House Stark of Winterfell is one of the Great Houses of Westeros and the principal noble house of the North. They trace their line to Bran the Builder, who is said to have raised the Wall at the end of the Long Night and laid the first stones of Winterfell upon the bones of the First Men. For some eight thousand years their forefathers ruled as Kings of Winter from that same seat, holding the North against marauder, Andal, and Targaryen alike.
Kings in the North
Where lesser kingdoms fell to the Andals, the Starks kept the Old Gods and the old ways, and broke any rival who reached too far north: the Marsh Kings of the Neck, the Red Kings of the Dreadfort, the Warg King of Sea Dragon Point, the Barrow Kings of the Rills.
The breaking of those rival kingdoms was the labour of many lifetimes. The Boltons of the Dreadfort, who once crowned themselves Red Kings and kept the flaying ways, bent the knee only after some thousand years of war, and the singers reckoned their submission the proudest trophy in the Stark crypts. The Night's King, a renegade thirteenth Lord Commander whom some chronicles name a Stark in his own right, was broken by Brandon the Breaker in league with the wildling Joramun. King Jon Stark drove raiders, who may have been Ibbenese or Valyrian or early Andal, from the lower White Knife and there raised the holdfast called the Wolf's Den; his son Rickard, called the Laughing Wolf, defeated the last Marsh King and wed his daughter, bringing the Neck and House Reed into Winterfell's realm. King Theon Stark, called the Hungry Wolf, made common cause with the Boltons at the Battle of the Weeping Water to break the Andal warlord Argos Sevenstar, then turned the bloody work outward and raised a Stark fleet that carried fire across the narrow sea into Andalos itself. He conquered the Three Sisters, harried the Fingers, drove the ironborn from Cape Kraken and Bear Island, slew Ravos Hoare for the killing of a Stark cousin, smashed a rebellion in the Rills, and granted lands and aid to the Night's Watch against wildling raiders.
The north would not keep its mastery of the salt water for long. Bear Island was won back by King Loron Greyjoy and lost again to King Rodrik Stark, said by the singers to have taken it from a Greyjoy heir in a wrestling match, though the maesters doubt the tale. Centuries before the Conquest King Brandon Stark, called the Shipwright, set sail westward across the Sunset Sea and was never seen again, and his son Brandon the Burner put the northern shipyards to the torch in his grief, so that the north has had no proper fleet of its own from that day to this. Around the year 700 BC the younger son Karlon Stark put down a rebel lord and was rewarded with the lands he had won, building there the keep that came to be called Karl's Hold, and from him the cadet line of Karstark descends. Several centuries before the Conquest, when Lord Lorimar Peake drove House Manderly out of the Mander on the orders of King Perceon III Gardener, the Starks welcomed the exiled Manderlys to the mouth of the White Knife, granting them the Wolf's Den and the lands around it; in time those lands became White Harbor, the only true city in the north. Against the wildlings beyond the Wall the Starks raised their banners again and again, breaking the brothers Gendel and Gorne in the deep places under the earth some three thousand years ago, and so the singers still tell. Of the legend of Bael the Bard, who is said to have sired a son on the maiden daughter of Brandon the Daughterless and to have been slain at last by that very son, Maester Yandel and other learned men preserve a careful silence. A war over the Three Sisters, which the maesters call the War Across the Water, kept the Starks at odds with the Arryns of the Vale for the better part of a thousand years; in its long course the Wolf's Den was taken once by slavers from the Stepstones, recovered by the great grandson of King Edrick Snowbeard whom men called Brandon Ice Eyes, and the Three Sisters themselves were lost to the Vale at the last.
Aegon's Conquest and Aftermath
When Aegon the Conqueror brought his dragons south, Torrhen Stark mustered thirty thousand spears on the banks of the Trident, weighed the cost, and bent the knee rather than burn. For surrendering his crown he was named Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, and his sons rode home unburned. He is remembered as the King Who Knelt. Queen Rhaenys brokered the marriage of his daughter to Ronnel Arryn, the boy King of the Eyrie, to bind the new realm together; the letters at the Citadel suggest that Torrhen consented only after long protest, and that his sons refused to attend the wedding at all.
