#myranda

In dead last place will be Ramsay and Myranda. Both are psychotic sadists who are extremely possessive of their darling and fully committed to brutally murder and torment everyone who does as much as look for half a second too long in your direction. If I had to choose the one who is more bearable and that is stretching that definition, it would have to be Myranda. She is just an inch more capable of genuine care and as far as I am concerned, she wouldn't actually punish you physically. Ramsay on the other hand is going to physically lash out if you defy him and won't shy away from breaking a leg or two to ensure you are bound to bed and cannot even entertain the thoughts of escape.

Next would be Cersei and Jaime. Both of them are already in a secretive relationship which within the story causes a lot of later conflict and adding you to that mixture is only going to complicate things. I imagine Cersei would make you her personal maid who has to accompany her everywhere she goes and rumours are definitely alive that she favours you in numerous ways. Cersei though is a selfish woman who resents everyone you prefer over her which may sometimes even include her brother and who is going to let part of that resentment out on you. When she gets drunk, she may even slap you or hit you. Jaime in comparison is more tame as he makes the decision to let Cersei hold more control over you to make her feel better. That being said, he isn't exactly gentleman material either. He can be quite arrogant at times and he is definitely going to humiliate anyone who shows interest in him. After he loses his dominant hand he may also have the tendency to trauma-dump on you which means you have two siblings complaining and lamenting to you about their hardships in life and both expect you to understand and comfort them.

Margaery and Renly aren't even bad per se but a marriage between a man who only loves other man and a woman who is expected to be his Queen and bear his child can only get you so far. There is friction between both of them due to expectations that are put upon them and the unfortunate reality of the situation. There may be some rumours that proclaim that Margaery is perhaps not desirable enough by certain imbeciles and whilst on the outside the woman acts like this doesn't affect her, she is definitely seeking you out for reassurance afterwards. Renly on the other hand is going for you for a different kind of reassurance as he too has his own burden as some people don't believe he would make a good king. If we go the romantic way and you are the only woman he is sexually aroused around, I do see another conflict arise as then Margaery would get jealous because she worked under the assumption that Renly would never touch you and that she could have you for herself.

Loras and Renly are next on the list. Both are lovers and therefore the overall dynamic would be much better though it is still weighted down by the need to keep their preferences a secret. If we go the platonic route, you could be a servant girl who may end up being adored by both men as a sort of little sister. As both of them are at war, the overall situation would be difficult though as this would mean that you wind up being isolated and constantly supervised for protection. If we go the romantic route and once again make you the only woman both men are physically and emotionally attracted too, Renly may make a similar mistake like Robb Stark and end up wedding you despite having a deal with the Tyrell family to marry Margaery as he doesn't want you as a mistress nor would he want his and Loras' children to end up being bastards which would put you at risk depending on how Margaery and her grandmother react to it all. Though I do think both women wouldn't react very hostile.

Ellaria and Oberyn may honestly wind up sleeping with you out of fun and end up getting attached and attracted to you afterwards. Both are adventurous and sexually very open-minded. Honestly, with the way their culture works you may not even have to hide your relationship as Oberyn could very easily just make you his other paramour whilst everyone knows you are getting taken by both of them. With the weight of secrecy out of the way though, I do think certain tendencies both have as obsessed lovers could make life a bit more difficult at times, especially Oberyn with his very reckless and trigger-happy nature.

Daenerys and Missandei may not know each other as long as many other people on this list but they have a strong and healthy bond which translates well into the overall relationship both would have with you. Daenerys aspires to be everything her ancestors were not known for and Missandei supports her in her claim of the Iron Throne. There is no physical abuse nor any verbal abuse involved and you can actually sit down with both of them and discuss certain things without being ignored or ridiculed. Daenerys can be very possessive though even if she hides it well and that is best shown in how violent her dragons can get when someone gets too close to you.

Robb and Jon are brothers with a strong bond despite the contempt Robb's mother may hold against Jon at times. On the outside both may appear to be close to perfect but both still have their own flaws. Robb can get quite protective and possessive at times, discarding rules and traditions in favor of wedding you. Jon on the other hand has been changed by his experience within the Night's Watch. If we base this around an AU where up to his death by the hand of the Night's Watch and where he lost Ygritte, he is going to be much more paranoid of losing another lover which leads his actions and his decisions.

