Ramsay Bolton

Ramsay Bolton (formerly Snow) is a major character in the fourth season. He initially appeared as a recurring character in the third season. He is portrayed by Iwan Rheon, and debuts in "Dark Wings, Dark Words". He was first referred to in Season 2, but his actual name is not mentioned until "Mhysa".

As the bastard son of Lord Roose Bolton, Ramsay originally used the special surname for bastards born in the North, and was known as "Ramsay Snow". Towards the end of Season 4, however, he was legitimized as Lord Roose's lawful son, and was therefore officially renamed "Ramsay Bolton".

Background
Ramsay Snow, better known as "The Bastard of Bolton", is Lord Roose Bolton's bastard son and only living child following the death of Domeric Bolton, as well as the only possible heir to House Bolton. He stayed behind at the Dreadfort to rule as its castellan when his father left for the south to fight in the War of the Five Kings.

Ramsay keeps a pack of dogs, which he employs for hunting.

Season 2
Ramsay besieges Winterfell in the name of King Robb Stark as ordered. He infuriates Theon Greyjoy - who currently held the castle in the name of the Iron Islands and his father - by blowing a horn all through the night. In the morning of the next day, when Theon rallies his men to defend the castle, he is betrayed and knocked out cold by his men, who take Robb Stark's offer of mercy for any ironborn in the castle except Theon, as expected. However, the castle is sacked by Ramsay afterwards and instead of letting the ironborn walk free he flays them alive.

Season 3
Following the Sack of Winterfell, Ramsay and his men take Theon to the Dreadfort, where the ironborn prince is subjected to gruesome tortures. Embarking on a twisted campaign of psychological manipulation, Ramsay poses as an ironborn emissary of Theon's sister, Yara, and falsely claims to have been sent by her to liberate him.

Ramsay Snow sends a false report to Harrenhal, where the main force of the Northern army has established, of the sacking of Winterfell by the ironborn, of the disappearance of Bran and Rickon Stark, and the unknown whereabouts of Theon Greyjoy.

Later that evening Ramsay returns, and releases Theon, provides him with a horse and tells him to ride east to Deepwood Motte, where his sister is waiting for him. Theon's captors, however, track him down and capture him again. As punishment, their leader attempts to rape Theon. Ramsay appears and swiftly dispatches the kidnappers with bow and arrow, deepening the bond of trust between them.

Afterward Ramsay promises Theon to take him to Deepwood Motte. Some time later the men reach a holdfast; Theon questions them, having to sneak inside since Yara's men are loyal to her. Ramsay warns Theon that some of the men belong to his father Balon. As the mysterious boy struggles to open a locked gate Theon confesses his jealousy of Robb's status, the murder of the two boys he passed off as Bran and Rickon, and acknowledges that Eddard Stark was his true father. After opening the gate Theon and Ramsay enter a darkened room. The young man lights a torch and Theon, much to his horror, notices he's back in the torture chamber. Armed men enter and Ramsay claims that Theon killed their comrades and escaped but he has brought their captive back. Kicking and screaming, Theon is refastened to the rack, as Ramsay drops his facade, grins sadistically and tells the men to put Theon "back where he belongs". Ramsay awakens Theon with a horn to continue torturing him. He threatens to remove Theon's pinky finger if he cannot guess Ramsay's true identity and their current location. After several guesses, Ramsay tells Theon he is correct in guessing that Ramsay is the brother of Torrhen Karstark, and that they are in Karhold. However he then points out that Theon never asked if he was a liar. He admits that he was lying, and begins flaying Theon's finger.

Theon is freed from his constraints by two young women, Myranda and Violet. They give him water and clean his wounds. Theon is apprehensive about their aid, until they disrobe and begin pleasuring him. The three are soon interrupted by Ramsay, who enters the chamber wielding a knife. After taunting Theon about his sexual prowess, he orders his men to restrain Theon and then removes Theon's genitals. Ramsay admits that the rumors about Theon were true, and that he did have a "good-sized cock", before momentarily tricking Theon into believing that the pork sausage he is eating is his penis. Ramsay talks about amputees having phantom limbs and wonders if Theon will have a phantom penis, feeling an itch whenever he sees naked girls. When Theon begs to be killed, Ramsay states that he is no good to him dead. Ramsay decides to give Theon a new name, and beats him until he starts calling himself "Reek". Ramsay also sends a letter to Balon Greyjoy and a box containing Theon's penis. He threatens to flay every ironborn in the North alive if they have not left by the full moon.

