Lyanna Stark
Lyanna Stark was the only daughter of Lord Rickard Stark of Winterfell, the younger sister of Brandon Stark and the elder sister of Eddard Stark. She was sixteen years old at the time of her death, described by those who knew her as a child-woman of surpassing loveliness, with a wildness in her that her father called "the wolf blood." Her brother Ned remembered her as beautiful, willful, and dead before her time, and he saw traces of her in his daughter Arya, who shared her long face and fierce spirit.
Abduction and the Rebellion
Lyanna was betrothed to Robert Baratheon, the young Lord of Storm's End, a match that pleased her father and brother but which Lyanna herself regarded with skepticism. At the great tourney at Harrenhal in the Year of the False Spring, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen crowned her the queen of love and beauty with a garland of pale blue winter roses, passing over his own wife, Princess Elia of Dorne. This public gesture was the prelude to her disappearance, which Robert and the Starks interpreted as abduction and rape. Robert's fury at what he believed Rhaegar had done to Lyanna drove him to lead a rebellion that overthrew the Targaryen dynasty. He killed Rhaegar on the Trident, smashing through his black armor with a warhammer, yet he confessed to Ned that the victory felt hollow: "I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her."
Death and the Promise
Ned Stark found Lyanna in a tower in the red mountains of Dorne, the Tower of Joy, where she lay in a bed of blood, dying. The room smelled of blood and roses. She was attended by three knights of the Kingsguard—Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent, and Ser Gerold Hightower—who had been her protectors. Ned and his companions fought them, and only Ned and Howland Reed survived. When Ned reached Lyanna, she was feverish and weak, her voice faint as a whisper. She made him promise something, grasping his arm so tightly that he bore the marks afterward. "Promise me, Ned," she cried, and when he gave her his word, the fear went out of her eyes. She smiled, her fingers clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, and rose petals spilled from her palm, dead and black. Ned never spoke of what she had asked, but the promise haunted him for the rest of his life, appearing in his dreams as a voice that wept blood.
The Secret and Its Legacy
The promise Lyanna extracted from Ned was the protection of her son, Jon Snow, whom she had borne to Rhaegar Targaryen. To keep the child safe from Robert's implacable hatred of all Targaryens, Ned claimed the boy as his own bastard, a lie that dishonored him in the eyes of his wife Catelyn and the world. He brought Jon home to Winterfell and raised him alongside his trueborn children, never revealing the truth. The secret of Jon's parentage was the knowledge that Jon Arryn died for, and it was the truth that Ned carried with him to his own death. In the crypts of Winterfell, Lyanna's statue rests beside those of her father and brother Brandon, a stone likeness with a garland of pale blue roses, and Ned would bring her flowers when he could, remembering that she was fond of them. Her memory continued to shape the lives of those who loved her: Robert never ceased to mourn her, and Ned's final thoughts before his execution were of the promise he had made to her in that room of blood and roses.
