Elenda Baratheon

Elenda Baratheon was the widow of Borros Baratheon and the mother of Olyver, the infant heir to Storm’s End. In the aftermath of the Dance of the Dragons, she had to preserve her house while its military strength was spent and its succession rested with a child. Her choices—accepting terms, sending daughters to the royal court, and later taking a new husband—show her acting as a guardian of House Baratheon amid continuing threats and shifting royal power.

Position and Family

Borros’s death in battle left Elenda responsible for the future of House Baratheon while Olyver was still a newborn. Borros had instructed that a son should be named Aegon, in honor of the king; when Elenda learned of her husband’s death, she instead named the child Olyver, after her own father. The decision is recorded at the close of the war, when the king’s identity and the fate of the Baratheon lord were both bound up in the conflict’s aftermath.

The vulnerability of the succession was plain when survivors of the Battle on the Kingsroad returned to Storm’s End. They came hungry, weary, and wounded, alone or in small groups, and Elenda judged from their condition that they had lost their appetite for further fighting. She also did not want to expose the infant Olyver, whom she regarded as the future of House Baratheon, to renewed danger. Her response to the crisis was therefore shaped by both the exhausted condition of the surviving men and the need to protect her son.

Terms with the Victorious Court

Elenda soon agreed to the terms offered after the battle. Still weak from childbirth, she wrote that she could not travel to King’s Landing for the coronation. Instead, her father, Royce Caron, Lord of Nightsong and Marshal of the Marches, would perform homage in her stead. She also agreed to send three of her daughters as hostages, placing members of her family at the royal court as a guarantee of House Baratheon’s loyalty.

The arrangements connected the Baratheons directly to the settlement between the former enemies. Ser Willis Fell accompanied the girls, as well as Princess Jaehaera, the eight-year-old daughter of King Aegon II and the future bride of Aegon III. Elenda’s daughters were thus sent into the same royal gathering that would unite the rival branches of House Targaryen through marriage. Elenda herself remained at Storm’s End with Olyver, while Royce Caron escorted Cassandra, Ellyn, and Floris to the city and stayed as their guardian.

The accounts also distinguish the fate of her fourth daughter, Maris, who had joined the Silent Sisters. Septon Eustace reports that she entered the order; Mushroom offers the more lurid claim that Elenda had her tongue removed. The narrative discounts that detail, noting that the belief that the sisters are tongueless is a myth and that their silence is an act of piety. Maris’s absence from the delegation is therefore explained by her entry into the order, not by the disputed story of mutilation.

A Second Marriage for Security

In 132 AC, Elenda took a new husband. With Borros dead and Olyver still an infant, Dornish incursions into the Stormlands had become more numerous, while outlaws in the Kingswood were causing further trouble. The account gives these dangers as the reason she felt she needed a man’s strong hand to keep the peace. She chose Ser Steffon Connington, the second son of the Lord of Griffin’s Roost.

Steffon was twenty years younger than Elenda, but he had proved his valor during Borros’s campaign against the Vulture King and was reputed to be both fierce and handsome. The marriage was therefore presented in practical as well as personal terms: Elenda selected a man with a record of military service while her son was too young to secure the Stormlands himself. The arrangement did not bring lasting security. While pursuing Dornish raiders across the marches, Steffon rode too far and too fast; one-armed Wyland Wyl came down upon him, and Elenda was widowed once more.

Her Daughters and the Royal Succession

After Jaehaera’s death, proposals for King Aegon III’s next marriage came from numerous houses. Elenda put forward Cassandra and Ellyn, joining other lords and ladies who sought to place a daughter or relative in the royal match. Cassandra had once been betrothed to Aegon II; in her letter, Elenda presented her as well prepared to serve as queen. The proposal gave Cassandra’s earlier dynastic connection a new significance, now in the contest to shape the young king’s marriage and the court’s future.

This later appeal echoed the earlier role of Elenda’s daughters in the settlement after the war. Cassandra, Ellyn, and Floris had first gone to King’s Landing as hostages and representatives of House Baratheon; later, Cassandra and Ellyn were offered as potential brides. In both cases, their presence at court served their family’s political position, although the evidence records the proposals rather than their outcome.

Political Role and Legacy

Elenda’s story is told through decisions made under pressure rather than through battlefield command. She named the heir Borros had not lived to meet, assessed the exhaustion of the returning soldiers, guarded Olyver from renewed danger, and accepted terms that required her daughters to serve as hostages. When threats continued, she sought a husband with proven martial ability; after his death, she continued to advance her family’s interests through the royal marriage contest.

These episodes place Elenda among the figures who managed the aftermath of the Dance at the household and regional level. The war’s end did not restore stability at once: the Baratheon heir was a baby, the Stormlands faced incursions and outlaws, and the royal court’s marriage politics opened a new field of competition. Elenda’s actions repeatedly connect those pressures, making the survival and standing of House Baratheon her central concern.