Arya Stark: Her Story and the Quiz Answers That Point to Her

If the quiz named Arya Stark, your answers went to her at least as often as to anyone else, and hers are the quiet answers, the ones that watch first, say little and act alone. This page follows Arya through the show with the season and episode of every scene, reads the answers that count toward her, and sets her beside Sansa and Jon, the two characters whose answers read closest to hers. Spoilers for all eight seasons.

Who Arya is, scene by scene

Arya is the younger Stark daughter ("Winter Is Coming," season 1, episode 1), and from the first episodes what she wants is a sword. In "The Kingsroad" (season 1, episode 2), Jon gives her a sword, which she names Needle. The same episode shows what the court does to people like her commoner friend Mycah. Joffrey's cruelty to him ends with Arya's direwolf, Nymeria, biting the prince; Nymeria flees, Sansa's wolf, Lady, is killed in her place, and the Hound kills Mycah. In "Lord Snow" (season 1, episode 3), Ned learns that Arya wants to be a swordswoman and already has a sword of her own, and he hires Syrio Forel to teach her.

The first season ends with her losing nearly everything. In "The Pointy End" (season 1, episode 8), Syrio stands against the Lannister men so that she can get away, and Wikiquote's season one page records what they say to each other there: "What do we say to the god of death?" "Not today." In "Baelor" (season 1, episode 9), she climbs the statue of Baelor the Blessed to see her father's judgment. Ned spots her in the crowd and alerts Yoren, a Night's Watch recruiter, and Ned is beheaded while Yoren takes her to safety. In "Fire and Blood" (season 1, episode 10), she leaves the city with Yoren as "Arry," passing as a boy among his recruits.

Seasons 2 to 4: learning from killers

At Harrenhal, in "Garden of Bones" (season 2, episode 4), Tywin Lannister spares her and recognizes that she is a girl. In the next episode, "The Ghost of Harrenhal" (season 2, episode 5), he works out that she is a Northerner without learning who she is, and Jaqen H'ghar offers her "three lives" in return for saving him and two other prisoners from a burning cell. She names Harrenhal's interrogator, the Tickler, first. Later she means to send Jaqen after Tywin, but she can't find him before Tywin rides out to face Robb's army, so she makes Jaqen help her escape instead, and he kills the guards so that she, Gendry and Hot Pie can get away ("The Prince of Winterfell," season 2, episode 8). In the season finale, "Valar Morghulis" (season 2, episode 10), Jaqen offers to train her. She turns him down because she wants to find her family, and he gives her a coin and the words "Valar morghulis" so she can find him later, then shows her that he can change his face.

Then she starts doing it herself. In "Mhysa" (season 3, episode 10), after the massacre at the Twins, she and the Hound see what is done to Robb's body, then come across Frey soldiers bragging about the killing. Arya stabs one of them to death and the Hound kills the rest. Wikipedia's article on the character marks it as the first time she deliberately kills someone. In "Two Swords" (season 4, episode 1), she takes Needle back from Polliver and kills him the way he killed Lommy, one of the recruits she left King's Landing with. In "The Children" (season 4, episode 10), Brienne knocks the Hound off a cliff, and when he begs Arya to kill him, she takes his silver and leaves him to die. She boards a ship to Braavos by showing the captain Jaqen's coin.

Seasons 5 and 6: becoming no one, and refusing to

In Braavos the price of the training is her name. In "The House of Black and White" (season 5, episode 2), the man wearing Jaqen's face lets her into the temple and tells her she must become "no one." In "High Sparrow" (season 5, episode 3), Jaqen asks how no one comes to own Arya Stark's things. She throws her possessions into the water, all but Needle, which she hides instead. In "Mother's Mercy" (season 5, episode 10), she wears a face taken from the temple to get close to Meryn Trant and kills him in revenge for Syrio. Jaqen criticizes her for taking a life that was not meant for her, and she is struck blind as punishment.

