Karhold

Eastern seat of the Karstarks, kin to the Starks of old. Lord Rickard rides south with Robb this season.

The fuller tale

Karhold rose a thousand years ago when Karlon Stark, a younger son of Winterfell, put down a rebel lord and was granted lands in the east for it — his descendants wore the name Karl’s hold into Karstark, and the sunburst on their banners never let anyone forget the wolf blood underneath. The Karstarks are the Starks’ kin writ harder: longer beards, colder lands, grudges kept with genealogical precision.

The war turns that kinship tragic. Lord Rickard rides south with three sons and comes home with none, and his grief curdles into the murder of captive boys — for which his king, his own blood, takes his head. The curse he speaks on the scaffold does half the story’s work thereafter: Karhold’s swords abandon Robb when he needs them most, and a Karstark stands with the Boltons in the wars that follow. It falls to a daughter of the house to spend the inheritance better — bringing Karhold back to the wolves, and proving the old sunburst banner could still remember whose blood it carried.

Born here

The fallen of this place — if any, they are named here. Spoilers.

No death the chronicle records has come to this ground — or none the maesters have set down.