Simon Thorne

Simon Thorne is the young heir of Lord Jon Thorne. He is a man of six-and-ten. He was forced into training to be a knight by his father at a very young age, which instilled a strong desire to become a great knight and warrior. However, this also caused a lot of pent up anger towards his father.

Personality and Apperance
Simon is confident to an extent, but he has insecurities about fighting at a very high level, as he fears he'll be unable to reach their level. Due to this insecurity, he tries to not treat anyone poorly, as he feels he is imperfect himself. Despite this, he does his best to hide any insecurity and acts very confident, especially around the soldiers of the Golden Company, the Captain-General Aeron Goldfyre, and particularly his lord father. He has no lordly aspirations whatsoever, despite being the heir to his House.

History
As the young heir of a minor house in the Crownlands, a region based around the royal family, he has not participated in much great history yet.

Childhood
Simon was born in the year 391 AC as the first child of Lord Jon Thorne. In the first years of his childhood, Simon grew a liking for games and would love to play at sport with House Thorne servants. When Maester Matten, maester for Thornekeep, began teaching a young Simon history, sums, and other things all nobles are taught, he took a great liking to study. His father, who was a strict man, did not appreciate the signs that his son would be weak, so he punished his son for trying to study on his own, outside of what he required Maester Matten to teach the boy.

As an attempt to harden Simon, at the age of Twelve, his father forced him to, daily, train at sword. First, he trained with the Master-at-Arms Balon Thorne, but eventually, after being disappointed with his son's skill at the sword, began training Simon himself. Simon was unhappy with this, but the dutifully son kept working at it. He wasn't great at the sword and still did not show the progress his father seeks, but he did improve due to this training.

Training with the Golden Company
Once Simon seemed to peak in his training with his father, his father was determined to have him train with more readied warriors. He considered sending for hedge knights to come to Thornekeep to train with his son, but he was able to get Simon sent to the Golden Company. As a young boy, he was forced by his father to train with recruits of the Golden Company. He first fought with new recruits and was easily beaten bloody by them. Overtime, he slowly learned how to dodge and parry against their attacks and slowly got comofrtable swinging a sword. After a while, he defeated his first recruit in 404 AC, a year after he began training with the Golden Company. Over the next two years, he was able to consistently defeat most new recruits thrown at him and finally became a respectable swordsman by the age of fifteen.

Personal Training
While his father had forced him to train against his will, Simon eventually took a liking to sword combat. Once he began causing more bruises than he'd take, he realized how exhilarating it was to best your opponent, and decided to put personal time into training, outside of his official training. Instead of fighting knights and soldiers; however, he decided to take to hunting in his free time. He grabbed a bow and arrow and began to learn how to shoot arrows, eventually becoming quite skilled at hitting his mark.

Squire
In late 407 AC, Simon was sparring with some soldiers of the Golden Company and was easily holding his own. The Capitan-General, Aeron Goldfyre watched the sparring and after it was over spoke with Simon. Impressed with the skill he saw in the young man, he made Simon one of his squires, to assist Aeron and to be trained to become even better.

Part I
Simon joined some other men to train under the watchful eye of Aeron Goldfyre. Sometime on the First Day of the Eleventh Moon, Simon met with his father, stationed with his troops in King's Landing. The two quarreled over Simon's place in the Golden Company, ending with his father striking Simon and Simon retaliating by drawing his sword upon his lord father. Simon returned to the Company after this.

Simon traveled with the Golden Company and other forces to the Riverlands, at the Queen's command, despite his father leading the Thorne troops with a separate army to Gulltown. Simon arrived in Harrenhal with the rest of the army. There, he spoke briefly with the Captain-General of the Golden Company. He traveled closely with Ser Aeron to Lord Harroway's Town, where the Golden Company is preparing to face the forces of the Vale that are invading the Riverlands. One day, he snuck off to practice his bow skills before returning back to the army.

Family
House Thorne is a small house, with few branches in its family tree.
 * Lord Jon Thorne, lord of Thornekeep. b. 368. m. Gwyn Piper b. 370.
 * Simon Thorne, heir to Thornekeep. Squire to Aeron Goldfyre. b. 391.
 * Alliser Thorne. Scion of House Thorne. b. 395.
 * Myranda Thorne. Daughter of House Thorne. b. 400.
 * Rickard Thorne. Scion of House Thorne. b. 403.
 * Balon Thorne. Brother to Lord Jon. b. 370. m. Dana Thorne, commonwoman with whom he fell in love.
 * Merrett Thorne, his son. b. 401.

Household
Simon has not lived at Thornekeep for around half a decade, so he does not spend much time with his father's household. However, he is familiar with it.
 * Maester Matten, maester of Thornekeep. Healer, educator, counselor.
 * Household guard.
 * Balon Thorne, Master-at-Arms.

Quotes by Simon Thorne
" Now; however, he was squire to the Captain-General of the Golden Company.  What would father think?  "

– Simon's thoughts about his at-the-time recently acquired position.

Quotes about Simon Thorne
" Simon was as able a squire as he could hope for. "

– Aeron Goldfyre in his thoughts about Simon.