Arthur Hightower

Arthur Hightower is the son of the late Lord of the Hightower, Leyton "Lightsteel" Hightower, and his wife, Lady Aelora Velaryon, the husband of Princess Naerys Targaryen, the Lord of the Hightower, Lord of the Port, Voice of Oldtown, Defender of the Citadel, and Beacon of the South. He assumed leadership of his house at the age of three, under regency of his mother, Aelora, after the untimely death of his father at the end of Aemon Dayne's lance. Spending the majority of his youth and rearing in the capital, King's Landing, he was separated from his siblings for most of his life; his elder sister, Alys, and his younger brothers; Addam and Leyton, named for their deceased father.

Appearance and Character
Average of build and height, Arthur Hightower stands out little from a crowd. He shares the same sharp, defined features of his mother and father, as well as the bright blonde hair his mother is famous for, as well as her blue-green eyes. Despite the particular hues of his most immediate appearance, his face is the spitting image of his father, leaving little doubt as to his parentage. He has dimples when he smiles.

Well groomed and well-kempt, Arthur has historically gone cleanshaven, although recently has allowed the beginnings of a beard to begin clinging to his jaw, feeling less of a pressure to keep a courtly appearance since his return to Oldtown. He keeps his thick mane blonde hair cut short, above the ears. Despite his dislike of opulence and livery, he dresses in a way that would suggest otherwise; with flamboyant, profligacy apparent in the clothes he wears, a habit he picked up while in the Dragon's Court that he still struggles to put down. In public, he prefers doublets of blues and greens and whites, with gold and silver trims, and is never seen without a smoke grey cloak draped across his shoulder, the sigil of his house embroidered in the center.

Above all else, Arthur struggles to grasp who he is, as a man grown, as a husband to Naerys, who he is in the light of the Seven, and as a Great Lord of Westeros. In his youth, his fate was not his own, and he felt almost captive in the capital, alone and isolated from his family he missed so dearly. He developed a quiet demeanor very early on, and though the melancholy that seized him as a child is now gone, he still goes through bouts of numbness, unsure of his place in the world, although he would never show it.

Outwardly, Arthur is the Beacon of the South, with a wide, brilliant smile. Friendly and amiable, he strives to try to fill his father's legacy in the only way he can; through great works of service and leadership, rather than through great deeds of swordsmanship, like Lightsteel had in his day. Despite his humble nature, he still craves glory, and wants nothing more than to feel as though he has earned the legacy his father had laid out before him, hating the idea that he has his position through primogeniture and primogeniture alone, and wanting to prove his merit as a lord. He is not a martial man, and holds a particular disgust for the profligacy for tourneys and other sorts of grand events, adamantly refusing to attend them.

Despite his disgust with the events of the Hightower Affair, it has aroused a dark, uncomfortable interest in the occult and arcane as of recent years, as he struggles to come to grips with the horrors he had to punish within his own family, sowing seeds of doubt and remorse for the lives he took in his rage against the Cult of Oldtown. This, coupled with the slow fading of his once ironclad faith in recent years has done little to help his search for identity, complicating the matter further. His growing regret has only furthered to widen the rift between him and his cousin, Olyvar, whose father, Dorian, he had executed for the treasons commmited by the Cult of Oldtown.

Recent Events
TBD

Background
Arthur Hightower was born in 415 AC to Lord Leyton Hightower and his wife, Lady Aelora Velaryon. He was the second child of their union, with an elder sister, Alys, already two years his senior. He was later followed by two younger brothers; Addam, born in 417 AC, and later, having just become pregnant a mere fortnight before her husband died, Aelora gave birth to a boy in 419 AC that she named after her late husband; "Little" Leyton.

In 418 AC, Leyton Hightower died during a joust against Aemon Dayne. With his ever bold sisters calling for the head of Aemon, in order to appease both houses, Queen Visaera I Targaryen ordered both houses send a child to King's Landing to have them warded together, so as to keep the peace between two of the oldest and proudest houses in Westeros. Arthur was sent to the capital later that year, where he would spend the rest of his years as a minor in the Red Keep.

