PastTheir BestThe Westeros power ranking

Petyr Baelish#Permanent link to Petyr BaelishLittlefinger

Fought once, at fifteen, for Catelyn Tully's hand, and was opened below the ribs by a bigger boy who had already promised not to kill him. Everything afterwards is arranged so that nobody has to swing at him at all: he buys the gold cloaks out from under Eddard Stark mid-coup, he recovers his own dagger from the throat of a man three guardsmen are holding, and he puts his wife through a hole in the floor of her own hall. When a blade does finally reach him he is on his knees in Winterfell, asking. There is no contest here to place — only a long record of not having one.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 40 (Catelyn VII)

  Catelyn recalls the duel — Brandon Stark asked Petyr to yield more than once, and a backhand through his armour below the ribs put him in the water.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 49 (Eddard XIV)

  Takes back his dagger from Eddard Stark's throat during the arrest, having bribed the gold cloaks to stand with the queen.

• shownA Storm of Swords · ch. 80 (Sansa VII)

  Tells Lysa Arryn he has only ever loved one woman, adds "only Cat", and shoves her out the Moon Door.

Cersei Lannister#Permanent link to Cersei Lannister

Never lifts a weapon and never has to. What she does instead is place other men's hands where she needs them — Ser Osney to smother a High Septon, Ser Ilyn Payne seated in the Queen's Ballroom through the Blackwater with orders to cut her own throat and Sansa Stark's if the walls give way. On screen she buries the whole Faith under wildfire from a window across the city. Then the Faith takes her guards away, and what is left is a woman shaved bald and walked barefoot the length of her own capital. That is not a fight she lost. It is the weight of her sort of power once somebody handles it directly.

• shownA Clash of Kings · ch. 60 (Sansa VI)

  Seats Ser Ilyn Payne, the King's Justice, in the Queen's Ballroom for the duration of the Battle of the Blackwater.

• statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 60 (Sansa VI)

  Tells Sansa that Payne is there for the two of them, because she will not let Stannis take them alive.

• shownA Feast for Crows · ch. 43 (Cersei X)

  Has Ser Osney Kettleblack murder the High Septon, and beds him as the reward.

Varys#Permanent link to Varysthe Spider

Has run the informers of three kings — Aerys II, Robert and Joffrey — from a body that anybody can take hold of. Jaime Lannister simply waits inside his chambers and has what he wants out of him at knifepoint, inside one conversation. The only blow he strikes himself in the books is a crossbow bolt into a man he had lured with a false message, and children with knives to finish it. On screen the Unsullied come for him with shackles and he does not resist a single step of the way to the beach. Nothing he does is an exchange; it is a sequence of arrangements made in rooms where the other party has not been told a contest is running.

• statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 44 (Tyrion X)

  Tells Tyrion he was sold to a man who drugged him, cut away his manhood and burned it in a brazier, then put him out on the street.

• shownA Feast for Crows · ch. 8 (Jaime I)

  Jaime, waiting in the eunuch's own chambers, forces him at knifepoint to get Tyrion out of the black cells.

• shownA Dance with Dragons · Epilogue

  Sends a child to fetch Ser Kevan Lannister to Pycelle's chambers, shoots him with a crossbow, apologises, and sets the little birds on him with knives.

Tywin Lannister#Permanent link to Tywin Lannister

Ended a rebellion by turning a stream into the mines under Castamere and drowning the family that lived in them, after which the song alone was enough to quiet the next lord who tried it. At the Green Fork he sits with the reserve on the high ground and spends the clansmen on his own left flank. The Red Wedding is transacted by raven, and afterwards he will allow Tyrion only that he countenanced it. He dies unarmed on a privy with his bowels opened by a crossbow bolt, shot by the son he had condemned that same week.

• statedThe World of Ice & Fire · The Westerlands: House Lannister Under the Dragons

  Ends the Reyne-Tarbeck revolt by diverting a stream into the subterranean castle of Castamere and drowning the Reynes inside it.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 19 (Tyrion III)

  When Lord Farman grew truculent years later, an envoy played "The Rains of Castamere" for him and he gave no further trouble.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 62 (Tyrion VIII)

  Commands the reserve from the high ground at the battle on the Green Fork, placing Tyrion and the clansmen on the left in the expectation that they will rout.

Olenna Tyrell#Permanent link to Olenna Tyrellthe Queen of Thorns

The strangler that killed Joffrey Baratheon at his own wedding was reportedly lifted out of Sansa Stark's hairnet by an old woman straightening it for her, in front of the whole court, and no chapter ever shows the hand doing it. Baelish says she did it; the television series has her say it herself, over a cup she has just been handed. By then Highgarden has fallen in one afternoon and she is sitting alone in a study with a Lannister army in the yard. She is off the scale because the only thing she has ever needed to be within arm's reach of is a girl's hair.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 68 (Sansa VI)

  Baelish tells Sansa that Olenna took the black amethyst from her hairnet while straightening it at the wedding.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 68 (Sansa VI)

  Baelish calls her a fearsome old harridan and not near as frail as she pretends.

• shownA Storm of Swords · ch. 60 (Tyrion VIII)

  At Joffrey's wedding she walks with a cane and smiles toothlessly.

The Night King#Permanent link to The Night King

• A man of the First MenA captive tied to a weirwood with a dragonglass dagger pushed into his chest by the Children of the Forest, who were losing their war and built a weapon.
• The Night KingWhere the rank comes from, and there is nowhere else it could come from. He has no arc: the figure who lifts the baby off the altar in season four does the same things as the one in the godswood in season eight.

