Brynden Rivers

Lord Brynden Rivers, called Bloodraven, was a legitimized Great Bastard, son of King Aegon IV Targaryen and Mylessa Blackwood, his sixth mistress. His personal sigil is a white dragon with red eyes, breathing red flames from its nostrils, on a black field. Despite being a bastard, he was loyal to House Targaryen during the Blackfyre Rebellion, Hand of King Aerys I, and Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. Shiera Seastar, another bastard of Aegon IV, was his mistress. His half-brother Bittersteel also desired Shiera, which increased the enmity between the two. He was believed to be a sorcerer. Pseudonym(s): Blood Raven Three-Eyed Raven Last Green Seer Title(s): Sor Master of Whispers Hand of the King Mr. Commander of the Night Watch Loyalty: House Targaryen Night Patrol Race: Valyrian and Riverman Birth: 175 AD, in King's Landing Death: 252 AD (presumably), in Beyond the Wall Personal emblem: A white dragon on black, breathing red fire. (Sable, a silver dragon with flaming gules)

Father: King Aegon IV Targaryen Mother: Mrs. Melissa Blackwood Mistress Lady Shiera Seastar (lover) Half-siblings: Shiera Seastar, Daemon Blackfyre, Aegor Rivers

Brynden was albino and therefore had milk-white skin, long white hair, and red eyes. On the right side of his face, he had a wine-red birthmark that extended from his throat to his right cheek. The birthmark was the reason he was called "Bloodraven," as it was said to look somewhat like a raven drawn in blood. However, Ser Duncan the Tall thought the birthmark was merely a blemish. According to George R.R. Martin, it is more a suggestion of a raven shape, like an inkblot. Brynden was not as tall or muscular as his half-brothers, Daemon and Aegor, but he was considered more cunning. Standing under six feet tall, Brynden was lean and wiry. He had a grim, forbidding aspect and sharp, vaguely sinister features. He typically wore scarlet and smoke colors, a dark gray mottled and streaked with black. For example, one of his outfits included a scarlet tunic with black boots and a smoke-colored cloak. Because his skin was sensitive to light, Bloodraven usually wore a cloak and hood. Brynden lost an eye during the First Blackfyre Rebellion, and rarely covered the empty socket with a patch, preferring to display his scar and empty socket to the world. He wore his white hair straight and shoulder-length, with the front brushed forward to cover his missing eye. Although Brynden carried the Valyrian steel longsword Dark Sister and was a skilled swordsman, he was also an expert archer who preferred to use his tall weirwood longbow. Brynden was said to be a sinister sorcerer and master spy, who effectively ruled the kingdom "with spies and spells" and as "Lord Bloodraven". A popular riddle was: "How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have? A thousand eyes and one." The song "A Thousand Eyes, and One" was written about Brynden.

In 175 AC, Brynden was born in King's Landing as the bastard son of King Aegon IV Targaryen and his sixth mistress, Lady Melissa Blackwood, who replaced the king's fifth mistress, Lady Barba Bracken. Brynden's older sisters were Mya and Gwenys Rivers. Although Melissa was eventually dismissed by Aegon IV in favor of his seventh mistress, Lady Bethany Bracken, Brynden was able to maintain close relations at court because of Melissa's popularity. Brynden resented Barba's bastard son, Aegor Rivers, nicknamed "Bittersteel". At some point, Brynden became the lover of his half-sister, Shiera Seastar. As Aegor also desired her, Shiera became another point of rivalry between the two half-siblings. Brynden would become Shiera's most ardent admirer. Like his other bastard brothers, Brynden was legitimized by his father Aegon IV in 184 AC, when the king was on his deathbed.

During the First Blackfyre Rebellion, Brynden remained loyal to his legitimate half-brother, King Daeron II Targaryen, rather than joining his bastard half-brother, Daemon I Blackfyre. Brynden commanded his personal guards, a group of archers called the Raven's Teeth. At the Battle of Redgrass Field in 196 AC, the Raven's Teeth gained the Wailing Mountains and launched arrows upon the Blackfyres from three hundred yards away, killing first Daemon's eldest son, Aegon, then Daemon himself, and finally Aegon's twin, Aemon. It is said that the arrows were fired by Brynden's sorcery, and people later called Brynden a kinslayer. Daemon's death led to the rebels' defeat, but some were rallied by Aegor Rivers in a mad charge. The resulting duel between the rival half-brothers left Brynden blind in one eye and Aegor retreating. With Daemon and his older sons dead, Aegor fled into exile in the Free Cities with his wife, daughters, and Daemon's remaining sons. After the war, Brynden took a hard line against the rebels, winning Prince Baelor Targaryen's appeal for clemency.

In 209 AC, Brynden became Hand of the King and master of the Whisperers, serving throughout the reign of his nephew, King Aerys I Targaryen. His first great ordeal was the Great Spring Sickness, an epidemic that killed King Daeron II Targaryen, Princes Valarr and Matarys Targaryen, and tens of thousands of others. Seeing the corpses piling up in the streets of King's Landing, Brynden ordered the pyromancers of the Alchemists' Guild to burn them in the Dragonpit. At night, the green glow of the wildfire pyres could be seen throughout the city. Around the same time, a drought began that lasted just over a year, causing many commoners to leave their lands in search of somewhere where rain still fell. Brynden ordered them to return to their own lands, but few obeyed. In fact, they blamed Brynden, cursing him as a murderer of kin. Many of them became thieves. Prices rose as trade declined, and it was widely accepted that travel was less safe under Aerys's reign than under his father's. Some claimed that Brynden and his mistress, his half-sister Shiera Seastar, used sorcery to uncover secrets. Brynden proposed to Shiera numerous times, but she always refused his marriage proposals. In 211 AC, Ser Otho Bracken, known as the Brute of Bracken, was expected to succeed to the lordship of Stone Hedge. Unwilling to see such a man in power, the Bracken's traditional rivals of House Blackwood were expected to start a war to eradicate him. It was suggested that Brynden, being himself half-Blackwood, would not be inclined to listen to any complaints from a member of House Bracken. Septon Sefton believed that Brynden would likely do nothing, and that if he did decide to act, it would only be to help his Blackwood cousins ​​bring Otho to bay.

