Borros Baratheon

In 129 AC, at the start of the war between Rhaenyra and her half-brother Aegon, both sides sought to win Storm's End over. Prince Aemond arrived first, hoping to bind Lord Borros through the marriage of one of his four daughters, born of his wife Elenda Caron and known together as the Four Storms. Borros received him with feasts, hunts and jousts, and showed himself more than willing to hand over whichever daughter the prince preferred.

While the two men were still haggling over dates and dowry, Prince Lucerys arrived at the castle on his mother's behalf. Accounts differ on how Borros took the surprise: some say he felt flattered to have both a king and a queen courting his favor, others that he was ashamed, and others that he was drunk or afraid. Having never learned to read, he had his maester open the letter and whisper its contents to him.

Borros then asked Lucerys whether, if he backed Rhaenyra, the prince himself would marry one of his daughters. Lucerys answered that he was already betrothed to his cousin, and Borros sent him off with a line that spread across the realm afterward: "Go home, puppy, and tell your mother the whore that the lord of Storm's End is no dog to be set against her enemies whenever it pleases her." As Lucerys turned to leave, Aemond challenged him to a duel, but Borros would not allow the fight under his own roof, arguing the boy had come only as a messenger.

During the Dance, Borros kept his distance from the dragons. When King's Landing fell to the Blacks, he called his bannermen and gathered close to six thousand men at Storm's End. Instead of marching on the capital, he took his army south, citing fresh Dornish raids by a claimant to the title of Vulture King.

Even so, when Ser Willis Fell reached Storm's End with the young princess Jaehaera Targaryen, Borros gave shelter to them both.

In 130 AC, on learning of Rhaenyra's death, Borros left his four daughters and pregnant wife behind and marched north through the Kingswood, with six hundred knights and four thousand foot soldiers. When his forces came within sight of the Red Keep, Lord Larys Strong rode out to parley with him in a pavilion set at the edge of the wood, while Borros's men felled trees to raft the river.

After deliberating, Borros, Larys and Queen Alicent Hightower struck a bargain before Grand Maester Orwyle: King Aegon II would take Cassandra as his wife, and Floris would be promised to Larys Strong.

With the pact sealed, Borros entered King's Landing with almost no resistance and set at once to restoring order in the capital: he stormed Visenya's Hill and seized King Gaemon, his mother and his court, and the following night did the same on Rhaenys's Hill, taking the Shepherd.

For the rest of the year, Borros served as an advisor to Aegon II and kept order in the capital, his men guarding the gates and walls. The king then sent him to the lands of Houses Rosby, Hayford and Stokeworth to punish them for having sheltered Rhaenyra during her flight to Dragonstone.

Borros took hostages from each family, and did not return them until sizeable ransoms were paid.

Near the war's end, word reached King's Landing that new Black armies were gathering to crown Rhaenyra's last surviving son, Aegon the Younger. Borros swore to crush them in the field and led the Green army against the forces of Lord Kermit Tully.

Certain that so young a commander posed no real threat, he led the cavalry charge himself, but Alysanne's archers broke it before it reached the enemy's shield wall. That wall very nearly gave when the northern infantry arrived, but held until Lord Benjicot Blackwood's men broke through the Baratheon flank. When Borros tried to pull back, the reserve troops, levies drawn from the Crownlands, turned on him and struck from behind.

Even so he would not yield: he killed twelve knights and Lord Darry before Lord Kermit, seeing him badly wounded, urged him to lay down his arms. Borros answered, "I would sooner dance in hell than wear your chains," and charged straight at him. Tully met him with his morningstar, which struck him full in the face. Borros died in the mud of the Kingsroad, sword still in hand.

Seven days later, his wife gave birth to a son. Borros had asked that, if it was a boy, he be named Aegon in the king's honor, but Lady Elenda chose to honor her own father instead and named him Royce.