Brought down a dragon with one thrown spear, over a frozen lake, and had the corpse hauled out of the water and its eyes open again before the episode was over. Nothing here is somebody's account of him — the arms on the Hardhome dock and the slaughtered wildlings standing up, a length of the Wall coming apart under blue fire, Drogon covering him in flame and the flame simply going out around him. He ends in the Winterfell godswood with his own blade half drawn and Arya Stark held clear of the ground by the throat, which is an assassination rather than a bout anybody took off him. No chapter is cited beneath this, because there is no chapter: he was invented for the television series and appears in none of the novels, whose Night's King is a Lord Commander of the Night's Watch out of the Age of Heroes and an entirely separate figure.

• shownGame of Thrones · S04E04 “Oathkeeper”

  Lifts the last of Craster's sons off an ice altar and touches a finger to the child's cheek, and the baby's eyes turn blue.

• shownGame of Thrones · S05E08 “Hardhome”

  Raises both arms on the dock and the wildlings killed in the massacre stand up as wights while Jon Snow watches from the departing boat.

• shownGame of Thrones · S06E05 “The Door”

  Passes through the fire the Children of the Forest have set at the cave mouth and kills the three-eyed raven inside.

Gregor Clegane#Permanent link to Gregor Cleganethe Mountain That Rides

• The Mountain That RidesMounted, in the heaviest plate anyone has, beating men to death in front of a crowd with a greatsword held in one fist.
• The man in the black cellsBlood gone black with the venom, leeches dying on contact, a hole eaten in his side, screaming loudly enough to carry through the Red Keep at night.
• Ser Robert StrongEight feet of silent knight in white enamel who takes neither food nor drink, produced by Qyburn once the Mountain's skull had gone to Dorne. The novels never say who is under the greathelm. The television series decides, and puts him back at Cersei's shoulder.

Seven feet of him and more, nearer eight, carrying a six-foot greatsword in one hand and a shield on the other arm. Jaime Lannister, counting the men who could overpower him physically, arrives at both Clegane brothers and thinks the elder one's strength is not a human quantity. What settles the placement is that all of it happens inside somebody's point-of-view chapter: Ser Hugh of the Vale taken through an unfastened gorget in a joust, a stallion's neck half severed with one swing in a temper, a horse speared out from under him on the Green Fork with no effect whatever on the rider. Then a trial by combat he wins from flat on his back, full of holes from a poisoned spear, shouting what he did to Elia Martell loudly enough for the whole gathering to hear. Poison thickened with sorcery finished him in the end and took its time about it. The thing his brother later carried over a Red Keep wall was Qyburn's work rather than the man.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 30 (Eddard VII)

  Stands well over seven feet, closer to eight, with arms as thick as the trunks of small trees.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 21 (Jaime III)

  Jaime, thinking of the few men stronger than himself, settles on both Cleganes, and reckons the Mountain's strength like nothing human.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 62 (Tyrion VIII)

  Wields a two-handed greatsword in a single hand while carrying a shield, and commands the van and left of Tywin's line on the Green Fork.

Daemon Targaryen#Permanent link to Daemon Targaryenthe Rogue Prince

Leapt out of the saddle in mid-air, landed on the larger dragon, and put Dark Sister hilt-deep through his nephew's blind eye, both beasts going into the Gods Eye and one of them crawling ashore to die. He is placed under men with far less in their hands because of what that account is. Fire & Blood is a maester's compilation of chroniclers who disagree with each other, the Gods Eye has not been filmed, and the Dance reaches its compiler through a fool, a septon and a grand maester who contradict one another on his own pages. The screen gives smaller and more useful things: a false surrender on a Stepstones beach that put three arrows in him and needed Laenor Velaryon and a dragon to finish, and two defeats in one afternoon at the hands of Criston Cole. Book and series both give Cole a tilt and a bout where his morningstar beats Dark Sister; they disagree about the order and not the kind.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Knighted at sixteen, and given the Valyrian steel sword Dark Sister by King Jaehaerys I.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Ser Criston Cole beats him twice at the tourney for Viserys I's accession, first in the melee and then in the joust.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Slays Craghas Drahar in 108 AC and is crowned King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea by Corlys Velaryon.

Jaime Lannister#Permanent link to Jaime Lannisterthe Kingslayer

• Ser Jaime of the KingsguardRight-handed, white-cloaked at fifteen, and everything the rank is argued from happens in this state.
• The prisoner of RiverrunChained, bearded and underfed for the better part of a year, which is the condition he is in when Brienne of Tarth fights him.
• The one-handed manA hand of gold strapped to the stump, a shield buckled to it clumsily, and a sparring partner chosen because he has no tongue to tell anyone how it went. The rank is explicitly not taken from here, and this is where most of his pages are.

At fifteen he was knighted in the field by Arthur Dayne and given a white cloak the same year, and the White Book records the two facts in consecutive sentences. The rank is taken from the years between that and the night Zollo took the sword hand off. Before it: three riders put down at the Hand's tourney, the third of them the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who had spent the previous rounds beating two men born thirty and forty years after him; Eddard Stark's guard cut apart around him in a King's Landing street; three named northmen killed while trying to reach Robb Stark through an entire army. After it: Addam Marbrand beats him without difficulty in a practice yard, and he switches to training at night with a man who cannot describe it. Every one of those states is listed above. The number is argued from the earliest, and the story spends most of its length in the last.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 67 (Jaime VIII)

  The White Book records him knighted in his fifteenth year by Ser Arthur Dayne for valour in the field, and chosen for the Kingsguard in the same year.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 44 (Jaime VI)

  Raised to the Kingsguard by Gerold Hightower at Harrenhal in 281 AC, the youngest knight ever taken into the order.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 11 (Jaime II)

  Won his first tourney melee at thirteen, while still a squire to Lord Sumner Crakehall.

