Storm's End

Durran Pesardedioses courted and married Elenei, daughter of the gods of sea and sky, and those gods never forgave the marriage. They sent storm after storm to punish the Stormlands for it. Durran refused to back down. He built a fortress at the foot of a cliff, watched it fall six times, and raised a seventh that finally held against sea and sky together.

No one agrees on why that seventh one held. Some point to a boy named Brandon, later remembered as the Builder; others credit the Children of the Forest and knowledge long since lost. The maesters, more sober about it, went looking for the storm that legend says should flatten the castle every seventy-seven years, and found only two candidates — one in 166 AC, another in 221 — fifty-five years apart, not the cycle the story promises.

Durran's line ruled from Storm's End for generations as House Durrandon, using those walls to hold the region while the First Men still worked it. When the Andals invaded, they tried the castle again and again and left empty-handed every time. Eventually both sides chose marriage over siege, and the bloodlines mixed. Archmaester Vyron believes, without quite proving it, that the castle's current look — the Andal influence visible in the stonework — dates from those years of forced coexistence.

Not even a Reach king as stubborn as Gyles III Gardener could break it: he besieged it for two full years and left without it.

When Aegon Targaryen launched his conquest of Westeros, Argilac Durrandon, the last of the Storm Kings, made the mistake that cost him his crown: instead of waiting behind his walls, he rode out to face Orys Baratheon in open battle. The defeat that followed became known as the Last Storm.

Orys then took Argilac's daughter Argella as his wife, and with her came the title of Lord Paramount of the Stormlands and the castle her father had failed to defend. House Baratheon was born on Durrandon stone.

Generations later, Storm's End was besieged again: Mace Tyrell's army on land and Paxter Redwyne's fleet at sea. Inside, commanding the defense, was Stannis Baratheon, Lord Robert's brother — and Stannis does not yield. He let his men eat rats before he opened the gates. The smith Donal Noye lost an arm in a siege that dragged on for nearly a year.

What saved the garrison wasn't a battle but a smuggler. Davos slipped through the Redwyne blockade by night in a black-sailed ship loaded with salted fish and onions, and that cargo kept Stannis going until Eddard Stark broke the siege by land.

Once Robert became king, he divided the realm among his own and gave Storm's End to his youngest brother, Renly. Stannis, who had defended those same walls with his teeth, never forgave him for it.

When war broke out among the five kings, nearly every lord who owed Storm's End loyalty chose Renly Baratheon over his brother Stannis. Renly's death didn't change that loyalty: Cortnay Penrose, castellan of the castle, refused to surrender it, afraid for the life of Edric Storm, Stannis's nephew, who lived within those walls.

Penrose didn't fall to an assault. A shadow summoned by Melisandre killed him, and with him dead, Lord Elwood Meadows opened the gates. Stannis named Ser Gilbert Farring the new castellan and, before marching on King's Landing, ordered the castle's godswood burned as an offering to R'hllor.

Years later, Mace Tyrell laid siege to the castle again, but it didn't last: his daughter Margaery's arrest in King's Landing pulled him back to the capital in a hurry. He left a token garrison behind to watch the walls, like someone unwilling to fully let go.

Further south, the Golden Company began eyeing Storm's End for a war of its own — one Aegon VI Targaryen planned to lead in person, against a castle no army had ever taken by force.