Domeric Bolton
Roose Bolton's trueborn son and heir, a quiet, gifted youth and fine harpist and horseman, who died young (book).
A soul born at The Dreadfort, sworn to House Bolton.
The fuller tale
How it ends for them
Died before the story ÔÇö before this story begins.
Domeric died before the story opens, of what the Dreadfort's maester recorded as a sickness of the bowels ÔÇö and what Roose Bolton, telling the story years later to a captive audience of one, calls murder without raising his voice: Ramsay poisoned him, Roose is certain, for standing between a bastard and an inheritance. The death was quiet, deniable and completely effective ÔÇö every quality Roose prizes, deployed against him ÔÇö and his response completes the family portrait: he could not prove it, could not spare his last heir, and so promoted the probable poisoner rather than punish him. Domeric's bones lie with his ancestors; his harp, his horses and his hope of a brother are the books' shortest, saddest character study, delivered entirely in past tense.
Their chapters, book by book
Where the page and the screen part
The show never speaks Domeric's name ÔÇö its Bolton succession needs only Roose, Ramsay and the unborn heir, and the backstory of a murdered trueborn brother would have duplicated the arc the show gave Walda's baby. His absence subtly changes Ramsay: book Ramsay is introduced to readers as a proven kinslayer before he ever takes the stage, his menace pre-loaded, while show Ramsay builds his r├®sum├® on camera. Book readers also get the richer echo ÔÇö Roose's warning to Ramsay that Walda's future sons are not to meet Domeric's fate is a sentence with a body already buried under it.