If a man could be said to be the sum of his life's events, then in Staford's case, two stand out supreme:
The first was a fresh winter day, the air so crisp and clear you could see unto the end of the world, and so sharp it bit to the core with every breath taken. He was a young boy at the time, and it was a struggle to keep up with his grandfather as they trudged through a crusted layer of snow. Every other step would break through the surface, leaving him knee deep in the dry powder snow beneath. His grandfather would grasp him by the cuff of the neck and drag him out, and on they went. As young boys were wont to do, he complained, because it was cold and he was soon shivering like an asp leaf in the wind, his cheeks blushed and his lips all but blue. Yet on they went, on foot, until they reached the Keep.
The ruins of a Keep. The Groves family's old seat, now reduced to a husk of its former self. Enough of it remained to stoke the imagination, however, to lend a glow of possibilities. Ghost towers, and ghost walls came alive in a boy's young mind; both what it might have been and what it could once again be.
"This is what befell us for backing a Pretender," said the old man with a grave note of sorrow and regret. "Never again, my boy. Never again. With time we shall have returned to us all we lost, by means of loyalty and valor."
It was the moment that cemented his ambition. He swore an oath to himself that he would one day become renowned knight of glorious reputation, that through steadfastness and loyalty to his King he would purge the dishonor of his ancestors. And since, in his imagination, the King would be a just King, all their lost lands and wealth would be returned, and the Lords of Kingsgrove would live in the greatest castle of the Riverlands.
A boy's dreams must by necessity bend to an adult's realities, but the core of it remained. The ambition.
The second was seeing his father kneel to Robert, and in the doing receiving a 'pardon' for not being a traitor. The emotions he experienced on in that singular moment of time, still lingers: Stomach clenched in a peculiar mixture of furious loathing and bitter resignation. Hating his father for surrendering, knowing there was no other option with the Targaryans vanquished. Knowing too that having been punished once for breaking with a King, they would now be punished for keeping faith with another.
It rode on the back of a war that had seemed at first like a Gift from the Warrior, but ended as a joke such as only the Stranger could conceive:
Staford had been participating in a Tournament thrown by one of his friends of the Reach. Word came that the rebel Baratheon had won at Summer Hall, and was marching on Ashford. He could hardly believe his luck, knowing that if he rode hard he could lend his sword to the Tarlys, and perhaps make a name for himself joining in the defeat of this Stormlord. The Battle of Ashford was his first taste of a true battle. Though he had seen blood shed before, those had been bare skirmishes, nothing to compare with the true show of power between great armies and hosts of glorious knights. A victory for the loyalists it was, but a sour one none the less. For Robert escaped, and Staford never even saw the fiend in the cacophony of unleashed violence, let alone struck him down with his own hand as he had envisioned in childhood-inspired daydreams.
At the Bells they lost him again. A fruitless hunt from street to street and house to house, as if Robert were a ghost rather than a man. Staford screamed with frustration when what had seemed the perfect trap closed instead on the loyalists, and they were forced to withdraw in ignomity. Few things are as dispiriting to a young knight as defeat.
Yet truthfully Staford had no idea what defeat felt like. He was still convinced of the Dragons' eventual victory, and was still certain he would, if not kill Robert himself, that he would slay some grand commander and make a name for himself in the ledgers of time. Fate had given Staford a place in the greatest war since the Blackfyre rebellion, a chance to make amends for his family's previous treachery. A chance to let all of Westeros know what House Groves was made of!
It was not to be. True defeat was wading through a river, water to his waist, his horse dead and enemies all around him. The water thick with blood and offal. Brown. No time to collect the battle honors of downed opponents, no time to even register who it was he fought at times. Foes? Friends? In the chaos he was turned around more than once, the screaming of tens of thousands of warriors deafening. A hammer blow to the head had left him staggering, with a blinding headache, and his helmet lost. Knocked off, and no amount of searching in those waters would retrieve it. No time to take his eyes off hacking swords, thrusting spears, swinging hammers to even try.
More than once he slipped, and thought he would drown in his heavy plate armor, pushed face down into the mud, water roaring in his ears. Other men's armored feet thumping across his back, pushing him further down. Mud in his mouth.
Prince Rhaegar's death was felt rather than seen, like a wound driven into the heart of the army's morale, eliciting a keening sound of despair. they ran, stumbled, fled. A horse not his bore Staford to King's Landing, his armor battered, his hair bloody and mattered. A scalp wound that throbbed the whole time, flirting with infection. Pursued, there were battles a many, tiny and desperate skirmishes of no name. He fought with weapons picked from the dead as his own fell apart, all but dead on his feet from exhaustion and feverish depletion.
Yet still his spirit refused to bow. They would hold King's Landing, he told himself and anyone else who would hear. The Reach and the Westerlands would come to their King's aid. The walls would hold the enemy at bay until then, and the Red Keep was impregnable! Such relief in all of them when Lord Tywin came to the gates, promising to turn this botched war into victory. Instead Staford watched the capitol burn, a hammerblow to his chest leaving him for dead in the very first moments of uncomprehending bewilderment, while the army poured into the city. To burn, to loot, to kill. He could do nothing but crawl into an alley, nursing his broken ribs, pass out. When he came to himself he was a hostage to a sellsword, one who knew the value of a knight lay in their ransom and not their murder. A lucky break in hindsight, even if at the time Staford felt that death would have been a kinder fate.
After the rebellion, he returned home to lands greatly reduced in size. Though his wounds healed, a festering sense of cynicism had taken root in him, and a bitter awareness that who were seen as honorable and just depended upon victory and little else. He had fought with all his heart for the Targaryans, yet in defeat all his accomplishments were forgotten. The Bards sang only of the deeds of the Rebels.