Claim: Sansa Stark is a fictional person in Game of Thrones.

Eddard `` Ned '' Stark is a fictional character in the first book of George R. R. Martin 's A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels and the first season of its television adaptation . Introduced in 1996 's A Game of Thrones , Ned is the honorable lord of Winterfell , an ancient fortress in the North of the fictional continent of Westeros . Though the character is established as a primary character in the novel and the TV adaptation , Martin 's plot twist at the end involving Ned shocked both readers of the book and viewers of the TV series .   Ned is portrayed by Sean Bean in the first season of HBO 's adaptation of the series , Game of Thrones , and as a child and young man by Sebastian Croft and Robert Aramayo respectively in the sixth season . Bean was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television and a Scream Award for Best Fantasy Actor for the role . He and the rest of the cast were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2011 .