CATELYN: Family, duty, honor.
Every Tully child learns our words,
but l was a woman before l understood them.
Years before,
my father had taken to foster the son of a wartime friend,
a minor lord on the Fingers.
The boy had arrived at our castle as Petyr Baelish.
Due to his home and size, my brother soon named him Littlefinger.
When l came of age,
Brandon Stark of Winterfell sought and won my hand.
To my father, Brandon was heir to the North
and a suitable match for a daughter of House Tully.
To me,
Brandon was wild and terrifying, never far from laughter or trouble.
l loved him with all the fire of a first passion,
much, l came to realize, as Petyr loved me.
When Petyr heard of my engagement, he challenged Brandon to a duel.
Petyr survived only because l begged Brandon not to kill him.
l still thought of Petyr as family.
Now,
l wish l had let him die.
Only days before my wedding, when l thought to be happy forever,
Prince Rhaegar Targaryen abducted Brandon's sister, Lyanna.
Hot-blooded as always,
Brandon immediately rode for King's Landing to demand justice,
which the Mad King Aerys Targaryen gave him
in his own twisted fashion.
The day the raven arrived with the news of my Brandon's death,
l locked myself in a room and refused to eat for days
until my father reminded me of my duty.
l was to marry Eddard, Brandon's younger brother.
A man whom l had never met, though of whom none spoke ill,
or spoke anything at all.
Our union would cement an alliance of the North, Vale,
Stormlands and Riverlands in rebellion against the Mad King.
l was a Tully.
l did my duty.
We were married quickly
and were spared only one night before he had to return to the field.
l spent the war by the windows,
waiting for a raven to hear if my son would grow up fatherless or at all.
We knew the price of defeat.
l scoured the kitchens and washing rooms for any and all gossip.
Robert had won and crushed the Mad King.
Robert had lost, but Jaime Lannister was now king.
Robert had almost won,
but the Mad King had become a dragon and burned King's Landing to ash.
At night, l told myself the war would end soon and bring peace.
Either a victory or the grave.
l was wrong.
Robert won,
and my husband avenged his brother and my love.
But when he came home to me,
he could not meet my eyes.
l saw the reason by his side.
Many men have bastards, l know.
And under the strain of war,
any man, no matter how honorable, may forsake his vows for a night of warmth
that he may never know again.
But Ned Stark was not built like other men.
His Northern honor would not let him sequester his shame
in some distant holdfast.
He brought this boy, this Jon Snow,
home to raise with his trueborn children.
My children.
Yet even these bitter memories are sweet now.
They are all l have left of my Ned.
Our family is broken and scattered.
And our son must wage a war for the pieces.
We need to go home.
The Starks are of the North,
and like the snows of winter, when they come south,
they melt away.