# Winter Is Coming
**Entity class:** Television episode and fictional house words
**Series:** _Game of Thrones_
**Air date:** April 17, 2011
## Definition
**“Winter Is Coming”** is the title of the first episode of HBO’s _Game of Thrones_, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and directed by Tim Van Patten. The title derives from the words of [[wiki/House Stark|House Stark]], created by [[wiki/George R. R. Martin|George R. R. Martin]] in _[[wiki/A Game of Thrones|A Game of Thrones]]_. In the premiere, Eddard Stark speaks the warning to Catelyn Stark; the words are not properly attributed to Jon Snow merely because popular culture associates him with the North.
## Relationships
- **literary origin:** [[wiki/A Game of Thrones|A Game of Thrones]].
- **fictional attribution:** [[wiki/House Stark|House Stark]].
- **television writers:** [[wiki/David Benioff|David Benioff]] and [[wiki/D. B. Weiss|D. B. Weiss]].
- **director:** [[wiki/Tim Van Patten|Tim Van Patten]].
- **speaker in cited scene:** [[wiki/Eddard Stark|Eddard Stark]].
- **playful route:** [[wiki/ICE|ICE disambiguation]].
## Sources / Provenance
- George R. R. Martin, _A Game of Thrones_ (1996).
- HBO, _Game of Thrones_, season 1 episode 1, “Winter Is Coming” (2011).