The connecting record
statedA Game of Thrones
Robert Baratheon killed Rhaegar Targaryen in A Game of Thrones.
A single swing of the hammer in the shallows, which caved in the ruby-studded breastplate and everything under it. Both armies then waded in after the gemstones, and the crossing has been called the ruby ford ever since.
What each of them is ranked on
The killer · Robert Baratheon · rank 15
the Demon of the Trident
Rode for Summerhall the hour he heard of the plot, with every knight and squire he had, and beat three loyalist hosts to the rendezvous — three battles in a single day, each lord taken in turn as he came up and before he could join the others — and killed Lord Fell face to face in the middle of it. Came out of a brothel at Stoney Sept when the bells started and left six men in the street, one of them Rhaegar Targaryen's own former squire. Met Rhaegar at a ford of the Trident with the warhammer and drove the ruby dragon on the man's breastplate into the chest behind it, and the stones went into the water and gave the crossing its name. Not one of those sentences is depicted. Each arrives as somebody's recollection — Eddard Stark's, an outlaw's, a maester's — because by the time a reader reaches him he is eight stone over, drinking before the jousting starts, and sending two Lannister squires off to borrow a breastplate stretcher that does not exist. He is the plainest demonstration here of what ranking a fighter at his best costs a page: the largest hour in the tier, and nobody ever watches a minute of it.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 54 (Davos V)
Warned by an informer, he rode at once with all his knights and squires, reached Summerhall ahead of the loyalist lords, and beat the hosts of Cafferen, Fell and Grandison in three battles in one day before they could join up, killing Lord Fell in single combat.
statedA Dance with Dragons · ch. 9 (Davos I)
Slew Marq Grafton at the taking of Gulltown at the start of the rebellion.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 29 (Arya V)
Harwin tells Arya that when the bells rang at Stoney Sept, Robert came out of hiding and "slew six men that day, they say", Ser Myles Mooton among them — hearsay, and marked as such by the teller.
All 15 citations
statedA Dance with Dragons · ch. 61 (The Griffin Reborn)
Jon Connington remembers being very nearly killed by him on the steps of the town's sept that day.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 19 (Jon III)
The spiked warhammer was forged for him at Storm's End by Donal Noye.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 4 (Eddard I)
Eddard remembers the two of them circling in the shallows until a crushing blow of the hammer stove in the ruby dragon and the chest beneath, and men of both armies scrabbling for the stones afterwards.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 21 (Jaime III)
Jaime Lannister reckons him the stronger of the two of them.
statedA Feast for Crows · ch. 24 (Cersei V)
Preferred the melee to the lists, where he could hit men with a blunted axe or hammer.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 4 (Eddard I)
Six and a half feet tall by Eddard's reckoning, and grown at least eight stone in the nine years since Greyjoy's Rebellion.
shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 30 (Eddard VII)
Too fat for his own armour at the Hand's tourney, he sends Lancel and Tyrek Lannister to Ser Aron Santagar for a breastplate stretcher, and Eddard and Barristan Selmy argue him out of the melee.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 30 (Eddard VII)
Varys tells Eddard afterwards that the queen had arranged for the king to die in that melee.
shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 47 (Eddard XIII)
Brought back to the Red Keep gored open by the boar, he dictates the will and asks for the order on Daenerys Targaryen to be called off.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 58 (Eddard XV)
Varys points out that Lancel Lannister kept the king's wineskin full for the whole of the hunt.
shownGame of Thrones · S01E05 “The Wolf and the Lion”
Set on riding in the joust, he torments Lancel Lannister over the armour that will not close and sends him off on an invented errand, and Eddard Stark tells him he is too fat for it and that no knight would dare unhorse him.
statedGame of Thrones · S01E07 “You Win or You Die”
Barristan Selmy says the king made everyone stand aside so that he could take the boar by himself.
The victim · Rhaegar Targaryen · rank 16
the silver prince
Beat Ser Barristan Selmy in the final tilt at Harrenhal, having gone through Yohn Royce, Brandon Stark and Arthur Dayne to reach it, then rode past his own wife to lay a crown of winter roses in Lyanna Stark's lap. Five years before that, at Lannisport, he put down two Lannister uncles and a dozen of Tywin Lannister's finest jousters on top of them, with Ser Barristan Selmy besides, and lost the last tilt to Dayne. Every word of it reaches a reader as recollection. He is dead before the story opens and stays that way: no flashback draws him swinging anything, the one scene the television series ever gives him is a wedding, and the witnesses are a Kingsguard who admired him, an exile in love with the idea of him, and the brother of the woman he carried off. Treating that as a weakness would break the whole method, because weighing a man at his best hour means weighing what is known of that hour, and here there is nothing else on the scale at all. What is on it is two tourneys and a body of testimony; the only field command anybody records him taking is the one he died under. He is placed low on that ground and no other. Nobody involved thinks the reports are false.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 58 (Eddard XV)
Eddard's memory of the tourney at Harrenhal has him unhorse Yohn Royce, Brandon Stark and Arthur Dayne, then take the final tilt from Barristan Selmy.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 58 (Eddard XV)
Passed over Elia Martell to set a crown of blue winter roses in Lyanna Stark's lap, which Eddard remembers as the moment all the smiles died.
statedA Feast for Crows · ch. 24 (Cersei V)
Cersei, ten years old in the stands at the Lannisport tourney of 276 AC, watched two of her uncles fall before his lance along with a dozen of her father's finest jousters, the flower of the west.
All 12 citations
statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Targaryen Kings: Aerys II
Unhorsed Ser Barristan Selmy at the same tourney, and lost the champion's tilt to Arthur Dayne.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 42 (Daenerys IV)
Barristan Selmy tells Daenerys that men said her brother loved his silver-stringed harp better than his lance, and that he never much cared for fighting.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 8 (Daenerys I)
Barristan tells Daenerys her brother was bookish as a child until he read something in a scroll that made him want to be a warrior, after which he trained fiercely.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 8 (Daenerys I)
Told her brother must have been a peerless warrior, Barristan calls him a most puissant one and then answers that "a warrior without peer" are fine words, but words win no battles.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 37 (Jaime V)
Took command of the royal army after Jon Connington lost at the Bells, leaving Jaime Lannister behind at the Red Keep.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 4 (Eddard I)
Lay dead in the stream at the ford with his breastplate stove in, while both armies searched the water for the rubies.
statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 23 (Daenerys II)
Jorah Mormont tells Daenerys that Rhaegar fought valiantly, nobly and honourably on the Trident, and that Rhaegar died.
statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 35 (Eddard IX)
Eddard, who has cause enough to hate him, will allow only that he did not think Rhaegar frequented brothels.
shownGame of Thrones · S07E07 “The Dragon and the Wolf”
Appears in one episode of the series and no other, in a vision shown to Bran Stark, marrying Lyanna Stark before a heart tree.
What this does not settle
One death in one work. It is the only place the record puts these two in the same room, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.
The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.
Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.