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jedimaesteryoda · 4 years ago

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Euron: The Deconstruction of the Romantic Pirate Captain

Portrait courtesy of Mike Hallstein.

Warning: Spoilers for The Winds of Winter

Pirate fiction is a popular sub-genre with a rich history in both literature and film from Treasure Island to Pirates of the Caribbean. As David Cordingly pointed out in Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates, pirate fiction’s popularity can be given to these stories often taking place in far off places with many of the readers coming from the colder Northern hemisphere, and the bulk of these pirate stories taking place in the tropical Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1730). It is also the adventure providing a form of escapism with many readers and viewers often living monotonous lives. As a result, pirates have been embedded in public consciousness from real-life pirates like Blackbeard to the fictional Long John Silver. Of course, as we’ll later get into, these fun images often contrast with real-life pirates.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin creates an entire culture of pirates known to themselves as the Ironborn though they are less the pirates of the Caribbean and more pseudo-Vikings. Piracy is enshrined in the Old Way, which has the Ironborn “pay the iron price,” or obtain plunder (which can even include people) by taking them at the point of an axe or sword. Many Ironborn have made names for themselves through daring raids, and it is through these exploits that they raise their standing in society, both in material wealth and reputation. However, there is one such Ironborn who stands out.

"Some men look larger at a distance," Asha warned. "Walk amongst the cookfires if you dare, and listen. They are not telling tales of your strength, nor of my famous beauty. They talk only of the Crow's Eye; the far places he has seen, the women he has raped and the men he's killed, the cities he has sacked, the way he burnt Lord Tywin's fleet at Lannisport . . ."

-A Feast for Crows, The Iron Captain

Euron “Crow’s Eye” Greyjoy is introduced in A Feast for Crows right after the death of his brother Balon who had exiled him. In a family of pirates and reavers, he is the black sheep of the family, the one who’s hated by everyone else. He manages to stand out from his family and all the other Ironborn through both his cunning and his sadistic cruelty as well as by boldly sailing places where no Ironborn has gone before like Asshai and (dubiously) Valyria. He is the Ironborn closest to a romantic pirate in appearance (which is intentional).

Euron’s character, from sailing to far-off places and his treasure to his charisma and even his eye patch, makes it clear that Martin borrowed from other pirates in fiction.

Let’s start with the titular character in Captain Blood: His Odyssey, who is not a Romantic Pirate Captain™, he is the Romantic Pirate Captain™. The book was adapted into the 1935 film seen by a young George R.R. Martin with Blood portrayed by the ever-handsome, charming actor who was typecast as the dashing swashbuckler, Errol Flynn. The film’s final duel between Blood and Levasseur (portrayed by Basil Rathbone) is ranked as one of the top sword fights on-screen, with Martin himself ranking it alongside the duel between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black in The Princess Bride.

A common trope in pirate fiction (though less so in real-life in the Golden Age of Piracy) is the pirate captain being an aristocrat or an educated man of some standing in society who is forced to become a pirate as a result of unfortunate circumstances. Peter Blood is a sharp-witted, handsome Irish doctor and veteran who is arrested for treason for attending to a wounded rebel during the Monmouth Rebellion. Blood is later sold as a slave and transported to Barbados to serve under the brutal master, Colonel Bishop, and manages to form a relationship with Bishop’s niece, Arabella. Subsequently, he is forced to become a pirate after the Spanish attack on Barbados, leading a crew of his fellow convict-slaves to freedom, and becoming one of the most feared and well-known pirates in the Caribbean. However, he manages to adhere to his own personal code and maintain some semblance of honor as a pirate while the legitimate authority figures in this story like Deputy-Governor Bishop, French commander Baron de Rivarol and Admiral Don Miguel de Espinoza as well as King James II (unseen) tend to be worse than the actual pirates. He preys on only Spanish ships and settlements (enemies of Great Britain who are treated as stock villains in the story) never on English or Dutch ones, operating more as a privateer than a pirate. He also chivalrously rescues women from other pirates and Spanish soldiers.

I have said already that he was a papist only when it suited him.

-Captain Blood, Chapter XVI: The Trap

No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair."

