The Kings of Winter

The Kings of Winter
Song and story tell us that the Starks of Winterfell have ruled large portions of the lands beyond the Neck for eight thousands

years, styling themselves the Kings of Winter (the more ancient usage) and (in more recent centuries) the Kings in the North.

Their rule was not an uncontested one. Many were the wars in which the Starks expanded their rule or were forced to win back

lands that rebels had carved away. The Kings of Winter were hard men in hard times.

Ancient ballads, amongst the oldest to be found in the archives of the Citadel of Oldtown, tell of how one King of Winter drove

the giants from the North, whilst another felled the skinchanger Gaven Greywolf and his kin in "the savage War of the Wolves",

but we have only the word of singers that such kings and such battles ever existed.

More historical proof exists for the war between the Kings of Winter and the Barrow Kings to their south, who styled themselves

the Kings of the First Men and claimed supremacy over all First Men everywhere, even the Starks themselves. Runic records suggest

that their struggle, dubbed the Thousand Years War by the singers, was actually a series of wars that lasted closer to two

hundred years than a thousand, ending when the last Barrow King bent his knee to the King of Winter, and gave him the hand of his

daughter in marriage.

Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and

small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the

Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient linges were extinguished forever.

Amongst the houses reduced from royals to vassals, we can count the Flints of Breakstone(?) Hill, the Slates of Blackpool, the

Umbers of Last Hearth, the Lockes of Oldcastle, the Gloveres of Deepwood Motte, the Fishers(?) of the Stony Shore, the Ryders of

the Rills ... and mayhaps even the Blackwoods of Raventree, whose own family ?????? insist they once ruled ????? of the wolfswood

before being driven from their lands by the Kings of Winter (certain runic records support this claim if Master Rundry's

translation can be trusted). Chronicles found in the archives of the Night's Watch at the Nightfort (before it was abandoned)

speak of the war for Sea Dragon Point, wherein the Starks brought down the Warg King and his inhuman allies, the children of the

forest. When the Warg King's last redoubt fell, his sons were put to the sword, along with his beasts and greenseers, whilst his

daughters were taken as prizes by their conquerors.

House Greenwood, House Towers, House Amber, and House Frost met similar ends, together with a score of lesser houses and petty

kings whose very names are lost to history. Yet the bitterest foes of Winterfell were undoubtedly the Red Kings of the Dreadfort,

those grim lords of House Bolton whose domains of old stretched from the Last River to the White Knife, and as far south as the

Sheephead Hills.

The enemity between the Starks and Boltons went back to the Long Night itself, it is claimed. The wars between these two ancient

families were legion, and not all ended in victory for House Stark. King Royce Bolton, Second of His Name, is said to have taken

and burned Winterfell itself; his namesake and descendant Royce IV (remembered by history as Royce Redarm, for his habit of

plunging his arm into the bellies of captive foes to pull out their entrails with his bare hand) did the same three centuries

later. Other Red Kings were reputed to wear cloaks made from the skins of Stark princes they had captured and flayed.

Yet in the end, even the Dreadfort fell before the might of Winterfell, and the Last Red King, known to history as Roger the

Hunstman, swore fealty to the King of Winter and sent his sons to Winterfell as hostages, even at the first Andals were crowding

the narrow sea in their longships.