Lyanna Stark
| House / Order | House Stark |
|---|---|
| Race / Culture | |
| Status | Deceased |
| Origin | The North; Dorne |
| Born | 266 AC (approx.) |
| Died | 283 AC, at the Tower of Joy, Dorne |
| Weapon | |
| Fate | Died in a bed of blood; her brother Eddard Stark held her dying and made a promise he never disclosed |
| Portrayed by |
Lyanna Stark was the only daughter of Lord Rickard Stark and the sister of Brandon, Eddard, and Benjen. Beautiful, willful, and skilled in the saddle, Lyanna was betrothed to Robert Baratheon, but her disappearance with Prince Rhaegar Targaryen became the spark that lit Robert's Rebellion. Though long dead by the time of the main narrative, Lyanna casts a long shadow over the events of A Song of Ice and Fire, and the secret of her death lies at the heart of one of its central mysteries.
Background
Lyanna was raised at Winterfell as the cherished daughter of House Stark. She was remembered by her brother Eddard as having a wild "wolf blood" and a beauty matched by her spirited nature. She rode like a northerner and was not made for the meekness of southron ladies. Ned loved her dearly and was troubled by her betrothal to Robert, knowing his friend's roving nature even as Robert idealized her.
A famous tale tells of the tourney at Harrenhal, where a mystery knight, the Knight of the Laughing Tree, took up the cause of a humble crannogman against bullying squires, and many have speculated the knight was Lyanna herself.
Disappearance and war
At that same tourney, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, though wed to Elia Martell, passed over his own wife to crown Lyanna queen of love and beauty with a wreath of winter roses. Some time later, Rhaegar and Lyanna vanished together. Her family named it abduction. Her brother Brandon rode to King's Landing in fury, and his death, along with that of their father, at the hands of the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen set the realm to war.
Death at the Tower of Joy
After Rhaegar fell at the Trident and the war was all but won, Eddard Stark and a handful of companions rode south to a place in the mountains of Dorne called the Tower of Joy, where three knights of the Kingsguard stood guard. A terrible fight followed, leaving only Ned and his friend Howland Reed alive. Within the tower, Ned found Lyanna dying in a bed of blood, amid the scent of crushed roses. She made him swear a promise with her final breath, words Ned carried in silence to his own grave. The nature of that promise, and the cause of the blood, are left for the reader to infer, and have given rise to the enduring theory of Jon Snow's true parentage.
Character
Lyanna is a figure built almost entirely from memory and rumor, glimpsed only through the recollections of those who loved her. Beautiful and headstrong, she is mourned by Robert as an idealized lost love and remembered by Eddard with quiet, guarded grief. Her story interrogates the gulf between how the powerful remember a woman and what she may have wanted for herself.
In the television series
In HBO's Game of Thrones, Lyanna appears in flashbacks portrayed by Cordelia Hill and Aisling Franciosi. The series confirms what the novels imply: that Lyanna died giving birth to Jon Snow, Rhaegar's son, and that her dying plea to Ned was to protect the child.
Appearances
- A Game of Thrones (mentioned and in dreams)
- A Storm of Swords (mentioned)