House Durrandon

The line traces back to the Age of Heroes, when its first king, remembered as a legendary hero, raised the castle that would give the house its name. From there they extended their rule across much of eastern Westeros, a stretch of land running from Cape Wrath to Crackclaw Point.

Their ambitions reached inland too: at the Battle of the Six Kings they seized the riverlands from their former rulers, pushing the stormlands' dominion further than the coast.

Over the centuries, stormlander power waned before the pressure of the Reach kings and Dornish raids. The riverlands they had once ruled ended up in the hands of Harren the Black.

It was Argilac who, in the house's last generations, managed to halt that decline for a time. But by the time the dragons' conquest arrived, Argilac was already an aging king whose skill with arms had faded.

When Aegon the Conqueror demanded every realm of Westeros bend the knee, Argilac refused. Aegon answered by sending Orys Baratheon, one of his fiercest commanders, to Storm's End, and in the battle that followed Argilac lost his life.

His daughter Argella shut herself in the castle and declared herself queen, but the garrison would not share her father's fate: they rose up and handed her over to Orys in chains. He treated her with some kindness, restored her a measure of dignity, and in time married her.

From that union rose the new House Baratheon, which took for itself the crowned stag and the words of the old Storm Kings, closing the history of House Durrandon as a ruling line.