Barristan Selmy#Permanent link to Barristan SelmyBarristan the Bold

• Barristan the BoldThe name Prince Duncan gave a ten-year-old mystery knight at Blackhaven, and the state the rank is argued from — Duskendale, the Ninepenny Kings, the kingswood.
• Arstan WhitebeardA false name, a squire's place behind Strong Belwas and another man's kit carried across the narrow sea. Nobody who meets him in this state takes him for a threat.
• Lord Commander of the QueensguardGilded mail, a dragon-winged helm, a school of freedmen squires, and the single duel the books ever put on the page.

Cut a path through the Golden Company to reach Maelys the Monstrous and killed him hand to hand, ending the male line of the Blackfyres — and every word of that reaches a reader as report, because it happened a lifetime before the first page. So does Duskendale: over the walls in the dark dressed as a beggar, a sentry killed before he could shout, the king carried out of the Dun Fort, and an arrow in the chest somewhere in the course of it. The one sword fight anybody gets to watch him win comes at the far end, in Meereen, against a pit fighter younger, heavier and very quick, who promised to eat his heart. Jaime Lannister beat him in the lists in three tilts, and that settles nothing at all, because one of the two was at his peak and the other was thirty-odd years past his. This page ranks at peak, so the joust is evidence about ages and not about men.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 67 (Jaime VIII)

  Cut his way through the Golden Company to reach Maelys the Monstrous and slew him in single combat during the War of the Ninepenny Kings.

• statedA Dance with Dragons · ch. 5 (Tyrion II)

  The killing of Maelys made his name known across the Seven Kingdoms.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 67 (Jaime VIII)

  Climbed the walls of Duskendale and the Dun Fort disguised as a beggar, killed a sentry, freed Aerys II from the dungeon, and cut down Ser Symon Hollard and two guards getting him out.

Arthur Dayne#Permanent link to Arthur Daynethe Sword of the Morning

Dead long before the first chapter opens, and reaching a reader entirely as other men remembering him. Eddard Stark calls him the finest knight he ever saw and admits in the same breath that he would not have walked away from the tower of joy without Howland Reed. Jaime Lannister, who as a boy wanted to be him, tells five of his own sworn brothers that Arthur could have killed the lot of them left-handed while pissing with the right. Catelyn Stark repeats what her household whispered: deadliest of Aerys's seven. That is the entire case and it is testimony rather than depiction, which is precisely why he sits where he does in a tier whose rule is that a peak is worth whatever its evidence is worth. When it finally is depicted, the story changes — the histories have Eddard killing him in single combat, and the vision shown to Bran Stark has him holding the northmen off with two swords, disarming Eddard, and dying of a knife in the back of the neck.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 6 (Catelyn II)

  Winterfell whispered of him as the deadliest of the seven knights of Aerys II's Kingsguard, slain by their young lord in single combat.

• statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 21 (Bran III)

  Eddard Stark told Bran he was the finest knight he ever saw, fought with a blade forged from a fallen star, and would have killed him but for Howland Reed.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 67 (Jaime VIII)

  Jaime tells Loras Tyrell and four other Kingsguard that Arthur could have slain all five of them with his left hand while pissing with the right.

The Wight Host#Permanent link to The Wight Hostthe army of the dead

Counts its dead as reinforcements, which is an arithmetic nothing else on this ladder has. Injury does not reduce it either. Alliser Thorne carries a severed hand south in a jar and swears the fingers were still working when he left the Wall; a direwolf under the hill gnaws at a loose arm and it goes on clutching until the bone cracks; a captured one comes out of its crate at the queen across the floor of the Dragonpit and is stopped by the chain on its neck, and when Sandor Clegane cuts it in half the top of it comes back at him over the flagstones on its hands. The novels supply specimens one at a time — Waymar Royce getting up in the snow in the prologue of the first book, Othor walking into the Lord Commander's chamber with black hands, Small Paul shattering a dragonglass dagger on his own mail. The force is the television series': the Hardhome shore emptied and re-crewed in a single gesture, and a burning trench at Winterfell put out by feeding bodies into it until the rest could walk over. Slow, stupid, and it takes fire like an oiled rag, which is why a tier of swordsmen sits above it.

• shownA Game of Thrones · Prologue

  Waymar Royce, killed by the Others in the haunted forest, gets to his feet with blue eyes and kills Will.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 52 (Jon VII)

  Othor's corpse rises inside Castle Black and goes for Jeor Mormont in his own chamber; Jon Snow sets it alight and the fire ends it.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 60 (Jon VIII)

  The second corpse brought in from beyond the Wall killed five men, among them Ser Jaremy Rykker, whose own dagger did it.

Sandor Clegane#Permanent link to Sandor Cleganethe Hound

• The boy at the brazierSix, maybe seven — he does not know which — holding a wooden knight that was not his, with the side of his face pressed into burning coals until three grown men could drag his brother off.
• The HoundSworn shield, then a white cloak he never asked for and never took the vows behind. Every contest the number rests on is fought in this state.
• The man under the treeThigh, ribs, neck and face opened at an inn, the wounds going bad on the road, and a girl who will not give him the mercy he asks for. The screen version sends him over a cliff instead, where a septon takes him for a corpse and revives him rather than burying him.

