Ser Steffon Fossoway

A knight of Cider Hall, ambitious as a weed: quick to promise his sword, quicker to sell it where advancement grows. The red apple, and the reason the tree splits.

The fuller tale

Where his cousin Raymun’s ambitions stay modest, Ser Steffon Fossoway of Cider Hall treats advancement as something to be actively pursued, quick to offer his sword’s service wherever it seems likeliest to be rewarded and just as quick to withdraw it if a better opportunity presents itself. He is not, by the tale’s own account, a villain exactly — simply a man for whom loyalty is a resource to be spent strategically rather than a bond to be honored for its own sake.

That difference in temperament between the two cousins plays out visibly at Ashford Meadow, where Steffon’s self-interested maneuvering stands in uncomfortable contrast to Raymun’s steadier decency — a family argument conducted less through open conflict than through two young men simply being, visibly, different kinds of knight in front of the same audience.

It is this contrast, more than any single dramatic act, that later gets folded into the popular explanation for why House Fossoway’s shield comes in two colors — the red apple standing, in the story smallfolk and heralds tell thereafter, for the senior line’s pride and self-interest, distinguished from the green apple of the cousins who chose a steadier path.

Both branches persist for generations after the tourney that supposedly explains their split, red-apple and green-apple Fossoways alike turning up as minor lords and knights throughout the Reach’s later history — proof, if any were needed, that a single tourney season’s family quarrel can outlive everyone who was actually present for it.

The page and the screen

Casting details for Ser Steffon Fossoway have not been widely publicized alongside the season’s more prominent announcements, and the show’s treatment of the cousins’ rivalry — a minor thread even in the novella itself — has not been a focus of the promotional material or critical commentary surrounding the first season’s release.

In the show, season by season

Season One. In A Trial of Seven — Sells his cousin's cause for a promise of advancement. The red apple, rotten.

Where they stand, season by season

Their fate — if death has found them, it is written here. Open at your peril.

The chronicle records no death for this soul — they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.