| Arya Stark | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Played by Nymeria | |
| Fandom |
A Song of Ice and Fire |
| Age |
Twelve |
| Race |
Human |
| Gender |
Female |
| Status |
Inactive |
Skills[]
Arya is, surprisingly for a girl of her age, trained in combat. Her main talent is swordsmanship; having learned the quick and clever ways of the Braavosi, she is quite skilled in the art.
She's agile and quick to react, and she knows how to watch and perceive. Due to her size she's lighter than most, allowing her to be a rather fast runner and small target. She's also fairly trained with a bow, and an adequate rider. She's clever, a decent liar, and able to form and execute acceptable plans. With all she's been through, she's had to learn to hold her own, learning survival skills such as stealth and (to an extent) reason. Though Arya doesn't hold much of that – she's usually quite snappy and impulsive, quick to insult and hardlylevelheaded when provoked. She's not the best at thinking things through and often her mouth can get her into trouble, as well as her actions. Her size also comes into play when it comes to physical weaknesses – while she's quick, she's not the strongest, and in some situations could be taken down with merely blunt force, despite her agility. She's human, after all; while at times she may think she's untouchable, she can bleed and grow ill like anyone else.
Personality[]
It could be said that Arya's most notable characteristic is her fieriness. She had always been the oddball, always choosing to play at being knights with her brothers rather than doing needlework like her sister and the other girls at Winterfell. Because of that, she frequently had quarrels with her sister, sometimes her septa and even her mother as well. She rejected the thought of being a lady and held onto the fantasy that someday she could be a knight like her brothers, or some lord of a holdfast. She liked to spend her days amongst the commonfolk as well, becoming easy friends with most lowborn. It was the highborn she had trouble with, and it was highborn she refused to be; it wasn't that she was ungrateful, but she refused to think of herself as a proper little lady, with petty tasks and duties. She had always been like that, and it seems as though she always will be. Even when she was thrown in amongst outlaws and stripped of all her highborn priveleges, she still gave those who called her things such as “m'lady” a shove.
In fact, being an outlaw is, surprisingly, what she aspires to be – outlaws are free and wild and, if she can prove herself, careless of gender. It's not that Arya denies her gender, in fact she does take offense to those who mistake her as a boy, but she doesn't see why she can't be a girl and an outlaw, or a knight, or some lord of a holdfast.
And she's snappy to those who deny her her freedom. She's a fighter, and can hold her own. She's stubborn as well, curious as a cat, and won't take no for an answer. She'll ask questions and won't stop until she gets an answer, she'll search until she finds what she's looking for. She won't give up, she won't give in. The things that come out of her mouth are unpredictable, but she'll make sure it's nothing you want out of her. She's feisty, but with feistiness also comes violence. She's not afraid to poke you with her sword, or more than that, slit your throat if you ever go too far. With all the things she's been through, some of the trauma has dampened her sanity, and if you've done anything to hurt her or the ones she loves, she'll be happy to open your neck. She's loyal to her friends, and she won't forget any wrong that you do them. While she's not entirely quick to trust, and hardly forgiving, she can sometimes be naïvely attached to those that do happen to weave their way into her heart. Needless to say she'll be quite shocked if you betray her, and she doesn't like to be made a fool of. Though at the end of the day, if things go well and everyone is pleasant, Arya can be quite a likeable person. She's got a quick tongue, some might say, but others may claim that she's endearingly honest. If you're weak of heart she's an easy enemy, but if you've got a sense of humour she can just as easily be a great friend. Her sense of adventure can often lead her into trouble, but it'll almost always make a good story when all's said and done. She's a complicated girl, with many different layers, some obvious and some more ulterior, though she somehow manages to work her way into the hearts of many. She's far from content, but she's capable of smiling and feeling carefree – she lives in the moment, so to speak.