-A Feast for Crows, The Prophet

Peter and Euron both can claim descent from island nations (Ireland and Iron Isles) with a history of nationalist sentiment against domination by a larger neighbor (England/Great Britain and mainland Westeros under the Iron Throne). Euron is sharp-witted and “the most comely of Lord Quellon's sons,” coming from the most powerful noble house on the Iron Islands, and is forced to leave after being condemned and exiled by his brother Balon. Euron then pursues a life of piracy, and earns the moniker of “as black a pirate as ever raised a sail,” one of the most feared pirates in the known world. In their respective stories, Euron and Peter demonstrate themselves to be brilliant, talented commanders, always managing to defeat their foes and win battles with their wits, with examples being Blood’s gambit in managing to escape past Espinosa in the raid on Maracaibo and Euron’s strategy in the taking of the Shield Islands. They are also known for their boldness and daring among their fellows.

What but ruin and disaster could be the end of this grotesque pretension? How could it be hoped that England would ever swallow such a Perkin? And it was on his [James, 1st Duke of Monmouth] behalf, to uphold his fantastic claim, that these West Country clods, led by a few armigerous Whigs, had been seduced into rebellion!

“Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?” [Latin for “Where, where are you rushing to, wicked ones?”]

-Captain Blood: His Odyssey, Chapter I: The Messenger

“I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros."

- A Feast for Crows, The Drowned Man

Of course, while Blood saw the Monmouth Rebellion as madness with his only involvement being healing a wounded rebel, Euron (described as madder than Balon) actually fought in the Greyjoy Rebellion (where Balon like James, 1st Duke of Monmouth, unsuccessfully tried to crown himself), and hatched the plan to burn the Lannister fleet at port. Blood is an innocent man unjustly condemned for following his Hippocratic Oath while Euron is a guilty man condemned for raping and impregnating his brother’s salt wife. Euron's crew is made up of slaves like Blood’s, but unlike Blood, he was never a slave himself whose slave crewmen joined him willingly, but a slave master who bought or captured them, and then compelled them to serve in his crew. Captain Blood returns after being pardoned (after the king who convicted him, James II, is overthrown) for saving Jamaica from a French assault, and chosen to be its governor, replacing his nemesis, Colonel Bishop, who ironically, was removed for abandoning his post in search of Blood. Euron likewise returns to the Iron Islands after arranging Balon’s death, and takes his post as King of the Iron Islands and Lord of Pyke, at first through intimidation, violence and bribes and later through a kingsmoot. Although, I would argue that like Colonel Bishop, Balon was an unsympathetic, incompetent ruler with an ultimately doomed invasion of the North and uprisings to go with Bishop’s doomed pursuit of Blood.

Blood looks out for his countrymen, and went to great lengths to avoid the sacrificing of his own men while Greyjoy only looks out for himself, even sacrificing and murdering his fellow Ironborn for his own ends. Peter rescues women from would-be rapists and kidnappers while Euron kidnaps and rapes them.

If he resisted so long, it was, I think, the thought of Arabella Bishop that restrained him. That they should be destined never to meet again did not weigh at first, or, indeed, ever. He conceived the scorn with which she would come to hear of his having turned pirate, and the scorn, though as yet no more than imagined, hurt him as if it were already a reality. And even when he conquered this, still the thought of her was ever present. He compromised with the conscience that her memory kept so disconcertingly active. He vowed that the thought of her should continue ever before him to help him keep his hands as clean as a man might in this desperate trade upon which he was embarking. And so, although he might entertain no delusive hope of ever winning her for his own, of ever even seeing her again, yet the memory of her was to abide in his soul as a bitter-sweet, purifying influence. The love that is never to be realized will often remain a man's guiding ideal. The resolve being taken, he went actively to work. Ogeron, most accommodating of governors, advanced him money for the proper equipment of his ship the Cinco Llagas, which he renamed the Arabella. This after some little hesitation, fearful of thus setting his heart upon his sleeve.

-Captain Blood: His Odyssey, Chapter XIII: Tortuga

"Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air . . . I know them all. I have seen their peoples garland them with flowers, and shed the blood of goats and bulls and children in their names. And I have heard the prayers, in half a hundred tongues. Cure my withered leg, make the maiden love me, grant me a healthy son. Save me, succor me, make me wealthy . . . protect me! Protect me from mine enemies, protect me from the darkness, protect me from the crabs inside my belly, from the horselords, from the slavers, from the sellswords at my door. Protect me from the Silence." He laughed.