In 211 AC, Lord Dagon Greyjoy raided the west coast, including Fair Isle, the Arbor shipping lanes, and the village of Little Dosk on the Reach. In 212 AC, Lord Beron Stark summoned his vassals to repel the Ironborn from the Stony Shore, while House Lannister was building ships to attack the Iron Islands. Throughout all this, Brynden kept an eye on Tyrosh, where his half-brother Aegor Rivers remained with the surviving sons of Daemon Blackfyre in exile. However, Victarion Greyjoy recalls that, "...not even Dagon could defeat the dragons," suggesting that the Targaryens eventually intervened.

During the marriage tournament at Whitewalls in 212 AC, Ser Maynard Plumm defended Brynden's actions as Hand of Ser Kyle the Cat. Through his informants, including a Vyrwel man-at-arms and a troupe of comic dwarves, Brynden was aware of a plot at Whitewalls to install Daemon II Blackfyre as the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. Brynden marched into the tournament with three hundred Raven's Teeth, three brothers of the Kingsguard, five hundred other knights, and five thousand foot soldiers from the Crownlands and the Riverlands. Faced with such force, Daemon attempted to rally the tournament participants for battle, but found little support. Daemon then challenged the Hand to single combat; Brynden refused and imprisoned the pretender, thus quelling the Second Blackfyre Rebellion. Daemon was kept in captivity instead of being executed with the other rebel leaders, ensuring that Aegor Rivers could not name his brother Haegon as a serious contender.

Following the Third Blackfyre Rebellion, Brynden argued that the captive Aegor Rivers should be killed, but King Aerys I Targaryen decided to send Aegor to the Night's Watch. However, Aegor Rivers escaped back to Essos when his ship was intercepted en route to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

Brynden continued as Hand to Aerys' successor, his brother Maekar I, in 221 AC. After Maekar's death in 233 AC, Brynden, as Hand of the King, convened a Great Council in King's Landing to discuss the disputed issue of succession. Aenys Blackfyre wished to attend the Great Council peacefully, and Brynden offered him safe passage to King's Landing from Tyrosh. However, as soon as Aenys arrived in the capital, he was arrested by the Gold Cloaks and then beheaded in the Red Keep. The Great Council chose Maekar's younger son to succeed as King Aegon V Targaryen, whose first act was to arrest Brynden for Aenys' murder. It is suggested by Maester Aemon that Brynden was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Red Keep. Brynden argued that he had sacrificed his honor for the good of the realm, but Aegon refused to release him. Instead, he offered the option of using black blood instead of death, which Brynden accepted.

When Maester Aemon sailed to the Wall in 233 AC, he was escorted by King Aegon V's friend, Ser Duncan the Tall of the Kingsguard, and accompanied by an honor guard of Night's Watch recruits. There were two hundred men and prisoners, including Brynden Rivers. Many of the men were archers from Brynden's Raven's Teeth. According to a semi-canonical source, Brynden took the Black Sister with him when he went to the Wall. Brynden was elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch in 239 AC. However, in 252 AC, he disappeared while traveling beyond the Wall.

A FEAST FOR CROWS - Maester Aemon tells Samwell Tarly that Brynden accompanied him to the Wall when he joined the Night's Watch, with Ser Duncan the Tall as his escort. The singer Dareon mentions that he knows a song about Bloodraven, "A Thousand Eyes, and One".

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS - Bran Stark discovers that Brynden is still alive as the Three-Eyed Raven, the last greenseer who lives with the Children of the Forest in a cave beyond the Wall. Brynden becomes Bran's mentor in the art of greensight and skin-changing.

"Treason is no less vile because the traitor shows himself to be a coward." - Brynden to Ambrose Butterwell

"There have always been Targaryens who dreamed of things to come, long before the Conquest." - Brynden to Duncan the Tall and Aegon Targaryen

"I had many names when I was fast, but even I had a mother, and the name she gave me when I was at her breast was Brynden." - The Three-Eyed Raven to Meera Reed

"I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother I loved, a brother I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I still see them, but no word of mine ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it." - Brynden to Bran Stark

"Mother marked Lord Rivers on the day he was born, and Bittersteel marked him again at Redgrass Field." — Sefton to Duncan the Tall

"How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have?" the riddle asked. "A thousand eyes, and one. Some claimed the Hand of the King was a student of the dark arts who could change his face, assume the appearance of a one-eyed dog, even transform himself into mist. Packs of lean, grey wolves hunted his enemies, the men said, and carrion crows spied on him and whispered secrets in his ear. Most of the tales were just tales, Dunk didn't doubt, but no one could doubt that Bloodraven had informants everywhere." —thoughts of Duncan the Tall

"Lord Bloodraven is a sorcerer and a bastard." — Flowers of Glendon to Maynard Plumm