Though King Aegon II was dead and the boy Aegon III proclaimed in his place, the killing did not cease at once, for word of the peace had not yet reached every field. Lord Borros Baratheon of Storm's End, the last great lord still under arms for the greens, had led his stormlanders into the riverlands, meaning to fall upon the lords of the Trident who had done the queen's cause such good service. Against him gathered the river lords in strength, among them the young and blooded Benjicot Blackwood and the levies of Houses Tully and Frey, hardened by a year of savage war upon their own soil.
The two hosts met near the Trident, and the heavens opened as they closed, turning the field to a churned and sucking bog. Men floundered in the mire, horses foundered, and the battle degenerated into a graceless, sodden brawl that the survivors named the Muddy Mess for the manner of the fighting. In the end the river lords prevailed, and Lord Borros Baratheon was slain, his stormland host broken and scattered across the rain-soaked plain. With his fall the last field army of the greens ceased to be.
The Muddy Mess is remembered as the final battle of the Dance of the Dragons, an inglorious and mud-spattered end to a war that had begun with dragons wheeling proud against the sky. There were no dragons here, no princes upon golden wyrms, only tired and mud-caked men killing one another in the rain because the tidings of peace had not yet come. So did the great war gutter out at last, and the realm, exhausted and bled white, turned wearily toward the long and troubled regency of King Aegon III.