Rogar Baratheon's War was a short 61 AC campaign against the Vulture King and Borys Baratheon, Lord Rogar’s estranged brother. Its later name, the Third Dornish War, obscures its character: the Prince of Dorne kept his armies out of the fighting, while the conflict itself was a pursuit through the Red Mountains. The campaign joined a dying lord’s final expedition to the young king’s effort to restore security to the Dornish Marches—and became a public demonstration that Jaehaerys Targaryen could lead in war.

Background and Purpose

The threat had grown while Rogar was occupied in King’s Landing. Dornish raiding along the marches had increased, reaching into the stormlands, and reports spoke of another Vulture King in the Red Mountains. Borys, one of Rogar’s brothers, had returned to Westeros after spending time in Myr and Volantis. The talk was that he had joined the outlaw and was raiding his own people. Garon, the brother who remained in the stormlands, was considered loyal and capable, but Rogar feared he could not control Borys or protect the young heir, Boremund.

Rogar made that danger plain when he asked Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne to accept his daughter Jocelyn and her cousins as wards at court. Boremund, then nine, would remain at Storm’s End in Garon’s care. Rogar also told the king that his maester believed he was dying. He had already been in pain before the Shivers, and it had worsened since. Though milk of the poppy eased it, Rogar used little, unwilling to spend what remained of his life asleep or die in bed. He intended to find Borys and the Vulture King in the mountains, accepting that the expedition might be a fool’s errand.

Jaehaerys granted Rogar leave and pledged his own support. The king’s decision made the campaign more than a private reckoning between brothers: the Vulture King had troubled the marches long enough, and Borys was a traitor. At the same time, Rogar’s departure left his family’s safety and the future of Storm’s End as immediate concerns, hence his arrangements for the children before he rode out.

The Mountain Campaign

Rogar led five hundred men into the mountains. Jaehaerys joined the hunt from the air on Vermithor, while Simon Dondarrion, Lord of Blackhaven, brought marcher knights in from the west to close off that route of escape. The stormlanders’ advance was difficult. They abandoned their horses and followed narrow goat tracks, steep slopes, and caves; concealed enemies rolled stones down around them. The terrain favored a fugitive who knew its paths, and the king’s forces had to search rather than meet an army in open battle.

The Vulture King’s reputation exceeded his actual strength. The first man to use that name had commanded thousands; this one was a minor noble with only a few hundred followers, an outlaw band known for robbery and rape. He could disappear into the mountains and return at will, and ambush made pursuit dangerous. Stories claimed he possessed a hidden, impregnable stronghold in the clouds. Jaehaerys found no such fortress, only a dozen rough camps scattered through the heights. Vermithor burned them one by one, depriving the outlaw of places to return to and making the search from the ground increasingly difficult for him to evade.

Borys was cornered first. Unlike the Dornish, he did not know the mountain paths well enough to escape the tightening pursuit. Rogar’s men quickly overcame his followers. When the brothers came face-to-face, Jaehaerys descended and prevented Rogar from having to kill his own kin. Borys rushed the king instead. Jaehaerys met him with Blackfyre and killed him, ending the confrontation without making Rogar a kinslayer.

The Vulture King’s Defeat

The Vulture King was brought to bay at the next full moon, in a burned-out lair where he had hoped to take refuge. He resisted the king’s men with spears and arrows, but was captured and brought before Rogar in fetters. Rogar claimed the right to face him himself. The outlaw’s chains were removed, and he was given a spear and shield; Rogar took up his axe, declaring that if the prisoner killed him, he should be allowed to go free.

Rogar was already weakened by illness and pain, yet he turned aside the Vulture King’s attacks and defeated him. The encounter brought the campaign’s two purposes together: Borys’s betrayal had been answered by the king, while Rogar himself had faced the outlaw who had preyed on the marches. But the victory did not restore Rogar’s health. Afterward, he acknowledged that he would not die with an axe in his hand after all.

Outcome and Significance

The war lasted less than half a year and was begun and won entirely in 61 AC. With the Vulture King eliminated, raiding along the Dornish Marches fell sharply for a time. The result was not the conquest or defeat of Dorne, whose prince had kept his armies out of the conflict, but the removal of a persistent threat operating within the mountains.

The campaign also altered how lords regarded Jaehaerys. As reports spread, even martial nobles gained new respect for the young king, and lingering doubts that he would prove like his father, Aenys, were dispelled. For Jaehaerys, the victory had a personal force as well: after feeling helpless against the Shivers, he had again exercised a king’s power against a danger to the realm. The hunt from Vermithor, the coordinated advance from east and west, and the defeat of the two leaders offered visible proof of his capacity to act.

Rogar survived the campaign but not for long. Half a year later he died at Storm’s End, attended by his maester, septon, brother Garon, and son and heir Boremund. His final expedition therefore did not give him the death he had imagined, but it did end the raiding threat and settle the immediate danger posed by Borys. Its name preserves Rogar’s central role more accurately than the conventional title: this was his war, fought with the king’s support, rather than a war against Dorne.