After the knee of Torrhen the rule of the north passed quietly through three lords whose names the chroniclers no longer trouble themselves to separate: Brandon the Boisterous, Lord Roderick, and Brandon the Boastful, the last of whom brought his two sons, Walton and Alaric, south to the Golden Wedding in 49 AC and died soon after his return. Walton succeeded him, and within the year the exiled remnant of Maegor the Cruel's Faith Militant and a handful of disgraced Kingsguard rose in mutiny upon the Wall against King Jaehaerys I. Lord Walton called his banners, beheaded Ser Olyver Bracken with Ice at Rimegate, and broke the rebels in the field; he pursued the survivors too far into the haunted forest, and there, by the account that reached Castle Black after, slew two giants before he was torn apart by the rest. His brother Alaric, who had loved Walton dearly, blamed the young king at King's Landing for ever sparing the deserters in the first place, and carried that grievance to the end of his days. In 58 AC, when Queen Alysanne came north on Silverwing, it was Alaric's daughter Alarra who first warmed to her, and through Alarra's friendship that her dour father was slowly charmed into granting the Night's Watch the great tract of land that men would come to call the New Gift. Alaric ordered half the harvest set aside against the winter of 59 to 60 AC and survived the Shivers that followed, dying at last in 72 AC. Both his sons had gone into the crypts before him, and the seat passed to his grandson Edric.
The Dance of the Dragons
Lord Edric kept the seat through the latter years of Jaehaerys's long reign, and was succeeded by Ellard Stark, who carried the votes of the north south to the Great Council of 101 AC at Harrenhal. There, with the realm summoned to choose between Viserys Targaryen and Laenor Velaryon, Ellard cast his lot for Laenor and joined the small Velaryon minority; the maesters who came after wrote that the New Gift still rankled at Winterfell, and that the same grievance set Ellard against the king's preferred heir and turned the north, in the next generation, toward Princess Rhaenyra's faction. The seat passed from Ellard to a Benjen Stark and from him to his son Rickon, who died in 121 AC and left Winterfell to a boy of thirteen, Cregan Stark. Cregan's uncle Bennard ruled as regent for him, and when Cregan came of age in 126 AC Bennard proved slow to surrender his power; in the end Cregan rose against his uncle, put him and his sons in irons, and took the lordship of the north into his own hands.
When the Dance broke in 129 AC, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon flew north and sealed the Pact of Ice and Fire with Lord Cregan, the promise that a daughter of Jacaerys's line would one day wed a son of Winterfell. The north was too remote for its banners to weigh on the early war, but Cregan sent the Winter Wolves south under Lord Roderick Dustin of Barrowton, with knights of White Harbor at their side, to fight and die for Rhaenyra. After one last harvest he himself led a great host of childless men, homeless men, men without wives or sons, and second sons, southward through the snow toward King's Landing. He came too late for battle. Aegon II was already dead by poison, the dragons that had ruled the sky were broken, and a council waited upon the boy Aegon III. Cregan held the city in his fist for a single day, that the maesters remember as the Hour of the Wolf, and in that day he held trials over the lords who had connived at Aegon II's poisoning, sparing only Lord Corlys Velaryon, whose pardon was bought by the Lady Alysanne Blackwood's offered hand in marriage. He was named Hand of the King for that single day, and on the next he turned back for the north. He held the realm together through the bitter regency of Aegon III: a winter that lasted six years, the Winter Fever that came up out of the south in 132 and 133 AC, and a wildling host of three thousand under Sylas the Grim, who broke through Queensgate and had to be hunted down across the snows. His eldest son and heir, also called Rickon, fell in the south at one of the last battles of King Daeron I's Conquest of Dorne, a wound the north never forgot.
