Rickard Thorne

Ser Rickard Thorne is remembered chiefly as the sworn protector of Prince Maelor Targaryen, whose flight from Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen’s capture of King’s Landing ended at Bitterbridge. His part in the story is brief but consequential: having left the capital with the young prince, he continued to defend him when their route to safety was blocked, and died still holding to that charge.

Identity and Service

At the death of Viserys Targaryen, Thorne was one of only five Kingsguard knights in King’s Landing. The others present were Ser Criston Cole, Ser Arryk Cargyll, Ser Rickard Thorne himself, Ser Steffon Darklyn, and Ser Willis Fell; Ser Erryk Cargyll and Ser Lorent Marbrand were on Dragonstone with Rhaenyra Targaryen and did not know of the king’s death. Thorne thus belonged to the small group of white-cloaked knights in the capital as the succession crisis began, though the account does not assign him a particular role in the council’s meeting or its decisions.

After Rhaenyra’s forces took the Red Keep, Aegon II had escaped, as had his children, six-year-old Princess Jaehaera and two-year-old Prince Maelor. Thorne and Willis Fell had gone with them. The account says even Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower did not seem to know where the fugitives had gone, and Luthor Largent swore they had not passed through the city gates. Thorne’s presence among those who disappeared establishes his place in the effort to get the royal children away from the capital, although the evidence does not explain when or how the group separated.

Escorting Maelor

Thorne next appears traveling with Maelor through the Reach, where the advancing army of Ormund Hightower had driven refugees toward Bitterbridge. The town was crowded and its inns full. At the Hogs Head, the traveler arrived with a staff in one hand and a small boy on his back, offering a silver stag in exchange for a place in the stables. He agreed to muck them out himself. The boy was presented as his son, but was in fact Maelor; Thorne was the child’s sworn shield and protector.

A heavy white-wool cloak edged with snowy satin concealed a pale-green dragon’s egg streaked with silver. While Thorne worked in the stable, the innkeeper, Ben Buttercakes, offered him ale and arranged for his stableboy, Sly, to search the traveler’s pack for more money. Sly found no coins, but discovered the cloak and egg. These details expose the precariousness of the journey: the prince’s safety depended on keeping his identity and royal possessions hidden, yet the objects intended to accompany or protect him became the means by which the inn’s occupants learned who he was.

The Attempt to Escape Bitterbridge

When Sly brought the cloak and egg into the common room, Thorne understood that concealment had failed. He threw the dregs of his ale into Buttercakes’s face, drew his sword, and fought his way through the men who tried to stop him. He abandoned the recovered treasures, reached the stables with Maelor, took a horse, and rode for the old stone bridge across the Mander. His apparent destination was Lord Ormund Hightower’s encampment at Longtable, about thirty leagues away; the route offered a possible refuge, but only if he could first get across the river.

The bridge was closed, and Bitterbridge was under Rhaenyra’s control. Pursuers raised an alarm, and guards on both banks blocked the crossing. Thorne tried to force his way through rather than surrender. As men gathered around the horse, he turned repeatedly in search of an opening, while Maelor clung to him. Crossbow bolts brought the attempt to an end. Thorne fell from the saddle and died on the bridge, still holding the boy he had sworn to defend. Willow Pound-Stone then pulled the weeping prince from his arms.

Death and Aftermath

The crowd that had seized Maelor argued over what should be done with him, and the surviving accounts disagree about exactly how the prince died. They agree on the outcome: he was dead by the time Lady Caswell and her knights arrived to disperse the mob. At her command, Sly and Willow Pound-Stone were hanged, as was the owner of the horse Thorne had taken, wrongly believed to have helped the knight escape. Lady Caswell had Thorne’s body wrapped in his white cloak and sent back to King’s Landing with Maelor’s head; she sent the dragon’s egg to Ormund Hightower at Longtable in the hope of appeasing him.

Thorne’s ending turns his Kingsguard duty into the measure of his brief role. His journey began in the company of a child he could not safely identify, and his last effort was to carry that child across a blocked bridge toward the nearest apparent refuge. He did not get Maelor to safety, and the prince did not survive the crowd’s struggle over him. But the account places Thorne’s death at the point where his protection failed only because the route was shut and the fugitives were surrounded: he held to his charge until he was killed.