Arya Stark

The younger Stark daughter — wilful, quick, happier with a blade than a needle. She named her direwolf Nymeria, for a warrior queen.

The fuller tale

Arya is the Stark who never fit the picture: better with a bow than her brothers, allergic to needlework, collector of the names of the overlooked. The younger daughter — long-faced, mud-spattered, nicknamed Horseface by crueler girls — inventoried Winterfell's servants and shepherds' children the way Sansa inventoried songs, and named her direwolf for a warrior queen. Her father, instead of correcting her, indulged the wolf blood: a slim sword from Jon as a parting gift, and a Braavosi fencing master in King's Landing who called the lessons dancing. Syrio Forel's water dance — swift as a deer, quiet as a shadow — becomes the frame of her whole life.

When the world breaks on the steps of Baelor's sept, she is in the crowd, watching. What follows is the war's underside, seen from a child's height: a Night's Watch recruit column under a false name, the burning riverlands, Harrenhal's terrors — where she serves the very lords killing her family, and learns from a captive assassin that three deaths can be bought with three names — then the Brotherhood without Banners, and the Hound as unlikely guardian, captor and tutor. Each stop strips something away and sharpens what remains. The list she recites at night — the names of everyone she means to kill — is a child's prayer with teeth, and the tale never quite decides whether it is keeping her alive or eating her.

Braavos and the House of Black and White offer the final trade: all of herself, in exchange for the power to be no one. She scrubs corpses, learns the lying game, goes blind and gets her eyes back, kills for the Many-Faced God and is punished for killing off the ledger. She takes the training and refuses the bargain — the Faceless Men teach her everything except how to stop being Arya Stark, and Needle, hidden in the rocks rather than surrendered, wins that argument for her. When the Waif is sent to end the apostasy, a blind girl's training and a single candle-cut end the game instead, and a girl announces to the kindly man that she is going home.

She comes home a legend wearing a girl's face. The Freys learn first — Walder's own sons baked into a pie, and the whole male line poisoned at a single toast, the North's longest bill settled by its smallest creditor. Winterfell gets back something wilder than it lost: a sister who trades barbs with death and unsettles everyone but Jon. And in the godswood, in the dark of the Long Night, the tale hands its single most consequential act of violence to her — the dagger-drop, caught and driven home, the Night King shattering, the dead falling mid-swing. The girl who spent a life reciting death's names ends the story's oldest one.

Afterward, with the list dead or forgiven — she walks away from the Hound's last hunt, and from vengeance with him — she does the most Arya thing imaginable: she declines every ending on the map and sails west of Westeros, where the maps stop. Not a lady, not a killer, not no one — an explorer. Of all the Stark children she travels farthest to end up most herself, and her story's last image is a prow pointed at the unwritten.

The page and the screen

Book Arya is younger — nine when it begins — and her Braavos chapters run deeper and stranger than the show's: the blind beggar Beth, the canal-cat Cat of the Canals, the Mercy chapter where she kills a name from her list while acting in a stage play. Everything after Braavos, though, is the show's invention. The published books have not brought her home; the Frey massacre, the Winterfell reunion and the godswood dagger have no book counterpart yet, and the Night King himself does not exist on the page. Readers know the girl; only viewers, so far, know the legend.

The show also pruned her companions and reassigned her encounters — book Arya never serves Tywin at Harrenhal (her cupbearer duty is to Roose Bolton, a far colder room), never meets Melisandre, and parts from the Hound by leaving him dying rather than robbed. The Tywin scenes are pure invention and among the show's best additions, a writers' room finding gold in a pairing the books never imagined. Her wolf, meanwhile, matters more in the books: Nymeria leads a huge pack through the riverlands, and Arya wolf-dreams her way into it — a thread the show reduced to a single roadside farewell.

In the show, season by season

Season One. In Winter Is Coming — Better with a bow than her brother, and bored by needlework. In The Kingsroad — Throws stones at her own wolf to save her life. In Lord Snow — First lesson: swift as a deer, quiet as a shadow. In A Golden Crown — "Syrio says every hurt is a lesson." In The Pointy End — Her first life taken — a stable boy, the pointy end first. In Baelor — Yoren pulls her off the statue before the sword falls. In Fire and Blood — A boy called Arry with a list that has just begun.

