Craster keeps a homestead deep in the haunted forest built entirely on customs the Night's Watch finds abhorrent and tolerates anyway, because a man willing to shelter rangers and share what little he has is, in that unforgiving country, worth more to the Watch than its own principles can comfortably afford. He takes his own daughters to wife as they come of age, fathering an unbroken line of daughter-wives and giving up every son born to him — an arrangement he treats as an old bargain kept rather than a horror committed, and one the wildlings themselves consider as abhorrent as the black brothers do. What exactly Craster does with those infant sons, and to whom, is a matter the Watch has long suspected without proof, until the mutiny at his keep forces the question into the open. A maester records that a man this comfortable trading his own sons away is, whatever bargain he believes he has struck, trading with something the Citadel would very much like to understand better.
Craster
- Life
- no fixed AC year given; an old man, master of his household for many years, when the story opens
- House
- none — a wildling of the Haunted Forest, master of his own keep
His homestead north of the Wall did not survive the Night's Watch expedition that stopped there.
The arc of Craster
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 Craster
Is Craster alive?
No — his homestead north of the Wall did not survive the Night's Watch expedition that stopped there; the chronicle treats the mutiny that killed him with care.
Who is Craster?
A wildling homesteader beyond the Wall who married his own daughters and sacrificed his infant sons, tolerated by the Night's Watch for the shelter he offered rangers despite the horror of his household.