#ramsay tag

[kingsmoot]

🔥

Honestly I’ve always been confused on Roose’s problem (among the many others he has) on why he doesn’t remarry and have actual true born heirs.

Obviously Domeric is killed by Ramsay and he’s like hm that will happen again, but he should just marry some woman and have as many children as possible, surely Ramsay can’t kill then all, espically if he just hides them away.

This is only controversial because whenever I talk to people about this like they’re like are you fucking forgetteting about the serial killer in the back garden but just KILL him if you have more sons it’s not that hard Big Goosey!

ooooooooough i'm so happy to talk about this, and i'm so sorry it's taken me so long to respond to you. i just wanted to be able to sit down with this ask and get nice and carried away.

you are right that roose COULD remarry and just try for as many kids as possible. and if wife number four dies in childbirth or from pregnancy complications well let's just line up wife number five and try again. he could walder frey it and play a simple numbers game. surely rams can't kill ALL of them as babies. maybe we'll hide a few. send them off to foster. maybe rams will finally get murdered in one of those almost-happy-accidents that keep happening to him but somehow letting him fail upwards instead of dropping dead. what if everything worked out for a change!

but even though roose is a self-serving pragmatist, this isn't something he would do. i do not think roose will ever have another child after ramsay. he tells theon that walda has a "fertile feel to her" and that if she pops out sons the way she pops in tarts the dreadfort will soon be overrun with the fruit of their loins. but i think he's just being.... glib. especially because he dismisses this fantasy as soon as he shares it.

Lady Walda is a Frey, and she has a fertile feel to her. I have become oddly fond of my fat little wife. The two before her never made a sound in bed, but this one squeals and shudders. I find that quite endearing. If she pops out sons the way she pops in tarts, the Dreadfort will soon be overrun with Boltons. Ramsay will kill them all, of course. That's for the best. I will not live long enough to see new sons to manhood, and boy lords are the bane of any House. Walda will grieve to see them die, though."

adwd, chapter 32, reek iii

i'll back up a bit, here, to make my point.

the thing that makes roose bolton such a terrifying villain is not his leeching, his voice so soft other men strain to hear it, his ageless face or his queer, cold, pale eyes. it is the fact that he does not see other people as worthwhile. he simply does not believe in their personhood.

This is a cold man, Catelyn realized, not for the first time.

asos; chapter 49, catelyn vi

to me, the roose moment that makes my blood run cold is actually the above excerpt from reek iii where he describes himself as "oddly fond of his fat little wife". this passage gets memed on a lot. so much so that i feel like people take the whole thing as a joke that it's easy to dismiss. but i really disagree. roose's description of walda isn't funny to me. it isn't awkward. it's chilling.

this is not the way you talk about your living human wife. this is the kind of distant, impersonal affection you would use to describe a neighbor's dog. not your own dog, who you know well, but your neighbor's, who you only see from time to time. this is how roose bolton talks about a woman he likes. a woman he is fond of and intimate with and married to. and she's less than a pet to him.

there are lots more examples of roose's cold calloused solipsism in this chapter. for another:

"This miller's marriage had been performed without my leave or knowledge. The man had cheated me. So I had him hanged, and claimed my rights beneath the tree where he was swaying. If truth be told, the wench was hardly worth the rope. The fox escaped as well, and on our way back to the Dreadfort my favorite courser came up lame, so all in all it was a dismal day. "A year later this same wench had the impudence to turn up at the Dreadfort with a squalling, red-faced monster that she claimed was my own get. I should've had the mother whipped and thrown her child down a well … but the babe did have my eyes. She told me that when her dead husband's brother saw those eyes, he beat her bloody and drove her from the mill. That annoyed me, so I gave her the mill and had the brother's tongue cut out, to make certain he did not go running to Winterfell with tales that might disturb Lord Rickard. Each year I sent the woman some piglets and chickens and a bag of stars, on the understanding that she was never to tell the boy who had fathered him. A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule."

adwd; chapter 32, reek iii

besides the abject horror of roose running down a random woman he spotted on a river bank with a gang of armed men to hold her down and rape her under her husband's corpse, the thing that really makes his treatment of ramsay's mother frightening to me is how casually he pays for her upkeep for the next couple decades.

