Robert Arryn

Robert was born in the year 292, in King's Landing, the only child of Jon Arryn and Lysa Tully. His parents named him after the king Jon had helped put on the throne.

Life at court was unkind to him: Prince Joffrey took pleasure in humiliating him and once struck him with a wooden sword. He was barely six when his mother took him out of the capital and brought him to the Vale, the Arryn homeland.

Jon Arryn's death made Robert, still a child, Lord of the Eyrie. His father had planned to send him as a ward to Dragonstone, under Stannis Baratheon, but died before it could be arranged.

Lord Tywin Lannister then offered to foster him, something no one recalled him ever doing before, and many read it as a way to hold the boy hostage. The king was ready to accept, but Lysa did not wait for his decision: she fled with Robert to the Vale before anyone could take him.

The king then gave the title of Warden of the East, traditionally held by the Arryns, to Ser Jaime Lannister. The lords of the Vale took it as an insult and proclaimed Robert the true Warden themselves. Lysa ruled in his name as regent, but did little to prepare him for the role he would one day have to fill.

It was Robert himself who presided over Tyrion Lannister's trial for the attack on Bran Stark, and who flew into a rage when his mother's champion fell to Bronn: he wanted to see Tyrion fly out the Moon Door. His aunt Catelyn offered to host the boy for a time at Winterfell; Lysa refused.

Lysa repeated to anyone who would listen what she said had been Jon Arryn's dying words about his son: "The seed is strong." She said it almost like a guarantee.

Tywin Lannister, then Hand of the King, granted Robert the title of Warden of the East in exchange for Lysa marrying Petyr Baelish and swearing loyalty to the Iron Throne.

Lysa began to dream of marrying Robert to Sansa Stark, who was living at the Eyrie under the false name Alayne; she thought it would leave her son ruling both the Vale and the North.

One day Robert used a doll to smash a snow castle Alayne had built in the shape of Winterfell. When she tried to take the doll back, the boy had one of his fits and Maester Colemon had to carry him off.

Not long after, in the middle of an argument between Sansa and her mother, Petyr Baelish pushed Lysa through the Moon Door. Robert was left without a mother, with Petyr as the only figure of authority around him.

With Lysa dead, Petyr Baelish proclaimed himself Lord Protector of the Vale and Robert's guardian, on the strength of his brief marriage to her. The boy clung to Alayne as if she were his new mother, and his temperament, already fragile, grew even more unstable.

He said he could not sleep because of the singing of Marillion, the mutilated singer. Maester Colemon began giving him sweetsleep to calm his fits, though he worried about what continued use of it might do. Petyr also let Robert's hair grow long, since the boy could not bear the sight of a blade near him.

A group of Vale lords, fed up with Petyr, signed a declaration together to drive him from the Eyrie and take over Robert's upbringing themselves. They called themselves the Lords Declarant. When Ser Lyn Corbray arrived among them, Robert, upset at the sight of him, threw a bowl of porridge that struck Maester Colemon.

The Declarants wanted to send Robert to Lord Yohn Royce at Runestone, where Ser Samwell Stone and Septon Lucos would tutor him. Petyr managed to talk them into giving him one more year. When winter came, the court moved down from the Eyrie to the Gates of the Moon, and Sansa and Mya Stone had to help a terrified Robert down the Giant's Lance.