The North

For thousands of years the North stood as a kingdom of its own, ruled from Winterfell by a single line: House Stark, whom tradition traces back to Brandon the Builder, a figure of the Age of Heroes. No other house challenged the northern throne for generations.

That independence ended when Aegon Targaryen crossed the sea with his dragons. Torrhen Stark gathered his men and marched into the Riverlands ready to face him, but once he weighed the scale of that force he chose not to gamble his people's lives: he sent his brother Brandon Snow with maesters to negotiate surrender. He has been remembered ever since by a name that sums up the choice.

Aegon honored the gesture. He left the Starks in charge of Winterfell, now bearing the title of Wardens of the North, and so a crown became a lordship without a drop of northern blood spilled on a battlefield.

With the crown gone but the lordship secure, the North stayed loyal to the Targaryens for generations, even as the south paid little attention to its affairs. Queen Alysanne wove part of that bond through marriages linking northern and southern houses, drawing together two worlds that usually turned their backs on each other.

Help also came for the Night's Watch: backed by Lord Alaric Stark, the queen poured resources into the Wall, a reminder that guarding that frozen border was never the black brothers' burden alone.

When the Dance of the Dragons split the realm in two, the North sided with the Blacks. Hundreds of men left their homes to form an army people called the Winter Wolves, ready to seek a glorious death in the south rather than become mouths to feed through the winter ahead.

The war ended sooner than they expected, and no battle was left for them to fight. Some turned to banditry, others married river widows, and a group crossed the sea to serve as mercenaries under a new name.

Generations later, Lord Rickard Stark looked south with an ambition not all his bannermen shared. He arranged marriages for his children with the great houses of Westeros and, in doing so, turned down offers from his own lords, planting a resentment that would take years to surface.

That resentment grew when the North sent troops to fight in Robert's Rebellion. Among the dead were nobles whose deaths reshuffled the succession of several houses, House Stark itself included.

In time, Eddard Stark, Rickard's son, rose to become Hand of the King in the south. His execution at young Joffrey Baratheon's order shut the door on any chance of understanding between his house and the Lannisters.

The North answered by crowning Eddard's son, Robb Stark, as King in the North, backed by his bannermen and the lords of the Trident. That crowning set the War of the Five Kings in motion.

While Robb fought in the south, the Ironborn attacked much of the North, and in the Riverlands the Lannisters prevailed at the battle of the Blackwater. With his king's cause growing weaker, Roose Bolton decided to switch sides.

His betrayal was sealed at the Red Wedding, where much of the northern army fell. In exchange, the Boltons were granted lordship over the North, and Roose became the new Warden of the North, a title that for centuries had belonged only to the Starks.

His authority, though, convinced no one: Stannis Baratheon and several northern lords contested it, and almost everyone else eyed it with envy and suspicion.