Is Roose Bolton immortal/undying?

[Equilibrium]

31 minutes ago, Wolfcrow said:

The eyes are the feature we see most of the time be connected with magical blood though, face shape is not. Red, unusuall deep green, purple are some examples we have. The face of the Starks it's not even that weird, they just have long angular faces and not all of them have it. 

Rooses eyes are almost white and the feature that everybody talks about, even though many of them see him every day, they still point it out . He had they eyes that are along with Dany's are described the most. People describe them as moons, something that are pretty close to stars and other celestial bodies that are used for magical eyes in the series. 

Having mentioned Brandon Ice-Eyes in my previous post, it seems to me there are few hints that Kings of Winter were more of a Roose-type of guys than Vale fosterling boi Ned "high on honor" and his children 

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He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice

 

[Evolett]

On 6/22/2022 at 7:13 PM, Nittanian said:

Regarding the book at Harrenhal,

 

On 6/22/2022 at 7:13 PM, Nittanian said:

So basically, burning the book was not an absolute symbol of Roose's desertion from the North. No identification of the book. His answer was simply "Roose had read it. Why leave it lying around where an enemy might read it too?" There was a little more than that but that was the key phrase... all in all, it was character building.

Whatever GRRM says about character building, my gut feeling is the that the book is important to events in the narrative, especially since it appears in the chapter Roose goes hunting wolves and later orders their skins to be made into a blanket for him. The book is thick, leather bound, the leather is dry, it has yellow pages suggesting it's ancient or at the very least, a very old book. He places it carefully in the fire and as he watches it burn, our attention is drawn to his eyes:

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Bolton turned a few more pages with his finger, then closed the book and placed it carefully in the fire. He watched the flames consume it, pale eyes shining with reflected light. The old dry leather went up with a whoosh, and the yellow pages stirred as they burned, as if some ghost were reading them.

I doubt this is just character building. Are we to view Roose as a man of learning? A seeker of ancient information for interest's sake? No. Whatever was in that book must have been important to him and dangerous enough to warrent its destruction to prevent others from reading it.

Perhaps it contained information relevant to the intended betrayal and murder of Robb Stark. Taboos were broken at the Red Wedding - guest right and kingslaying. We may speculate - could the book have revealed how to placate the gods in the event of committing such crimes? Was the killing of the king and the massacre of thousands of men a massive sacrifice intended to fuel magic of great proportions? Was Patchface's prophecy not so much a prophecy as a recipe for a magical ritual? 

Roose reading the book and then carefully placing it in the fire to burn it contrasts Joffery's wild destruction of The Lives of Four Kings given to him by Tyrion. And speaking of kings, is Joffery's book the clue to Roose's book?

 

9 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

Having mentioned Brandon Ice-Eyes in my previous post, it seems to me there are few hints that Kings of Winter were more of a Roose-type of guys than Vale fosterling boi Ned "high on honor" and his children 

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He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he had walked a thousand times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice

Both Roose and Ramsay are said to have eyes like "chips of dirty ice"

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Roose Bolton’s own face was a pale grey mask, with two chips of dirty ice where his eyes should be.

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He had his lord father’s eyes—small, close-set, queerly pale. Ghost grey, some men called the shade, but in truth his eyes were all but colorless, like two chips of dirty ice.

I don't recall "dirty ice" or "chips of dirty ice" used in describing eyes of the Starks, living or dead. Besides the reference to "ghost grey," Ramsay's eyes are obviously a point of discussion, as are Rooses eyes, which are mentioned and described in some detail by other characters. We are supposed to notice them and compare them to the eyes of the Starks, usually just "ice" without additional descriptive terms. 

[Wolfcrow]

11 hours ago, Equilibrium said:

Having mentioned Brandon Ice-Eyes in my previous post, it seems to me there are few hints that Kings of Winter were more of a Roose-type of guys than Vale fosterling boi Ned "high on honor" and his children

Yup, I kinda agree too. The kings of winter I think did way more magic stuff than just warging for sure. And with the description we have for many of them, it's like we have two main magical bloodlines. The green one and the ice one, half have the wolf-blood, wild and unpredictable etc etc, closer to Brandon and Lyanna, but we, also, have people that are described icy and solemn Ned type figures that sound closer to ice than green magic.

[Equilibrium]

15 hours ago, Evolett said:

I don't recall "dirty ice" used in describing eyes of the Starks. We are supposed to notice them and compare them to the eyes of the Starks, usually just "ice" without additional descriptive terms. 

Dirty, tainted ice, I think symbolism is clear.

What's more, Roose is always on about tainted blood, so it fits thematically.

[Bobity.]

On 6/24/2022 at 6:42 AM, Wolfcrow said:

The eyes are the feature we see most of the time be connected with magical blood though

I have concluded that out of ordinary eyes is a tell sacrifices are being practiced by the individual, though I realize that false positives are possible.

On 6/24/2022 at 7:17 AM, Equilibrium said:

Having mentioned Brandon Ice-Eyes in my previous post, it seems to me there are few hints that Kings of Winter were more of a Roose-type of guys than Vale fosterling boi Ned "high on honor" and his children 

Agreed that the Starks have a sacrificing past, recall mention of hanging entrails in weirwood trees, and lets not forget the last available moments of Bran's POV of the Winterfell weirwood.  But I always found the Boltons to be cultural outsiders in the North, with no shared interest in observing the Old Gods via weirwoods. Got no evidence, but my head cannon has the Boltons arriving after the Starks were established, prior to the Andals.

