The North

House Stark is the ancient ruling house of the North, Lords of Winterfell and Wardens of the North since the age of heroes. First Men in blood and the old gods in faith, the Starks are as old as the Wall itself — a family shaped by the cold and the long memories that come with it. They are typically dark of hair and grey of eye, long-limbed and stern of feature, though the line has broadened through centuries of marriages into the lesser houses of the North.

 

The house's most storied possession is Ice, a Valyrian steel greatsword passed from lord to lord, its pale grey blade as much a symbol of Stark authority as Winterfell itself. It was with Ice that Cregan Stark beheaded the last men condemned during the Hour of the Wolf, fulfilling his justice before surrendering the Hand's chain of office and riding home.

 

The North has not been a naval power since the days of Brandon the Shipwright, a King in the North who sailed west into the Sunset Sea thousands of years ago and was never seen again. His son, Brandon the Burner, put the torch to what remained of the northern fleet in his grief, and the North has gone without ever since — a fact that shapes its character as much as its winters do.

 

Cregan Stark marched south in 131 AC to honor the blood oath he had sworn to Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, arriving to find the war already over and the peace already made. He served six days as Hand of the King during what became known as the Hour of the Wolf, presiding over the trials of those who had poisoned Aegon II before returning his chain of office and riding home. The Pact of Ice and Fire — his sworn promise that Jacaerys's firstborn daughter would one day wed a Stark heir — died with the prince, but the memory of it lingers. The North does not forget oaths lightly, even ones circumstance has rendered moot.

 

By 140 AC, Lord Cregan rules Winterfell at two-and-thirty, and grief has become something of a familiar companion. His first wife, Arra Norrey, died in childbed in 128 AC, leaving him a son — Rickon, now twelve, betrothed to Jeyne Manderly. He wed again during the Hour of the Wolf itself, taking Alysanne Blackwood to wife in a match born as much of politics as anything else, though by all accounts it became something warmer than that. She bore him four daughters before dying in 139 AC, leaving Winterfell quieter than it has any right to be with six children in it. An arrangement is already spoken of between Cregan and his distant cousin Lynara Stark, but he has not yet taken her to wife. He is in no apparent hurry. Winterfell waits, as it always does, for what comes next.

House Bolton is one of the oldest and most feared houses in the North, ruling from the Dreadfort on the banks of the Last River. First Men in blood and ancient in lineage, the Boltons once ruled as Red Kings across the lands between the Last River and the White Knife -- bitter rivals of the Starks for dominance over the North for thousands of years before the last Red King, Rogar the Huntsman, finally bent the knee to Winterfell.

 

The submission did not soften the house's reputation. The Boltons are known throughout the North for their tradition of flaying their enemies, a practice they were commanded to abandon upon submission to Stark authority -- and which rumor insists they have never truly given up. A hidden chamber in the Dreadfort is said to hold the flayed skins of enemies past. Whether true or not, no one has ever pressed the point loudly.

 

By 140 AC, House Bolton endures as one of the most powerful bannermen of Winterfell, outwardly obedient and inwardly unchanged. The Dreadfort watches, as it has always watched, and its blades remain sharp.

 

Members of House Bolton are typically pale of complexion, with light eyes -- most often grey or pale blue -- and hair ranging from dark brown to near-black. They tend toward lean builds and are seldom described as warm in bearing.

House Cerwyn is among the oldest and closest bannermen of House Stark, their seat at Castle Cerwyn sitting barely half a day's ride from Winterfell itself. That proximity has shaped the house entirely -- the Cerwyns have been in Stark's orbit for so long that the line between close vassal and household companion has often blurred, and the lords of Cerwyn are typically counted among the most trusted men in the North.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Cerwyn followed Cregan Stark south without hesitation. Lord Cerwyn, said to have been Cregan's closest friend, was present in King's Landing during the Hour of the Wolf, standing at the Lord of Winterfell's side as he presided over the trials that closed the war. It is a distinction the house has not forgotten.

 

By 140 AC, House Cerwyn remains one of the most prominent bannermen in the North, their loyalty to Winterfell as unambiguous as their words suggest. Members of the house tend toward the sturdy, dark-featured look common to the old Northern bloodlines -- dark hair, grey or brown eyes, and the broad builds of men raised to cold weather and hard ground.

