The North Isn’t the Only Kingdom in ‘Game of Thrones’ With a Claim to Independence (Published 2019) (2024)

This article contains spoilers for Season 8, Episode 6 of “Game of Thrones.”

After everyone else at the Great Council voted for Bran to be the king of Westeros in Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” finale, his sister Sansa announced, “The North will remain an independent kingdom, as it was for thousands of years.”

It was a bold, unexpected move — to everyone except maybe Bran.

It might also have prompted a little buyer’s remorse for a few other members of the council. Yara Greyjoy once bargained for Iron Islands independence with Dany — a concern that seemed suddenly to have taken flight like a dragon in mourning. The new prince of Dorne also leads a region that once enjoyed independence; judging by their raised eyebrows, they might both have just realized that they missed an opportunity.

If so, they didn’t say much, and so Bran was declared king and lord of the newly reconfigured “Six” Kingdoms. But the leaders of those kingdoms could just as well have made the same claim Sansa did.

[Read the recap of the “Game of Thrones” series finale.]

According to the books, before Aegon Targaryen united Westeros under his rule, seven kingdoms enjoyed independence for thousands of years: The Kingdom of the North, the Kingdom of the Mountain and the Vale, the Kingdom of the Isles and the Rivers, the Kingdom of the Rock, the Kingdom of the Stormlands, the Kingdom of the Reach, and the Principality of Dorne.

And within those kingdoms, there were more kingdoms. (The Reach, for instance, once comprised four kingdoms.) Some refer to this period as the days of the Hundred Kingdoms.