Ronard Storm

While Morden II Durrandon held the throne, House Durrandon pulled itself out of decline and recovered some of its former glory. Much of that was owed to Ronard, the king's bastard half-brother and a warrior with a fearsome reputation, who became his castellan and ended up running the realm in practice. He married Morden's sister, which put him one step from the crown without having to seize it outright.

That last step took him less than five years. It was Morden's own wife who set the crown on Ronard's head, and the songs sung afterward claim she shared his bed as well. Morden, thought harmless by then, was locked away in a tower cell.

Ronard ruled for close to thirty years, long enough for the nickname the Baseborn to stick to him for good. Battle after battle, he put down the rebel lords and petty kings who challenged his rule, leaving none standing.

Marriage didn't slow him down: from every enemy he defeated and who swore him fealty, he claimed a daughter as a wife. By the time he died he was credited with ninety-nine children and, according to legend, twenty-three wives. Most of those children were born bastards and left out of their father's inheritance, so they had to make their own way in the world.

Thousands of years later, that trail of bastard children still shows in the Stormlands. It's not unusual to find smallfolk there, even the humblest among them, who boast of carrying royal blood because of Ronard.