-A Feast for Crows, The Iron Captain

Peter is loyal to one woman, Arabella, never finding companionship with another, and even rescues her from Don Miguel. Euron, by contrast, never had a single romantic relationship, just taking the daughter of the Lord of Oakenshield as his mistress, and later cutting her tongue out, and having her chained to his ship’s prow. Peter named his ship for Arabella, whose name means “yielding to prayer.” As well as reflecting his love for a certain woman, it represented his personal commitment to keeping to some semblance of honor and morality. Euron, in direct contrast, named his ship Silence, as a way of mocking his victims’ prayers of protection that are answered with only silence from both the gods and with death. The ship itself tellingly has a black iron likeness of a beautiful woman without a mouth.

Peter is shown to be merciful as he spared his enemies like Colonel Bishop and Don Miguel, as opposed to Euron’s mercilessness shown by having Blacktyde cut into seven pieces and Lord Hewett killed after capturing him. Peter is a noble gentleman and honorable rogue while Euron is an ignoble, black-hearted scoundrel. I would argue that as a character, Peter Blood is closer to Jon Snow than he is to Euron Greyjoy, or if you’re going for characters on the Iron Isles, he is closer to Lord Rodrik “the Reader” Harlaw with a shared scholarly disposition, and Harlaw’s attitude towards the Greyjoy rebellions being virtually the same as Blood’s towards the Monmouth Rebellion.

GRRM likely also had at least one other pirate in fiction in mind when writing Euron.

Long John Silver is the prototypical pirate from Treasure Island where many pirate tropes in pop culture get their inspiration from, and in Long John’s case, he has the talking parrot and the missing leg. He is the ship’s cook who turns out to be the pirate captain organizing a mutiny on the Hispaniola.

intelligent and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests.

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney's letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like — a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.

-Treasure Island, VIII: At the Sign of the Spy-glass

Euron had seduced them with his glib tongue and smiling eye

-A Feast for Crows, The Reaver

Euron and Long John both manage to stand out from their fellow pirates in a number of ways. What people often miss in Treasure Island is that Long John being a pirate captain is a plot twist. Jim doesn’t suspect Silver of being a pirate upon meeting him given while the first pirates we met in the book clearly gave the impression that they’re pirates though their heavy drinking, cursing and violent, threatening behavior, Silver by contrast is polite, well-mannered, courteous, warm and charming. He is usually sober and self-controlled, and greets you with a warm smile on his face. Likewise, the Ironborn reavers tend to display the same rough characteristics as the pirates in Stevenson’s book while Euron by contrast is charming and well-spoken, and we usually see him with a smile on his face. Long John also stands out through his intelligence which is shown in the way he manages his money well rather than spending it all away like other pirates, thinking about long-term planning, and coming up with a plan to find Flint’s treasure by deceiving Squire Trelawney into recruiting his men as crew members on the Hispaniola. Euron is shown to be intelligent and cunning as well when he takes the Shield Islands by not following the coastline and sailing out to sea to avoid being seen, and marrying Asha off to Erik Ironmaker, effectively removing her as a threat. Both men win their leadership positions through their charisma, force of personality, intelligence and lofty promises with taking Flint’s treasure in Long John’s case and all of Westeros in Euron’s case. Of course, Euron’s plan like Long John’s will likely not end well for his followers.

However, both pirates are basically con men with their friendly demeanor being masks. Ben Gunn noted that Captain Flint feared no one, but added the exception of Silver. One could see why as Silver could be charming and courteous on the outside, but upon reaching the titular island, one witnessed the rage and capacity for violence that existed within this man when he coldly murdered Tom Redruth for refusing to join him. Euron likewise can be charming on the outside, but his true nature comes out in certain moments like drowning Lord Botley in a cask of seawater, and cutting Lord Blacktyde into seven pieces for refusing to submit to him.

The similarities seem to end there. Look more closely, and you’ll find plenty of contrasts that separate the two characters.

I’m [Long John] fifty mark you; once, back from this cruise, I set up gentleman in earnest.

-Treasure Island, XI: What I Heard in the Apple Barrel

Lord Balon's eldest brother had never given up the Old Way, even for a day. His Silence, with its black sails and dark red hull, was infamous in every port from Ibben to Asshai, it was said.

