#and it can't happen because victarion is gone and hope is gone with him

[undeniablespice]

drowned god the weak little beast you put on this earth to write fanfiction and like greyjoys has been neglecting homework in order to reread the affc ironborn chapters and have way too many opinions about the soggiest man in the world. i have Had Some Thoughts on aeron, theon, and names

it really is striking to me just how little people refer to aeron by his name. not just in conversation, but in the narrative itself, with the most notable example of this being aeron himself in his pov chapters constantly thinking of himself not as aeron but as damphair or just The Priest. he refers to himself as damphair or The Priest instead of aeron like twenty times throughout the prophet, to the point where it's used almost as frequently as his actual name. in the drowned man it's only like eight times (which i think is mostly because the vast majority of this chapter is given over to the kingsmoot, where aeron is mostly a spectator and the narrative focus is on the events taking place rather than his reaction to them). in the forsaken, it's ten times, though while aeron is actively imprisoned he mostly thinks of himself as aeron, with damphair being used four times in flashbacks to events that took place in the past, once during a conversation with euron while aeron is defying him, and then three times after he is freed and he can see the sea again

the consistency and frequency of aeron in his own mind thinking of himself as something other than his name reads to me almost like a foil to theon and reek. the identity of the damphair allows aeron to dissociate himself from the burden of his past weaknesses and sins: his pre-drowning frivolity and alcoholism and euron's sexual abuse. for aeron, being damphair is as empowering as being reek is degrading for theon. he is constantly affirming to himself that he is a loyal servant of the drowned god and that this makes him strong. it gives him status and purpose he never had as aeron the boy, who was the youngest and weakest of his brothers. aeron-the-priest cannot be frightened by any mortal man any more than he can be frightened by the dark or by memories. kill the boy to become the man -> drown the boy to become the damphair

(although, of course, when aeron tells himself all this about how god chose him and it makes him strong and special and immune to fear, he is deluding himself. the damphair is haunted incessantly by his brothers. aeron has the tendency to reconcile his lasting fear of euron with his special god-given immunity to such mortal flaws as feeling fear by believing that euron is ungodly/an avatar of the storm god/literally the devil, and therefore not really a mortal man in the same way that balon and victarion are

which is a really interesting parallel to how euron must see himself, what with the whole apotheosis god-king thing he's got going on by twow. in a way, euron is aeron's real god. it is euron's abuse that first connected aeron with faith, and it is faith that aeron uses to cope with and overcome the lasting psychological scars of that abuse and urri's death. aeron doesn't think of euron as a mere flesh and blood human being anymore. he's mythologized the crow's eye in his own mind: euron is not just his abuser, he's a boogeyman, a devil, quite literally the thing that goes bump in the night. and euron knows this, and delights in knowing it and in taking every chance he can to tear down aeron's faith and replace the drowned god with himself as the backbone of aeron's life. which he does not actually succeed in doing, as of the forsaken! aeron keeps his faith like theon keeps his name. it cannot be taken from them)

reek, meanwhile, is not an identity that theon chooses to assume to cope with his trauma. it is forced upon him in the middle of the trauma and he has no choice but to accept it for his own self-preservation. ramsay devastates theon physically: flaying him, starving him, beating him, removing his fingers and toes and teeth and genitals. imprisonment and violence are the tools he uses to take away theon's physical strength to resist him, but reek is how he gets to all the parts of theon that can't be bruised or cut. it's the psychological equivalent of a flaying knife. reek is the weapon he uses to attack theon's identity and sense of self and personhood. though it's important to me to note that those were things theon was already struggling with well before ramsay came on the scene, and that he has an absolutely unbelievably strong will that allows him to retain a degree of his original personality under ramsay and regain his own name later in adwd even after enduring all the torture and abuse. he is a greyjoy of pyke. his name is theon, and if he dies, he will die as theon, not as reek. when he leans into being reek, it is as a means of self-preservation and protection from harm. he basically says as much to jeyne when he tells her to be arya: he believes that serving ramsay and capitulating to his whim is the best way to stay safe. you have to know your name.

ultimately, theon is as relieved to be rid of the name reek as aeron is relieved to see the ocean again at the end of the forsaken. theon's name is a source of pride to him, something that he clings to after he has lost everything else, something that will always be his even after all that has been taken away from him. aeron's name is a source of shame, something that he is reduced to when he feels weak, something that he reverts to when he is powerless at the mercy of his abuser