Ulf White and Hugh Hammer's Defector Alliance and Ambitions

Ulf White and Hugh Hammer were allied dragonriders whose growing power helped fracture the green host at Tumbleton. Known together as the Two Betrayers, they were bound less by a common cause than by mutual advantage: each could use the other’s dragon and following to press for rewards, while both resisted serving Prince Daeron Targaryen on terms set by others. Their alliance ended with Hugh dead and Ulf briefly left as the sole surviving dragonrider among them, still bargaining for a throne he would never claim.

The alliance at Tumbleton

The men’s partnership took shape within a divided army. Prince Daeron’s forces had dragons and a large host, but their supplies were dwindling and their numbers were steadily reduced by desertions. While some of the younger lords wanted to march on King’s Landing, the Two Betrayers would not join an attack unless their own demands were met. Ulf wanted Highgarden, with its lands and income; Hugh wanted a crown. Their leverage came from the dragons they rode and the troops who gathered around them, not from agreement with Daeron’s plans.

The source accounts distinguish their temperaments even as they group them politically. Ulf was notorious for drunkenness and for conduct that made him feared by those around him. Hugh, the son of a common blacksmith, was physically formidable and had little formal training in war, but his strength and use of a warhammer made him dangerous in battle. He rode Vermithor, once the mount of the Old King, and his power was magnified by the size and reputation of the dragon. Ulf’s status likewise rested on his dragonrider’s influence and on the following he could command. The alliance gave each man a partner in a camp where the established lords increasingly regarded both as a threat.

Divergent ambitions

Hugh’s ambition was the more openly royal. He reasoned that being a lord was an inadequate prize when he possessed a dragon and could attract men to his side. A prophecy about a hammer striking down a dragon circulated through the camp, and some interpreted it as a promise of his victory. The account stresses that Hugh could neither read nor write and that the prophecy’s origin was unknown, so it cannot be attributed to him; nevertheless, it helped give his claim a larger, seemingly fated meaning among his supporters.

Ulf’s demand was different in scale but equally disruptive. He sought Highgarden, arguing that the Tyrells had stayed out of the Dance and should therefore lose their seat and lands. Hugh’s claim to kingship challenged Daeron’s position directly; Ulf’s demand challenged the authority and property of a great house. Neither man’s objective aligned with the campaign’s immediate need to preserve supplies, keep the army together, and decide whether to advance. Their partnership thus carried a built-in strain: they shared resistance to being directed by Daeron, but the rewards they sought were not the same.

The crown and the break with Daeron

The conflict sharpened after news arrived that Aemond Targaryen had died at Harrenhal and King Aegon II had disappeared following the fall of King’s Landing. With the green cause apparently without a king, some at Tumbleton argued that Daeron should be crowned, while others favored declaring him Prince of Dragonstone. Hugh rejected either outcome. He claimed that the throne should be his, invoking the Conqueror’s right and the strength of his dragon, Vermithor. With Vhagar dead, Vermithor was the oldest and largest living dragon in Westeros, and far larger than Daeron’s Tessarion.

Daeron’s anger made the breach unmistakable. After he threw wine in Hugh’s face, Hugh answered with a threat and left with Ulf. The next day Hugh appeared wearing a crown of black iron. When Ser Roger Corne knocked it from his head and mocked his claim, Hugh ordered his men to seize Corne; the confrontation turned into a wider clash in which several men died and others were wounded. The crown was not merely a personal ornament: it made Hugh’s bid for authority visible and forced Daeron’s supporters to decide whether they would accept a rival king in their own camp.

The Caltrops and Hugh’s death

The violence prompted Daeron’s loyalist lords to organize against the dragonriders. At a secret meeting in a Tumbleton inn, the conspirators known as the Caltrops concluded that killing Ulf alone would leave Hugh, the more heavily guarded and dangerous of the two, free to dominate the camp. They debated what to do about the dragons as well as their riders: some thought Tessarion could be enough to retake King’s Landing, while others wanted Vermithor and Silverwing for the campaign. Bold Jon Roxton urged them to kill the two men and then let the bravest conspirator claim their dragons.

Daeron was not present at the meeting, but the plotters sought his approval before acting. He readily sealed warrants for Hugh and Ulf’s executions. The planned attack never proceeded as intended. Two days later, Tumbleton awoke to a night assault, with burning camps, attacking forces and a dragon overhead. Hugh died in the fighting, ending both his bid for kingship and the alliance in its original form. Eight of the thirteen Caltrops were dead, and the conspirators’ victory did not restore their control of the dragons or settle the larger struggle.

Ulf alone and the end of the partnership

Hugh’s death left Ulf as the last dragonrider among the Two Betrayers and the possessor of the last dragon in their immediate faction. He made clear to Lord Unwin Peake that he still expected to advance: Peake could take the city, while Ulf would take the throne. The exchange shows how quickly the balance changed. The partner whose claim had been most explicit was gone, but Ulf did not abandon the prospect of rule; instead, he treated Hugh’s death as an opening to pursue the crown himself.

The proposed march on King’s Landing never came. Ser Hobert Hightower visited Ulf with two casks of wine, and Ulf’s suspicion led him to insist that Hobert drink the same Arbor gold he had been offered. Hobert did so rather than betray the Caltrops, and both men drank the poisoned wine. Ulf fell asleep and did not wake; Hobert died within the hour. The partnership’s end was therefore also the end of the power it had accumulated: Hugh’s death had removed its king-maker, and Ulf’s death removed its remaining rider. Their story at Tumbleton turns on the difference between possessing military force and holding a durable political coalition. Dragons could make their demands impossible to ignore, but they could not make those demands compatible with the aims of Daeron’s lords, or protect the alliance once its members became obstacles to one another’s plans.