Kermit Tully

Kermit Tully was the young Lord of Riverrun who led the riverlords through the final battle of the Dance of the Dragons and into the unsettled peace that followed. His victory over Borros Baratheon helped make him one of the Lads, the youthful leaders who presented themselves as the victors’ new generation. Yet the aftermath exposed the limits of his authority: Cregan Stark rebuked his belief that the war was over, and Kermit later objected when Unwin Peake arranged a royal betrothal without the regents’ agreement.

Lord of Riverrun

Kermit inherited Riverrun after his father, Elmo Tully, died on the march from drinking bad water. Elmo had held the lordship for only forty-nine days. His death left command of nearly six thousand assembled riverlanders to Kermit, then a nineteen-year-old described as wild, headstrong, and eager to prove himself as a warrior. The inheritance placed him at the head of a substantial host, but it also made the young lord responsible for an army already moving toward a decisive confrontation.

Kermit’s age mattered beyond his personal reputation. House Tully held the paramount lordship of the Trident, a dignity granted by Aegon the Conqueror, but its bannermen often possessed greater resources or prestige. The Brackens, Blackwoods, and Vances controlled wider lands and could raise larger forces; the Freys of the Twins were rising in strength; the Mallisters had an older lineage; and the Mootons were wealthier. Even ruined Harrenhal remained larger and more formidable than Riverrun. Kermit therefore inherited a title whose standing depended in part on his ability to command respect from powerful vassals.

The Battle of the Kingsroad

The riverlords were six days from King’s Landing when Borros Baratheon marched out to meet them. Borros’s strength included levies from Stokeworth, Rosby, Hayford, and Duskendale, as well as two thousand men and boys hastily armed in Flea Bottom. The armies met two days from the city, where the Kingsroad ran between a wood and a low hill. After days of rain, the ground was soft and muddy. Borros attacked near dusk despite the riverlords’ shield wall and archers occupying the hill.

The Citadel calls the engagement the Battle of the Kingsroad; the soldiers who fought there called it the Muddy Mess. The stormlander cavalry charged in a wedge, but archers shot down many of their horses before the riders could reach the shield wall. The surviving knights arrived in disorder, hampered by the mud. The riverlords held their position as fresh fighters took the places of the fallen. When the stormlander infantry pressed them back, hundreds of riverlanders emerged from the woods in a flank attack led by Benjicot Blackwood. That intervention helped break Borros’s assault and gave Benjicot the name Bloody Ben.

Kermit’s role came into focus in the battle’s final, personal encounter. Borros’s reserve did not answer the signal to advance: men from Rosby, Stokeworth, and Hayford stayed where they were, the armed rabble scattered, and Duskendale’s knights changed sides and attacked the stormlanders from behind. As the king’s last army collapsed, Borros was unhorsed by arrows from Alysanne Blackwood and her archers. He continued fighting on foot until Kermit came upon him. Kermit called on him to yield, but Borros refused and charged. Kermit killed him with his morningstar. Borros died on the Kingsroad with his sword still in hand, and the last army supporting Aegon II had been defeated.

The Lads and the limits of victory

After the battle, Kermit rode toward King’s Landing beside his brother Oscar and Benjicot Blackwood. Oscar had killed three men in the Muddy Mess and had been knighted on the battlefield; Benjicot, only thirteen, had commanded the flank attack. Their youth did not make them the only notable people in the victorious host, but the three had become its most conspicuous leaders. Bound by the battle, they were so closely associated that their men referred to them collectively as the Lads. Their prominence marked a shift in the leadership of the victorious riverlords, though it did not erase the differences in age, standing, or experience among them.

The Lads expected to confront a city that might have to be besieged or taken by storm. Instead, Lord Corlys Velaryon and Prince Aegon rode out under a peace banner and yielded King’s Landing. The news that Aegon II was dead made the surrender possible, but it did not settle the question of what victory required. Kermit and his companions accepted the new king, while Cregan Stark arrived with the Northmen and argued that the war could not be considered finished while the remaining Greens had not submitted. Kermit warned that Storm’s End, Oldtown, and Casterly Rock were powerful fortresses and would not fall easily; Benjicot likewise warned that an assault could cost Stark half his men.

Kermit also protested that the stormlanders had already been beaten and could not field another army. Cregan countered that Aegon II’s envoys might return with sellswords, and that the queen’s cause had survived earlier declarations of victory. The Lads were overmatched in the confrontation and agreed to join Cregan’s march against Storm’s End. The accounts differ about their reasons: one presents them as persuaded by Cregan’s argument and hungry for further glory, while another suggests they were frightened of him. The disagreement preserves an important distinction between their military achievement and their political leverage. Kermit had helped win the battle, but he could not dictate the peace to the older lord who arrived with a fresh northern host.

After the battle

Kermit did not take a place on the council of regency formed to protect and govern Aegon III while the boy king was under age. His omission was among several notable exclusions, although the account singles out Unwin Peake as the lord truly angered by being left off the council. The distinction suggests that Kermit’s absence did not provoke the same recorded resentment. In the remainder of 131 AC, he and his knights returned to Riverrun as the great lords left King’s Landing for their own seats.

Kermit’s later recorded intervention came amid Peake’s attempt to arrange Aegon III’s marriage to Peake’s daughter, Myrielle. The proposal provoked objections from other lords because Peake had not consulted the council of regency. Kermit called the betrothal presumptuous, joining a wider challenge to the Hand’s claim to decide a matter of such importance on his own. The match did not proceed, and Myrielle became known throughout the realm by the nickname Lady Turnips rather than as a future queen. Kermit’s objection thus echoed the question raised after the Muddy Mess: a military victory could establish new leaders, but the shape of the peace and the young king’s future remained matters of contested authority.