I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

This post will be about Game of Thrones and its reprehensible monster of a villain, Ramsay.

Game of Thrones is a rare story in that so many of its villains have sympathetic traits, and its well-intentioned heroes more often-than-not struggle with the consequences of questionable choices.

Not every character can be described as that complex, though.

Ramsay Snow, by contrast, seems uniformly awful. And he is.

Although this post is called Defending Ramsay Bolton (look, I’ll just be shifting back and forth between Bolton and Snow, for absolutely no reason) – I’m not in this to justify or condone his actions.

Rather I’ll be defending his place in the story of Game of Thrones. To be specific, Ramsay on the show since I don’t know if the same things that I’ll say here can be said about Ramsay in the books.

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Season Five: A Plot Point Too Far

I noticed a fair amount of Ramsay Bolton backlash during the infamous fifth season of Game of Thrones, where Sansa Stark replaced Jeyne Poole as Ramsay’s bride from the books. (Jeyne, unfortunate collateral damage from the Lannister coup in the capital, was forced to impersonate Arya Stark and was married off to Ramsay to secure Bolton legitimacy in the North, with the blessings of the Lannister-held crown.)

I understand backlash against Ramsay. No one likes that guy and no one should like that guy. (There were other reasons, Sansa-related reasons, to be mad.)

But some of the backlash was a bit more meta than merely hating on a hate-worthy monster of a character. The sentiment was more or less saying that a character like Ramsay Snow shouldn’t be in the show in the first place.

That’s a weird thought, that the show shouldn’t have a villain. Okay, maybe no one is actually saying that there can’t be villains on the show, but it felt like that’s what they were saying. Or rather, that Ramsay was too villainous. And maybe too cartoonishly villainous.

I don’t necessarily agree, particularly because the Ramsay on the show is arguably a better character than Ramsay in the books. This isn’t a dig against George RR Martin or how he writes the books. It’s just that book-Ramsay kind of occupies the same under-developed zone as Vargo Hoat or Gregor Clegane. They’re awful, and he’s awful. And not necessarily developed beyond baseline awfulness.

Ramsay is clearly more important to the story than the character of Lord Vargo, who was swapped out of the show and replaced with the Bolton henchman, Locke. I don’t know if the story taking place in the North, particularly with Theon Greyjoy’s participation, would have worked out without a Ramsay Snow to have betrayed Theon. Or if it would have worked with a somewhat gentler, or less brutal Ramsay.

In a way, we were given a more versatile Ramsay on HBO, although I might not be giving enough credit to the evil bastard in the books.

His scenes with his father, Roose Bolton, were always gripping (mostly because Roose was consistently an aspect out of Ramsay’s control, until it was time for kinslaying.) We can debate my interpretation, but Ramsay Bolton somehow hid his rampant sadism while face-to-face with Littlefinger. That’s quite a poker face.

I’ve busted on the show for making Ramsay overly-competent at times – but finally his luck ran out with Sansa’s reinforcements from the Vale of Arryn saving the day as Jon’s northern coalition was close to extinction. Now that Ramsay is dead, I assume that people who were uncomfortable with him being in the show will be more comfortable with him having been in the show.

He did have a thematic and brutal ending.

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Ramsay, the Malignant Mirror

Ramsay Bolton serves a functional purpose in the story as a baseline reference of badness for gauging other characters. He’s a good foil for discussing the virtues and vices in others.

I previously wrote about Ramsay filling the villain hole left by Joffrey’s demise (who was worse, I wonder? Joffrey or Ramsay?) – but I preferred comparing Ramsay Snow to Jon Snow, since Ramsay was the kind of person that Catelyn was afraid Jon might turn out to be.

We have more comparisons that are worthwhile.

This most recent season’s finale kicked off with the beleaguered Queen Cersei achieving a stunning victory over her foes by detonating a cache of hidden wildfire. Her victory was somewhat marred with the news that her remaining child, King Tommen, had leapt to his death from the Red Keep. King’s Landing, indeed.

When Cersei was shown Tommen’s body, she had no comment. When asked about a funeral ceremony for Tommen, she dispassionately suggested that he be burned and that his ashes be spread where the Sept once was, so he could be with his grandfather and sister. And she left as if leaving behind some dirty laundry for someone else to clean and mend.

This is reminiscent of Ramsay’s story, from the end of Season Five and into the beginning of Season Six.

Ramsay had achieved a stunning victory over his foe, Stannis Baratheon, outside of Winterfell. Ramsay’s victory was somewhat marred with the fact that during the battle his wife Sansa escaped over the walls of Winterfell, but not before his creature Reek had killed Ramsay’s lover Myranda by pushing her off the same walls. Winterfell, indeed.

Ramsay had an unusually tender moment while viewing her corpse, wishing that she could be with him when he avenged her. But when asked if a grave should be dug or if the men should build a pyre…

Ramsay: Buried? Burned? She’s good meat. Feed her to the hounds.

The similarity of these story beats suggests a connection being drawn between the vicious Bolton and the cruel queen. We’ve known that Cersei can be nasty and vindictive, but her behavior when faced with Tommen’s death implied that she’s graduated up to a new level and she’s going to be more like Ramsay.

Cersei isn’t the only Lannister with a Bolton resemblance.

Across the Narrow Sea in Braavos, Arya Stark — forgive me, No One, was casing out a troupe of mummers as part of an assassination detail. She watched several performances of The Bloody Hand, a retelling of recent political events over in Westeros.

It was quite clear that the playwright for The Bloody Hand had decided that Tyrion Lannister, the evil Imp, was the architect of all of the misfortune in Westeros. The play’s sinister dwarf gleefully took advantage of the king’s death, betrayed Hand of the King Ned Stark, sated his lust on young Sansa Stark, and murdered his nephew Joffrey as well as his own father, Tywin.