There was almost a spring in his step as Ramsay finally made his way towards the First Keep - his father had left Winterfell to sort out some matters at Castle Cerwyn, leaving him with enough time to pay the little princess a short visit. 

The two guards at the bottom of the tower held the ladder as he climbed up, the old wood creaking underneath his weight. It troubled him that he could not lock her up properly (the entrance to her cell was a hole in the ground without door or lock) but he at least found comfort in knowing that the distance to the ground beneath was so far, she would never be able to survive a jump.

He forced himself through the small hole, and finally stood in her new prison.

Princess Cerelle sat with her back towards him; hair open, hands carding through. It looked… Well, if he was forced to be frank, he would say her hair was beautiful. The defined curls that fell almost down to her waist and cloaked her body nearly entirely from his view looked as if they were spun out of liquid gold, and everything about them demanded his attention.

She made no sign she had heard him enter, simply continuing on with brushing her curls.

The motion kept his eyes locked onto it, and there was little he could do to free himself from this trance. Lucion’s hair had been blonde as well, but this was a different matter altogether.

When it was that he had gotten close enough to her to let his hand hover above the strands he did not know, but he also refused to refrain from gently - who knew he would ever use this word in relation to himself - tracing the softness of her strands.

Still, she continued on.

Ramsay thought he would quite like cutting it all off and keeping it as a trophy. No one would say anything about taking her hair - he was not injuring her, after all - but to a pretty thing like her, such a loss would hurt oh so terribly.

“Something like you seems almost misplaced in a dirty place such as this.”

“You are free to release me whenever you wish.”

He laughed loudly, rubbing some of the strands between his fingers. “I assume some southern singer would froth at the mouth at your current situation - the pretty maiden trapped in a tower, guarded by a horrible monster.”

“You consider yourself a monster?” Her voice was even, flat, betraying no emotion.

“On some days.” Ramsay slowly rounded her, only letting her hair fall from his grasp once he stood in front of her, and also only so he could take her chin between his fingers instead and force her to look at him. He cocked his head, studied her right eye - the swelling, the stitches, the blood still collecting in small but heavy bags. “Why are you not scared of me?”

“There is nothing to fear.”

He ripped her head upward, her hands falling to her side in search of balance and her throat straining so beautifully under the exertion. “Careful. Or I might forget our families are allies.”

“You already have.”

“Are you deaf?”

“What?” Had his father asked something of him? With the expectant and slightly annoyed way he looked at him, Ramsay wondered what he could have possibly missed. It had been quiet all throughout breakfast. “I don’t understand.”

“That seems to happen a lot with you recently. First I tell you not to touch the princess, and you almost kill her twice. Then I tell you that our prisoners are worth more alive to us than dead, and you kill one of them.”

“It was not me that killed Lucion, father, but the wound in his-”

“I did not give you permission to speak!” The great hall had fallen deathly quiet. “He is dead because of your torture. You just could not control yourself, could you? And now I tell you to steer clear of the princess, to never talk to let alone see her, and even this simple command you disobey.” He shook his head at the look on Ramsay’s face. “Did you seriously think you could hide this from me? The guards obey me, not you.”

Ramsay’s eyes skittered around the room, across all the lords and ladies staring at them in rapt attention. Like hounds that had smelled the sweetest of bloods.

“Father, I-”

“You will stay away from her, do you hear me? You know what is coming for us, and we will need all the boons we can get.” His father’s gaze returned to the food before him, and he resumed eating. After a long while he finally said, “The maester says Lady Walda is due any day now. Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”

The warning was clear.

It still didn’t manage to keep him away from her. How could it? If the princess had not mutilated his father at the Twins, he was certain the man would go pay her a visit as well. She was so soft, so beautifully responsive if one knew what to look for, so perfectly unsuited for this ugly cell. Ramsay had heard singers describe royalty being locked away in gilded cages to be put on display for those passing by, and there was something so delectably intriguing about such an image.

On the other hand - in her tower she belonged to him alone.

The princess’ hair had been braided once more when he visited her next, though this time it was a simple thing, falling down her back all the way to her waist. A white silken band, far too clean for her current state, held it all together.

Her hand shot out when he traced the fabric - surprising him quite a bit, even if he’d never admit so, for he had thought her asleep - and took ahold of his wrist. The grip was tight in a way he had not expected from a dainty thing like her.

