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a-secret-bolton-vampire · 3 years ago

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The Crow's Eye: A Study in Evil

TW: Rape, CSA, Donald Trump, religion

Long time since I last did anything, but Euron has been on my mind a hell of a lot lately, so I decided to write a thing about him. Do be warned, this is the longest thing I've written, and it is very, very long.

There are many villains in A Song of Ice and Fire: Tywin, Cersei, the Mountain, the Others, Roose, Rorge. The most despicable of the lot though would be Joffrey, Ramsay, & Euron. There is something that makes them so hatable yet they have such a large imprint on the story. Despite there being little to almost no grey in any of these three characters, they each have subtle nuances to them that makes them compelling villains.

Joffrey is the deconstruction of the pretty prince. He has his mothers and fathers good looks, yet he is a brutal, psychopathic tyrant. He enjoys hurting and humiliating people, and is an entitled brat. He thinks that everyone will listen to him because he's the king and that's whats to be expected. Yet, we see that he was neglected by Robert and at least some of his intense cruelty was part of trying to impress or follow in Robert's footsteps (who was a famed warrior and often hunted).

In addition, being raised by Cersei, who herself was raised by Tywin who has questionable logic for leadership, couldn't have helped much either. However, Joffrey is simply still a child. An utterly sadistic tyrant, but still a child. He loves to belittle and torment but he is too ineffectual to even fight in battle, and on multiple occasions he is easily shut down by other people (like Tywin, or Cersei, or Tyrion). He was the first real villain of the series. From here on, the villains get intensely more vile and terrifying.

Ramsay himself is not without some nuance. His mother was the wife of a miller, and when they married without Roose's approval, he had the miller hanged and raped his wife. Growing up, Ramsay was with his mother, who had been given certain gifts by Roose on the condition she stay quiet about the rape. Yet as Ramsay grew, he grew wild, all the while his mother and his servant Reek pushed him towards trying to claim his rights, despite his bastard status.

Ramsay greatly resents being a bastard, and you could also look at his insanely cruel actions as him trying to live up to the Bolton name. In addition, Roose is a very cold man, and there is no real warmth between father and son. Ramsay killed Domeric out of jealousy, and Roose shows no affection or care for Ramsay. The upbringing of Joffrey & Ramsay are obviously not excuses for the crimes against humanity they routinely commit, but it provides insight into how they became what they ended up being.

Joffrey was a villain that shows what can happen when spoiled children end up in a position of high authority, and is a threat to those already low down in society. He's essentially a bully but with the power that comes with royalty. Ramsay is a different sort of villain, more akin to a serial killer from psychological horror films. He is clever, a capable trickster, and unrepentant sadist who enjoys torturing and breaking people down so they can serve him as his own personal pets. Yet, like Joffrey, he has a temper that is hard to control, and his inability to control his cruelty is what will eventually do him in.

Enter Euron Greyjoy. While I don't like saying that Joffrey was the first act villain, Ramsay was the second, and Euron is the third, these are three human villains that we feel the most emotions about, due to their impact on the plot and their unbelievable cruelty. Both Ramsay & Euron are villains straight out of horror, but their horror is very different. I will be breaking down Euron's character, his backstory, his intents, his narrative relevance, and his ultimate role in the Song. So, join me on this long, winding adventure into horror, gods, & madness.

The Slow Build Up

To start off, I want to give a scene by scene break down of Euron as he is shown chronologically in the books, to get the sense of the narrative around him. We first hear about Euron in A Clash of Kings, when Theon arrives to Pyke, and makes note of who is and isn't there.

Old men were cautious by nature. His father was old now, and so too his uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. His uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but the Silence did not seem to be in port.

At this point, I don't know if GRRM was already planning for Euron to be a super important character to the plot. Instead of having this big complex plan, I think that he had an idea of who Euron was and that he would be important later, but left it ambiguous enough to expand on when needed.

This first mention indicates that wherever Euron was, he was not like his brothers Balon & Victarion, and is notably absent from the rest of his family. You might even call him the black sheep of the family. Still, there are more things about Euron that are mentioned that build him as a potentially imposing figure.

