his facial burns at his brother Gregor's hands as a child, deserting the Kingsguard at the Battle of the Blackwater, and protecting then abandoning Sansa and Arya Stark in turn
A sworn sword who has hated fire, knighthood, and his own brother in roughly that order since childhood, and whose final page in the published chronicle leaves him gravely wounded and very possibly, though nobody will quite say it outright, alive.
Burned by His Brother
As a boy Sandor was caught playing with a toy belonging to his elder brother Gregor, who held the younger boy's face into a brazier of burning coals and left it there until the scarring was total and permanent. Their father covered the crime with a story about bedding straw catching flame, a lie the smallfolk of the Westerlands still repeat, and Gregor was never punished for it. Sandor grew into a man who despises knighthood's pretensions precisely because he watched a knighted brother commit an unpunished atrocity against him and call it an accident.
The Hound Who Wouldn't Kneel
He took service in King's Landing as a sworn shield — a bannerless man-at-arms who wore no knight's spurs and openly mocked those who did. Feared for his skill and for the scarred, furious face that made children flinch, he despised the songs of chivalry that had never once shielded him, and trusted a blade over a vow. What set him apart from the brutes he stood among was an unwilling conscience: a contempt for cruelty dressed up as honor that he could never quite silence, however hard a hard world had taught him to try.
Appearances
In the novels
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
A Storm of Swords
A Feast for Crows
On screen
HBO's Game of Thrones — Seasons 1–8
Key events
c. 270 ACBorn to House Clegane, a minor knightly house sworn to Casterly Rock.
childhoodIs held down and burned across half his face by his older brother Gregor over a stolen toy, an act the family covers up as an accident.
before 298 ACEnters the service of House Lannister, eventually becoming Joffrey Baratheon's sworn shield.
298 ACRescues Sansa Stark from a mob and shields her from Joffrey's cruelty at court on more than one occasion.
299 ACDeserts the Kingsguard during the Battle of the Blackwater, unable to face the wildfire.
299 ACLeaves King's Landing and gives Sansa his white cloak before vanishing into the Riverlands.
299-300 ACTravels the war-torn Riverlands with Arya Stark, a captor turned reluctant protector seeking ransom for her.
300 ACIs grievously wounded by an outlaw's men and left for dead by Arya; his fate afterward is unconfirmed in the published books.
Reading the character
Sandor Clegane's whole arc runs on the tension between his professed cynicism — gods are a lie, knighthood is a lie, chivalry gets people killed — and the number of times he acts to protect people weaker than himself anyway, usually while denying that's what he's doing. His scarred face, inflicted by his own brother, gives the text a standing symbol for the gap between the appearance of monstrosity and the substance of it.
His disappearance from the page after his fight over Arya is one of the series' most deliberately unresolved threads: the text plants a wounded, unnamed gravedigger at a remote monastery that fans widely read as Sandor in hiding, but never confirms it, leaving his fate the choice of the individual reader rather than the narrator.
The arc of Sandor Clegane
This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
A grievously wounded gravedigger at the Quiet Isle in A Feast for Crows is widely read by fans as Sandor in hiding, but the text never confirms this identification, and his ultimate fate remains unresolved in print.
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
Whether the Hound is truly dead or living out a quiet penance under another name is one of the chronicle's most argued open questions, kept alive by a single unconfirmed gravedigger the text mentions and never explains.
Beyond the text
What the chronicle strongly implies but never states outright, and what the author has said beyond the page — set apart from the established record, and never sworn to by the maesters.
Theorized
The gravedigger the Elder Brother sets to labour on the Quiet Isle — a big man, broken and lamed, too tall for any horse to bear — is never given a name, yet every stroke of the description marks him for the Hound, his old self buried so a quieter man might tend the graves.
SourceA Feast for Crows, Brienne VI
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.
SourcesAGOTACOKASOSAFFC
Explore further
House
Who is Sandor Clegane?
A sworn sword who has hated fire, knighthood, and his own brother in roughly that order since childhood, and whose final page in the published chronicle leaves him gravely wounded and very possibly, though nobody will quite say it outright, alive.
Is Sandor Clegane 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.