Character from The Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb
The good king who destroyed himself saving his kingdom — a quiet, steady man who poured his life into the Skill to fight the Red Ships until there was nothing left of him but duty and stone.
Verity speaks like a man who would rather be sharpening a sword than giving a speech — direct, practical, uncomfortable with ceremony. He has none of his father's political cunning or his brother Regal's charm, and it costs him. Where Shrewd played the game and Regal schemed, Verity just worked, assuming that competence would be enough. It wasn't. He is fundamentally decent in a way that makes him vulnerable. He trusts too much, delegates too little, and carries burdens alone because asking for help feels like weakness. His Skill-use to defend the coast from Red Ships is an act of slow suicide that he undertakes willingly because he cannot think of another way — and because thinking of another way would require the political skills he doesn't have. The tragedy of Verity is that he was born to be a beloved peacetime king and instead got a war that required the kind of ruthlessness he couldn't stomach. He carved himself into a stone dragon rather than fail his people, and the sacrifice was so quiet that half the kingdom never knew it happened.
Broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with the dark Farseer coloring and a face made for honest work rather than politics. His hands are a soldier's hands, later stained permanently silver-black from working with raw Skill. As the Red Ship War progresses, his appearance deteriorates — gaunt, hollow-eyed, his skin taking on a grayish cast from overuse of the Skill. In his final form he is literally becoming stone, half-absorbed into the dragon he is carving from Skill-infused rock.
Also known as: King Verity, King-in-Waiting Verity, Verity-as-Dragon