House Bolton

House Bolton of the Dreadfort is a powerful and ancient noble House of the North, sworn (in name) to House Stark. Their sigil is a flayed man, red on pink, and their words -- spoken seldom and never lightly -- are "Our Blades Are Sharp." They rule from the Dreadfort, a grim and forbidding castle on the Weeping Water, said to hold the salted skins of the Stark kings of old.

The Boltons descend from the First Men and once ruled the lands east of the White Knife as the Red Kings, rivals to the Kings of Winter for thousands of years. They are infamous above all for the old practice of flaying their enemies alive, a custom outlawed by the Starks but never wholly forgotten by the lords of the Dreadfort.

History

For all their professed loyalty, the Boltons never forgot that they were once kings, and that it was the Starks who subdued them. That buried resentment surfaced in the War of the Five Kings. Roose Bolton, lord of the Dreadfort, marched south under Robb Stark's banner -- and then turned his cloak. In conspiracy with House Frey and House Lannister, Roose helped engineer the Red Wedding, where Robb Stark and his host were betrayed and butchered. For this treachery the Lannisters named Roose Warden of the North.

His bastard son, Ramsay Snow, legitimized as Ramsay Bolton, is a sadist who delights in flaying and the hunt, and who broke the captured Theon Greyjoy into the cringing creature called Reek.

Notable Members

• Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort, the new Warden of the North
• Ramsay Bolton, his cruel bastard son, legitimized

Significance

The Boltons' betrayal at the Red Wedding shatters the Stark cause and hands them dominion over the North -- a rule built on treason and terror that the northern lords neither forgive nor truly accept. The flayed man supplants the direwolf at Winterfell, but only by the leave of the Lannisters and the loyalty of no one.