Lyonel Strong

Before inheriting Harrenhal, Lyonel spent years at the Citadel, forging six links of a maester's chain without ever finishing it: life behind those walls simply did not suit him. What he carried away from those years was a grasp of the laws of the Seven Kingdoms that few lords could match.

In time he inherited the lordship of Harrenhal, already under the reign of Jaehaerys I Targaryen. Over the course of his life he was widowed three times, burying as many wives before the court ever called him to greater matters.

Those who only knew him from afar took him for a blunt man: heavyset, bald, sparing with words, with a name as a fighter. Those who dealt with him daily knew that silence hid a cold head and a formidable memory for the law.

In 105 AC King Viserys I called him to court to fill the seat of Master of Laws, left empty since his own brother, Prince Daemon Targaryen, had held it. Lyonel did not come alone: he brought his two daughters, who entered Princess Rhaenyra's service as handmaidens, and his two sons, Harwin, who went on to captain the Gold Cloaks, and Larys, who became one of the king's confessors.

Four years later, in 109 AC, the king's own father-in-law, Ser Otto Hightower, fell from grace for pressing Viserys to name as heir the son he had with Queen Alicent Hightower, Otto's own daughter. Fed up, the king stripped him of the Handship and gave the pin to Lyonel instead.

In 111 AC a rumor called Princess Rhaenyra's honor into question, tying her to Daemon and to the knight Criston Cole. Lyonel, a man for harsh remedies, urged Viserys to execute his brother for treason; it was Septon Eustace who talked the council out of it, and Daemon was exiled rather than killed.

With the scandal settled, the court turned to finding Rhaenyra a husband. When Alicent put forward her own son Aegon, Viserys refused outright, and told Lyonel in private why: the boy carried Alicent's blood, and she wanted him on the throne.

In 120 AC Ser Harwin Strong was removed from his post as Rhaenyra's sworn shield. Lyonel left court to return with his son to Harrenhal.

There the two of them, father and son, died in a fire that tore through part of the castle. The official word called it an accident, blamed on the old curse said to hang over Harrenhal.

Not everyone accepted that account: fingers were pointed, without firm proof, at Daemon Targaryen, at Corlys Velaryon, at the king himself, and at Larys Strong, the son who was left holding Harrenhal after his father's and brother's deaths.