Winterfell

Seat of House Stark

The ancient stronghold of the Kings of Winter, built over hot springs ten thousand years ago. Its granite walls have never been taken by storm.

The fuller tale

Winterfell is the argument that a castle can be a character. It sprawls across acres of the northern plain in two concentric rings of granite, raised ÔÇö the songs insist ÔÇö by Bran the Builder himself, and grown organically over eight thousand years until towers lean against towers and covered bridges stitch the centuries together. Hot springs run beneath it, piped through the walls so the keep stays warm while the snow stands man-deep outside; the glass gardens grow winter roses on the heat of the earth. It is a fortress designed by people who understood that the enemy is not always an army. Sometimes it is simply the cold.

Two places inside the walls hold the castleÔÇÖs soul. The godswood is three acres of old forest sealed in stone, its heart tree a white weirwood with a carved red face older than the castle around it ÔÇö here Ned cleans Ice after every execution, here Jon prays before taking his vows, here the story stages its most private conversations. Below ground run the crypts, level under level of dead Kings of Winter seated in stone with iron swords across their knees to keep the vengeful spirits in. It is down among those tombs, beside LyannaÔÇÖs statue, that the taleÔÇÖs greatest secret sleeps for six seasons and five books.

The war strips the castle the way it strips the family. Theon takes it with twenty men and a dry moat, because every sword it had marched south; it burns in the sack that follows, and for years the seat of the Starks is a smoke-blackened shell traded between traitors ÔÇö a Bolton banner on the gatehouse, a stolen name in the great hall, a wedding held in the snow-filled godswood that the North never forgives. The castleÔÇÖs occupation is the storyÔÇÖs clearest sacrilege, and it makes the point the Boltons never grasp: you can hold Winterfell without ever once possessing it.

Its recapture is the northÔÇÖs turning tide ÔÇö banners of the wolf in the yard again, the family reassembling piece by piece within walls that remember them. And then the story plays its longest card: the fortress built against the cold becomes the place where the cold is finally met. The living world funnels into WinterfellÔÇÖs yards and crypts for the war against the dead, and the Long Night ends where the tale began, in the godswood, under the heart tree, by a knife the castle taught a girl to hold.

When the wars are done, Winterfell has outlived every power that touched it ÔÇö the dragons, the lions, the flayed men, the dead. A Stark queen is crowned in its hall, and the castle resumes the only work it has ever really done: keeping the North alive until spring. The old kings in the crypts, one imagines, consider the books balanced.

The page and the screen

The tellings diverge sharply over who suffers inside the occupied castle. In the books the bride Ramsay breaks at Winterfell is Jeyne Poole, SansaÔÇÖs childhood friend, passed off as Arya Stark while the real Arya is an ocean away ÔÇö a lie about a lie, with Theon forced to give the bride away. The show hands that ordeal to Sansa herself, collapsing two characters into one and rerouting her whole arc through the castle. The books also leave WinterfellÔÇÖs reconquest unwritten: Stannis marches on it through the snows and the armies have yet to meet on the page, so the Battle of the Bastards ÔÇö and everything after it ÔÇö is the show writing ahead of the source.

The chronicle here

King Robert rides to Winterfell and asks Ned to be his Hand; the letter from Lysa accuses the Lannisters of murder. (S1┬ÀE1)
Theon sails to raid the Stony Shore, and thinks bigger: Winterfell is barely garrisoned. (S2┬ÀE5)
Theon takes Winterfell with twenty men and beheads Ser Rodrik with four strokes. (S2┬ÀE6)
Bran and Rickon vanish from Winterfell with Osha and Hodor. (S2┬ÀE6)
Theon hunts the missing Stark boys and hangs two burned farm boys from Winterfell's walls. (S2┬ÀE7)
Theon's own men sack him; Winterfell burns behind them; Maester Luwin dies at the heart tree. (S2┬ÀE10)
Littlefinger's plan lands: Sansa Stark will marry Ramsay Bolton, in Winterfell. (S5┬ÀE3)
Stannis marches from Castle Black for Winterfell, family and red woman in train. (S5┬ÀE5)
Sansa's wedding night in Winterfell ÔÇö Ramsay makes Theon watch. The North's walls hear it. (S5┬ÀE6)
Ramsay's twenty men burn Stannis's camp; the march to Winterfell strands in snow and hunger. (S5┬ÀE9)
Robert comes to Winterfell; in the crypts before Lyanna's statue he asks Ned to be his Hand and offers Joffrey for Sansa. (AGOT 5)
Farewells at Winterfell: Jon gives Arya a sword called Needle and says goodbye to a Bran who cannot hear him. (AGOT 11)
Tyrion stops at Winterfell on his way south and gives Bran the gift of riding again ÔÇö a saddle design ÔÇö and gets frost from Robb for his kindness. (AGOT 25)
At the crossroads inn Tyrion Lannister walks in on Catelyn Stark; she calls on her father's bannermen and takes him ÔÇö but not toward Winterfell. (AGOT 29)