Garlan Hightower

## Lord Commander of the Kingsguard

### Children

Kept hidden from the realm and raised in secret by his brother, Garlan sired  Baelor and  Baela Flowers/Hightower.

### Relatives

Arlan Hightower, NephewUthor Hightower. Nephew
Baelor Hightower, Nephew
Baela Hightower, Niece

**Garlan Hightower** was the son of Alester "the Silverhand" Hightower and served as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard until his death in 390AC. Though many choose to mock his final moments, the story of Garlan is seen as largely tragic in Oldtown.

## History

### Early Life

Garlan was born in the year 343AC, in the city of Oldtown. A robust and strong looking child, even as a babe, he seemed a fitting future heir to the Hightower, and as good a firstborn as any man might wish for. His birth secured the lineage of his father, who had not yet inherited the city - but when Ossifer Hightower died in 351AC, Garlan's future was already predestined.

The rivalry between Alester and Otto the Blackflower was already deep by the year 351, as sharp and as bitter as only the hate between family can be. Despite his father's hatred for the man, however, Garlan looked up to his mercurial and larger-than-life uncle, admiring his tales of grand adventures and his skill with sword and lane. Otto fed the boy's pride, taking great pleasure in subverting the eldest son of his enemy. Though the lad was only eight, he saw in the Blackflower everything he might aspire one day aspire to, despite his father's warnings.

After Otto's attempt on Alester's life, and resulting chaos, imprisonment, and exile, Garlan was distraught. The two poles of his life - the two central pillars upon which he had built his heart - had warred, and bled, and now began to crumble. Blackflower defied his life sentence, taking the ship that was meant to carry him to the Wall and fleeing to the east. Alester threw himself into the city, building a golden era for House Hightower - even as he neglected his son.

### The Making of a Warrior

With his hero in exile and his father in seclusion, Garlan turned to his tutors for guidance. A succession of men taught him maths, and history, and letters - though each paid him less mind than the last, focusing instead on currying favour with his father, whose fame and fortune had already begun to grow.

Garlan grew disdainful of scholars and learned men, marking them as weak-willed sycophants one and all. He spurned his lessons, and defied his tutors - for a time he terrorized the Hightower, an army unto himself. His energy was boundless, his mischief bordering upon the cruel. By the year 353AC his father had had enough - and so brought in a new Master-at-Arms, that might teach the boy true swordplay.

Merlyn of the Mander was a rough man, short of stature and patience. He was not at all handsome to look upon, caring more for the company of hounds and horses than other people. But he was a deft hand with a sword, and no better rider had graced Oldtown since the days of Melessa the Dragonfly. Garlan hated him with the strength of youth for many of those initial months, but as the training progressed and Garlan grew stronger, hatred gave way to begruding respect, and eventual love. Merlyn proved a powerful father figure to a boy who had lost his way, and from him Garlan learned the simple truths of life, the truths that would one day shape him as a man:

"Trust your horse, and your hound, and your sword, Garlan." Merlyn said. "But never trust a man. A horse will work till foundering, a hound will fight till death. A sword might break and shatter - but men will lie with a breath."

These words, fueled by the loss of his uncle and the distance of his father, and coupled with the stories of heroics and wonder that he so loved as a boy, birthed in Garlan a fatal hubris that would one day be his end. Where Otto taught him the heartbreak of loss, Merlyn taught him to block and parry. Where Alester showed him neglect, and misuse, the man of the Mander showed him to care for arms and armour. As the years passed, and Garlan's skill grew, the lost and confused boy gave way to a man, tall and strong, full of arrogance and ambition. He was handsome, aye, and deadly with a blade - generous with his friends but haughty in victory. But despite his pride, to most, he seemed a good enough heir. To most, indeed; but not all.

### The Tournament of 362AC

To celebrate Garlan's 19th nameday, a tournament was held outside of Oldtown. Knights from across the southern Reach attended, and the man of honour himself rode in the lists. Many knights, great and small, won acclaim on that day - but Garlan Hightower triumphed over them all, emerging the victor and champion. Greatly pleased, both by the good showing his son had made for House Hightower, and the fact that he could now keep the prize money, Alester Hightower strode forward in front of the assembled crowd, and offered to knight his son and heir on the spot.

"Kneel." He said, before the hushed audience. All eyes upon Garlan, expectant.

But the Heir to the Hightower was proud and strong. As he looked upon his father, a man he had loved from a distance as a boy and kept as a distance as a man, Garlan turned his horse aside, and left him there. Before the assembled lords of the region, Garlan Hightower rode across the tourney grounds and dismounted before Merlyn of the Mander, the hedgeknight who had trained and all but raised him. He drew forth his blade, bright as the dawning sun, and laid it at the old knight's feet, descending to his knees and bowing as he did so. Before the lords of Cuy, Mullendore, Costayne, Bulwer, Beesbury, Blackbar, and a dozen houses beside, Alester's own son defied him to be knighted by a man of common birth.

### Father and Son

The fight that occurred in the Hightower that evening is legendary in Oldtown, even to this day. Passersby in the streets could hear the raised voices of father and son, shouting back and forth like swordsmen trading blows. The Silverhand had never raised his voice before that day - some say he never did so again, afterward. But on that night they roared black insults, nineteen years of resentment bubbling to the surface with heat and vehmence. Alester saw in his son everything he had once hated in his cousin - the easy arrogance, the stubborn pride, the rash and bold and foolhardy drive that caused men to love him so easily. Garlan, with all the rebelliousness of youth, fought back with all his might, the sorrows of boyhood turned bitter by the passage of years. In the end, only intervention could halt the two from coming to blows, but even that could not halt the words that Garlan spake next;

"The White, the Black, or a chain." he threw at his son. "Be it the Citadel or my dungeons, it makes no difference. I'll not raise the second coming of Blackflower as my heir; I'll be damned to all seven hells before you or that bastard make a mockery of me."