Season 4
Some time later, Ramsay hunted a girl named Tansy in the wood with his hounds, Myranda, and Theon, recently renamed "Reek". With bows in hand, he and Myranda gleefully pursued Tansy, firing arrows at her as they went. Ramsay explained that Tansy had made Myranda jealous so she had to go because she was causing too many problems otherwise. Myranda managed to strike Tansy with an arrow in the leg before Ramsay happily sicked his dogs on her, killing her. Shortly afterward, Roose Bolton arrived at the Dreadfort where Ramsay waited for him. Roose introduced Ramsay to his newly acquired wife, Walda Bolton, before asking him if he could see his captive. Ramsay agreed to show him Theon before greeting his father's hunter, Locke, who he congratulated for his crippling of Jaime Lannister. Locke assured him that the Kingslayer had screamed loudly enough that Ramsay would have enjoyed it. Ramsay brought "Reek" to his father only to find his father furious about the flaying and alterations he had made on him, since Theon was a key bargaining chip to rid the North of Iron Islanders. Roose chastised Ramsay for his actions, telling him he put too much trust in him. Ramsay tried to prove that his torture had purpose, showing his father that "Reek" would never betray them and that his method had revealed key information; that Theon had not killed Bran and Rickon Stark. Finding it enlightening, Roose sent Locke after the Stark boys and told Ramsay to take Moat Cailin, a vital base in the North, from the Greyjoy forces, and that if he could take in the name of their family, he would reconsider Ramsay's actions.

Ramsay engages in particularly violent sex with Myranda, forcing her to strangle him as they both climax. Meanwhile Yara Greyjoy, intent on rescuing her brother Theon from Ramsay's clutches, leads a force of fifty ironborn reavers in rowing boats up the Weeping Water towards the Dreadfort. They manage to enter the castle and find Theon in a kennel alongside the dogs, but he refuses to go, having become loyal to Ramsay. Ramsay soon drives the ironborn from the Dreadfort with his soldiers, and Yara declares her brother to be dead.

After Ramsay is able to take Moat Cailin with some help from Reek, his father meets with him on an open field and hands him a document legitimizing the former bastard and granting him the right to call himself "Bolton". They then make their way towards Winterfell.

Personality and traits
"This is turning into a lovely evening!"

- Ramsay to Yara's crew

Ramsay is sadistic, savage, wild, psychotic and completely capable of committing unspeakable atrocities without remorse, simply for pure amusement. Due to his violent nature, one may compare his mind to Joffrey Baratheon's, in that he is cruel, unintelligent and purely sociopathic. However, it is shown that Ramsay, in his own twisted way, is actually quite intelligent, and possesses a ruthless and cold mind for strategy. However, sometimes he does not fully consider the long term consequences of his actions, such as castrating Theon Greyjoy, Balon Greyjoy's last living son and heir. Ramsay tends to be very meticulous with his talent for torture, setting up scenarios to break his victims mentally and emotionally along with the physical torment. Ramsay also enjoys turning the torture into games for his own amusement, such as letting people go just so he can hunt them down for sport. Like many other bastards, Ramsay despises his status and alienation from society. His primary goal, other than torture, is to win his father's approval and be legitimized as a true Bolton. He is overjoyed when he is given the chance to prove his worth and take Moat Cailin for the Boltons.

In hand-to-hand combat Ramsay fights with a bizarre dual-weapon technique, wielding a mace in his right hand and a dagger in his left; savagely bludgeoning and stabbing at his opponents, leaping around and laughing maniacally while doing so. On the other hand, however, Ramsay is shown to fight with no body protection, leaping into battle bare-chested, hinting that he is much braver and more courageous than most villains.

Quotes
Spoken by Ramsay

"My mother taught me not to throw stones at cripples... but my father taught me aim for their head!"

- Ramsay Snow to Theon Greyjoy

"If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."

- Ramsay Snow to Theon Greyjoy

"Rip her! Rip her! Rip her!"

- Ramsay orders his hounds to maul Tansy to death.

Spoken about Ramsay "I will kill that man. I don't care how many arrows they feather me with, how many spears they run through me - I will kill that hornblowing cunt before I fall!"

- Theon Greyjoy

"Ramsay delivered the terms. The ironborn turned on Theon as we know they would. They handed him over trussed and hooded. But Ramsay... well, Ramsay has his own way of doing things..."

- Roose Bolton, revealing that after Ramsay promised the twenty ironborn in Winterfell safe passage, he flayed them all alive anyway.

"I place far too much trust in you."

- Roose Bolton to his son

Behind the scenes
Iwan Rheon's character was announced and then credited only as "Boy" in order to keep his true identity as Ramsay Snow a secret until "Mhysa."

