244 AC, at Casterly Rock – 300 AC, at King's Landing, killed by a crossbow bolt fired from the dark of the council chamber
House
Lannister of Casterly Rock
Titles
Lord Regent · Hand of the King
The competent brother who spent his life making his more famous sibling's decisions work, and lasted exactly as long as the family let him actually be in charge.
Tywin's Right Hand
Born at Casterly Rock in 244 AC, Kevan was Tywin Lannister's younger brother, married to Dorna Swyft and father of four children, Lancel among them — a rare Lannister content, apparently without resentment, to spend his career second rather than first.
He fought at Tywin's side through the sack of King's Landing and the decades that followed, and again through the War of the Five Kings, offering the kind of blunt, unglamorous counsel his brother rarely accepted from anyone else in the family.
Regent for a Season
After Tywin's murder, and Cersei's disastrous, paranoid attempt at ruling alone got the queen herself imprisoned by the Faith Militant, the small council turned to Kevan — reluctantly summoned back from his own affairs at Darry — to serve as Lord Regent and Hand of the King for young Tommen.
He had barely begun setting the council's business in order, working to unwind the worst of Cersei's mismanagement, when a summons to Grand Maester Pycelle's own chambers turned out to be a trap: Pycelle already lay dead there, and Kevan was shot through the chest by a crossbow bolt fired from the dark — killed within days of taking up the regency, by a hand few in the castle would ever learn belonged to Varys.
Key events
244 ACBorn at Casterly Rock, younger brother of Tywin Lannister.
300 ACSummoned to King's Landing to serve as Lord Regent and Hand of the King for Tommen.
300 ACAssassinated in Grand Maester Pycelle's chambers by a crossbow bolt fired from the dark; Pycelle is found already dead.
Legacy
Kevan Lannister might have been the regency King's Landing actually needed — competent and unspectacular in exactly the ways his family's recent rulers had not been — and he never got the chance to prove it.
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House
Who is Kevan Lannister?
The competent brother who spent his life making his more famous sibling's decisions work, and lasted exactly as long as the family let him actually be in charge.
Is Kevan Lannister 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.