i find it almost impossible to compare roose and the unnamed miller's wife of weeping waters socially and economically. she lives on the dreadfort's lands and he is her lord. the kind of money and resources that roose can toss around on an afternoon's diversion of fox hunting is more money and resources than this woman could have ever hoped to see if she had lived a dozen lifetimes. and when she comes to him beaten and scorned with his rape baby brandished in her arms, he maims her brother in law and gifts her her dead husband's mill and a generous annual allowance. in one casual motion he grants her more than she ever could have hoped to have. and he could have done that from the beginning. there was nothing stopping roose from making a gift of the mill to her after he raped her and left her bleeding on the river bank. besides, of course, the fact that it would never occur to him to do so. not until he got annoyed. before then, he hadn't thought of her at all.

but in addition to reek iii giving us a glimpse at roose bolton's pre-canon, casual, wanton, cruelty, it also gives us a glimpse into his own self perception. he says:

to ramsay:

"You are mistaken. It is not good. No tales were ever told of me. Do you think I would be sitting here if it were otherwise? Your amusements are your own, I will not chide you on that count, but you must be more discreet. A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours." "Is this why you left Lady Dustin and your fat pig wife? So you could come down here and tell me to be quiet?"

and again to theon:

A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule." "A fine rule, m'lord."

roose's criticism of ramsay is not the fact that he is a serial killing serial rapist. roose is both of those things. roose's criticism of ramsay is the fact that he's gouche. he's bruttish and rude and was not raised in a noble household to act a lord. he's classless as well as lower class.

roose's greatest criticism of ramsay is that he makes him look bad.

but, and this is the point i've been ramping up to make, i think that roose is actually ashamed of ramsay and what ramsay says about him. i think roose, like tywin, sees his child as evidence of his own corruption.

don't worry i have pullquotes.

"They're only leeches. My lord." "My squire could take a lesson from you, it would seem. Frequent leechings are the secret of a long life. A man must purge himself of bad blood. You will do, I think. For so long as I remain at Harrenhal, Nan, you shall be my cupbearer, and serve me at table and in chambers." This time she knew better than to say that she'd sooner work in the stables. "Yes, your lord. I mean, my lord."

acok; chapter 47; arya ix

"Yes," Roose Bolton said. "His blood is tainted, that cannot be denied. Yet he is a good fighter, as cunning as he is fearless. When the ironmen cut down Ser Rodrik, and Leobald Tallhart soon after, it fell to Ramsay to lead the battle, and he did. He swears that he shall not sheathe his sword so long as a single Greyjoy remains in the north. Perhaps such service might atone in some small measure for whatever crimes his bastard blood has led him to commit." He shrugged. "Or not. When the war is done, His Grace must weigh and judge. By then I hope to have a trueborn son by Lady Walda."

asos; chapter 49, catelyn vi

"Tell him … tell him to be afraid?" Reek felt ill at the very thought of it. "M'lord, I … if I did that, he'd …" "I know." Lord Bolton sighed. "His blood is bad. He needs to be leeched. The leeches suck away the bad blood, all the rage and pain. No man can think so full of anger. Ramsay, though … his tainted blood would poison even leeches, I fear." "He is your only son."

adwd; chapter 32, reek iii (sidenote i can't help but hear a note of pain in theon's voice, here. i don't think he's feelings empathy or sympathy for ramsay, here, but he does know what it's like to be dismissed and discounted by a lord father who has no other sons to choose from, and hearing how roose talks about ramsay threatens to remind him of a feeling he had before he learned his name.)

i have a really long post in which i pull these same quotes where i talk about the parallel of how robert talks about joff to how roose talks about ramsay. and while i'm talking about joffrey there, i did make the point that roose's phrasing about ramsay's bad blood that not even the leeches can drain away leaves us with the obvious question of whose blood it is that's in ramsay. and if we know whose blood it is that's in rams, then we can look at roose's frequent and obsessive leechings in a very different light.

roose tells ramsay that no tales were ever spread of him, and yet he is notoriously regarded as cold, cruel, and deeply unnerving by the whole of the north. he does, in fact, have a bad reputation. and it does precede him. but roose is protected by his high birth, his status and position as lord of the dreadfort, by his military strength, and by his political and social loyalties + securities as ned stark's bannerman who raised his banners in support of robert's (successful!) rebellion. he, like his son, preys on anonymous northern peasant girls who have no recourse for justice, but he's not quite so loud about it.

speaking of roose's son, let's pivot to domeric real quick.

