Rickon Stark

Rickon is born in Winterfell, the last of the children of Eddard Stark and Catelyn Tully. Robb, Sansa, Arya, and Bran come before him, and he also has a half-brother, Jon Snow, raised in the same castle despite not sharing a mother.

Stubborn and not given to obeying, he inherits the light eyes and the look of the Tullys, his mother's family, more than his father's.

When Jon Snow finds the abandoned litter of direwolf pups, Eddard lets each of his children keep one. Rickon, the youngest of them all, is at first afraid of his, and takes a while to name it: he ends up calling it Shaggydog.

During the feast Winterfell holds for King Robert Baratheon, Rickon stops beside Jon in the procession, and his half-brother encourages him to keep going.

When Eddard leaves for King's Landing to serve as Hand of the King, he leaves Rickon in Winterfell with his mother and Robb. Bran's fall from a tower and the coma that follows consume Catelyn entirely, and Rickon, left to himself, clings to Robb, crying.

In time he grows used to running around the castle yard with Shaggydog, Grey Wind, and Summer, and grows angry each time Robb has to leave on business in the North. When the direwolves turn on Tyrion Lannister, it is Rickon who calls Shaggydog back.

On learning that Robb is marching south to free their father, Rickon hides in the crypts of Winterfell and attacks the men sent to fetch him with a rusty sword; Shaggydog wounds two of them. When his wolf is chained up in the kennels he cries, and refuses to say goodbye to Robb before he rides out.

Bran dreams of their father in the crypts, and Osha and Maester Luwin take him down to see that the tomb is empty. Shaggydog, unchained, breaks free and wounds Luwin before Summer drives him back; Rickon, who had freed his own wolf, says that he too dreamed their father was coming home.

The group then goes up to the maester's tower, where Luwin shows the children obsidian arrowheads. Soon after, a raven arrives with the news: Joffrey Baratheon has had Eddard Stark executed in King's Landing, and Rickon weeps for his father's death.

After the victory at the Battle of the Camps, the northern lords and the river lords proclaim Robb King in the North at Riverrun, and his siblings become princes.

Under the pact between House Stark and House Frey, Big Walder and Little Walder arrive at Winterfell as wards. Rickon is wary of them at first, though he ends up playing with them at Lord of the Crossing, monsters and maidens, rats and cats, and building his own pretend castle.

When Little Walder shoves him into a puddle, Shaggydog bites him, and Ser Rodrik Cassel has the castle's direwolves shut up in the godswood. With his mother away in the south, Rickon refuses to have his hair cut, and bites the girl who tries: from then on he wears it long and unkempt.

Theon Greyjoy takes Winterfell with a band of ironborn raiders, and Rickon is held hostage along with Bran and the Reed siblings. When Stygg kills Mikken, it is Meera Reed who shields Rickon. Soon after, Osha, Hodor, the direwolves, the Reeds, and the Stark children all vanish from the castle.

Theon and Reek search for them without success in the Wolfswood; instead, they kill two miller's sons, and Reek flays the bodies. Theon displays the tarred heads at Winterfell as those of Bran and Rickon.

The news reaches King's Landing, where Varys tells Tyrion Lannister, who tells his sister Cersei; both fear how Catelyn, holding Jaime Lannister hostage, will react. At Riverrun, Catelyn decides to free Jaime in exchange for her daughters; in King's Landing, Sansa prays for her brothers during the Battle of the Blackwater, and at Harrenhal, Arya weeps on learning of their deaths.

In truth, Rickon and the others have hidden in the crypts and survive the sack that Reek — in reality Ramsay Snow — inflicts on the ruined castle. They find Maester Luwin dying in the godswood; he tells them Bran and Rickon must be split up and hidden. Osha takes Rickon and Shaggydog away to a destination she reveals to no one.

All of Westeros believes Rickon dead, but Jon Snow, warged into Ghost, dreams of Shaggydog tearing apart a huge, long-horned goat — perhaps a unicorn of Skagos — without knowing the dream points to where his brother is hiding.

Wex Pyke, a survivor of Winterfell's fall, tells Lord Wyman Manderly and Robett Glover that he followed Rickon and Osha to Skagos. Davos Seaworth sets out for the island to find the boy and name him heir to Winterfell.

The novels leave Rickon's fate open, on his way to Skagos with Osha. The show, instead, closes his story earlier: it places his death in the year 303, a point the books have not yet reached.

The atlas records both versions without mixing them, since each canon follows its own calendar.