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 (behind Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow) 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.
Character Arya Stark was born 289 years after the conquest of Westeros by King Aegon I Targaryen as the third child and youngest daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn Stark of Winterfell, the ruling liege of the North. She is nine years old at the start of the book series. (She is 11 years old in season 1 of the HBO television show.) She has five siblings: an older brother named Robb, an older sister named Sansa, two younger brothers, Bran and Rickon, and an older illegitimate half-brother, Jon Snow. Through her mother, she is also a first cousin to Robert Arryn, the lord paramount of the Vale of Arryn; she is also 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 sister, Sansa, who is praised for favoring activities traditionally befitting a noblewoman, Arya is a tomboy who shows no interest in dancing, singing, and sewing; rather, she 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; has proven to be a constant source of headaches for her household tutor, Septa Mordane; and is given the nickname "Arya Underfoot" by the guards of Winterfell. Socially an outcast among her peer group of young noblewomen, she is particularly close to her bastard half-brother Jon, who encourages her and gives her a smallsword as a parting gift upon his leaving for the Night's Watch. The sword, which Arya names "Needle" after her dreaded embroidery lessons, is well suited to her slender build and favoring the Braavosi "Water Dance" (fencing) 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 a lean, athletic physique, brown hair, grey eyes, and long face (for which she was teased as "Horseface" by Sansa's lady's companions) and is said to resemble her late aunt Lyanna Stark in both looks and temperament. At the start of the novel series, she is prepubescent, generally regarded as messy and plain-looking, and often mistaken for a boy; there are multiple instances in the books, however, in she is compared favorably to the famously beautiful Lyanna. She is frequently catching the eyes of men—to the point of sexual harassment—when her body starts to develop later in the series. She is also a powerful skin-changer, developing on her own instinct the ability to telepathically control her direwolf, Nymeria, across entire continents while sleeping, as well as forming a psychic bond with a feral cat 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, naming 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, has a Braavosi-style smallsword made for her as a parting gift, which she names "Needle" after her least favorite ladylike activity, needlepoint.
While taking a walk together, Prince Joffrey Baratheon and her sister, Sansa, happen upon Arya and her friend Mycah, the low-born butcher's son, 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. Sansa's direwolf, Lady, is killed in Nymeria's stead, and Mycah is hunted down and killed by Sandor Clegane ("the Hound"), 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 makes her first kill: 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, albeit with a false identity.
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 Baratheon, to House Lannister guardsmen. 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 now-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. She first 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. He gives Arya a strange Braavosi iron coin to ensure her induction into his guild, known as the Faceless Men, and tells her to remember the passphrase "valar morghūlis" ( in High Valyrian) 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 she is recognized as Arya Stark. At the Brotherhood's secret base, Arya encounters Sandor Clegane, and she accuses him of Mycah's murder. 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. The pair reaches 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 in the Vale but is unable to proceed due to the weather; he decides to take her to her great-uncle, Brynden Tully of Riverrun, instead. On the way to Riverrun, they encounter two men on Arya's death list, "the Tickler" and Polliver, both of whom were Gregor Clegane's men-at-arms at Harrenhal. In the ensuing fight, Arya personally stabs the 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 of 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 morghūlis".
A Feast for Crows Arriving in Braavos, Arya makes her way to the headquarters of the Faceless Men, the House of Black and White, where she is initiated into the guild by the House's priest in charge, whom she calls "the Kindly Man". The Kindly Man orders her to dispose of all her possessions, and she complies by throwing them all in the river. However, she secretly hides her sword, Needle, the one thing that reminds her of sweet childhood memories. For her training, Arya adopts the identity of "Cat of the Canal", a street child who helps sell seafood, and continues to have increasingly frequent, vivid dreams of direwolves that further prevent her from discarding her old identity. During her training, she briefly meets (and saves) Samwell Tarly and later murders the Night's Watch deserter Dareon. After admitting her unauthorized killing to her mentor, she is given a cup of "burnt-tasting" milk to drink; the next morning, she wakes up blind.
A Dance with Dragons Arya remains blind in the service of the House of Black and White for half a year. She continues to dream through the eyes of her direwolf, Nymeria, but speaks of it to no one. While she is blind, Arya wanders the streets of Braavos under the identity of "Beth", a blind beggar girl, and becomes better at sensing without her eyes, as well as lying and detecting the lies of others.
After skinchanging into a stray tomcat that followed her back to the temple, Arya is able to identify the Kindly Man as the person who sneak-attacks her with a stick every night and later surprise-hits him. For this achievement, she passes her test of blindness and regains her vision, and she is given her first assassination assignment. When she successfully poisons a crooked insurance salesperson without rousing any suspicion or collateral damage, the Kindly Man gives Arya an acolyte's robe and assigns her to begin her first apprenticeship embedded within a theatrical group.
The Winds of Winter An excerpt chapter from the yet-to-be-published sixth book of the series, named "Mercy", was released on George R. R. Martin's official website on March 27, 2014. In the chapter, Arya assumes the identity of an apprentice stage actress under the alias Mercedene ("Mercy", for short). She performs in a Braavosi theatrical play, The Bloody Hand, a dramatized parody of the recent Westerosi political events in King's Landing, in which she plays a maiden and rape victim of the titular evil dwarf Hand: a demonized version of Tyrion Lannister.