Willem Blackwood

Willem travels to Storm's End to seek the hand of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, heir to King Viserys I, promising to keep her safe if she marries him. Jerrel Bracken mocks him and his house in front of the court.

Rhaenyra turns him down, and as Willem withdraws, Bracken calls him a coward. Both men draw steel: Bracken knocks him down, but Willem drives his own sword home and kills him. As Jerrel bleeds out at his feet, Willem is sick.

Thirteen years later, now a belted knight, Willem watches his kinsman Davos Blackwood fall into a land dispute with Ser Aeron Bracken. The clash leads to the Battle of the Burning Mill, where his brother Lord Samwell Blackwood is killed by Lord Amos Bracken, and Willem becomes regent for his young nephew Benjicot.

He answers Prince Daemon's summons to Harrenhal. Before the council he recalls the oath his father swore twenty years earlier to Viserys I and to Rhaenyra as heir, and how he himself once competed for the princess's hand before she married Ser Laenor Velaryon. Though he notices Daemon acting erratically, he pledges that the Blackwood levies will fight for the Blacks if Daemon and Caraxes deal with House Bracken in return.

At a later meeting between Daemon and Lord Amos Bracken, Amos insults House Blackwood and the memory of Samwell. Willem urges Daemon to kill him; when Amos rejects Daemon's terms and leaves, Daemon gives Willem unofficial leave to raid the Bracken lands and force their submission, so long as it doesn't look like the Crown's doing.

Willem's raids bring the Brackens to heel, but his men fight under the Targaryen banner, and the river lords soon put the pieces together. Learning that Daemon had sanctioned such methods, they come to Harrenhal to denounce him as a tyrant.

After Lord Grover Tully's death and his grandson Oscar's rise as Lord Paramount of the Trident, the river lords gather again at Harrenhal. Willem arrives with Amos Bracken and his son Raylon as prisoners, but when Prince Daemon announces that Oscar is joining the war for the Iron Throne, Lord Petyr Piper answers that he won't follow a young man allied with someone who slaughters the innocent for ambition. Willem tries to defend himself, claiming he did what was needed and presenting his captives as traitors, but the river lords name him the traitor instead.

When Lady Mallister demands justice, Willem replies that justice has already been done by defeating Brackens who had sworn to Aegon II, and he kneels to pledge his sword to Oscar. Oscar accepts him as a vassal but reminds him of his duty to every house and insists he must answer for his actions, believing the violence against the Brackens sprang from Willem's own will rather than any order. When Oscar has him arrested, Willem looks to Daemon for help, but the prince does nothing, and Oscar forces Daemon to carry out the execution to atone for his own past failures. Willem shouts that he was only obeying orders, but Daemon beheads him anyway. Despite his death, the Blackwood levies still muster at Harrenhal among the forty thousand men marching under Daemon's command.