What We Can Learn About Abusers from Game of Thrones Character Ramsay Bolton
*Contains Spoilers*
The Trap
There’s a character named Ramsay Bolton in the Game of Thrones series. If there is a spectrum of evil, Ramsay is the evilest. While most of the bad characters do bad things to get ahead: they want power or wealth. Ramsay is evil for the pure enjoyment of it.
The TV series did a fantastic job portraying his character. Even though I’d read the books and already knew Ramsay was evil before we met him in the show, when he showed up in Theon Greyjoy’s prison cell, pretending to be his friend, I wanted to believe he was good. Even though I knew he was bad, I wanted him to be good. Just like Theon Greyjoy was so desperate for absolution after he betrayed Rob Stark. He needed hope, and here was a stranger, offering kindness and a way of escape.
Even though I knew it wasn’t going to end well, while Ramsay is leading Theon through the tunnels toward his freedom, I believed, along with Theon, that he was going to get away.
Then Ramsay lights the torch, and Theon realizes he’s been played. Ramsay hasn’t led him to freedom. He’s led him to a torture chamber inside the very castle walls Theon thought he was leaving.
Four years ago, I took a job at a church in Los Angeles. It was the perfect job. I’d be working with teenagers again and I’d be living in a city I loved and felt at home. The church was a larger church than any I’d worked for, and I could see opportunities for growth, expanding my career, and using my gifts.
Then, six months in, my boss flipped a switch. I remember the agony I felt after I saw behind his mask. Not again. Not again, I screamed inside my head. I knew the nightmare of a relationship with this sort of person. I’d experienced it before. I thought I’d come to paradise. I ended up in hell.
The Torture
Anyone who’s been in a relationship with a narcissist knows the sheer torture that is such a relationship. While maybe my boss wasn’t quite on the same level as Ramsay and didn’t enjoy evil for the sake of evil, there were many times I felt like he was playing games with me. He was messing with me and gaining satisfaction from knowing he had the power to make me miserable.
You can’t blame Theon Greyjoy for not knowing the person who’d been posing as his friend is actually his jailer. He was in prison, and someone was offering to help him escape. Anyone in prison might think, Hey, I’m in prison, my life can’t get much worse, what have I got to lose? Until you’re staring the next-level psychopath in the face, and he’s grinning because he knows he’s caught you. Ramsay doesn’t just torture Theon physically. He tortures him psychologically, making Theon think he deserves the torture because of what he did to Rob Stark. He’s a master at playing on Theon’s weaknesses.
One of Theon’s weaknesses is the longing for love and acceptance. Several times, Ramsay reverts to the friendly, kind person Theon first met. He makes Theon think the torture is over. Once, he gives Theon a gift. But the gift, the kindness, always ends up being a new kind of torture.
The Escape
Have you ever heard the adage, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”? Well, this is a very victim blaming statement that doesn’t understand trauma bonding. And Theon and Ramsay have a trauma bond if ever there was one. I recommend the book Betrayal Bond for more understanding of this. But the trauma bond explains why it’s so difficult to leave abusive relationships. The abuser has violated your soul. Even if you know it’s wrong and don’t like it, they’ve accessed your sense of self in such an intimate way. Losing them feels like losing part of yourself. The abuser has become embedded into your psyche, and they have no intention of leaving. No matter what choices you make, they were never going to let you go.
After years of torture, Ramsay eventually turns Theon into little more than a dog. Theon obeys Ramsay without protest, no matter what heinous and humiliating things Ramsay makes him do. He’s allowed to roam around the castle without a cell or chains, because Ramsay’s broken him. Theon won’t ever leave. He’s too grateful that the torture is over.
With abusive relationships, we’re so desperate for relief, when there’s a lull in the storm, we just want to believe it’s over. We want to believe it’s better. Our minds and bodies can’t process going back to the nightmare. We cling to the good times. We orient ourselves to remembering the sweet, kind things the abuser did. We think the abuser has changed.
And the abuser is more than willing to feed this illusion. It works in their favor. But the whole time, it’s just another form of torture, a part of their plan to keep us dependent.
Even while the church I worked for tried to take my boss and me through conflict resolution and relationship therapy, I knew, deep in my soul, a healthy person would never have treated me the way my boss treated me. We couldn’t “resolve conflict” if my boss was sick.
I jumped through the hoops. I played the games. But I knew it was only a matter of time before one of us got fired. In the end, he eventually quit. While I was relieved, it was just a severing of another head on the Hydra. There were plenty of other narcissists to take his place. Plus, he was now working at a different church, a place that had no idea they’d hired an unsafe person.
Theon Greyjoy eventually escapes Ramsay. In an impulsive moment, he and Sansa Stark jump from the castle wall in the middle of a snowstorm. But it’s many episodes later before Ramsay gets his epic comeuppance.
Even though Theon got away, he’d live with the scars for the rest of his days. With an abuser, even if you escape, you rarely win.
But even though you may not win. You can be free.
Katherine Spearing is a member of Tears of Eden’s Editorial Board and Board of Directors. Follow her on Instagram @katherinespearing and Twitter @katespearing
Photo by Michael Hacker on Unsplash