House Dustin is one of the great houses of the North, ruling the barrowlands from Barrow Hall in Barrowton — a castle built upon the Great Barrow itself, said by legend to be the resting place of the First King of the First Men. The rusted crown on their sigil is no idle ornament. The Dustins claim descent from those ancient Barrow Kings who ruled the western reaches of the North long before the Starks unified it, and they have never entirely forgotten what that means.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Dustin sent two thousand men south of the Neck under Lord Roderick Dustin — Roddy the Ruin — while Cregan Stark assembled the main northern host. These were no young soldiers. It was long the custom in the North for older men to march to war in winter, freeing the food stores at home for those with years yet to live. The Winter Wolves, as they called themselves, wore old mail and ragged furs and carried axes, mauls, and ancient iron swords. They charged Lannister spearmen five times at the Battle by the Lakeshore and came away victorious despite losing two-thirds of their number. Roddy the Ruin sounded the charge at the Butcher's Ball that killed Criston Cole.

 

He died at the First Battle of Tumbleton, his shield arm taken off by Ser Bryndon Hightower's longaxe — and killed both Hightowers anyway before his wounds took him. The last of the Winter Wolves died with him.

 

The years since the war have not been without their shadows. During the great winter that followed, Lord Jonos Dustin — who rules Barrowton still — closed his gates as hundreds of starving smallfolk gathered beneath his walls. He has never answered for it, and in the barrowlands, no one has forgotten.

 

By 140 AC, House Dustin endures as one of the more powerful bannermen of Winterfell, their ancient lineage and Dance-era sacrifice standing somewhat in tension with more recent memory. Members of the house tend toward the broad, weathered look of old northern stock — dark or sandy hair, grey eyes, and the unhurried bearing of people who have always known the cold is coming.

House Glover is among the principal bannermen of Winterfell, ruling Deepwood Motte from deep within the northwestern wolfswood. Old in blood and older in memory, the Glovers were once kings in their own right after the Long Night, ruling the wolfswood until the Kings of Winter brought them to heel. The silver mailed fist on their banner is the emblem of a house that has never entirely stopped thinking of itself as more than it appears.

 

Deepwood Motte is a modest wooden castle by the standards of the great houses, but the wolfswood itself is the Glovers' true domain. The forest clans -- Houses Bole, Branch, Forrester, and Woods -- are sworn to Deepwood Motte rather than directly to Winterfell, making the Glovers the gateway to a considerable body of hard and half-wild fighting men who do not march for just anyone.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Glover followed Cregan Stark south and backed the blacks without hesitation, as they have backed every Stark cause in living memory.

 

By 140 AC, House Glover endures as a reliable and quietly formidable presence in the North -- not the wealthiest of Stark's bannermen, nor the most prominent at court, but the kind of house that has outlasted flashier rivals by never overreaching and never forgetting where its strength actually lies. Members of the house tend toward the dark, hardy look of people raised in deep woodland -- dark hair, grey or brown eyes, and builds that favor endurance over elegance.

House Hornwood is among the principal bannermen of Winterfell, holding lands in the eastern reaches of the North that border both the Dreadfort and the Manderly holdings around White Harbor. It is not the most comfortable position -- to have Bolton on one side and Manderly on the other is to live permanently between two ambitious neighbors -- and the Hornwoods have long cultivated the steady, watchful temperament that such a position demands.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, Lord Hornwood declared for the blacks and marched south with Cregan Stark's host as part of the army that arrived in King's Landing during the Hour of the Wolf. The house paid a quiet price for it -- his younger son, who had come south with the army, disappeared into Flea Bottom during those turbulent days and was never found. Whether he died in the chaos, lost himself in the city, or simply chose not to return is a question the family has never been able to answer.

 

By 140 AC, House Hornwood endures as a reliable if unremarkable presence among Stark's bannermen -- steady in loyalty, careful in politics, and very much aware of who their neighbors are. Members of the house tend toward sturdy northern builds, with dark or brown hair and the grey eyes common to old First Men blood.

House Karstark is Stark blood made its own house. Some seven centuries before Aegon's Landing, Karlon Stark -- a younger son of the King of Winter -- was granted lands in the northeastern reaches of the North as reward for putting down a rebel lord. The castle he raised there he called Karl's Hold, which became Karhold in time, and the Karhold Starks became Karstarks in the way that names do when generations pass and distance grows. The white sunburst on black is their own, but the blood behind it is as old as Winterfell.

 

Karhold sits near the Grey Cliffs overlooking the Shivering Sea, as far north and east as any great house in Westeros dares seat itself. It is cold country, raided by Skagosi and wildlings with enough regularity that the Karstarks have never had the luxury of being anything other than fighters. They are typically big men -- bearded, long-haired, brown of hair and blue-grey of eye, broad in build and long in face -- shaped by generations of cold weather and harder neighbors.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Karstark marched south with Cregan Stark and the blacks without hesitation, as Stark blood does.

