Bran Stark was a boy built for climbing — Winterfell's walls, its towers, its half-ruined First Keep — before a fall from a height he should never have survived left him unable to walk at all. What might have ended most stories instead began his: the crippled boy began to dream of a three-eyed crow calling him north, dreams too vivid and too accurate to dismiss as a child's fancy. Guided by a wildling woman who remembers the old ways and a companion who claims descent from the First Men's oldest servants, Bran set out from a burning Winterfell on a journey no maester of the Citadel would have sanctioned and few could have survived. A maester records, with the discomfort proper to his order, that some of what Bran has since learned makes a mockery of the distinction between legend and history.
Bran Stark
Prince of Winterfell
- Life
- no fixed AC year given; seven years old at the story's opening by internal reckoning
- House
- Stark
- Titles
- Prince of Winterfell (informal)
- Allegiance
- House Stark
- Seat
- None (once heir to Winterfell in his brothers' absence)
- Culture
- Northern
- Religion
- The old gods
- Weapon
- None
- Notable for
- Discovering a greenseer's gift for warging and green dreams after being left unable to walk
Alive, last seen travelling beyond the Wall in search of answers no maester can give him.
Appearances
In the novels
- A Game of ThronesPOV
- A Clash of KingsPOV
- A Storm of SwordsPOV
- A Dance with DragonsPOV
On screen
HBO's Game of Thrones — Seasons 1–8
Perspective
Bran's chapters shift the story's register from court politics to something older and stranger, tracking a crippled boy's education in green dreams, warging, and the world's forgotten magical history.
Key events
- c. 291 ACBorn at Winterfell, the fourth child of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, an avid climber.
- 298 ACFalls from a tower at Winterfell and is left unable to walk.
- 298 ACBegins having vivid dreams of a three-eyed crow calling him north.
- 298 ACFlees Winterfell with his younger brother Rickon and a small company.
- 299 ACJourneys beyond the Wall guided by Osha and the siblings Meera and Jojen Reed.
- 300 ACReaches a hidden cave beyond the Wall and meets the last greenseer.
- 300 ACBegins learning to see through the eyes of the three-eyed crow.
Reading the character
Bran's chapters run parallel to the rest of the story's political machinery but answer a different kind of question: not who rules the Seven Kingdoms, but what older, stranger forces underlie the entire world the other characters are fighting over. His disability, framed early as a tragic ending to one kind of life, becomes the opening for an entirely different one that the text treats with real seriousness rather than as mere compensation.
His journey beyond the Wall also functions as the series' clearest bridge between the human political drama and the older magical history hinted at throughout - the First Men, the Children of the Forest, the greenseers - and the books use Bran's education to slowly widen the reader's sense of how much history the Seven Kingdoms has forgotten or never knew.
The arc of Bran 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 Bran Stark
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House
Is Bran Stark alive?
Yes, alive as of A Dance with Dragons, far beyond the Wall — what he finds there the chronicle treats as spoiler territory.
Who is Bran Stark?
The second son of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, left unable to walk after a fall from Winterfell's walls, who discovered a gift for dreaming true that no fall could take from him.