-A Clash of Kings, Theon II

Long John Silver has a talking parrot that repeated phrases while Euron in direct contrast has an entire crew of mutes. Silver is actually missing a leg while Euron wears an eye patch despite not missing an eye. Although to be fair, many pirates wore eye patches despite having both eyes, since they frequently had to move above and below decks, from daylight to near darkness. Keeping a patch over one eye adapted it to the darkness, and if a pirate went below decks, he could just switch the patch to the other eye and see in the darkness more easily. In this case, Euron keeps his eye patch to hide his black “crow’s eye” and show his blue “smiling eye,” symbolically showing how he uses his smiling, charming light exterior to hide his dark side. Long John Silver also managed to be a legitimate businessman by owning a pub in Bristol in between acting as a pirate, and he planned to use his share of Flint’s treasure to settle down as a gentleman and retire from piracy. Euron was never engaged in anything resembling legitimate business as he stuck to piracy, and he only left piracy to set himself up as a reaver king of the Ironborn, and basically just do a large-scale version of what he did before.

While Long John Silver did employ murder, he used it in a calculated manner in pursuit of a larger goal. He didn’t kill people randomly, but to get rid of the people likely to stand in the way of his obtaining Flint’s treasure: the sailors who wouldn’t mutiny with him and the people commanding the voyage. Euron also uses murder in a calculated manner against people who oppose him such as his brothers and dissident lords, but he also engages in random acts of violence that don’t provide any clear benefit to himself such as when he murdered a hedge wizard and cut out the tongue of Falia. There is also a level of sadism to his actions that Long John’s lacked such as feeding a warlock to his cohorts, chaining people to the bows of ships, and making the Hewett women serve naked.

Long John Silver also does have some redemptive qualities such as seeming to genuinely care for Jim Hawkins to the point of risking his life when his crew wanted to harm him. Euron wouldn’t have stuck his neck out for Jim, but had the kid’s tongue cut out and used him as a slave at best. Long John also seems to be good to his wife going by the level of trust he put in her while Euron never really seems to genuinely care for anyone but himself. He is unmarried, and doesn’t seem to treat the women he’s laid with well if his mistress Falia is anything to go.

At first glance, Euron Greyjoy has a lot of the qualities that invite admiration of the romantic pirate captain: intelligence, charm, charisma and boldness/daring. However, he lacks the human qualities, ie the honor and nobility often found in these characters that keep them from being just villainous rogues. He is a handsome aristocrat who turns to piracy after being exiled from his home, but unlike other pirates in this trope, neither his backstory nor his present situation evoke any sympathy. He isn’t a good man who is unjustly condemned, but an admitted rapist and murderer who managed to avoid justice for his deeds. He uses the pirate tropes to win support from the Ironborn who esteem the Old Way that glorifies piracy. Martin effectively uses Euron to deconstruct the romantic pirate captain trope by showing how romanticism is often used to pretty up ugly things, in this case, piracy, by revealing the dark reality behind them. Piracy is, at the end of the day, a profession of armed robbery with pirate captains usually being capable of savage cruelty and violence. In real life, good pirate captains like the fictional Peter Blood amongst others were incredibly difficult to find given good people generally avoided such line of work. Even so, no matter how good a man a character like Blood was, he still obtained much of his wealth and prestige from robbing ships and settlements with the justification being that they were Spanish, enemies of Britain. Essentially, it is an argument based on the premise of total war. The Ironborn philosophy is practically the same mindset, but unlike with Blood, we got to see the side of the victims of their predations on the Shield Islands and the North.

The way the Ironborn view piracy can be similar to how plenty of people in the real world view piracy in fiction and even real-life. The reader could ask how could the Ironborn admire people like Euron, to which one could just as easily ask how could people esteem Sir Henry Morgan to the point of naming a popular rum label for him (with the slogan “Live like the Captain”)? Euron and the rest of the Ironborn effectively have the reader critique the romantic attitudes towards piracy found in popular culture.

On a final note, another key difference between Euron and the romantic pirate captain will likely be how his story ends. The pirate captain usually gets a happy ending, settling down with all the considerable wealth he acquired over his career in piracy. After his victory against the French in Jamaica in a final battle, Peter Blood gets his pardon, is made Deputy-Governor of Jamaica, gets the girl, Arabella, and settles down to a comfortable retirement from piracy. Long John Silver, even though he was the main antagonist rather than the protagonist, escaped the Hispaniola with "three hundred or four hundred guineas” likely to reunite with his wife. Euron’s story likely won’t be a happy ending with him winning a glorious final battle before settling down to a comfortable retirement with the beautiful girl, Daenerys, but more likely him being killed with the battle turning out to be a disastrous defeat for his fellow Ironborn.

In this story, where the romantic pirate captain is the villain, he and his fellow pirates will get no hero’s reward, but instead their comeuppance.

We will likely see how his story ends in The Winds of Winter.

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