The Stormlands is the southeastern realm once ruled by the Storm Kings of House Durrandon, extending from Cape Wrath to the Bay of Crabs. Though the Durrandons’ power contracted over centuries, their successor lords at Storm’s End remained important to the realm’s wars and politics: the region’s mountains, coast, and strongholds repeatedly shaped the routes armies took and the risks they faced.

Extent and the Durrandon legacy

The Storm Kings’ dominion had once covered the eastern half of Westeros. Its losses came from several directions: the Kings of the Reach encroached from the west, Dornishmen raided from the south, and Harren Hoare and his ironmen pushed the Durrandons away from the Trident and lands north of the Blackwater Rush. By the time of the last Storm King, Argilac Durrandon, this long decline had been interrupted but not undone. He had turned back a Dornish invasion while still a boy, joined a cross-sea alliance against Volantis, and later killed Garse VII Gardener, King of the Reach, at the Battle of Summerfield. In old age, however, Argilac’s hair had greyed and his prowess at arms diminished.

The landscape of lordship was concentrated at Storm’s End, the seat of House Durrandon and later of House Baratheon. Its curtain wall was said to be thicker even than Harrenhal’s, and the castle was considered impregnable to assault. That reputation mattered when news arrived of the destruction of Harrenhal by Queen Rhaenys and her dragon: rather than wait inside his own fortress for a similar fate, Argilac rode out to meet the invaders in the open field. The stronghold was thus both a defensive anchor and the point from which a ruler could choose to take the fight beyond its walls.

From Storm Kings to Baratheons

After Argilac’s death, Orys Baratheon took Argilac’s daughter as his wife and became the first Baratheon lord of Storm’s End. As a bastard brother of Aegon the Conqueror and his trusted commander, Orys linked the new dynasty to the Targaryens; through his marriage, he also joined it to the blood of the old Storm Kings. Generations later, Lord Rogar Baratheon could claim both lines of descent. The inheritance was political as well as genealogical: Storm’s End and its lords continued to command the allegiance of the storm lords, even while the Iron Throne drew the region into a larger royal system.

That system sought to turn former enemies into subjects of one realm. Aegon I encouraged the great houses to send younger sons and daughters to court, where they served as pages, squires, cupbearers, handmaidens, and companions to the queens. There they could see royal justice firsthand and be encouraged to think of themselves as subjects of a united kingdom rather than as people defined only by their regional identity. Stormlanders belonged to this wider network of courtly service and allegiance, but local power remained consequential. During the regency that followed, the Stormlands and several other great regions were reported to be in secret communication with Alyssa, the widowed queen, waiting to see whether her son’s cause could prevail before declaring for him.

A contested southern frontier

The Stormlands’ southern border made it vulnerable to conflict with Dorne. When Rogar Baratheon was occupied in King’s Landing, Dornish raids into the marches grew more frequent and began troubling the Stormlands itself. Reports of another Vulture King in the Red Mountains added a second danger: Rogar’s brothers Borys and Garon argued that they lacked the men and money to root out the raider. The mountains offered concealment and made pursuit difficult, allowing the Vulture King to disappear and return at will. In the campaign later known as Lord Rogar’s War, Rogar led five hundred men into the mountains while Jaehaerys Targaryen searched from the air on Vermithor. The contrast between an army’s numbers and a raider’s knowledge of the terrain defined the pursuit; the account identifies the Vulture King as a comparatively small-scale outlaw, not a leader of the vast forces associated with the earlier namesake.

Dorne also threatened the region by sea. Prince Morion planned to assemble forces at Ghost Hill and the Tor, transport them across the Sea of Dorne, and surprise the Stormlands, with Storm’s End or at least Cape Wrath as his intended limit. His accompanying vow to burn a hundred towns and destroy a hundred castles was out of proportion to the settlements actually found on Cape Wrath. The expedition ended before a living Dornishman reached the Stormlands: wreckage and bodies washed ashore for half a year, but no invader set foot on its soil. In a separate raid during a very dry year, Dornishmen crossed the Sea of Dorne in ships supplied by a pirate king from the Stepstones, attacked six towns and villages on Cape Wrath’s southern shore, and fires spread through half the Rainwood. These episodes make the coast a route of both attempted invasion and sudden reprisal, not simply a barrier between the realms.

Armies, alliances, and changing routes

Stormland forces also served in campaigns beyond their borders. When Myrish pirates seized Tarth, Lord Boremund was to cross there with his stormlanders and join the Evenstar’s levies. The Velaryon fleet was assigned to protect the crossing, while Prince Aemon and his dragon were available if the fighting proved more difficult than expected. The plan depended on cooperation among the royal fleet, the Stormlands’ forces, and Tarth’s local defenders; the sea passage was a military vulnerability that had to be secured before the land forces could combine.

During the Dance of the Dragons, Storm’s End again became a decisive political concern. House Baratheon had long supported the claims of Princess Rhaenys and her children, and Rhaenys expected the Stormlands to stand with her because of her maternal blood ties and Lord Boremund’s longstanding friendship. The Greens nevertheless treated the region as a major prize. After Boremund’s death, his son Borros was regarded as even more belligerent, and the lesser storm lords were expected to follow his lead. Queen Alicent therefore sought to draw him to her son’s cause. The competing expectations show how a region’s allegiance could be shaped by inherited friendships and kinship, but also targeted through immediate royal diplomacy.

Borros later assembled nearly six thousand men at Storm’s End with the declared intention of marching on King’s Landing. Instead, he led them south into the mountains, citing Dornish incursions; observers suspected that the dragons ahead, rather than the Dornishmen behind, had changed his course. After the death of the queen, he eventually marched north from Storm’s End through the Kingswood with six hundred knights and four thousand foot soldiers, leaving his pregnant wife and four daughters behind. His arrival helped end the rule of the Three Kings in King’s Landing. The episode makes the Stormlands a staging ground whose forces could change direction as political and military dangers shifted.

War’s costs and the region’s place in the realm

The Stormlands’ armies were not insulated from the wider collapse of the Dance. In a later campaign near King’s Landing, Borros led stormlanders against the riverlords, whose forces were moving down the kingsroad. His strength included levies from Stokeworth, Rosby, Hayford, and Duskendale, as well as two thousand men and boys hastily armed in Flea Bottom. When Borros ordered his reserve forward, the men of Rosby, Stokeworth, and Hayford dropped the king’s golden dragons and held back; Duskendale’s knights changed sides and attacked the stormlanders from behind. The battle turned rapidly into a rout, and the last army of King Aegon’s cause was shattered. A regional host could bring substantial force to the capital, but its effectiveness depended on the loyalty of the surrounding contingents.

The account also places the Stormlands within a kingdom exposed to longer pressures than battle alone. In the winter of 59–60 AC, famine spread after crops failed across the North, riverlands, westerlands, the Vale, and even the Reach; bread and meat prices rose, while fresh produce became scarce in towns and cities. The evidence does not specify the Stormlands’ particular losses in that winter, but it establishes the realm-wide conditions within which its rulers planned and governed. Across the narrative, the Stormlands’ significance lies in the conjunction of geography and allegiance: a formidable seat at Storm’s End, a difficult southern frontier, sea routes vulnerable to attack, and a powerful body of lords whose choices repeatedly mattered to the crown.