Alone in the Capital
The early years of Arthur’s time in the Capital would at first prove mundane. While the youth quite evidently mourned the absence of his mother, as any would, with time, it was more the memory of the idea of his family that he mourned, rather than the true loss of the presence of his father. He had hardly known the man, after all, but he had known what it felt like to be apart of a unit, a clan of people who he felt most safe around. And he mourned the loss of that safety more than anything else. He had few teachers or tutors he enjoyed the presence of, and his instructors constantly faded in and out of his education.

There was one that would come to remain a solid rock of dependence in Arthur's young life, however, in the form of Ser Sybassion Spicer, a Knight of the Kingsguard, and later Lord Commander of the Whitecloaks. Arthur would come to squire beneath him in time, and Ser Sybassion taught the boy as best he could the ways of the blade, bow, and lance, as well as all else that was expected. Although he would never become an outstanding knight like that which he served, his initial interest in martiality was taken as a sign that he was truly a son of his father, and helped him grow during a time of great confusion and stress in his life, even if it didn't last.

While much had been taken from Arthur in the name of reconciliation between that of his House and that of the House Dayne, the most crucial thing that had been taken from him was peace of mind. After all, he had no real understanding of why he was forced to leave his family and go to King's Landing. How could he, being so young?. Even so, as the days passed, and turned to weeks, and then to months, and years, the notion of 'family' began to warp in his mind, as he longed for the one thing that had been taken from him most of all, he also began to realize that he might be able to choose his own family, at least for the time being, in order to reconcile his displacement.

The Blood of the Covenant
As time dragged on, Arthur found himself becoming fast friends with several of the others his age around the Red Keep, particularly the young princes Baelor and Daemon Targaryen, as well as, somewhat ironically, young Lord Vorian Dayne, his partner in silken chains and the only other his age who truly knew his struggles and could understand him accordingly. Those earliest years in the Capital proved to be the easiest of Arthur's life, for with age, came responsibility, and the obligation to make decisions that would shape the rest of his life as the young Lord of Oldtown.

Nevertheless, Arthur could not remain a child forever. And as he grew in body and mind, so to did his understanding of the events that were occurring around him in court, as the death of Queen Visaera ushered in the Springtide, bringing with it the wedding of the future King, Prince Aegon Targaryen to his sister, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. Now three and ten years, all this made sense to Arthur’s mind, the power, the titles, the positions, the bowing, the marriage, but still, a part of him, small as it was, wondered how Oldtown fared, how his siblings were, Alys, Addam, and 'Little' Leyton, and if his mother missed him at all. After all, he had only sparingly recieved correspondence from any of them by ravenscroll, and as much as it pained him to acknowledge, he found it hard to miss her in any context more than by virtue of his knowledge of the fact that she was his mother, and he should miss her. Aelora Hightower was to Arthur, her first born son, a woman unknown, and a mother long forgotten from memory. If it were not for the letters, and the talk of his family and the knowledge of his inheritance as the Lord of the Hightower, he might've entirely forgotten his identity being separate from the dominion of House Targaryen.

The next three years proved fortuitous for Arthur, as he seemed to find himself more in this time, and come to meet with the things he enjoyed, and slowly wriggle away from more martial pursuits, at which he was strikingly average. Yet, even from in King’s Landing, Arthur began to hear of his young brother’s incredible wit and skill with the practice sword, even at such a young age. Once the talk of Addam began in the letters sent by his mother, he soon stopped reading them, instead allowing them to pile up, before feeding them to the fire one after the other. He had always known he would never be the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms, but his dreams of any sort of gallantry were dashed as he became more and more aware of Addam's incredible natural talent with a blade. From that point on, he wholly set aside that dream, and began to devote himself more and more to that which he was good at, excelling at his studies in economics, history, mathematics, statecraft, and other more scholarly, lordly pursuits. Addam could have his swords; Arthur would have the Hightower one day, and his playing at knight would have to come to an end if he was going to be able to live up to his father's legacy.

Three Heads has a Forbidden Marriage
In 430 AC, King Rhaegar II allowed his son, Prince Aegon take a second wife in Visenya Silvermoon. In doing so, and wedding the baseborn daughter of a Lysene whore, Arthur Hightower, now six and ten, was outraged. To take a second wife while the first still lived was a mockery of all the laws of gods and men that had governed Westeros since the Conqueror's Sons learned their lessons about the evils of polygamy. To Arthur, the marriage was an abomination of the highest order, though he was careful to keep his opinions to himself and only himself, for to raise such an outcry while in the seat of House Targaryen's power would mean certain death.

