unrecorded; his final years are bound to the old gods' weirwoods
Weapon
longbow
Notable for
ending the First Blackfyre Rebellion at Redgrass Field; the birthmark and pale eye that fed a lifetime of dragon-and-sorcery rumor
The maesters kept his crimes in three different books, and none of the three agree
Brynden Rivers came into the world in 175 AC, one of the four bastards Aegon IV legitimized on his deathbed and so one of the four "Great Bastards" whose grievances would bleed the realm for a century. His mother was Melissa Blackwood, sixth of the king's mistresses, and the pale skin and blood-red birthmark under his left eye — a stain the smallfolk read as a dragon, or a raven, or the king's own guilt made flesh — gave him a name before he ever earned one. He earned the rest of it soon enough.
He fought for the crown, not for his half-brother Daemon Blackfyre's rebel one. At Redgrass Field in 196 AC, by every surviving account, it was Brynden's bow that ended the First Blackfyre Rebellion: three black arrows, one after another, took Daemon and both the sons riding beside him. Whether that was soldiership or something closer to a curse is a question the chronicles leave open, and Brynden himself was not a man given to correcting rumor that served him.
He rose after that the way careful, watched men rise — Hand to Aerys I, Hand again to Maekar I, a name attached to every faction's fear of sorcery and to no faction's certain loyalty. When Maekar died in 233 AC, Brynden called the Great Council that should have settled the Blackfyre question peacefully; instead a rival claimant died under his safe conduct, on his watch, in circumstances the record does not care to clarify. The new king's first act was to arrest his own Hand for the killing.
The Watch, in the end, was where the realm's inconvenient men went, and Brynden went there rather than to the block. He commanded it from 239 AC and, in 252 AC, rode north of the Wall and did not ride back. What became of him beyond the Wall is the stuff of the Watch's own oldest rumors — a shape said to linger deep in the haunted forest, older and stranger the further north the tale is carried — and the Citadel's confirmed record goes no further than that.
Where they appear
In the novels
A Dance with Dragons
On screen
HBO's Game of Thrones — Seasons 4–6
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.
Key events
175 ACBorn to Melissa Blackwood, one of Aegon IV's deathbed-legitimized bastards.
196 ACEnded the First Blackfyre Rebellion at Redgrass Field with three arrows.
209 ACNamed Hand of the King to Aerys I.
233 ACCalled the Great Council after King Maekar I's death; a rival claimant died under his safe conduct.
233 ACTook the black and joined the Night's Watch rather than face the block.
239 ACRaised Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.
252 ACRode north of the Wall and did not ride back.
300 ACFound beyond the Wall, bound into a weirwood, by a crippled Stark boy seeking a three-eyed crow.
Reading the character
Brynden Rivers reads as the Citadel's own uneasy conscience made into a single man: a bastard whose blood-marked face got him a legend before he'd done anything to earn it, and who then spent a long, quietly ruthless career proving the smallfolk right to be afraid of him. His arc across the histories is really a study in what a state does with its most useful and most distrusted servants — Hand twice over, chief suspect in half the court's misfortunes, and finally exiled to the one institution built to absorb men like him.
What makes him more than a stock sorcerer-advisor figure is the ambiguity the sources refuse to resolve. Was Redgrass Field soldiery or something closer to a curse? Did he engineer the Great Council's bloodshed or merely fail to prevent it? The Citadel's own uncertainty is the point: Bloodraven's power, in every era he touches, is the power of a man whose true nature nobody around him — friend, rival, or later chronicler — was ever quite able to pin down.
Legacy
Later singers claim the mole under his eye was a third eye all along, waiting; the Citadel records it only as a birthmark, and declines to speculate further.
His rivalry with his half-brother Bittersteel outlived them both, carried into exile by two generations of Blackfyre pretenders who never let the Golden Company forget which brother chose the dragon and which chose the sword.
Sourcesfire-and-bloodtwoiafadwd
Explore further
House
Who is Brynden Rivers?
The maesters kept his crimes in three different books, and none of the three agree
Is Brynden Rivers from the books or the show?
Book canon. This profile follows George R. R. Martin’s novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.