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Why weren't Ned's kids fostered?


PrinceHenryris

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This must have come up before, but the search didn't help.

Brandon and Ned were both fostered. If we believe Barbrey, Lyanna spent a lot of Her time riding the Rhylls.

However, none of Ned's children were fostered.

When and where should they have been sent?

My suggestions (once Brandon is born):

Robb goes to the Karstarks or Umbers;

Jon Snow finds himself shipped to the Daynes;

Sansa to the Royces; and

Arya to the Mormonts.

Bran and Rickon are too young at the start of aGoT.

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Jon wasn't for obvious reasons. Robb is the heir and close with Jon so it makes sense keeping them together.



Do girls typically get sent out as Wards? I know nobles send their daughters to be bed maids and stuff but given their Lord Paramount status I doubt the Starks would do that.



Arya same reason as above.



Bran or Rickon probably would have got sent somewhere at some point. Bran wanted to be a knight so he would have had to squire for someone.


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I'm not too sure why Ned's kids weren't fostered. We know Catelyn was reluctant to part with Bran at the beginning of AGoT so maybe she didn't want her kids be fostered and Ned respected her wishes.



If they were fostered then I think it would have been like this:


Robb goes to the Manderlys or Karstarks


Sansa would go to King's Landing to be fostered by King Bob and Cersei (assuming Westeros is completely peaceful) or she would go to the Mallisters or Blackwoods


Arya would go to the Arryns or another northern house maybe the Mormonts or even the Reeds.


Bran and Rickon would be too young, but when they were older they would serve as squires. I don't think many houses would accept a bastard so Jon would have stayed at Winterfell.


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This is something that we have been wondering for quite a while. Not only that it shows how Ned was politically inept, but Catelyn should have known better. Plus, at the beginning, we actually see that Starks don't have political circle around them in Winterfell. I mean, Ned is this man with reputation, certainly someone thought of him being worthy of raising their children. Catelyn is a Tully married to a Stark, but there is no highborn girl around Sansa and Arya (in comparison look at Margaery's entourage). And it is not like there weren't girls in the North - Mormont girls, Manderly girls, Alys Karstark. We know Robb and Jon followed Ned during his journeys, but lack of developed friendships with boys who would become heirs of their houses is a bit troubling.



Overall, whatever was the reason, it just shows how Starks were politically unprepared.






I'm not too sure why Ned's kids weren't fostered. We know Catelyn was reluctant to part with Bran at the beginning of AGoT so maybe she didn't want her kids be fostered and Ned respected her wishes.





Like he would have respected her wish regarding Bran? Cat may have been reluctant, but if there wasn't for fall, Bran would have gone to KL.


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its hard to know really. Maybe it have something to do with the secrets around Jon. What message would it send to the other lords if you send you trueborn sons and heirs away and keep your bastard.



Maybe he just loved his kids too much. I wouldn't last a day without mine


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For some reason I feel like this is connected to the odd parentage of this generation of noble children. For some reason the almost all the High Houses decided to marry eachother. If you look at the family trees of all the Great Houses you see they marry cousins when possible and rarely marry outside their region when it's not. But suddenly you have proposed Lannister/Targs, Stark/Tullys, Stark/Beratheons, Targ/Martels, and Lannister/Martels(Tyrells come later) . Suddenly this generation of children become much more important and confusing inheritance wise, so maybe it's a security thing. To keep them both secure from harm and political indoctrination.

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I think it's because of his trauma of losing all his family at a very young age and therefore wanting to keep his children close and give them all the love and affection he can and spend as much time with them as possible. He's a family man. He seems to have given pretty much all of them excellent education as well, so it's not clear they would have been better off elsewhere. It's also not as if he needs to built alliances, being content to rule the North and leave the Kiingdom to his best friend Robert (who already likes him). He's also got an excellent relationship with his bannermen with no real need to strengthen it further and we also know that he visited those bannermen regularly and seems to have taken the children with them on those trips and vice versa. Also, heirs and girls don't tend to be fostered so the only one to be sent might be Bran, and it wasn't exactly overdue with him.

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I think it's because of his trauma of losing all his family at a very young age and therefore wanting to keep his children close and give them all the love and affection he can and spend as much time with them as possible. He's a family man. He seems to have given pretty much all of them excellent education as well, so it's not clear they would have been better off elsewhere. It's also not as if he needs to built alliances, being content to rule the North and leave the Kiingdom to his best friend Robert (who already likes him). He's also got an excellent relationship with his bannermen with no real need to strengthen it further and we also know that he visited those bannermen regularly and seems to have taken the children with them on those trips and vice versa. Also, heirs and girls don't tend to be fostered so the only one to be sent might be Bran, and it wasn't exactly overdue with him.

Nailed it

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I think it's because of his trauma of losing all his family at a very young age and therefore wanting to keep his children close and give them all the love and affection he can and spend as much time with them as possible. He's a family man. He seems to have given pretty much all of them excellent education as well, so it's not clear they would have been better off elsewhere. It's also not as if he needs to built alliances, being content to rule the North and leave the Kiingdom to his best friend Robert (who already likes him). He's also got an excellent relationship with his bannermen with no real need to strengthen it further and we also know that he visited those bannermen regularly and seems to have taken the children with them on those trips and vice versa. Also, heirs and girls don't tend to be fostered so the only one to be sent might be Bran, and it wasn't exactly overdue with him.

