Gendry

Season One

A blacksmith's apprentice in King's Landing with a face that keeps getting him a second look from strangers he's never met, and a bull's-head helm he made himself that he won't sell no matter what's offered. Ned Stark comes to his forge asking about a sword and leaves looking rattled; neither of them says why. When the Watch recruiter Yoren comes through Flea Bottom short on volunteers, Gendry signs on more to get out of the city than out of any love for the Wall, unaware that a queen would rather he didn't exist at all. He heads north with Yoren's ragged column of thieves and orphans, one of whom is a Stark girl traveling as a boy.

Season Two

North with Yoren's recruits until Lannister soldiers under Ser Amory Lorch run them down; Yoren dies covering the retreat, and the survivors are marched to Harrenhal as prisoners. A man they call the Tickler works down the line asking after gold and outlaws and killing for the wrong answer, and when it's Gendry's turn, Arya blurts out that he's highborn to make him worth more alive than dead — a lie built on the one fact about him she doesn't know is true. Tywin Lannister takes the castle in hand soon after and puts the torturing away as bad economics; he admires the quality of a horseshoe Gendry has made without ever learning whose son struck it. Gendry works the forge the rest of the season, plotting with Arya to slip away.

Season Three

Sold by the Brotherhood to Melisandre for gold they need more than they need one more sword — a betrayal Arya never quite forgives them, or herself, for missing. At Dragonstone the red priestess tells him whose son he actually is and puts leeches to his skin, murmuring the names of three rival kings over the blood she draws, while Stannis watches with the patience of a man finally calling in a debt he's sure the universe owes him. When leeches aren't blood enough and the fire is made ready for him instead, Davos Seaworth — who can't read half of what crosses his desk but can still tell right from wrong — breaks him out of his cell and puts him in a rowboat pointed at nowhere in particular, on the theory that alive and lost beats efficient and dead.

Season Seven

Found in a Flea Bottom forge by Davos, who remembers an old debt and repays it by getting him out of King's Landing a second time, into Jon Snow's company beyond the Wall. Issued a war hammer instead of a sword, which suits him better anyway, he's the one who volunteers to run for help when the ranging party is trapped on a frozen lake surrounded by the dead — a proposal everyone laughs at until he actually does it, covering the distance to Eastwatch fast enough to get a raven off to Daenerys in time. He is waiting on the ice when the dragons arrive, in time to watch one of them not fly home again.

Season Eight

Forging dragonglass weapons through the nights before the Battle of Winterfell as fast as the smiths can heat the ore, arming half the castle himself. He survives the battle, and Arya comes to his forge the night before it to spend what might be their last hours as something other than friends. Afterward, at Winterfell's high table, Daenerys names him legitimate — Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End, the first acknowledgment his father's family has ever given him — and he immediately asks Arya to be his lady, getting the honest no he probably should have expected from a woman who spent years learning to want nothing that comes with a title. He turns up months later at the council in King's Landing anyway, one more lord with a say in who sits the throne that used to belong to his father.

A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them

Eddard VI Ned follows the late Hand's footsteps to Tobho Mott's forge and meets Gendry — a black-haired apprentice with King Robert's jaw.

A Clash of Kings 2 chapters that name them

A Storm of Swords 2 chapters that name them

A Feast for Crows 1 chapter that name them