"Euron Croweye has no lack of cunning, though. I've heard men say terrible things of that one." Theon shifted his seat. "My uncle Euron has not been seen in the islands for close on two years. He may be dead." If so, it might be for the best. 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. "He may be dead," Esgred agreed, "and if he lives, why, he has spent so long at sea, he'd be half a stranger here. The ironborn would never seat a stranger in the Seastone Chair."

An outcast, intelligent, and dangerous. Yet, the last words that Asha says here turned out to be woefully wrong. We hear no more mention of Euron until A Storm of Swords, when we learn that Balon has died. The captain of Myraham, which brought Theon to Pyke, returns to let Robb know of the news from there:

The captain bobbed his head. "Aye, but that's not all of it, no!" He leaned forward. "The brother's back." "Victarion?" asked Galbart Glover, surprised. "Euron. Crow's Eye, they call him, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail. He's been gone for years, but Lord Balon was no sooner cold than there he was, sailing into Lordsport in his Silence. Black sails and a red hull, and crewed by mutes. He'd been to Asshai and back, I heard. Wherever he was, though, he's home now, and he marched right into Pyke and sat his arse in the Seastone Chair, and drowned Lord Botley in a cask of seawater when he objected. That was when I ran back to Myraham and slipped anchor, hoping I could get away whilst things were confused. And so I did, and here I am."

Here we get more of an idea of who Euron is. At this point it's pretty clear Euron is being set up to be important. This fearsome man with a sinister reputation appears the day after his brother dies, and when someone objects to him taking the throne, he simply has him drowned. Doesn't sound like a very nice guy.

No more mention is made of him, until A Feast for Crows. When Aeron learns of Balon's death and Euron's return, he begins to get flashbacks to his brother Urri and a rusted hinge screaming, and is deadset against Euron being king, calling a kingsmoot to let the Drowned God decide matters. Even Asha's uncle Rodrik is against going to the kingsmoot, worried that Euron will be Urron Redhand come again, slaying all the captains & kings on Nagga's Hill and establishing himself as the only true King of the Isles.

Victarion also has thoughts about Euron, and hates him tremendously, so much so that he thinks about killing him and the curse of the kinslayer when he arrives at Old Wyk. Only here do we finally see Euron on page.

He looks unchanged, Victarion thought. He looks the same as he did the day he laughed at me and left. Euron was the most comely of Lord Quellon's sons, and three years of exile had not changed that. His hair was still black as a midnight sea, with never a whitecap to be seen, and his face was still smooth and pale beneath his neat dark beard. A black leather patch covered Euron's left eye, but his right was blue as a summer sky.

And immediately Euron starts shit. When Aeron objects to godless men sitting on the Seastone Chair, Euron goes on a long boastful monologue about how he is the godliest man ever to raise sail, that he is more devout than even Aeron, and when Asha asks about his involvement in Balon's death, it nearly breaks out into a fight between Asha and Euron's supporters, only for Victarion to put an end to it.

Afterwards we learn why Euron was away, and why Victarion hates him. Euron impregnated Victarion's salt wife (either via seduction or rape), and ruined Victarion's honour in the eyes of the culture of the ironborn. As a result, Victarion beat his wife to death to retain his honour, and Balon exiled Euron to prevent Victarion from killing him, telling him to never return to Pyke so long as he lived. But now he is back, and when the kingsmoot starts, Aeron hopes that Euron would speak first:

The Crow's Eye was never patient, Aeron Damphair told himself. Mayhaps he will speak first. If so, it would be his undoing. The captains and the kings had come a long way to this feast and would not choose the first dish set before them.

Instead, Euron waits to be the last person to press his claim, and interrupts when he has one of his men blow a massive horn he has in his possession. He then makes a speech that even inspires Aeron:

"My little brother would finish Balon's war, and claim the north. My sweet niece would give us peace and pinecones." His blue lips twisted in a smile. "Asha prefers victory to defeat. Victarion wants a kingdom, not a few scant yards of earth. From me, you shall have both. "Crow's Eye, you call me. Well, who has a keener eye than the crow? After every battle the crows come in their hundreds and their thousands to feast upon the fallen. A crow can espy death from afar. And I say that all of Westeros is dying. Those who follow me will feast until the end of their days. "We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have you be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less . . . but 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."

