Robb Stark

Eldest child of Eddard and Catelyn Stark, Robb was fifteen when his father was beheaded in King's Landing. The North and the Riverlands named him King in the North — a title his grandsire had yielded to Aegon the Conqueror — and he rode south to make the Iron Throne answer for it.

He was a natural commander: the Whispering Wood, the Battle of the Camps, victory after victory, and Tywin Lannister's veterans could not pin him down. But the war was won and lost in the council chamber as much as the field — he broke his betrothal to a Frey daughter for a Westerling, lost the Frey crossing, and let the Karstarks march off in fury — and every alliance he needed walked out with them.

At the Twins he came to make his peace with Walder Frey, and was stabbed beneath the wedding canopy while his bannermen were slaughtered at the same tables. The Red Wedding broke the Stark cause in a single night, and the Young Wolf's end became the North's enduring grief.