Myranda


 * "Not so pretty now!"
 * ―Myranda to a brutally murdered Tansy[src]

Myranda is a recurring character in the third, fourth and fifthseasons. She is played by guest star Charlotte Hope and debuts in "The Bear and the Maiden Fair". Myranda isRamsay Bolton's lover, and much like him has a cruel and sadistic streak, taking pleasure in inflicting pain and killing.

Biography
=== Myranda was a servant of House Bolton of the Dreadfort, her father being the castle's kennelmaster. She was one of Ramsay Snow's bedwarmers and his secret lover, whom Ramsay intended to marry, prior to his unexpected legitimization. ===

Season 3
Myranda and Violet enter the torture cellar in which Theon Greyjoy is kept hostage, release the former Prince of Winterfell and put him on a bed. Then they attempt to seduce him, claiming they have heard the heir to Pyke is "well endowed". Violet claims Myranda was in training to become a septa but her sexual urges kept her from taking the vows. Theon is initially distrustful but cannot help but grow aroused when Myranda, stripped of her clothes by Violet, straddles him.

Season 4
Some time later, Myranda joins Ramsay in hunting another bedwarmer, Tansy, whom she is jealous of, through a forest near the Dreadfort. She enjoys seeing the terrified girl being chased by her master's hounds for a while, but eventually shoots her through the leg with an arrow, and moments later watches her being mauled to death by the dogs.[2]

Myranda later engages in sex with Ramsay as Yara Greyjoy and a group of ironborn climb over the walls of the Dreadfort to assault the castle.[3]

Season 5
Myranda accompanies the rest of House Bolton to their new home, Winterfell. She is present when the Boltons and their household gather at the castle's main yard to greet the newly arrived Sansa Stark andPetyr Baelish. She watches with obvious jealousy and anger as Ramsay greets his new betrothed, Sansa.[4]

While in Ramsay's bedroom, Myranda discusses Ramsay’s upcoming marriage to Sansa, admitting her jealousy of her, especially since Ramsay had promised to marry Myranda back when he was a bastard. Ramsay disregards Myranda's insecurities, causing Myranda to proclaim that perhaps she will marry too and leave him. This angers Ramsay who violently tells her that she is his and she is not going anywhere, unless she continues to bore him with her petty jealousy. He threateningly reminds her what he does to people who bore him, and hearing this Myranda swears never to bore him again. He forces himself on her and she bites his lip before they have sex.

Later, as Sansa wanders around the castle, Myranda approaches her beside the tower where Jaime Lannister once pushed Bran Stark from the window. Myranda puts on a friendly façade, talking to Sansa about her mother’s demise and offering her condolences, which Sansa accepts, though she clearly sees through her. To help Sansa "remember" how things used to be before her family's untimely death, Myranda leads Sansa down to the kennels to reunite her with Theon.[5]

The night of the wedding, Myranda is sent by Ramsay to draw Sansa's bath, an order neither woman is enthusiastic about. As she wrings the black dye out of Sansa's hair, Myranda advises her not to let Ramsay get bored of her, and tells her the fates of Violet, Tansy, and many other women. Sansa boldly asks if Myranda ever really believed that Ramsay would marry her, which stops the girl dead in her tracks. Sansa coolly declares that she is a Stark and Winterfell is her home: she refuses to be scared and nothing Myranda says will intimidate her. Silently fuming but unable to retaliate, Myranda asks if she is still needed. Sansa dismisses her. She is later present at Ramsay and Sansa's wedding, again looking on with jealousy as they are married.[6]

During the battle between the Bolton soldiers and the forces of Stannis Baratheon, Myranda takes Theon and corners Sansa with a bow and arrow before she can escape under the orders of Ramsay to bring her to her bed chamber. After Sansa makes it clear that she is unafraid of death, Myranda admits that Ramsay needs Sansa alive in order to birth an heir to the North, though she still threatens to maim her with her arrow. Before she can release it, Theon grabs her, making her fire and miss. In the ensuing struggle, Theon ignores Myranda's pleas and throws her off the rampart to her death, enacting a small justice for his castration.[7]

Behind the scenes
The sex scene between Ramsay and Myranda in "The Laws of Gods and Men" was originally longer, and included Myranda striking Ramsay across the face as well as throttling him. This moment was cut from the final episode, but can still be seen in the trailer for the fourth season.

