Damon Hightower

Ser Damon Hightower is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, called 'the Orange.' His hair has turned from dark brown to an elegant white, but his steel-blue eyes are sharp as they were in his youth. Otherwise he is a lithe man, a trait that has made one of the realm’s premier duelists.

## History

Born in 328 AC the second son to Lord Otto Hightower and Lady Leona Mullendore, Damon was a naturally athletic child. Oftentimes he could be found playing with the other highborn lads and the squires about Battle Island, but seldom did he get into any real trouble. In 334 AC at the age of 6 young Damon was sent to Highgarden as a page for Ser Lorent Tyrell, eventually becoming his squire.

His youth spent in Highgarden differed wildly from his years in Oldtown. The Tyrells of Highgarden gloried in the finer things, be they expensive wines or well-spiced foods. Damon loved his time there, growing used to riding horses in the yards with the boys and, as time progressed, spending long hours indoors talking with the girls.

His skill with a blade progressed dramatically, by the age of ten-and-four he was able to disarm men twice his age in the training yard. Two years on, at ten-and-six, he proved to be an exceptional swordsman and unusually skilled with a shield. His talents warranted note by many in the Tyrell court, and by the time he reached his majority there was some excitement to see the young Hightower boy debut in the tourney circuit.

As he grew, so too did his appetites for the luxury that he experienced in Highgarden. In his later teenaged years he became known as a chaser of skirts as well as a premier duelist, and beyond that he spent quite a bit on finer wines. In 346 at eight-and-ten he earned his knighthood from Ser Lorent, but not before he unhorsed his own knight in a tourney at Tumbleton celebrating the marriage of Lord Footly’s eldest daughter.

For the next year Ser Damon traveled throughout the Reach, participating in two tourneys: the Tourney of Bandallon and the Tourney of Old Oak. A handsome young lad as he was, he found himself very popular. A night after his victory at the lists in Bandallon, drunk from the celebration, Ser Damon met Lady Falia Blackbar-- a scion far down the line of succession, the youngest daughter of a third son of the aged Lord Blackbar-- and the two became very close. By the time he departed Bandallon for Oldtown, though he wouldn’t know it, Ser Damon had planted a bastard in Lady Falia.

After a strong finish in the Tourney of Old Oak later that year, a message arrived to Ser Damon from Bandallon, tied with a strip of blue ribbon. Lady Falia wrote that she was with child, and only Ser Damon could be the father. She had hidden it as long as she could, but in the eighth moon of her pregnancy it could no longer be disguised. Out of love she refused to name the man who had impregnated her, much to the rage of her father. Ser Damon was shocked to learn this, horrified at the dishonor he had done to the woman he loved.

Ser Damon at once rode to King’s Landing, seeking to meet with his father, the Master of Ships, Lord Otto Hightower. The conversation they had was explosive, as Lord Hightower had high hopes for his sons-- Damon’s eldest brother was a promising soldier as well, though more of a leader of men than the skilled swordsman Damon had turned out to be. He stated that the child must be hidden, that a bastard would be a stain not only on Ser Damon’s honor, but on the honor of House Hightower. Lord Otto invited the Blackbars, along with several other houses, to a great feast to mark the beginning of the year 348-- an event at which Ser Damon and Lady Falia were reunited, and from which Lady Falia’s bastard son never left. Lady Falia informed her father that she had taken the opportunity to deliver the child to the Faith, where he might better serve. Her father cared little about the matter, glad to see it resolved.

Young Lyonel Flowers would thus be housed at the Hightower, watched over in secret by his father. Ser Damon scarce left Battle Island for the first half of 348, so great was his shame. He wrote regularly to Lady Falia, but had been disabused of the notion of a marriage when his lord father stated she was not of appropriate station to marry the second son of a Hightower. The lady would visit Oldtown twice with her father, and she and Ser Damon would sit with their infant son and act as a family, if only for a few hours, when they could steal away.

The effect of having a bastard son sobered the twenty year old Ser Damon, and he spent more time in the training yard. His self-imposed sequestration on Battle Island ended early, however, when Lord Otto observed that his absence from the tourney circuit after so auspicious a career had already been noted, and anyone about Bandallon would soon draw a connection between the timing of Lady Falia’s pregnancy, the Tourney, and Ser Damon’s sudden retirement from the joust and the melee.

Over the next eight years Ser Damon rode in a dozen tourneys, placing highly in many and less so in others. He also found himself spending more time in the capital with his father, which he viewed and accepted as punishment for his indiscretion. It was here that he first glimpsed his future brothers in the Kingsguard, though he thought them fools at the time for giving up so much of their lives. His father had made certain to tell tales of his prowess at arms, and soon after his arrival to court had introduced him to King Loras Baratheon.

