Arya Stark
Arya Stark is a fictional character in American author George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy novel series and its HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones, where she was portrayed by English actress Maisie Williams. She is a prominent point-of-view character in the novels with the third most viewpoint chapters and is the only character to have a viewpoint chapter in every published book of the series, with her chapters having various alternative titles such as "Cat of the Canals", "The Blind Girl", "The Ugly Little Girl" and "Mercy" from the fourth book onwards.
Introduced in 1996's A Game of Thrones, Arya is the third child and youngest daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Lady Catelyn Stark. She is tomboyish, headstrong, feisty, independent, disdains traditional female pursuits, and is often mistaken for a boy. She wields a castle-forged steel smallsword named "Needle" forged by Mikken, the blacksmith of Winterfell, as a parting gift from her half-brother Jon Snow, and is trained in the Braavosi style of sword fighting by Syrio Forel.
Arya is among the most popular characters in the ASOIAF books, and Maisie Williams' performance in the HBO adaptation received critical acclaim. In 2016 and 2019, Williams was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She and the rest of the cast were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Character
Arya was born in 289 AC as the third child and younger daughter of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn Stark of Winterfell, the ruling liege of the North, and is nine years old at the beginning of the book series. She has five siblings: an older brother Robb, an older sister Sansa, two younger brothers Bran and Rickon, and an older illegitimate half-brother Jon Snow. Through her mother, she is also first cousin to Robert Arryn, the lord paramount of The Vale; and the niece of Edmure Tully, the lord paramount of the Riverlands.Arya is left-handed and talented in sums and housekeeping. In contrast to her older sister Sansa, who is more praised for favoring activities traditionally befitting a noblewoman, Arya is an unwomanly girl who shows no interest in the ladylike dancing, singing and sewing, but rather revels in outdoor activities and exploring, and is an excellent horserider. She is described as "wolf-blooded", blunt, impulsive and "always difficult to tame" by her mother Catelyn, proven to be a constant source of headache for her household tutor Septa Mordane, and given the nickname "Arya Underfoot" by the guards of Winterfell. Socially an outcast among the peers of young noblewoman, she is particularly close to her bastard half-brother Jon Snow, who encourages her and gives her a smallsword as a parting gift. The sword, which Arya names "Needle" after her dreaded embroidery lessons, is well suited to her slender build and favoring the Braavosi "Water Dance" style of swordplay which emphasizes speed and agility with quick thrusting attacks. Throughout her travels, Arya displays great resourcefulness and cunning and also becomes increasingly ruthless.
Arya is the only one out of her full-siblings to inherit the Stark features of lean athletic physique, brown hair, grey eyes and long face, and is said to resemble her late aunt Lyanna in both looks and temperament. At the start of the series, she is prepubescent and generally regarded as messy and plain-looking, and often mistaken for a boy; but there are multiple instances in the books comparing her to the famously beautiful Lyanna, and frequently catching the eyes of men when her body starts to develop later in the series. She is also a powerful skinchanger, developing purely on her own instinct the ability to telepathically control her direwolf Nymeria when sleeping, as well as forming a psychic bond with a street tomcat in Braavos.
Storylines
Novels
''A Game of Thrones''
Arya adopts one of the direwolf cubs that her brothers Robb and Jon discover in the wild, and names her "Nymeria" after a legendary Rhoynish warrior queen. She travels with her father, Eddard, to King's Landing when he is made Hand of the King. Before she leaves, her half-brother Jon Snow has a Braavosi-style smallsword made for her as a parting gift, which she names "Needle" after her least favorite ladylike activity.While taking a walk together, Prince Joffrey and her sister Sansa happen upon Arya and her friend, the low-born butcher's son Mycah, sparring in the woods with broomsticks. Arya defends Mycah from Joffrey's torments and her direwolf Nymeria helps Arya fight off Joffrey, wounding his arm in the process. Knowing that Nymeria will likely be killed in retribution, Arya chases her wolf away; but Sansa's direwolf Lady is killed in Nymeria's stead and Mycah is hunted down and killed by Sandor Clegane, Joffrey's bodyguard.