Stepped between his brother and the unhorsed Ser Loras Tyrell in the lists and then blocked every savage blow Gregor aimed at his own hound's-head helm, staying on the defensive the whole way through and never once cutting at his brother's unprotected face, and then went to one knee mid-exchange because the king's voice carried over the crowd. The record here is unusually thick and almost all of it depicted: Renly Baratheon put down on the first day of the Hand's tourney and Jaime Lannister on the second pass of the next, led off the field unable to see out of his own helm; a rioting crowd beaten back off Sansa Stark's horse in the capital; Beric Dondarrion opened from sword to shoulder in a trial by combat fought with a burning shield strapped to the arm that held it, by a man who will not go near a fire. Jaime, counting who could physically overpower him, arrives at both Cleganes. He enters the story six or seven years old and already ruined, and leaves the ranked span cut open at the crossroads inn, begging a girl to finish it. Neither end of him is his own doing.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 29 (Sansa II)

  Tells Sansa that Gregor shoved the side of his face into the coals of a brazier — "I was younger than you, six, maybe seven" — and held him there until three grown men pulled him off.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 29 (Sansa II)

  Unhorses Renly Baratheon on the first day of the Hand's tourney.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 30 (Eddard VII)

  Beats Jaime Lannister on the second pass after nearly losing the first, and Jaime is led off the field unable to see through his mangled helm.

Oberyn Martell#Permanent link to Oberyn Martellthe Red Viper

Won. That is the part everybody forgets about him, and it was not close: eight feet of ash spear against full plate behind an oaken shield, the joints found over and over, the hamstring cut once the bigger man had tired of chasing, the shaft snapped off in the belly. Gregor Clegane was on the ground and done. The afternoon only turns because Oberyn stood over him demanding he say Elia Martell's name aloud, and was put on his back for it. All of it is set down inside one point of view and filmed later almost shot for shot, which makes it about as well attested as any duel on this ladder — no chronicler, no gap of thirty years, nobody's grandfather remembering. No states are listed above this entry because there are none to list. He has no before and no after. His best quarter of an hour and his last quarter of an hour are the same one.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 38 (Tyrion V)

  At sixteen he fought Lord Edgar Yronwood over the man's paramour; the duel was to first blood, both took cuts, and Yronwood's festered and killed him.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 38 (Tyrion V)

  Rumour that he fought that duel with a poisoned blade is where the name Red Viper comes from, among friends and enemies alike.

• statedA Feast for Crows · ch. 2 (The Captain of Guards)

  Doran recalls him toppling much larger boys at the shoulder-riding game in the Water Gardens, and Oberyn promising on leaving Sunspear to do it again.

Brienne of Tarth#Permanent link to Brienne of TarthBrienne the Blue

• The girl at Evenfall HallSixteen, told by her third betrothed that he would want a proper woman once they were wed, and answering that she would take it from a man who could beat her. He left with three broken bones.
• Brienne the BlueCobalt plate, a rainbow cloak, and the one occasion anybody measures her against a whole field at once. The number comes from here.
• The woman from the crossroads innA cheek chewed to the bone by Biter, delirious, calling out a Lannister's name while the brotherhood decides whether to hang her.

Nobody at Bitterbridge could put her down — not Ser Loras Tyrell, and not the string of suitors who had been mocking her all week — so the melee went to a woman with a blunted morningstar, who was offered any reward within the king's power and asked Renly Baratheon for a place in his guard. That is the single time she is put against everybody present, so that is where the rank is argued from. Everything later is won at odds she did not choose and cannot fully bank: Jaime Lannister on the Duskendale road is manacled and near a year starved by the time she gets his head under the water, and what surprises him is not losing but finding her stronger. She kills Pyg, Timeon and Shagwell in one afternoon at the Whispers. She kills Rorge at an inn full of orphans and then has her cheek chewed off by Biter. On screen she bites a chunk out of Sandor Clegane's ear, beats him with a stone and sends him over a cliff. Nobody ever gives her a fair fight, and she wins most of them.

• statedA Feast for Crows · ch. 9 (Brienne II)

  Warned at sixteen by Ser Humfrey Wagstaff that he would expect a proper woman, she said she would accept it from a man who could beat her, and broke three of his bones trying.

• shownA Clash of Kings · ch. 22 (Catelyn II)

  Wins the melee at Bitterbridge with a morningstar, beating Loras Tyrell and many of the knights who had been wagering on her maidenhead, and asks for the rainbow cloak as her prize.

• shownA Clash of Kings · ch. 33 (Catelyn IV)

  Accused of Renly's murder with her own sword out of reach, she fends off Ser Emmon Cuy with the dead king's blade.

Criston Cole#Permanent link to Criston Colethe Kingmaker

• Ser Criston of the KingsguardA steward's son with a morningstar, sworn shield to a princess, in the white at twenty-three. The decade from Maidenpool to the wedding tourney at King's Landing is where the rank is taken from.
• The KingmakerHand of the King, sacking Duskendale and walking four thousand men about the riverlands. He does almost no fighting of his own in this state, and the last of it kills him.

A steward's son knocked Dark Sister clean out of Daemon Targaryen's grip with a morningstar to take the melee at Viserys I's accession tourney, unhorsed the same prince in the lists that afternoon, unhorsed both Cargyll twins of the Kingsguard after him, and was finally put down by Lord Lymond Mallister. That day is most of the case, and the man he took it off is placed in the apex tier of this page. What follows is damage rather than improvement: at Rhaenyra's wedding tourney he breaks Ser Harwin Strong's collarbone and shatters his elbow, and cracks Ser Joffrey Lonmouth's helm hard enough that the man needs six days to die of it. The series moves that killing indoors and makes it bare-fisted, kneeling on the man's chest and punching until his own arm will not rise. He ends on a stony ridge south of the Gods Eye offering single combat to three enemy commanders at once, and three archers answer with an arrow apiece before any of them has to.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  A steward's son from the Dornish marches, he wins the melee at the tourney for Viserys I's accession in 104 AC by knocking Dark Sister out of Daemon Targaryen's grip with his morningstar.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Wearing Rhaenyra's favour at the same tourney, he unhorses Daemon in the joust, then Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk Cargyll, before Lord Lymond Mallister unhorses him.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Taken into the Kingsguard at twenty-three in Ser Ryam Redwyne's place, and made Lord Commander in 112 AC.