 

By 140 AC, the Karstarks remain among the most formidable of Winterfell's bannermen -- distant kin to the Starks, loyal as Starks, and about as warm.

House Manderly is the wealthiest house in the North and the most unusual — southron in faith, southron in manner, and southron in origin. They did not come to the North by conquest or ancient right but by exile. A thousand years before Aegon's Landing, Lord Lorimar Peake drove House Manderly from their seat at Dunstonbury on the Mander at the behest of King Perceon III Gardener, who feared their growing power in the Reach. House Peake took Dunstonbury for themselves. The Manderlys fled north with what wealth they could carry, and the King of Winter gave them the Wolf's Den and the charge of defending the White Knife — an oath the Manderlys have honored with a loyalty that can only come from people who remember very clearly what it felt like to have nowhere to go.

 

The city of White Harbor grew from that bargain. Built on Manderly wealth and Manderly ambition, it is the only true city in the North, the region's primary trade port, and the most southron place north of the Neck — wide cobbled streets, knights in service, septons and septs, merchants from half the known world moving through its harbor. The New Castle, built to replace the aging Wolf's Den, is said to deliberately echo their lost seat at Dunstonbury. The Manderlys worship the Seven, not the old gods, and have maintained a strong tradition of knighthood in a land where most men fight without ever being anointed.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, the Manderlys declared for the blacks. Prince Jacaerys Velaryon flew to White Harbor personally on his dragon Vermax to secure their support — a dragon landing in the North's only city was not a small thing, and Lord Manderly answered the call in kind. Their fleet and their harbor were significant contributions to Rhaenyra's cause, and it was at White Harbor that much of the northern war effort was organized and supplied.

 

By 140 AC, House Manderly is among the most powerful bannermen in the North and the most likely to be found beyond it. White Harbor's trade connections, their southron faith and customs, and their long memory of exile have made them comfortable in southern courts in a way most northern houses are not. A Manderly in King's Landing raises no eyebrows. A Stark or a Karstark at court is a different matter entirely.

 

Members of House Manderly tend toward the heavyset, a trait that has run in the family for generations, with fair or light brown hair and blue or grey eyes. Their dress and manner are markedly more southron than their northern neighbors. And, in keeping with their history, members of House Manderly are more likely than any other house to maintain a presence in the capital. 

House Mormont holds Bear Island in the Bay of Ice, a cold and beautiful place of old oaks, tall pines, and more bears than people. It is not a wealthy seat. Bear Island has few resources worth coveting, and the Mormonts have never been rich -- but they have been proud, and they have been loyal, and in the North those things count for more than gold.

 

The island came to them by way of Rodrik Stark, a King in the North said to have won it from a driftwood king of the ironborn in a wrestling match -- though skeptical maesters suggest the kings more likely wrestled with words than with their bodies. Whatever the truth of it, the Mormonts have held Bear Island ever since, and they have held it hard. Ironborn raiders and wildlings from the Frozen Shore have tested them for generations, most often striking while the men were out fishing. The women of Bear Island learned to fight from necessity, and the tradition has never left them. The carving on the gate of Mormont Keep says everything: a woman in a bearskin, a child at her breast and a battleaxe in her other hand.

 

House Mormont possesses Longclaw, a Valyrian steel bastard sword, held by the family for five centuries -- a treasure entirely out of proportion with the house's modest means.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Mormont followed Cregan Stark and the blacks without hesitation.

By 140 AC, the Mormonts remain exactly what they have always been -- poor, proud, fierce, and immovable. Members of the house tend toward sturdy, weathered builds, dark hair, and the grey eyes common to old northern stock.

House Reed rules the Neck from a seat no one can find twice. Greywater Watch floats on a haunted bog and moves -- where and how, the crannogmen do not explain, and ravens cannot locate it. It cannot be found on any map. An army that tried to take it would drown in the marshes long before it got close, which is, more or less, the point.

 

The crannogmen are the smallest and most reclusive of the North's peoples, living in the swamps and marshes of the Neck in ways that have not changed since before the Andal invasion. They are slight of build and short of stature, shaped by a land of shallow water and poor nourishment, and tend toward lean, wiry frames, dark or muddy brown hair, and eyes of green, grey, or brown -- the coloring of people who have spent generations in dim light and still water. They do not fight in open battle if they can avoid it -- they harry, they vanish, they strike with poison darts from the reeds and disappear before their enemies know where to look. Armies that have attempted to march the causeway through the Neck with hostile intent have found the crannogmen a far more formidable obstacle than the road itself.

