Roose Bolton
Lord of the Dreadfort, the most powerful of the Stark bannermen: soft-spoken, bloodless, and unreadable, a leech-loving lord whose stillness unsettles everyone around him.
A soul born at The Dreadfort, sworn to House Bolton.
The fuller tale
Season Three
Roose Bolton is Warden of the North; Walder Frey washes his hands and his floors.
Where they stand. Harrenhal, The Twins and The Dreadfort.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Slain at Winterfell (S6┬ÀE2)
The Lord of the Dreadfort, who put a dagger in his king at the Red Wedding, received the same courtesy from his own bastard at Winterfell ÔÇö Ramsay's blade in the gut the moment a trueborn heir was announced.
In the show, Roose Bolton dies exactly as he lived ÔÇö at close quarters, quietly, mid-calculation. When word comes to Winterfell that Walda has delivered a son, Ramsay embraces his father, and the audience has half a second to read the arithmetic in his eyes before the dagger goes into Roose's gut: a trueborn heir existing means a legitimized bastard's claim expiring, and Ramsay does to his father precisely what his father did to his king. The maester is instructed to announce that Lord Bolton was poisoned by his enemies; Walda and the newborn are dealt with within the hour. It is the Red Wedding's logic brought home to roost ÔÇö betrayal as house tradition, passed father to son like the name. In the books, no such scene has occurred: Roose is alive at Winterfell in the published telling, though sharing a castle with Ramsay, a war, and several thousand people who remember the Red Wedding ÔÇö a life-expectancy chart all its own.
Their chapters, book by book
A Clash of Kings 2 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
Book Roose is alive. As the published volumes close he holds Winterfell with Stannis marching on it, his Frey and Manderly allies knifing each other in his own hall, a false Stark bride bleeding sympathy toward his son's enemies, and the North's old houses remembering all around him ÔÇö the quiet lord's position anything but quiet. His show death at Ramsay's hand is, so far, television only. The books also deepen his menace in ways the show only gestures at: his account of Ramsay's conception is one of the saga's most chilling monologues, his 'a peaceful land, a quiet people' credo gives the character a stated philosophy, and the fan theory that the ageless, unblinking lord is something stranger than a man ÔÇö built from leeches, pale eyes and a certain timelessness ÔÇö remains a durable cottage industry the text neither feeds nor kills. Michael McElhatton's performance gave the show's Roose a dry, watchful gravity that made him many viewers' favorite monster; readers would say the books' version is the same man with the temperature turned three degrees lower.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.