Renly Baratheon

Renly was born at Storm's End in 277 AC, the youngest of Lord Steffon Baratheon and Lady Cassana Estermont's three sons, and was orphaned in infancy when his parents drowned in Shipbreaker Bay returning from a voyage to Volantis. Raised largely by his household rather than either of his brothers, he grew into the most conventionally charming lord at Robert's court, made Lord of Storm's End in name and, later, Master of Laws on the small council — a seat that owed more to his popularity than to any particular gift for the law.

He cultivated the devotion of Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers, and through that bond built an alliance with Highgarden that outweighed anything his own modest holdings could offer. His household became the fashionable one at court, admired by nearly everyone and, not incidentally, resented by his sober elder brother Stannis, who considered Renly's charm cheap coin next to the birthright Stannis felt Robert had cheated him of.

Once the crown passed unexpectedly out of his brother Robert's hands, Renly refused to bend the knee to his nephew Joffrey, whom he suspected was no Baratheon at all, but he declined just as firmly to support Stannis's stronger claim, arguing that a crown ought to go to the man lords would actually follow. He married Margaery Tyrell in haste to bind Highgarden formally to his cause and crowned himself king with the full weight of the Reach's soldiery behind him — by most reckonings the largest host raised in the entire war.

He marched on King's Landing expecting an easy throne, pausing near Storm's End to parley with his brother Stannis, who had arrived to press a rival claim of his own. What passed between the two brothers at that parley the published chronicle treats as one of the war's real turning points: within a day, the bulk of Renly's host — the Tyrells foremost among them — had abandoned the field entirely, and the single largest army the war ever raised simply stopped existing as a fighting force.