Character from Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
The man who killed Jorg's mother and brother — the act that set a prince on the road and turned a boy into a thing that burns.
Count Renar ordered the attack on Jorg's carriage that killed his mother and baby brother William. Jorg was nine. He was impaled on thorns and forced to watch. Everything Jorg became — every village he burned, every throne he took, every person he killed — traces a line back to this man's decision. Renar himself is less a character than an inciting incident. He made a political move. It had consequences he couldn't have predicted. The boy who survived the thorns came back, and Count Renar's lands burned for it. Sageous may have been behind the attack, manipulating Renar as he manipulated everyone else. But for Jorg, Renar was the face of the thing that took his family. Faces are what you burn.
A nobleman of the Hundred Kingdoms — the specific details matter less than what he represents. He is the face Jorg sees when he closes his eyes. He is the beginning of everything.
Also known as: The Count of Renar