Quellon Greyjoy

Before he ever sat the Seastone Chair, Quellon built a name for himself as a fighter, hunting corsairs and slavers across the Summer Sea with his longships.

A shakier tradition holds that his men fell on Lord Farman's fleet and put Faircastle to the torch, taking advantage of how loosely Tytos Lannister held the Westerlands together.

He also brought a hundred ships to the War of the Ninepenny Kings, one of the last times the ironborn threw themselves wholesale into someone else's war, before Quellon changed course.

Once he held the Seastone Chair, Quellon set out to pull his people away from their harshest habits. He forbade turning war captives into thralls, though the order never quite stuck, and banned reaving except when he himself gave the word.

He taxed those who still kept salt wives and pushed his own toward marriages with mainland houses, taking a third wife of his own from House Piper. He also opened the Iron Islands to maesters, so they could teach his people and tend their sick.

Maester Yandel once wrote that no Greyjoy had ruled the Seastone Chair with such a level head since Lord Vickon Greyjoy. As Lord Reaper of the Iron Islands, Quellon stayed loyal to the Iron Throne, and few dared cross him: he was stubborn and could turn fearsome when angered, growing more careful still as the years passed.

He cut an imposing figure — some six and a half feet tall, said to be strong as a bull and quick as a cat.

Quellon married three times and fathered nine children, only four of whom lived to see adulthood. His first wife, of House Stonetree, bore Harlon, Quenton and Donel, none of whom survived childhood. His second wife, of House Sunderly, gave him Balon, Euron, Victarion, Urrigon and Aeron; all of them grew up except Urrigon. His third wife, of House Piper, bore Robin, who also died as a boy.

He lived to see his grandchildren born: his daughter-in-law Alannys Harlaw, wed to Balon, gave him Rodrik as his first grandson, with Maron, Asha and Theon following. Victarion married more than once and had nothing to show for it but a stillborn daughter, while Euron gave him bastard grandchildren scattered across the world, born of whores and salt wives, in spite of everything Quellon had forbidden.

Quellon's health began to fail during Robert's Rebellion, and it was only after the Battle of the Trident that his elder sons talked him into joining the war against House Targaryen. He led fifty longships against the Reach and kept the bulk of his fleet at home in the Iron Islands, in case House Lannister, still sitting on the fence, chose to come out for King Aerys after all.

He died at sea, at the Battle of the Mander, off the Shield Islands, and with his death the ironborn's part in that war was reduced to next to nothing.