Alys Arryn

**Alys Stark** née Arryn is the Dowager Lady of Winterfell. She is the only daughter of the late Lord Alaric Arryn and was wed to Eon Stark until his death in 419 AC. She wields Talon, the valyrian steel dagger of the Arryns.

## Recent Events

The Dowager Lady of Winterfell has made a place for herself among the wolves. Since the return and ascent of her daughter Berena, who was presumed dead for nearly three years until 430 AC, she has settled into a powerful position at her shoulder.

In 438 AC, Alys governs Winterfell in the shadow of her daughter. Hers is a motherly presence within the castle, as she has taken on the responsibility of looking after the younger Starks, including the children of Jon II Stark and his second wife, her late friend and companion, Alysanne Stark.

## Background

Alys was born in the Eyrie in 390 AC and is the sole daughter of Lord Alaric Arryn and his wife, Theodosia Belmore. As the result of a childhood oft spent in the shadows of her brothers, Alys always preferred the clang and clamor of a duel to the pristine and pampered environment of a lady.

She was wed to Eon Stark in 408 AC, and despite the nonconforming will of her youth, she would prove to become dutiful wife. For the first year of their marriage Alys was reserved, *aloof*, even; a privately pious woman, Eon was able to break the ice of unfamiliarity between them by restoring the old sept of Winterfell to its former grandeur. By the second, they were deeply in love.

Alys would give her husband four children: Berena, Ellard, Rodwell, and Jocelyn. They would suffer the loss of their youngest son in 418 AC, and with Rodwell's death, so too went their love. When Alys most needed comfort, Eon had become stoic, preferring to grieve alone. Alysanne Stark had proven a reliable shoulder, even when her husband rode off to war beyond the Wall.

Eon would never come home, to Winterfell, dead or alive. In 419 AC when he was felled in battle in Northern efforts against Ekkill Crowsbane, his body was lost and never returned to rest in the crypts of Winterfell. Lost as well was Benjen Stark, Alysanne's husband, and in the year that followed his death she was wed to Alys' good-father, the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, Jon II Stark.

It took much time for the court of Winterfell to grow accustomed to a Lady of Winterfell that was not the late Sarra Mormont- Alys included, although Jon's first wife had passed years before she wed Eon. It was strange to see Lord Stark smile, *truly* smile at that, but it seemed eventually that his affection for her had become contagious. When the Lady of the Dreadfort was at last accepted as the new Lady of Winterfell, she was wholly so, and Alys was ultimately happy to have a good friend so close- especially as motherhood posed its challenges in the form of her eldest daughter, Berena, who was oft as unmanageable as she was troublesome.

For Alys, having Alysanne at Winterfell eased the widow's loneliness. Together, the pair of them raised their children and when Edderion's wife Arya passed, they, combined with the maids and wet-nurses, cared for his three young daughters in addition. Despite how much more crowded the halls had become, Winterfell seemed almost empty when Jon sent Berena to King's Landing against her protests. On her 16th nameday, she gifted her daughter Talon, the valyrian steel dagger that had belonged to her father before her.

After the turn of a moon, Alys would take again to her blackest mourning clothes. The Blue Winter scoured the North and with thousands of others it claimed her sole surviving son, Ellard, the heir of Winterfell. Riddled with despair, Alys' only solace came with caring for little Jocelyn, the last of her children to remain beside her, and the knowledge that soon, at winter's end, Berena would return from the capital and take her place as her grandfather's heir.