In this not-exactly-accurate portrayal of the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister is presented as a monstrous schemer. Almost like Richard III in his Shakespearean evilness.

Or rather, almost like Ramsay Bolton, who behaves in the “real” world of Westeros the way the mummer troupe’s version of Tyrion behaves in the play’s fictional world.

The lies about Tyrion (told not only in plays in Braavos but also in rumors of the Demon Monkey in King’s Landing) are Ramsay’s reality.

Betrayals? Check. Kinslaying? Check. Abusing Sansa? Check. (I’m talking about the show here for Ramsay’s list of crimes, but I don’t want to diminish Jeyne Poole’s pains from the book either by implying only that Sansa’s virtue is important.)

The reason I feel this is important: at some point, Arya on the show will hear about the torment that Sansa suffered as Ramsay’s bride. And she’ll remember what she saw in Braavos and most likely add Tyrion to her list. On the assumption that Tyrion probably was as bad as Ramsay.

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Ramsay, the Guide Through Hell. Or Act Two. One of Those.

I come not to praise Ramsay Snow, nor bury him (since he was good meat and Sansa did right by Ramsay’s starving hounds) but to defend his position as an element in the narrative.

I’ve heard it suggested that A Song of Ice and Fire is roughly a three-act story, broken up something like this:

• Act 1) The Hour of Treachery
• Act 2) Didn’t Expect That, Eh?
• Act 3) The Next Thing That’s Been Brewing aka ???

Okay, I just made up those names but in rough terms, the Lannisters rise up against the Starks treacherously. Joffrey beheads Ned, Tywin orchestrates the Red Wedding. This sets the stage for honor seemingly being worthless in the face of sly opportunism and organized betrayals.

Joffrey’s the guy we hate in Act One.

In the second act, the betrayers are the ones brought down by treachery from those close to them, and the honorable are still dangerously sticking to their principles. Joffrey gets poisoned by his allies, Tywin gets arrowed by his son.

Likewise, Roose Bolton is killed by his son and Ramsay enjoys the edge against Jon’s vulnerable forces but is blindsided by Sansa’s allies.

Ramsay’s the guy we hated in Act Two.

The first act breaks the equilibrium in favor of the villains; the second act somewhat moves things back into balance, but not quite. Roose-Ramsay act as a sort of northern mirror image of the Lannister team of Tywin-Joffrey (with poor Sansa playing a role in both locations.)

The third act will be the endgame, and I’m not going to speculate too much.

I think it was important for Ramsay to have carried the villainous load up in the North. Roose Bolton was too much like Tywin for him to feel like a separate threat, and the Starks needed to actively take Ramsay down as opposed to Joffrey who was taken down by others. (Yes, Sansa had the poison, but that’s not an active move on her part.)

So just like Cersei leveling up to Ramsay-levels of behavioral aspects, the Starks have leveled up on dealing with the villains, from passive participants to active protagonists.

As well, Ramsay is kind of a bridge-villain between flawed human Joffrey and the inhuman Night’s King. Joffrey had the potential to be manipulated, but Ramsay was the manipulator. At least he was still human.

That’s can’t be said about the Night’s King.

I’m assuming that the Night’s King is the villain to supplant Ramsay in the story. I guess I won’t really know that until the show is over.

But it just seems like our antagonists are appropriately getting worse and worse. And I don’t think it would have worked as well to have gone from Joffrey to the Night’s King, without this transitional villain to make the hand-off.

So, thank you Ramsay.

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Alright, I’ll wrap this up. I’m not sure if this article was all that substantial. I don’t really feel like I defended Ramsay from anything other than a seemingly straw-man “He shouldn’t be in the story” assertion. Fair enough.

But hopefully whatever passed as insights in this essay had some merit. That there was some overall structural element to the story that Ramsay Bolton brought.

In fact, let’s test this out. Imagine you can go back and edit one of two elements away from Season Five. What would it be?

There’s no wrong answer, but honestly I’ll be surprised if people opt to keep the Dornish plot. It was poorly executed, and received more consistent bagging on then Ramsay. But I could be wrong.

Maybe now the Dorne-admirers can be emboldened to vote to remove Ramsay instead, and feel good about their choice.

It’s just not how I’d vote. Even if I defend Dorne on the show. Yes I have done that. More or less twice. Ramsay and the story in the North is better than the Dornish storyline.

I’m certainly glad Ramsay Bolton is gone now, even if he’s out to make room for someone or something worse. But I will miss seeing Iwan Rheon on the show. He brought a certain magnetic quality to the role that is absent (in my opinion) from Ramsay Snow in the books.

Thank you Mister Rheon. (Rheon, Rheon, it rhymes with Theon.)

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Okay, we’re just over a month away from the start of Season Seven. I’d say it’s torture to have to wait another four weeks, but I don’t want to press my luck and mention torture in an essay about Ramsay.

Everyone keep calm for the next 33 days or so. We’ll get there.

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(Comments are always welcome. Super welcome! But if you want to talk spoilery Game of Thrones talk with me (also welcome) I’d invite you to visit my Safe Spoilers page on my backup blog. That way my non-book-reading friends won’t be shocked with foreknowledge.)

Images from HBO’s Game of Thrones (obviously.)

I make no claim to the images, but some claims to the text. So there.

If you liked this article, thank you! I have all of my Game of Thrones related articles on my handy-dandy Game of Thrones page should you want to read more but don’t want to navigate around my site.

© Patrick Sponaugle 2017 Some Rights Reserved