"Lord Bolton has never acknowledged the boy, so far as I know," Ser Rodrik said. "I confess, I do not know him." "Few do," she replied. "He lived with his mother until two years past, when young Domeric died and left Bolton without an heir. That was when he brought his bastard to the Dreadfort. The boy is a sly creature by all accounts, and he has a servant who is almost as cruel as he is. Reek, they call the man. It's said he never bathes. They hunt together, the Bastard and this Reek, and not for deer. I've heard tales, things I can scarce believe, even of a Bolton. And now that my lord husband and my sweet son have gone to the gods, the Bastard looks at my lands hungrily."

acok; chapter 16, bran ii

from lady hornwood we learn that ramsay was only brought to the dreadfort (and still not publicly acknowledged) after the death of roose's only son and heir

The Lady Walda wrote from the Twins almost every day, but all the letters were the same. "I pray for you morn, noon, and night, my sweet lord," she wrote, "and count the days until you share my bed again. Return to me soon, and I will give you many trueborn sons to take the place of your dear Domeric and rule the Dreadfort after you." Arya pictured a plump pink baby in a cradle, covered with plump pink leeches.

acok; chapter 64, arya x

from walda we get a very young noblewoman's practiced courtesies, assuring her lord husband (a stranger to her) that she will do her duty as his wife and produce him healthy, hale heirs. and we might assume that "your dear domeric" here is just a bit of poetic alliteration that walda includes in her letter to be flowery.

but roose himself talks about domeric in a way that is totally unlike how roose talks about anyone else at all.

"He is your only son." "For the moment. I had another, once. Domeric. A quiet boy, but most accomplished. He served four years as Lady Dustin's page, and three in the Vale as a squire to Lord Redfort. He played the high harp, read histories, and rode like the wind. Horses … the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard's daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself. Redfort said he showed great promise in the lists. A great jouster must be a great horseman first." "Ramsay killed him. A sickness of the bowels, Maester Uthor says, but I say poison. In the Vale, Domeric had enjoyed the company of Redfort's sons. He wanted a brother by his side, so he rode up the Weeping Water to seek my bastard out. I forbade it, but Domeric was a man grown and thought that he knew better than his father. Now his bones lie beneath the Dreadfort with the bones of his brothers, who died still in the cradle, and I am left with Ramsay. Tell me, my lord … if the kinslayer is accursed, what is a father to do when one son slays another?"

adwd; chapter 32, reek iii

domeric is given a depth and a personhood in roose's memories that his three wives and his rape victim are not. he speaks about domeric with a great and enduring father's love and a fierce pride. he goes out of his way to tell theon (a boy lord reduced to a pitiful, nearly inhuman state) about his accomplishments and his interests. roose loved his son.

and his other son -- a culmination of all his many years of cruelty and predation, a congealing together of all his bad blood -- kills him.

roose bringing ramsay to the dreadfort, even before legitimizing him, is his admission that ramsay is the only son he will ever have. he will never sire another heir. ramsay will make certain that any he might produce go to their graves. rams is the death of his house. roose acknowledges that explicitly in reek iii, but he admitted it to himself as soon as he summoned rams from weeping water.

roose's decision not to have any more children is a very intentional one. he is not trying to solve the problem of ramsay killing all his potential heirs. he knows that this will be inevitable. he has accepted that his bastard son snuffed out his one beloved heir, and that the gods have bound his hands. he cannot kill ramsay, for the gods abhor a kinslayer. and yet ramsay is a kinslayer himself, which roose is well aware of. ramsay is only a shadow of the father, and a reflection of his many sins. he is both a result of and a punishment for roose's cruelty.

[kingsmoot]

at the end of the day i feel that the majority of modern aus (or any thramsay-centric aus) are missing just how much ramsay hates women. and i understand that this is like an unpleasant thing to think about and you might not want to do that because it is vile. but i'm sort of curious what about his character is appealing for you to dwell on if you remove this.

ramsay doesn't like. have no real opinions on women and not include them in his life. his life is actually pretty firmly structured around how deeply he hates women and how their existence as objects beneath him in the westerosi hierarchy of personhood and power allows him to do, like. everything. ramsay is only alive and only in the position he is in because he is not a woman and because his mother is not a person. but he is. and he can access like... existence! in a way that she cannot. and like he hates the dissonance of how much he hates and resents her for "making him" a lowborn bastard but also that he only has the social standing that he does because she fought tooth and nail to get it for him. both his actual social standing and the way he expresses/utilizes the protection it affords him are built on and from the brutalization of women. he's a character that really lives in the intersection between class and gender hierarchy in westeros and who highlights where both of those forms of social order give way to brute strength and military prowess.

ramsay doesn't avoid or not care about women, his life is quite pointedly built over their corpses.

