House Arryn

Mandon Moore

Life: 299 AC, at the Battle of the Blackwater, drowned in the Blackwater Rush
House: House Moore, a minor landed knightly house of the Vale of Arryn; Kingsguard sworn to Joffrey I

Killed at the Battle of the Blackwater in the fighting along the riverfront, one casualty among many the crown's forces suffered that night.

Even his fellow Kingsguard found Ser Mandon Moore difficult to warm to — a knight the text repeatedly describes through other characters' unease, a man whose eyes gave away nothing at all, which several of them find considerably more disturbing than a temper they could read. He came south from the Vale, brought to King's Landing by Lord Jon Arryn and raised to the white cloak under Robert Baratheon — a grant of the Kingsguard's honor that, by the text's own account, neither Robert nor Jon Arryn seems to have made out of any particular fondness for the man himself. Kept on after Robert's death, he served Joffrey with the same flat, unreadable competence he brought to everything else.

The arc of Mandon Moore

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

During the Battle of the Blackwater, Moore turns on Tyrion Lannister mid-fight, first offering a hand to pull him from the water and then slashing his face nearly to the bone before moving to finish him — an attack Tyrion, on waking, becomes convinced was a paid assassination rather than battle-madness. Podrick Payne shoves Moore into the Blackwater Rush before he can land the killing blow; the weight of his own armor drags him under. Cersei Lannister, in her own later chapters, never once thinks of Mandon Moore or the attempt on her brother's life — a silence the chronicle notes without being willing to call it proof of anything.

Where the books leave Mandon Moore: Mandon Moore's white cloak ended in the river he tried to drown Tyrion Lannister's squire's suspicions in — and whether the order that sent his blade at Tyrion's face came from Cersei Lannister, from Moore's own private grudge, or from nowhere the text is willing to name, the chronicle has never been able to settle.

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

SourcesACOK · TyrionASOS · TyrionTWOIAF · The Reign of Robert I

Explore further

House

Who killed Mandon Moore?

Podrick Payne, Tyrion Lannister's squire, shoved him into the Blackwater Rush during the fighting; his own plate armor dragged him down and drowned him.

Did Cersei Lannister order Mandon Moore to kill Tyrion?

Tyrion believes so once he recovers, but the books never confirm it — Cersei's own later chapters in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons never mention Moore or the attack at all.