Lucamore Strong

Lucamore Strong’s career joined spectacular public honor to private betrayal: acclaimed as a tourney champion and raised to the Kingsguard, he was later exposed as a secret husband to three women and father of sixteen children. His fall tested the meaning of a White Sword’s vows, and its consequences reached beyond the disgraced knight to the families he had kept apart.

From Melee Champion to White Sword

Lucamore first came to prominence in the great melee held in the Dragonpit on Rhaenys’s Hill. The tournament’s seven-seven competitors fought in teams, first on horseback and then on foot with blunted weapons; two men died and more than forty were wounded. After hours of combat, the last man standing was the broad-shouldered, blond knight from the Riverlands. The victory made Lucamore a favorite of the smallfolk, whose affection would later sharpen the contrast between his public standing and his private conduct.

The opportunity to join the Kingsguard came after Ser Willam the Wasp died on a royal mission in Essos. Septon Barth concluded that the supposed monster Willam had been sent to investigate was no monster at all, but a story told by men stealing sheep. Jaehaerys Targaryen declined to punish the whole city of Pentos for the outlaws’ actions, and the account of Willam’s fate was entered in the White Book. To fill the vacant place, the king gave the white cloak to Lucamore, the melee’s victorious knight. His rise thus rested on both battlefield prowess and royal appointment: a popular champion became one of the sworn protectors of the king.

Service at Court

Lucamore’s service included a brief but consequential role in the return of Aerea Targaryen to the Red Keep. When Balerion landed in the inner ward by Maegor’s Holdfast, Lucamore was at his post on the bridge across the dry moat. He pushed past the onlookers, lifted the princess, and carried her through the castle to Grand Maester Benifer. His account described her as gravely ill; the king subsequently ordered him to say no more about her condition. Aerea died that night, and the court announced that she had succumbed to a fever.

This episode places Lucamore at the center of a tightly guarded royal crisis, but the surviving account also marks the limit of what he could publicly say. His own description circulated briefly before Jaehaerys silenced further talk. He was therefore remembered not only as a knight who responded to the stricken princess, but as a witness whose account the crown chose to suppress. The episode does not change his later standing at court: Lucamore remained a favored Kingsguard knight until his secret household was discovered.

The Hidden Marriages

Near the end of 73 AC, the amiable, widely liked knight was found to have married three women in secret despite his Kingsguard vows. He had kept each wife ignorant of the other two and fathered sixteen children among the three families. The discovery turned his household into a public scandal. In Flea Bottom and along the Street of Silk, people made bawdy jokes about “Ser Lucamore the Lusty”; in the Red Keep, Jaehaerys and Alysanne Targaryen were mortified. They had been particularly fond of him and felt he had deceived them both.

The breach also angered the Kingsguard as an institution. Ser Ryam Redwyne discovered Lucamore’s transgressions and reported them to the Lord Commander, who brought the matter before the king. Speaking for his sworn brothers, Ser Gyles Morrigen said Lucamore had dishonored what they stood for and asked that he be put to death. The accusation was not simply that Lucamore had formed a family: his secret marriages had violated his promise to remain unmarried and chaste, while the fact that he had concealed them from the Crown called the reliability of his other oaths into question.

Judgment and Consequences

Brought before the Iron Throne, Lucamore knelt, admitted his guilt, and begged for mercy. His appeal to the needs of his wives and children did not soften Jaehaerys. The king compared Lucamore’s broken vows with the oathbreaking of two Kingsguard who had abandoned Maegor to support Jaehaerys: he had sent those men to the Wall rather than allow them to keep their white cloaks. A knight who disregarded his vows of chastity and marriage, Jaehaerys reasoned, could not be trusted to honor his oath to defend and obey the king.

Alysanne distinguished Lucamore’s culpability from that of the dependents caught in the scandal. She condemned his repeated breach of his marriage vows, but recognized that the wives had not known about one another and that the children were innocent. Jaehaerys ordered Lucamore’s castration, had him put in irons, and sent him to the Wall, where he would have to take new vows. The fate of the wives and children was left to Alysanne, who provided for each household separately rather than leaving them under the consequences of Lucamore’s fall.

The two eldest boys chose to join their father at the Wall; the girls could enter the Faith as novices, and one did. The remaining children stayed with their mothers. Lucamore’s first wife and her children were placed in the care of his brother Bywin, newly made Lord of Harrenhal. The second wife and her children were sent to Driftmark to be fostered by Daemon Velaryon, while the third, whose children were the youngest, went to Storm’s End under the care of Garon Baratheon and young Lord Boremund. Alysanne also decreed that none of the children would bear the Strong name: the three branches became Rivers, Waters, and Storm. The decision supplied separate homes and identities, but made the cost of their father’s deception permanent in their names.

The Meaning of His Fall

Lucamore’s story turns on the distance between reputation and conduct. The champion who had delighted the commons and the trusted knight favored by the royal couple proved to have maintained a concealed family life incompatible with the office he had sworn to serve. His fall makes the Kingsguard’s vows more than ceremonial language: in Jaehaerys’s judgment, disregard for one sworn duty cast doubt on every other promise attached to the white cloak.

The resolution also reveals a contrast between the king’s punishment of the knight and the queen’s practical attention to those dependent on him. Lucamore lost his place, his freedom, and the right to have his children bear his name; the wives and children were dispersed among the Wall, the Faith, Harrenhal, Driftmark, and Storm’s End. The account ends not with the return of the popular champion, but with a divided family assigned new affiliations and names. His epithet survived as a bawdy joke, while his broken vows became a warning about the obligations attached to royal service.