[kingsmoot]

☕️ + this theory that Ramsay’s mother killed Domeric

i like this theory! i originally read it in a post on asoiafblr that i can no longer find but that i believe was by amuelia.

and i talk about it in this ask:

🌿🪶📜🪳!!! and ohhhh wow i'm looking up more on the body world exhibit that is . very sketchy provenance indeed. i didn't realize they had plas

i understand what the linked post is saying about poison being a woman's weapon but i think it's important to note that poison is regarded as a woman's weapon, which doesn't actually prevent men from using it or getting women to use it on their behalf (lysa poisoning jon arryn for petyr, as one example)

i like to think that reek may have been the one to suggest the manner and method of domeric's death, but i base that on poison being regarded as a woman's weapon and reek wearing flowers in his hair "like a maiden" because i have always taken that line and run with it to hc him as being outwardly effeminate.

in general though i regard domeric's poisoning as a plot that was hatched by the whole little family working together, reek and the miller's wife coaxing ramsay into action when the opportunity presented itself. i don't think rams would have done it this way independently, so whether his was the hand that slipped domeric the poison directly or not, i don't think it was his idea.

[kingsmoot]

[kingsmoot]

hi! im not sure if you’ve spoken about this before but would be so interested to hear your thoughts on the dynamic between ramsay and the original reek? like the combined matters of reek already being a serial rapist and murderer before he even meets ramsay, the abject weirdness of an adult man being best friends with a child/preteen, and the fact that ramsay names his torture victim after reek despite no indication that he ever tortured the original reek? i always felt george was hinting at some kind of cycle of abuse thing with the whole “who corrupted who” line. anyway sorry this ask is so long but i love your analysis and would really like to hear what you think!

hello 🩷❤️🖤 firstly thank you for your kind words!! i have spoken about this before, but i'm happy to speak about it again, ty for your interest! i'm honestly a little surprised this is such an underdiscussed topic in general!! but not too surprised.

in short: yes. i completely agree with you. from my reading of the text it is obvious that reek was sexually abusing ramsay. i've made a few posts about it:

1. most plainly here

2. and i also touched on it here where i talked about ramsay's mama willingly and purposefully putting him in danger

I went through asearchoficeandfire and pulled every mention of reek i, the manservant that roose gifted to ramsay, so let's go through them all together

the rest is under the cut for discussion of child abuse, endangerment, neglect, and csa, as well as rape and necrophilia

there are three "reeks" in the text. reek, the manservant that roose bolton gave to ramsay and his mother. reek, who is ramsay in disguise in winterfell. and reek, who is the tortured remains of theon greyjoy. to keep things simpler and easier to follow i am only going to call these three people reek, ramsay, and theon, ignoring who might have been called "reek" at what time.

"Lord Bolton has never acknowledged the boy, so far as I know," Ser Rodrik said. "I confess, I do not know him." "Few do," [Lady Hornwood] replied. "He lived with his mother until two years past, when young Domeric died and left Bolton without an heir. That was when he brought his bastard to the Dreadfort. The boy is a sly creature by all accounts, and he has a servant who is almost as cruel as he is. Reek, they call the man. It's said he never bathes. They hunt together, the Bastard and this Reek, and not for deer. I've heard tales, things I can scarce believe, even of a Bolton. And now that my lord husband and my sweet son have gone to the gods, the Bastard looks at my lands hungrily." Bran wanted to give the lady a hundred men to defend her rights, but Ser Rodrik only said, "He may look, but should he do more I promise you there will be dire retribution. You will be safe enough, my lady . . . though perhaps in time, when your grief is passed, you may find it prudent to wed again."

acok, bran ii

this is the first we hear of reek and ramsay, and it's notable that they've only been over at the dreadfort + its surrounding lands for two years now. we learn later in adwd that reek and ramsay have been together since ramsay was a child, but they were living in weeping water with ramsay's mother

