You Win Or You Die: Ranking the 99 Game of Thrones Deaths

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Roose Bolton

I’ll admit, Roose Bolton’s death threw me for a loop. Of course, he had to go sometime, and before Ramsay, but my reading of Ramsay could not have been more wrong in this regard. I never imagined he’d be the one to do Roose in. To me, Roose was the only person who could reign Ramsay in, usually through disapproval over reason, as Ramsay never quite responded to the latter. Everything Ramsay did, he did with the endgame that it would put him in his father’s favor. He wished to shed his bastard legacy in not only name, but in persona as well. Even after Roose legitimizes him, Ramsay is hell-bent on proving that he’d earned it.

Perhaps that’s where his decision to kill Roose really comes into play. Once Walda bears Roose a trueborn son, Ramsay knows that he’ll be shunted aside. All of his work and dedication will have been for naught. At some point, Ramsay’s mission became less about his father and entirely about his own quest for the power his father could have given him. He knew that with a shiny, brand new baby boy, Roose would never again give him what he craved. And if he was no longer useful to Ramsay, then it was up to Ramsay to dispose of him. One quick stab to the gut and Roose went down like a sack of potatoes.

Just as well. If Ramsay hadn’t killed his father, the pair might still be running Winterfell. And there’s just nothing better than seeing those Stark banners fly once more.

As for Ramsay, he got what was coming to him. Roose once told him, “If you acquire a reputation as a mad dog, you’ll be treated as a mad dog.” All of Ramsay’s crimes come crashing down when Sansa lets his hounds loose upon him. She is detached and dispassionate, and tells him what he most fears: “Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear.” With Ramsay’s death comes his irrelevance, which he is powerless to prevent.

And who says Game of Thrones never has a happy ending?