Lyonel Hightower

Lyonel was born in 115 AC, the eldest child Lord Ormund Hightower had with his first wife. Two brothers followed, Martyn and Garmund, and a sister, Bethany; their mother did not survive childbirth.

Years later, Lord Ormund remarried, this time to Samantha, the teenage daughter of Lord Donald Tarly, barely two years older than Lyonel. From the day she arrived in Oldtown to become his stepmother, Lyonel could not look away from her.

When the Dance of the Dragons broke out, House Hightower sided with Aegon II Targaryen, following the loyalty Lord Ormund had long held with the Greens. The war cost him dearly: in 130 AC Lord Ormund fell at the Battle of Ladera, and Lyonel suddenly inherited the title of Lord of the Hightower.

By the war's end, the throne had passed to Aegon III Targaryen and his regents, and among them Lord Corlys Velaryon sent Oldtown the terms under which the house was to submit. Lyonel's answer was to snatch the parchment from his maester's hands, tear it apart, and swear he would answer in the Sea Snake's own blood.

Despite the outburst, he ended up submitting: he broke his house's old ties to the Greens, swore loyalty to Aegon III, and returned the crown gold that Oldtown had been holding on its behalf. The chronicles disagree on why he yielded: some say Lady Samantha talked him into it, promising to marry him if he signed the new king's peace; others say Lord Hightower obeyed because his house answered to the Tyrells, who threatened to let his brother Garmund, then a ward at Highgarden, die if he raised an army.

Not long after swearing loyalty to the new king, Lyonel announced he wished to marry Samantha, his own father's widow, and the news shook the realm. The High Septon forbade the marriage as incestuous and ordered Lady Samantha to join the Silent Sisters as penance.

Not even the head of the Faith's condemnation could keep them apart. Lyonel gave up on marrying her, but not on Samantha herself: he kept her at his side for the next thirteen years, neither of them accepting the penance imposed on her.

In 131 AC, Lyonel and Samantha traveled to King's Landing at the head of forty Hightower men to pay homage to the new king and attend his coronation. Their affair was already common knowledge by then, and the scandal was such that the High Septon himself refused to travel with them, arriving three days later alongside Lords Redwyne, Costayne, and Beesbury; on the way back, he refused their company again.

The couple still could not marry, but that did not stop Lyonel's name from being floated as a possible husband for Lady Baela Targaryen. Nothing came of it: Baela ended up marrying Lord Alyn Velaryon instead.

When Lord Alyn Velaryon passed through Oldtown on his way to Lannisport and the Westerlands, Lyonel welcomed him warmly. The courtesy young Velaryon showed Lady Samantha won him Lyonel's affection at once, and the friendship that grew between them helped smooth over much of the old bitterness between Blacks and Greens. Lyonel pledged twenty warships to the cause, to which Lord Redwyne of the Arbor would add thirty more.

In 136 AC, Lyonel and Samantha rode to King's Landing at the head of six hundred bannermen to take part in the assembly of lords called to settle the regency of the still underage Aegon III.

The ban was only lifted once the Faith elected a new High Septon, who overturned his predecessor's ruling. Lyonel and Samantha could finally marry, after thirteen years of waiting without ever leaving each other's side.

The marriage produced six children.