Khal Drogo#Permanent link to Khal Drogothe Great Khal

• Khal DrogoForty thousand riders, thirty years old, an uncut braid to the thigh and no defeat behind him. The rank comes from here and there is nowhere else it could come from.
• The man who fell off his horseA poultice torn off an arakh cut, the wound gone bad, and a khal on the ground in front of his own khalasar — which among the Dothraki settles the question of command before anybody asks about the fever.
• The empty thing on the grassLeft breathing and nothing else by Mirri Maz Duur's ritual, bathed and led out into the night by his wife, who then puts a pillow over his face.

Never lost, and the evidence offered for that is a hairstyle. A Dothraki cuts his braid when he is beaten and lets the world read the shame in it; Drogo's hangs uncut past his waist to his thighs, and few men die with theirs whole. Forty thousand riders behind him, and the novels keep almost all of his fighting off the page — Khal Ogo and Ogo's son are killed out of sight and reported afterwards by Jorah Mormont, and what Daenerys actually sees is an arrow through his arm and an arakh cut where a nipple used to be. So the only fight anybody gets to watch is the one the television series invented for him, and it is a good one: challenged in front of the khalasar, he throws his own arakh into the dirt, lets the man open his chest to demonstrate what the wound is worth, then cuts his throat with his own blade and draws the tongue out through the hole. Both tellings finish him with a scratch taken in a fight he won without effort.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 3 (Daenerys I)

  His oiled braid, hung with tiny silver bells, falls past his waist to his thighs, and marks him among the Dothraki as an undefeated warlord.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 3 (Daenerys I)

  Viserys tells Daenerys that the length of that braid means the man has never been defeated in combat.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 3 (Daenerys I)

  Thirty years old, moving like a panther, and younger than Daenerys had expected.

Jon Snow#Permanent link to Jon SnowLord Snow

• The boy in the Winterfell yardTrained beside Robb Stark and beat him often enough that Catelyn took it personally.
• Lord Commander of the Night's WatchLongclaw, the Wall, Hardhome and the Castle Black yard. Everything the rank is argued from happens in this state, which ends the day he lays the command down.
• What came backKnifed in a courtyard by the men who ran his own castle and, on screen only, brought back by a red priestess into something quieter that resigns its post six episodes before the field outside Winterfell. The walk out alone in front of the Bolton charge, the mud, and the beating he gives Ramsay Bolton all belong here, and the number is explicitly not taken from here.

Shattered a White Walker with Longclaw on the shore at Hardhome, the first one anybody had put down with steel instead of dragonglass, and the pair of them stood there a beat working out what had happened. The rest of the ranked span is more command than swordwork, and it is thin: the Wall held for days after Donal Noye died at the gate, and little else. The walk out alone in front of a Bolton cavalry charge with the horse shot from under him, and the long stretch face-down in the mud under his own routed infantry with men climbing over him to get clear, are six episodes past the resignation and are not banked here. On the page he is competent and nothing rarer — Ghost has to bite Qhorin Halfhand's calf before he can finish the man, and in his own last book a wildling wearing somebody else's face beats him in the practice yard after he has asked for three opponents at once. Then his officers put knives in him in the courtyard, one apiece, saying it was for the Watch.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 79 (Jon XII)

  Catelyn Stark was particularly annoyed on the occasions when he bested Robb at their training.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 52 (Jon VII)

  Sets fire to the corpse standing over Jeor Mormont in the Lord Commander's chamber and burns himself badly doing it.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 60 (Jon VIII)

  His right hand is swathed in silk halfway to the elbow afterwards and carries the burn scars from that night.

Aemond Targaryen#Permanent link to Aemond TargaryenAemond One-Eye

• The boy with two eyesTen years old, the only one of his siblings without a dragon, and mocked with the offer of a pig.
• Aemond One-EyeA sapphire in the socket, nightblack armour chased with gold, the largest dragon alive, and whatever Criston Cole managed to teach him. The rank is taken from here because there is no other version of him old enough to fight. Gyldayn takes the right eye; the series takes the left.

Climbed onto the largest living dragon at ten years old, at night, without permission, and paid an eye for it on the walk back — a trade he said afterwards he would make again. Criston Cole made a swordsman of him, and every source Gyldayn compiled agrees he was a dangerous one, which is the trouble: agreement is not a bout, and nobody ever set a bout of his down. What got written was the dragon's work. The series films two fights of his own and neither is a duel: a brawl among children on a Driftmark beach, where he breaks a boy's nose, throws all four of them off him at once, and still finishes on the sand screaming with a dagger opening his face; and the retaking of Harrenhal in the third season, where he goes through the survivors with Blackfyre and kills Ser Simon Strong and both his sons, the last of whom wounds him badly in the back on the way down. His last recorded act is fastening his saddle chains properly, and the man who left his own dangling crossed the gap between two falling dragons and put a sword through the socket Lucerys Velaryon had emptied.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  At ten and still dragonless, he goes to Vhagar in secret on Driftmark; she breaks her chains, and he flies two circles before setting down.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  In the fight that follows he beats Jacaerys Velaryon savagely, and Lucerys draws a dagger and slashes out his right eye.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Said later that he considered an eye a fair price for Vhagar.

Robert Baratheon#Permanent link to Robert Baratheonthe Demon of the Trident

• The Demon of the TridentSix and a half feet of him, and a spiked warhammer Donal Noye made for him at Storm's End. Every claim the rank rests on happens in this state, and none of it happens on a page.
• The kingEight stone heavier, red-faced by midday, too wide for his own breastplate and argued out of the melee by two men who love him. This is the version a reader actually gets, for the whole of the first novel and then no more.

