House Stark

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

The youngest Stark's whereabouts since the sack of Winterfell are a matter the chronicle keeps carefully veiled.

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 killed most of his family 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.

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.

Fleeing Winterfell ahead of Theon Greyjoy's men, Rickon is spirited north by Osha to the wild island of Skagos, deliberately kept apart from Bran's own flight so that the Starks might not be lost in a single stroke. Lord Wyman Manderly of White Harbor learns of the boy's survival through channels the chronicle keeps veiled, and stakes his own house's loyalty on recovering him — a mission entrusted, in the published books, to Davos Seaworth, whose search for Rickon has not yet reached its end on the page.

Where the books leave Rickon Stark: alive as of A Dance with Dragons, in hiding on the island of Skagos with the wildling woman Osha and his direwolf Shaggydog, his whereabouts known to Lord Wyman Manderly but not yet recovered by anyone acting in his name

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

SourcesAGOT · BranACOK · BranADWD · DavosTWOIAF · House Stark

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Is Rickon Stark alive?

As of A Dance with Dragons, yes — hidden away from the war that claimed 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.