House Stark of Winterfell

The Stark line runs back to the First Men, and tradition traces it to Brandon the Builder, who helped raise the Wall for the newly formed Night's Watch before founding Winterfell and, with it, a line that would reign over the North for thousands of years.

Some say the Night's King, that thirteenth Lord Commander turned dark legend, was a Stark, though that is only one of the origins claimed for him. Firmer ground is the record of their wars. They broke the Boltons of the Dreadfort, who gave up flaying prisoners only when they swore fealty some thousand years past. They also drove off raiders at White Knife, and won Bear Island from the ironmen in a wrestling match. Vassal houses grew out of those campaigns: the Karstarks, the Umbers, the Mormonts.

There was war too against the Arryns of the Vale, after a raid on the Three Sisters, and it ended with the North ceding those islands after years of fighting.

That reign ended when Aegon Targaryen crossed the sea with his dragons. Torrhen Stark marched south into the Riverlands ready to face him, but weighing the Dragon King's strength he chose to bend the knee instead. He has been known ever since as "The King Who Knelt".

Aegon did not punish the surrender. He returned Winterfell to the Starks as a lordship and granted them the title of Warden of the North, which their heirs would hold for generations.

Nearly a hundred and thirty years after the Conquest, House Targaryen split in two over the Dance of the Dragons, and the North did not stay out of it. Prince Jacaerys Velaryon sought Lord Cregan Stark's support, and won it through an agreement remembered as the Pact of Ice and Fire, meant for a war that was expected to be short and was not.

When it was over, Cregan served a brief spell as Hand to King Aegon III, a stretch of time that came to be known as the Hour of the Wolf.

Around the year 213, the house went through an unusual succession crisis. A string of lords had fallen in the North's wars, against rebels from Skagos, against the wildling king Raymun Redbeard, and against Dagon Greyjoy and the ironmen, until Beron Stark was left at its head, himself slowly dying of wounds, with five Stark widows arguing over who would follow him.

Out of that tangle came Rickard Stark as Lord of Winterfell. Together with his maester, Walys Flowers, he looked south for allies: he betrothed his heir Brandon to Catelyn Tully of Riverrun, and his daughter Lyanna to Robert Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End.

Robert loved Lyanna from afar, but she did not share his ardour, least of all after Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, having won the tourney at Harrenhal, crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty over his own wife, Elia Martell. Lyanna vanished soon after, and in time it was taken as certain that Rhaegar had carried her off against her will.

Brandon rode to King's Landing demanding answers, and King Aerys II had him seized alongside his father, Rickard, before putting both to death. That double killing lit the open war against the Targaryens.

Eddard, Rickard's second son, married Catelyn Tully to seal the alliance with Riverrun and fought on the rebel side through the sack of King's Landing and the siege of Storm's End. Afterward, with Howland Reed and five other companions, he reached the Tower of Joy searching for his sister. He found her dying, and of that farewell only this is known: she drew from him a promise Eddard would carry for the rest of his life.

When the war ended, Eddard came home to the North with a bastard son, Jon Snow, and ruled from then on in Robert's name, now king. His younger brother, Benjen, took the black at the Wall. Years later, as Lord of Winterfell, Eddard helped crush the Greyjoy Rebellion and brought Theon Greyjoy home as a ward.

Years later, Robert I travelled to Winterfell to name his old friend Eddard Hand of the King. Eddard accepted and rode south with his daughters Sansa and Arya, while Catelyn stayed in the North with Robb, with Rickon, and with Bran, left crippled after a fall from a tower at Jaime Lannister's hand. Jon Snow, for his part, took the road to the Wall with his uncle Benjen.

The bond between Stark and Lannister broke completely when Catelyn had Tyrion Lannister seized. After Robert's death, Eddard was charged with treason and executed, and open war was declared between the two houses.

Robb marched south, freed Riverrun, and there, breaking with the Iron Throne, had himself proclaimed King in the North.

While Robb won battles in the south without gaining allies beyond the Tullys, Winterfell was left exposed. Theon Greyjoy seized it on his own account, and later Ramsay Bolton finished burning it to the ground.

Bran and Rickon fled separately, each toward a different part of the North. Sansa was held hostage at court in King's Landing. Arya, who had escaped the capital with a group of recruits bound for the Wall, saw that group attacked and ended up serving at Harrenhal, from which she eventually escaped.

When Catelyn freed Jaime Lannister on her own authority, Rickard Karstark answered by killing prisoners, and Robb had him executed, losing much of his own army in the process. Soon after, Robb broke his promise to a daughter of Walder Frey by marrying Jeyne Westerling instead, and the Freys withdrew their support.

With Winterfell lost and the North in enemy hands, Robb agreed to go to the Twins for the wedding of his uncle Edmure Tully to a Frey daughter, as a gesture of peace. There, in a trap laid by Roose Bolton, Tywin Lannister, and Walder Frey, Robb and Catelyn were murdered in what would come to be known as the Red Wedding.

With Robb and Catelyn dead, what remained of the house scattered across Westeros. Bran, together with Hodor and the Reeds, crossed the Wall guided by a mysterious rider and reached the lair of an old being known as the three-eyed raven, where he began learning to see beyond what ordinary eyes can. Of Rickon it is only known that he is hiding on Skagos, and that Lord Wyman Manderly has set Davos Seaworth to find him.

Sansa, held at court and later married off to Tyrion Lannister, escaped during Joffrey's wedding and ended up at the Eyrie, where Littlefinger passes her off as his bastard daughter. Arya fled King's Landing, served as a scullion at Harrenhal, fell in with the Brotherhood Without Banners and then Sandor Clegane, and finally sailed across the sea to Braavos.

Jon Snow, back at the Wall, infiltrated Mance Rayder's wildling army and returned in time to see Stannis Baratheon arrive mid-battle. He was soon elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, a post from which he refused to be legitimised as Lord of Winterfell. Meanwhile, in a North no Stark now rules, Ramsay Bolton marries a girl the smallfolk call Arya Stark, to lend the Boltons a title that is not truly theirs.