Willem Darry

When the Red Keep needed a new master-at-arms, Lord Tywin Lannister, then Hand of the King, put forward his own brother, Ser Tygett, for the post. Aerys II Targaryen ignored him and named Willem Darry instead.

Years later, when Prince Rhaegar decided it was time to become a knight, it was with Willem that he trained.

When word of Prince Rhaegar's death at the Trident reached King's Landing, King Aerys II sent Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys to Dragonstone, and Willem went with them.

Aerys was killed soon after, during the sack of the capital, and Rhaella died giving birth to Princess Daenerys. With the king and queen dead, the garrison at Dragonstone began weighing whether to hand the two children over to the new king, Robert Baratheon.

Before they could decide, and before Stannis Baratheon's ships arrived to take the island, Willem gathered four loyal men, broke into the nursery, and got Viserys and Daenerys off Dragonstone under cover of night. They sailed on to the Braavosi coast.

In Braavos, Willem settled with the two children in a house with a red-painted door. During that time he was visited by Prince Oberyn Martell, and with the Sealord of Braavos as witness, the two men signed a pact: Viserys would one day marry Princess Arianne Martell, in exchange for Dorne's support in winning him back the Iron Throne.

When Daenerys was five, in 289 or 290 AC depending on the source, Willem fell ill with a wasting sickness that slowly ground him down until it killed him. By the end he walked with a cane, half-blind, a grey man with a rough voice and big, weathered hands. Daenerys would remember him as a dear old bear of a man, roaring orders at the servants from his sickbed and always gentle with her.

After he died, the household servants stole what money was left, and Viserys and Daenerys were left to fend for themselves on the streets of Braavos.

Years later, Daenerys would put it simply: "No one kept me safe when I was little. Well — Ser Willem did, but then he died."

Years later, in the House of the Undying in Qarth, Daenerys had a vision of a room behind a red door, and in it she heard Willem Darry calling to her. She remembered that he was dead and turned away from the vision, certain it could not be real.

In Meereen, Prince Quentyn Martell handed Daenerys a scroll containing the secret pact signed years before in Braavos: the promised marriage between Viserys and Arianne Martell, bearing the signatures of Willem Darry for the Targaryens and Oberyn Martell for Dorne.