Exactly. And additionaly Ned's father had ambition, build alliances, sent Ned to be fostered and made sure the kids met a lot of other nobles. Didn't do the family a lot good in the long run. It's reasonable that after being fostered and not seing his brother and sister much before they died, Ned is completely content to sit and have some family life with his own children. Ned is not politically savvy nor ambitious, and that seems to serve him well until he jumps right into political intrigue with all the grace of bull in a china shop. Besides, iot might be a cultural thing. Rickard had 'southron' ambitions. North seems to care less about fostering, having entourage and so on - perhaps because it's much bigger, sparsely populuated region. Knights are also not quite popular there, which means not many squires as well.

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I think after seeing everything that happened to his family during the years around the rebellion, Ned wanted to keep his children close to him.

Maybe a bad political move on his part, but for the majority of Roberts rule the Kingdom was enjoying a long peace. There was little reason to foster the boys or to rush the girls into prearranged marriages.

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Bran is still seven at the beginning of the story, and Catelyn's favorite child. She did not want to be separated from him. He may have been fostered eventually, though. Nothing suggests that the nobility in Westers sends away their children at the age of four or five.



But nothing really suggests that the Starks are usually into this whole fostering thing. In fact, most Lords of Winterfell seem to have cared about themselves and their own lands, and little else, so there was really no tradition (or need) to foster children with Southron lords.



I also don't think that Brandon was fostered in the Rills. Him hanging out there and spending time there as a youth is not the same as being fostered there.


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I think the easy answer is they didn't need to.



Robert Arryn was going to be fostered by Stannis to keep him safe from the impending trouble. Then because his father died/as a hostage. None of those apply to the Starks.



Frey wanted to use fostering to gain status. Starks don't need that.



Fostering seems like a good way to strengthen alliance with a lesser house from your region but the Starks have good ties anyway. Yes Bolton betrayed them eventually but there is nothing to suggest that fostering would have stopped that betrayal. The Starks are on excellent terms with the rest of the major Northern lords.



I don't think Ned had any interest in cultivating any further ties with Southern lords. He had no political ambitions so there was no reason too. He already had blood ties to the Riverlands and the Vale and Robert was a good friend. He should have been politically secure. Plus with the number of kids he had marraige pacts would surely be on the agenda for the near future.


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Why should they be fostered? Jaime Cersei and Tyrion weren`t. If Ned and Brandon were fostered that was possibly forced by the then king, or family problems. I`d be more interested in why Robb wasn`t sent to squire for anyone

I'm going to sound really stupid now but... isn't squiring mainly a tourney thing? In peace time anyway? What use would a Northerner (who generally shun tourneys) have for a squire? Is it a 'thing' in the north?

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I'm going to sound really stupid now but... isn't squiring mainly a tourney thing? In peace time anyway? What use would a Northerner (who generally shun tourneys) have for a squire? Is it a 'thing' in the north?

I thought it was a way to learn on hand experience from a knight to one day become a knight. Dunno if there`s a southron bias about it

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I'm going to sound really stupid now but... isn't squiring mainly a tourney thing? In peace time anyway? What use would a Northerner (who generally shun tourneys) have for a squire? Is it a 'thing' in the north?

Domeric Bolton served as a page for Lady Dustin before going to the Vale to squire. So if they have pages, I would guess they have squires, just not knights. Guess you go from "squire" to "warrior?"

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This must have come up before, but the search didn't help.

Brandon and Ned were both fostered. If we believe Barbrey, Lyanna spent a lot of Her time riding the Rhylls.

However, none of Ned's children were fostered.

When and where should they have been sent?

My suggestions (once Brandon is born):

Robb goes to the Karstarks or Umbers;

Jon Snow finds himself shipped to the Daynes;

Sansa to the Royces; and

Arya to the Mormonts.

Bran and Rickon are too young at the start of aGoT.

Why would Jon go to a house with no ruling Lord to learn from. Edric is himself fostered with Dondarrions.

The Girls would be sent where they were betrothed if anything.

This is something that we have been wondering for quite a while. Not only that it shows how Ned was politically inept, but Catelyn should have known better. Plus, at the beginning, we actually see that Starks don't have political circle around them in Winterfell. I mean, Ned is this man with reputation, certainly someone thought of him being worthy of raising their children. Catelyn is a Tully married to a Stark, but there is no highborn girl around Sansa and Arya (in comparison look at Margaery's entourage). And it is not like there weren't girls in the North - Mormont girls, Manderly girls, Alys Karstark. We know Robb and Jon followed Ned during his journeys, but lack of developed friendships with boys who would become heirs of their houses is a bit troubling.

Overall, whatever was the reason, it just shows how Starks were politically unprepared.

Like he would have respected her wish regarding Bran? Cat may have been reluctant, but if there wasn't for fall, Bran would have gone to KL.

Well you have to remember that customs in the North and South are different. Lyanna didn't seem to have ladies in waiting either. Look at the other Northern Girls we see, do they see like the ladies in waiting type?

Ned was a great Lord, one of the best in the series. Sure, he wasn't cut out for the lies and manipulation down south but he knew his own turf, he knew his own people. He travelled to see them extensively and took his children. Ned is dead and people are still fighting for him. That is the mark of a spectacular man.

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