Storm's End

A drum-towered castle whose walls have never fallen to storm or siege, ancestral seat of House Baratheon.

The fuller tale

Storm’s End sits uncommitted at the Dance’s opening — Lord Borros Baratheon has four unmarried daughters and no particular love for a queen he feels has taken his house for granted, which makes him a prize both factions court rather than an ally either can assume. Rhaenyra sends her son Lucerys as envoy, offering nothing more concrete than an old alliance and a polite request; the greens send Prince Aemond on Vhagar with an actual proposal, a marriage to bind House Baratheon to House Targaryen at last, and Borros — who admits outright he simply prefers a male heir to a female one — receives him with feasts, hunts, and real enthusiasm.

The two envoys arrive close enough together to collide. Aemond and Borros are still haggling over which daughter and what dowry when Lucerys reaches Storm’s End with nothing to offer that can compete, and the humiliation of watching his rival’s courtship in progress sends the boy back into the sky rather than risk another night under Borros’s roof — straight into Aemond and Vhagar’s path over Shipbreaker Bay, and to his death. The marriage that was meant to settle the stormlands peaceably never happens; Aemond dies at war before the wedding can be arranged, and Storm’s End is left holding the memory of a match that broke the peace instead of keeping it.

The castle whose walls have never fallen to storm or siege does not fall to the Dance either — its true damage is done not to its stones but through them, the failed courtship inside its halls setting off the killing that turns a cold civil war hot. Storm’s End ends the Dance the way it enters most wars: unconquered, and quietly responsible for a great deal more than its own walls ever suffered.

In the first season

Robert's birthright, spoken of at court — while his brother Renly slips out of the capital with a different crown in mind.

The chronicle here

• Jacaerys flies for the Eyrie and Winterfell, Lucerys for Storm's End — envoys, not warriors. At Storm's End waits Vhagar. (S1·E10)
• The king is a day dead before the green council has crowned a new one: Aegon, the Conqueror's crown on his head, anointed before the mob in the Dragonpit while his sister labors on Dragonstone, unknowing. Grand Maester Orwyle is sent with terms; Rhaenyra answers with her father's crown on her own head. The realm chooses sides — the Vale, the North and the rivers for the queen, Oldtown, the Rock and Storm's End for the king. And at Storm's End, in a storm, Vhagar falls upon a boy flying home with an answer. (F&B 2)

Born here

Souls the story brings here

The fallen of this place — if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

• Lucerys Velaryon — Taken by Vhagar over Shipbreaker Bay