Borys Baratheon

Borys Baratheon is the eldest of Rogar Baratheon’s four brothers and the man Rogar names heir to Storm’s End in a confession and will prepared after a failed political plot. The surviving accounts of Borys’s own conduct are sparse and sometimes contradictory: he is implicated in one disputed version of an alleged scheme involving Coryanne Wylde, but later appears as the calmest voice urging Rogar not to defy King Jaehaerys.

Identity and disputed account

The identity of the man who supposedly met Coryanne Wylde at an inn by the ferry is contested in the versions of A Caution for Young Girls. The older, shorter copies, titled Sins of the Flesh and The High and the Low, identify him as Ser Borys Baratheon, Rogar’s eldest brother. Other versions, A Wanton’s Tale and The Wickedness of Men, name Rogar himself. The book’s text had accumulated alterations over generations, and even the maesters could not agree on its title; the account therefore does not establish that Borys met Coryanne at all.

In the versions that describe the encounter, the man dismisses Coryanne’s father and brother, orders her to disrobe for his inspection, and then proposes sending her to Dragonstone as a supposed companion to Queen Alysanne. Her real purpose, he says, would be to seduce Jaehaerys and disrupt the king’s marriage. Since the account assigns this plan to Rogar in some copies and to Borys in others, it cannot securely be treated as evidence of Borys’s actions or intentions.

Place in House Baratheon

Borys appears among Rogar’s brothers during the crisis that followed Rogar’s dismissal as Hand. After Rogar’s departure from King’s Landing, he and his brothers eventually set out for Storm’s End with their levies. Their force was barely half the size of the one that had marched with Rogar two years earlier to overthrow Maegor; Rogar blamed the losses on men who had stayed in the capital for its alleys, inns, and pleasures. The account does not specify Borys’s individual role in that departure.

Rogar later ordered his maester to prepare a will and confession. Having had no children by either of his wives, he absolved Borys, Garon, and Ronnal of involvement in his wrongdoing, asked that his youngest brother Orryn be shown mercy, and named Borys heir to Storm’s End. This was Rogar’s declared succession plan; the account does not describe Borys taking possession of the seat.

Counsel to Rogar

When Jaehaerys summoned Rogar back to King’s Landing, the brothers disagreed over how to answer. Garon and Ronnal urged defiance, arguing that Storm’s End was strong enough to resist the king. Borys, often regarded as the most volatile and belligerent of the brothers, was instead the calmest in this exchange. He warned Rogar that the king might execute him and advised him to take the black with the Night’s Watch.

Rogar rejected both the call to resist and the suggestion that he go directly to the Wall. He chose to meet Jaehaerys and explain himself, reasoning that he could still ask to take the black afterward. He made the journey accompanied by only six of his oldest knights. Borys’s counsel thus marks a notable contrast between his reputation and his conduct: at the moment when his family urged force, he advised caution, while the narrative leaves his own later fate unstated.