This weekend Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin gave what has become an increasingly rare public appearance at Balticon—a Comic-Con of sorts in Baltimore. Martin appeared before the crowd several times and even read out an all-new chapter from The Winds of Winter—something he hasn’t done in years. Some show watchers might be intrigued by the timing of this new Greyjoy-centric chapter—like the release of the Dorne and Sansa chapters before it, the new Euron-heavy section seems to comment on some of adaptive choices a recent HBO episode. But the most interesting bit of news for non-book-readers actually has to do with a spoiler-free reveal about Brienne. The lady from Tarth just got a very flattering new backstory.

By most metrics, Brienne’s backstory in both the books and the show is pretty distressing. The lady warrior lost both her mother and all of her siblings and, despite her father’s efforts to marry her off, suffered through three broken engagements. She was mocked, scorned, and rejected in a way the show beautifully captured in the Season 5 scene between Podrick and Brienne when she talked about Renly, one of the only men she ever met who was kind to her. “‘Brienne the Beauty,’ they called me. Great joke. And I realized I was the ugliest girl alive—a great, lumbering beast.”

But, in one move, Martin has given Brienne’s non-dainty frame tremendous new meaning. Brienne, he announced to the Baltic crowd, is the descendent of Ser Duncan the Tall and let me explain, show watchers, what that little detail means.

Ser Duncan the Tall is one of the most famous knights in all of Westeros. Though the show doesn’t have the luxury of delving into history all that often, it made some room for Ser Duncan in Season 4 when Joffrey was flipping through the history of the knights of the Kingsguard. “Ser Duncan the Tall. Four pages for Ser Duncan. He must have been quite a man,” Joffrey sneered. “So they say,” his father/uncle Jaime replied.