The seat, the words, the line, and the tale of House Durrandon — drawn from the novels and the Citadel's fuller histories, with the television series set aside wherever it parts from the books.
Seat
Storm's End
Region
The Stormlands
Founder
Durran, called Durran Godsgrief by the singers, who is said to have wed Elenei, daughter of the sea and the wind, and paid for the marriage in storms for generations after
The Durrandons ruled the stormlands as Storm Kings from a founding the songs remember better than any maester can verify — a wedding night broken by a storm that killed every guest inside it, and a king who rebuilt his hall again and again rather than yield the woman he had won. What survives that legend is Storm's End itself, whose curved, windowless walls have shrugged off every siege and every storm thrown at them since. The line ended not by slow decline but on a single rain-lashed field, when an old king's pride outran his caution and a dragon queen's flanking charge outran his army.
I
The Storm Kings and the Trident
The Durrandons did not confine themselves to the stormlands. King Arlan III Durrandon married a daughter of Lord Roderick Blackwood of Raventree Hall, and when Roderick rose against his own overlord, King Humfrey I Teague of the Trident, Arlan marched his stormlanders to his father-in-law's aid and broke the Teagues at the Battle of Six Kings. Roderick did not enjoy his victory long; his heir was a boy of eight, and Arlan, trusting none of the dead lord's brothers to hold the Trident steady, simply added the riverlands to his own crown rather than hand them back.
The arrangement held for some three centuries — longer than most Seven Kingdoms lasted under any single house. It ended at Fairmarket, where King Arrec Durrandon, Arlan's descendant, met the ironborn king Harwyn Hardhand Hoare in battle and lost, betrayed in the field by river lords who preferred a new master to their old one. Arrec's fall cost the Storm Kings the Trident entire and left his grandson Argilac to inherit a diminished stormlands crown — one considerably smaller than the one three centuries of Durrandon kings before him had held.
II
The Dornish Marches
Where the Trident could be won and lost by force of arms, the stormlands' southern border with Dorne proved harder to settle by any means at all. Generation after generation of Storm Kings and Dornish princes fought over the Dornish Marches and the passes through the Red Mountains — the Boneway chief among them — a frontier the sources consulted describe as shifting with almost every reign rather than resolving into any fixed line. Marcher houses that would later swear to Storm's End as a matter of course — Swann, Caron, Wylde, Selmy among them — spent that same span of centuries as often raided as protected, their loyalty to whichever crown, Durrandon or Dornish, held the nearer castle that year.
No maester's chronicle claims the marches were ever fully quiet before the Targaryens arrived, and the Chronicle does not pretend otherwise; what can be said is that the border the Durrandons left behind at their fall was, in its rough shape, the one the stormlands has kept ever since.
III
The Last Storm and the Storm Queen
Argilac the Arrogant's death at Orys Baratheon's hands in the Last Storm ended the Durrandon name, but not, quite, the Durrandon blood or the Durrandon house's mark on the stormlands. Argilac's only child, Argella, barred Storm's End's gates and declared herself Storm Queen rather than yield to the army approaching under her dead father's killer; when Queen Rhaenys flew Meraxes to the walls to parley, Argella answered that her garrison would die to the last man before it opened them. Her own garrison disagreed, mutinied, and delivered her to Orys's camp bound and gagged rather than share Harrenhal's fate. Orys freed her with his own hands, fed her, and spoke to her gently of her father's courage — then married her, and in her honor took House Durrandon's crowned stag and its words for his own new House Baratheon.
Storm's End itself outlived the line that raised it by centuries. When Robert Baratheon's rebellion put the castle under a year's siege in 283 AC, it held — the same curved, windowless walls that had shrugged off every storm and siege since the Age of Heroes doing, once more, exactly what Durran Godsgrief is said to have built them to do. No army has yet taken Storm's End by force; the only man who ever won it did so by killing the king who held it in the open field, and marrying the daughter who was left to surrender it.
In the chronicle
The people of House Durrandon
The lords, ladies, and branches of Durrandon the books name — the notable, the infamous, and the merely unlucky.
