Rickon Stark was still a small boy — prone to tantrums, fiercely attached to his direwolf, and largely undisciplined by any septa's hand — when the war that upended his family's fortunes reached Winterfell's gates. Too young to be sent off as a hostage or fostered as a page, he was instead the child everyone in his family worried over and none of them had time to properly raise, caught between an absent father, a mother riding herself thin across the riverlands, and older siblings scattering to their own separate catastrophes. When Theon Greyjoy seized Winterfell, Rickon's survival owed less to any plan than to a wildling woman's blunt instinct to run rather than surrender, and to a castle sacked in enough confusion that no one thought to search very hard for one small boy. A maester notes that of all Eddard Stark's children, Rickon is the one the realm has managed to lose most thoroughly — which some at White Harbor now consider a very deliberate mercy.
Rickon Stark
- Life
- no fixed AC year given; the youngest of Eddard and Catelyn Stark's children, a small boy of three or four by internal reckoning when the story opens
- House
- Stark
- Allegiance
- House Stark
- Culture
- First Men / the North
- Religion
- The Old Gods of the Forest
- Notable for
- The youngest Stark child, hidden away from the war that upended the rest of his family, bonded to his direwolf Shaggydog
The youngest Stark's current whereabouts are a matter this chronicle keeps carefully veiled.
Where they appear
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Key events
- 294 ACBorn at Winterfell, the youngest of Eddard and Catelyn Stark's five trueborn children
- 298 ACReceives a direwolf pup, Shaggydog, found alongside five littermates in the wolfswood
- 298 ACWatches his father Eddard ride south to serve as Hand of the King, and later his elder brothers Robb and Bran take up their own separate burdens at Winterfell
- 299 ACFlees a sacked Winterfell with the wildling woman Osha as Theon Greyjoy's ironborn seize the castle
- 299 ACParts ways with his brother Bran on the road north, so that no single disaster can claim both surviving Stark sons at once
- 299 ACReaches hiding on the distant island of Skagos under Osha's protection
- 300 ACHis survival becomes known to Lord Wyman Manderly through channels the chronicle keeps veiled
- 300 ACA mission is quietly set in motion to bring him home, its outcome unresolved on the published page
Reading the character
Rickon Stark spends nearly the entire published story off the page, which is itself the point: he is the Stark child small enough, and unimportant enough by the war's own brutal calculus, to be worth hiding rather than displaying. Where his older siblings are drawn one by one into the war's machinery, as hostages, commanders, or symbols, Rickon's whole story is the deliberate absence of a story, kept that way on purpose by the people trying to protect him.
His pairing with Osha, and his separation from Bran, reflect a recurring instinct in the books: that scattering a family widely, however painful, protects it better than keeping it together in one vulnerable place. Rickon's eventual reappearance is one of the more anticipated threads left for the story's final volumes, and the chronicle treats it with the caution any unresolved thread of this weight deserves.
The arc of Rickon Stark
This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
In the timeline
Theories about Rickon Stark
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House
Is Rickon Stark alive?
As of A Dance with Dragons, yes — hidden away from the war that upended the rest of his family, though the chronicle keeps his exact circumstances veiled.
Who is Rickon Stark?
The youngest son of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, spirited out of a besieged Winterfell as a small boy and hidden by a wildling woman on the northern island of Skagos.