Free Folk

The free folk are the tribes, villagers and forest dwellers who live north of the Wall, and they appear from the opening pages of A Game of Thrones. In the Seven Kingdoms they are called wildlings. They claim descent from the First Men and keep the old gods of the forest, and when Bran the Builder raised the Wall their ancestors chose to stay on the far side of it. They have held clear of southern crowns ever since, and they name those who live below the Wall kneelers, for submitting to rulers they did not choose. Fractious, quick to anger and quick to violence, they keep their own rough codes of honour and find the ways of the south soft and baffling. For the most part they quarrel among themselves; only rarely do they gather behind one man, a King-Beyond-the-Wall, a title that is proclaimed rather than inherited and that must be won by earning the respect of most of their factions.