#the youngest son of Cregan Stark and Lynara Stark.

[coldraindropsss]

Jeyne Manderly, wife of Rickon Stark, son of Cregan Stark.

Myriame Manderly, wife of Rodwell Stark, son of Brandon Stark, the youngest son of Cregan Stark and Lynara Stark.

[wallboys]

cregan and lynara really said barthogan is a beautiful name for a baby boy

[goodqueenaly]

Who do you think some of the she-wolves of Winterfell could be? I think strong contenders are one of Rickon Stark's daughters, Serena and Sansa, Myriame Manderly, Lorra Royce, maybe Melantha Blackwood if she's in the North yet. What do you think?

Per GRRM (at least back in 2006), the story of “The She-Wolves of Winterfell” will feature “five Lady Starks running Winterfell ... with four of them widows of a bunch of fairly recent former Lord Starks, and the current Lady Stark, whose 30-something husband is fading fast from a wound taken from fighting the Ironborn”. That Lord Stark would be Beron, which means that the “current Lady Stark” would be Lorra Royce (though whether she was from the senior line Royces of Runestone, or the junior line Royces from whom Nestor descends, we don’t yet know). Beron’s predecessor as Lord Stark was his brother, Rodwell, whose wife was Myriame Manderly, so presumably she will be the first of those Stark widows. Rodwell was the eldest son of Lord Brandon Stark, so I expect his and Beron’s mother, Alys Karstark, will be alive as well. (Hopefully she’s as brave and awesome as her name twin in the main novels.)

What makes this calculation somewhat tricky from here is that, according to the Stark family tree from TWOIAF, Barthogan (Brandon’s immediate predecessor as Lord of Winterfell) was unmarried. Barthogan’s own predecessor, Jonnel, was married, twice in fact - but unless he took a rather extraordinary step in putting aside one of his wives to marry the other, presumably we’ll only meet one of them. My money would be on Sansa Stark, because of the rich succession questions her presence could raise; as one of the daughters of Rickon Stark, Sansa had arguably a far better right to Winterfell than any of Cregan’s younger sons or their descendants. It’s remotely possible that either Jeyne Manderly (the wife of Rickon Stark) or Lynara Stark (the wife of Cregan) would have still been alive at this time, although my feeling would be no. If Jeyne was of an age with Rickon she would have been in her early 80s by the time of this story, and while that’s not the oldest age any (non-magical) person has reached in Westeros, it is certainly old by Westerosi standards; as for Lynara, while I would guess she was younger than Cregan, I can’t imagine that even at the youngest she was too much younger than her own stepson Rickon, and so probably the same calculus as with Jeyne would apply.

That’s only three Stark widows, of course, though I wouldn’t say that that would necessarily be all the fierce Stark ladies hanging around Winterfell (and let’s remember, not only has this been a work in progress long before the formalization of the Stark family tree in TWOIAF, but GRRM can’t math). Serena Stark was not a widow of a Stark lord (as Edric Stark, her uncle-husband, died before he could succeed), but she was still the senior heir of Rickon as well as the widow of a Stark. Serena also had four children by Edric, and while I’m suspicious their twin boys died young (they never ruled Winterfell either, and the family tree didn’t show them marrying or having children), their daughters lived to marry and have children of their own; indeed, I could see where Serena and her daughters would have emphasized that they were “Starks”, the rightful heirs to Winterfell. Cregan’s daughters by Alysanne Blackwood might have been alive, albeit probably in their 70s at least (although we don’t know if they ever married; no spouses were listed on the lineage). Cregan’s youngest daughter, Lyanna (how could GRRM ignore the thematic possibilities with that namesake?) and his granddaughter, Arsa (Beron’s sister), may also have been around Winterfell (though their marital fates are unknown as well).

It’s also worth pointing out that there may be one other lady around Winterfell around the time of “The She-Wolves of Winterfell”: Wylla Fenn, the mother of Brandon Stark’s bastard, Lonnel Snow. Although Lonnel, as an unlegitimated bastard, would not legally have any rights to Winterfell, as a son of a Stark lord (and his son by a northern noblewoman) in a period of uncertain succession, Lonnel might well have come forward (or been put forward by his mother) to grasp at power in the North. (And let’s be real, could it really be coincidental that GRRM named the mother of a bastard son of a Stark lord “Wylla”?)