The line of House Bolton, generation by generation
The family tree of House Bolton
House Bolton, root and branch — 14 names across 5 generations, seated at The Dreadfort in The North. Each band below is a single generation, eldest first; the mono line beneath a name gives its parents, so the descent reads down the page. Dates follow the maesters, and where the songs outrun the records the chronicle hedges the legend as legend.
Seat
The Dreadfort
Region
The North
Words
“Our Blades Are Sharp”
Generation 1
The Red Kings — flayers of the Dreadfort, if the older songs are trusted
The Red Kings
Age of Heroes onward, the count of reigns unfixed
Styled Kings of the Dreadfort
Ruled the easternmost North from the Last River to the White Knife as the Kings of Winter's bitterest rivals for the better part of the age, and are said — in tellings this Citadel repeats without vouching for — to have flayed their captive Starks and worn the skins as cloaks. That the flayed man became this house's sigil rather than an embarrassment to be lived down says a great deal about how little shame the Dreadfort has ever wasted on its own reputation.
Royce Boltonthe second of that name
centuries before the Conquest, c. unknowable
Styled Red King
Took and burned Winterfell itself in one of the countless wars between the Dreadfort and the Kings of Winter — a feat his own descendant would repeat three hundred years later, which either argues for a family tradition of grudges or a Winterfell slow to learn a lesson.
Royce Boltonthe Redarm, fourth of that name
centuries before the Conquest, c. unknowable
Styled Red King
Earned his epithet plunging his bare arm into captive Starks to draw out their entrails by hand — a method this maester will not dwell on further, except to note that a byname earned this way tends to outlive every other achievement its owner ever managed.
Rogar Boltonthe Huntsman
as the Andals came into Westeros, c. unknowable
Styled the last Red King
Submitted to Winterfell rather than face the combination of the Andals' arrival and the Kings of Winter's patience, sent two of his own sons north as hostages, and swore off both the crown and — on parchment, at least — the flaying. The Dreadfort has bent the knee for a thousand years since and reserved the right, evidently, to keep the knives sharp regardless.
Generation 2
A thousand quiet years of bannermen (unfixed)
The Lords Bolton between Rogar and Roose
from the submission to Winterfell down to living memory
Styled Lords of the Dreadfort
Bent the knee, kept the Dreadfort, and mostly kept the flaying to rumor rather than record — sworn swords of Winterfell through the Andals, the Long Night's memory, and every war the North has fought since, without producing a single name this chronicle can respectably hang a birth or death year on.
Generation 3
The Leech Lord's household (present reckoning)
Roose Boltonthe Leech Lord
living, as of 300 AC
Styled Lord of the Dreadfort, Warden of the North
Wed an unnamed first wife (no issue); Bethany Ryswell (second); Walda Frey (third, 'Fat Walda')
Soft-spoken to the point that men forget he is speaking at all, and a believer — by his body servant Reek's account — that a naked man has few secrets but a flayed man has none. He fought for Robb Stark's cause until the arithmetic changed, then sold the Young Wolf to the Freys' crossbows at his own daughter's wedding feast and was handed the North for the trouble. He treats his only trueborn son's death, and his only living son's parentage, with roughly the same cold interest he treats everything else.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Bethany Boltonnée Ryswell
d. two years after her son's birth
Styled Lady of the Dreadfort
Wed Roose Bolton
Roose's second wife, of the Ryswells of the Rills, and mother of Domeric — the only one of her sons the cradle did not take before he was weaned, by her husband's own sparing account. She died of a fever with her boy barely out of infancy, and left the Dreadfort's only trueborn heir to be raised, this maester suspects, with considerably less warmth than a mother would have managed.
The miller's wifeunnamed
fl. c. 279 AC
Bedded by Roose Bolton under the old, banned right of the first night while her husband hanged from a tree beside them for the crime of marrying without his lord's leave, she brought the resulting son to the Dreadfort a year later and was sent home with a small stipend and a standing order never to tell the boy his father's name — an order this chronicle can report she did not honor.
