First Keep

The First Keep is the oldest surviving structure within Winterfell, a squat, windowless tower that had sat unused for hundreds of years before being burned and partially collapsed during Ramsay Bolton's sack of the castle. It is most famous as the site of Bran Stark's fall, the event that crippled him and set the entire narrative of A Song of Ice and Fire in motion. In A Dance with Dragons, the ruined shell of the First Keep serves as a landmark of memory and guilt for Theon Greyjoy, who recalls the day Bran fell and later leads Lady Barbrey Dustin to the hidden entrance of the crypts at its base.

Architecture and History

The First Keep is the oldest part of Winterfell, a squat, windowless tower built of grey stone. By the time of the main narrative it had been abandoned for hundreds of years, its original purpose superseded by later construction. During Ramsay Bolton's sack of Winterfell, the keep was put to the torch; much of what did not burn collapsed. When Theon Greyjoy visits the site in A Dance with Dragons, he finds only a shell remaining, one side open to the elements and filling with snow. Rubble is strewn all about: great chunks of shattered masonry, burned beams, and broken gargoyles. The falling snow has covered almost all of it, but part of one gargoyle still pokes above the drift, its grotesque face snarling sightless at the sky.

Bran Stark's Fall

The First Keep is the site of Bran Stark's crippling fall. Theon Greyjoy was out hunting that day, riding with Lord Eddard Stark and King Robert, with no hint of the dire news that awaited them back at the castle. He remembers Robb's face when they were told. No one expected the broken boy to live. Theon later reflects that the gods could not kill Bran, no more than he could, a strange thought that leads him to consider that Bran might still be alive.

The Crypt Entrance

The entrance to the Winterfell crypts is located at the foot of the First Keep, in the oldest section of the castle. When Lady Barbrey Dustin asks Theon to show her the way down into the crypts, he leads her party to this spot. It takes Lady Dustin's men the better part of half an hour to uncover the entrance, shoveling through the snow and shifting rubble. When they do, the door is frozen shut; her serjeant has to go find an axe before he can pull it open, hinges screaming, to reveal stone steps spiraling down into darkness. Theon warns her that it is a long way down, but she is undeterred. The way is narrow and steep, the steps worn in the center by centuries of feet. They go single file—the serjeant with the lantern, then Theon and Lady Dustin, her other man behind them. Theon has always thought of the crypts as cold, and so they seemed in summer, but now as they descend the air grows warmer—not warm, never warm, but warmer than above. Down there below the earth, the chill is constant, unchanging.

Narrative Significance

The First Keep functions in A Dance with Dragons as a locus of memory and guilt for Theon Greyjoy. Standing before its ruins, he is forced to confront his past: the day Bran fell, his own role in the subsequent destruction of Winterfell, and the ghosts of those he has wronged. The keep's ruined state mirrors Theon's own broken condition, and the hidden crypt entrance at its base becomes the threshold through which he must pass to face the stone kings of the north and the truth of his own identity.