Tansy

"If you make it out of the woods you win!"

- Ramsay Snow to Tansy

Tansy is a minor character appearing in the fourth season. She is played by guest star Jazzy de Lisser and only appears in "The Lion and the Rose".

Background
Tansy is a servant of House Bolton.

Season 4
Due to Myranda's supposed jealousy of her, Tansy is hunted through the woods near the Dreadfort by Ramsay Snow, Myranda and the bastard's girls, with Reek feebly attempting to keep up due to his injuries. Ramsay and Myranda amusedly call her name through the woods as she desperately runs to evade them, with Ramsay saying that if she makes it out of the woods, she "wins" -- presumably, she'll be allowed to leave with her life. Myranda eventually strikes her in the leg with an arrow, and Tansy begs for her life as Ramsay says she has become a problem; Myranda is jealous of her presence, although Myranda denies it. Ramsay goads the dogs into ripping her to shreds as she screams. Myranda mockingly comments that she is "not so pretty now," while Theon watches with discomfort.

Season 5
Myranda mentions Tansy to Sansa Stark as one of several women who Ramsay was involved with but killed after they began to bore him, and gleefully quips that Ramsay let her join him in "hunting" Tansy for fun, which angers Sansa.

Behind the Scenes
George R.R. Martin stated on the DVD commentary of "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" that he had written a scene involving Myranda and Violet for the fourth season. Stephanie Blacker was not available for the fourth season due to the fact that she was pregnant. Since Martin wrote "The Lion and the Rose", this seems to suggest that the role played by Tansy in the episode was originally intended for Violet. This is further backed by dialogue in the fifth season where Myranda mentions that Ramsay murdered Violet when she became pregnant (possibly with his child).

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, there is no mention of a girl at the Dreadfort named Tansy. The name is apparently fairly common for girls born in the Riverlands, and is possibly meant to be a reference to an ingredient of Moon Tea, a powerful contraceptive/abortifacient, since smallfolk often name their daughters after flowers and herbs. There are two book characters by that name, neither has anything to do with the Boltons:


 * An innkeeper who works at the Peach, a brothel within Stoney Sept.
 * An orphan who currently lives at the Crossroads Inn.

Tansy's role in the show is filled in the books by Kyra, who was a bedwarmer for Theon Greyjoy after the seizure of Winterfell. When the Boltons put the castle to the sword, they chained the women and children and took them to the Dreadfort. Kyra is manipulated by Ramsay into releasing Reek from his cell, but he successfully tracks them both down as was his intention all along, and kills Kyra. At some point after the hunt, Ramsay names a puppy from the next litter of pack hounds Kyra, as he's wont to do with his "sport".

It is unknown if there was a girl named Tansy among Ramsay's victims. If there was, the fact that none of his dogs is named Tansy indicates that the hunt was not challenging enough in his eyes, and that girl was given a painful death.

During the final stages of his illness, Hoster Tully continuously mutters the word "Tansy". Catelyn initially believes it to be a name and attempts to discover who it belongs to, but to no avail. After thinking it over, recalling Lysa's tearful reaction when Catelyn let her hold baby Robb, she realizes the terrible secret that haunts her father on his deathbed: Lysa got pregnant some time before her marriage to Jon Arryn, and their father forced her to undergo an abortion by drinking Moon tea (one of its ingredients is the herb called Tansy). The only detail that Catelyn does not figure is who was the man who got her sister pregnant. Lysa reveals that when she drags Sansa to the Moon Door: after Petyr Baelish was defeated by Brandon Stark when he challenged him for Catelyn's hand, Lysa nursed him and the two ended up sleeping together, with Lysa becoming pregnant as a result of this. After Hoster had to send Petyr back to the Fingers, Lysa revealed this to him in the hopes that he would relent and allow her to marry Petyr. Instead he made her abort the child, for which she resented him for the rest of both of their lives, hence she did not visit him when he was dying or attend his funeral.