Rogar Baratheon

Rogar was born in the year 17 after the Conquest, the eldest of five siblings born at Storm's End. His grandfather, Orys Baratheon, had been King Aegon the Conqueror's half-brother and the first lord of the house that bore his name; by marrying the daughter of the last King of the Storm, Argilac Durrandon, he had joined Baratheon blood to that of the old stormland kings. Rogar grew up with two lines behind him: one Targaryen by allegiance, one Durrandon by blood.

Already Lord of Storm's End, he married for the first time, but the match lasted barely a year: his wife died of a fever before their first anniversary, leaving him no children.

When Prince Aegon, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, defied his uncle Maegor I Targaryen and called him a usurper, Lord Rogar was among the lords secretly in touch with the dowager queen Alyssa Velaryon, the prince's mother. He held back from declaring openly, waiting for Aegon to prove his strength first. The wait cost him nothing in the end, since Aegon fell to Maegor at the Gods Eye before Rogar had to choose.

After the defeat, Rogar sheltered Alyssa and her two surviving children, Prince Jaehaerys and Princess Alysanne, at Storm's End. If he feared the king's revenge, he hid it well; his own brother Ser Borys claimed Rogar dreamed of meeting Maegor in single combat and splitting his skull with an axe.

In 48 AC he finally acted on that loyalty: he gathered his bannermen at Storm's End and proclaimed Jaehaerys the rightful king, the first great lord in the realm to do so. The prince named him Hand of the King and Protector of the Realm in return. Other houses soon followed, beginning with Lord Daemon Velaryon, the young king's own uncle; the duel Rogar longed for never came, since Maegor died soon after on the Iron Throne, in circumstances no one ever fully explained.

Twenty-three days later, Rogar escorted the dowager queen to King's Landing, where the rest of the family already waited. There he argued against those who favored the elder Princess Rhaena as heir, insisting the crown belonged to Jaehaerys by right. One of his first acts as Hand was to jail hundreds of men who had served Maegor.

Through Jaehaerys's minority, Rogar shared power with Queen Alyssa, though the young king insisted on a voice in every decision and sat in on council meetings despite his age. With the dungeons full of Maegor's men, Rogar counseled against mass executions, urging trials and hostages instead of blood; Jaehaerys, eager to prove he was nothing like his uncle, pardoned most of them. Though not yet crowned, his mercy won Rogar the backing of both House Baratheon and House Velaryon.

Jaehaerys was crowned in Oldtown before the year was out, by the Septon Supreme himself, with Rogar among the lords in attendance. The following year, when Queen Rhaena married Androw Farman without the crown's leave, Rogar's fury was plain; not long after, he married the dowager queen Alyssa himself, in a lavish ceremony remembered as the Golden Wedding, attended by lords from half the known world. Some whispered that Rogar marked the occasion on his own in Lys's pleasure houses; others noted that Jaehaerys had never given leave for his mother to remarry at all.

Rogar and Alyssa then set about finding the king a bride, and Rogar himself proposed the Archon of Tyrosh's daughter; Alysanne, meanwhile, was promised to his own younger brother, Ser Orryn. But Jaehaerys and his sister moved first: one night they flew to Dragonstone on their dragons and married in secret. When Rogar and Alyssa caught up with them, Rogar tried to have the marriage annulled and even threatened to storm the castle, until Alyssa reminded him that her own children rode dragons. The royal couple spent the rest of the minority at Dragonstone, and Rogar kept the marriage secret, threatening to cut out the tongue of anyone who spoke of it.

With the king away from court, Rogar and Alyssa ruled from King's Landing and tried other ways to break the marriage, including a failed attempt to have a lady of the court seduce Jaehaerys. When Alyssa finally relented and urged Rogar to accept Alysanne as queen, he shouted her down before the whole Small Council and proposed setting Jaehaerys aside for his niece, Princess Aerea. The plan went nowhere: Alyssa demanded his resignation as Hand, backed by her brother Lord Daemon Velaryon and by Lord Qarl Corbray, and Rogar rode out of the capital in fury with half his men.

Out of office, his brother Ser Ronnal tried to seize Princess Aerea for Storm's End, but Lord Corbray had already moved her away on Alyssa's orders. Rogar then turned to another niece, Rhaella, a novice at Oldtown's Starry Sept, sending his brother Orryn to fetch her; the Faith stopped him, and Orryn was taken prisoner by Lord Donnel Hightower, accused of a plot to pass Rhaella off as her twin sister and crown her queen.

Rogar called no banners and marched on no one. He shut himself up at Storm's End, dictated a will and a confession, begged mercy for Orryn, and named his elder brother Ser Borys his heir. When Jaehaerys, now of age, finally summoned him to King's Landing, Rogar came with only six knights, ready to explain himself or take the black. The king forgave him on condition that he never speak against him or Alysanne again and that he be a worthy husband to Alyssa; then he took Rogar to see Vermithor, his dragon, so the lord would not forget who he answered to. Four days later, Rogar and Alyssa set out for the stormlands, escorted safely home through the Kingswood by Kingsguard knights.

In 51 AC, Rogar attended the second ceremony held to mark Jaehaerys and Alysanne's marriage, and that night, well into his cups, he led the bedding procession himself. That same year Alyssa fell pregnant, something Rogar had long stopped expecting; the boy was born healthy, and Rogar named him Boremund.

In 54 AC Alyssa was with child again, despite warnings about her age and health. The birth went as badly as feared: King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne, then visiting Lord Dondarrion at Blackhaven, received urgent word from Rogar and rushed to Storm's End. A terrified Rogar could not bring himself to look at his dying wife, and it fell to the maester to choose the child's life over the mother's. Alyssa died; the girl, Jocelyn, lived. Days later Queen Rhaena arrived at Storm's End accusing Rogar of killing her mother and threatening to burn the castle down if he remarried or mistreated his children. Rogar never took another wife.

In 58 AC he brought his children to the tourney Jaehaerys held in King's Landing for the tenth anniversary of his coronation; when a pox swept the Seven Kingdoms soon after, Rogar himself stayed well and his children recovered quickly, but his brother Ronnal and Ronnal's children died of it.

In 61 AC he returned to the capital to ask the king to raise his daughter Jocelyn and his orphaned nieces at court, and warned Jaehaerys that his brother Borys had joined the Vulture King in raiding the Dornish Marches. Believing his own death was near, Rogar announced he would march on the Red Mountains himself; to his surprise, Jaehaerys chose to ride with him. The campaign that followed, known to the smallfolk as Lord Rogar's War, lasted less than half a year: Rogar led five hundred men into the mountains while Jaehaerys watched from above on Vermithor. The king killed Ser Borys himself, to spare Rogar the guilt of killing his own brother; the Vulture King fell soon after, cut down by Rogar in single combat with his axe.

Rogar had expected to die in that war and did not. Half a year later, in 62 AC, he died at Storm's End, with his maester, his septon, his brother Garon, and his son and heir Boremund at his side.