The last King in the North and the first Lord of Winterfell of the new realm of the Seven Kingdoms. When word came that Aegon the Conqueror had burned Harrenhal with Balerion and broken two kings on the Field of Fire, Torrhen called his banners and led thirty thousand spears down the kingsroad to the banks of the Trident. Across the river he could see the dragon camp; behind him a long winter march and a kingdom that could not survive a Field of Fire of its own. He sent his bastard half-brother Brandon Snow across the water as an envoy in the dark, weighed the cost a final time at dawn, and laid his crown and his sword at Aegon's feet rather than burn his people for pride. From that day he was the King Who Knelt.
For surrendering his crown he was confirmed in his seat as Lord of Winterfell, named the first Warden of the North under the Iron Throne, and saw his sons ride home unburned. He did not live long after. The marriage of his daughter to Ronnel Arryn, brokered by Queen Rhaenys to bind the new realm together, he was made to swallow only after much protest, and the letters preserved at the Citadel suggest his sons never forgave it. He was succeeded at Winterfell by Brandon the Boisterous, though by what precise relation the chroniclers no longer agree.