Among ADWD’s most memorable crowning moments of awesome are the northmen expressing their undying love for and loyalty to the Starks despite the house seemingly teetering on the verge of extinction—heirs dead, missing, or in captivity; ancestral seat of Winterfell in ruins and occupied by enemies.
Ten-year-old Lyanna Mormont roundly rejects Stannis Baratheon as her king.
Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK. (Jon I, ADWD)
Wylla Manderly, a girl of no more than fifteen, finds the treacherous lies of the Freys unbearable and denounces them for all her grandfather’s court to hear.
“
A thousand years before the Conquest, a promise was made, and oaths were sworn in the Wolf’s Den before the old gods and the new. When we were sore beset and friendless, hounded from our homes and in peril of our lives, the wolves took us in and nourished us and protected us against our enemies. The city is built upon the land they gave us. In return, we swore that we should always be their men. Stark men!” (Davos III, ADWD)
Northern hill clansmen brave death by winter and the sword both, hundreds making a grueling march to Winterfell, for a chance to save Ned Stark’s daughter.
“
Winter is almost upon us, boy. And winter is death. I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned’s little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. No one sings songs of men who die like that. As for me, I am old. This will be my last winter. Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die. I want to feel it spatter across my face when my axe bites deep into a Bolton skull. I want to lick it off my lips and die with the taste of it on my tongue.” (Asha II, The King’s Prize, ADWD)
And, of course, Wyman Manderly, who’s so bold as to bake his foes into Frey pies and serve them to the usurping Boltons at a wedding feast.
“
Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. “My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, hung his sword upon the wall to feast with friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter… but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done.” (Davos IV, ADWD)
It’s all terribly inspiring and, upon realization of Manderly’s deception, of just how deep hatred for the Boltons and Freys runs, some began to wonder if there isn’t more to it. Thus was born
The Grand Northern Conspiracy.
this character
, read 
to the end of the last chapter on Jon