Generation 4
One trueborn, one not (297–300 AC)
Domeric Bolton
d. 297 AC
Styled heir to the Dreadfort
Parents Roose Bolton · Bethany Bolton
A gentler product of the Dreadfort than the name usually suggests — he read history, played the harp, and rode well enough to make a name for himself in the Vale's tourneys — and died at home of a sudden bowel sickness not long after riding out, against his father's wishes, to meet the bastard half-brother he'd only just learned he had. Roose calls it a sickness. Roose also, by his own admission, suspects poison. This Citadel notes that both statements come from the same close-mouthed man.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Ramsay Boltonthe Bastard of the Dreadfort
living, as of 300 AC
Styled heir to the Dreadfort (legitimized)
Wed Donella Hornwood; 'Arya Stark' (Jeyne Poole)
Parents Roose Bolton · The miller's wife
Legitimized by royal decree once Domeric's death left the Dreadfort heirless, and brought home to a father who has never troubled to hide that he finds the boy more useful than beloved. He seized Lady Hornwood's lands by marrying her at knifepoint and then declined to feed her, and wed a second bride the realm was told was Arya Stark before the marriage bed and the north he claims to rule both discovered otherwise. His own father's household now watches him with roughly the caution one extends a loaded crossbow left cocked in a hallway.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Generation 5
The heir's brides, and an unborn rival (300 AC)
Donella Hornwood
d. 299 AC
Styled Lady of the Hornwood (seized)
Wed Ramsay Bolton
Widowed and landed, and for exactly those two reasons taken by force from a harvest feast, wed before a septon and a heart tree both, and locked in a tower afterward without food until she had chewed the flesh from her own fingers trying to survive. Ser Rodrik Cassel broke down her door too late to matter. The North has not forgotten it, whatever the Dreadfort would prefer.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
'Arya Stark'in truth, Jeyne Poole
living, as of 300 AC
Styled Lady Bolton (by a marriage built on a false name)
Wed Ramsay Bolton
A steward's daughter dressed in a dead girl's name and sent north to marry the Dreadfort's heir so the Iron Throne could claim the North was settled — a fraud both households understood perfectly and the bride, by every report smuggled south since, has understood rather more painfully than either.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
An unborn son of Roose Bolton
expected, 300 AC
Styled rival heir
Fat Walda's pregnancy, confirmed late in the present year, leaves the Dreadfort's newest legitimized heir with a considerably shorter shelf life than the word 'heir' usually implies — a fact this Citadel is confident Ramsay Bolton has already calculated to the day.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
Dashed cards mark bastards and baseborn lines. Names shaded behind the veil belong to the present tale; unveil them only if you do not fear to know.
Cadet branches and offshoots
Younger sons and daughters whose blood struck out on its own — some founding houses of their own name, some withered to a line in the annals, some disputed to this day.
Domeric's brothers
d. in infancy
Roose has mentioned, in passing and without evident grief, that Domeric had brothers who did not survive the cradle — a sentence delivered with the same flat calm he brings to every other loss this house has suffered, or caused.
What the maesters dispute
Where the records quarrel, contradict, or fall silent, this chronicle sets the arguments down rather than settling for you what the texts leave open.
How many Red Kings actually reigned at the Dreadfort, and for how long: the surviving names — Royce the second, Royce the Redarm, Rogar the Huntsman among them — are a handful salvaged from what the house itself claims was a thousand years of unbroken kingship, and the arithmetic does not remotely close.
Whether the Red Kings truly wore the flayed skins of Stark princes as cloaks, or whether the flaying was always more sigil than practice, exaggerated by frightened southron chroniclers with no way to check: House Bolton has never once, in this chronicle's experience, gone out of its way to correct the rumor.
Whether Domeric Bolton died of a natural sickness of the bowels or of poison at his bastard half-brother's hand: Maester Uthor's own diagnosis stands unchallenged in writing, Lord Roose's private suspicion stands unchallenged in his own head, and no third party has ever been permitted close enough to either to settle it.
Whether House Bolton genuinely abandoned the old right of the first night a thousand years ago, as the North prefers to believe, or merely stopped discussing it: Ramsay Snow's own conception, by his father's unhurried account, argues rather strongly for the second reading.
How many members of House Bolton are in the books?
This tree gathers the current documented Bolton corpus from the novels and their histories — kings and lords, daughters and bastards, and cadet offshoots. The maesters count only what the texts preserve; where a name survives without its deeds, the chronicle says as much rather than inventing the rest.
How do I read this House Bolton family tree?
Each band down the page is one generation, eldest first. Beneath a name, the mono line names that person's parents, so descent reads from the top down. Dashed cards mark bastards and baseborn lines; cards behind the veil hold fates from the present tale, revealed only if you choose to unveil them.
Where does House Bolton come from and where do they sit?
House Bolton holds The Dreadfort. The tree opens with the earliest forebears the records name — legendary where the singers outrun the maesters, firmer once true dates begin — and this chronicle marks the myths as myths, never dressing a song up as a certainty.
Which House Bolton tales are still disputed?
A good many. Contested parentage, missing generations, bynames left unexplained, and legends the singers embroider all appear under 'What the maesters dispute' at the foot of this page, where the arguments are set down without pretending to close what the books leave open.