In the books
In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Ramsay Snow is accompanied around the Dreadfort by a gang of lackeys called "the Bastard's Boys", who assist him in his atrocities. There are no women among them. Myranda was invented for the TV series, though she is loosely a condensed and gender-swapped equivalent to the Bastard's Boys. One of the oldest of the "Bastard's Boys" is "Ben Bones", the kennelmaster at the Dreadfort; Myranda is mentioned to be the kennelmaster's daughter, apparently a nod to the novels.

Ramsay doesn't really care about any of the Bastard's Boys, however, even when some die. At one point the one named Luton is grievously injured during a bloody brawl between the Freys and White Harbor knights invited to the wedding feast. Luton wails uncontrollably as he tries to hold his entrails inside himself with his hands, but the noise annoyed Ramsay so much that eventually he silenced him by ramming a spear into his chest (it wasn't a mercy-kill, he could have tried to get medical attention for Luton but didn't bother).

Myranda explains in Season 5's "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" that Violet, her companion when she helped Ramsay torture Theon in Season 3, was later killed by Ramsay when she got pregnant, causing him to grow "bored" with her. At the beginning of Season 4, Ramsay and Myranda hunted and killed the girl Tansy in the woods around the Dreadfort for petty amusement - but Violet was never seen again. Apparently the actress who played Violet got pregnant and could not return to the show, but the original intention was to have Ramsay kill Violet with his hunting dogs - showing that, as with his own Master Torturer whom he killed in Season 3, he really doesn't care about any of his underlings and will randomly kill them for flippant reasons. Because the actress could not reappear they had to use a new girl "Tansy" in the scene instead, lessening the point compared to killing Myranda's accomplice Violet.

Myranda says in "Kill the Boy" that Ramsay promised to marry her - while confusing at first, on closer analysis this was apparently just something Ramsay said as pillow-talk and didn't mean seriously. Even in the episode he waves it off as if it was nothing she she brings it up. Ramsay doesn't really care about anyone, except his need for Roose's approval. Actor Iwan Rheon confirmed in an interview withDetails.com that Myranda is just a disposable underling/sex object to Ramsay:
 * "If she bores him, he'll kill her. It's not like he's madly in love with her or anything. It's just sex. She's nuts and she's fun and she's another pair of eyes in the castle. I don't think he's capable of loving or whatever, but he kind of likes her. He'd get rid of her if she was annoying him."[8]

Myranda, however, seems to have half-convinced herself that she's Ramsay's favorite on some level.

One of the Bastard's Boys indeed dies in the events leading up to Theon's escape from Winterfell (withJeyne Poole, not Sansa Stark, who isn't even there), the one known as Yellow Dick, who was found dead with his genitals cut off and shoved down his throat. He is the sixth victim in a string of mysterious murders. Originally Theon is suspected because he is seen wandering often aimlessly at Winterfell, but Lady Dustin points out that Theon with his missing fingers can hardly hold a spoon, let alone kill someone stronger than him. Eventually it turned out to be Mance Rayder and his six spearwives sent to infiltrate the castle and rescue Jeyne (whom they believed was Arya Stark). Myranda's death in the Season 5 finale might be a nod to this.

The only book character named Myranda is the daughter of Lord Nestor Royce (Yohn's cousin), who becomes Sansa's friend in her storyline in the Vale. She has no connection to the Boltons and no resemblance whatsoever to Myranda of the show, neither in physical description nor personality.