The Stark line has been thinned considerably since Game of Thrones began. Ned’s dead, Robb’s dead, Arya has run off to be an assassin and won’t ever be a normal noble lady, and Bran is turning into a tree. Only Sansa and Rickon still have a role to play in the high politics of Westeros. And Sansa is following her own path down the game of thrones. Will Rickon, long missing, end up as Lord of Winterfell? Most certainly. More importantly: Will he end up as King in the North?

Rickon Stark, King In The North

The ties that bind Westeros have frayed since the end of the Targaryen dynasty, and even more since the War of the Five Kings. What was once an empire may break into competing kingdoms, and Cersei Lannister certainly isn’t going to stop them (although Daenerys and Aegon might). The North, freshly subdued after its greatest rebellion, would not seem a likely place for rebellion to break out again.

Rickon Stark is now, by rights, the Lord of Winterfell, as the eldest living male heir to Ned Stark who isn’t turning into a tree. He’s missing now, of course, but King Stannis has sent Davos Seaworth to track him down and bring him back from Skagos, where he’s probably become even more ferocious than he already was as a young boy.

When he’s back, will the North rally to him and rise in rebellion again? Sure, maybe, depending on whether King Stannis wins the Battle of Winterfell and tosses out the Boltons (UPDATE: In the books, that is. In the show, Stannis is toast and Rickon will have a harder road). There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, after all. But look farther to the future. The Lannisters aren’t long for the Iron Throne; that much is obvious. One of the Targaryens is going to take it sooner or later, and then they’ll need the support of the North in the real War, the one against the Others.

For that war, they’ll need a Stark. And Rickon Stark can rally the North better than anyone else alive—although Sansa could be a great help too, if she’s still around. By the time of the war against the Others, Rickon’s role as Lord of Winterfell seems assured—the Targaryens don’t care about the politics of the Boltons and the Red Wedding or the War of the Five Kings. They’ll restore the status quo as best they can to enforce a quick peace on the land. And then they’ll move north (let’s hope—otherwise the land will fall into eternal darkness).

But what happens after the war with the Others? Rickon has already been the fiercest of the Starks, and a few years in a barbarian wilderness will have made him even more so. He is going to be like the Kings of Winter of old—fierce, imposing, terrifying. And that’s just what he’ll need to be to rebuild a North that will be ravaged worse than any other kingdom by the Others… a land filled with blood and death, not to mention wildlings and foreign soldiers and probably a dead dragon or two. It’s not hard to imagine him becoming a new King in the North, a new King of Winter, after it all ends, from Winterfell’s stony seat.

But that’s a long way away yet, and a lot could change, and George R. R. Martin loves surprises. But let’s keep our eye on Rickon Stark—of all the Starks, he’s done the least yet, and that suggests he still has some role to play.