House Florent of Brightwater Keep is an ancient Reach house that has never quite reconciled itself to being the second house of the Reach rather than the first. They descend through the female line from Florys the Fox, a daughter of Garth Greenhand, a descent the Florents argue is older and more legitimate than the Tyrells', who came up only as the Gardener kings' stewards. Their arms keep the memory: a red fox amid a ring of azure flowers on an ermine field, the fox for Florys and the flowers for the meadows of the Reach.
When Mern IX Gardener and his sons burned upon the Field of Fire, the Florents looked to be raised in their place. Instead Aegon the Conqueror gave Highgarden to the steward who had handed him the keys, and the black grievance that followed has outlived twenty generations. The Florents bent the knee with the rest of the Reach, but at every contested succession since, they have pressed their older claim.
In the present generation the Florents have bound themselves close to House Baratheon. Lord Alester serves at Highgarden as bannerman to Mace Tyrell, but his brother Ser Axell is castellan of Dragonstone, and his niece Selyse is queen to Stannis Baratheon. His daughter Melessa is Lady of Horn Hill, wed to Randyll Tarly. When the brothers Baratheon went to war, Brightwater Keep declared for Stannis with all its strength, and Lord Alester's son Ser Imry Florent took command of the royal fleet that sailed against King's Landing.
The Blackwater undid them. Imry's fleet burned upon the wildfire of the Hand, Renly's host went over to Joffrey under Tyrell banners, and Lord Alester, despairing of his king's cause, opened a secret correspondence with Tywin Lannister and Mace Tyrell. King Stannis named it treason. On Melisandre's pyre at Dragonstone the Lord of Brightwater Keep was burned alive, and shortly after King Tommen, by the counsel of Lord Tywin, stripped the Florents of Brightwater Keep and bestowed it on Ser Garlan Tyrell. The senior line of Florys the Fox has become, at last, landless.