Symeon Santagar

**Symeon Santagar** is a knight of House Santagar and the current Knight of Spottswood. He has served in this position since his father's death in 98 AC from prolonged bouts of illness.

## Appearance and Character

Not the strongest nor the tallest, Symeon is nonetheless neither small nor weak. He is of decent height and build, and clearly athletic in nature. His greatest asset is not his strength but his speed. Symeon keeps his hair and beard short, both of which are a deep black. His amber eyes flicker like candlelight, and he wears a wry smile.

Symeon is an arrogant and bullheaded man, fueled by a life of relative confinement and restriction. Though his confinement to Spottswood allowed him to study rigorously, it left the young man yearning for more, perhaps overly so.

## History

Symeon Santagar was born into peace. The firstborn child of Ser Lewyn Santagar, Symeon was born in the first months of the regency of the young Prince Nymor. Due to Spottswood’s proximity, the Santagars enjoyed good relations with the young Nymor, and Ser Lewyn came to grow fond of his prince.

This loyalty was soon tested when Marcher Lords gathered above the mountains, waiting to strike back at Dorne for the incursions of the Lord of Yronwood. Santagar banners trailed the sun-and-spear north to the Boneway, and stood beside the Prince of Dorne as the Iron Throne bore down on them. Fortunately, it would prove unnecessary, and the young Santagar boy of seven was not made an orphan.

Ser Lewyn quickly took to the Prince’s peaceable nature, and impressed the values of his liege lord upon his growing family. By Symeon’s tenth nameday, he had a sister, a brother, and then two more sisters, two, four, seven, and ten years younger than himself. Symeon, Cyrenna, Armen, Lia, and Dyanna were kept close at hand by their father, most often confined to Spottswoods and only a morsel of its surrounding lands, as meagre as they already were.

As Symeon grew older, he came to see the irony of his existence. A knightly house had little fortune in peace. By all accounts, the Santagars had been failing for some time, but recent decades had seen a more sharp downturn in their standings. Ser Lewyn had grown into something of a recluse, and fast approaching his own majority, Symeon came to start his disagreements with his father’s approach to their existence.

Still, though, the matter remained of his confinement. Ser Lewyn had not seen to the traditional raising of his children, keeping them at his side where they would be little tempted by the likes of the Bloodroyal and his ilk. There were knights in service to Spottswood that Symeon and Armen would squire for, and their less-than-ladylike wives for his sisters to serve as handmaidens to, but life felt full to the young leopard.

Nevertheless, Symeon took his opportunities to study, and he did so dutifully. Most of this was spent studying the martial matters that would be required of a knight, or rather a knight not named Lewyn. Symeon came to find himself most comfortable with a spear and buckler, noticing the greater possibilities afforded to him by switching stances and shifting the weight of the spear from his left to his right hand when necessary.

It was not only with the spear that Symeon noticed his dual proficiency. The boy had a knack for using both hands, whatever the task. By fourteen, Symeon was fooling even Maester Mandon with his hand, having the maester guess as to if it was written with his left or with his right, though Symeon was not always so truthful in his revelations. In fact, Symeon grew less and less truthful in a great number of settings.

Confinement to a single castle--and not a large one at that--bred creativity, and creativity bred behaviour that some might have deemed...unchivalrous. Maester Mandon was clever, no doubt, but gullible, and when Symeon’s childlike curiosity turned to conniving inquisition, the old man was none the wiser. Symeon learned from him what he could, and began tormenting his family and their servants with small doses of herbs and vinegars that would cause the most alarming of stomach movements. No sooner than their bellies had started turning Symeon was off to the shadows, dancing his way through the castle he was growing mightily familiar with.

Not long after his majority, news began to trickle across the Red Mountains of war. Lannisters and Tyrells were biting and pricking at dragons, and to the shock of the young Santagar, Dornishmen and Ironmen were… talking. More and more Symeon felt a yearning for something greater than what his father had given him, even something so simple as a wife. It would seem in his years as a recluse that friendly relations across Dorne had dwindled, and Ser Lewyn could scarce produce any matches for his heir, let alone his following four children. Symeon did not fully mind, in truth, as by eighteen he already had a child by a Spottswood serving girl, with a second on the way, by a different mother. Still, a marriage would have been opportunity to see more of Dorne, and for that Symeon resented his father further still.

The resentment would come to pass when Symeon turned twenty. Unfortunate circumstances saw Ser Lewyn in the wrong place at the wrong time. By Symeon’s reckoning, Ironborn merchants who had been in contact with merchants from the capital had brought what Symeon could only assume was the Dragonblight to Dorne. Ser Lewyn had been in Plankytown and no doubt acquired the sickness there. It had abated by the time he had returned to Spottswood, but Ser Lewyn never truly recovered. Following illnesses hit him harder after the Blight, and by 98 AC he was dead.

Symeon Santagar, not yet twenty-one, rose to the position of Knight of Spottswood, knighted by one of his father’s knights in the process. Truthfully, the knighthood angered Symeon, it served as yet another reminder of a life unlived. For some months Symeon took to the responsibilities of managing his holdfast, and before he could even travel to Sunspear to swear fealty to Prince Nymor, he found himself now instead with a Prince Doran to kneel before.

## Recent Events

With the news, Symeon made preparations for travel, to renew his house’s allegiance to Sunspear--a new knight and a new prince.

## Family

* Ser Lewyn Santagar, Knight of Spottswood (55-98 AC)
* Delena Santagar (b. 57 AC)
	+ **Ser Symeon Santagar, Knight of Spottswood (b. 76 AC)**
		- Maron Sand (b. 93 AC)
		- Elia Sand (b. 94 AC)
	+ Cyrenna Santagar (b. 78 AC)
	+ Armen Santagar (b. 80 AC)
	+ Lia Santagar (b. 83 AC)
	+ Dyanna Santagar (b. 86 AC)