Cregan's Successors
Cregan had five sons in all, and the seat went uneasily among them. Jonnel succeeded his father and wed his half niece Sansa, but the marriage was barren and the lordship passed not to his older brother Edric (who had wed his own niece Serena and got children of her) but to Cregan's fourth son Barthogan, for reasons the chronicles no longer record. Barthogan died childless in the Skagosi rebellion of King Daeron II, and the seat went to Cregan's fifth and last son Brandon, from whom the later Starks descend. Brandon was succeeded by his eldest son Rodwell, who died without issue; the lordship passed to his brother Beron. Beron was mortally wounded driving Dagon Greyjoy's ironborn from the north, and as he lay dying at Winterfell the She Wolves of Winterfell, the surviving widows of his line, set the claims of their children one against the other; the years that followed are remembered for those quarrels more than for the lord who at last prevailed, Beron's eldest son Donnor. Donnor died without heirs, and the lordship passed to his brother Willam. In 226 AC the King Beyond the Wall Raymun Redbeard led a great wildling host south, and at Long Lake Lord Willam Stark and Lord Harmond Umber of the Last Hearth met him in the snows; Willam was killed in the breaking of the wildling host, but his brother Artos cut down Raymun Redbeard before the battle ended, and the kingdom was held. Willam was succeeded by his son Edwyle Stark, and Edwyle by his own son Rickard Stark.
Robert's Rebellion
Lord Rickard Stark was urged on by his maester Walys to bind the north to the south through the marriages of his children, what his courtiers came to call his southron ambitions: his heir Brandon to Catelyn Tully of Riverrun, his daughter Lyanna to Robert Baratheon of Storm's End, and his second son Eddard fostered out at the age of eight to the Eyrie under Jon Arryn, where he and Robert grew up brothers in all but blood. At the great tourney at Harrenhal in 281 AC Rickard's four trueborn children stood together for the last time. The winning knight, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, rode past his own wife to lay the crown of love and beauty in Lyanna's lap; within the year the prince had taken her away, and Brandon, riding to King's Landing to demand her return, was arrested by King Aerys II for threatening the life of the crown prince. Rickard answered the summons to court expecting trial by his peers, but the Mad King demanded trial by fire instead, burned him alive in the throne room while Brandon strangled himself in his bonds trying to save him, and then sent word to the Eyrie that the heads of Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon were to be delivered up. Lord Jon Arryn raised his banners instead, and that act, the maesters now agree, is reckoned the beginning of Robert's Rebellion. Eddard climbed back through the Mountains of the Moon and crossed the Bite to call up the north, won at the Battle of the Bells with Hoster Tully's aid, and rode then to Riverrun and made good upon his dead brother's word by wedding Catelyn Tully himself. After Robert broke Rhaegar at the Trident, Eddard took command of the rebel host, marched on King's Landing too late to prevent its sack by Tywin Lannister's men, quarrelled bitterly with Robert over the murders of Rhaegar's wife and children, and rode south to relieve the siege of Storm's End. From there he and six companions sought Lyanna at a tower of joy in the foothills of the Red Mountains; only he and Howland Reed of the Neck rode back, and Lyanna died in his arms after exacting from him a promise whose contents he never spoke aloud.
He returned to Winterfell with a natural son in his arms, raised quietly as Jon Snow and named in the records as a get of the wet nurse Wylla; Catelyn met him at the gates with their trueborn son Robb, and Lyanna's bones were laid in the crypt beside those of her father and brother. Eddard's youngest brother Benjen took the black within months of the war's end and would in time become First Ranger of the Watch. In 289 AC Lord Stark went to war once more for King Robert, putting down Balon Greyjoy's rebellion and bringing the broken Lord of Pyke's surviving son Theon back to Winterfell as a ward and hostage. For fifteen years thereafter Eddard ruled the north quietly and well, keeping a careful distance from the intrigues of King's Landing, and the smallfolk called him a hard, just, and honest lord after the old kind.
A Game of Thrones
By the events of A Game of Thrones the house is led by Lord Eddard Stark, brother in arms to King Robert during the rebellion that toppled the Targaryens, and now Warden of the North in his name. With his lady wife Catelyn of House Tully he has five trueborn children, Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Rickon, and raises his natural son Jon Snow alongside them at Winterfell. The Starks are reputed across the realm as hard, plain, and honest folk, slow to laugh and slower to speak ill of an oath. Their sigil is a grey direwolf running upon a snow-white field; their words are Winter is Coming, and unlike most house mottoes they are a warning rather than a boast.
