Renly Baratheon

Renly is born in the year 277, the third and last child of Lord Steffon Baratheon and Lady Cassana Estermont. His two brothers, Robert and Stannis, are years older, and he will remain the youngest of the three for the rest of his life.

When the war later known as Robert's Rebellion breaks out, Renly is barely more than a boy, and those around him keep him well away from anyone who might think to seize him as a hostage. He is shut inside Storm's End through the siege the castle endures, and what he remembers from those months is a starving garrison holding on with next to nothing left.

Once Robert takes the Iron Throne, he hands out the family's seats without much regard for custom: instead of giving Storm's End, the ancestral home of House Baratheon, to Stannis, the elder, he gives it to Renly. Stannis takes it as an insult, even though Dragonstone, the seat tradition sets aside for the heir, holds less land and less wealth than the one his younger brother now rules.

The upshot is that Renly, still barely more than a boy, wields more real power than Stannis, who is left holding only the title. At sixteen he travels through the Stormlands and reaches Tarth, where he dances with the daughter of the house, Brienne. He is also said to have visited Sunspear, where Princess Arianne Martell set out to win him over and failed.

During his years as Lord of Storm's End, Renly takes Loras Tyrell on as his squire, and between the two of them grows a bond that reaches well past sword drills. It is never said outright, but the court takes it as understood that Renly and Loras are lovers, and more than one tongue wags about it quietly.

In time Robert calls him to his small council as Master of Laws, and Renly settles in King's Landing. He leaves the castle in the hands of his castellan, Ser Cortnay Penrose, who is also raising Edric Storm, Robert's bastard son. In the capital, a woman named Brella enters his service.

When Robert's retinue returns from Winterfell, Renly rides out to meet them alongside Ser Barristan Selmy and the king's executioner, Ilyn Payne. Joffrey's accusations against Nymeria, Arya Stark's direwolf, strike him as so funny that he has to leave the hall, picturing the prince disarmed by a little girl.

He enters the Hand's tourney and loses to Sandor Clegane, though it costs him nothing in popularity — the smallfolk adore his looks and his easy charm. He shows Eddard Stark a portrait of Margaery Tyrell and asks whether she resembles Lyanna; a bewildered Eddard tells him there is no resemblance at all. Together with Loras, Renly is weighing whether to push Robert toward taking Margaery as a mistress, on the theory that any hint of Lyanna in her would smooth the way.

He rides along on the hunt that will leave his brother mortally wounded. With Robert dying, he goes to Eddard Stark and urges him to move first and seize the throne before Cersei Lannister can. Eddard refuses, and Renly, with no one behind him, leaves the city.

With Robert dead, Renly wastes no time: he wins over the whole of House Tyrell, seals a marriage to Margaery, and manages it without breaking off what he has with Loras. It is at Highgarden that he is crowned, and from there he declares himself King of the Seven Kingdoms, ahead of his own brother Stannis, whose claim by blood comes first.

He raises a personal guard to match his new title, the Rainbow Guard, an overdressed mirror of the Kingsguard. He gathers a large army on the strength of his charm and the ties he already holds with the lords of the Stormlands.

Rather than moving straight against his rivals, Renly takes his time: he marches slowly south, picking up swords and oaths while the Lannisters and the Starks bleed each other in the Riverlands. Along the way he stages tourneys to keep his people entertained.

Robb Stark, already proclaimed King in the North, sends his mother Catelyn Tully to Bitterbridge to feel out an alliance against Tywin Lannister, dug in at Harrenhal. Renly offers to let Robb keep his title, but will not accept the North breaking away from the Seven Kingdoms.

When Stannis, also crowned king on his own account, lays siege to Storm's End, Renly has no choice but to abandon his court at Bitterbridge and head back to his family's stronghold. Catelyn Tully mediates a meeting between the two brothers, but neither gives ground on his claim to the throne, and the talk ends in a personal standoff. Renly, unbothered, eats a peach and offers it to Stannis, who takes it as mockery and rides off with nothing settled.

The night before the battle, a shadow born of Melisandre's sorcery slips into Renly's tent and kills him. Only Catelyn Tully and Brienne Tarth are there when it happens.

Weeks later, at the Battle of Blackwater, Garlan Tyrell, Loras's brother, dons Renly's armor so that Stannis's men will believe his ghost has come back for revenge.

At the wedding feast of Joffrey and Margaery, the singer Hamish the Harper performs a song about Renly: it tells how his ghost, repenting of having coveted his nephew's throne, came back to defend the realm from Stannis before returning to Highgarden for one last look at the face of the one he loved most. The song brings Margaery to tears.

Later, Loras admits to Jaime Lannister that he buried Renly somewhere only the two of them knew from his days as a squire at Storm's End, so that no one else could find him or disturb his rest.