I'm just saying that. On Game of Thrones , Ramsay Snow (now Bolton) is the worst. He's not a villain you love to hate, like Tywin Lannister or - well, any Lannister. Ramsay Bolton is a villain you love to hate. You wish Sansa stabbed him with a corkscrew. You hope he chokes on one of the sausages he keeps eating. You want Stannis to burst through the door and give Ramsay his own dose of violence. You really wish poor Reek could find a little bit of Theon's ember to keep in himself and maybe, I don't know, add something to his drink. But Ramsay...he just keeps on living and skinning people. Which begs the question: Where exactly is Ramsay's evil? Is Ramsay as bad in the books as he was in Game of Thrones ?
(Spoilers ahead.) The short answer is, yes. Ramsay Bolton is evil, terrifying, and the worst in all of the A Song of Ice and Fire medium. In ASOIAF , he still betrayed the Starks along with his father, still gleefully dismembered and tortured Theon into his Reek state, and was heavily involved in the ancient Bolton practice of skinning. While all of those things are the same, many of the changes in Ramsay's storyline from book to screen are more directly attributable to changes in Sansa's storyline. From George R.R. Martin's book series to David Beniff and D.B. Weiss's TV shows, Ramsay's fall from grace has always been consistent. However, since the only point-of-view chapter in the book that focuses on Ramsay is Reek's, the show's intense focus on Ramsay makes him seem even worse than readers may remember.
Littlefinger seems naive about Ramsay
One of the more subtle differences between the original Ramsay and the TV series Ramsay is that in the original, Ramsay's diabolical cruelty was widespread throughout Westeros. He was known throughout the North to strip women naked and let hounds hunt them before raping, killing and skinning them. That's why Littlefinger first betrothed his (creepy) beloved Sansa to Ramsay, then willingly left her alone with him - a man notorious for playing the most dangerous games in his spare time Man, this is a little weird for readers. Either Littlefinger doesn't care about Sansa's well-being as much as he lets on, or Ramsay's high level of madness isn't as well known in the show as it is. Regardless, Ramsay looks just as scary in the books as he does in the show, but his cruelty may not be as impactful because it's not focused on one character (Sansa) like it is in the show.
Ramsay + Sansa is not a thing in the books
The betrothal between Sansa and Ramsay and the nightmarish marriage that followed does not exist in ASOIAF . In the books, Ramsay is married to Jeyne Poole, Sansa's former Winterfell friend who is now forced by the Boltons to impersonate Arya Stark. Creator David Benioff told Entertainment Weekly of Ramsey's storyline with Jeanne Poole, "Do you have a female lead? She's a very talented actor and we've got After five years of following her and the audience loving and adoring her? Or would you have brought her in? "For me, that question has its own answer: You use characters that the audience is invested in. "Because the audience is so invested in Sansa, the exact same events that happen to Jeyne in the books are even more relatable to Sansa because Sansa was the victim of Ramsay's violence.
We see more of Theon's torture
In the book, most of Ramsay's atrocities appear in passing or as rumors in chapters from other points of view. However, on the show, they are front and center. Even before Sansa's storyline took a turn, Theon Greyjoy was humiliated and mutilated. And, while the outcome is essentially the same, the way the viewer/reader gets there is probably the biggest difference in Ramsey's direness from book to screen. In the books, Theon is captured by Ramsay in Book 2, and between Books 3 and 4, Theon is known only as the man he gave to Robb and Catelyn Stark at the Red Wedding. A piece of skin is represented. Suddenly, in volume five, Reek appears - tortured, dismembered, and revealed to be a shell of Theon.
Of course, in the show, all the nasty events that happened at Ramsay's hands between books two and five are shown in detail , from cheating on Theon, to castrating him, to having him at the wedding Walking Jeyne down the aisle (although Sansa, in place of Jeyne, was even worse). So while Ramsay's actions are just as deplorable in George R.R. Martin's books, it's the extra attention they receive in the show's narrative that makes Ramsay the most evil in a sea of evil villains villain.
Image: Helen Sloan/HBO (2)
