c. 270 AC, reckoned as roughly five years younger than his brother Gregor
A sworn sword who has hated fire, knighthood, and his own brother in roughly that order since childhood, and whose final page in the published chronicle leaves him gravely wounded and very possibly, though nobody will quite say it outright, alive.
Burned by His Brother
As a boy Sandor was caught playing with a toy belonging to his elder brother Gregor, who held the younger boy's face into a brazier of burning coals and left it there until the scarring was total and permanent. Their father covered the crime with a story about bedding straw catching flame, a lie the smallfolk of the Westerlands still repeat, and Gregor was never punished for it. Sandor grew into a man who despises knighthood's pretensions precisely because he watched a knighted brother commit an unpunished atrocity against him and call it an accident.
The Hound Who Wouldn't Kneel
He served as Joffrey Baratheon's sworn shield through the opening of the War of the Five Kings, killed the butcher's boy Mycah on Cersei Lannister's order in an act Sansa Stark never fully forgave him despite his own visible discomfort with it, and deserted his post mid-battle at the Blackwater in 300 AC, disgusted with the war, the wildfire, and his own service both. He fled the city with Arya Stark as an unwilling and unwillingly protective companion, fought Brienne of Tarth over her in single combat, and vanished from the published record gravely wounded, last reported at a monastery known as the Quiet Isle.
Key events
c. 270 ACBurned by his brother Gregor as a boy.
298 ACKills Mycah the butcher's boy on Cersei Lannister's order.
299 ACDeserts the Kingsguard mid-battle at the Blackwater.
300 ACFights Brienne of Tarth over Arya Stark and vanishes, gravely wounded, from the record.
The arc of Sandor Clegane
This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
A grievously wounded gravedigger at the Quiet Isle in A Feast for Crows is widely read by fans as Sandor in hiding, but the text never confirms this identification, and his ultimate fate remains unresolved in print.
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.
Legacy
Whether the Hound is truly dead or living out a quiet penance under another name is one of the chronicle's most argued open questions, kept alive by a single unconfirmed gravedigger the text mentions and never explains.
SourcesAGOTACOKASOSAFFC
Who is Sandor Clegane?
A sworn sword who has hated fire, knighthood, and his own brother in roughly that order since childhood, and whose final page in the published chronicle leaves him gravely wounded and very possibly, though nobody will quite say it outright, alive.
Is Sandor Clegane 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.