Game of Thrones - The Bolton's Bastard, the North's Warden

The Greyjoys remain a nuisance to Roose Bolton. Sure Tywin offers him Ward of the North but he must rid the lands of the Greyjoys, refusing to send reinforcements to help wrestle control in his favor despite his association in ridding the Lannisters of Robb and Cat Stark. Reek, once a cocky, braggadocios Theon looking to impress his father and Ironborn men who followed him to Winterfell initially now shaves Ramsay “Snow” (Roose still doesn’t recognize the sadistic psycho as a Bolton) and obeys him. Even when asked about the Stark boys to impress Roose, Ramsay is able to assure his father that Bran and Rickon weren’t burned alive as so thought. Roose enlists his bastard and Reek to help him secure Moat Callin, a stronghold that would assist in the Boltons gaining a foothold in the North so that Warden is more than just a title rewarded to him by Tywin. Theon now Ramsay’s stooge and toy to order around and kneel emotionally to his every whim certainly adds a new dynamic and dimension to the Boltons war with the Greyjoys. 

Ramsay is the kind of sadist who hunts down one of his girls for sport, enlisting another to handicap her with an arrow to the leg before turning his blood thirsty dogs on her to rip her apart. And there is obedient, subservient Reek, no longer independent and completely under Ramsay’s control. It is quite a psychological rape of Theon, using torture and “flaying” (it is an aspect of the Bolton sigil) to render him less than a man, a dehumanization process that deprives Balon Greyjoy’s castrated and discarded son of any freedom to think or act on his own. Ramsay has created the perfect pet and Roose, clearly, is impressed by his son’s work. Perhaps a bit of pride in his son who seems aiming to please. Theon doesn’t even seem to operate on his own at all, as if that part of him was systematically eliminated.

I was sort of lamenting—perhaps a bit too much of a strong word, it wasn’t that dramatic—to colleagues at work in regards to how numb I felt by the end of The Lion and the Rose, how Joffrey’s painful demise to poison didn’t leave me quite as satisfied as I had figured. I kind of assumed I’d be blood thirsty, especially after Joffrey’s continued humiliation of Tyrion, but I guess I was just numb by the end. The episode opened with Ramsay on his hunt, with one of his girls and a tagalong Reek pursuing another of the Dreadfort’s prostitutes looking to turn the dogs loose on her once she was subdued with an arrow in her hip. And Stannis loyalists (who worshipped other gods, their sin according to Melisandre and Stannis) burning alive at the stake while his wife speaks about seeing their “souls in the fire” while Melisandre justifies it as Davos remains polarized by all of this. It is like this accumulative effect of evil spread across Westeros, with seemingly each subplot featuring some sort of despicable behavior. The least Martin (writer) and Graves (director) could do was give us something to cheer about. But by the end of the episode I was wiped out. One of my friends told me I needed to divorce myself from contributing too much emotional investment and consider it just an entertainment. But medieval times up to today, history, biblical even, continues to reiterate that bad things happen across the world because humans are the worst monsters of all.