Gregor Clegane

Gregor was twelve when he found his younger brother playing with a toy he himself had thrown away. Sandor was not yet eight. Gregor pressed his face into a lit brazier and held it there until the fire had ruined half of it.

Their father later said the boy had been burned by a bed catching fire, and no one in Westeros contradicted him in public. Gregor was knighted four years afterward, by the hand of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen himself.

At seventeen, already a knight, Gregor marched under Lord Tywin Lannister to the gates of King's Landing, where the Lannister army entered the city it claimed to be defending as though it were the enemy.

He carried out an order no one else would: he killed Prince Rhaegar's infant son by smashing his head against a wall, then turned on Rhaegar's wife, Princess Elia Martell, whom he murdered after a brutal assault. For years afterward, rumor held — never fully confirmed — that he had also killed his own father, his sisters, and his first two wives.

At the tourney Robert Baratheon holds to honor his new Hand, Gregor kills Ser Hugh of the Vale in the joust and unhorses Ser Balon Swann. When Ser Loras Tyrell rides a mare in heat that drives his stallion wild and throws him, Gregor beheads the horse with one stroke of his greatsword and goes after Loras with his blade raised.

Only his own brother Sandor stops the joust from ending in a corpse, and only the king's direct order makes Gregor stand down.

When Catelyn Tully takes Tyrion Lannister prisoner, Tywin answers by sending Gregor to burn a path through the Trident to draw Eddard Stark out. Wounded, Eddard sends Lord Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr in his place to bring Gregor to the king's justice; their party is cut down at Mummer's Ford.

Gregor then leads the vanguard of Tywin's army at the Battle of the Green Fork and clears the retreat road to Harrenhal.

On Tywin's orders, Gregor turns the Riverlands into wasteland. His band takes Castle Darry, where he kills the boy Lord Lyman Darry, only eight years old, then burns Stone Hedge to the ground, torching its fields and sparing none of its people.

During that campaign he captures, without recognizing her, Arya Stark along with Hot Pie and Gendry, and carries them off to Harrenhal. Soon after he marches out with the bulk of Tywin's army and leads the vanguard at Stone Mill, where Edmure Tully forces him back.

Tywin sends him to cut off the northern army's retreat at Duskendale, where he takes several lords hostage, Wylis Manderly among them, then seizes the Ruby Ford. Like everyone else, he searches the Riverlands for Jaime Lannister and finds nothing.

On Tywin's orders he retakes Harrenhal from Vargo Hoat and puts the castle to the sword. He does not kill Hoat quickly: he cuts off his limbs one by one and forces him to eat them before finishing him, then feeds that same flesh to the northern captives.

When Tyrion Lannister demands trial by combat to answer for Joffrey's death, Queen Cersei names Gregor her champion against Prince Oberyn Martell, who fights for Tyrion.

Oberyn wounds him badly and brings him down, but Gregor reaches him before falling and kills him with his bare hands. Before he dies, Oberyn forces a confession out of him about what he did to Elia Martell years before. The spear that wounded him had been poisoned.

The poison does not kill him quickly: the wound rots, his blood turns black, and leeches die the moment they touch him. Cersei hands his body over to Qyburn, a maester expelled from the Citadel, who asks leave to experiment on him while he lingers.

A huge skull said to be his later reaches Sunspear, where Doran and Arianne Martell receive it along with the Sand Snakes as payment for Elia, Aegon, and Oberyn; Obara Sand doubts it is truly Gregor's. In King's Landing, meanwhile, talk begins of a new white-armored knight, immensely tall and silent, whom no one recalls seeing sworn into the Kingsguard.