Renly Baratheon

Youngest brother of Robert and Stannis, Renly was barely a man when Robert took the crown, and he spent two decades as master of coin and the court's favourite — witty, generous, and gay in a court that agreed not to notice. He held Storm's End in the Reach's green fields and learned that popularity is its own kind of army.

When Robert died, Renly did what no lawful man would: he declared himself king ahead of both his brothers, and married Margaery Tyrell to bind the Reach to his cause. Within a fortnight he had the largest host in Westeros and the best cooks in the realm, and not a single legal argument — his whole case was that people liked him better.

Stannis's shadow ended it before the first battle. Melisandre slipped through the dark beneath Storm's End and drove a killing shadow into his chest on the eve of his triumph, and the Reach carried its banners to the Lannisters instead. The war of the five kings had its shortest reign, and its strangest murder.