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None alive now know why Densil behaved so cruelly. No portraits remain of the fourth baron of House Dufort (praise the Eight), but contemporary reports suggest that his eyes were as black as a Wood Elf's, but flat and cold.
Having wiped out his treasury within two years of taking over, Baron Densil set his sights on finding a wealthy bride. The Dufort name attracted an ambitious and very wealthy merchant, and he agreed to offer up his eldest daughter in marriage. The Dufort title in exchange for her extensive dowry. The two were married by proxy and Baroness Helenna arrived at the castle to meet her husband for the first time. It was said she was a woman of plain looks and extreme intellect.
The day she arrived at the castle, Helenna insisted on meeting the Dowager Yoanna. Despite the harsh conditions, Densil's old mother yet lived in the tower, Densil took his new bride to meet her mother-in-law. No one knows exactly what happened during this encounter. The new baroness later said that upon seeing Densil, his mother leaped from her squalid bed and issued a horrific screech.
She grabbed her son with uncanny strength and flung both herself and her soulless surviving child out the tower window. They plunged to their deaths.
Baroness Helenna remained at Castle Navire. A cousin of the Dufort line, Sinvel, was decreed the fifth baron. No one was particularly surprised when the widowed baroness married the fifth baron a month or so later.
Since that union, the barony has prospered and was promoted to a duchy after the conclusion of Ranser's War. Whatever curse struck the Mad Baron and House Dufort has luckily appeared to have died with him.