[Wolfcrow]

16 hours ago, Bobity. said:

I have concluded that out of ordinary eyes is a tell sacrifices are being practiced by the individual, though I realize that false positives are possible.

Practiced by the individual definitely not, we have babies with these eye colours. Having magical blood because of previous ancestors, most likely, every magic needs blood and a sacrifice, but it also pass through blood relation so they eye colour points to magical blood, every time, even if the person doesn't know it. I mean, so far there isn't a person with purple/moss green/red and weird colour eyes anyway in our story that doesn't have magic, so I doubt the guy with the most described eyes in the story (minus Dany) is just chilling and happened to have almost white disturbing eyes that aren't blind.

[Loose Bolt]

21 hours ago, Bobity. said:

Got no evidence, but my head cannon has the Boltons arriving after the Starks were established, prior to the Andals.

Actually we know that 2 Red Kings Royces II and IV sacked and burned Winterfell. So I assume that Boltons and their Dreadfort are older than WF. In fact I am wondering how Starks survived those sackings of their capital.

[SansaTakingUpNeedle]

On 6/18/2022 at 7:32 PM, Bobity. said:

Blood sacrifice is well established throughout the ASOIAF, the Boltons are just very in the open about it. Much like the Stoney Dornish and their episodic Vulture King's who like to slash faces and chop hands. Or Vargo wearing a Black Goat helm, his hometown god which demands daily sacrifices…. poor Jamie.

I believe that there are other motives to cutting limbs than just a sadistic past time, and the Bolton flaying is a step up that ladder.

Blood sacrifices are necessary for blood magic, and I believe an argument could be made that sacrifices are the origin of all magic. Throughout the books reference are made about the recorded longevity of past kings during the Age of Heroes, discounted as inaccurate myth by the Andal narrative. Perhaps sustained sacrifices over a long period of time, which the Boltons do in plain view, is the mojo that results in such longevity and imparts dominant genetics upon the lineage (kingsblood).

Add in the Faceless Men’s flayed face collection (with a mojo source likely being the oft visited self sacrifice suicide pool above it) and a regularly blood sacrificing long-lived Bolton wearing the skin of his flayed sons to hide his true age is not really a stretch.

Do you think that Roose sacrifices his own blood after being leeched? We see Mel leeching Stannis and using the leeches for blood magic.

Another thought: Roose tells Theon that after hearing that a miller had married the woman who later gave birth to Ramsay, he hang the miller on a tree and raped his young wife under the same tree. I believe that this "tree" is a weirwood. - Of course, it could just be some random tree, but Ramsay also uses the word tree when he actually means a weirwood, talking about his marriage: "I'm sick of waiting. We have a girl we have a tree, and w have lords enough to witness." (ADWD, Reek (Chapter in Barrowton)) AFAIN northern weddings are performed in front of weirwoods.

So if Roose hang the miller in a weirwood, didn't he sort of sacrifice him to the old goods (like in the story Davos learns at the Wolf's Den)? And has the raping of Ramsay's mum also some ritualistic purpose? Is Roose doing it in front of the goods to provoke them or because he thinks the right of the first night is totally legal/maybe even required by the Old Gods?

What do you think about this?

[Evolett]

On 6/28/2022 at 9:10 PM, SansaTakingUpNeedle said:

Do you think that Roose sacrifices his own blood after being leeched? We see Mel leeching Stannis and using the leeches for blood magic.

Well, Roose does not seem to handle them personally. Arya was responsible for removing the creatures after he had been leeched and there is no mention of what she does with them (I don't recall). The leeches are probably reused after a few days, when they've finished digesting their meal.  

 

On 6/28/2022 at 9:10 PM, SansaTakingUpNeedle said:

So if Roose hang the miller in a weirwood, didn't he sort of sacrifice him to the old goods (like in the story Davos learns at the Wolf's Den)? And has the raping of Ramsay's mum also some ritualistic purpose? Is Roose doing it in front of the goods to provoke them or because he thinks the right of the first night is totally legal/maybe even required by the Old Gods?

Hanging is a bloodless death which makes it different from the sacrifices at the Wolf's Den. In that scenario, the victims were disembowled and their bloody entrails hung on the tree. It's hard to say if Roose's actions served some ritualistic purpose. Perhaps we are meant to compare this hanging to other prominent hangings in the narrative, such as those carried out by the BWB under Lady Stoneheart. 

What I do think though, is that Roose lost something when he performed those acts, suggested by this quote:  

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If truth be told, the wench was hardly worth the rope. The fox escaped as well, and on our way back to the Dreadfort my favorite courser came up lame, so all in all it was a dismal day.

The woman was not worth the rope, the fox escaped and his favourite horse came up lame. 

[Springwatch]

Hanging for Roose ties with his general disgust for blood. I can't decide if the rape is part of his core character (because it's an act of cruelty) or what he considers one of the sins of hot red blood, something he wants leeched out of him.