Jon Roxton

Jon Roxton, called Bold Jon, was a knight remembered for his black temper, his Valyrian steel sword Orphan-Maker, and his role in the violence and conspiracy at Tumbleton. He moved from claiming Lady Sharis Footly as a prize of war to advocating the killing of the dragonriders Hugh Hammer and Ulf White; when the attack came, he killed Hammer, but did not survive the battle himself.

Identity and Reputation

Roxton was among the powerful men who stepped forward to claim authority over the royalist host at Tumbleton after Lord Ormund Hightower’s death. He was feared for his temper as well as for Orphan-Maker, the black blade he carried. Although Lord Unwin Peake could muster a hundred knights and nine hundred men-at-arms, Roxton’s reputation rested less on command of a large force than on his personal menace and his willingness to use violence.

The rival claimants to leadership failed to control the soldiers under them. While the lords quarrelled over precedence and plunder, the host’s discipline collapsed. Roxton’s actions reflected that breakdown: his standing as a knight did not restrain him from treating the people of Tumbleton as spoils of war, and his blade became a means of enforcing his own claim.

Lady Sharis and Lord Footly

Roxton became enamored of Lady Sharis Footly, the wife of Tumbleton’s lord, and claimed her as a prize of war. When Lord Footly protested, Roxton killed him with Orphan-Maker and took Lady Sharis. The episode makes his violence personal as well as political: amid a sack in which the town’s people were left exposed to the soldiers’ appetites, Roxton asserted possession of a noblewoman and answered her husband’s objection with lethal force.

During the later surprise attack on Tumbleton, Roxton was still occupying Lord Footly’s bedchamber and had taken the lord’s wife. The detail places him inside the town when the assault began, rather than with the commanders outside its walls. It also connects the earlier seizure of Lady Sharis to the circumstances of his encounter with Hugh Hammer: Roxton was in the yard when Hammer rushed out, half-dressed, seeking his equipment and a horse so he could reach Vermithor.

The Caltrops’ Conspiracy

As Hugh Hammer and Ulf White grew more powerful, Roxton joined the secret council known as the Caltrops, convened in the cellar of a Tumbleton inn. Its members debated how to curb the dragonriders’ arrogance and how to take the Iron Throne amid the disorder at King’s Landing. Some proposed postponing the killings until after the city had been taken; others considered that dishonorable. Roxton settled the argument by advocating that Hammer and White be killed first, after which the bravest conspirator could claim their dragons and lead them into battle. Those present understood that he meant himself as the prospective dragonrider.

Prince Daeron was not at the meeting, but the plotters would not proceed without his approval. When Lord Unwin Peake brought him execution warrants for Hammer and White, Daeron eagerly sealed them. Roxton’s plan therefore had the prince’s authorization, even though Daeron had not attended the debate. The conspirators intended to eliminate both riders and transfer the dragons to their own side; the approaching attack on Tumbleton disrupted that plan before they could carry it out as arranged.

Death and Narrative Significance

During the night assault, Roxton encountered Hammer in the yard. He addressed him as a man already dead in the battle, then drew Orphan-Maker and killed him. A dozen of Hammer’s men arrived in time to witness their lord’s death. Although Roxton killed three of them, the others overcame him, and he was slain in turn. The account offers a sharply ironic possibility: that he slipped on a coil of Hammer’s entrails. It immediately cautions that this detail may be too perfectly ironic to be true, leaving the precise manner of Roxton’s death uncertain while confirming its outcome.

Roxton was one of eight Caltrops killed in the battle; Lord Owen Fossoway and Marq Ambrose also died, while Richard Rodden was mortally wounded and died the next day. The conspiracy’s proposal to take the dragons therefore collapsed with its leading participants. Roxton’s trajectory is a concentrated example of the host’s competing ambitions: he used the disorder to claim a woman and to assert command through violence, then sought to convert the dragons into instruments of political conquest. He achieved the killing of Hammer, but not the prize he had imagined for himself; he died before he could claim a dragon or challenge for the throne.