"No One" (season 6, episode 8) settles it. Hunted through Braavos by the Waif, Arya flees to her hideout, puts out its only candle and fights her in the dark. Jaqen follows a trail of blood to the Hall of Faces and finds the Waif's face there. He congratulates Arya on becoming no one, and she turns the title down. She is Arya Stark of Winterfell, she tells him, and she is going home.

Seasons 6 to 8: the list, and putting it down

Back in Westeros she goes after the people who wronged her family. In "The Winds of Winter" (season 6, episode 10), she serves Walder Frey a pie baked from his sons, pulls off her servant's disguise to show him her own face, and cuts his throat. In "Dragonstone" (season 7, episode 1), posing as Walder, she poisons the men of House Frey and heads south to kill Cersei. She doesn't get there. In "Stormborn" (season 7, episode 2), Hot Pie tells her Jon has retaken Winterfell, and she turns north. On the road a wolfpack attacks her, and its leader is Nymeria. Arya asks her to come north, Nymeria leaves her be, and Arya says, "That's not you." The line could as easily be about Arya herself.

At home, in "The Spoils of War" (season 7, episode 4), she finds that Bran saw her coming and knows about her kill list. He gives her a Valyrian steel dagger, and she spars with Brienne to a draw while Sansa and Littlefinger watch. In "The Dragon and the Wolf" (season 7, episode 7), Sansa summons Arya before the lords of the North and the Vale, then turns the hearing on Littlefinger and sentences him to death, and Arya carries out the sentence. In "The Long Night" (season 8, episode 3), when the Night King catches her by the throat and by her dagger hand, she switches the dagger to her other hand and stabs him, which destroys him and his army.

The last turn undoes the list. In "The Bells" (season 8, episode 5), she reaches King's Landing with the Hound, the man she once left to die, still set on revenge against Cersei, and he talks her out of it. They part as friends. She tries to help with the evacuation until a falling tower knocks her out, and when she wakes in the ruined city, she rides out on a white horse. In the finale, "The Iron Throne" (season 8, episode 6), she sets out to explore the uncharted sea west of Westeros.

The arc has a clear shape. She starts as a girl who wants a sword and her family, spends years learning other people's ways of hiding and killing, keeps her name when the training asks her to give it up, and in the end sets the list down and sails off the edge of the map. What holds steady is that she decides who she is and keeps coming back to it, from the sword she hides in Braavos to the name she gives Jaqen in the Hall of Faces.

What the Arya answers have in common

The answers on the quiz that count toward Arya are listed in full further down this page. Read together, they share a handful of habits. Some of the questions quoted here are on the full version only.

• Silence over reaction. When an advisor says something unwelcome, the Arya answer is "File it away and say very little. Your reaction is not their business." When someone says you have no idea how the real world works, it's "Say nothing. They'll understand eventually." A serious mistake gets carried "Privately," worked through alone, with no grief performed "for anyone's benefit." And what people misread about her is that "the distance means you don't care."
• Out of sight until the moment. Given command of strangers, she would "Disappear into the ranks first and learn the real situation before showing your hand." Her negotiating style is "Invisible until the moment, then precise and decisive when you move." Her supernatural pick is the ability "to move unseen and untracked," and she has survived because "You made yourself too invisible to find."
• Watching from the edge. In a room where everyone is performing, she would "Observe from the margins and decide who in this room is actually interesting." When three of her people argue, she lets them, because "You'll know who's right when you see how they handle it."
• Doing without the credit. She protects the people she loves "in ways they may not even realize," helps someone vulnerable "in a way that doesn't require them to know it was you," and passes on a legend because "You have no interest in being remembered. You care about what you actually did." Her followers count on her to "do what needs to be done when no one else will," and her legacy is "The things you did that no one else would."
• Belonging to herself. The lesson she would leave a child is "that you belong to yourself first. No one else gets to write your story." The song about her life is "The girl who refused to become what the story expected of her." Offered a deal by an enemy, she would "Take nothing from them. Not even the conversation."
• The unfinished job. What keeps her up at night is "The list. The names. What still needs to be done." Her last night before everything changes goes to "Sharpening your sword. Literally or otherwise."

