Ryam Redwyne

Ryam Redwyne was a celebrated jouster and Kingsguard knight whose public fame rested on feats with a lance, while his service to the crown placed him at moments of private crisis and royal discipline. Jaehaerys ultimately made him Hand of the King after the death of Septon Barth, but Ryam’s brief tenure demonstrated that prowess in the lists did not by itself equip a man to govern. His story moves between spectacular tournament victories and the quieter demands of office: investigating a fellow knight’s breach of vows, waking the king and queen with news of their daughter’s death, and confronting the limits of his own appointment.

Family and Tournament Reputation

Ryam was the youngest son of Lord Manfryd Redwyne of the Arbor, who served Jaehaerys as lord admiral and master of ships. The distinction between the father’s naval office and the son’s later fame as a knight is central to the shape of Ryam’s career: his reputation grew through public contests of arms, even as royal service would eventually ask him to perform work that no tournament could prepare him for.

At the coronation anniversary tourney in King’s Landing, Ryam emerged as the field’s outstanding jouster. In successive tilts he unhorsed Ronnal Baratheon, Arthor Oakheart, Simon Dondarrion, Harys Hogg—known to the commons as Harry the Ham—and two Kingsguard knights, Lorence Roxton and Lucamore Strong. The sequence made his victory more than a single fortunate pass: he prevailed against a varied field that included both celebrated competitors and members of the king’s own sworn guard. When he rode up to the royal box and crowned Alysanne Targaryen queen of love and beauty, the commons answered with approval.

His success was not confined to that contest. At the great tourney held in King’s Landing in 98 AC for the fiftieth year of Jaehaerys’s reign, Ryam and Ser Clement Crabb broke thirty lances against one another before the king named them co-champions. The contest was remembered as the finest display of jousting in Westeros. Ryam’s repeated prominence at major royal celebrations made him a figure through whom the court could display both martial excellence and the splendour of the king’s reign.

Service in the Kingsguard

When the Shivers had run their course, Jaehaerys returned to the work of replacing lost friends and councillors. Ryam was among the two knights presented with white cloaks, alongside Ser Robin Shaw. The appointment placed the celebrated tourney knight within the Kingsguard, where his duties extended beyond ceremony and combat. The same court that had applauded his skill in the lists expected him to uphold the order and vows of the king’s sworn brothers.

That responsibility became visible in the case of Lucamore Strong. Ryam discovered that Lucamore had secretly taken three wives and fathered sixteen children, despite his Kingsguard vows, and brought the matter to the Lord Commander, who then reported it to the king. The discovery initiated a formal reckoning: the other Kingsguard regarded Lucamore’s conduct as a dishonour to their order, and Ser Gyles Morrigen asked that he be put to death. Lucamore confessed before the Iron Throne and sought mercy, but Jaehaerys treated the violation as a breach of a sacred vow that cast doubt on whether the knight could be trusted to keep his other obligations. Ryam’s part in the affair was not as judge but as the knight whose discovery brought the hidden conduct to the crown’s attention.

A Messenger of Grief

Ryam also carried news that had no public triumph attached to it. After Princess Viserra died in an accident during a nighttime ride, it fell to him, as a Kingsguard knight, to rouse Jaehaerys and Alysanne and tell them their daughter had been found dead in an alley at the foot of Aegon’s High Hill. The account identifies him at the hour of the wolf, placing him at the threshold between the city’s nighttime disorder and the royal household’s grief. His role was starkly different from his appearances at tourneys: the knight who had once brought acclaim to the royal box now had to wake the king and queen with a family tragedy.

Later, while Jaehaerys was travelling through the Reach, Ryam again won a tourney staged in the king’s honour, this time in Oldtown. The recurrence reinforced his standing as a champion even as the king’s journeys and household brought him into other kinds of service. His public identity remained inseparable from the lists, but his appearances in the record also mark the demands placed on a trusted member of the royal household beyond the field.

Hand of the King

A fortnight after the fiftieth-year tourney, Septon Barth died peacefully in his sleep after serving as Hand for forty-one years. Jaehaerys chose the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard to succeed him; that officeholder was Ryam Redwyne. The choice elevated him from a celebrated knight into the realm’s chief political office, but the comparison with Barth set an exacting measure. Ryam’s unquestioned skill with a lance proved of little use in the work of the Hand, and Jaehaerys removed him after only a year. The king then appointed his son Baelon Targaryen, whose judgement of men and choice of loyal subordinates better suited the demands of the post.

Ryam’s short tenure does not diminish the record of his service; it clarifies its limits. He was effective and memorable in the roles the evidence shows directly: a champion repeatedly distinguished before the court, a Kingsguard knight whose discovery exposed a serious breach within the order, and a trusted bearer of news to the royal family. The Handship was the exception that tested the reach of his reputation. His career therefore sets martial renown beside administrative fitness without treating them as the same gift: the lists made Ryam celebrated, but the king’s government required abilities his fame as a jouster could not supply.