It was a few days after Alebelly's bath that Ser Rodrik returned to Winterfell with his prisoner, a fleshy young man with fat moist lips and long hair who smelled like a privy, even worse than Alebelly had. "Reek, he's called," Hayhead said when Bran asked who it was. "I never heard his true name. He served the Bastard of Bolton and helped him murder Lady Hornwood, they say." The Bastard himself was dead, Bran learned that evening over supper. Ser Rodrik's men had caught him on Hornwood land doing something horrible (Bran wasn't quite sure what, but it seemed to be something you did without your clothes) and shot him down with arrows as he tried to ride away. They came too late for poor Lady Hornwood, though. After their wedding, the Bastard had locked her in a tower and neglected to feed her. Bran had heard men saying that when Ser Rodrik had smashed down the door he found her with her mouth all bloody and her fingers chewed off.

acok, bran v

the above is referencing ramsay, of course, disguised as reek. here we have the account of how ramsay and reek were caught on lady hornwood's lands after they had kidnapped and raped her from the stark perspective (and filtered through bran's 7-year-old perspective as well) but a little later on we hear it straight from the bastard's mouth:

"Aye, but [Ser Rodrick] thought us friends. A common mistake. When the old fool gave me his hand, I took half his arm instead. Then I let him see my face." The man put both hands to his helm and lifted it off his head, holding it in the crook of his arm. "Reek," Theon said, disquieted. How did a serving man get such fine armor? The man laughed. "The wretch is dead." He stepped closer. "The girl's fault. If she had not run so far, his horse would not have lamed, and we might have been able to flee. I gave him mine when I saw the riders from the ridge. I was done with her by then, and he liked to take his turn while they were still warm. I had to pull him off her and shove my clothes into his hands—calfskin boots and velvet doublet, silver-chased swordbelt, even my sable cloak. Ride for the Dreadfort, I told him, bring all the help you can. Take my horse, he's swifter, and here, wear the ring my father gave me, so they'll know you came from me. He'd learned better than to question me. By the time they put that arrow through his back, I'd smeared myself with the girl's filth and dressed in his rags. They might have hanged me anyway, but it was the only chance I saw." He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. "And now, my sweet prince, there was a woman promised me, if I brought two hundred men. Well, I brought three times as many, and no green boys nor fieldhands neither, but my father's own garrison."

acok, theon vi

ok just a quick pause i LOVE ramsay's little monologue here it's SO CRAZY GOOD it's so good it's so

like telling theon to his face "aye, but he thought us friends. a common mistake." is CRAZY. it's so good!!!! after so many chapters of build up too the whole thing feels like being nailed down to a chair and put in thumb screw and every time there's a new bran or theon chapter they're tightened just a half-turn before this reveal where your thumbs are sliced clean off by a scimitar IT'S SO GOOD RRAUUUGHHH

sorry i got distracted. this li'l bit is interesting because it sets ramsay up as In Charge. he calls the shots. "[Reek]'d learned better than to question me," he says, and he sacrifices reek to the stark riders to save his own skin. the way ramsay tells this story sets reek up as disposable and submissive. a servant who is below ramsay's station, defers to him, gives obeisance, and gives his life for his master. (notable as well that this is not Lady Hornwood who they are raping the corpse of, but an anonymous northern girl, likely one of the smallfolk who live by and/or in the Hornwood keep)

ramsay's language here also makes it clear that this is habitual for him and reek. he likes to hunt girls, rape them, and kill them, and reek likes to fuck their corpses before they've cooled. romance. this was established somewhat back in bran ii when lady hornwood first introduced the pair, but we now have it straight from ramsay's mouth that this is their habitual game.

"I knew the first Reek. He stank, though not for want of washing. I have never known a cleaner creature, truth be told. He bathed thrice a day and wore flowers in his hair as if he were a maiden. Once, when my second wife was still alive, he was caught stealing scent from her bedchamber. I had him whipped for that, a dozen lashes. Even his blood smelled wrong. The next year he tried it again. This time he drank the perfume and almost died of it. It made no matter. The smell was something he was born with. A curse, the smallfolk said. The gods had made him stink so that men would know his soul was rotting. My old maester insisted it was a sign of sickness, yet the boy was otherwise as strong as a young bull. No one could stand to be near him, so he slept with the pigs … until the day that Ramsay's mother appeared at my gates to demand that I provide a servant for my bastard, who was growing up wild and unruly. I gave her Reek. It was meant to be amusing, but he and Ramsay became inseparable. I do wonder, though … was it Ramsay who corrupted Reek, or Reek Ramsay?" His lordship glanced at the new Reek with eyes as pale and strange as two white moons. "What was he whispering whilst he unchained you?"

