House Hightower

Gerold Hightower

the White Bull

Life: 283 AC, at the Tower of Joy in the Red Mountains of Dorne
House: House Hightower of Oldtown (uncle to Lord Leyton Hightower); Lord Commander of the Kingsguard under Jaehaerys II and Aerys II

The longest-serving Lord Commander the Kingsguard had known in generations, killed at war's end defending a tower in the Red Mountains rather than his king.

A younger son of Oldtown's ruling house does not, as a rule, spend his life sworn celibate and landless in another family's service, but Gerold Hightower took the white cloak all the same and rose, over decades of unbroken loyalty, to command the Kingsguard through the final years of Jaehaerys the Second's reign and the long, worsening one of Aerys the Second after him. Men who served beside him remembered a commander of iron discipline and few words, more given to drilling his knights than flattering his king — a temperament that made him, by most accounts, respected rather than loved, which a maester notes has kept more Kingsguard alive over the centuries than affection ever has. It was Hightower who stood as senior officer of the three knights found guarding a lonely tower at the rebellion's close, which makes him, by rank if nothing else, the man who decided — or was given the order — to keep his sword there rather than at his king's side in King's Landing.

The arc of Gerold Hightower

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

Whatever instruction sent the Lord Commander south to Dorne instead of north to the Trident with the bulk of the crown's strength, Hightower held it to the end: in Eddard Stark's fevered dream of the encounter, it is Hightower who answers Ned's question of where the three knights had been during the war's last battles — 'We were not there,' he says, a bare four words the realm's readers have spent decades weighing against everything else the tower concealed.

Where the books leave Gerold Hightower: Gerold Hightower's decades commanding the White Swords ended at a tower in Dorne he chose, or was ordered, to hold rather than the king he had sworn to shield with his own body — a choice the histories have never explained and Hightower himself did not survive long enough to answer for.

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.

In the timeline

Theories about Gerold Hightower

SourcesAGOT · EddardTWOIAF · Robert's RebellionTWOIAF · The Hightowers of Oldtown

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House

Battles fought

How long did Gerold Hightower serve as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard?

The exact span is not given precisely, but he held the post across the end of Jaehaerys II's reign and the whole of Aerys II's — decades of service, ending only at the Tower of Joy.

Was Gerold Hightower related to Lord Leyton Hightower?

Yes — he was Leyton's uncle, a son of Oldtown's ruling house who spent his life in the Kingsguard rather than his family's own halls.