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Ramsay Snow is Roose Bolton's bastard son, and one of the major antagonists in the series. He is an ugly man. Even splendorous garb cannot disguise this fact. He is big boned and slope shouldered, with a fleshiness to him that suggests that later in life he will turn to fat. Ramsay is a sadistic psychopath, serial rapist, and rumored cannibal. He is cruel, savage and wild, taking delight in torturing others. He is quite fond of the old Bolton custom of flaying their enemies alive.

One of Ramsay's most monstrous hobbies is to have young women stripped naked and released into the Bolton forests, before hunting them with a pack of female feral dogs, that are deliberately trained to be vicious and mean-tempered. He gives a quick death to women who give him good sport (after raping them first), then flays their corpses, and names his female dogs after the women he enjoys most to "honor" them. The women who do not give him good sport are raped and then flayed alive, without naming the dogs after them. The skins of his kills are brought back with him to the Dreadfort as gruesome trophies. The bodies of the women are fed to his dogs.

Ramsay is introduced in ​A Clash of Kings​, though his appearance in the TV series was pushed back until the third season. He is first mentioned by Lady Donella Hornwood who notes that he masses troops at the Dreadfort. She sends him a message inquiring about his intentions, and he rudely answers that it is none of her business.

Following the deaths of Lady Hornwood's husband and son, Ramsay forces her to marry him and to sign a will that names him as her heir, so he can inherit her lands. He rapes her and locks her in a tower, and does not give her any food. When Ser Rodrik Cassel finally arrived to free her, it was too late - she had gnawed off all of her fingers. As one of Ramsay's favorite torture tactics, he had flayed the skin off of all of the old woman's fingers, leaving her to bite them off as the only way to end the agony, after which in delirium from hunger she ate some. Ramsay later gleefully boasts about this accomplishment.

Ramsay and his servant "Reek" later caught a peasant girl and raped her to death. Reek continued even after the girl died. It is then that Ser Rodrik's men found them. Ramsay was supposedly killed, and Reek taken prisoner to Winterfell. Rodrik wished to put Reek to death, but needed him alive as a witness to many of Ramsay's crimes, hoping that after Roose Bolton heard his tale, he would abandon his claim for the Hornwood lands.

After Theon takes Winterfell, Reek offers to serve him if released from captivity. He becomes one of Theon's supposedly more trustworthy attendants, helping him hunt for Bran and Rickon. It is Reek who advises Theon to kill and flay two unnamed miller's sons to pass off as the Starks, and Theon accepts his advice. Afterwards, Theon orders Reek to secretly murder Gelmarr, Aggar and Gynir for their knowledge of the truth, and he does. Since Theon needs a scapegoat, he falsely accuses Farlen the kennelmaster and executes him. Theon does not kill Reek, fearing that the blackguard hid a written account of what they had done.

After Rodrik defeats Dagmer Cleftjaw at Torrhen's Square, the Northmen march on Winterfell to liberate it. Theon refuses to give up the castle, using Beth Cassel as hostage to prevent Rodrik from attacking, and his men prepare to make a final stand. Reek offers to help Theon by taking a large sum of money to the Dreadfort and returning with much-needed reinforcements, asking for Palla in return. Theon does not trust Reek but reluctantly agrees, since he has no other choice. He promises to give Palla to Reek providing that he brings two hundred men.

When Northmen led by Rodrik Cassel surround Winterfell, an army of 600 men bearing the flayed man of House Bolton arrives, led by a mysterious armored captain. As Rodrik offers his hand in friendship, the captain cuts off his arm and the Bolton army attack the other Northmen and defeat them, suffering only minor casualties. They enter the castle and the captain presents Theon with the bodies of Rodrik, Leobald Tallhart, and Cley Cerwyn. He removes his helmet and reveals himself to be Reek, then reveals that he is in fact the real Ramsay Snow. He had switched clothes with the real Reek when Rodrik arrived to cheat death and get into Winterfell, while Reek was killed by Rodrik's men. He tells Theon that he would much enjoy the use of his bed-warmer Kyra instead of Palla, and when Theon refuses, Ramsay knocks him out. Ramsay and his men then put Winterfell to the torch and its people to the sword (among them Maester Luwin), as well as abducting Theon and killing almost all the other ironborn. In addition to Theon, Ramsay took two of Lord Frey's grandsons who were being fostered at Winterfell, and a few of the castle staff, among them Palla, Old Nan, and Beth Cassel.

