Edric Storm

Edric Storm was born in 287 AC, the son of Robert Baratheon and Delena Florent, conceived — to Stannis's lasting humiliation — on the very night of Stannis and Selyse's own wedding, when a drunken Robert bedded Delena in a chamber down the hall from his brother's marriage bed. Robert acknowledged remarkably few of his bastards, but he acknowledged this one, and Edric was raised partly under Stannis's grudging care at Storm's End despite the insult his conception represented.

He grew up bearing his father's stamp plainly: black hair, deep blue eyes, and the sturdy Baratheon build — a resemblance that would nearly cost him his life once his uncle's court turned to blood magic to fight a war on three fronts at once.

When Stannis and Melisandre sought a weapon against three rival kings simultaneously, Edric was bled by leeches, his blood burned over the names of Joffrey Baratheon, Robb Stark, and Balon Greyjoy — and within the year all three were dead by other hands, a coincidence the text is careful never to fully explain. Melisandre later pressed Stannis for a far greater sacrifice still, arguing that a king's blood burned whole, rather than merely leeched, might wake dragons from stone.

Ser Davos Seaworth, unwilling to let a boy burn for a prophecy he did not believe, arranged with the pirate Salladhor Saan to spirit Edric off Dragonstone and across the narrow sea to the Free Cities before Melisandre or Stannis could act on it — a mercy that cost Davos his standing and very nearly his neck.