House Darklyn
The old kings of Duskendale, long since bent to the Iron Throne but proud as ever of the port that was theirs before King's Landing was a fishing village.
The fuller tale
Duskendale ruled itself as an independent kingdom for centuries before King’s Landing existed as anything more than a fishing village on the Blackwater’s bank, and House Darklyn has never entirely let go of the seniority that history grants them — bent to the dragon generations ago, but proud, still, of a port that answered to no one before the Targaryens arrived to change that.
Gunthor and Steffon Darklyn carry that old pride into the Blacks’ cause without hesitation, and it is Steffon who performs one of the war’s most quietly loaded gestures — retrieving Viserys’s own crown and carrying it to Rhaenyra at Dragonstone, a physical symbol of the succession the Greens had just tried to steal, delivered by a house old enough to remember when crowns in this part of the world were Darklyn property rather than Targaryen.
Steffon does not survive the war his loyalty helped legitimize, killed defending the queen’s cause when the mob turns on the Dragonpit itself — a death that costs Duskendale one of its own without costing the house its standing, a port city that entered the crisis with an old grievance about who used to rule here and leaves it having proven, at least, which side its loyalty was worth.
