Bartimos Celtigar

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Celtigar.png
Bartimos Celtigar
Celtigar.png
Titles
Allegiances
Race Valyrian
Culture Crownlands
Died 130 AC
King's Landing
Books

Bartimos Celtigar was a Lord of Claw Isle and a head of House Celtigar during the Dance of the Dragons.[1]

History

Lord Bartimos was a member of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen's black council during the Dance of the Dragons. He urged the queen to use her numerical advantage in dragons to take King's Landing from King Aegon II Targaryen, but Rhaenyra agreed with the cautious Prince Daemon Targaryen.[1] After Rhaenyra seized control of King's Landing, Lord Bartimos was named lord treasurer and master of coin on her small council.[2]

The treasury was completely empty and Rhaenyra was in desperate need of coin, for the Greens had sent three quarters of the gold away for safe keeping and spent the rest prior to the fall of the capital. To rectify this, Lord Bartimos put in place the ruinous taxes his ancestor Lord Edwell Celtigar once enacted, although Bartimos went a step further. Taxes on wine and ale were doubled, port fees tripled. Every shopkeeper was assessed a fee to keep his doors open. Innkeepers were required to pay a silver stag for each bed in their inn. The entry and exit fees once put on the seven city gates by Rego Draz, the "Lord of Air", were brought back, but at triple the cost. A property tax was put in place that smallfolk and wealthy alike were obliged to pay depending on how much space they took up. Bartimos even made executions a source of coin, by having them take place in the Dragonpit and charging those wishing to see the spectacle three pennies. Merchants and traders who couldn't pay had their property, ships, or cargo seized. Though these taxes replenished Queen Rhaenyra's coffers, they quickly made both the queen and Lord Bartimos despised by the populace.[2]

After the Treasons of Tumbleton by the Two Betrayers, Bartimos urged Rhaenyra to arrest the other two baseborn dragonriders, Ser Addam Velaryon and Nettles.[1][2] He later argued for a tax to be placed for any child born out of wedlock, which would help fill the royal coffers and would discourage more bastards being born. When riots broke out in King's Landing, Lord Bartimos's manse was overrun by a mob, his servants turned on him or fled, and his kinsman Arthor was cut down. Bartimos himself was bound to a post and tortured until he revealed all the locations of his wealth. Then a tanner named Wat declared to Bartimos that he hadn't paid the "cock tax" and thus his manhood was forfeit. Wat the Tanner later rode through the streets upon a stolen horse, displaying Lord Bartimos's severed head and genitals to the crowds and declaring an end to all taxes.[3]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Princess and the Queen.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Fire & Blood, The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Triumphant.
  3. Fire & Blood, The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Overthrown.