Of all the treacheries of the War of the Five Kings, few cut the north so deeply as the fall of Winterfell to Theon Greyjoy. Sent by his father Balon to reave the Stony Shore, the Stark ward instead turned upon the house that had raised him. With no more than a handful of men he scaled the walls in the night while the castle lay near empty, its garrison drawn off, and took the ancient seat of the Kings of Winter almost without a fight. He slew the few who resisted, forced its people to yield, and named himself Prince of Winterfell. When Bran and Rickon Stark fled into the wild rather than bend, Theon could not find them; to cover his failure and cow the north, he put two miller's boys to death, tarred and hung their small bodies from the walls, and gave them out as the murdered sons of Eddard Stark.
Theon's hold on the castle was brief and hollow. Ser Rodrik Cassel, the old master-at-arms, gathered what northern strength he could and marched to retake Winterfell, but he was betrayed at the walls by Ramsay Snow, the bastard of the Dreadfort, who came in the guise of a friend at the head of Bolton men and Dreadfort spears. Ramsay cut down Ser Rodrik and his host, then turned his cruelty upon the castle itself. His men slaughtered the ironborn, save Theon, whom they carried off in chains, and put Winterfell to the torch, butchering its remaining folk without regard for age or station. The great hall and the towers were left blackened and roofless, the winter town burned, the heart of the north reduced to a smoking shell, its people scattered and slain by the very man his father the Leech Lord would soon set over the north.