Hobert Hightower

Hobert Hightower was a cousin of Queen Alicent and an obscure member of House Hightower whose brief prominence came during the royalist host’s collapse at Tumbleton. He claimed command by kinship when more formidable leaders were gone, proved unable to impose order, and ultimately died after drinking poisoned wine rather than expose the conspirators who had sought to kill the dragonriders Hugh Hammer and Ulf White. His story turns on the distance between claiming authority and exercising it: Hobert could command neither a divided army nor the events closing around him, but he did make a decisive choice when loyalty demanded a price.

Identity and Claim to Command

The circumstances that raised Hobert to prominence were bleak. Lord Ormund Hightower and his cousin Ser Bryndon had been killed, while the younger Hightower heirs remained far away at the Hightower. Prince Daeron was still a boy, and although he had shown courage in battle, he had been more accustomed to receiving orders than giving them. Hobert, another cousin of Lord Ormund, had previously been entrusted only with the baggage train. The account describes him as stout and slow, and notes that he had lived sixty years without distinguishing himself.

In this leadership vacuum, Hobert presumed to take command by virtue of his kinship to Queen Alicent. His claim was only one among several. Lord Unwin Peake, Jon Roxton, and Lord Owain Bourney also advanced their own standing, and none had enough authority to bring the competing leaders and their soldiers into line. The dispute over precedence and plunder unfolded as the host’s discipline disintegrated. Hobert’s position therefore rested on family connection at a moment when the army needed more than a title or a claim: it needed a leader able to restrain its members.

Tumbleton and the Limits of His Authority

The disorder at Tumbleton was not merely a contest among commanders. As the leaders quarreled, soldiers joined the looting and violence across the town. Accounts by Septon Eustace and Grand Maester Munkun say that Prince Daeron was sickened by what he witnessed and ordered Hobert to stop it. Hobert’s efforts were ineffective. The failure exposed the weakness of his command: even a prince’s instruction, delivered through the man asserting authority over the host, could not restore control.

The rival leaders themselves deepened the crisis. Jon Roxton claimed Lady Sharis Footly as a prize of war and killed her husband when he protested. At a war council, Peake and Bourney argued until Peake stabbed Bourney. Hobert and Daeron watched in horror. These incidents show the widening gap between the army’s formal leadership and its actual conduct. Hobert was not presented as directing the worst abuses, but neither could he prevent them; the would-be commander remained a witness to a force whose appetite for plunder and factional advantage overran its chain of authority.

The Caltrops and the Decision to Act

The dragonseeds’ growing power eventually brought Hobert into a conspiracy. After Hugh Hammer asserted his claim to Highgarden and conflict intensified, Peake and a reluctant Hobert summoned eleven other lords and landed knights to a secret meeting in the cellar of a Tumbleton inn. The conspirators called themselves the Caltrops. They considered how to remove Hugh and Ulf, whose dragons made them dangerous as well as politically ambitious. The discussion exposed their central problem: killing the riders would not by itself settle what should happen to their dragons.

Hobert raised that problem directly, asking what the plotters could do about the dragons. The others proposed possibilities, including relying on Daeron’s Tessarion or attempting to claim Vermithor and Silverwing. Jon Roxton pressed for killing the dragonseeds first and letting the bravest conspirator claim their mounts afterward. Daeron had not attended the meeting, and the Caltrops were unwilling to proceed without his approval. They sent Lord Owen Fossoway to fetch him in the night. When Peake presented warrants for the executions of Hugh and Ulf, Daeron eagerly sealed them. Hobert’s participation thus moved beyond his earlier, ineffective claim to command: he helped convene the plot and put its proposed action before the prince whose authorization the conspirators sought.

Defeat and Death

The plan did not reach its intended moment. On the very day the Caltrops expected to strike, Tumbleton woke to a surprise attack, and the Second Battle of Tumbleton began. Eight of the thirteen conspirators died, including Owen Fossoway, Marq Ambrose, and Jon Roxton; Richard Rodden was mortally wounded. Hobert and Peake were among the four who survived. Hugh Hammer was dead, but Ulf White remained alive and was now the last dragonrider among them. The conspiracy had lost its planned sequence, leaving its survivors to face the danger they had hoped to remove.

The following morning, Hobert went to negotiate the next assault on King’s Landing and brought two casks of wine, one Dornish red and one Arbor gold. Ulf White’s suspicions were stirred by Hobert’s sweating, stammering, and excessive heartiness. He set the Dornish wine aside and insisted that Hobert share the Arbor gold. Hobert drank, then drank more after seeing Ulf do the same. The account presents his conduct as a refusal to betray his fellow Caltrops: rather than reveal the plan or refuse the test, he accepted the poisoned wine. Ulf fell asleep and did not wake; Hobert tried to make himself vomit after the danger was apparent, but died within the hour. His death gives his earlier lack of distinction a sharp counterpoint. Though he had failed to master the host, he met the final test of allegiance without abandoning the conspirators who had trusted him.