“None the Citadel can confirm from the printed page — though a house whose own lord has been struck by lightning this many times, in one sense or another, could be forgiven a motto about surviving it.”
The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Dondarrion — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Blackhaven
Region
The Stormlands
Founder
A messenger of an old Storm King, so the legend runs, ambushed on the Boneway and saved by a lightning bolt that struck his attackers dead where they stood; raised to lordship for delivering his message all the same, and given a forked purple bolt for his arms. The Citadel repeats this one as legend, not history, and expects no reader to mistake the distinction.
Marcher lords of the Dornish boundary for longer than most houses this chronicle catalogs, the Dondarrions guarded the Boneway with unremarkable competence for centuries — until their most recent lord proved considerably harder to keep dead than anyone, including the lord himself, found comfortable.
I
The Bolt That Made a Lord
House Dondarrion's founding legend does the family the courtesy of being memorable rather than plausible: a Storm King's rider, ambushed in a night storm on the Boneway, his horse killed and his sword broken, saved at the last by a bolt of purple lightning that struck down the men about to finish him. He delivered his message, and was made a lord for it, and his descendants have carried a forked purple bolt on black, speckled with stars, ever since — a sigil this chronicle finds unusually literal for a house that otherwise tells the story as though it happened yesterday rather than in an age no one now living can date.
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
A Warrant from Winterfell
Lord Beric Dondarrion held Blackhaven and the Boneway with the same unremarked competence as generations of Dondarrions before him, until Eddard Stark, newly Hand of the King, sent him south with a royal warrant to arrest Ser Gregor Clegane for the burning of villages along the Trident. The mission went as badly as sending a small party after Gregor Clegane generally does: ambushed at the Mummer's Ford by Clegane's own retainers, Beric was struck through the chest by a lance and, by every account this chronicle can locate, killed.
In the chronicle
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The present tale
This chapter carries the house's fortunes into the novels' events — veiled until you choose to read on.
§
The Lightning Lord
Beric did not stay dead — the first of what this chronicle, choosing its words with some care, will call several occasions. A red priest of R'hllor traveling with his company, Thoros of Myr, performed the last rites over him and found, to his own evident astonishment as much as anyone's, that the god he served had answered. Thoros would repeat the working five times more across the years that followed — six returns from death in all — and Beric paid a price the novels are candid about: less memory with each return, less of the man who had first ridden south from Blackhaven, until he described himself, by the end, as tired in a way sleep could no longer touch.
What became of Beric's company after his seventh and truly final death — given, this chronicle notes without further elaboration, to another mourner beside a riverbank rather than kept for himself this final time — belongs to a darker turn in the war's history than a house entry ought to summarize. Blackhaven itself stands without its lord, held by whatever household remains, while the Brotherhood Without Banners that Beric raised continues under other hands entirely.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The people of House Dondarrion
The lords, ladies, and branches of Dondarrion the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Beric Dondarrion
Lord of Blackhaven, called the Lightning Lord
d. 298 AC; his death, by report, has not proved permanent
Explore further
Members
What is House Dondarrion known for?
Marcher lords of the Dornish boundary for longer than most houses this chronicle catalogs, the Dondarrions guarded the Boneway with unremarkable competence for centuries — until their most recent lord proved considerably harder to keep dead than anyone, including the lord himself, found comfortable.
Where is the seat of House Dondarrion?
House Dondarrion holds Blackhaven, in The Stormlands. The chronicle traces the house from its founding down to its part in the present tale, marking legend as legend wherever the songs run ahead of the record.
Is House Dondarrion in the books or only the show?
Book canon. This history follows George R. R. Martin's novels first, then the histories — Fire & Blood and The World of Ice & Fire — and does not follow the television series where it diverges.