Benjicot Blackwood, called Bloody Ben by his men, was born in 118 AC and made Lord of Raventree Hall at only eleven, when his father Lord Samwell Blackwood was slain at the Battle of the Burning Mill in 129 AC at the outset of the Dance of the Dragons. Shy and slim in peace but fierce in his armor, the boy lord fought for the blacks through the whole of the riverlands war. He wept at the carnage of the Battle by the Lakeshore, hunted the foragers of Ser Criston Cole, and commanded the center at the Second Battle of Tumbleton, where he had his longbowman Billy Burley put three arrows through the eye of the dragon Tessarion.
At the Battle of the Kingsroad in 131 AC he broke the flank of Lord Borros Baratheon's greens so that the archers of his aunt, Black Aly, could cut down the green knights, and he rode to King's Landing as one of "the Lads" beside Kermit and Oscar Tully. He returned home after the coronation of Aegon III, helped settle landless northmen across the war-torn riverlands, and lived a long life in the king's service, leading host after host from the broken Vale campaign of 135 AC to the entombment of Addam Velaryon's bones in 138 AC.