Gendry

Gendry is a strong, stubborn apprentice armorer in the shop of Tobho Mott, the master smith on the Street of Steel in King's Landing. He is a tall lad about Robb Stark's age, with a thick mane of black hair, a shadow of a new beard, and sullen blue eyes. His hands are corded with muscle from working the forge, and he possesses a natural talent for metalwork, having crafted a steel helm shaped like a bull's head with two great curving horns, a piece of journeyman's work that he refuses to sell, insisting it was made for himself. His fellow apprentices mock him for his bullheadedness, a nickname he throws back in their teeth by forging the helm. He is crude as new steel, as his master says, but also stubborn and proud of his craft.

Discovery by Eddard Stark

Eddard Stark, investigating the death of the previous Hand, Jon Arryn, traces the late Hand's movements to Tobho Mott's shop. He learns that Jon Arryn and Stannis Baratheon had visited the armory specifically to see the boy. When Ned questions Gendry, the apprentice reveals that Jon Arryn asked him about his well-being, his work, and most pointedly, about his mother—who she was and what she looked like. Gendry tells them his mother died when he was little, that she had yellow hair and used to sing to him, and that she worked in an alehouse. Stannis Baratheon, who accompanied Arryn, said nothing but glared at the boy as if he were a rapist. Ned, studying Gendry's jaw and blue eyes, recognizes the unmistakable Baratheon look: the same black hair and strong features that mark Robert's trueborn children and his acknowledged bastards.

Identity and Significance

Ned Stark realizes that Gendry is Robert Baratheon's unacknowledged bastard son. The Baratheon look is stamped on his face—in his jaw, his eyes, that black hair. Renly is too young to have fathered a boy of that age, and Stannis too cold and proud in his honor. Gendry has to be Robert's. The apprentice fee for his training was paid by a stout, brown-bearded lord in a rich purple velvet cloak who gave no name and wore no sigil, paying twice the customary sum for the boy and once for the armorer's silence. This secret—that the king had fathered a bastard with the unmistakable Baratheon coloring—is the very clue that led Jon Arryn to discover that Robert's supposed heirs, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, were not his trueborn children, as their golden hair betrayed their Lannister parentage. Ned later reflects on Gendry when he remembers Robert's other baseborn children scattered throughout the Seven Kingdoms, including a daughter in the Vale and a boy fostered at Storm's End, none of whom could threaten Robert's trueborn children—unless those children were not trueborn at all.

Later Mention and Thematic Role

As Ned lies dying, he remembers the bastards: little Barra at her mother's breast, Mya in the Vale, Gendry at his forge, and all the others. He promises Robert he will guard his children as if they were his own, a vow that encompasses the king's bastards as well as the falseborn princes. Gendry thus serves as a living piece of evidence in the central mystery of the novel, a tangible proof of the Baratheon seed's strength that ultimately leads to the revelation of Cersei's incest and the illegitimacy of her children, setting the stage for the War of the Five Kings.