Robb Stark inherited Winterfell at an age when most highborn sons are still squiring for someone else, and inherited a war within the same season, when the crisis that engulfed his father in King's Landing left the North leaderless. He proved a startlingly capable field commander for a boy barely into manhood, winning every battle he fought and earning, from bannermen who might easily have humored a boy-lord instead, a crown of his own making: King in the North. That the crown came at the price of an oath he could not keep — a betrothal traded away for love, or honor, or simple youth — is a cost the songs remember more kindly than the men he broke faith with. A maester records that undefeated in the field is a rarer boast among the War of the Five Kings' claimants than the songs like to admit — and one Robb Stark could make without exaggeration.
Robb Stark
the Young Wolf
- Life
- no fixed AC year given; fourteen years old at the story's opening by internal reckoning
- House
- Stark
- Titles
- Lord of Winterfell · King in the North
- Allegiance
- House Stark
- Seat
- Winterfell
- Culture
- Northern
- Religion
- The old gods
- Weapon
- A sword; fought alongside his direwolf, Grey Wind
- Notable for
- Being crowned King in the North and winning every battle he fought in the War of the Five Kings
The King in the North's war ended before the crown he was given could be secured.
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
- c. 284 ACBorn at Winterfell, eldest son and heir of Eddard and Catelyn Stark.
- 298 ACRaises the North's banners as war spreads across the Seven Kingdoms.
- 298 ACWins the Battle of the Whispering Wood, capturing Jaime Lannister.
- 298 ACCrowned King in the North by his assembled bannermen.
- 299 ACBreaks a betrothal to a Frey daughter after falling for another woman.
- 299 ACSlain at the Red Wedding alongside his mother and the greater part of his host.
Reading the character
Robb's arc, told entirely through his mother's eyes rather than his own, is a study in the gap between battlefield competence and political survival: a commander who never loses a battle still loses the war, because the war he is actually fighting runs on alliances, oaths, and guest-right rather than swords alone.
His story also interrogates the cost of youthful choices made for love or honor rather than calculation, and the books are unsentimental about how a single broken promise, however sympathetically motivated, can outweigh every battlefield victory that came before it.
The arc of Robb 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
Explore further
House
Is Robb Stark alive?
No — the King in the North's war ended before the crown he was given could be secured; the chronicle treats the particulars, and their aftermath, with care.
Who is Robb Stark?
Eddard Stark's eldest son and heir, who was crowned King in the North by bannermen loyal enough to follow a fifteen-year-old into a war against the Iron Throne.