House Hollard

A house all but wiped out in the fall of Duskendale, surviving in a single unlikely man ÔÇö the drunken fool who helped a Stark girl slip a lion's cage.

The fuller tale

The Hollards were bannermen and kin to the Darklyns of Duskendale, and they shared in their masters' ruin: when House Darklyn was destroyed for the Defiance, the Hollards were cut down with them. Only a boy named Dontos was spared, on the plea of Ser Barristan Selmy, and taken into the King's service.

Dontos Hollard grew into a sodden, ruined knight, kept at court as a drunken jester after he was too far gone in wine to fight. Yet it is this discarded fool, remembering the mercy once shown him, who becomes Sansa Stark's secret friend and the instrument of her escape from King's Landing ÔÇö a reminder that in this tale the ones the powerful overlook are often the ones who change everything.