Appearance[]
'Beautiful' was never a word used to describe Arya – that courtesy always went to her sister. And rightly so, as well. While Arya was not the ugliest child, her looks hardly compared to that of her sister's elegance. She's a skinny girl, short, around 150 centimeters, with tangled mousy brown hair and a long, solemn face like her father (which, unfortunately, had earned Arya nicknames such as “Arya Horseface” and “Lumpyhead”).
Her eyes are a gray the colour of storm clouds, much like her father as well, and much duller compared to her sister and mother's brilliant blue eyes. While her hair was once long enough to pull back into a bun or ponytail, it's now scraggly and short, going hardly past her chin. As for clothing, Arya would much rather run around in tunic and breeches than play at being a proper lady. In fact, with her less than girlish behaviour, unkempt clothes and hair, and her usually dirt-cached skin, Arya is more than often mistaken for a boy, though she'll tell you the right of it quick enough, and perhaps a bit more.
Relationships[]
History[]
In the light summer snows of Winterfell, Arya Stark was bore by Catelyn and Eddard Stark, as their third child and their second daughter. She grew up in the shadow of her older sister, Sansa. Sansa had always been the perfect princess of Winterfell; she was skilled with a needle, courteous, pretty, and always followed the rules. Arya, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. Instead of drinking tea and dressing up with her sister, the young girl elected to play with her brothers, learning to ride and fight, and only spent time with Sansa when she was forced to practice needlework with the Septa.
One day, Lord Stark and her brothers had returned from an execution of a deserter of the Night's Watch, found cradling six wolf pups in their arms; four boys, two girls. The pups proved to be the babes of a direwolf, an animal thought to be extinct and unlike any average dog that inhabited the castle. Arya named hers Nymeria, after a warrior queen she had heard about in a story, and the direwolf had become her constant companion ever since.
Everything changed when the King Robert Baratheon and his royal family paid the Starks a visit. Her father had been named Hand of the King, his chief advisor. Ned and Robert had had a rather close history together, and so her father accepted. Arya, Sansa, and Bran were soon thereafter invited to join on the journey to the capital, King's Landing, though after Bran had succumbed to a coma after a deadly fall, it was only the girls that went, while Robb, Rickon, and their mother stayed behind with Bran, and her bastard brother Jon traveled North to take the black and join the Night's Watch, the guards of the vast Wall in the very North.
Before the the Starks separated however, Jon had visited Arya in her chambers to say goodbye, and with his farewells, he had also brought a gift. It was a sword, to Arya's delight; a long, thin sword that she had christened Needle. It was the greatest gift she had ever been given, and quite possibly the last she would ever receive from Jon.
After they had wept all their tears and said all their goodbyes, Arya and her sister joined the royal family to King's Landing. On the Kingsroad, Arya discovered her strong dislike for the prince, Joffrey. He was a spoiled, rotten child who was deceivingly charming, and Arya was displeased with her sister's infatuation with him, to say the least. Her dislike for the boy only grew into utter hatred when he and her sister had found her in the woods.
Due to the absence of her brothers, Arya found herself playing with wooden sticks with the butcher's boy by the river. Joffrey and her sister had stumbled across them on a walk, and the confrontation resulted in Nymeria coming to Arya's rescue when Joffrey had her pinned and nearly tearing the boy's arm off. After Arya had collected her pride and thrown the prince's blade ('Lion's Tooth,' he had smugly called it) into the Trident, she ran off into the woods with her wolf.
Arya knew that Nymeria would surely be slaughtered for what she had done, and so ordered the pup to run off into the woods where she could not be found, regretfully throwing stones at the poor wolf in order to chase her away. Later Arya was found in the woods and taken to stand before the Queen to receive the King's justice. In the end, Sansa's wolf Lady was put to death in place of Nymeria, and Sansa cried herself to sleep and despised her younger sister with all that she had.
