Torrhen Karstark

Torrhen Karstark was a son of Rickard Karstark, Lord of Karhold and head of House Karstark. 
==Biography==
===Background===
Torrhen is a son of Lord Rickard Karstark, the Lord of Karhold. He has an older brother Harrion Karstark, who dies fighting in the War of the Five Kings.
===Game of Thrones: Season 2===
The army led by Robb Stark against the forces of House Lannister is camped in the Westerlands. Torrhen is assigned to guard the prison cell of Jaime Lannister and Alton Lannister. Jaime has been held since his capture in the Battle of Whispering Wood, while Alton has just returned from King's Landing with the crown's peace terms. As the other cells are full, Alton is put in the cell with his distant cousin. Their cell is guarded by Torrhen.
Jaime kills his cousin to create a distraction. When Torrhen enters the cell to check on the two, he sees both prisoners bloody with Jaime collapsed against the post he is chained to and Alton convulsing on the ground. As he leans over the body, Jaime is able to approach Torrhen from behind and strangle him with his shackles. After killing Torrhen, Jaime takes the keys off his belt and frees himself.
However, Jaime does not get very far (due to being fatigued from his imprisonment), and he is soon recaptured. Rickard demands the head of the Kingslayer in revenge for the loss of his son. Catelyn is only barely able to get him to agree to wait for Robb to return to decide the issue, but the Karstark forces grow restless as the night progresses. Fearing that the Karstarks will kill their valuable political hostage before dawn even arrives, Catelyn frees Jaime to trade him for the return of her daughters (as soon as Jaime reaches King's Landing). The anger of Rickard and his need of a father's revenge sows dissension in Robb's army.
===Game of Thrones: Season 3===
Rickard converses with Roose Bolton over the slaughter of Northern prisoners at Harrenhal, lamenting the loss of his sons while their killer roams free. Roose assures Rickard that the debt will be paid.
Rickard attempts to justify his killing of Willem and Martyn Lannister as vengeance for the deaths of Harrion and Torrhen, but Robb does not accept his rationale and executes him for murder.
Later, an imprisoned Theon is at the mercy of an unknown boy (Ramsay Snow) who threatens to flay Theon's pinky if he cannot guess their current location, the boy's identity, and why he is torturing Theon. At first, the boy rather convincingly gives Theon the impression that he guessed right about them being in Karhold and that the boy is Torrhen's younger brother, angry over his death at the hands of the Kingslayer. But then the boy quickly crushes Theon's relief by revealing all of that was a lie and flays Theon's pinky anyway.
===Game of Thrones: Season 4===
Although Torrhen is never again mentioned by name, his death is alluded to when Jaime argues with Cersei that he murdered people (alluding to Alton as well) to get back to her, but she coldly replies, "You took too long."
==Family==
==In the books==
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Torrhen Karstark is the third son of Lord Rickard, and also joins his father and brothers, Harrion, the eldest, and Eddard, the second, as part of the Northern forces in the War of the Five Kings. He is named after Torrhen Stark, the King in the North at the time of Aegon's Conquest.
Torrhen, alongside his brother Eddard, serves as part of Robb's personal bodyguard. During the battle in the Whispering Wood, Jaime realizes that his army is lost, and makes a final push to single-handedly carve his way through the Northern army in an attempt to kill Robb in a single combat. Jaime manages to reach Robb's personal bodyguard and kill several of them, among them Torrhen and Eddard, before he is knocked unconscious.
The TV series's depiction of an escape attempt by Jaime, during which he kills Torrhen, is a very loose adaptation of events in the books. Originally, Jaime was kept in relatively comfortable imprisonment at Riverrun (not in Robb's camp), but then killed two guards and seriously injured a third during a failed escape attempt, after which he was chained up in the dungeon. Torrhen, however, was not one of these guards.
In the TV version, Jaime kills Torrhen because he was guarding his cell, which causes Rickard Karstark to become enraged and demand revenge, to the point that Catelyn releases Jaime (in promise of her daughters' safe return from King's Landing) because she fears he won't live out the night. In the books, Jaime killed Rickard's sons Torrhen and Eddard at the battle in the Whispering Wood (Eddard Karstark's death is apparently unchanged in the TV version). While Lord Karstark was certainly upset in the books, he wasn't going to disobey Robb's direct command as his liege-lord that Jaime must remain unharmed (at least because he thought they'd execute him eventually). Catelyn's decision to exchange Jaime as a prisoner isn't rushed by pressure from within the Stark camp, but is rather due to her grief at hearing the (false) report that Bran and Rickon have been killed by Theon. Catelyn decides that keeping her remaining children safe is what matters most, so she releases Jaime, sending him under escort by Brienne and Cleos Frey to King's Landing. Typically for Catelyn, she does not bother to consider the obvious applications of her deed (namely the damage to Robb's authority, the folly of sending Jaime with only two escorts via a land strewn with enemies and outlaws, and the possibility that the Lannisters will not simply free her daughters). Rickard only truly becomes enraged after Catelyn releases Jaime, because he never thought they'd release the killer of his sons, and kills two POW. The TV series may have moved Torrhen's death around to make it closer to Jaime's release, instead of just mentioning that Jaime killed Torrhen at the end of Season 1 and expecting the audience to remember this over a season later.
==Appearances==
*
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
==References==
===Notes===
==External links==
*
Category:Individuals appearing in Game of Thrones
Torrhen Karstark
Category:Men-at-arms
Category:Northmen
de:Torrhen Karstark
es:Torrhen Karstark
fr:Torrhen Karstark
nl:Torrhen Karstark
pl:Torrhen Karstark
ru:Торрхен Карстарк
zh:托伦·卡史塔克