Since I still don’t know if I can ask the question here, I’ll just ask it here. It contains spoilers. I can’t remember how far in, but if you haven’t read about Theon Greyjoy’s return for the Iron Islands, don’t read any further.
Can somebody explain to be how exactly Winterfell fell? I must have been tuning out when that happened. What I remember was that Theon sent that dude to go find some help. The Stark bannermen raided, were doing well, then the dude came back with his army and defeated them all. Then he turned on Theon or something? The next thing I know, Winterfell is fallen. And it had something to do with Roose Bolton’s bastard son. Then Theon was apparently (?) killed in a pretty painful fashion.
If you’re worried about spoiling anything for me, I am presently early into the fourth book. They just buried Tywin Lannister.
Can someone untangle all of this for me?
Theon conquered Winterfell with a group of Iron Islanders, enough to take the place but not enough to hold it. His disgusting but crafty henchman Reek tells Theon that with enough money he can scare up more men to help. He comes back leading an army from The Dreadfort, because Reek is really Ramsay Snow, Roose Bolton’s bastard, and they take Winterfell from Theon and make him a prisoner.
The tell is actually from the previous Theon chapter, when he has taken a small village in the region. Theon has a small group of his men make a big show of building armaments outside the castle walls of a lord near Winterfell that is under it’s protection. They are only a ruse, however, and when the men leave Winterfell to help protect the lord’s castle form the fake army, Theon sneaks in and takes their castle.
The step that the book leaves vague is after the first Reek, Ramsay Snow, shows up and shatters the forces trying to liberate Winterfell from Theon’s grasp. Prior to this Theon was holding off these men primarily by holding a dagger to the throat of their children who were in Winterfell at the time.
After Ramsay Snow smashes the Stark loyalists outside the castle he storms in, kills the small group of Iron Islanders and then sacks the castle killing everyone they can find and setting fire to the keep.
For the why, I presume this was done to decapitate what was essentially the entire remaining core of the Stark’s central authority in the north. Maester Lewin etc… The Starks symbolic and practical control system over the north was pretty much eliminated when the castle and its people were destroyed leaving a voice that Ramsay Snow intends for his family to fill.
It is referred to that Winterfell was burned. Was that Theon in preparation of losing it, or Ramsay once he had one it?
And, do we know the extent to which Ramsay was working with his father on this? He was estranged at this point, no? Did Bolton’s plans for betrayal go back that far? I remember when he was talking to Jaime, he was more in a “keeping options open” frame of mind. If he was working with Ramsay, I suppose one has more options by holding the north. But it also kneecapped his own side, giving one side a much stronger position and his own self less leverage to negotiate with them (since they’d be less likely to need his help). Or was it just the case that Ramsay got industrious and his father caught up with him and then they plotted? Or do we know?
The burning was Ramsay. Theon grew up there and had fond memories of it; also, he needed Winterfell intact to hold it.
We don’t know the details of the Ramsay/Roose interaction. My best guess is that Ramsay was on his own and presumed dead while pretending to be Reek, and didn’t reconnect with Roose until the visit from which Ramsay returned with the Dreadfort army.
—————— oh crap spoilers are showing up in gift of gab ——————
Why did he burn it? So the people of Winterfell wouldn’t be able to report that it was his army that killed Stark’s men?
I chalked it up to his being a murderous, sadistic fishhole.
Ramsay is a psychopathic serial killer, torturer, and rapist which pretty much explains everything he does, though you have to sort of guess how much is his own doing and how much is done on Roose Bolton’s orders.
oh crap spoilers are showing up in gift of gab
Yeah, that spoiled it for me. I’m just at the point where Theon is being taught what it really is to be an Iron Islands Man for real… by his sister, who I cannot help but enjoy even though she’s a pirate and even now, after I know what she’s going to help make happen.
Sorry, man! I made a point of putting it in its own post… but the GoG thing escaped me.
Rest assured, there are a lot of things that happen between here and there.
I must be very dense because I re-read the chapter twice to try to make sense of what really happened when Theon is double-crossed and I never read the name Ramsay Bolton, anywhere. Im glad i found this blog, because I couldnt figure out who reek really was. I am on my second reading of the whole series. I had forgotten almost everything, It all feels brand new to me…which is a good thing. These books are amazing!!!