quick & easy hotd verse ā
* until my brain comes up with something more decent
delivering the news of prince aemonās death to the capitol, gendry is the unknown bastard son of boremund baratheon, conceived at the back of the red keep in 92 AC with a local tavern wench.
he was born with the standard baratheon features: striking blue eyes, thick black hair, and boremund's stubborn frown. his mother (blonde, frail woman) never sought out boremund for any form of compensation; most likely, she didn't know who he was. simply that he was a nobleman.
when gendry was five, his mum passed away from fever. gendry eventually ran away from the tavern, chased by the tavern keeper, and he had to scrap by fleabottom for a year until he met a qohorik master armorer, master aoken.
as a child, gendry has always been larger than his peers. (again, the baratheon genes at work.) this was why master aoken had taken up gendry at all because he saw "the potential in the boy". true enough, gendry showed resilient and easy strength in hammering the anvil.
unlike in canon [where tobho mott was one of the more famed master armorer due to his specific skills¹] master aoken, though a skilled smith himself, is considerably average among the many swordsmith down the street of steels. therefore, there will be weeks sometimes that master aoken and gendry would have to rely on limited pay to survive.
this did not help when master aoken is a drunkard and a serial gambler; something gendry, as he grows older, tries to stave master aoken away from, but also aid him whenever he's passed out somewhere.
when gendry was three-and-ten, the second prince took a hold of fleabottom with his goldcloaks and, overnight, they saw a dramatic change of order "restored". gendry lost friends from this sudden change, just as master aoken did as well. while some streets thrived, like the street of silk, some others lived in constant fear and watch-out. this turn of event is the first legitimate seed sown in gendry of his growing antagonism towards highborns.²
*** the following details may change ā master aoken eventually passed away when gendry is five-and-twenty. ever since, he took up the armoury left in master aoken's wake and run it himself.
fun little note: his relationship with aoken is both a parallel to his relationship with tobho mott, yoren and arya in the canon verse. that is, aoken was, for a while, his father / brother figure (aoken was only 20ish when he found gendry), his master, his protector, and his source of shelter ā but obviously as aoken's addiction grew worse over the years, gendry was forced to become his protector and source of shelter.
fun little note #2: same as got canon, gendry will always yearn for stability and family - which he still sometimes search in aoken, but he does not always receive them fully due to aoken's addictions.
¹ referring to the fact that tobho mott were one of the few who could work with valyrian steel. considering the time period wherein the targs' culture survive and are thriving, i would assume that smiths working with valyrian steel are abundant. or at least, there would be more than one. master aoken is simply one of them, thus he loses the appeal of being unique unlike tobho mott who posessed it. ² gendry has a lot of feelings about what the goldcloaks are doing. please feel free to challenge him about it :)