Robert Baratheon
Robert Baratheon is the first king of his dynasty, having seized the Iron Throne by right of conquest after leading a rebellion against the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen. He is a man of huge physical appetites and legendary martial prowess, yet by the time of the narrative he has become a shadow of the warrior he once was. Fifteen years after his victory on the Trident, he is fat, drunken, and trapped in a miserable political marriage to Cersei Lannister, a woman he despises and who despises him in return. His reign is marked by a profound personal and political decay that sets the stage for the wars to come.
The Warrior King in Decline
Robert's past glory is constantly contrasted with his present decay. In his youth, he was a giant of a man, clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden's fantasy, wielding a spiked iron warhammer that Eddard Stark could scarcely lift. He was a demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, who killed Prince Rhaegar Targaryen in single combat. By the time he visits Winterfell, however, he is a fat man, red-faced and sweating through his silks, with a girth to match his height and dark circles under his eyes. He has gained at least eight stone since the Greyjoy rebellion, and his once-powerful frame is now burdened by excess. His love of hunting, feasting, and whoring has taken a toll, and he is often drunk, his judgment clouded by wine. He himself laments this decline, confessing to Ned that he was never so alive as when winning the throne, and so dead as now that he has won it.
The Unhappy King and His Court
Robert's marriage to Cersei Lannister is a source of constant misery and political instability. He openly despises her, and she returns his contempt with cold fury. The marriage was arranged by Jon Arryn to bind the Lannisters to the new dynasty, but it has been a disaster from the first night, when Robert, drunk and on top of his new wife, whispered the name of his lost love, Lyanna Stark. This single act poisoned their union forever. Cersei, in turn, has taken her twin brother Jaime as her lover, and all three of Robert's supposed children are actually Jaime's bastards. Robert is willfully blind to this truth, preferring to drown his suspicions in wine and hunting. He is surrounded by a court he finds tiresome—flatterers, fools, and Lannisters—and he longs for the simple life of a sellsword, free from the burdens of the crown. His relationship with his son Joffrey is strained; he sees the boy's cruelty and weakness and is deeply troubled by what kind of king he will become.
Friendship with Eddard Stark and the Burden of the Crown
Robert's deepest bond is with Eddard Stark, his old friend and comrade-in-arms. He trusts Ned implicitly, and his journey north to Winterfell is driven by a desire to have him by his side again as Hand of the King. He offers Ned the position, along with a betrothal between their children, Sansa and Joffrey, hoping to recreate the brotherhood they shared in their youth. However, their friendship is strained by the realities of power. Robert is a capricious and willful king, and Ned's sense of honor often clashes with Robert's more pragmatic and brutal instincts. Their most bitter argument comes over the fate of Daenerys Targaryen, the pregnant young princess across the Narrow Sea. Robert, consumed by a paranoid hatred of the Targaryens, orders her assassination, a command that Ned finds morally repugnant. This conflict reveals the chasm between the man Ned once knew and the king Robert has become.
Death and Legacy
Robert's death is a direct result of his own reckless nature. While hunting in the Kingswood, drunk and impatient, he insists on facing a monstrous boar alone. The boar rips him open from groin to nipple, a mortal wound. On his deathbed, he makes Ned Stark promise to protect the realm and serve as regent for his son, unaware that the boy is not his own. He also expresses regret for ordering Daenerys's death, asking Ned to stop the plot if it is not too late. His final moments are marked by a poignant mix of bravado and despair, as he jokes about being killed by a pig and asks Ned to take care of his children. His death, and the succession crisis it triggers, is the spark that ignites the War of the Five Kings, a conflict that will consume the realm. Robert Baratheon's legacy is that of a great warrior who won a throne but could not hold it, a king undone by his own demons and the lies of those closest to him.
The novel's publication history reveals the modest beginnings of the series that would eventually define Martin's career. A Game of Thrones was released in August 1996 by Bantam Books in the United States and HarperCollins Voyager in the United Kingdom, with initial print runs of only several thousand copies in the US and a mere 1500 in the UK. The US edition was printed months early to allow distribution at the June 1996 American Booksellers Association convention, with additional copies circulated at the July Westercon. The cover featured a recommendation from Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time, while the UK edition positioned Martin as an heir to J. R. R. Tolkien. Martin himself has cited historical fiction as a key influence, particularly Maurice Druon's seven-book series The Accursed Kings, which he called "the original game of thrones." He originally conceived the story as a trilogy, a standard length for the fantasy genre at the time, and built the world organically as he wrote.