Ramsay is the product of rape: years ago Roose wanted to have sex with the beautiful new wife of a poor miller on his lands, so he had the miller hanged and raped his wife. Roose only acknowledged Ramsay in his teenaged years, thus Ramsay spent a rough youth in poverty as the bastard son of a poor miller's widow, until he somehow found out about his parentage and insisted on claiming his "rights". The result is that - in contrast with Jon Snow, the bastard of Winterfell - Ramsay is a crude, almost half-feral savage who is uneducated and knows nothing about courtly behavior. When Ramsay does send (dictated) letters to his enemies, they are often extremely crass, unstructured, and blunt, laced with profanity and taunting threats, and with pieces of human skin enclosed. While the letter Ramsay sends to Balon in the Season 3 finale of the TV series is not present in the books, it closely matches his "writing style" from the novels.

Ironically, Ramsay actually somewhat seems to like his mother, and speaks highly of her - she is after all the one who convinced him to go to the Dreadfort to pursue his "rights", though she also found him wild and unruly. Moreover, Ramsay has actually convinced himself that Roose fell in love with his mother at first sight, and thinks of their union as a poetic romance. In reality, Roose raped the miller's wife on a whim, under the very tree he had her husband hanged from, and afterwards was casually disappointed that raping her wasn't as physically pleasurable as he'd thought it would be.

It is unclear from the books whether Ramsay contacted his father after Theon let him go, got orders from Roose to destroy Winterfell and followed them, or that he committed all the above actions on his own and only later reported what he had done to Roose, who had independently come to the same conclusion that the time was ripe to betray the Starks.

Roose Bolton and the Freys lie about their reports from what happened at Winterfell. Lothar Frey and Walder Rivers inform Robb and Catelyn that they got a letter from Lord Frey's grandsons: Winterfell has been destroyed and Ser Rodrik was killed by the ironborn, but the survivors were taken to the Dreadfort by Ramsay. Lothar and Walder claim not to be sure of Theon's fate.

When Roose reports Ramsay's actions to Robb (falsely making it sound as if Ramsay saved the day by driving the ironborn from Winterfell), Catelyn sharply reminds him that Ramsay has committed many vile crimes, among them murder and rape. Roose answers nonchalantly that after the war is over, Ramsay will be tried for his crimes, and maybe his deeds will atone for the crimes he committed - or not. He is not overly concerned of the possibility that Ramsay may be executed (particularly because he knows Robb will not live long enough to judge Ramsay).

Ramsay's torture and emasculation of Theon are not directly described in A Storm of Swords, but rather alluded to in A Dance with Dragons. Ramsay does not send a letter and a box containing Theon's genitals to Balon Greyjoy, the Greyjoys remaining oblivious to Theon's survival. Ramsay does send his father some skin flayed from Theon's finger, which Lord Bolton shows to Robb and Catelyn before the Red Wedding as proof that Theon is being punished for his betrayal. Ramsay sends a letter of warning to Asha, in which a piece of Theon's skin is enclosed, but that happens much later. Neither Asha nor any of the ironborn know what happened to Theon, believing him to be dead (though a few ironborn lords point out that his death was never confirmed). Arguably this is the only "sane" reason that Ramsay kept Theon alive, though the main reason was still that Ramsay took sadistic glee in unfairly inflicting torment on a random person. The succession laws in the newly independent Iron Islands are unclear, i.e. Asha/Yara feels that as the older sibling she is the heir, but according to the most common inheritance law in the Seven Kingdoms, as Balon's only surviving son Theon is the heir to the Iron Islands. Ramsay is not simply holding Theon hostage, as he has no intention of letting him leave alive and makes no attempt to contact the Greyjoys about his survival. Rather, Ramsay's goal was this very uncertainty: even if Theon were dead, the ironborn's line of succession would at least be clear, but not revealing the fate of Balon's heir generated confusion and dissent within their ranks. The TV version altered this, but still makes clear that Ramsay never offers hostage terms for Theon. In the TV version, Ramsay's plan is that slowly torturing Theon and mailing pieces of him to Pyke will eventually frighten the Greyjoys into withdrawing from the North.

Although Ramsay is noted as being a fierce fighter, he is undisciplined in warfare, lacking form or finesse, and is described as wielding his sword like a meat cleaver. Ramsay in the show, however, is depicted as a deadly hunter and archer, easily dispatching six of his own men within seconds.

In the books, Ramsay is known for his ostentatious taste in clothes; garbing himself in velvet, silk, and satin, usually in the Bolton colors - pink and red. In the show, however, Ramsay's attire is considerably more subdued, in order to fit in with the established drab dress code for northern characters. That being said, the leather jerkin Ramsay wears in season four is, in fact, a very dark shade of reddish purple: a subtle reference to his literary counterpart.