Although Asha and her supporters object to what he says next, Euron tells the captains that the horn is a dragon horn, capable of binding dragons to his will, and when he reveals his massive amount of loot, he is elected the new king, much to Aeron's shock. After this, Aeron proclaims he will have the smallfolk rise up to undo Euron's ascension, but he goes missing. Baelor Blacktyde attempts to flee, but Euron has Victarion hunt him down and cuts him into seven pieces. Asha flees back to Deepwood Motte.

Not long after, Euron leaves with the ironborn and takes the Shield Isles, raising four new lords to hold the isles. Yet here he makes a mistake, when he says that they are going to sail east to Meereen and Daenerys. The ironborn do not want to travel a long distance, instead intent on raiding around the Reach. Even Rodrik the Reader calls him out.

"I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last. I have taken the Silence on longer voyages than this, and ones far more hazardous. Have you forgotten? I have sailed the Smoking Sea and seen Valyria." Every man there knew that the Doom still ruled Valyria. The very sea there boiled and smoked, and the land was overrun with demons. It was said that any sailor who so much as glimpsed the fiery mountains of Valyria rising above the waves would soon die a dreadful death, yet the Crow's Eye had been there, and returned. "Have you?" the Reader asked, so softly. Euron's blue smile vanished. "Reader," he said into the quiet, "you would do well to keep your nose in your books."

And for a moment it seems that Euron's hold on the Seastone Chair is not secure. He later has Victarion visit him, and says that he realized that he was moving too quick, forgetting that the ironborn are small minded and not as ambitious as he is. Instead, he sends Victarion to Meereen with the Iron Fleet to bring Daenerys back, with Victarion plotting to take Daenerys as his wife in an act of revenge. This is the last we see and hear of Euron for a long time. Until we reach The Forsaken.

Aeron's thoughts on Euron, up until now, have been rather ambiguous as to whether he was as big of a threat as he thinks he is. His trauma might've been clouding his judgement of Euron as an antichrist type figure. But now the title of his first chapter, The Prophet, begins to make sense. Aeron was right about everything.

Here, we learn that Euron has no interest in being the King of the Iron Islands, in fact he holds disdain for the Old Way and ironborn culture and religion. In fact, his ambitions are far beyond what we initially assumed. He doesn't just want Daenerys and her dragons, he doesn't just want the Iron Throne; he wants to be a god. Now him telling Aeron to kneel to him for blessing makes more sense, as does his speech on being the godliest man ever.

We also get clarification on exactly what Euron did to Aeron. It is not completely explicit, but it's explicit enough that it leaves little room for other options. In fact, what we learn is much worse than we could have imagined.

“It was me who taught you how to pray, little brother. Have you forgotten? I would visit your bed chamber at night when I had too much to drink. You shared a room with Urrigon high up in the seatower. I could hear you praying from outside the door. I always wondered: Were you praying that I would choose you or that I would pass you by?”

Euron molested Aeron and his brother Urri as children. Yet even that's not the end of the horrific reveals. He tells Aeron that he has killed three brothers; Harlon, Robin, & Balon. A kinslayer thrice over. At this point, we can say that Euron is a monster worse than Joffrey or Ramsay ever were. And as the chapter unfolds, he gets worse and worse and worse. By the end, he has numerous mutilated priests tied onto the prows of ironborn ships (including Aeron on Silence) and sails into the open ocean. Then, he brings forth his own lover, Falia Flowers, pregnant, her tongue cut out, and naked, tying her right next to Aeron as a "gift".

Aeron thinks of him as a demon in human skin. There is no more apt description for the Crow's Eye. Here is the end of what we know. Now let's go all the way back to the beginning, to see how Euron became the way he is, and what he wants.