At the death of Lord Jon Arryn in 298 AC the king himself rode north to ask Eddard to come south as Hand. A letter from Catelyn's sister Lysa, smuggled north in the same hour, named the Lannisters as Jon Arryn's murderers, and against his better judgment Eddard accepted. His daughter Sansa was betrothed to Crown Prince Joffrey, and his second son Bran, climbing the broken tower of the First Keep, witnessed Queen Cersei in the arms of her twin brother Jaime; the kingslayer pitched him from the window to keep his silence, but the boy survived and woke crippled, with visions of a three eyed crow waiting in his sleep. While Eddard's investigation in King's Landing led him to the bastards of King Robert and the truth of Cersei's children, Catelyn followed the dagger of an assassin to Tyrion Lannister, who fell into her hands on the kingsroad and was taken to her sister at the Eyrie. By the time Ned told the queen what he knew and offered her the chance to flee, King Robert was dead of a boar that smelled too much of wine, Petyr Baelish had betrayed his promise of the gold cloaks, and Janos Slynt's men had cut down the Stark household in the Red Keep. Sansa was held hostage in the Red Keep; Arya escaped only by the wits of her dancing master Syrio Forel; Bran's life had been spared by his direwolf Summer in a second attempt at Winterfell; and Jon Snow, gone to the Wall, had saved Lord Commander Mormont from a wight in the dark.
The War of the Five Kings
Robb Stark called the banners and marched south, and at Riverrun the northern and river lords proclaimed him King in the North and King of the Trident in answer to Joffrey's mockery of an execution upon the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor. He took Jaime Lannister at the Whispering Wood, broke the siege of Riverrun at the Battle of the Camps, and won battle after battle in the westerlands while Theon Greyjoy, sent to Pyke as his envoy, betrayed him to ride home and storm Winterfell in his father's name. Bran and Rickon were hidden in the crypts and given out as slain. Robb's mother, in her grief, freed the captive Kingslayer in exchange for a promise that Sansa and Arya would be sent home to her, and on the strength of that broken faith Robb wed Lady Jeyne Westerling of the Crag at dawn, breaking the marriage he had pledged to House Frey. To make amends he sent his uncle Edmure Tully to wed in his place at the Twins, and Lord Walder Frey, conspiring with Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister, slaughtered the king, his lady mother, and a third part of the northern host at what the singers now call the Red Wedding. Sansa, in the meantime, had been wed to Tyrion Lannister to break her claim, was carried out of the city by Petyr Baelish after Joffrey's poisoning, and was brought at last to the Eyrie disguised as the Lord Protector's natural daughter Alayne Stone. Arya, given up for dead a hundred times, took ship at Saltpans with an iron coin and crossed the narrow sea to learn the trade of the Faceless Men. Of the brothers, Bran journeyed north beyond the Wall with Hodor, the Reeds, and his direwolf Summer to the cave of the last greenseer, where he began to learn the ancient arts of greensight; Rickon, with the wildling Osha and his great black wolf Shaggydog, was said by Lord Wyman Manderly to have been carried to the savage Skagos. Jon Snow ranged beyond the Wall, loved and lost a wildling girl named Ygritte, climbed the Wall in Mance Rayder's host, defended Castle Black in the battle beneath the Wall, and refused Stannis Baratheon's offer to be legitimized as Lord of Winterfell. He was elected the youngest Lord Commander in living memory, and in the bitter winter that followed, when he turned the Watch toward defence of the realms of men and an alliance with the free folk, his own officers turned upon him in the snow before the Lord Commander's tower.
The End of the Third Century
At the close of the third century after the Conquest the house seems all but broken: Eddard headless, Catelyn drowned at the Twins and risen in a darker shape as the Lady Stoneheart who hangs Freys from the riverside oaks, Robb murdered in his hall, Sansa hidden under another name in the Vale, Arya gone across the sea, Bran lost in the wilderness beyond the Wall, Rickon a rumour upon Skagos, and Jon Snow stabbed by his sworn brothers. The Iron Throne has named Roose Bolton Warden of the North and legitimised his bastard Ramsay as a Stark son in name, and the great sword Ice has been melted down to make two Lannister blades, Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper. Yet the words of the house remember a winter that always comes again, and the smallfolk of the north have not forgotten that there must always be a Stark in Winterfell.