Yet, as much as the young Lord of the Hightower desired to leave the Capital above all else, such would have been too obviously an act of blatant disrespect. Thus, the Lord of Oldtown was forced to endure this court of mockery, and elevation of a base concubine for nigh on another year. Once that year had passed, however, never had there been a faster ship to leave harbor than the First Tower, with Arthur in his cabin, grateful to be gone of the capital for as long as he could will it, and not the slightest inclination to look behind him as he crossed into open waters. Early in the year of 331 AC, Arthur arrived in Oldtown for the first time in his adult life.

The Hightower Affair
Main Article: The Hightower Affair The Hightower Affair was to become a most striking occurrence of events revolving around the Hightowers and Oldtown in the year of 433 A.C. The Affair would see the revelation, arrests, trials, and burnings of some twenty-seven declared cultists and heretics, eight of whom were named Hightower, and notably, a Lannister bastard.

The event would serve to bring much of both fame and infamy to the Lord Arthur Hightower, with some remarking that he had made himself a kinslayer by seeing to the executions of his kinsmen and kinswomen, yet in contrast, were vastly more prominent the voices of those supporting the Lord for his actions, notably those organisations of the Faith within Oldtown, and the Maesters, as their orders had both been infected by this plague.

Deep Wounds
With the routing of the Cult of Oldtown, and even though the Bleeding was still carving a bloody swath through the realm, a tense curtain of peace was drawn back over the Hightower and the streets of Oldtown. As Lord of the Hightower, Arthur ensured peace returned in full, whilst also encouraging the Faith within Oldtown to focus its efforts to greater affect upon the wealthier portion of the population. Yet most so of all, he saw the boons of trade return to his harbor in full, and the taxes of the treacherous Houses Cuy and Costayne raised, so as to pay for the loss of both coin and life that was incurred during their crimes of 433 AC. By Arthur's Law, would these Houses pay for the suffering of his city, his family, his people, and more.

Behind closed doors, however, his own family found themselves far less pleased with his return. Second sons were always a problem, and Addam was no different. Through a series of incidents, a steady, heated rivalry began sparking between Addam and his lord brother. Some within the Hightower assumed it had been borne of Arthur's execution of the man Addam had considered a father; their uncle, Dorian Hightower, as well as that of the executions of the others who bore their name. Others yet thought it to be the result of Addam's abrasive tendencies, coupled with his seeming extreme competence at anything he attempted, from swordplay to study, while Arthur had little natural talent to rely on by comparison.

In 435 AC, Ser Addam Hightower was named a Knight of the Kingsguard. Consequently more within the Hightower clan than just Arthur found reason to rejoice, for it meant an end to the cold war front between the two brothers. However, despite the good fortunes of both brothers, one last prickly interaction made sure that Addam would have little will to write to his siblings from King's Landing; for when he asked to take the family Valyrian Steel Sword Vigilance with him, he was denied, though it hadn't had a proper knight to wield it since the death of Brightsteel. With his brother's stormy presence now removed from Oldtown, Arthur was able to focus on his newest obligation set before him; his betrothal to Princess Naerys Targaryen.

Kissing Strangers
In the year 438 AC, Arthur and Naerys were finally wed. Despite their prolonged betrothal, Arthur had only met her once before, at the funeral of Queen Visaera, and found his long standing partner to be an utter stranger as he wrapped his family's cloak around her in the Starry Sept.

Family
''Foreword: Bolded names indicate those that were lord of their respective house at some point or another. Italicized names indicate that the character is now deceased. (m.) denotes a marriage into the family.''


 * Leyton Hightower, Lord of the Hightower, b. 387 A.C. d. 418 A.C.
 * m. Aelora Velaryon, Lady of the Hightower, b. 394 A.C.
 * Alys Hightower, b. 413 A.C.
 * m. Denys Redwyne, b. 414 A.C.
 * House Redwyne
 * Arthur Hightower, Lord of the Hightower, b. 415 A.C.
 * m. Naerys Targaryen, Princess of the Seven Kingdoms, b. 418 A.C.
 * Addam Hightower, Knight of the Kingsguard, b. 417 A.C.
 * Leyton Hightower, b. 419 A.C.
 * m. Samantha Beesbury, b. 419 A.C