Rickard Stark

> *"A clever hunter does not run. He walks. Whether his prey is a rabbit, an elk, or a wolf, the beast will tire first. No matter how sharp their teeth, nor how fast they run, or how great in stature they stand, they will grow tired, and await their end with bated breath. The hunter will come."* - From *A Collection of Northern Musings*
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Rickard Stark is the Lord of Winterfell, the Warden of the North, and the head of House Stark. He is the only son of Barthogan 'Blacksword' Stark, the grandson of Cregan Stark, and the father of Teora, the Stark in the South. His reign has been marked by an uneasy peace, as his realm awaits the succession of his house with vested interest.

## Personal History

### The Ryswell Question (156 - 160 AC)

> *“See the truth laid bare, pup. The handiwork of a killer’s blade. A mockery to the gods and your forefathers. And no black brother grows rich from a lord’s dead son...”*
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> **- Lord Cregan Stark, 160 AC**
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Rickard Stark, son of Barthogan 'the Blacksword' Stark and Jyana of House Reed, grandson of Cregan Stark and Lynara Stark, was born in the year 156 AC. Winter had come, as it always had, and shaped life in Winterfell into a temperate and humble existence.

Cregan Stark, the so-called Old Man in the North, did not expect Rickard to ever rule Winterfell. He was the son of a third son, and Rickard was a beloved man of the North. Indeed, the North expected to inherit another era of peace, prosperity, and order as it celebrated one of the longest peace-times in recent memory.

House Stark held true to this vision of the future until it was shaken by the untimely death of Rickon Stark. He was discovered in Castle Black, as a guest of the Night's Watch, mutilated in his bed by an assassin's blade. Whispers at court and rumors abroad spoke rather loudly of a Ryswell plot, motivated by Rickon's sudden marriage to the young Jeyne Manderly. Choosing to marry for love over politics is a move hardly sanctioned by history. Though suspect men of the Watch and the neighboring Mole's Town were hanged and interrogated, Cregan could not sniff out a trail.

As a boy of only four years old, Rickard did not understand the magnitude of his uncle's death. Noting this, the Old Man in the North bid his grandson to witness the funeral with the rest of his vassals, where Rickon's corpse lay bare and unclean for all to see. Cregan told his grandson 'I want the killers, if they stand amongst us, to know the weight of their deed, and to see the grief in our eyes.'

An argument in wake of the funeral drove a rift through the Stark household; Jonnel Stark, the family’s balck sheep, argued with his younger brother Barthogan that the Ryswell family had no involvement in the grisly affair, and should not bear the blame. Barthogan, the more stubborn of the pair, argued that House Ryswell should at least bear an investigation. They shouted, yelled, and Barthogan struck Jonnel across the brow. Before their father could intervene, Rickard’s father was gone.

### The Old Ways & A New World (160 AC - 174 AC)

> *“You’re going to the same place as I am, Rickard. Whether the Stranger takes you with a rotten hand, or that weirwood draws you in its embrace. A feast for the worms.”*
> *- Jonnel Stark, 170 AC*
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To that point, his temperament was cool and level-headed. He sat beside his grandfather when the old man held court, meted punishments, admonished rewards, and saw to the prosperity of his subjects and the honor of his hold. He was not exceptionally scholarly, but he found himself reading more often than fighting. The house’s maester gave him books and scrolls on family histories and on beasts, grumpkins, and snarks. And when the young Stark grew old enough, Cregan bid him to hold ceremonies for visitors, ride out to see his bannermen, and even consulted him on simple affairs.

Alas, it was not all without a cost. With no father to look over him, and the health of Cregan waning with age, Jonnel was oft instructed to accompany Rickard if not lead him. The man was harsh, sour, and quick to disprove. For each hold they rode to, he gave cause to distrust their lords and kin. He disparaged houses in good standing to Stark, and Rickard could only hold his breath.

