Roger Rogers

""''Ser Roger of House Rogers. Firstborn son of Robert Rogers. Served as a squire to Ser Donal Rogers. Took part in the Battle of Summerhall during the Dragon’s Defiance, slaying Ser _ Blackbar and Lord Addam Peake. Knighted by Lord Lyonel Baratheon after the battle. Took part in the Battle of Skull Valley. Took part in the Battle of the Redgrass Field, capturing Lord Bertram Cuy and slaying Ser Grover Tarly. Appointed to the Kingsguard after the war by King Daeron III.''

— The White Book

Childhood
A second cousin to a lord may yet be called nobility, even if that lordship a poor one, but the claim is much weakened when it comes to the grandson of that cousin. Robert Rogers was no knight himself, though his father had been one, and although no one could contest his claim to the name of Rogers, a couple of his stiffer-necked cousins in Amberly would most certainly have had liked to. Worried that only a worse fate awaited his son, Robert named the boy Roger, for whoever could that name belong to save a Rogers of Amberly?

Roger never knew his mother, but his father raised him as well as he could on a falconer’s wages. Robert had learnt how to read and write, and so he taught Roger to do the same (though not well in either, for lack of a better teacher and proper material). The remainder of the boy’s time was divided between helping his father in the falconries of the lord and roughhousing with the other boys around the castle.

Such tranquillity could never last though. Robert Rogers was caught by a foul disease that originated in the roots of his manhood, where one morning he woke to find his sack in dull throbbing pain. He thought nothing of it and mentioned it to no one on account of the awkwardness despite its persistence over the next few moons. Symptoms only grew as the dull pain passed on to his lower belly too, and soon Robert could barely perform his duties for lack of strength. Roger had thought the illness but a mild one brought on by age, but eventually grew worried when his father fell ill with fever and ran to the castle’s septon. The holy man inspected Robert grimly before leaving. The next day, he returned and gave Robert a sack of sour wine plus a handful of poppy seeds while he prayed over a knife. Catching Roger watching, half-hidden behind the door, Robert smiled and sent him off to the falconry where the boy remained for the rest of the day. Roger returned that evening, and for one night all seemed back to normal.

But the next day, fever set on Robert again: The wound had festered, and life was seeping out of him with the pus from his balls despite all Roger and the septon could do. A week later and Roger was an orphan.

Squiring
Another distant cousin, Ser Donal, took pity on the boy. Donal himself was no exceptional warrior but taught his squire what he can, and if he wasn’t rich, he wasn’t starving either. He’d find work with one lord or another, save up half-a-dozen stags or so, then spend it travelling between the woods and villages of the Stormlands taking what jobs he wanted. He wasn’t quite a hedge knight, for when he has spent every penny or lost his suit in a tourney, he could always find service and arms at Amberly. Donal's travels did not make him a rich man or a famous one, but it took him to see and hear tales of many rich and famous men. Every evening, when the horses have been watered and the food cooking, he'd sit by the fire and tell his squire - or any other companions - tales of men such as Harlen Tyrell, Vorian Dayne and Vaegon Targaryen. Most of all he spoke of Lyonel Baratheon, Stormland's own hero, who distinguished himself in so many tourneys, who fought the legendary duel against the Red Lion for the hand of his wife, and who led the charge through the mountain passes of Bloodstone.

Squiring for such a man was not the hardest life. Roger always had food in his belly and a tent over his head if not a roof. He learned to cook with a little of this and that; he learned to sharpen a sword and clean plate; he learned to scourge mail in a barrel of sand. More than that, he trained in the arts of battle. Roger might be a bit shaky ahorse while holding lance and shield, but he reallygets going when both his hands are on the reins. He might tire under a full suit of plate, but really, plate is just an unnecessary expense; hauberks and half-helms are where it's at. As for swords and maces and the like, though he might not swing as hard or as quick as the next man, Ser Donal and every man Roger has ever faced in the yards admit that they have never seen another one so quick with their shield. Donal understood that his squire was no Aemon the Dragonknight, but his squire was a good squire, and that was all a squire needed to be.

A year after his father's death, the two left the castle. They had barely gone two miles before Roger heard chirping in one of the nearby bushes, muffled and weak but still familiar. He lept off his horse and sprinted to the shrubbery where he found one of his father's lanners. One of her wings was bent unnaturally, and thorns from the bush had cut her. Perhaps she was abandoned when the lord saw that she could fly no more, or maybe the hunting party just couldn't find her after their best falconer died. Roger disentangled the bird carefully and set down to make a splint for the wing. Ser Donal had complained of the delay, but he took to it well in the end and came to love the falcon as much as the boy when he found it meant the occasional game at suppertime.

Of note was that their travels brought them to Storm's End during the great tourney celebrating the Prince of Dragonstone's marriage. Not one, but half a dozen mystery knights competed alongside all the great champions of Ser Donal's stories. Roger cheered at the Kingsguard in their armour so bright it hurt his eyes, the Targaryens in their dark plate atop their black steeds, younger favourites such as Jaeherys Storm and Stannis Penrose, who cannot be so much older than he was himself, but rode and fought with so much skill it left him wide-eyed. Though Prince Aegon was unhorsed in the joust almost immediately, Roger was left with disbelief when Ser Donal leaned down to tell him they're of an age. And it was by the champion's hand he fell, anyway.

Ser Donal didn't compete himself since their destrier had caught on a slight limp the last week, but Roger had a better time watching than he would have otherwise anyways, especially since Donal would most likely have fallen to even the least knight on the field. For a moon after, Roger spoke of nothing else but what he saw at the tournament, describing each charge of the warhorses and every knockout in the melee down to agonising detail. He talked about this lord's armour and that knight's horse to whatever audience he can gather, which by the second week amounted to just the bird. To his falcon, Roger also talked about what he didn't to Ser Donal, about the girl who was crowned Queen of Love and Beauty by Lord Darklyn, about the princess whose hair was the colour of silver.

The Dragon's Defiance
The memory of the tourney did eventually fade away over the next year, but those men he had seen there came back as vivid as ever when Lord Lyonel called the banners of the Stormlands. Bearing the arms of House Rogers, Donal and Roger returned to Amberly to march alongside their cousins to war.

Under the banners of maze, quill, stag and dragon, Roger watched knights atop their thundering destriers charge at each other before the ruins of Summerhall. It was so much like the jousting he had saw the year past, but the illusion shattered when the first iron-tipped war lance connected, punching through plate and mail like paper to find the flesh beneath. Horses and men alike screamed as they connected. Roger could not distinguish between the cries of man and beast.

Ser Donal and his opposite’s lances had glanced off each other's shield, and now they drew their swords as their horses danced, biting and kicking. Roger kicked at his own palfrey, willing it to go faster so he could aid his master. Around him, he saw a hundred other squires and freeriders do the same. As the two knights spun around, Roger noticed that Ser Donal’s opponent wore unadorned armour, and his shield was empty save for a single black line through the centre. The man was too focused on Ser Donal, his weapon hammering down again and again onto pine, the sigil was already unrecognisable with the maze and half the unicorns in splinters. He did not notice Roger’s approach, and from behind, Roger slammed his own blade into the back of the knight’s chestplate. Even a blind man would have been able to feel the ring or hear the terrible screech, however, and now he turned to loom over the squire, swinging down at him before he could recover from his own strike. Donal was too dazed to react, but at that moment his destrier startled, reared up, and came down on the Reachman so hard that he lost his seat and fell - onto Roger’s outstretched blade.

“Blackbar,” Ser Donal muttered, still dazed. He might have said more, but then an arrow struck him in the small of his back. He fell from his horse then, by the dead Blackbar knight’s side. Roger knelt next to his knight while the battle raged on all around them, more hectic by the second. The line had moved away from them as the Stormlords pushed the ranks of the Reachmen back, but a number of thicker-armoured Reach knights, unhorsed, had also broken through the line of Stormlander cavalry. One of these found them then and lumbered towards the Rogers knight breathing heavily against his horse. He must have thought the squire prostrated in the knight’s lap dead, and nor did Roger notice the approaching danger until Ser Donal gave a yell. He sat up too quickly, the back of his head - covered only in mail coif - slammed painfully into the Reachman’s armoured crotch. Roger scrambled to his feet as the knight tumbled over him onto Ser Donal, and buried his sword in the gap between his great helm and gorget.

The remainder of the battle was without incident. Roger managed to get Ser Donal’s body on a horse, and he fell back with the rest of the Stormlander host, now with a second warhorse laden with what loot he could gather from the slain men in tow. That evening, Roger was summoned and was knighted by none other than Lord Lyonel Baratheon himself. By all accounts, he had slain a knight and a lord - for the second Reachmen proved to be Lord Addam Peake - and Roger was too dazed by the day’s events to testify on ‘how’, not that he would have risked losing a knighthood given by his childhood hero.

In the next battle, Stormlands’ new war hero was placed in the vanguard, albeit far from the centre of the wedge where men like Lyonel Baratheon rode. His horse took a bolt before the formation ever connected with the Tyrell spears, and Roger spent all of Skull Valley in the mud with his horse atop of him, surprisingly unhurt thanks to his new plate holding the weight of the animal above him.

Since Roger didn’t die, he rode once more at Redgrass Field, this time in Prince Daeron’s own van. He saw then that a cavalry charge was no tourney, and every man rode with the intent to kill. Thankfully though, as it was no tourney, no opponent was assigned to strike him and him alone. The Reach knights charging back at them found marks for their lances on both riders next to Roger, while his own unwieldy weapon landed on some Reachman’s knee. The armour held, but the momentum was enough to unbalance the knight and make him fall right in front of Roger’s warhorse (or rather, the Blackbar’s horse). Its hooves took care of the rest.

The impact had unhorsed Roger himself. He unsheethed his sword to help him stand, but instead felt it strike metal, and then sink into something soft. Roger turned towards it as he pulled the blade back in horror - it was the Reachmen who had charged on the other side of him. He had the bottom of his body under a horse and was bleeding from his chest where Roger stabbed him. “I- I yield, ser,” he said, struggling to remove his gauntlet, “Lord Bertram Cuy, please.”

While red grass burned and a golden rose fell, Roger kept silent vigil over another old knight. This one, he will not let die. (For the fate of Lord Bertram Cuy, read Tolley’s bio! Spoilers: He died.) That evening at camp, Prince Daeron spoke to him, and Lord Lyonel slapped him across the shoulder.

Knight of the Kingsguard
When the war ended, Daeron came to Roger again, this time asking him to be one of his newly-assembled seven. And what seventeen-year-old boy would say no to such an offer? He had no parents, no beautiful lady betrothed, no attachments left since Ser Donal passed save for his bird. And that, he may take with him to the White Sword Tower. Feeling almost like that time he drank four pints at the tavern near Nightsong while Ser Donal wasn’t looking, ‘yes’ was out of his mouth before his new king finished his sentence.

The five new brothers of the Kingsguard were announced after Daeron’s crowning. In the Sept of Baelor, the men were called forth by their Lord Commander, and their accomplishments read. Roger watched them out of the corner of the eye as he took his oaths, suddenly feeling so sick he could barely finish them. These were seasoned warriors - even one-armed, sickly Ser Willem looked imposing compared to him - great knights from great houses like those men whose stories he had heard growing up. These men deserved to be on the Kingsguard.

What was he, a Stormlands boy, a son of a falconer and squire for a hedge knight doing here among these men, in King’s Landing? Who was he, to repeat the same oaths Aemon the Dragonknight and Ser Barristan the Bold uttered? Who was he, to receive a white cloak from the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, to be helped up and called brother by the Sword of the Morning?

Ser Roger Rogers was a knight of the Kingsguard, but he knew he did not belong.

And whatever would they do if anyone else finds out? He’d be stripped of his cloak and knighthood for deceiving the king, surely, and certainly be sent to the wall if not to the King’s Justice.

No one must know, even if it meant lying for a lifetime.

Roger took shifts at the most obscure hours; he would set out early to his duties and returned late to avoid his sworn brothers; he would volunteer to guard the royal nursery, or the queen mother, if it meant his charge wouldn’t seek him out for a spar, as Prince Aegon or Princess Helaena might; he would be absent from the yards during the day and swing at a dummy at night; he would avoid every man, make no friends, and never speak unless spoken to.

Ser Roger Rogers was not a true Kingsguard, and no one must know.

Timeline
362 AC: Roger Rogers was born.

372 AC: Roger’s father, Robert Rogers dies. Roger begins squiring for Ser Donal Rogers.

378 AC: Roger attends the Tourney at Storm’s End with Ser Donal, and stares wide-eyes at the many lords and ladies.

379 AC: Roger and Ser Donal fights for Daeron in the Dragon’s Defiance. Roger slays Ser __ Blackbar and Lord Addam Peake in the Battle of Summerhall. Ser Donal dies from the wounds sustained in the same battle. Roger is knighted by Lord Lyonel Baratheon. Ser Roger partakes in the Battle of Skull Valley. Ser Roger slays Ser Grover Tarly and captures Lord Bertram Cuy at the Battle of the Redgrass Field.

380 AC: Ser Roger Rogers is made a knight of the Kingsguard.

Achievements
Slayed Ser _ Blackbar and Lord Addam Peake at the Battle of Summerhall.

Knighted by Lord Lyonel Baratheon.

Partook in the Battle of Skull Valley.

Slayed Ser Grover Tarly and captured Lord Bertram Cuy at the Battle of the Redgrass Field.

Possessed all of his limbs and wasn't a witch, ironborn or kingslayer when named to King Daeron III's Kingsguard.

Discovered Ser Vorian Dayne's secret mistress.