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.

Rhaegar Targaryen#Permanent link to Rhaegar Targaryenthe silver prince

• The boy who readBookish to a fault and no use with a sword, until something he read decided him otherwise and he went out to the yard on his own account.
• The Prince of DragonstoneKnighted at seventeen, black plate with a three-headed dragon in rubies on the breast, and the only state any account of him is an account of.

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.

Arya Stark#Permanent link to Arya StarkCat of the Canals

• The pupil in the Small HallNine years old, a wooden blade weighted with lead that she cannot yet catch when it is thrown to her, and four hours of failing to touch her teacher.
• No oneBraavos, a borrowed face, a stretch of induced blindness no source puts a length on, and a target killed with a coin he bit himself. None of this is fighting, and the training that matters is in the lying.
• Arya Stark of WinterfellThe one who comes back. The number is argued from this state and mostly from the screen, because it is the only place she is ever set against a fighter who is ready for her.

Fought Brienne of Tarth to a standstill in the Winterfell yard and finished with a blade at each other's throats, having lost Needle mid-bout and switched to a dagger without dropping a step. That is the one occasion anybody puts her in front of a ranked fighter who is awake, armed and trying, and it is why she stands at the head of this tier instead of the foot of it. The rest is killing rather than fencing: a stableboy with a pitchfork, a torturer stabbed from behind with his own knife, a deserter in a Braavosi canal, an old insurance seller poisoned through a coin he tested with his teeth. The two versions do not even agree about who did what — the novels leave her the squire and the Tickler at the inn and give Polliver to the Hound, while the series has her cut Polliver's leg from under him, take Needle back and put it through his throat. Then the Night King, one thrust, one continuity, and the largest single act anyone this far down the ladder performs. She is also the only fighter on the page whose best hour may not have happened yet.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 22 (Arya II)

  Eddard Stark gives her the sword back and hires Syrio Forel, who throws her a lead-weighted wooden blade she cannot catch and spends four hours letting her fail to strike him.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 50 (Arya IV)

  Kills a stableboy who grabs her arm in the stables during the purge of House Stark, putting Needle through his belly.

• shownA Storm of Swords · ch. 74 (Arya XIII)

  At the crossroads inn she stabs the squire in the belly, kills the Tickler from behind with his own dagger while repeating his questions back at him, then recovers Needle from Polliver and finishes the squire.

Loras Tyrell#Permanent link to Loras Tyrellthe Knight of Flowers

• The Knight of FlowersKnighted at fifteen, silver armour bought on the Street of Steel, a cape of woven roses and a white bloom handed up to a different girl after every course. Two seasons of this is the whole file.
• The white cloakKingsguard at seventeen, which spares him a marriage and gives him a sister to guard. He trains the king, judges a prisoner and supervises other men's swordwork.
• The penitentOn screen, a seven-pointed star cut into his forehead in front of his own family, minutes before the sept comes down on everyone in it.

Unhorsed Jaime Lannister at fifteen, and that one afternoon carries most of this rank. It reaches a reader twice from two men with nothing in common — Petyr Baelish, still sour about the Valyrian dagger he lost betting the other way, and Robert Baratheon, who liked the story enough to tell it again over breakfast. Later the same year, at the Hand's tourney, he puts Gregor Clegane on the ground without breaking his own lance, having ridden a mare in heat at the man's stallion, and the crowd is still cheering when Gregor kills the horse with a single blow that half severs its neck and comes for him with a sword. He goes to the last two at Bitterbridge. He kills two of Renly Baratheon's Rainbow Guard in a rage over a murder they had no part in, and owns up to it a year later, to Jaime Lannister, in the White Sword Tower. Then he is seventeen and in white, and it stops. Cersei Lannister eventually gives him Dragonstone to storm and he comes back as somebody else's summary of quarrels, maces and boiling oil.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 18 (Catelyn IV)

  Petyr Baelish says he lost a Valyrian steel dagger to Tyrion Lannister by betting on Jaime at the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name day, because Loras Tyrell unhorsed him.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 30 (Eddard VII)

  Robert Baratheon retells the story of the Knight of Flowers unhorsing Jaime Lannister at that earlier tourney, and calls him a son any man would be proud of.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 29 (Sansa II)

  One of the four still standing at the end of the first day of the Hand's tourney, alongside both Cleganes and Jaime Lannister.

Bronn#Permanent link to BronnSer Bronn of the Blackwater

• The sellsword on the high roadRingmail over boiled leather, a half helm, no shield at all, fifteen years younger than the knight opposite, half a hand taller and longer in the reach. Everything the number rests on is fought in this kit.
• Ser Bronn of the BlackwaterKnighted alongside six hundred others after the chain, with a burning green chain on smoking grey for arms and a brothel he can now visit on his own account.
• Lord StokeworthA castle, a wife, four household knights and another man's son named in mock honour of his old employer. He is the one entry here that nothing ever damages.

A sellsword who turned down the shield he was offered took the Eyrie's champion apart in front of the woman who had picked the knight, and the method is the entire man: nothing fair in it, no exchange he had not chosen, and at the end a statue shoved over onto a knight in full plate who could no longer see out of his own visor. Catelyn Stark is the only person on that terrace expecting it, having watched him work on the high road while everyone else was calling him a common hire. The series stages the same fight the same way and adds the Moon Door. What follows is a long demonstration that he never faces anybody fresh — Ser Balman Byrch challenges him courteously, is beaten, is made to name who sent him and is killed anyway, and even that arrives secondhand from a battered widow. When a second trial comes up and the champion on the other side is Gregor Clegane, he declines it and marries into a castle instead. Comfort is the only wound the story ever gives him.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 31 (Tyrion IV)

  Arms Tyrion Lannister with a double-bladed axe when the mountain clans come down on the party, telling him to pretend he is splitting logs.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 40 (Catelyn VII)

  Refuses a shield and fights Ser Vardis Egen in ringmail over boiled leather against full plate, being fifteen years younger, half a hand taller and longer in the reach.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 40 (Catelyn VII)

  Runs the armoured knight until he tires, opens his elbow while the narrow visor loses him, topples a statue onto him and kills him where he lies.

