Rickard Karstark
Lord of Karhold, a proud, grim northern bannerman of distant Stark blood, who marches his sons to war under the direwolf banner.
A soul born at Karhold, sworn to House Karstark.
The fuller tale
Season Three
Rickard Karstark murders two Lannister squires in their cells; Robb takes his head and half his army.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Beheaded for murder (S3┬ÀE5)
He butchered two captive Lannister boys in their cell to answer his sons' deaths, and dared his king to do something about it. Robb Stark took his head at Riverrun with his own hand ÔÇö justice that cost him half his army.
On the page. Executed by the King in the North (ASOS, ch. 21)
He broke into Riverrun's cells and butchered two Lannister squires, then dared his king to answer for it. Robb took his head in the rain in Riverrun's godswood with his own hand ÔÇö and the Karstark strength rode home.
Robb Stark held the trial in his own person, as Ned had taught him: the man who passes the sentence swings the sword. For the murder of two captive boys, Rickard Karstark was condemned by his king ÔÇö over the pleading of nearly every adviser Robb had, all of them making the same argument, that the Karstarks were half his infantry and dead lords pay no debts. Robb hanged the seven who did the deed and took Rickard's head himself, in the show at a block in the rain, in the books in Riverrun's godswood, where it took more than one stroke. The condemned man's last words were the same in both: a curse, and a title revoked ÔÇö kill me and be cursed, you are no king of mine. The Karstark strength marched home the next morning, and every historian of the war, in-world and out, marks the same entry: justice done perfectly, and the cause it belonged to poorer by half an army. Walder Frey merely finished what Riverrun's headsman's-block began.
Their chapters, book by book
A Storm of Swords 1 chapter that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The show compresses the Karstark ledger ÔÇö one son dead in the Whispering Wood instead of two, unnamed Lannister boys instead of the books' Tion Frey and Willem Lannister, murdered in Riverrun's cells ÔÇö but keeps the moral shape intact. The books extend the aftermath in ways the show skipped entirely: Rickard's heir Harrion sits a Lannister prisoner, his uncle Arnolf schemes to betray Stannis and steal Karhold, and his daughter Alys flees to the Wall to escape a forced marriage, giving Jon Snow one of A Dance with Dragons' warmest subplots. The show's sequel to the Karstark grudge is simpler and colder: the house rides with Ramsay Bolton at the Battle of the Bastards, and a later generation's small children stand in Winterfell's hall to be forgiven. Two tellings, one lesson ÔÇö the wound Robb dealt at Riverrun never stopped bleeding.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.