Time passed. She did not let go.

“Do not worry, princess.” He leaned in close, her face half-hidden in the darkness the moon was unable to breach. “I was merely admiring you.”

“Admire me from a distance.”

She turned away, hand releasing his, to seemingly return to the sleep he had prevented her from enjoying. But he simply could not have that.

“You know, your brother did not like being looked at. It was what made him most uncomfortable during my visits. Even as I was peeling the skin off his fingers, it somehow seemed to hurt him more when I had my men there to watch.” She attempted to move - in what direction or what for he didn’t know - but he quickly caught her; straddling her hips, pressing her wrists into the ground to prevent her from moving. “But this is what he hated most of all. A blade or teeth or nails he could endure, but as soon as your bare hand touched his skin, he began writhing away like a worm. Or like you right now.” He laughed. “Tell me, were you two twins? He certainly seemed of a similar enough age.”

The moon broke free of the clouds outside long enough for him to catch a glimpse at her eye - unfocused.

He could not have that.

One quick strike, hard enough to twist her head to the side, loud enough for the guards on the ground to surely have heard. And yet… Her eye regained its presence, but instead of the fury he had expected from her, all the slap earned him was a heavier, almost panicked breathing, as well as a pair of trembling lips.

Ramsay took her chin between his fingers to turn her face back towards him. “Curious. Usually, that brings people back.”

He left soon after. Something about that hit to her head had messed her up enough to make her unresponsive for long enough for him to lose interest.

One day shortly past noon - he had just returned from a hunt with Damon, Skinner, and his hounds, for lack of being forbidden from entertaining himself with the princess - Karstark soldiers passed through the gates of Winterfell, a small wooden cart being dragged inside behind them. His father was already with them by the time Ramsay had realised them to be of importance.

“My lord,” Arnolf Karstark bowed not quite as deeply as a man of his age ought to be able to. “I bring you great news. For I have found and am now delivering you the body of Stannis Baratheon!”

He pulled back the tarp which had thus far covered the wagon and revealed the lifeless figure of a man, dressed in the torn leathers and furs of a Northman.

“Have I not commanded for him to be brought to me alive?” Ramsay’s father said.

“Well- Aye, my lord, you have, but- You see, he was fighting back against my men quite fiercely and-”

“So a single southern man was enough to overpower your trained soldiers?”

The man opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, searching for an answer that would absolve him of the punishment everyone knew House Bolton was only too glad to deal out. Ramsay found he looked quite humorous this way; like a fish left on land for too long.

“Well, we cannot change what has happened,” his father said, though the edge of his smile Ramsay was able to spot spoke enough of his true feelings on the matter. “Let us drink on the false king’s death.”

The look he sent Ramsay as they passed him told him everything he needed to know. Even after these past few days and weeks, his father still knew what he liked, and gave it to him whenever he could.

I am still the heir, he reassured himself.

“Flaying a corpse is no fun,” he told Damon and Skinner. “I’ll leave that honour to you two. Just make sure to keep his face intact should we ever need it.”

For he would enjoy their victory at the side of his father - right where he belonged.

When Lord Roose Bolton slept, he made his way to the Broken Tower.

Sometimes she was awake when he came, sometimes asleep; there was no true telling what he would find once he had climbed to the top of the ladder. Tonight the gods seemed to favour him, for she was leaning against the wall furthest from the entrance, fingers playing with her braid, and humming a gentle tune. Her right side was the one facing him, and with it the eye he had been so close to cutting out. At least he had managed to take away its sight.

“I never asked you-” He lowered the torch in his hand to illuminate her whole body- “how you wish to be called. Princess? Your grace? Simply Cerelle?”

Ramsay had not expected a reaction - not truly, not after he had gotten to know her so well already. And yet it surprised him still that she simply continued humming her strange and foreign song. Previously, she had at least halted for a moment once he had entered her space, or made sure to keep her movements and sounds to the absolute necessity, as if that could have ever protected her. Yet now…

He knelt before her and cocked his head at what he found.

There were tear tracks running across her cheeks. Dark bags below her eyes, their whites blood-shot, her entire body trembling. Most intriguingly, when he reached out a hand to let it run across her lips - mouthing some words or prayers, so similar to her brother’s - she did not try to escape his touch. The princess let it happen, so lost within her own mind she could barely even muster the most basic of resistances against her greatest enemy.

