end of the war, Aegon II decided to punish the riverlord who had not sworn him fealty, and Ben joined forces with Lord Elmo Tully to meet him at the battle of the Camino Real. The riverlands men came out from among the trees and broke the flank of Lord Borros Baratheon's army.

At thirteen, Ben already had a reputation as a hardened fighter, and that victory over the stormlanders earned him the name he would be remembered by, Ben the Bloody. He was marching with his men toward Desembarco del Rey to lay siege to the city when word came that Aegon II himself had been poisoned and killed by his own men.

Ben and his aunt Aly took the king's death badly: to them, poison was a coward's weapon, not a warrior's. At Desembarco del Rey, while Aegon III's coronation was being prepared and the council of regents took shape, Ben formed a close friendship with Lord Kermit Tully and his brother Ser Oscar; the three of them became known as the Boys.

When he finally returned to Árbol de los Cuervos with his aunt, a thousand northmen that Lord Cregan Stark had brought south escorted them home. His name came up among the possible suitors for Lady Baela Targaryen, the king's half-sister, though the match never went through.

In 132 AC he traveled to Invernalia for his aunt Alysanne's wedding to Lord Cregan Stark. Since the journey fell in the depths of winter, it took three times as long as planned, and outlaws stole every wedding gift they carried along the way.

The following year Queen Jaehaera Targaryen died, and Lord Unwin Peake, Hand of the King, secretly married Aegon III to his own daughter Myrielle. When the match came to light, many lords protested, and Ben was among those who argued the king should have been given at least half a year to mourn his queen before being remarried.

In 134 AC he brought a thousand of his own men to Ser Robert Rowan's expedition to the Valle de Arryn, where a succession dispute had broken out. When the clans of the Montañas de la Luna killed Ser Robert along the way, Ben, who had not even come of age, was left in command of the army. Together with Lord Alyn Velaryon he managed to restore order in the Valle and force the remaining claimants to swear vassalage to Lord Joffrey Arryn.

Two years later, in 136 AC, his name was floated for the office of Hand of the King, but he was passed over as still too young.

Ben lived on for many more years. In 138 AC he allowed Lord Alyn Velaryon to take the bones of his brother Addam, which had been kept at Árbol de los Cuervos since the second battle of Ladera; Alyn carried them to Marcaderiva to be laid to rest at Casco.