The rest of the trip to King's Landing was solemn. When they arrived, Arya found that there was nothing for her there. She still lived in Sansa's wake, and she was still forced to do tedious tasks and duties such as needlework. It was perhaps worse than even bleak Winterfell. That is, until her father had discovered Needle. After Ned had learned of Arya's passion for swordplay, he assigned her a master, a Braavosi water dancer by the name of Syrio Forel. Syrio taught her the Braavosi way of swordplay; unlike the common knight's methods, the Braavosi were swift and nimble, using their agility instead of their strength. And at the end of the day when she was sore and sweaty, and Septa Mordane asked her where she had been, she could truthfully say she had been doing "needlework".
It was her one escape in the mess that the King's court was, and all her cares about the prince and the Queen and the King seemed to melt away. That is, of course, until she heard conspirators discussing her father, and his possible death. She had stumbled across the two in the dungeons when she was performing one of Syrio's lessons — chasing cats — and had hid in one of the old dragon skulls. After the encounter, Arya had prayed to the gods every night for her father's safety, the old and the new. And so it distressed her when the King Robert's death came about, declaring Joffrey the new King and Protector of the Realm. It was when men of the Kingsguard had interrupted one of her lessons, requesting that she be taken before the King, that she realized a battle had broken out. Running from her pursuers, Arya left the castle and took refuge in the city.
It was on the steps of Baelor that she saw her father put on trial, and it was on the steps of Baelor that she saw her father murdered. It was when she had been desperately maneuvering through the crowd that one of her father's men, Yoren, had found her, and saved her from the ghastly sight of Lord Eddard's beheading. After the execution, she was whisked away by Yoren, who cut her hair off, gave her a new alias (an orphan boy named Arry), and flung her into his band of miscreants whom he was taking for service on the Wall.
They started their journey, though it soon ended when they were ambushed; when Yoren failed to open his gates to an officer of Lord Tywin by the name of Ser Amory Lorch, he attacked in great numbers. Arya, an older boy named Gendry, a fat boy named Hot Pie, the dyer's apprentice Lommy Greenhands, and a small girl they called the crying girl (for her constant habit of sobbing) managed to escape, though with zero supplies and little to no knowledge of how to survive off natural resources. Though even that soon came to an end when they were caught by Lorch's men anyways; the crying girl, whom they had named Weasel when she had eventually stopped crying, had escaped, Lommy was killed, and Hot Pie, Gendry, and Arya were taken as captives to Harrenhal.
At Harrenhal, Arya was reunited with one of the men she had saved during the ambush – a foreign man that went by the name of Jaqen H'ghar. Jaqen became something of a friend to Arya, and with his friendship, he brought a deal as well; for his life and the two others that she had saved, he offered to take any three lives that she desired in exchange. The ordeal gave Arya a brief sense of power, and newfound bravery. She used her first two names on guards that had shown her cruelty, and her last on Amory Lorch and his men.
With Lorch defeated, the hostaged northmen overthrew Harrenhal and gave it a new lord – Lord Roose Bolton. Under Lord Bolton's rule, Arya became a cupbearer by the name of Nan. Though Roose treated her more kindly than the Lannister men ever did, she still wished to escape, and after Bolton departed and Harrenhal was left to Lord Vargo Hoat, she did just that, taking Gendry and Hot Pie along with her.
Not long afterwards, the group was discovered by a band of the Brotherhood Without Banners. They took the escapees to the Inn of the Kneeling Man, where a man named Harwin recognised her as Arya Stark from the days he worked at Winterfell. Gendry and Arya traveled with the Brotherhood to their hideout, while Hot Pie stayed behind to work at the inn. They were welcome guests, and treated kindly, and Gendry was knighted to be Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill and smith for the leader of the Brotherhood, Lord Beric Dondarrion. In her dismay of having both of her only true companions parting, Arya attempted to flee, though was soon caught by a treacherous man by the name of Sandor Clegane, or more commonly, The Hound, and was his captive for ransom, planning to take her to her brother at Lord Walder Frey's twin castles.
One night, whilst on the road to the Twins, the black cords sprung from the Earth. The last thing Arya remembers was feeling them coiling around her legs, the sensation of falling, and opening her eyes to black.