 

House Reed has sworn to House Stark for thousands of years, since long before the Andals came to Westeros, and their loyalty to Winterfell is absolute and entirely non-transferable. During the Dance of the Dragons they were of no recorded significance in the wider war -- which is exactly how the Reeds prefer things.

 

By 140 AC, Greywater Watch remains as inaccessible and unknowable as it has always been. A Reed at court would be a genuinely unusual sight, and would likely draw as many curious stares as a shadowcat on a leash.

House Ryswell rules the Rills, the broad sweep of land between the barrowlands and the Stony Shore, a territory crossed by countless small streams and brooks that give the region its name. It is horse country -- flat, wide, and well-watered -- and the Ryswells have bred the finest horses in the North for as long as anyone can remember. Their cavalry is the largest in the region, their animals prized enough to serve as diplomatic gifts, and the horse's head on their banner is no idle choice of sigil.

 

They are an old family with old convictions. An ancient tale tells that when seventy-nine deserters abandoned the Wall, one among them was the youngest son of the Lord of the Rills, who sought shelter at his father's keep. The lord returned his son and every man with him to the Nightfort, where they were buried alive in the ice to forever stand the watch they had abandoned. Late in his life, that same lord took the black himself, to end his days standing watch behind his own flesh and blood. Whether the story is entirely true or merely true in the ways that matter, the North tells it still.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Ryswell followed Cregan Stark south with the blacks.

 

By 140 AC, the Ryswells remain among the most prominent bannermen of Winterfell -- wealthy in horses if not in gold, vast in territory, and possessed of a reputation for the kind of hard, uncompromising honor that the North respects even when it does not entirely welcome it. Members of the house tend toward lean, weathered builds suited to long hours in the saddle, with brown or dark hair and grey or brown eyes.

House Tallhart holds Torrhen's Square, a sturdy keep on the shores of a broad lake southwest of Winterfell, surrounded by dense woodland that provides the region's primary income in timber and fishing. They are not the wealthiest of Stark's bannermen nor the most prominent at court, but they are reliable, and in the North reliability is its own form of distinction.

 

The Tallharts are First Men in blood and old in loyalty to Winterfell, their house predating the Conquest by centuries. Their territory, though modest, sits at a strategically useful point -- the lake and the forests around Torrhen's Square make it a natural staging point for forces moving between the barrowlands and Winterfell, and the Tallharts have always understood the value of holding a place that armies need to pass through.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Tallhart followed Cregan Stark south with the blacks without recorded distinction -- which is to say they did what was asked of them, came home, and got on with it.

 

By 140 AC, the Tallharts endure as steady, unshowy bannermen of Winterfell. Members of the house tend toward the sturdy, dark-featured look of old northern stock -- brown or dark hair, grey or brown eyes, and the weathered, practical bearing of people raised in deep woodland country.

Last Hearth is exactly what it sounds like -- the last fire before the Wall, the northernmost lordly seat in the Seven Kingdoms, a castle of pine and oak in a hard country of lonely hills and cold rivers. The Umbers have held it since before the Andal invasion, former petty kings reduced to vassals of Winterfell, and they have spent every generation since defending their lands against wildling raiders who come down from beyond the Wall with a regularity that has shaped the family as thoroughly as the cold.

 

The Umbers are big people -- famously, generation after generation, the kind of large that gets talked about. They are broad and loud and possessed of a ferocious loyalty to the Starks that is less about deference and more about respect for demonstrated strength. Their sigil is a roaring giant breaking silver chains on flame-red, and it suits them.

 

They have a deep and genuine hatred of wildlings, born of centuries of raids and losses -- a cousin of one lord carried off, the only daughter of another taken and never returned. That hatred makes them invaluable allies for the Night's Watch, and many Lord Commanders have had Umber blood. It also makes them, by the standards of more southron houses, somewhat wild themselves -- a fact that is best left unremarked upon at Last Hearth.

 

Rumors persist that the Umbers still practice the lord's right to the first night, abolished by King Jaehaerys I some eighty years past. The Umbers deny it. The denial is not universally believed.

 

During the Dance of the Dragons, House Umber marched south with Cregan Stark and the blacks, as they have marched for every Stark cause in living memory.

 

By 140 AC, Last Hearth sits as cold and defiant as it ever has. Members of the house run large -- brown-haired, grey-eyed, broad of shoulder and long of limb, with the weathered look of people who have spent their lives in the far north and intend to spend the rest there.

The following houses are the remaining vassal houses of the Crownlands. Please click a house's box for additional known information such as existing characters (canon or custom), house words, and who a house's liege lord might be.