Edric Storm

The story of how he came into the world isn't a flattering one. On the night Stannis married Selyse, Robert and Delena Florent lay together in the newlyweds' own marriage bed while the couple was still dancing downstairs in the hall. Stannis took it as a direct insult to his honor. Robert apologized publicly, but once the boy was born, it was Stannis who decided his fate: he sent him away, to Storm's End, under the care of his other brother, Renly. Because Delena came from noble stock, Robert didn't hesitate to acknowledge the boy as his own.

Renly, busy with his own affairs, left most of the boy's upbringing to his castellan, Ser Cortnay Penrose, and to the castle's maesters and arms masters. Every name day brought a gift from his father: a pony one year, an ermine cloak the next, and once even a miniature warhammer modeled on the one Robert carried into battle. The boy wrote back with thank-you letters that reached King's Landing, and the king read them laughing, then asked Varys what on earth he'd sent this time.

Despite the distance, Robert made the trip to Storm's End for a few days most years. On those visits he taught the boy swordplay, and father and son trained together, brief as those spells were.

When Eddard Stark meets Gendry, the armorer's apprentice in King's Landing, he can't help thinking of the other children Robert scattered across the realm: Mya Stone, in the Vale, and this other boy, Edric, about whom he knows almost nothing.

In a private conversation, Ned asks Petyr Baelish what he knows of the king's bastards. Baelish can offer only two names: the boy at Storm's End, and a pair of twins born at Casterly Rock whom, he claims, Queen Cersei had put to death.

Once Stannis proclaims himself king, he decides to turn his nephew into a political weapon: if Edric plainly carries the Baratheon look while Cersei's children show none of it, that alone proves to the realm that Joffrey and his siblings were fathered by Jaime Lannister, not Robert.

To get his hands on the boy, Stannis lays siege to Storm's End. Ser Cortnay Penrose holds out week after week, not out of loyalty to any cause but out of sheer dread of what Stannis might do to the boy once the castle fell. It falls anyway.

Stannis takes Edric with him, this time to Dragonstone. There the boy finds someone his own age and his own blood: his cousin Shireen, Stannis's daughter, with whom he quickly becomes friends.

At Dragonstone, everyone agrees on one thing: Edric has his father's stubborn, affable temperament, with a charm that wins him friends without his even trying. He shares lessons with Maester Pylos alongside Shireen and Devan Seaworth, Ser Davos's son, and grows close to both. Even Stannis admits as much to Davos, remarking that the boy has a gift he gets from his father and carries in his blood — that he knows he's a king's son but would rather forget he's a bastard, and that he adores Robert the way Renly once did as a child.

He's drawn to the idea of following in Robert's footsteps: he trains with weapons every day he can, devours books on the history of Westeros, and declares himself devoted to the Warrior, a faith he refuses to give up even as the island tries to win him over to the worship of R'hllor. He won't pray to the Lord of Light, he says — he's a Warrior's man, like his father.

Playing with Shireen and the fool Caramanchada in Aegon's Garden, Edric runs into Ser Davos Seaworth, and also witnesses his great-uncle, Ser Axell Florent, arrest the Onion Knight on a charge of plotting to kill Melisandre.

Melisandre asks Stannis for something far darker: to sacrifice Edric, convinced that a king's blood would be enough to wake the stone dragons and hand him victory in his war. Stannis refuses.

Davos doesn't trust that refusal to hold. Afraid Stannis might eventually give in, he secretly arranges the boy's escape, having him smuggled aboard the Lysene galley Loco Prendos by night, bound for the Free Cities. He names Ser Andrew Estermont, Edric's cousin, as the boy's guardian, and sends Ser Gerald Gower, Ser Triston of Colina Cuenta, Lewys the Fishwife, and Omer Blackberry along as his protectors.

Melisandre warns Davos that hiding the boy changes nothing — that when the Long Night falls, Edric will die like everyone else, wherever he is, and Davos's own sons will die along with him.

The last trace of Edric places him out at sea, crossing the Narrow Sea aboard the Loco Prendos, still under the watch of the men Davos put in charge of him.

The next time word of him surfaces, the ship has already reached its destination: he remains hidden in the free city of Lys, with Ser Andrew Estermont and the rest of his escort making sure no one finds him.