Though he had managed to reclaim the Winter Throne , King Ifan faced daunting challenges in securing his new kingdom. Many towns and villages lay in ruins, and many houses were damaged by the war. The people began to lose faith in house Stark, and worst of all was the fact that the North was indebted to the Iron Bank and the Valyrian Freehold. The King would have to borrow more money to have capital for rebuilding projects.
The new king Ifan did not waste time in getting the country's affairs in order however, and was determined to rebuild the kingdom his ancestors built. He started by ordering trade reforms in order to encourage merchants and guilds to spring up in northern cities. He would commission the expansion of many of the North's silver mines, as well having his engineers and geographers search for new resources to exploit.
Ifan also reopened trade with the Southern Westerosi Kingdoms, and while most southerners were still wary of the northerners, silver, wool, timber and eastern goods were enough motivation for many traders to overcome any prejudice they might have had against the "barbarians from the north".
These actions helped alleviate the North's economic problems and pay the Iron Bank's debt though the latter would take years before being fully repaid.
The Valyrians would be much trickier to deal with. The Freehold had long traded with the North , being one of the few Sunset kingdoms who were reliably stable and not erupting into civil war every decade and the Valyrians being unwilling to conquer parts of Westeros for practical and spiritual reasons.
However in its last century of existence the Freehold began to take a more keen interest in Westeros and their Northern trading partners .
Though a military invasion was out of the question, an economic one was far more palatable . When prince Ifan was gathering allies in Essos the Valyrians approached him with generous offers of men, ships and supplies at a desperate time for him. In return they asked for trading concessions and privileges for Valyrian traders and the right to build trading outposts along the Northern canals .
Ifan was no fool and he knew exactly what such a deal entailed , it would in one fell stroke make Valyrian interests dominant in the North and might even bring the slave trade into the North which would utterly destroy his credibility and lead to further instability allowing the Valyrians to gain even more influence and power in the chaos that would ensue.
He get around this problem by cleverly having the outpost sites be the most inhospitable and difficult to settle places along the canals (whom even the hardiest free folk could not settle ) .
This limited the number of freemen colonists who would volunteer to come to the North and at the same allow the North to exploit these places (Valyrian Engineering was able to make the lands palatable where Northmen hardness couldn't ).
He then proceeded to make the slave trade extremely unprofitable by making it mandatory that any slaves who set forth on northern soil would be freed immediately on the pain of very high fines.
The Valyrians were annoyed at this but as the North was the only kingdom that they could reliably trade with -trade with the southern kingdoms hinges on how pious or pragmatic the current king was- so they let the North have this victory, in part because they had to deal with a series of devastating slave uprisings led by "faceless men".
However Iran's most enduring legacy was his political reforms , under him the unofficial meritocracy that was always an element of northern rule become official and women were granted full rights officially under his reign. Inspired by tales of Yi Ti , he would implement the "Royal examination system " designed to screen candidates for positions in bureaucratic positions (most notably the King's council ).
Finally the Wolf Guard whose job was to protect the king were given a new task in secret. In addition to protecting worthy rulers , they had the duty of discreetly ending the reign of any potential new Sevans' who sit on the Winter Throne.
And so when he died after forty years of rulership, Ifan was succeeded by his daughter Alys without issue and she would continue his policy by once again having the north take an interest in its southern neighbors.