Siege of Storm's End

Robert Baratheon had taken most of the stormlands' fighting men with him to war, leaving his brother Stannis behind with barely a garrison to hold the family seat. Once the rebel army was broken at Ashford, the road to Storm's End lay open, with no force left to bar it.

Mace Tyrell then marched the Reach's host up to the castle walls, while Paxter Redwyne brought his fleet from the Arbor into Shipbreaker Bay to seal off any escape by sea. With land and water both closed, Storm's End was cut off from the rest of the realm.

The siege dragged on for nearly a year, and inside the walls food ran out long before the besiegers' patience did. The garrison lived on horses, dogs and cats, and came close to the point of eating their own dead.

At some point during the siege, Ser Gawen Wylde, the castle's master-at-arms, tried to open a back gate to surrender it, but was caught before he could and spent the rest of the siege locked away, where he eventually died. What saved the defenders was smuggling of another kind: a ship loaded with onions and salt fish, sailed by Davos, slipped past the Redwyne fleet and reached the starving castle.

The siege did not end by force but by the arrival of Eddard Stark, who reached Storm's End after King's Landing had already fallen to the rebels. Faced with Stark's troops, Mace Tyrell chose to surrender his army without a fight.

Tyrell disbanded his forces and most of the Reach's lords were pardoned by Robert; the Redwyne fleet withdrew toward Dragonstone. The hunger endured inside the castle also brought a reward: the smuggler who had slipped the blockade was knighted for it, and chose the name Seaworth for his new house.