Season Two. In The Night Lands — A boy called Arry on the kingsroad, with three names owed to her. In What Is Dead May Never Die — The Mountain's men pick a prisoner to die each day. In Garden of Bones — A prayer of names, whispered nightly: Joffrey. Cersei. Ilyn Payne. In The Ghost of Harrenhal — A man owes three. She has a list far longer. In The Prince of Winterfell — A man keeps his word: walk out the front gate.

Season Three. In Dark Wings, Dark Words — Outed by the Hound in a cave full of outlaws. In Kissed by Fire — Watches a dead man rise for the sixth time. In The Rains of Castamere — Close enough to hear the music change. In Mhysa — Her first man dead for mocking her mother's corpse. Valar morghulis.

Season Four. In Two Swords — Reclaims Needle the way it was taken: through a throat. In Breaker of Chains — Learns the Hound's philosophy: dead men don't need silver. In Mockingbird — Learns where the heart is, and uses the lesson within the hour. In The Children — "Valar morghulis." The coin buys a ship north to a new god.

Season Five. In The House of Black and White — "Valar dohaeris." Jaqen's face was never Jaqen's. In High Sparrow — Sweeps floors while Needle sleeps under the stones. In Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken — A girl gives a dying child water and mercy in the same cup. In The Dance of Dragons — A name from her list walks into her city. In Mother's Mercy — A girl took a life that wasn't hers to take. A girl is blind.

Season Six. In Oathbreaker — Sight returned, on the day she stopped needing it. In Blood of My Blood — A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and she is going home. In The Broken Man — Stabbed, swimming, bleeding out in a city of assassins. In No One — A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and the House of Black and White lets her go. In The Winds of Winter — "The last thing you're ever going to see is a Stark smiling down at you."

Season Seven. In Dragonstone — "Winter came for House Frey." In Stormborn — "That's not you." She lets the wolf go, and goes home. In The Spoils of War — Duels Brienne to a smiling draw. "Who taught you that?" "No one." In Beyond the Wall — Littlefinger's planted letter does its slow poison between sisters. In The Dragon and the Wolf — The Valyrian dagger comes back to its buyer's throat.

Season Eight. In Winterfell — Reunions: Jon, Gendry, the Hound — a list of a different kind. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms — Spends the last night her own way: no regrets, no waiting. In The Long Night — "What do we say to the god of death?" Not today. In The Bells — Came for one name; left saving anyone she could. In The Iron Throne — West of Westeros — where all the maps stop.

In the books

A Game of Thrones. In The Road South — Needle goes south hidden in her chest of clothes. In The Hand Investigates — Balancing on one leg atop the stairs. Syrio says every hurt is a lesson. In The Wolf Calls the Banners — A dancing master's wooden sword buys her the door.

A Clash of Kings. In The Comet — Arry the orphan boy, marching north with thieves. In Wolves and Krakens — Three lives owed by a man who keeps his word too precisely. In The Kraken in the Godswood — Weasel soup: the castle changes hands over dinner. In The March on the City — Valar morghulis, and an iron coin worth a continent.

A Storm of Swords. In Dracarys — The lightning lord shows her his scars in firelight. In The Red Wedding — The Hound's axe-flat saves her from her family's fate at the gate. In Gold, Ice, and the Hanged Woman — "Valar morghulis." The Titan of Braavos rises off the bow.

A Feast for Crows. In The Crows Gather — Gives Needle to a stone step's hiding place and becomes 'Cat of the Canals'. In The Quill and the Quiet Isle — Cat of the Canals sells cockles and keeps a private list.

A Dance with Dragons. In The Griffin and the Rhoyne — The blind girl learns to hear lies; her third gift to the god is coming.

Their journey

Where they stand, season by season

Mentioned in the chronicle

• A feast at the Twins: Walder Frey toasts his men with poisoned wine — worn by Arya Stark. (S7·E1)
• The Night King smiles at dragonfire, walks to Bran — and Arya Stark comes out of the dark. (S8·E3)
• Winterfell hosts a wedding in the snow: Ramsay Bolton takes “Arya Stark” — Jeyne Poole in a stolen name — and Reek gives the bride away into horror. (ADWD 33)

Their fate — if death has found them, it is written here. Open at your peril.

The chronicle records no death for this soul — they are living when the tale leaves them, or their ending is a page the maesters have yet to turn.