Larys Strong

Larys was the second son of Lord Lyonel Strong, lord of Harrenhal; he had an older brother, Harwin, and two sisters. When King Viserys I named his father Master of Laws in 105 AC, the family moved to King's Landing. While Harwin joined the City Watch, Larys was given a place among the king's confessors.

In 120 AC a fire at Harrenhal killed his father and brother, and Larys inherited the castle overnight. It was rumored — never proven — that he had set the blaze himself to claim the lordship. True or not, the rumor followed him for the rest of his life.

Soon after, Viserys named him Master of Whisperers and Confessor, posts that gave him access to secrets from half the realm. Larys said little in small council meetings; he preferred to listen, and when he did speak it was usually something that changed the direction of the conversation.

At Viserys's death, the small council chose to crown his son Aegon rather than recognize Princess Rhaenyra as queen. Larys barely spoke at that meeting; he only proposed that everyone present cut their palms and swear an oath of blood-brotherhood, and they did.

War reached Harrenhal quickly. Prince Daemon Targaryen took the castle almost without a fight, since much of Larys's garrison was in the capital. From King's Landing, Larys drew up a list of the lords who had attended Rhaenyra's coronation at Dragonstone; those names became targets for King Aegon and his new Hand, Ser Criston Cole.

When Rhaenyra took King's Landing in 130 AC, Larys vanished. Before he disappeared he had smuggled King Aegon and his children out of the Red Keep through its secret passages, splitting them up to make pursuit harder: one knight escorted Prince Maelor toward Oldtown, another took Princess Jaehaera toward Storm's End, and Aegon himself was sent in secret, aboard a fishing boat, to Dragonstone — the one place no one would think to look.

Hidden somewhere in the capital, Larys is thought to have kept working against Rhaenyra: he is credited with the rumor that Queen Helaena had been murdered, and with the hand behind the defection of the so-called Two Betrayers. He resurfaced when Ser Perkin and his men retook the Red Keep after Rhaenyra's flight, and was welcomed by the new king, Trystane Truefyre.

When the stormlander host closed in on King's Landing, Larys traveled with the dowager queen Alicent Hightower and Grand Maester Orwyle to negotiate a truce with Lord Borros Baratheon. The deal married Baratheon's eldest daughter to Aegon II and promised another, Floris, to Larys himself. At the same meeting he argued for sparing Lord Corlys Velaryon's life — old, in his view, and no longer a threat — in exchange for Velaryon support for Aegon II; winning Alicent over, since she held grudges, took more work than winning over Baratheon.

Once Aegon was back in the capital, Larys played both sides at once: he convinced the king to pardon Corlys so he could be dealt with later, while warning Corlys himself of the treachery closing in on him. Lord Baratheon's defeat at the Battle of the Kingsroad brought Aegon down — his men switched sides, his loyalists were killed, and the king himself was poisoned. No one doubted Larys was behind all of it.

The arrival of Lord Cregan Stark's northern army changed Larys's fortunes. Cregan, serving as Hand to the new king Aegon III during the Hour of the Wolf, had backed Rhaenyra, but would not accept Aegon II's poisoning going unpunished. Grand Maester Orwyle confessed to giving Larys the poison, and Ser Perkin admitted to acting as his agent. Unlike Corlys Velaryon, who admitted to conspiring, Larys would neither confirm nor deny the charges against him.

Cregan condemned both great lords, though Alysanne Blackwood talked him into pardoning Corlys. Most of those found guilty chose to take the black; Larys and Ser Gyles Belgrave of the Kingsguard chose death instead. With Larys's execution in 131 AC, House Strong died out.

Before he was beheaded, Larys asked that his clubfoot be cut from his body so he might at least be free of it in death, and Cregan agreed. His head was set on a spike by the walls of the Red Keep, his body given to the Silent Sisters, and his bones later returned to Harrenhal. The foot, though, disappeared before it could be buried — according to Mushroom, someone stole it and sold it to a sorcerer.