Roose Bolton

Roose Bolton speaks so softly and so rarely raises his voice that men who have crossed him report the experience as more unsettling than any shouted threat, and the North has learned across centuries to treat House Bolton's calm with particular wariness. He keeps his leeches close, believing they draw off bad blood and ill humors, a habit that has earned him his epithet and does nothing to soften a reputation his ancestors built flaying men alive. Sworn to Robb Stark and seemingly loyal through much of the war, Roose is a man who reads the field with a banker's patience rather than a soldier's urgency, content to let others take the risks and the losses while he waits for the moment his own interests are best served. A maester who has studied House Bolton's long, unpleasant history finds Roose entirely true to form — patient, unreadable, and never once acting before the advantage is unambiguously his.