Rickard broke his composure only once. When he was barely a man of four-and-ten, the pair and their entourage made one of the first formal visits to Castle Black since the murder of Rickon Stark. To call spirits dismal was a gross misjudgement; they were in utter squalor. In an attempt to make amends, the young Stark requested to lead Castle Black’s recruits to their weirwood; to watch over their vows and offer a prayer of his own. Jonnel declared it a gross misuse of their time, but only once they were beyond the Wall. It was a humiliating affair, to be scolded before the conscripts of the black brotherhood, and Rickard spoke out.

He could only utter “You faithless malcontent”, before Jonnel struck him with the pommel of his sword. The boy fell unconscious, and awoke with a splitting headache on the back of his uncle’s horse.

### Milk-Eye & The Measure of Words (174 - 177 AC)

> *“Ha! A direwolf for a direwolf! You’ll have yours, for arrows spent and wilds travelled, o good-daughter of mine.”*
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> - Lord Cregan Stark to Mara Forrester, 174 AC
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Rickard’s grandfather was shaken by recent events. Both the loss of his heir, and the departure of his youngest son, left the old wolf protective of what family remained in Winterfell. He thrust his grandson into the care of Winterfell’s master-at-arms, a maimed bastard named Beck Rivers.

With the loss of his uncle and the abandonment of his father, Rickard eluded his practice whenever he could. The finer points of swordplay would never reach him, as he took company from the weirwood planted in Winterfell, and his cousins, Sansa and Berena. The three were close friends at first, but there was a rift that split them apart: Sansa and Berena followed the old gods and the new, as the daughters of Rickon’s widow Jeyne.

Rickard believed ardenly that the spirits whispered to him in the boughs of the godswood, and he tended to the wellbeing of the pale-barked tree. He and his cousins often squabble about their cultural divide; whether they played Knights and Brigands or Rangers and Wights, if Jeyne or Jyana were fairer, or which of them could grow up to marry a beautiful prince or princess of the House Targaryen. Some squabbles even turned violent, but Rickard never struck the girls even as they clawed him and left his eye blackened.

To that point, his temperament was cool and level-headed. He sat beside his grandfather when the old man held court, meted punishments, admonished rewards, and saw to the prosperity of his subjects and the honor of his hold. He was not exceptionally scholarly, but he found himself reading more often than fighting. The house’s maester gave him books and scrolls on family histories and on beasts, grumpkins, and snarks. And when the young Stark grew old enough, Cregan bid him to hold ceremonies for visitors, ride out to see his bannermen, and even consulted him on simple affairs, and not all encounters were strictly professional. Rickard had a teenage infatuation with one of his grandmother’s handmaidens: a girl, the same age as him, from House Whitehill: Alarra.

Alas, it was not all without a cost. With no father to look over him, and the health of Cregan waning with age, Jonnel was oft instructed to accompany Rickard if not lead him. The man was harsh, sour, and quick to disprove. For each hold they rode to, he gave cause to distrust their lords and kin. He disparaged houses in good standing to Stark, and Rickard could only hold his breath.

Rickard broke his composure only once. When he was barely a man of four-and-ten, the pair and their entourage made one of the first formal visits to Castle Black since the murder of Rickon Stark. To call spirits dismal was a gross misjudgement; they were in utter squalor. In an attempt to make amends, the young Stark requested to lead Castle Black’s recruits to their weirwood; to watch over their vows and offer a prayer of his own. Jonnel declared it a gross misuse of their time, but only once they were beyond the Wall. It was a humiliating affair, to be scolded before the conscripts of the black brotherhood, and Rickard spoke out.

He could only utter “You faithless wretch”, before Jonnel struck him with the pommel of his sword. The boy fell unconscious, and awoke with a splitting headache on the back of his uncle’s horse. Jonnel did not speak of it, and neither would Rickard. They understood the dynamics at play.