Silence fell upon the room - an heir to Oldtown had not been disinherited for nigh on three hundred years. Father looked at son, and son looked at father; then, in that tense and waiting silence, Garlan laughed.

"So be it."

Ravens flew to King's Landing, as black as the mood in the Hightower. Arrangements were made, deals and negotiations all conducted, and at last Garlan Hightower was confirmed to be next in line for the Kingsguard in the year 363AC. Then, after the death of Ser Imry Costayne in 367AC, Garlan was invited to the capital to don a white cloak.

### The King's Guard

Though Garlan had laughed when his father had given the ultimatum, the son of Oldtown had found little pleasure in it. Serving upon the Kingsguard was not his idea of a destiny; the vows of chastity would prove especially hard, for a man once deemed the Rake of the Whispering Sound. But Garlan knew Alester, as only a son might know his father, and feared what might be done if he refused. For all his anger and bitterness he still loved his younger brothers, too - and feared to see what might become of them, if they were torn between father and idolized hero not unlike he had once been, long before.

Thus Garlan spoke the vows, and joined the Kingsguard of King Gowen Baratheon. Whatever his other failings the eldest son of Oldtown was a preeminent knight; and within two years, after the death of the previous Lord Commander Gwayne Grafton, he had been named to their head. His younger brother Mallador was now heir to the Hightower - and for the next eight years, no word was exchanged between Oldtown and her distant son.

In the year 375AC, Alester the Silverhand died, during the events known as the Great Schism. Mallador Hightower succeeded him to the family seat, and for the first time in years, reached out to his elder brother. The two carried on a correspondence - halting and formal at first, but gradually more frequent and intimate as the years went on. The two grew so close that in 377AC, Garlan went home to visit his brother; and there revealed a secret that bring shame to two noble families, and death to Garlan himself.

### As Always - A Woman

A woman - Rhaenys was her name, sister to Garlan's sworn brother Aemon Velaryon. She was fair and kind of heart, and to Garlan seemed as perfect as the Maiden herself. As proud and arrogant as he was, ever boastful and loud, he humbled himself to court the young Velaryon woman, quiet words and whispered promises doing all that bravado could not.

Their affair carried on for a year before Rhaenys discovered she was pregnant - to Garlan's mixed delight and horror. Their affair had been a secret, treason as it was, but this would reveal the whole of it to any who might care to look. Desperate, Garlan reached out to his brother in Oldtown, who had a pregnant wife of his own to care for. Rhaenys was sent in secret to Oldtown, there to give birth in relative comfort and secrecy - and in the seventh month of 378, she did. Twins - Baelor and Baela - both healthy and strong. Their mother, however, slipped away shortly after; the birth had been too much.

### Of Loss and Legacy

With the death of his lady love and the birth of two secret children he could not even claim, Garlan's mood took a turn for the worst. Already proud, his arrogance became defiant - hubris, most would call it, for he cared little for anyone but himself. His visits to Oldtown increased in frequency, however; he would visit at least once a year, without fail. When war broke out in 390AC, Garlan almost relished it - fighting was something that he could do, and do well - and it took his mind away from his sorrows, where it tended to often dwell.

As the forces of the Targaryen invaders closed about the city, Garlan readied the defenses of the men who stood to defend it. Looking out on Maekar's host, vast and strong, many thought to surrender, and give over the city to it's besiegers. But Garlan would hear none of it. Pride would not let him bend the knee to some foreign king, and worse still - he had heard of who rode in their ranks, the banner of the Second Sons now side by side with a black flower. His erstwhile uncle, once hero and god; now back to bring yet more blood into Garlan's life.

In the forces arrayed against him, Garlan saw a glimmer of hope. If he could defeat the Targaryen army, break their center and drive them back, he would win not only glory, and fame, and honour - but a boon, no doubt, from his Baratheon king. A chance - a slim one, but a *chance* - to claim acknowledge his children as his own, and bring them to King's Landing. If he could save the city and the realm for it's king, surely the man would not begrudge him the small pleasure of a family he could see but once a year.

And so Garlan prepared. He gathered every man he could, every soldier and recruit and beardless boy that would join him, and offered up the prayer Otto Blackflower always gave before combat. Then he took his mighty host into the field, and charged into his destiny.

The slaughter of that day has not been forgotten. The horror and carnage of that battle scarred permanently upon those who survived it. Few men who stood with Garlan in the center made it out unscathed, and no fewer than five of his fellow Kingsguard were slain in that crucible of fire and steel.

Garlan Hightower watched with horror and woe as his men fell in droves around him, slain by a foe they could not best as much as they had been slain by his pride. Surrounded and doomed, there was little to be done - not for the Heir of House Hightower. He readied his blade, a knight to the last, and drove into the ranks of his foes, a whirling and thunderous storm of steel that felled all who stood before it. Men died beneath his hand and broke before his advance, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard carving his way toward the Dragon Prince in glittering white armour. The sun shone above him, through clouds of smoke and haze, even as the son of Oldtown leveled his blade toward Maekar.

The duel they fought went back and forth, as fine a dance as had ever been made to the tune of swords and steel. Thrice did Garlan nearly bring down his foe, only to have the Targaryen slip away in the last moment; his armour marked with three long gouges. Their blades flickered like tongues of flame, dancing in the wind, but in the end only one could survive. In a final, desperate lunge, Maekar's sword took the Lord Commander by the knee - sending the Hightower to his back. The next blow to fall would be the last - and there, in the year 390AC, Garlan Hightower breathed his last.