DurranGodsgrief
the first Storm King
Age of Heroes, by tradition
Wed Elenei against her divine parents' wishes and watched the sea and sky together break his wedding hall over his guests' heads — then rebuilt, and was broken again, through generation after generation of storms no two songs number the same way. What finally quieted the storms — the children of the forest, or simple stubborn engineering — the singers do not agree, only that Storm's End still stands.
Argilac Durrandonthe Arrogant
the last Storm King
d. 2 BC
An old king grown fearful of Harren the Black, who offered Aegon Targaryen his daughter Argella's hand and a slice of disputed land, then read insult into Aegon's counter-offer of Orys Baratheon and sent back an envoy missing both hands. He met Orys in the field rather than hide behind his walls, very nearly won, and was killed in single combat during the storm the singers call the Last Storm — the end of his line's name, though not, through Argella, of its blood.
Elenei
wife to Durran Godsgrief, daughter of the sea god and the wind goddess
Age of Heroes, by tradition
Wed Durran against her divine parents' wishes and is said to have paid for it in the storms that broke over his rebuilt halls for generations after. Whether she was goddess, mortal, or the songs' way of explaining a stormlands king's habit of building on the most exposed headland in the realm, no chronicle consulted settles; only Storm's End's continued survival argues that something about the marriage, in the end, worked.
Arlan III Durrandon
Storm King
unrecorded; roughly three centuries before Arrec's fall
Married a daughter of Lord Roderick Blackwood of Raventree Hall and marched to Roderick's aid when he rose against King Humfrey I Teague of the Trident, crushing the Teagues at the Battle of Six Kings. Roderick's heir proved a child of eight, and Arlan, distrusting the dead lord's brothers, folded the riverlands into his own crown rather than restore it — beginning three centuries of Storm King rule over the Trident that his descendant Arrec would lose in a single afternoon.
Arrec Durrandon
Storm King
unrecorded; grandsire of Argilac Durrandon
Held the riverlands his ancestor Arlan III had won three centuries before, but held them weakly enough that Harwyn Hardhand Hoare judged the crossing worth the risk. Defeated at Fairmarket by Harwyn's ironborn and a coalition of his own river lords who preferred a new master to their old one, Arrec lost the Trident in a single battle and left his grandson Argilac a stormlands crown considerably smaller than the one three centuries of Durrandon kings before him had worn.
Argella Durrandonthe Storm Queen, by her own brief proclamation
last of House Durrandon by blood
fl. 2 BC
Barred Storm's End's gates and declared herself queen rather than surrender after her father Argilac's death in the Last Storm, and told Queen Rhaenys to her face that her garrison would die to the last man before it opened them. Her own men disagreed, mutinied, and delivered her to Orys Baratheon's camp bound and gagged; Orys freed her with his own hands, fed her, spoke gently of her father's courage, and married her — carrying House Durrandon's crowned stag and its words into the new House Baratheon he founded in her name.
What the record disputes
Where the sources disagree or a song outruns the maesters, the chronicle marks the doubt rather than settling it.
The number of storms that broke over Durran's rebuilt halls is given wildly differently between tellings — some songs count dozens, others hundreds; the Chronicle treats the figure as unfixed rather than choosing among them.
Whether the Last Storm fell in the same year as Aegon's landing or somewhat after it is not pinned to a single date across the sources consulted; the Chronicle gives the landing's own year rather than commit to a sharper figure the record does not support.
Some accounts credit Storm's End's storm-defying construction to the children of the forest, others to later Durrandon builders working alone; the Chronicle records both rather than choose.
Explore further
Battles
What is House Durrandon known for?
The Durrandons ruled the stormlands as Storm Kings from a founding the songs remember better than any maester can verify — a wedding night broken by a storm that killed every guest inside it, and a king who rebuilt his hall again and again rather than yield the woman he had won. What survives that legend is Storm's End itself, whose curved, windowless walls have shrugged off every siege and every storm thrown at them since. The line ended not by slow decline but on a single rain-lashed field, when an old king's pride outran his caution and a dragon queen's flanking charge outran his army.
Where is the seat of House Durrandon?
House Durrandon holds Storm's End, in The Stormlands. 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 Durrandon 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.