### Silent Night (177 AC - 182 AC)

> *“Go, Berena. The House is too proud to die to a schemer’s plot.”*
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> *“And what of you, Rickard? What of your father?”*
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> *“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, and Jonnel is a Stark no more.”*
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> - Rickard & Berena Stark, 177 AC
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Though Cregan proved robust on horseback in the hunt for Milk-Eye, the man's mane of white and wheezing breath spelt out the writing on the wall; the Old Man was not long for the world. The inheritance was not as sound as he claimed: Sansa Stark, a lady of twenty years, was the de jure heir to Winterfell. While Queen Rhaenyra and her successors had softened the south's perception of women in power, the North remained rigid and slow to change as always.

His father, Barthogan, approached the coming storm directly; he swore to look after his niece's safety and decried her would-be opponents in court and abroad. Cregan offered little more than a silent glare, but another wolf was building a plot against young Sansa and her eventual rule. Rickard saw the ravens flying from Winterfell's towers, the coin flowing from Stark's coffers, and the lurking presence of Jonnel Stark. Rickard's uncle was planning something dire.

Rickard saw no approach that did not declare themselves usurpers or kinslayers, and sought to mitigate the damage to their house. They resolved to send away those members of the House who could come into harm. Berena would hide away in the Iron Islands, and the Ironborn escorting her sated with gold and furs. Rickard's mother, Jyana, returned to the Neck to be with her kin.

In 177 AC, when Rickard was but one-and-twenty, Cregan Stark died of natural causes amidst revelry and feasting. The festivities were overshadowed by the dread of succession. Somehow, Jonnel had outpaced his house and assembled a coalition of supporters in Houses Dustin, Ryswell, and Umber to take the seat by himself. Sansa fled as Barthagan and Rickard delayed as best they could, but fate saw it that her own horse foiled her flight to White Harbor.

So began the Silence of Snows. A reign marked by its solemnity, and bereft of colour as those who opposed the new Lord of Winterfell and his forcibly-wed niece-wife.While Jonnel could not condemn his kin without eroding the foundation of his own house, it stood upon a dangerous precipice until he had a trueborn son.

To earn their obedience, Rickard and Barthogan were stripped of their duties and given alternatives. Rickard was named Lord of Moat Cailin with a piecemeal garrison. Barthogan was named ‘The North’s Justice’, a title for a glorified headsman. Often executing men and women held only in disregard to his uncle. Worse, Rickard’s wife Mara was confined to the Broken Tower as a hostage.

The Silence proved to be a period of introspection and self-discovery for Rickard. The man, now aged six-and-twenty, fell sick with fever not long after he arrived in Moat Cailin. His dreams were rife with imagery of blood, the deep roots of ancient trees, and the visage of a monstrous wolf.

Young Rickard, nearly wasted away, surviving only on good fortune and Crannogman medicine. He devoted his time to the Neck, with no other diversion save the drilling of conscripts and housecarls. He frequently forayed into the Neck on foot, hunting frogs and rodents and other sickly things, narrowly avoiding lizard-lions and other obscure fauna. He felt as close to the gods in the rainwashed marshlands as he had in Winterfell, and learned the ancient ways of worship from the Crannogmen who lived there. Haruspicy and divination, totems and prayers.

Rickard did not soon forget the camaraderie he forged with his house’s vassals, and their friendship would be repaid in full in times to come. Unexpected circumstances heralded a shift in northern politics....

### The Son in Winterfell (182 AC - 187 AC)

> *“See the house’s honor restored, son. I’ll look to our glory. The sword strikes harder than the pen, but we’ll need arms before the year is through.”*
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> - Lord Barthogan Stark, 183 AC
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As the gods would have it, the Silence of the Snows were broken as quickly as they had come. After five years of a quiet and dismal reign from Winterfell, the Lord Jonnel Stark fell dead in the halls of White Harbor, accompanied by henchmen and mermen both. Much of the North could hardly bother to mourn his passing, and the Starks returned to their hold within the moon.

A council of lords and ladies was held in Winterfell’s hall, to see where the succession lay. After a period of discussion, it was clear that Sansa Stark could not lead the realm in any strict capacity: five years of marriage to her uncle left her broken in both body and mind. Her removal from the succession left it clear to whom would be the new Warden of the North: Barthogan Stark, with his only son Rickard as his heir.

