I get very emotional knowing that Robb never really had a life without (discounting the war) Jon, but Jon WILL have a life without Robb now going forward:(
Whenever I think about the Starklings at the end of the series, I just think about this:
When he closed his eyes, he dreamed of direwolves.
There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. (Jon VII, ACOK)
There should have been six.... This is why I don’t think any more Stark kids will die (other than Jon, but you know what I mean). It’s so much sadder and more meaningful if Robb is the only one who doesn’t make it to the end. There will only be five of them, when there should have been six.
And it’s so sad, because Robb didn’t even want to be king. He was the only one of the five kings who didn’t ask for his crown. He shouldn’t have even been the Lord of Winterfell, a duty that was placed on him at the age of fourteen, years before he was supposed to be ready for it. It was a deadly responsibility forced upon a child.
“Gods be good, why would any man ever want to be king? When everyone was shouting King in the North, King in the North, I told myself . . . swore to myself . . . that I would be a good king, as honorable as Father, strong, just, loyal to my friends and brave when I faced my enemies . . . now I can't even tell one from the other.” (Catelyn III, ASOS)
And I think about this line in TWOW, when Sansa meets the seventeen-year-old Wallace Waynwood:
Robb would be his age, if he were still alive, she could not help but think, but Robb died a king, and this is just a boy. (Alayne I, TWOW)
Robb didn’t just die a king. He did die a boy. He died a young boy crying for his mother.