In King's Landing, her father discovers Arya's possession of Needle, but instead of confiscating it he arranges for sword-fighting lessons under the Braavosi swordmaster Syrio Forel, who teaches her the style of fighting known as "water dancing". After her father's arrest, Syrio is killed protecting Arya, and she narrowly escapes capture. In her escape, she kills her first person, a stable hand who was going to turn her in to the queen, Cersei Lannister. She later witnesses the public execution of her father before falling under the protection of the Night's Watch recruiter Yoren.
''A Clash of Kings''
Arya escapes King's Landing with Yoren and his party of recruits, pretending to be a boy named Arry; on the road, she clashes with the other Night's Watch child-recruits Lommy, Gendry, and Hot Pie, but eventually befriends them. On the way, the party is attacked by Amory Lorch when Yoren refuses to yield Gendry, who is actually a bastard son of the late King Robert, to the Lannisters. The Night's Watch convoy is overrun and massacred, but Arya and the other children escape through a tunnel. Before escaping, she rescues three prisoners locked in a wagon cage, among them a mysterious man named Jaqen H'ghar.Arya and her friends are later captured by Ser Gregor Clegane and taken to Harrenhal as slave laborers. After witnessing the torture and death of her fellow prisoners, Arya begins nightly reciting the names of the people upon whom she wishes to exact revenge. At Harrenhal she re-encounters Jaqen, now under the employ of the Lannisters, who offers to kill for her any three people she names; whereupon she names two people who hurt her at Harrenhal. When Jaqen asks her to name the last target, Arya extorts him to help her free northern prisoners by naming Jaqen himself as the third person. In order to get Arya to retract the name, Jaqen stages a massive prison riot that overwhelms the Lannister garrison. Afterwards, Jaqen offers to take Arya with him, but Arya expresses a wish to go home, so he gives Arya a strange Braavosi iron coin to ensure her induction into his guild, the Faceless Men, and tells her to remember the passphrase "Valar Morghulis" before leaving. The next morning Roose Bolton captures the castle, and Arya becomes his personal cupbearer. Eventually, Arya escapes Harrenhal with her friends Gendry and Hot Pie after killing a guard.
''A Storm of Swords''
While Arya and her companions are making their way north, she begins dreaming of her lost direwolf, Nymeria. Later, she and her companions are discovered by a guerrilla group, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and is recognized as Arya Stark. At the Brotherhood's secret base, Arya encounters Sandor Clegane, where she accuses him of Mycah's murder; but the Hound survives a trial by combat and is released.Arya eventually escapes the Brotherhood alone, but is captured by the Hound, who plans to return her to her family for a ransom. They reach the Twins just as her brother and mother are killed during the Red Wedding, and Sandor knocks her unconscious to prevent her from being killed. A few nights later, Arya skinchanges into Nymeria during sleep and pulls her mother's corpse out of the river for the Brotherhood to find. Later, Sandor plans to ransom her to her aunt Lysa at the Vale, but is unable to proceed due to the weather, so he decides to instead take her to her great-uncle Brynden Tully. On the way to Riverrun, they encounter two men on Arya's death list, Tickler and Polliver, who were both Gregor Clegane's men-at-arms at Harrenhal. In the ensuing fight, Arya personally stabs Tickler to death and reclaims her sword Needle from Polliver's corpse, but Sandor is severely injured. When Sandor becomes gravely ill from his wounds, Arya refuses to kill him and abandons him to die under a tree by the Trident river. She travels to the port town Saltpan and gains passage to Braavos on a merchant galleass, Titan's Daughter, by presenting the ship's captain with the iron coin that Jaqen gave her along with the Valyrian phrase "Valar Morghulis."