RE: Game of Thrones Season 6 Discussion [SPOILERS WITHIN]
June 20, 2016 at 12:22 pm
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2016 at 1:10 pm by Homeless Nutter.)
(June 20, 2016 at 11:40 am)pocaracas Wrote: Well... yes and no.
Who decided that the Boltons should be second in command, after the Starks?
King Joffrey did, or his Hand - Tywin. They made Roose Bolton Warden of the North, as a reward for betraying the King in the North. In the eyes of the Crown - the lords of the North, siding with Rob were rebels - they were lucky they weren't all put to the sword after the Red Wedding. Why would the king allow any of those houses to rule the North?
(June 20, 2016 at 11:40 am)pocaracas Wrote: How would the Starks, while Wardens of the North, allow such a vicious house to have so much power? So many men? so much wealth to control all those men?
Something messed up happened in the past, over there...
Well, yes - quite a lot, actually. In the books we are told that Boltons used to hunt and skin Starks like animals, possibly because Starks were known to warg into wolves. I'm not sure why Ned tolerated Boltons, but presumably it's because their rivalry was in distant past (a thousand years ago) and at some point Boltons submitted to Starks, who were too honorable to massacre a defeated foe.
Roose Bolton also helped with Robert's rebellion against the Mad King and - while a cold and cruel man - he wasn't a psychotic, unpredictable bastard, like his... err... bastard. We only started hearing about the exploits of Ramsey after Ned left for King's Landing. And in the books Bran did try to bring Ramsey to justice for his crimes, but the bastard was detained, pretending to be a servant - the original Reek - and then Theon took Winterfell and set him free.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw