Name
▔▔▔▔▔Ser Beric Hightower
• Ser Beric the Burned (The Reach)
• The Bagfaced Knight (The Seven Kingdoms)
• Beric the Babe (Formerly)
Age
▔▔▔▔▔34
Reputation
▔▔▔▔▔There are few knights in Westeros' history that have garnered reputations like that of Beric Hightower. He is a folk hero in some villages and a tall tale in others, though his name finds its way into lands he has never stepped foot in all the same. Beric is a prodigious swordsman who was dubbed
Beric the Babe at thirteen, who has since dedicated the majority of his waking hours to scouring the Reach of banditry and crime. Although he is a skilled combatant, he is easily more well-known for the disfiguring facial burns he suffered -- though their origin seems to change from place to place -- and the linen sack he wears to hide his face. To most, Beric is a half-mad laughing stock, while some see through his eccentricities and recognize his martial skill. Regardless, Beric continues to illicit starkly divided opinions everywhere he goes, though fewer and fewer are kind as he ages.
History
▔▔▔▔▔• Beric Hightower is born with his umbilical cord around his neck, which many blame for his strange behavior. As an infant, he does not cry, laugh, smile, or respond to provocation of any kind. Most assume he is deaf and dumb, or more optimistically, deaf and shy. He learns to read remarkably quickly, although he continues to exhibit strange behavior throughout his childhood -- Beric compulsively stacks and lines up the toys in his room, tears off his clothes and runs about the Hightower nude, and strangest of all, does not speak a word. Servants and retainers jape that he is a changeling in whispers for years.
• A week after his seventh nameday, as a reward for behaving himself during the High Septon's visit to the Hightower, Beric accompanies his father to preside over two knights dueling, and speaks for the first time, requesting he become a knight. His stunned father agrees, and makes him his personal squire. Beric takes to swordsmanship with an almost concerning speed, and after three years, has surpassed his father's swordsmanship and requires two tutors. As his mannerisms have improved under his newfound tutelage, his father encourages his training wholeheartedly. Beric abandons all other interests in favor of learning more about knighthood, training from the moment the sun hits the sky to the moment it leaves, while studying books of technique procured from the Citadel by candlelight at night. His speech improves, though he is still a remarkably quiet boy.
• By thirteen, Beric has become a prodigy whose talents are somewhat well-known in the Reach, spending his days beating knights into the dirt for sparse audiences of smallfolk watching across the waters of Oldtown. Beric now requires four tutors -- two knights, a sellsword, and a Braavosi swordsman -- to satiate his obsessive focus on training and improving his technique. For the constant toll on his body training takes, Beric sleeps remarkably little, waking up at the crack of dawn with little comforts throughout the day but breaks for rest. Beric attends a tournament at Highgarden to celebrate the birth of Leo Tyrell, where he wins the Squire's Tourney and is knighted by Quentin Tyrell, who dubs him
Beric the Babe. Sensing an opportunity to further ally his house with the Hightowers, Quentin then requested Beric's attendance as a Knight of Highgarden, perhaps the greatest honor for any knight of the Reach, to guard his newborn son Leo. Within a fortnight, Beric's life changes from that of a prodigious squire to Ser Beric of Highgarden. Unable to bring his four tutors, Beric begins training with the Hightower guards.
• Aside from being Leo Tyrell's bodyguard, Beric has become Captain of the Guard during his tenure at Highgarden by the time he is twenty. However, this is not without provoking the ire of many Tyrells and their retainers, including Cassana Tyrell, who has grown fearful of him -- His obsessive training is a stark contrast to the restrained, manicured culture of Highgarden, and he has accidentally killed one guardsman during a bout of sparring. Furthermore, Beric is almost entirely without tact, chafing at the knightly duties of court, frequently speaking too little and out of turn, and being well-known as an unwelcoming Captain of the Guard to those visiting Highgarden. Cassanna chooses Ser Alec Fossoway as the knight Leo will become a page for, a knight known for his courtly nature and wisdom, and dismisses Beric. Having devoted a great deal of his identity to knighthood by now, Beric refuses to return to the comfort of the Hightower, and begins life as a hedge knight.
• Beric takes the young Damon Swann as a squire during his travels, teaching him as much as he can impart. During this time Beric becomes known as
Beric the Bedless, a wandering vehicle of law within the Reach, the Marches, and the Westerlands, killing slews of bandits and thieves. When he is six-and-twenty, Beric and Damon are spotted by Red Rickard, the leader of a small company of sellswords and highwaymen, whose father was killed five years prior by Beric. They are followed in secret as they set up camp for the night, and are set upon with nets and chains as they slept. Beric and Damon are beaten until sunrise, with Rickard finishing the deed by dragging the still-chained Beric into the smoldering remnants of the campfire, face-first. Though the company leaves them to die, Beric manages to wiggle his way to freedom before he can burn to death. Damon Swann manages to free himself and Beric from their restraints, and robs a passing farmer of his horse to carry the dying Beric to Oldtown. Lord Hightower knights Damon for this, and begins sending for every manner of healer gold can buy.
• It has taken scores of maesters, hedge wizards, and maegi from Asshai, but after two years, Beric has healed enough to live life outside of his bedchamber, though that is the furthest thing from his wishes -- He is left horribly disfigured by his healing, causing several servants who cannot stand the sight of him to leave Oldtown in the night, one by one. In order to avoid offending his family members within the Hightower, both through blood and marriage, Beric begins to experiment with methods of hiding his malformity. He initially wears a helm at all times, though his skin is too sensitive to sustain this for long, and then tries wearing a scarf and cowl, though he finds them too easily displaced by wind. Eventually, Beric would settle on the face he would wear for the rest of his life; A simple burlap sack, with two holes cut out for his eyes. Beric would go on to eat, bathe, and attend to his burn wounds in absolute privacy, far from the remaining Hightower servants.
• Finding that he had grown rusty after his years of healing, Beric hires seven more tutors to assist his training. He continues with his usual day-and-night regimen of training for two years until accidentally killing one of his tutors during a spar, resulting in the remaining six leaving his service. Realizing that his mutilation has caused him to grow obsessive and fearful of the outside world, Beric disembarks from the Hightower at thirty years of age, continuing his scouring of the Reach as Beric the Burned. Shortly after word spreads that Beric Hightower has returned to life as a hedge knight, Quentin Tyrell sends a score of knights to find him. A mere year from turning sixty, an aging Quentin wishes to ensure his son and heir Leo will be able to defend himself -- and, vicariously, the Reach -- should he have to. Dissatisfied with Ser Alec Fossaway's martial training, Leo humbly requests Beric take his son on as a squire, asking forgiveness for his earlier dismissal from Highgarden and subsequent maiming.
• It is the present day. Beric has been training Leo Tyrell as a squire for four years, and will soon be four-and-thirty himself. With the war on Essos on the horizon, it is believed that Beric and Leo will make their way across the Narrow Sea to assist in the assault on the New Valyrian Empire.
Family Tree
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