Jorah Mormont#Permanent link to Jorah MormontJorah the Andal

• The Lord of Bear IslandNewly knighted, one of the first men through a breach and champion of a tourney inside a single season. The number comes from that year and from nothing after it.
• The exileSlaver, then a spy reporting on the girl he ends up serving, carrying a hip wound from Qotho that months later a queen's nursing has still only begun to close.
• The pit fighterSold as a slave in middle age. The novels keep him caged as Yezzan's property until he signs with the Second Sons; on screen he is put in Daznak's grand melee, where he finishes upright because somebody else killed the man who was killing him.

The champion's laurel from Lannisport is the only thing holding this rank up, and the man who reports it is Jorah Mormont, once, at night, in a dead city, to a girl he is in love with. He went through the breach at Pyke behind Thoros of Myr and was knighted for it; a season later he wore a Hightower girl's favour, beat every challenger set in front of him and held Jaime Lannister to a draw in the final tilt. Then he entered tourney after tourney to pay for the wife he had won with that one and never came near it again, each defeat costing a suit of armour and a charger, until the debts turned him into a slaver and Eddard Stark's sentence turned him into an exile. The one fight a reader actually watches him win happens after the fall, and it is Qotho, killed at the price of an arakh in the hip. The rest of the late record is the screen's: Stone Men beaten off a boat in Old Valyria with greyscale as the fare, which the novels give to Jon Connington rescuing Tyrion in the Sorrows, and a melee in a fighting pit he wins standing only because a stranger put a blade through the water dancer who had him on the sand, where the novels leave him caged as Yezzan's property until he signs with the Second Sons.

• statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 12 (Daenerys I)

  Tells Daenerys he earned his knighthood in Greyjoy's Rebellion by following Thoros of Myr through the breach at Pyke.

• statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 12 (Daenerys I)

  At Robert Baratheon's tourney outside Lannisport he held Jaime Lannister to a draw in the final joust, took the champion's laurel and named Lynesse Hightower queen of love and beauty.

• statedA Clash of Kings · ch. 12 (Daenerys I)

  Entered tourney after tourney afterwards to pay for his wife's tastes and never distinguished himself again, each loss costing him a suit of armour and a charger.

Areo Hotah#Permanent link to Areo Hotahthe captain of guards

• The Norvoshi boySold to the bearded priests, trained by them, and sent to Dorne as a young woman's shield with a longaxe and three words. Serve. Obey. Protect.
• The captain at SunspearWhite-haired now, copper scales under sandsilk, six feet of mountain ash slung across his back. The one hour that argues this rank is fought in old age and not in youth.

One clean kill, in one chapter, decades into a career, and the man on the other end of it wears a white cloak. Ser Arys Oakheart charges a barge on the Greenblood to keep two princesses out of Dornish custody, takes crossbow bolts on the way in, reaches the deck and goes down under the longaxe. Arianne Martell watches the whole thing and badly wanted the other result, which makes her about as unfriendly a witness as this page has to offer. The rest of the record is a man standing to the left of a chair — barring Obara Sand from her uncle's rest, bringing the butt of the axe down on marble to move Tyene off the dais — and he is honest about his own limits in a way almost nobody above him manages, sizing up Ser Balon Swann across a feast and thinking plainly that this one would be harder work than Oakheart was. The adaptation deletes the argument entirely. It gives him a dozen guardsmen and someone else's brawl to break up, a courteous line to Jaime Lannister about the good fight the two of them will now never have, and a poisoned knife in the spine from a woman he was posted there to watch.

• shownA Feast for Crows · ch. 2 (The Captain of Guards)

  Bars Obara Sand from Prince Doran's rest at the Water Gardens, and the narration allows that deadly as she is, she is no match for the captain.

• shownA Feast for Crows · ch. 2 (The Captain of Guards)

  Brings the butt of his longaxe down on the marble floor to warn Tyene Sand off the dais when she reaches for Prince Doran.

• shownA Feast for Crows · ch. 21 (The Queenmaker)

  Steps out of the barge cabin on the Greenblood with a dozen crossbowmen, and Ser Arys Oakheart of the Kingsguard charges them, is hit by several bolts, reaches the deck and falls to the longaxe.

Syrio Forel#Permanent link to Syrio Forelthe First Sword of Braavos

Five Lannister guardsmen went down to a bald Braavosi holding a lead-weighted practice sword, and then he turned to a Kingsguard knight cased in white plate and told a nine-year-old to leave. That is the entire record, one scene, written once and filmed once, and the two versions stop in the same place. Nine years as First Sword to the Sealord is his own account of himself, offered to that same pupil at the very first lesson, and the only outside support for it is that the Hand of the King thought him worth hiring. No states are set out under this entry because the story declines to supply a second one — the last thing anybody is shown is Meryn Trant cutting the wooden sword in half, and the only word on what followed is Cersei Lannister telling her brother that the dancing master interfered and the girl escaped. He is placed on a rout of five men-at-arms and a refusal to run, which is a great deal more than the bottom of this tier can show and a great deal less than the top of it.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 22 (Arya II)

  Hired as a dancing master, he throws Arya a wooden blade weighted to make her strong, tells her the water dance is not the hacking iron dance of Westeros, and lets her fail to touch him for four hours.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 50 (Arya IV)

  Tells Arya he became First Sword of Braavos because he alone looked at the Sealord's cat and said what it plainly was, where the other bravos saw a marvel.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 50 (Arya IV)

  Breaks the fingers of the first guardsman to draw on him, and by the time Arya reaches the far end of the Small Hall five Lannister men are dead or dying around him.

