Beric Dondarrion

In 294 AC Beric becomes betrothed to Allyria Dayne, the younger sister of the lord of Starfall. The engagement brings a seven-year-old boy to Blackhaven: Edric Dayne, Allyria's nephew, who arrives as Beric's page.

Three years later Beric names him his squire, tying the boy's fate to his own long before any war begins.

Beric travels to King's Landing for the tournament held in honour of the new Hand of the King, and loses his match against Thoros of Myr. Soon after, Eddard Stark, who holds that office, puts him at the head of a party ordered to bring Ser Gregor Clegane to justice, a knight who has been laying waste to the Riverlands on Lord Tywin Lannister's orders.

Beric's column is ambushed by Clegane at the Mummer's Ford. His squire Edric Dayne stands between them, but it isn't enough: Beric dies for the first time at Gregor Clegane's hands. While Robb Stark fights his own war against the Lannisters near the Trident, what's left of Beric's party turns to raiding the enemy's supply trains.

Thoros of Myr, a priest of R'hllor, brings him back with the rite they call the last kiss. It won't be the only time. Each return drains a little more of his memory, and out of the scattered survivors of the ambush grows the Brotherhood without Banners, which Beric ends up leading in a guerrilla war against the Lannister forces.

Lannister forces capture Beric and hang him; he's cut down before the rope finishes the job. It isn't the last time he dies: Ser Burton Crakehall caves in his skull with a mace, Ser Amory Lorch hangs him at Rushing Falls, and Gregor Clegane finishes it with a dagger through his eye.

None of it slows his band down, which keeps pounding Tywin Lannister's columns around the God's Eye, while Clegane's men hunt for him without success. Word spreads that Beric has vanished, or that he's dead.

The Brotherhood grows as it passes through villages the Lannisters have burned, paying for what it takes instead of stealing it. The smallfolk start returning the favour, and that mutual protection is what holds the band together when no one would bet on its leader anymore.

Members of the Brotherhood capture Arya Stark, Gendry and Sandor Clegane and bring them before Beric, who is moving through the Riverlands while some of his men dress as him to spread the idea that the Lightning Lord could be anywhere.

They're taken to the Hollow Hill, where Beric shows his faith in the Lord of Light in front of them for the first time. He faces Sandor Clegane in a trial by combat, lighting his sword with his own blood. Sandor's fear of fire doesn't stop him falling to the blade, but Thoros brings him back once again.

The truth of what happened at the Mummer's Ford comes out: Edric Dayne, along with another companion named Gergen, shielded a badly wounded Beric and got him away, but he still died that same night in a stand of trees before Thoros could revive him. Since then Beric has led a band of outlaws again and again, one who invokes the memory of the dead king, and every new death leaves him with a little less body and a little less memory.

When Lady Catelyn Tully's body is pulled from the river by the direwolf Nymeria, Thoros refuses to perform the rite again. It's Beric who kisses her, and with that act he passes his own life into hers.

It isn't clear exactly when Lord Beric's final death catches up with him. All that's known is what Thoros of Myr later confides to Brienne of Tarth: that it happened some time after Catelyn Tully got her life back.