Barthogan’s ascension barely saw time to steady itself when another disaster brought itself to Winterfell’s gates: a courier clad in the black of the Night’s Watch brought news that Zachery Hill, once a ranger of the ancient order, had stripped off his vows to declare a new King of the Wall and Beyond as the North stabilized. Rickard himself preached caution to his father, insisting that they gather a host of greater size, or call the Targaryens for aid. There was no convincing the new Lord of Winterfell, who took the host he could gather in week’s time to the Wall.

Rickard remained in Winterfell to spare the dynasty a second untimely death. There was still work to be done to rectify the damages his uncle had wrought at his home: trials and executions, letters to pen and vassals to assure, and return Berena Stark from abroad. He expected his father to return in a moon, but was shocked to see the newly dubbed ‘Blacksword’ at Winterfell’s gates barely weeks after his departure.

With the day won, a sense of normalcy returned to daily life. The thaw of spring ushered the return of Berena Stark from the island of Pyke, Mara Forrester was freed from her captivity, and Sansa Stark was given to her kin in White Harbor, accompanied by an honor guard of hardened men.

Still, a lingering danger permeated the household. Barthogan’s victory at Castle Black had cost him dearly, but swelled his pride to the point of foolhardiness. The loss of life had also instilled a sense of anger - the Blacksword and northmen alone had saved their people from Hill’s turncoats, and the crown seemed silent as ever on matters that did not concern itself. Rickard and the house’s maester penned a letter for the King’s eyes only. It was a polite but firm demand: the Pact of Ice and Fire that was wrought between Lord Cregan and Queen Rhaenyra was not intended to be so easily forgotten.

Rickard, now a man grown with three-and-thirty years to his name, held his tongue even as the need to protest squirmed in his stomach. He held his hopes that this fire could be snuffed out without fuel to burn, and his attention turned elsewhere. His wife Mara, barely wed when Cregan passed and the Silence began, was recovering from her duress under the reign of Lord Jonnel. Her mind still held its cunning even when her body was worn and sickly. His mother expressed worry for her ability to bear children, narrow-hipped and meagre in build, but the heir to Winterfell left the fate of their marriage to the gods.

The years of the Blacksword were spent in his shadow, putting his fury to words and following his father’s steel with civility, and watching for danger over his shoulder. Treachery and subterfuge had shaken the house and its reputation before, and Rickon could not see it suffered again.

Nevertheless, Barthogan continued to prod and pick at the sleeping dragon in King’s Landing. Each year, his letters increased in their fiery candor tenfold. A humble request became a harsh demand, and at the end of the fourth year of his reign, a threat: answer to the bond forged in the Dance of the Dragons, or Westeros could suffer war yet again. He gathered an army to coax the king from the capital to hear his demands.

Once again, Rickard remained the Stark in Winterfell. He held his breath, knowing a misplay could spell the death of his house. The Blacksword marched with an army numbering thousands, and returned bloodied, beaten, and defeated. The Lord of Riverrun, Oswald Tully, followed to redress the issue of his father’s host marching through the Riverlands.

A deal had been struck at the end of a sword: for the Blacksword’s defiance, his descendants would bear the blame and live at the end of a Targaryen leash: Rickard’s heir would be given as a ward of the Crown. Rickard hoped this could be a sobering day for his father, but the lord of Winterfell lost the last of his days to dire wounds and deep drinking.

### A Pact of Melting Ice (188 AC - 195 AC)

> *“You’d be a fool to think that was the end of this, Rickard… so long as you still have your strength, don’t let this be the end… do you see me, Father? Do you see me, on the field? My sword is bright…!”*
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> - Last words of Barthogan ‘The Blacksword’ Stark, 188 AC
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Cregan Stark never expected Rickard Stark to inherit Winterfell. In 188 AC, Barthogan Stark died of what the maester could only call a broken heart, and Rickard was named Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. A decade of treachery, deceit, aggression, and tragedy nearly toppled a dynasty of millenia, and now, its survival is guaranteed only by his careful rule and the fair graces of the Dragon.

