Lord of White Harbor and the wealthiest banner of the North, head of a house that traces its line to the Reach but has held the mouth of the White Knife in the name of the Starks for a thousand years and more. By the events of A Game of Thrones Wyman is past his fiftieth nameday, balding and grey-bearded, and so enormously fat that he must be lifted onto and off of his chair by serving men. He has not sat a horse in years, calls his litter his great chair on wheels, and is mocked the realm over as Lord Too-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse and, more affectionately by his own people, as Lord Lamprey for his fondness for the lamprey pies his cooks bake him by the platter.
When Eddard Stark went south, Wyman sent silver and grain. When Robb Stark called the banners, Wyman sent his sons. Ser Wylis, the heir, rode south in the van and was taken at the Battle of the Green Fork; he lay two years a prisoner in Harrenhal before ransom was at last arranged. Ser Wendel, the second son, rode with Lady Catelyn to treat with Renly in the Stormlands and was at her side at the Twins when the Rains began to play; a Frey crossbow took him through the open mouth as he raised his cup, and his bones came home in a chest filled with salt. Lord Wyman wept for a day and a night, and then he began to plan.
By A Dance with Dragons he plays the part the Iron Throne would have him play: a broken old fool too lost in grief and lampreys to be dangerous, ready to bend the knee to King Tommen and wed his granddaughter Wynafryd to Ser Rhaegar Frey to seal the new peace. To three Frey envoys (Symond, Jared, and Rhaegar) he is a generous host with bottomless cellars. To Ser Davos Seaworth, Stannis Baratheon's envoy, he is a public executioner: he hangs a criminal's head and hands above his gate and lets the world believe it is the Onion Knight's. In private, beneath the New Castle, he tells Davos that the north remembers, that he means to crown Eddard Stark's son Rickon (last seen on Skagos and being sought by the mute boy Wex Pyke), and that the price of his sword is the boy delivered.
He marches at last to Winterfell with three hundred men, his cooks, and a gift of three great pork pies for the bedding feast of Ramsay Bolton and the false Arya Stark. He serves them with his own hand and eats of them himself, weeping for joy and singing snatches of The Rains of Castamere between mouthfuls. None of the three Frey envoys are ever seen alive again. On the ride back from White Harbor he is set upon, taken prisoner by Hosteen Frey, and returned bloodied to Winterfell with a slash across his throat that very nearly kills him; the maesters stitch him up and he lives, heavier still in vengeance than he ever was in lamprey.