Arryk and Erryk Cargyll's fraternal duel

Arryk and Erryk Cargyll’s fraternal duel turned the Kingsguard’s divided loyalties into a private, fatal encounter: the identical twins, sworn to opposing claimants, met with drawn swords on Dragonstone and both died. Its meaning is inseparable from the uncertainty around how they fought and whether they had a loving farewell at all.

Brothers Bound to Opposing Oaths

At the time King Viserys died, Arryk was among the five white cloaks in King’s Landing, while Erryk was on Dragonstone with Princess Rhaenyra. Their division became political as well as geographic: Arryk swore his sword to Aegon II, and Erryk to Rhaenyra. The brothers’ identical appearance later made that allegiance difficult for others to read; even fellow Kingsguard, according to Mushroom and Septon Eustace, could not tell them apart.

The contrast between their vows and their kinship became the heart of the story told about their last meeting. A ballad composed long after the Dance, “Farewell, My Brother,” claims that the twins tried to persuade one another to change sides before exchanging declarations of love and parting as enemies. The account gives their separation the shape of a deliberate farewell, but the histories do not corroborate it: no source mentions such a meeting when Orwyle’s party was leaving Dragonstone. The possibility remains, not the certainty.

The Mission to Dragonstone

After Prince Jaehaerys was murdered, King Aegon II wanted to avenge his heir by flying to Dragonstone and seizing or killing Rhaenyra and her sons. The green council dissuaded him from attacking the island himself. Criston Cole instead proposed answering the princess’s stealth with stealth, and chose Arryk for the task. The order made the Kingsguard’s divided allegiance more than a matter of competing vows: one brother was to carry the king’s vengeance into the stronghold where the other served.

Arryk knew Dragonstone well, having visited during Viserys’s reign. Since the island depended on fishing boats for supplies, Cole reasoned that a fisherman could bring him ashore at the village below the castle; in his white cloak, he could then pass for Erryk. The exact target of the mission is disputed. Grand Maester Munkun says Arryk was ordered to kill Rhaenyra and end her rebellion, while Mushroom says Aegon wanted him to murder her sons, Jacaerys and Joffrey. The accounts agree on the mission’s purpose as vengeance, but not on whom the king intended it to strike.

Arryk did not set out willingly. Septon Eustace recounts that he went to the Red Keep’s sept on the night of his departure to pray for forgiveness to the Mother Above. Bound by his vows to obey both king and commander, he nevertheless sailed dressed as a salt-stained fisherman. He landed without hindrance, put on his armor and white cloak, and entered Dragonstone by passing as his twin. The disguise succeeded until he reached the heart of the castle: on his way to the royal apartments, he came face-to-face with Erryk, who understood at once what his brother’s presence meant.

The Duel and Its Conflicting Accounts

The encounter turned Arryk’s disguise into a recognition only Erryk could make. As Arryk moved through Dragonstone toward the royal apartments, Erryk saw his twin and understood what his presence meant. The singers give the brothers a final exchange of affection: “I love you, brother,” Erryk says as he draws his sword, and Arryk answers, “And I you, brother,” before drawing his own. In this telling, their sworn duties bring them to violence, but their kinship remains present even as they fight.

Grand Maester Munkun’s account makes the duel a prolonged struggle. The clash of steel woke half the queen’s court, yet the onlookers could not intervene because no one could distinguish one twin from the other. The brothers dealt each other mortal wounds and died in one another’s arms, tears on their cheeks. Their identical faces, previously useful to Arryk’s deception, made the conflict impossible for the witnesses to resolve by sight; the fight ended not with one brother surviving to be identified as victor, but with both dead.

Mushroom offers a markedly harsher version. He says the fight lasted only moments and that the twins exchanged accusations of treachery rather than declarations of love. On the spiral steps, Erryk struck first, cutting down at Arryk with a blow that nearly severed his sword arm at the shoulder. As he fell, Arryk seized Erryk’s white cloak, pulled him close, and stabbed him in the belly. Arryk was dead before the guards arrived; Erryk lingered for four days, screaming in pain and cursing his brother. This account replaces a shared death in an embrace with a violent sequence in which one twin briefly outlives the other, grievously wounded.

The versions cannot be reconciled from the surviving testimony. Singers and storytellers have preferred Munkun’s account, but that preference does not establish its truth; Septon Eustace says only that the brothers slew each other. The histories therefore preserve the duel’s outcome more firmly than its manner: both Kingsguard brothers died, while whether they died together in grief or in a struggle marked by mutual accusations remains uncertain.

The Kingsguard’s Fracture in Miniature

The duel compresses the larger conflict into the bond between two brothers: the same white cloak and indistinguishable faces cannot conceal that Arryk and Erryk have sworn themselves to opposing claimants. Their oath-bound service turns political division into a mortal encounter, while the witnesses’ inability to tell them apart makes the violence resistant to a clear victor or even a settled account. Whether the twins died in a final embrace or in mutual recrimination remains unresolved; what endures across the rival tellings is that neither brother survived the allegiance that separated them.