“None the Citadel can confirm from any printed page.”
The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Florent — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Brightwater Keep
Region
The Reach
Founder
Unnamed. Long sworn to Highgarden as one of the Tyrells' more prominent Reach bannermen, House Florent's fox-and-flowers arms mark a house wealthy and well-married enough to have produced a queen — a distinction that cost the family rather more than it paid out.
House Florent backed two Baratheon claimants in a single war without ever quite choosing either on principle: most of the family followed the Reach's lead to Renly, while the branch bound to Stannis by marriage followed him instead, and when Renly's murder ended the question of loyalty for every other Reach house, it was the Florents' Stannis connection that suddenly looked less like the family's eccentric branch and more like its shrewdest investment.
I
Foxes Among the Roses
House Florent's standing among Highgarden's bannermen owed more to marriage than to military weight — a pattern the family kept up into this chronicle's own century, when Lord Alester Florent's niece Selyse was wed to Stannis Baratheon, then merely Lord of Dragonstone and a king's disagreeable younger brother rather than a claimant to anything. It was not, at the time the match was made, an especially glamorous arrangement for either side; it would prove, within a generation, to be the single fact about House Florent this chronicle's readers are most likely to have already heard of.
II
A House Divided by Its Own Marriage
When the War of the Five Kings split the realm between two Baratheon brothers, House Florent split with it in miniature: the great mass of the family, sworn to Highgarden, rode to war behind Renly along with the rest of the Reach, while Ser Axell Florent — Selyse's uncle, and a man this chronicle's sources describe as never modest about his own importance — had already attached himself to Stannis's household as self-appointed Queen's Hand and castellan of Dragonstone. Renly's murder in his own tent, struck down by a shadow no living witness has explained to the Citadel's satisfaction, ended the split at a stroke: with Renly gone and the bulk of his stormlords bending the knee to Stannis as the last legitimate Baratheon standing, House Florent's marriage-bound branch found itself, almost overnight, at the head of a king's court rather than a poor relation to one.
In the chronicle
III
Burned for a Fair Wind
Lord Alester Florent's elevation to Hand of the King under Stannis ended in fire rather than favor. Caught treating privately with House Lannister for terms that would have traded away Stannis's claim in exchange for lordships and a royal marriage for his own kin, Alester found his negotiations discovered by the red priestess Melisandre's agents before they could bear fruit — and when Stannis resolved to sail north to the Wall's aid, it was Alester who was bound to a post and burned alive on the shore, the fire offered to R'hllor in exchange, so the queen's men held, for winds that would carry the king's ships to Eastwatch. He is recorded as having faced the flames in silence until they reached him, and screaming only once they had.
In the chronicle
The people of House Florent
The lords, ladies, and branches of Florent the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
Alester Florent
Lord of Brightwater Keep, Hand of the King to Stannis, executed for treating with House Lannister
d. 300 AC, burned alive on Stannis Baratheon's order
Selyse Florent
Alester's niece, wife to Stannis Baratheon
fl. late 3rd century AC
Axell Florent
Selyse's uncle, self-styled Queen's Hand and castellan of Dragonstone
fl. 299–300 AC
Explore further
Members
What is House Florent known for?
House Florent backed two Baratheon claimants in a single war without ever quite choosing either on principle: most of the family followed the Reach's lead to Renly, while the branch bound to Stannis by marriage followed him instead, and when Renly's murder ended the question of loyalty for every other Reach house, it was the Florents' Stannis connection that suddenly looked less like the family's eccentric branch and more like its shrewdest investment.
Where is the seat of House Florent?
House Florent holds Brightwater Keep, in The Reach. The chronicle traces the house from its founding down to its part in the present tale, marking legend as legend wherever the songs run ahead of the record.
Is House Florent in the books or only the show?
Book canon. This history follows George R. R. Martin's novels first, then the histories — Fire & Blood and The World of Ice & Fire — and does not follow the television series where it diverges.