“What have you seen, little princess?” he whispered, tracing the scars on her left cheek. “What terror have the gods shown you?”

Ramsay’s gaze dropped to her chest, in front of which, for the first time, a necklace hung. The metal was beaten and dirty, worn-down from years of constant use, yet the golden lion sitting atop it still gleamed brightly in the light of the torch. When he went to touch it, she was suddenly gone, and he found himself stumbling backwards.

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” She cowered against a different wall, standing upright instead of sitting down as if she expected to be able to flee any moment now, one hand pressed against the old stone behind her, the other clutching the necklace. “Just let me go.”

He smiled.

“Father.”

The man stayed silent, continuing to write some letter or missive instead of acknowledging his own flesh and blood. Ramsay knew his father did so to test him, to gauge whether he had made the correct choice in legitimising him, but such a test was not needed today. Not with the sort of proposition he had come up with.

“Father, I have found a way for us not to need Sansa Stark anymore to secure our hold over the North.”

“I doubt Tywin Lannister will take all too kindly to you marrying his granddaughter.”

How, he had almost asked. How did you know? But he knew such a question would never be received kindly by his father, so instead he went down a different route. “With her as my wife and future Lady of Winterfell, the crown will have no other choice but to support our claim for all eternity. It is what any good lord would want - his blood ruling every corner of the kingdom, and I am handing this to him on a silver platter.”

Finally, he met Ramsay’s gaze, and even if his face was as void of emotion as always, he seemed particularly exasperated with him. “After I informed him of the death of Lucion Lannister, I have not heard from him again. What do you think this means?”

“That… Uh, that he-”

“There is an army currently passing Moat Cailin. Our scouts have not returned to confirm whose it is but I assume you will agree with me that there is only one reason left for anyone to attempt an invasion now that winter has come.” His father leaned forward. “The Lannisters have come to get the princess back. If you marry her, they will not hesitate to kill you if it means freeing her. So I suggest you come up with a smarter solution to our current predicament than marrying the first pretty woman you stumble across. Now leave my sight, I have work to do.”

The princess reacted most commonly to mentions of her brother, yet even that grew stale after a few visits. There were only so many ways to describe how it took three men to hold him down when he had first begun with the torture, or how pliant he had suddenly become as soon as her name had gotten mentioned. Even telling her he used her dagger to take apart his flesh failed to keep him entertained for long.

Ramsay could not harm her. He could not injure her. He could not touch her. He could not rape her. What was there even left to do?

“Why do you care so much about that girl?” Myranda asked one morning, naked body tangled up in the furs and blankets of his bed. “I watched her when she was still in the dungeons and she was one of the most boring prisoners we have ever had.”

“She is not scared of me.” A half-truth. “But she refuses to fight back.” To a certain extent. “I merely want to finally be able to say I broke her. You know how much fun that is.”

There was another thing, as well. He could not quite explain it and if he ever attempted to, the entirety of Winterfell would hail him a madman, but it was almost as if he felt drawn to her. As if the gods themselves attempted to convince him to be close to her. To make her his.

Myranda grinned and let herself fall back against the mattress. “Well, as long as you don’t marry her, I see no reason for you to stop playing with her. At least she lasts long.”

Ramsay did not expect it to end quite the way it did, but then again, when had it ever?

His father had found out about his continued nightly visits to the princess, about how he had the guards killed and replaced by ones loyal only to him, about how his men - mainly Grunt and Skinner - had prevented anyone from finding out until now. There were other things too, of course - the thing with the two Walders, the time his bitches had gotten loose, his unwillingness to make good for the Hornwood incident with the Northern lords - but all this resulted in these cursed words.

“You are disinherited. I would be mad were I to keep a rabid dog like you as my heir.”

Truly, his father should have seen the blade coming. He had gifted it to him on his nameday a few years past. Ramsay could not help but smile at his father’s shocked expression, at the blood he coughed and the fluid that was seeping past the dagger and onto Ramsay’s hand. The body fell to the ground like a sack of rotten cabbages.

“Bring me my step-mother.”

His hounds would feast well this night, but that he would leave to his men. The only thing that mattered now was the Broken Tower rising up above him, the setting sun illuminating the old stone and breathing new life into the ruined structure.

I am Lord of Winterfell now. I own this castle, and all those who reside within.