adwd, reek iii

the above comes two books later, and now that we've gotten lady hornwood's perspective (and this is a perspective that comes from the general northern grapevine of people who live between winterfell and the dreadfort) and ramsay's perspective (which we will soon learn to doubt) we get roose's.

it's interesting too, i had always pictured reek as a grown adult man, but my friend @wormlips pointed out to me recently that roose does call him a "boy" in the above passage. i think i always pictured him as an older man partially since theon is transformed through his year of torture in an abandoned shipping container into an old man. i had just always made the logical leap that in addition to making theon smell terrible so that he is more similar to reek, purposefully torturing and starving him and turning him into a bent old man was also to emulate reek. to recreate him in a way. so i have always pictured him as being WAY older than ramsay, like rams is between seven and ten and reek is like... forty five. but wormie also pointed out that drinking perfume seems like a childish thing to do. i can see the sense in their reading of it! i have personally never pictured the two of them as being close in age, but rather ramsay as a child and reek as an old(er) man. i think the two incidents of reek stealing perfume might have happened when he was young but that he was an adult by the time ramsay's mother came to the dreadfort to ask for a serving man.

it's interesting also that roose implies with his question of who corrupted who that reek was not a serial rapist + murderer before he was given to ramsay. but idfk about that. the thing is that all of these people are unreliable narrators, so it's kind of a murky picture of a purposefully obscured past.

it doesn't make sense to me that the smallfolk would claim the gods cursed reek to "stink so that men would know his soul was rotting" if he wasn't already murdering and/or raping girls or defiling corpses. why would that be how they explained his smell if he was just a normal guy with a medical condition?

it's possible that roose only gave reek to ramsay and his mother because of his smell. because ramsay's mother wanted him to give them a servant to help her raise the boy so roose gave her one who smelled like an open grave being used as a latrine. but that doesn't seem like the kind of joke roose bolton would play. not to me! roose giving the troublesome mother of his rapebaby a man with a proven history of horrible violence? that seems like the kind of joke roose bolton would play. to me.

also reek and ramsay becoming "inseparable" reads as far less sinister if you picture them being the same age. i do not.

another point to reek being significantly older is that it wouldn't make sense for roose to send a child over to a woman who was asking for childcare support. even if he did, she'd send him back. he couldn't do any more work around the mill than ramsay could if they were both children, he would just be an extra mouth to feed. so even if he isn't quadrouple ramsay's age like i'm picturing him, he would definitely be older. like 16-7 at minimum i think.

to your point about cycles of violence, i would say that ramsay's entire existence as a character is about cycles of violence. the cycles are certainly cycling!!! but that's not exactly what i get from this particular snippet. i take roose's question about whether reek corrupted ramsay or ramsay reek in the same way i take his telling ramsay that his way has always been in favor of "a peaceful rule and a quiet people". he's full of shit!!!

my reading of it is that rams was obviously already a violent child. maybe he was killing animals, hurting his mother, hurting his fellow children. but he was a child. and reek was an adult man with a history of violence towards others. that violence isn't explicitly stated in the text but i think if the smallfolk were saying that his soul was rotting then it had to be pretty bad. i interpret this as reek already being a rapist and serial killer before he ever met ramsay (which is your reading too!).

"Has my bastard ever told you how I got him?" That [Theon] did know, to his relief. "Yes, my … m'lord. You met his mother whilst out riding and were smitten by her beauty." "Smitten?" Bolton laughed. "Did he use that word? Why, the boy has a singer's soul … though if you believe that song, you may well be dimmer than the first Reek. Even the riding part is wrong. I was hunting a fox along the Weeping Water when I chanced upon a mill and saw a young woman washing clothes in the stream. The old miller had gotten himself a new young wife, a girl not half his age. She was a tall, willowy creature, very healthy-looking. Long legs and small firm breasts, like two ripe plums. Pretty, in a common sort of way. The moment that I set eyes on her I wanted her. Such was my due. The maesters will tell you that King Jaehaerys abolished the lord's right to the first night to appease his shrewish queen, but where the old gods rule, old customs linger. The Umbers keep the first night too, deny it as they may. Certain of the mountain clans as well, and on Skagos … well, only heart trees ever see half of what they do on Skagos. "This miller's marriage had been performed without my leave or knowledge. The man had cheated me. So I had him hanged, and claimed my rights beneath the tree where he was swaying. If truth be told, the wench was hardly worth the rope. The fox escaped as well, and on our way back to the Dreadfort my favorite courser came up lame, so all in all it was a dismal day.

adwd, reek iii

the above always sends a chill down my spine... "a peaceful rule. a quiet people. that has always been my way. make it yours." you delusional lying bastard 🩷🩷🩷

this passage is notable as well because it shows us that rams is an unreliable narrator. it's not the first time either!!

