Stannis Baratheon

Stannis was born at Storm's End in 264 AC, the second son of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont. Renly came after him; Robert had already come before, and that order shaped much of what Stannis became. As a boy taken to court by his father, he mistook the man on the Iron Throne for King Aerys II himself; years later he learned it had been Tywin Lannister, the Hand, sitting where the king no longer cared to.

He grew up convinced he would always come second. Maester Cressen, who tended all three brothers at Storm's End, ended up devoting himself mostly to Stannis, seeing him as the neediest of the three, a solemn boy with little taste for laughter. He was thirteen when his parents drowned on the way home from Volantis; from that day he stopped praying to the Seven, and never prayed to them again.

When Westeros rose against the Targaryens, Stannis found himself trapped inside Storm's End, besieged by the forces of Mace Tyrell and Paxter Redwyne. The siege dragged on until starvation set in; what saved the garrison was a smuggler, Davos, who slipped onions and salted fish past the blockade. Stannis took him into service and let him choose the name Seaworth for the house he was founding — and still cut the fingertips off his left hand, because smuggling remained a crime and Stannis made no exceptions, not even for the man who had kept him alive.

Eddard Stark broke the siege. Soon after, Robert charged his brother with raising a fleet to take Dragonstone, the last Targaryen stronghold. A storm reached the island before Stannis did and sank the fleet defending it; the dowager queen Rhaella died there giving birth to Daenerys. Willem Darry spirited the two Targaryen children away toward Braavos just before Stannis landed. The castle fell with barely a fight.

For holding Storm's End and taking Dragonstone, Stannis expected to be given Storm's End itself, the seat that was his by right. Robert gave it to Renly instead, leaving Stannis the Targaryens' bare rock of an island. Stannis obeyed, as he always obeyed, though he took it as an insult; over the years he built House Baratheon of Dragonstone there and ruled the island with the same dry discipline he brought to everything else.

He married Selyse Florent. At the wedding feast, Robert bedded a cousin of the bride, Delena Florent, in the bed made ready for the newlyweds; that night produced Edric Storm, the only bastard Robert ever acknowledged. Stannis took it as an insult to his wife's house and sent the boy away to be raised elsewhere, in the care of castellan Cortnay Penrose. With Selyse he had one daughter, Shireen; the marriage itself was never much more than a duty performed once or twice a year.

Robert brought him to King's Landing as Master of Ships and gave him a seat on the small council, leaving Dragonstone to his wife's uncle, Axell Florent. Stannis carried much of the burden of ruling while Robert drank and hunted; when the Greyjoys rose in rebellion, he crushed Victarion's Iron Fleet and took Great Wyk in his brother's name. He got little credit for any of it.

In time he came to suspect Cersei's children were not Robert's. He confided in Jon Arryn, and the two investigated in secret — he dared not tell Robert himself, afraid his brother would see the accusation as nothing but Stannis clearing his own path to the throne. They compared Robert's acknowledged bastards, all dark-haired, against his legitimate children, fair like the Lannisters; they checked old records of past Baratheon marriages and found the same pattern every time. Jon Arryn died poisoned before he could lay the proof before the king.

When Jon Arryn died, Stannis assumed the Handship would fall to him. Robert rode north and offered it to Eddard Stark instead. Furious, and fearing for his own life, Stannis left King's Landing and shut himself up in Dragonstone with much of the royal fleet.

In the North, Eddard Stark's own investigation reached the same conclusion Stannis and Jon Arryn had: Cersei's children carried no Baratheon blood. Robert died in 298 AC. Eddard, named regent, decided to recognize Stannis as his brother's rightful heir before handing over the throne — but he was arrested and executed for treason before he could carry out that plan.

From Dragonstone, Stannis declared himself King of Westeros, Robert's rightful heir by blood and law. He gathered sellswords from Myr and Lys, but most Baratheon bannermen chose Renly instead, easier to like and easier to follow. His wife Selyse fell under the sway of the priestess Melisandre, who proclaimed Stannis the reborn hero of the faith of R'hllor; Stannis converted, burned the statues of the Seven in Dragonstone's sept, and split his own men between those still loyal to the old gods and those who now worshipped fire alone.

Rather than march on King's Landing, he led his forces to besiege Storm's End, hoping to draw Renly into a trap. When Renly arrived to lift the siege, Melisandre birthed a shadow in Stannis's shape that killed him in his own tent. Most of Renly's army swore to Stannis on the spot, and after Cortnay Penrose's death the castle fell as well. He sent his fleet against King's Landing and came close to taking it, but Lannister and Tyrell armies arrived in time to undo the victory — among them, wearing Renly's armor, rode Garlan Tyrell, and for a moment everyone thought they'd seen a ghost.

Back at Dragonstone with his forces thinned, Stannis had his Hand, Alester Florent, thrown in the dungeons for trying to buy peace with the Lannisters by offering up his own daughter Shireen as a hostage. When Axell Florent proposed putting all of Sweetsister to the sword, Davos objected; Stannis sided with him and named him Hand instead, since Davos was one of the few men willing to tell him a truth he didn't want to hear.

Melisandre insisted that only Edric Storm's blood, Robert's bastard son, could complete a spell strong enough to win the war. Stannis hesitated, but allowed her to draw the boy's blood to burn against the other claimant kings. Just as he seemed ready to go further, Davos revealed he had already smuggled the boy off the island, and put before Stannis a letter from the Night's Watch begging for help.

Stannis marched for the Wall and arrived in time to crush the wildling assault at the Battle of Castle Black. He stayed to negotiate with the wildlings and offered to legitimize Jon Snow as heir to Winterfell in exchange for his support of the crown; the offer came to nothing when the Watch chose Jon as Lord Commander instead. Stannis kept looking north for allies.

At Castle Black, Stannis called on the northern lords for loyalty. Only the Karstark castellan, Arnolf, and part of the Umbers under Mors answered. He sent Davos to White Harbor to treat with Wyman Manderly, with little to show for it, and burned the man he believed was the King-Beyond-the-Wall for deserting the Watch — not knowing it wasn't really Mance Rayder. The wildlings who remained were given a choice, swear to him or go back beyond the Wall; nearly all of them swore.

Arnolf Karstark proposed joining forces against the Dreadfort, Roose Bolton's seat, while Ramsay Bolton was away at Moat Cailin. Jon Snow, suspicious of Karstark, talked Stannis out of it. Stannis turned west instead and took Deepwood Motte from the ironborn, taking Asha Greyjoy prisoner in the process; he returned the castle to House Glover, which won him the support of House Mormont as well, and much of the North besides, including survivors of the sack of Winterfell who had been hiding in the Wolfswood.

With that growing army he marched on Winterfell. Arnolf Karstark and Mors Umber joined him on the way, but a snowstorm slowed the column and cut it off; Jon Snow, learning that Karstark meant to betray Stannis, tried to warn him. The last word on Stannis, according to a letter Ramsay Bolton sent to Castle Black, is that he and most of his army died near a lake three days from Winterfell — though no one has confirmed whether that's true or just a lie of Ramsay's. The books leave his trail there, unresolved. The television series tells a different ending, and records him dead in the year 302.