Beric Dondarrion#Permanent link to Beric Dondarrionthe lightning lord

• The Lord of BlackhavenA young marcher lord in the procession at the Hand's tourney, handed a hundred men and a royal warrant because his rank fitted the errand. Nothing shows him win a fight in this state.
• The lightning lordOne eye, a caved-in temple, a rope mark under a scarf, a hole through the chest, and a blade he lights by cutting his own palm. He is a better fighter assembled out of the damage than he ever was intact.
• The Lord of CorpsesThe old woman at High Heart's name for him, because the grave smell on him is fresh. By the following book his fire has gone out of the world and something grimmer has the brotherhood.

Rank a fighter at his best hour and Beric Dondarrion is the case that turns the rule inside out, because his best hour arrives after he starts dying. Alive, the novels never show him win anything at all — a name in the procession at the Hand's tourney, a lordling given a hundred men because his rank suited the commission rather than his skill at arms did, and then an ambush in the riverlands that kills most of the party and leaves nobody certain he came out of it. The famous version is built entirely out of the damage: one eye gone, the skull crushed at the temple, a noose scar, a wound clean through the chest, and a sword he sets burning by opening his own palm. Thoros of Myr has brought him back six times by then and says a seventh would finish them both. He still loses the only duel a reader is shown, opened shoulder to breastbone by Sandor Clegane, and he still gets up. On screen the last useful thing he does is hold a corridor full of wights so a girl can reach a door, and it costs him the death that sticks.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 29 (Sansa II)

  Rides in the procession at the Hand's tourney, where Jeyne Poole announces she would marry him on sight.

• shownA Game of Thrones · ch. 43 (Eddard XI)

  Eddard Stark refuses Loras Tyrell the commission and gives it to Beric instead, putting a hundred men under him to bring Gregor Clegane to the king's justice.

• statedA Game of Thrones · ch. 55 (Catelyn VIII)

  Tywin Lannister's army ambushes that party and kills most of it, and word reaching Robb Stark is that Beric may have escaped but nobody knows.

Grey Worm#Permanent link to Grey Wormcommander of the Unsullied

• A token from the bucketOne of eight thousand, issued a fresh colour and a fresh vermin every morning so that no name could ever belong to anyone.
• Commander of the UnsulliedThe one name he keeps, drawn on the morning he stopped being property. The rank is argued from here and mostly from the screen.

Nothing in the five novels puts a weapon in this man's grip on the page. He is in the room and named in the chapter, chosen by the other eunuchs as the ablest of them, and he holds on to the name he drew from the bucket on the day Daenerys Targaryen freed him — after that the books use him as a chain of command rather than as a swordsman. The martial case is therefore the corps and not the soldier. Jorah Mormont calls the Unsullied the best-trained fighting force in the world and tells the tale of the Three Thousand of Qohor to prove it; a slave-master in Astapor demonstrates in front of a horrified audience how little of a wound they will register. All of it is somebody talking. The screen supplies the missing half and does not spare him for it — helmet gone in a Meereenese alley, one leg opened, a dagger in his side that he pulls out of himself and puts through a man's throat before carrying on.

• statedA Storm of Swords · ch. 8 (Daenerys I)

  Jorah Mormont calls the Unsullied the best trained fighting force in the world and tells Daenerys of the Three Thousand of Qohor, who broke a khalasar.

• shownA Storm of Swords · ch. 23 (Daenerys II)

  Kraznys mo Nakloz demonstrates in Astapor that the Unsullied obey every command given them and feel hardly any pain, and both Daenerys and Arstan are appalled by what the training costs.

• shownA Storm of Swords · ch. 27 (Daenerys III)

  Daenerys buys all eight thousand Unsullied plus every boy still in training, then turns them on the slavers with one word.

Harwin Strong#Permanent link to Harwin StrongBreakbones

• BreakbonesCaptain in the gold cloaks the year his father brought him to court — no source gives his age, only that he was fifteen at the youngest — sworn shield to the Princess of Dragonstone, and called by one chronicler the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms. There is nothing else under the number.
• BrokenbonesA collarbone and an elbow taken off him by Criston Cole at Rhaenyra's wedding tourney, and a court fool's nickname that outlived him by the better part of two centuries.

Breakbones is on this ladder because a history says, in a single clause with no example attached, that he was the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms in his day. Fire & Blood never has him win a thing. The one bout it records he loses in public, at the wedding tourney of the princess he was sworn to, when Criston Cole cracks the collarbone and ruins the elbow and Mushroom renames him on the spot — and it is the mockery, not the epithet, that lasted. On screen there are two swings and both are strange. A crowd is shouldered apart so he can carry Rhaenyra Targaryen out of a crush, and a beating is administered to Criston Cole in the training yard that takes four Kingsguard to stop, to a man who declines to return one blow and lies there smiling because he has won the argument instead. Then a locked door at Harrenhal, a fire set by his brother's mutes, and a ceiling. The strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms never gets a fight, and the tier goes on below him.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Breakbones was said to be the strongest man in the Seven Kingdoms in his day, and is described as massive and redoubtable.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Brought to court by his father Lyonel Strong in 105 AC and made a captain of the gold cloaks of King's Landing.

• statedFire & Blood · Heirs of the Dragon — A Question of Succession

  Given Rhaenyra's favour at her wedding tourney in 114 AC, where Criston Cole breaks his collarbone and shatters his elbow and Mushroom mocks him afterwards as Brokenbones.