In the first years of his rule, the Stark of only four-and-thirty attempted to assuage the rightful fears of his vassals in terms of succession; with no son to his name, and his wife only getting older, the North could see its greatest house with no succession. Moat Cailin was granted to the houses of the Neck when the Lord of Greywater Watch was granted the tongue-in-cheek title of ‘Master of the Moat’; Berena Stark was formally wed to the House Karstark to earn their distant cousin’s favor, and a council of lords and ladies was assembled to advise him on the course of the North at large. House Forrester saw great favor with the Starks, as their own progeny became Speaker for the newly crowned Queen Daenaerys and a former Forrester was now Lady of Winterfell.

Lord Stark’s quiet pleas for a child finally bore fruit in 195 AC. Despite his wife’s greater years, she gave birth to a child in 195 AC: Teora Stark. Born seven years after the death of Barthogan Blacksword, the more superstitious members of court called it an omen: she could bear the so-called wolfsblood and prove as calamitous (or as glorious) as her grandfather. Worse still, she was no son. Those who decried Sansa Stark only decades ago expressed the same concerns.

### Child of Mine (196 AC - 215 AC)

> *“I have always dreaded the first snows, but never have I lamented the coming of summer. Snow wanes, but the sun hangs in the sky, promising a coming flame to burn away the winter.”*
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> - Rickard Stark, 215 AC
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Lord Rickard resigned to a fate he saw as destined for his house. If Winterfell should go to a woman when his time in the world was done, it would be his daughter, and this time there would be no wolves lurking in the shadows. His only goal remained the stability of the North and the safety of his people. War and battle were a rare occurrence in his rule, as his style favored a sort of ‘tough love’ through diplomacy.

“Together, stones build a keep, and when one falls, so do the rest,” he wrote in the early years of his reign, as he committed his thoughts to memory. When asked, his only goal for the North was its continued stability. Both his wife and child saw the man distance himself from the day-to-day life of the keep, taking meals in his private quarters and sitting quietly in feasts and revelry.

Winterfell also became a home to the young nobles of the north and beyond, taking wards from Forrester, Mormont, and even Tully in Rickard’s reign. He did not forget his friends, either. House Reed was granted the title ‘Master of the Moat’; once the tongue-in-cheek position given to him by his uncle, the defense of the Neck was affirmed. In the same breath, he declared a council of close advisors: the Lord Sentinels. While each lord and lady who entreated him received his open reception, these lords were granted the privilege of advising him on matters of rule, especially those that concerned matters beyond the walls of Winterfell.

His commitment to peace was not absolutely successful; his attempt to bind the feuding houses of Whitehill and Forrester with marriage saw a wedding party dead and both parties back to quarreling with fresh vigor Rickard lamented even to modern times. To the same effect, when a Magnar was witnessed practicing cannibalism, he bound them to the upstart Ryswells through their daughter, Athdra. The Rills’ tenuous relationship with the Starks continued to buckle.

And his bond with his daughter suffered too. The shadow of the Targaryens loomed larger overhead with every passing day, though the royal family had hardly bothered with his realm since the Dance. Weeks before Teora’s name-day, the time came to send his daughter southward. His oft-unruly daughter was taken by boat from White Harbor, and Rickard has yet to hear of her to this day.

Nonetheless, he mourned the absence of his daughter. On the date of her sixteenth nameday, a feast was proclaimed in Winterfell, gathering fighters, riders, and nobility as far south as Highgarden. Barely moons after the festivities were concluded, he dispatched the lords Dustin and Manderly to witness Teora’s upbringing firsthand. Each brought a polarizing tale of the young Stark in the South

Rickard knows his life is coming to a close with every passing day. No lord rules forever, but his death spelt yet another tragedy the North would suffer. His only directive is seeing that tragedy is held at bay by a Stark prepared for the task...