Ser Damon would be called to war in 356 after becoming an almost permanent and popular fixture at court. He rode to Highgarden to join the host of his liege, Lord Matthos Tyrell. Rather than wage war on the Dornish, Ser Damon found himself fighting fellow Reachmen-- namely those of House Ball. He joined in both efforts to force the Prince’s Pass. Already a well-known personality around the Reach, his performance in battle only helped to grow his reputation. Rumor abounded that the tourney knight had put to the test his hard-won reputation as a lethal swordsman in open battle and left no Reachman wanting but the Fossoways. Under the walls of Lord Blackmont’s castle the war ended, however, and Ser Damon might have returned to Highgarden if he had not been summoned instead to King’s Landing.

The summons had come from the Hand of the King, word that Lord Otto had perished in the fighting. By the time Ser Damon arrived in King’s Landing King Loras had perished of a festered wound, and his heir Steffon was preparing for his coronation. The young King met him personally in the throne room, flanked by knights of his Kingsguard. He only realized after that the elder of the knights held in his hand an orange-trimmed cloak, and when the King made his request Ser Damon could do little more than grant it. The King handed him Vigilance, recovered from the field by Lord Andrey Estermont, and bid him rise a knight of the Kingsguard.

It occurred to him in his first weeks guarding the King and his household that this was his destiny. Ser Damon had been groomed by his father to serve in this role for most of his life, it explained much: his father had never arranged a marriage, had hidden young Lyonel Flowers, had brought him to court and introduced him to the many courtiers and power brokers in the capital.

King Steffon’s rule was more or less peaceful, and Ser Damon served ably enough-- though he grew bored at times. In what little free time he had guarding the Queen, and eventually the monstrous heir Orys, he read through the Seven-Pointed Star and frequently made his way to the Great Sept of Baelor. Faith had not factored highly in his life prior to 356 AC, but faith helped to strengthen his resolve.

His venture to Storm’s End began in 358 AC, a short two years into his tenure as a Kingsguard. Ser Damon oversaw the Crown Prince as he trained alongside Theodan Baratheon, the heir to Storm’s End. His messages to the Lord Commander detailed a steady and enthusiastic progression from rambunctious child to dangerous fighter-- and rambunctious man. The Prince’s antics were legendary before too long, and when Orys received his knighthood in 365 AC he had gained a reputation as a skirtchaser and a drunk, though Ser Damon would not suffer to hear such insults said aloud.

It seemed that his time away from the capital would not end with his departure from Storm’s End, however. His charge had it in his mind to venture around the realm, joining in tourneys and visiting every tavern and winesink from Riverrun to Sunspear, or so it felt. It would be Ser Damon who had to prevent the Prince from attacking Daeron Martell and Theodan Baratheon, though it was a near thing and no small task given the ever-increasing size of the Crown Prince.

He would follow the Crown Prince around the Kingdom for several more years until his return to court in 369. Orys would storm out of the Red Keep upon learning of his betrothal to Lady Yronwood, and in his wake would follow the Orange Knight. Scarcely a year later they would return to the keep, the former now a King.

War would come to Westeros, however, when King Orys invaded the Kingdom of Winter. The Orange Knight would once again be at his King’s side through much of the fighting, and once again would have to physically restrain the King from leading another charge against the Starks in the penultimate battle of the war, one which claimed many men-- including the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

In the subsequent peace talks, the Orange Knight-- still in armor dented from the war-- once again held Orys back to prevent his assaulting the Stark king.

Now the most senior of the Kingsguard, having served for ten-and-four years, King Orys made his leal friend and protector the Lord Commander. It was the culmination of Ser Damon’s life, and indeed of his late father’s ambitions. Thought it would not be the first time-- Ser Gerold Hightower had been Lord Commander for the last Targaryen king, for example-- great honor had been earned for House Hightower.

Ser Damon spent the next five years rebuilding the Kingsguard, aware that their task was no easier for King Orys’ legendary appetites. He was a harsh taskmaster, but fair. Multiple times per moon the Lord Commander would take those Kingsguard who could be spared into the training yard below the White Sword Tower, and they would spar from sunrise to sunset. His intention would be-- and remains-- to craft the Kingsguard into the most talented and feared knightly brotherhoods in all the world.

By 375 AC it became known that negotiations between Lord Yronwood and the King-- or likely his Hand, Princess Jocelyn-- had concluded. The King would wed the Yronwood girl, and there would no doubt be a grand ceremony and tournament. Ser Damon ordered a doubling of their training sessions and, privately, doubled the amount of praying he did.