5'6" | 130 lb
Lira Dayne
Age18
HouseDayne
Personality-Kind
-Stubborn
-Temperamental but working on it
Weapon of ChoiceLongsword
Talents-Swordplay
-Diplomacy
-Observation
HistoryThe second child of Lord Gerrod Dayne and Pollenda Gargalen, Lira Dayne has managed to skirt house responsibility for most of her life. Her elder brother, Uther, received the lion’s share of their father’s attentions, and Lady Pollenda spent most of her time doting over sickly Micah, the youngest. When she wasn’t sat with the maesters and septas, Lira was free to roam High Hermitage at her leisure. Most often, this meant watching Uther as father taught him how to hold a sword and ride a horse, preparing him for the glorious, knightly future that awaited him as heir to their house. It would have been a lie to say that Lira wasn’t envious of her brother, for his prospects and for the love he received, but she didn’t hate him. She couldn’t. He was kind to her, he treated her not only like a person, but an equal; he treated her like family. When she was sent off to ward with her mother’s family in Salt Shore, she missed Uther’s company the most, and it was him she wrote to most often.
While High Hermitage was beholden to more stringent Westerosi customs, Lira enjoyed much more freedom under the care of her grandparents at Saltshore. While she was still subjected to lessons in history and courtship, she was also able to spend her free time training with the masters of arms, learning many of the things she had always only watched Uther learn. At Salt Shore, she came to understand why the Dornish were viewed as hot-blooded and temperamental, and as a child of eight, Lira was eager to take it over the rigidity of High Hermitage. She took to the longsword with a fervor that she hoped would have made even her father proud, training each day in the bright hours and often still into the dark. Her letters to Uther were rife with talk of knighthood and tournaments and chivalrous battles, all so excitedly scrawled as to be nearly illegible, but Uther always wrote back, happy to hear about her progress and her hopes. She nurtured childish dreams of the day she would return to High Hermitage, to astound her lord father and stand beside her brother as a knight of House Dayne.
On her sixteenth birthday, Lira bade Salt Shore goodbye and traveled to the Tor, where she was to reunite with her family at a tournament hosted by house Jordayne. Lira had witnessed a number of games at Salt Shore, Godsgrace and Vaith, but none so big as at the Tor. There she saw knights from as far north as the Vale, all of them glistening in their armors, painted with the sigils of their noble houses, whose names Lira had all but forgotten in her excitement.
Her family welcomed her warmly, even lord Gerrod. Micah was still a brittle boy at fourteen, with no illusions of knighthood and glory, but Uther already looked like royalty. Clad in white-trimmed armor, donning a violet cloak with House Dayne’s sigil and a greatsword upon his back, Lira thought it was nothing short of shameful that he wasn’t wielding Dawn itself. One day, she was certain, he would.
Lira attempted to get herself on the registry. Although she had little aptitude for jousting, she had grown confident enough in her skills with a longsword that she was sure she could stand her ground. Lord Gerrod, of course, wouldn’t have it, and though Lira mourned the opportunity to find glory alongside her brother, she was content enough to cheer Uther on.
The joust came first, and Lira shouted with glee as Uther unseated riders from their Dornish neighbors in Vaith and Wyl, and outcomers from Houses Morrigan and Serrett. His last bout was to be against Aryk Oakheart, heir to his house. Lord Gerrod, perhaps seeing a chance to prod at the Oakhearts, allowed Lira to squire for Uther that bout. The crowd hollered and whistled, but she was deaf to them. She brought Uther his lance and his helmet, proud as she’d ever been, and watched him ride off down the lists.
The riders broke two lances against each other, and on the third tilt, Aryk’s shattered against Uther’s chest and sent the Dayne heir to the ground with his horse tumbling down atop him. Shrieks and cries erupted from the stands, none louder than Lira’s. By the time they pulled him free, he was a mangle of dented, bloody metal—but he was alive.
The Dayne’s spent the remainder of the tournament in the maesters’ tents, as old men cut and stitched and broke and pulled sharp metal splinters from Uther’s body until he woke up, only to scream in agony until milk of the poppy put him to sleep. When all was said and done, the maesters left the Daynes with an heir who had but three fingers on the one hand he had left, a leg that would be forever twisted and useless, a shattered nose and a single eye. Lira was stricken. The fate of their house was all but an afterthought; what she dreaded most was when Uther would wake, when he would find his body shattered, and his dreams with them.
In the months that followed, a withering fell upon High Hermitage. Uther rarely left his chambers, and just as rarely took guests—even Lira. Lord Gerrod was miserable, fretting over the house now that his heirs were crippled and sickly, and despite Dornish customs it was clear Lira was never going to be considered. She didn’t care. She couldn’t get the tournament out of her mind, couldn’t get that damned Oakheart heir out her mind. How had he bested Uther? Her brother was destined for knighthood, destined to be the greatest Dayne in generations, surely no Oakheart boy could be that skilled or that lucky. For weeks, Lira harbored dark thoughts of foul play, but came to realize that not only were these suspicions unfounded and unprovable, they were dishonorable. Desperate. Knights were not desperate.
It had not been foul play, nor luck that had laid Uther low. He had simply been beaten. The contest had been fair, the honor lost, well, honorably.
Lira found that Aryk was traveling to King’s Landing, having leveraged his victory at the Tor for a chance at squiring for a member of the King’s Guard. So, with naught but a note left in her wake, the middle Dayne left her home behind and made for King’s Landing. Eventually she found Aryk at the foot of the Red Keep, and demanded a duel from him. Naturally the boy refused, but Lira persisted day after day, taunting and insulting and trying every appeal to the honor he must have had—honor he’d stolen from her brother, and honor she’d reclaim.
At length Aryk conceded; people were beginning to snicker whenever he turned his back on her, joining in when she called him a coward—among other, more colorful things. They cleared a space, and right there at the steps of the Red Keep, Lira Dayne crossed blades with Aryk Oakheart. Briefly. The bout ended in only a handful of strokes, with Aryk disarmed and Lira’s sword leveled at his neck. It was over, she’d won.
And…nothing changed. Uther wasn’t magically brought out of his melancholy, and he certainly wasn’t healed. The honor she was sure had been taken from her house did not return to her in a flow of fire and glory; if it existed at all, it had simply snuffed away into nothing. She had traveled all this way and even in victory she had achieved nothing. The realization withered her, and she may have stood there in an empty stupor into the midnight hours, had she not been invited inside the Keep. Word was being sent to her father to assure him of her safety, but Lira knew well that they would not hear joy in return.
Sure enough, what came was a letter boiling with such fury that Lira could not bear to hear it. The gist was clear enough: father didn’t care whether she came home or not. So she did not. Lira spent the next two years in King’s Landing, at the kindness of the young prince Vaeron. Every stray thought of Dorne, of home, brought immense, humbling shame, and Lira has since felt the hot-blooded temper she’d fostered at Salt Shore simmer into a much colder, starker self-reflection.
RelationsLira has known Vaeron Targaryen since the day she dueled Aryk Oakheart. Whether the young prince witnessed the bout or not, he consoled her in its wake, and upon learning she was highborn, invited her into the Red Keep. Since then, she’s come to think of him as a good friend and a pleasant conversationalist, and often seeks out his company when things are slow in the Red Keep.
TriviaAny Misc Info