What the Arya answers leave out says as much. None of them asks for a title, an audience or anyone's approval, and none involves persuading anybody. The Arya answer usually ends with her acting alone, or choosing not to act yet. They also leave out most of what the show's Arya does. Apart from the list and the sword, the answers keep her self-reliance and drop the killing, so a match says you share some of her habits, not her history.

Arya, Sansa and Jon: where the answers split

Read side by side, the options put Sansa and Jon closest to Arya. This is a reading of the answer wording, not a figure computed from results. If your count for Arya was close to one of theirs, these are the questions where your answers parted.

Sansa: watching people, or watching the ground

Sansa is the other watcher on the quiz, and on several questions both answers start by watching. The difference is what each one watches for. The note under the question about taking command of strangers puts it plainly. Arya watches to learn the ground, Sansa to learn who matters. Sansa's answers then go into the room. She would "Watch carefully to learn who has real influence and who is dangerous, then work the room quietly," "Listen twice as much as you speak, then offer a solution each one can live with," and pick "The ability to anticipate what people want before they ask for it." Arya's answers stay at the edge of the room. She lets the argument run, meets the insult that Sansa would "Absorb" as information with silence, and moves alone when she moves.

The show stages the split in "The Dragon and the Wolf" (season 7, episode 7). Sansa runs the hearing, sets out the charges and passes sentence on Littlefinger, and Arya carries it out. If your answers kept choosing the version that ends in a deal everyone can live with, you leaned Sansa. If they ended in a quiet exit or a single act, you leaned Arya.

Jon: duty in the open, purpose in private

Jon's answers share Arya's quiet. Both let an insult go ("Let it pass" for Jon, "Say nothing" for Arya), both carry a bad mistake without a show of it, and on the question about becoming a legend at the cost of a moral compromise, Jon's, Arya's and Ned's answers all begin with the word "Pass." What separates Jon and Arya is who the answer faces. Jon's answers face the people who depend on him. He earns command by "leading from the front," spends his last night "With the people who matter most," and lies awake over "whether the people depending on you are safe." Arya's answers face a task, often one nobody else knows about. She disappears into the ranks, sharpens her sword and lies awake over the list.

So Jon's quiet belongs to someone standing in front of everyone, and Arya's to someone nobody is watching. The show ties the two together from the start, when Jon gives her Needle, and it's the news that Jon has retaken Winterfell that turns her north in season 7. There is more on how Jon leads in the article on four leadership styles in the show.

Cersei comes near on a couple of questions too, since she also keeps the weight of a mistake out of sight and spends her last night preparing. Her answers aim at control of other people, though, and Arya's never do.

Reading your result

Your result comes with the count for all eight characters, and the counts say more than the name. A wide lead means Arya's kind of answer kept winning across the quiz. A narrow lead over Sansa or Jon means you split between watching alone and watching for people, or between private purpose and public duty, and the sections above show where. A tie names every tied character rather than picking one, so Arya can share a result with someone else.

Answering like Arya mostly means that, given the choice, you took the option that keeps its own counsel and acts without an audience. That describes the answers you picked on one page. It doesn't measure courage or loyalty, and it says nothing about how you would hold up in her situation. Character results can also feel right whatever they say, partly because a sketch written broadly enough can fit almost anyone; the article on the Barnum effect explains why.

The show doesn't present those habits as pure strengths, either. The training that taught her to disappear asked her to give up her name, and she refused it. The revenge she spent seasons on ends with her choosing to let it go. If the result doesn't fit, the count for all eight and the note under each question are the better guide, because they show which answers moved you where, and why.