Ramsay was clad in black and pink—black boots, black belt and scabbard, black leather jerkin over a pink velvet doublet slashed with dark red satin. In his right ear gleamed a garnet cut in the shape of a drop of blood. Yet for all the splendor of his garb, he remained an ugly man, big-boned and slope-shouldered, with a fleshiness to him that suggested that in later life he would run to fat. His skin was pink and blotchy, his nose broad, his mouth small, his hair long and dark and dry. His lips were wide and meaty, but the thing men noticed first about him were his eyes. He had his lord father's eyes—small, close-set, queerly pale. Ghost grey, some men called the shade, but in truth his eyes were all but colorless, like two chips of dirty ice. At the sight of Reek, he smiled a wet-lipped smile. "There he is. My sour old friend." To the men beside him he said, "Reek has been with me since I was a boy. My lord father gave him to me as a token of his love."

adwd, reek i

ah, but that's not true, is it, rams? your father gave him to you as a jest, to spite you and your mother. he was given to you both to harm you and it is a quirky little miracle that he ended up harming others with you instead.

rams tells himself and other stories about how he was welcomed into his father's house and beloved by him. how his mother was a great beauty who his father was in love with. and it's all lies. all dust upon the air.

i'll also note that roose describes reek as being "dim". i don't think there's much truth to that tbh. i think roose is proven time and again to view all the smallfolks as dumber than him. beneath him and mostly inhuman. this is really well defined in arya's acok chapters when she serves as his cup bearer and she is totally invisible to him.

"A fine rule, m'lord." "The woman disobeyed me, though. You see what Ramsay is. She made him, her and Reek, always whispering in his ear about his rights. He should have been content to grind corn. Does he truly think that he can ever rule the north?"

adwd, reek iii

[ALICENT HIGHTOWER VOICE] AND AEMOND... YOU KNOW WHAT AEMOND IS.

this btw is where my characterization of ramsay's mama really takes root. i think it's obvious enough what she was doing without this explicit confirmation from roose, especially with how ramsay acts and how he speaks about himself. but this is the crux of it. she had everything taken from her. her husband murdered and her raped under his still-warm corpse. and then she carried her pregnancy to term in the hopes that the gods would grant her a boy who could be given a place in the world that she never could be.

to me this is where the cycles start cycling. not with reek and ramsay, but with a desperate, violated, brutalized woman giving her son back to her rapist and insisting that he claim him. like, if she were... i'm not certain that i would call her a "Good Victim" for doing this but she could have aborted her pregnancy. tried to rebuild her life now that her husband was dead and she was physically brutalized. aboritcides are plentiful in westeros. or if she wanted to keep her pregnancy to term she could have lived the rest of her quiet life with her child in weeping waters in the shadow of the dreadfort. and she could have kept her son far from the leech lord who brutalized her.

but she didn't!!!!!!!! she shoved that baby right into the wide open razor toothed mouth of the monster who brutalized her!!! she knew exactly what kind of man lord roose bolton was and she was determined to get her child recognized by him and taken into his fold.

i love that rams is like... a personification of her all consuming rage as well as a personification of his father's brutality. it's great.

"He fights for you," Reek blurted out. "He's strong." "Bulls are strong. Bears. I have seen my bastard fight. He is not entirely to blame. Reek was his tutor, the first Reek, and Reek was never trained at arms. Ramsay is ferocious, I will grant you, but he swings that sword like a butcher hacking meat."

adwd, reek iii

further evidence of reek being significantly older than ramsay! a child would not tutor another child. further evidence also that reek was already a brutally violent man before he and rams started playing the most dangerous game in the woods. he taught ramsay how to hack people apart with a broadsword.

also calling reek ramsay's "tutor" here reinforces to me that their relationship was inappropriate. odd for a young child and his teacher to be "inseparable".

