Rickard Stark

Lord Rickard rode to King's Landing to answer for his son's outburst and was granted trial by combat. Aerys named fire as his champion, roasted him alive inside his own armor, and strangled his heir Brandon in front of him with a device built for the purpose.

It was the atrocity that made the rebellion inevitable and unforgivable. Whatever Robert's own faults, the regime he pulled down had done that, in its own throne room, for entertainment. Rickard's death is the reason nobody in the North ever needed persuading.