Otto Hightower

Otto Hightower's appointment as Hand of the King grew out of tragedy. In 101 AC, Prince Baelon, the King's heir and sitting Hand, died unexpectedly, and King Jaehaerys I — already worn down by earlier losses — chose Otto, the younger brother of the Lord of Oldtown, for his steadiness and grasp of statecraft. Otto brought his family with him to the capital.

Jaehaerys spent his last years bedridden, and it was Otto who carried the weight of ruling while his daughter Alicent tended to the Old King in his final days. When Viserys I inherited the throne he kept Otto in the post, though the new king was happy to leave him the least pleasant parts of governing.

No one questioned Otto's loyalty, but his temper was another matter — proud and curt, and his hold over the king grew alongside the court's mistrust of him. His fiercest rival was the king's brother, Prince Daemon; Otto pushed Viserys to strip him of his seat on the Small Council, and had him named commander of the City Watch instead, a move he came to regret once two thousand gold cloaks answered to his rival.

Otto feared Daemon might become a second tyrant if he ever took the Iron Throne, and began urging Viserys to name his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra, as heir. The king refused, still hoping his wife would yet give him a son.

Queen Aemma's death in childbirth reshaped the court: Viserys named his daughter Rhaenyra his heir, but a year later, in 106 AC, he took Otto's eighteen-year-old daughter Alicent as his new wife. Some at court whispered that the Hand had turned the king's grief to his own advantage, though nothing was ever proven.

In 107 AC Otto became a grandfather with the birth of Aegon, the first of four children Alicent bore Viserys. From then on he pressed the king to reconsider the succession and set one of his grandsons ahead of Rhaenyra, but Viserys held his ground.

The pressure went too far. In 109 AC the king dismissed Otto as Hand for refusing to let the matter of the succession rest, and with no place left at court, Otto returned to Oldtown. Alicent stayed behind in King's Landing at the head of her children's supporters, soon known as the Greens.

Eleven years after his fall, the death of Lord Lyonel Strong in the burning of Harrenhal, in 120 AC, brought Otto back to the center of power: Grand Maester Mellos suggested a younger man for the post, but Viserys preferred someone familiar, and Otto returned to King's Landing as Hand. At court, the gap between the Greens, loyal to Alicent, and the Blacks, who backed Rhaenyra, kept widening.

On the first day of 127 AC, a feast to celebrate the king's recovered health brought both sides together in a show of peace: Rhaenyra and Alicent wore each other's colors, and even Daemon raised a toast to Otto's years of loyal service. The truce didn't outlast the king's own departure from his banquet.

Over the last decade of the reign, Otto filled the Small Council with his own men until it was made up mostly of Greens; Ser Criston Cole, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, was already one of them. By the second month of 129 AC, a king too ill to rule left nearly everything in his Hand's care.

When Viserys died, Otto played a decisive part in the hurried coronation of his grandson Aegon, setting aside the king's last wish that Rhaenyra succeed him.

With Aegon II on the throne, Otto took up the Handship again and moved quickly: he had Lord Lyman Beesbury thrown into the black cells and put his own son, Ser Gwayne Hightower, in command of the gold cloaks under Ser Luthor Largent, tasked with watching for any sign of disloyalty to the new king.

Otto spent much of his effort courting allies beyond the capital. House Greyjoy turned down his offer of the Sea Lordship and a council seat, choosing instead the Blacks' offer to raid the Lannisters. With House Baratheon, his approach worked: he sent his grandson Aemond to ask for the hand of one of Lord Borros's daughters.

Aemond's journey ended in tragedy: along the way he killed Lucerys Velaryon, Rhaenyra's second son, and with that death war stopped being a possibility and became a certainty. The answer came swiftly — Prince Daemon ordered the killing of one of Otto's own great-grandsons, young Prince Jaehaerys, in payment for Lucerys's life.

After Lucerys's death, Otto threw himself deeper into the war effort: he hired sellswords, strengthened King's Landing's defenses, and sought allies wherever he could find them. He sent word to Dorne, banking on the old enmity between House Martell and Daemon, but Prince Qoren Martell refused to take a side.

The ravens Otto sent to Bridgewater, Riverrun, White Harbor, Gulltown, and Winterfell mostly came back with refusals: most great houses leaned toward Rhaenyra, the Vale among them, through her mother's Arryn blood. Riverrun chose to stay out of the fight entirely, while Prince Jacaerys Velaryon won the Blacks the support of the Three Sisters and the North.

Aegon II began to see fumbling where he'd once seen skill, especially once Daemon took Harrenhal and several riverland houses turned to the Blacks, and the Tyrells — whom Otto had counted as certain — declared neutrality in the Reach. Otto asked his nephew Ormund Hightower to put down those rebellions, and looked for a fleet of his own among Lord Corlys Velaryon's enemies to break the Velaryon blockade choking the capital.

Aegon's patience ran out before those efforts bore fruit, and he replaced his grandfather with Ser Criston Cole as Hand, despite Queen Alicent's pleas. The fleet Otto had gone looking for arrived only after his fall, and with it the Greens' victory at the Battle of the Gullet.

When Rhaenyra's army reached the gates of the capital, Otto and his daughter Queen Alicent tried to organize its defense, but the City Watch turned on them — the gold cloaks defected to Daemon's side and killed Ser Gwayne, Otto's son, before throwing the gates open to the Blacks.

Otto was the first to pay for the defeat. With King's Landing hers, Rhaenyra had him accused of treason and put to death.

When the war ended, it was Rhaenyra and Daemon's son, young Aegon, who took the Iron Throne as Aegon III — and everything Otto had worked to secure for his own blood came to nothing.