61 Chapter 61

For the next few days, he spent his time talking with the other lords or in the company of Robb and Jon as well as in the Library of Winterfell.

The other lords had also brought their children along with them in order to betrothed them and make new alliance and he had no doubt that Wyman Manderly would have tried to betrothed one of his granddaughters to him had Lord Manderly not known about my deal with lord Stark.

Robb and Jon also called him for a spar in the courtyard. An invitation that he easily declined as he had never learned how to use a sword. And never used it to kill anything aside from the Basilisk back in Hogwarts.

He was an administrator, a scholar, a wizard and a warrior. But a swordsman he was not.

Robb, being the good boy that he is, informed him that the other Northerner lords will look down upon him if he is not able to swing a sword. To that, he simply replied that he didn't cared about the other lords who looked down upon him as long as his people lived in prosperity.

From the way that Jon Snow looked at him once he said that, he had a feeling that he made another admirer that day.

Last but not the least, he spent some of my time with Sansa Stark each day.

And while she grew more and more enamoured with him each time they talked, he grew more and more frustrated with her naivety and her utter detachment with the reality.

So when Lord Stark called him and asked for his response, he spoke truthfully and declined the betrothal.

Lord Stark looked slightly angry at his evaluation his Sansa Stark and his decline of the betrothal but even though we're usually blind to the vices of our loved ones, Ned Stark understood that he had spoiled his daughter and understood his reasons behind declining the marriage.

But in the end, if he didn't made a betrothal pact with House Stark, then the power imbalance within the two houses might cause a civil war to happen in the future.

So something needed to be done.

And so, he gave Ned Stark four different options.

Option 1- Ned Stark sends his eldest son, Robb Stark as a ward to live in Dreadfort. This way, both him and Robb Stark could form a brotherly bond that would stop any notion of civil war in the future.

Option 2- Ned Stark sends his baseborn son Jon Snow as a ward instead of Jon Snow.

Option 3- Ned Stark teaches Sansa Stark about the realities of life instead of filling her head with useless notions of chivalric knights of the south. That way, if Sansa became a reasonable girl in the future then he might consider being betrothed to her.

Option 4- He courts Arya Stark when she is older and if she also doesn't have her head stuck up in the clouds then he'll consider being betrothed to her.

After thinking about it for a while, Ned declined his first two options.

Option 1st on the basis that Robb Stark was the heir of Winterfell and he didn't want his heir to serve as a ward to some other house.

Option 2nd on the basis that Jon Snow was a bastard and sending him as a ward would not be proper. But when he read Ned Stark's mind, he was surprised to find the Jon Snow was not Ned Stark's son at all.

In fact, Jon Snow was the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen and Ned didn't want anyone else to find out about this.

Well… the more you know.

In the end, Ned told him that he'll try to work with his daughters and they'll talk about the betrothal the next time.

He agreed to these terms and left the solar.

The next morning, most of the lords left Winterfell and went on their way back to their own castles and keeps and he too bade goodbye to Robb Stark and Jon Snow, whom he had become good friends with and left for Dreadfort.