Longsword, with an understated skill for a man well past sixty
Notable for
Slaying Maelys the Monstrous to end the War of the Ninepenny Kings and serving with legendary distinction under four kings
The greatest knight of his generation, whose decades in white eventually gave way to a second oath altogether — sworn, this time, to the last scion of the dynasty he failed to save at the Trident.
Sixty Years in White
Barristan Selmy, born around 236 AC, slew the pretender Maelys the Monstrous in single combat during the War of the Ninepenny Kings at only twenty-two or twenty-three, a feat that ended the war outright and earned him a Kingsguard cloak from Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower in King Jaehaerys II's final years on the throne. He went on to serve with a reputation for valor that outlasted three more kings, riding at the Trident where Rhaegar Targaryen died and taking wounds there fighting, by his own reckoning, for the losing and the wronger side, a weight he has never stopped carrying.
Robert Baratheon, who respected little from the dynasty he'd overthrown, kept Barristan on as Lord Commander of his own Kingsguard rather than execute or exile him — one of the very few Targaryen loyalists Robert ever forgave — and Selmy repaid it with fifteen more years of honest service to a king who mostly ignored his counsel.
A Second Oath, Across the Narrow Sea
Barristan's fifteen years guarding Robert's throne gave way, once that reign ended, to a second oath altogether — sworn this time to Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of the dynasty he had once ridden against his own conscience to defend at the Trident. Reaching her took the old knight across the narrow sea, and cost him considerably more than a change of scenery.
What that second service has asked of him since is the clearest test yet of where Barristan's loyalty actually lives — a question that has followed him, one way or another, for more than sixty years.
Appearances
In the novels
A Game of Thrones
A Storm of Swords
A Dance with DragonsPOV
The Winds of WinterPOV
On screen
HBO's Game of Thrones — Seasons 1–5
Perspective
Barristan's chapters in A Dance with Dragons and the released The Winds of Winter sample take the reader inside Meereen's siege and palace politics through an old, honor-bound knight's eyes — a firsthand reckoning with Daenerys Targaryen's rule, his own past failures, and what loyalty costs a man in his sixties.
Key events
circa 237 ACBorn.
260 ACSlays Maelys the Monstrous in single combat, ending the War of the Ninepenny Kings, and is named to the Kingsguard by Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower.
283 ACFights at the Battle of the Trident for King Aerys II's cause; Rhaegar Targaryen dies in the same battle.
283-298 ACServes as Robert Baratheon's Lord Commander of the Kingsguard for fifteen years.
298 ACDismissed from the Kingsguard by King Joffrey in open court for his age.
298-299 ACCrosses the narrow sea under the false name Arstan Whitebeard to find Daenerys Targaryen.
299 ACReveals his true identity to Daenerys in Essos, becoming one of her most trusted protectors.
300 ACLeft holding Meereen together in Daenerys's name after her disappearance on Drogon's back.
Reading the character
Barristan's career is the clearest case in the whole story of loyalty outlasting its own usefulness in the eyes of the young men and women who inherit power from their elders. His choice to serve Daenerys Targaryen once his service to Robert's line came to an end reframes his entire life's loyalty around a question that has quietly troubled him since the Trident: whether he chose the right side, the last time a Targaryen needed defending.
As a POV character, his chapters offer one of the story's few genuinely experienced, self-critical vantage points on Daenerys's rule — an old knight measuring a young queen's methods against decades of hard-won judgment, without ever fully resolving whether his loyalty and his conscience are pulling the same direction.
The arc of Barristan Selmy
This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
Days after Robert's death, Joffrey and Cersei stripped Barristan of his Kingsguard cloak in open court on grounds of age alone — a public humiliation that left him, by his own account, briefly suicidal. He crossed the narrow sea instead under the false name Arstan Whitebeard, found Daenerys Targaryen in Essos, and revealed his true identity to become one of her most trusted protectors. Daenerys's absence from Meereen isn't a matter of choice: she vanishes from the city on Drogon's back amid the crisis engulfing it, leaving Barristan and a handful of others to hold the city in her name with no clear timeline for her return. How much Barristan privately judges Daenerys's methods in Meereen, and how far his loyalty would stretch against his own conscience, is a tension the text raises repeatedly without forcing him to resolve it on the page.
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
Barristan Selmy's career argues that loyalty outlives usefulness in the eyes of the young men who inherit power from their elders — and that the old knight discarded for it usually outlasts them anyway.
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Who is Barristan Selmy?
The greatest knight of his generation, whose decades in white eventually gave way to a second oath altogether — sworn, this time, to the last scion of the dynasty he failed to save at the Trident.
Is Barristan Selmy 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.