Companies & Orders

The Kingswood Brotherhood

The last great outlaw band of the royal forest south of King's Landing, hunted down as much for its swagger as for its crimes.

History

An assortment of poachers, deserters, and worse infested the kingswood in the last years of Aerys II's reign, loosely bound under a leader named Simon Toyne and given real teeth by a savage swordsman who called himself the Smiling Knight; an archer of genuine skill named Ulmer and a woman remembered as Wenda the White Fawn — who once captured and branded a Frey squire before ransoming him home — rode among them, and between robbery and ransom the brotherhood grew bold enough to trouble lords, not merely travelers.

That boldness proved its undoing. When the outlaws seized Lady Jeyne Swann and her septa, the crown answered with a small royal party led by Ser Arthur Dayne of the Kingsguard, riding alongside a young Barristan Selmy and a newly dubbed Jaime Lannister — the same campaign, the record notes, in which Jaime first won his own knighthood.

Dayne cut down the Smiling Knight in single combat, and Selmy killed Simon Toyne; the brotherhood scattered in the rout that followed, and Ulmer of the Kingswood was among those who chose the black at the Wall over a hangman's rope. What became of Wenda, Oswyn Longneck, and the rest, the surviving chronicles do not trouble to say.

Notable members

Names a reader of the novels meets in the ranks of The Kingswood Brotherhood.

SourcesA Storm of SwordsA Feast for Crows

What is The Kingswood Brotherhood?

The last great outlaw band of the royal forest south of King's Landing, hunted down as much for its swagger as for its crimes.

Is The Kingswood Brotherhood from the books or the show?

Book canon. This entry follows George R. R. Martin's novels and histories, and notes where the television series diverges rather than following it.