"He's not afraid of anyone, m'lord." "He should be. Fear is what keeps a man alive in this world of treachery and deceit. Even here in Barrowton the crows are circling, waiting to feast upon our flesh. The Cerwyns and the Tallharts are not to be relied on, my fat friend Lord Wyman plots betrayal, and Whoresbane … the Umbers may seem simple, but they are not without a certain low cunning. Ramsay should fear them all, as I do. The next time you see him, tell him that." "Tell him … tell him to be afraid?" Reek felt ill at the very thought of it. "M'lord, I … if I did that, he'd …" "I know." Lord Bolton sighed. "His blood is bad. He needs to be leeched. The leeches suck away the bad blood, all the rage and pain. No man can think so full of anger. Ramsay, though … his tainted blood would poison even leeches, I fear."

adwd reek iii

aaaaaaaaand back to ramsay's bad blood. "I had him whipped for that, a dozen lashes. Even his blood smelled wrong." :> where did all the bad blood come from, i wonder? his sire perhaps?

i love roose describing rams as full of anger. that's his mama's anger 🩷 calcified by roose's rejection of him and his refusal to accept this. spurred on by reek's proclivities and by reek's own rejection by his liege lord. just a horrible layer cake of brutality and violence and abuse.

that's all the quotes i have for you!!!

to me it is obvious from the above text that reek sexually abused ramsay as a child. possibly when he got older and bigger and stronger and reek was a much much older man, smaller and frailer, he really was meek and obedient to ramsay. but it didn't start out that way. his tutor would not behave with deference towards him. the man who taught him how to hack meat apart with a broadsword and how to hunt women through the woods before skinning them was not... subservient to him.

the closeness between them is suspect just because of their age difference and further suspect because of who reek is and what he does.

i also think that ramsay would never see this as sexual abuse. i think ramsay and theon have exactly the same frame of mind here where it isn't possible for them to be sexually abused or taken advantage of because they're men and that doesn't happen to men.

it's obvious that ramsay thinks of his relationship with reek fondly. fondly enough that he tells people reek was a token of his father's love. fondly enough that he creates a new reek for himself after the first one dies.

to your point about ramsay torturing theon into his reek when he never tortured reek, i do read part of that as revenge. like a sort of inversion of what was done unto him. i don't think that reek tortured ramsay the way ramsay tortures theon! but i do think he assaulted him. a major theme with ramsay is the playing of parts (a theme intensified and continued when jeyne is brought to winterfell as arya) so i see his sexual abuse and torture of theon as an inversion of what reek did to him.

i mean, i think ramsay tortures theon for other personal reasons. like resenting his beauty, his status as a lord's legitimate son, and the way he treated him in winterfell when he took it over. and just because he's a sadist who likes torturing people to get off. but also i like to think that it was an inversion of what reek did to him.

i'm unsurprised also that this isn't really talked about because the asoiaf fandom in general loves to say that the cycles are cycling but hates to admit that the evil monstrous characters who hurt people were also hurt themselves. so it's like bad fandom politics to say that ramsay bolton, who is a serial killing serial rapist, was also raped as a child. and put into situations with people he never should have been in because he was a child.

this is way too long it's way too many words it took me like the whole day to write it!!! i hope you read it to the end and don't get bored!!! thank you for your question mwah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kingsmoot]

couple people charmed by the potential of ramsay and joffrey getting along in kl the way rams took the walders under his wing but i'm sorry to tell you joffrey baratheon would never tolerate ramsay bolton within three hundred feet of him he is the king of all seven kingdoms king of the rhoynar the andals and the first men and protector of the realm and rams is just some big dumb miller's son with pretentions at things far above and beyond his station they would never bond over anything because joff would not see ramsay (legitimized or not) as a human being

[kingsmoot]

i like that ramsay's creepy ass unsettling smile is a familial trait he got from his dad. he has his father's cold dead eyes, his inhuman smile, and his total solipsistic disregard for the value of human life.

[kingsmoot]

acok; chapter 35, bran v

new au idea where theon doesn't take winterfell and regardless of whether or when robb returns ser rodrick ends up taking "reek" to the dreadfort to share the dead bastard's crimes with lord bolton in hopes that he would abandon his claim to hornwood lands

what i wouldn't give to see roose's face crack when he sees who they bring forward