Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 4

4 years ago

Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 4

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EDDARD STARK
Eddard “Ned” Stark, son of Lord Rickard Stark is head of the House of Stark, greatest Northern House, and he is the Warden of the North. His home is Winterfell, and he has six children, five legitimate and one bastard, in order of age: Robb, Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Rickon. Jon is the bastard son, while the rest are legitimate children of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn Stark— which is pronounced “Katlin”.

Now, let us get something here. Bastard is a very strong word here in Nigeria. One of the harshest insults you can level at anybody. But in the seven kingdoms, it’s not that way. Did your mother or father have you out of wedlock? If the answer is yes, then you’re a bastard. Quite simple. Bastard in that case is not meant as an insult, only as a truthful statement of fact, except when it is actuallymeantas an insult.

Different regions have their bastard names for highborn bastards only, depending on where the illegitimate child is born. A bastard cannot take the surname of his father. The bastard name of the North is Snow— because they have the coldest weather in all the seven kingdoms —so Jon, Ned Stark’s bastard son, is Jon Snow. All the rest carry their father’s name, Stark.

Ned Stark was born in Winterfell, but lived only a small part of his childhood there. He was sent to foster at the castle of Lord Jon Arryn when he was a child, a man who was an ally of his father’s House, Lord of the Eyrie in the Vale. He wasn’t the only highborn child sent to foster with Lord Arryn. Another young boy of his age was there too, Robert of House Baratheon. The two boys grew up together, and of course became very close friends.

Ned had three siblings. Brandon Stark, the firstborn, after whom his son Bran was named, Ned was the second, Benjen was the third, while his sister Lyanna was the last. When Ned took Catelyn as his wife, Lord Arryn, a man who was like a second father to him, took Catelyn’s younger sister Lysa to wife, making the two men brothers-in-law.

The sigil of House Stark is a direwolf.

The first book of A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones, begins with three men of the Night’s Watch, a highborn young man, Waymar Royce, youngest brother of Bronze Yohn Royce, one of the bannermen of Lord Arryn, and two lowborn men who go on a ranging beyond the Wall to investigate a report of wildlings moving South en masse.

After watching in disbelief a wildling settlement just previously known to be littered with bodies of mysteriously dead wildlings now suddenly empty, as if the dead men and women grew legs and walked away, young Waymar gets ambushed by the Night King and his order of Others. The Others, or White Walkers, as they are also called, look completely otherworldly— permit my pun —and the Night King’s sword shatters the young lordling’s fine steel sword upon contact.

All the Walkers then raise their swords and butcher the young man in cold blood.
One of the other two older men watches from up in a tree, and after waiting in terror for the Others to leave, he climbs down and looks at the corpse of the fine young man, knowing for sure that the Night’s Watch is finished.

But, to his own peril, the man learns how the dead wildlings disappeared when the butchered young man suddenly stands and grabs him by the neck, then chokes him to death on the spot.

The last man heard and saw all of this, and was supposed to run immediately back to Castle Black and warn the Night’s Watch of the horrors beyond the Wall.

But the man was so afraid and traumatized by what he had seen that he decided he was done with the Night’s Watch, and once he crossed the Wall, he ran away. A person with memories like that is bound to behave like a madman, or maybe it was just because he wore black clothes from head to toe, an identifying factor of men of the Night’s Watch, that he was spotted easily.

For whatever reason, the man was immediately recognized for what he was and taken into custody.

I know some people might be confused by all the Night’s Watch, White Walkers, Others and co. that I’ve mentioned. I will explain all those soon, but for now, let’s talk geography. King’s Landing, the capital of the seven kingdoms, is far South. Travel a road called the Kingsroad going to the North, and you will end up in Ned Stark’s lands. Keep going North past that, and you’re going past some other Northern Houses.

All Northern roads, however, dead-end at the Wall.