Biography

The Storm Lord's Heir

Robert was born the eldest son of Lord Steffon Baratheon and Lady Cassana Estermont of Storm's End, the ancient stormland fortress said to have been raised by Durran Godsgrief in the Age of Heroes. He grew up alongside two younger brothers — dutiful, humorless Stannis and charming young Renly — but spent much of his youth away from home, fostered at the Eyrie under Lord Jon Arryn, Warden of the East.

It was in the Vale that Robert's most important friendship was forged. His fellow ward was Eddard Stark of Winterfell — quiet and solemn where Robert was loud and reckless — and the two grew as close as brothers under Arryn's care. Jon Arryn became a second father to them both, a bond that would eventually decide the fate of a dynasty.

Tragedy came early. While Robert was still a young man, his parents drowned within sight of Storm's End when their ship broke apart on the rocks of Shipbreaker Bay. Robert and Stannis watched from the castle walls. Robert became Lord of Storm's End — and, some say, never entirely forgave the world for it.

Lyanna

Lord Robert was betrothed to Lyanna Stark, Eddard's sister — a wild, willful northern beauty whom Robert loved with the totality he brought to everything. Lyanna herself was less certain; she reportedly observed that love would never change Robert's nature, and his nature ran famously to other women. Whatever the truth of their match, it never came to be.

At the great tourney of Harrenhal, Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen won the champion's laurel and rode past his own wife to crown Lyanna his queen of love and beauty. Not long after, Rhaegar and Lyanna disappeared together. Her brother Brandon rode to King's Landing demanding justice, and the Mad King Aerys II had Brandon and his father Lord Rickard Stark put to death in the throne room. When Aerys then demanded the heads of Robert and Eddard from Jon Arryn, Arryn refused — and raised his banners instead.

Robert's Rebellion

What followed is called Robert's Rebellion, or the War of the Usurper, depending on who tells it. Robert became the revolt's figurehead and battlefield hammer: he had the royal blood (his grandmother was a Targaryen), the martial gifts, and the charisma to bind stormlanders, northmen, riverlords, and Valemen into one cause.

His war was ferocious and personal. He fought three battles in a single day at Summerhall, was wounded and defeated at Ashford, hid from his hunters in Stoney Sept until the Battle of the Bells turned pursuit into rout, and finally met Rhaegar himself at the ruby ford of the Trident. There, wounded and roaring, Robert caved in the silver prince's breastplate with one swing of his warhammer, scattering the rubies from Rhaegar's armor into the river. The war was decided in that instant. (The full campaign is chronicled on the Battles page.)

Victory tasted of ash. Tywin Lannister sacked King's Landing in Robert's name, and Rhaegar's wife and small children were butchered — a crime Robert shrugged at, to Eddard Stark's lasting horror. And Lyanna, the woman the war had ostensibly been fought for, was found dying in a tower in Dorne. Robert took the throne having already lost the only prize he actually wanted.

The Reign of Robert I

Robert was crowned by right of conquest and Targaryen descent, and to seal the alliance that had financed the war's end he married Cersei Lannister, Tywin's dazzling and ambitious daughter. The marriage was poisoned from the wedding night — Robert, deep in his cups, called his bride by Lyanna's name — and it curdled into fifteen years of mutual contempt, infidelity, and, on Robert's part, drunken cruelty.

As a ruler, Robert was a magnificent figurehead and a negligent king. He hated the tedium of governance and handed it wholesale to his Hand, Jon Arryn, and a small council dominated by Lannisters, while he hunted, feasted, drank, whored, and staged ruinously expensive tourneys. The Crown that Aerys left rich, Robert left six million gold dragons in debt — half of it owed to his own father-in-law. His one great test in the field came when Balon Greyjoy declared himself King of the Iron Islands: Robert crushed the Greyjoy Rebellion with genuine relish, briefly himself again, then sank back into the long feast.

The queen, meanwhile, bore three golden-haired children — Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen — none of whom, in truth, were Robert's. All were fathered by her twin brother, Ser Jaime Lannister. Jon Arryn discovered the secret. Jon Arryn died suddenly. And Robert rode north to Winterfell to ask the only man he had ever fully trusted to become his new Hand.

The Last Hunt

Eddard Stark accepted the Handship and began, in turn, to pull the same thread that had killed Jon Arryn. Before Ned could bring the truth to his king, Robert — drunk on wine pressed on him by a squire in Lannister service — was gored by a monstrous boar during a hunt in the kingswood. He died slowly of the wound, with humor and regret in roughly equal measure, naming Eddard Protector of the Realm and regent for a son who carried not one drop of his blood.

Ned, in mercy, altered the wording of the dying king's will. It saved no one. Within days of Robert's death, Ned was imprisoned as a traitor, and within weeks the realm was at war over the throne Robert had won with his hammer. What his death unleashed is told on the Legacy page.

The Man Himself

In his prime Robert stood six and a half feet tall, black-haired and blue-eyed, muscled like a maiden's fantasy — his own description, naturally. By the time of his death he was red-faced and enormously fat, a fact he mocked more savagely than anyone else dared to. That was Robert in miniature: whatever the truth was, he would say it louder than you, laugh harder at it, and then drink to forget it.

He was generous to a fault, quick to rage and quicker to forgive, incapable of holding a grudge against anyone except the Targaryens — that hatred alone never cooled, and it drove him to sanction the assassination of the exiled Daenerys, the act that finally fractured his friendship with Ned Stark. He knew exactly what he had become. Few characters in the saga see their own failure so clearly, joke about it so well, and do so little about it.