Ascension of the Crow's Eye

Euron was the second son of Quellon Greyjoy, right after Balon. The timeline is not exact, but from what we know, Euron was always different from the rest of his family. We know that at some point, he killed his half-brothers Harlon & Robin. Both were sick, easy targets, yet Euron killed them out of more than just sadism:

"Do you remember little Robin? Wretched creature. Do you remember that big head of his, how soft it was? All he could do was mewl and shit. He was my second. Harlon was my first. All I had to do was pinch his nose shut. The greyscale had turned his mouth to stone so he could not cry out. But his eyes grew frantic as he died. They begged me. When the life went out of them, I went out and pissed into the sea, waiting for the god to strike me down. None did."

Euron seems to have been curious about the divine early on. According to Balon and later Victarion, no man is more accursed than the kinslayer. Euron strikes me as someone who is very intelligent and curious and wants to know more about the world. Perhaps he had suspicions early on that the gods might be fake, so he tested it by committing the biggest sin in ironborn culture; killing his own brothers. When nothing happened, he took this as proof that the gods do not exist. It freed him from the constraints of ironborn culture, knowing that nothing would happen if he defied the Drowned God.

We also know that he craves power. Child sexual abuse is a form of domination and control, something Euron obviously wants. He abused Aeron and Urri because of the power he got from it. This is seen in multiple instances with his family. Euron abused his two younger brothers, then later impregnated Victarion's wife, bragging about it afterwards. Euron knows his siblings and what makes them tick all too well, so I have no doubts that he intentionally had Victarion's wife impregnated so that he would be forced to kill her because of his strict adherence to ironborn culture.

It's too light to say that Euron is the wildcard of the family. He practically is the most dominant of them all. Even Theon fears him and his eyepatch. Almost all the trauma that his family has gone through is a direct result of his own actions. We will get to more about his utter sadistic tyranny over his family and what that means, but that will come later.

Looking at those quotes from A Clash of Kings about Euron, I think exile for him must've not been much different from his usual activities. He loves reaving, he loves traveling, and he loves dominating over people and seeing other cultures. The only difference being that he did not return to Pyke for three years, longer than was usual for him.

He claims to have gone as far as Ib and Asshai, and even sailed the Smoking Sea and visited the ruins of Valyria, where those who go never return. It's ambiguous as to whether or not we went there. At the least, he's not telling the truth about certain things, and what is and isn't fact is hard to discern from him. What is for certain, is that the exile changed Euron, and led to him being the man he is today. His want for power is not new, but his ways of going about it have changed. Although, again, we cannot fully trust everything he says, Euron claims to have acquired a dragon's egg, and told a Myrish wizard to hatch it. When he grew impatient, he killed the wizard and threw the egg into the sea.

This might've been the first time Euron has tried to use dragons as a means to acquiring more power. Even though it was an egg, and it failed to hatch, he realized that there was more to the world than meets the eye, and there were ways he could become powerful that others simply brushed off or found foolish. I believe that everything changed after Daenerys left Qarth.

"You had not been gone from Qarth a fortnight when Pyat Pree set out with three of his fellow warlocks, to seek for you in Pentos."

Yet, despite this, and despite Daenerys knowing the warlocks never forget a slight, they never came for her again. That's because someone else came for them.

"Shade-of-the-evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat."

According to the A World of Ice & Fire app, this what where Euron acquired Dragonbinder, not from Valyria, but the warlocks:

The warlocks under Pyat Pree attempt to pursue and avenge themselves on Daenerys, but their ship is taken by Euron Greyjoy, who seizes their alleged dragon-binding horn from Valyria and takes them as slaves.

We need not wonder what the curious tale the warlocks told was. They had a dragon horn, they left to get revenge on Daenerys, and they know of her dragons, having seen them with their own eyes. But I believe that the real thing that finally made Euron return was the shade of the evening. Shade of the evening is essentially magical LSD, that gives you one hell of a trip, but with the bonus of prophecy and visions to boot. A mind altering drug like this could easily change someones life, as I believe it did with Euron. He acquired secret knowledge, saw things that nobody else knew, and decided that it was time he came home.

Euron himself confesses to killing Balon;

"Oh, and Balon was the third, but you knew that. I could not do the deed myself, but it was my hand that pushed him off the bridge.”

We also see a vision back in A Storm of Swords, from the Ghost of High Heart;

"I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings."

It's all but confirmed that Euron hired a Faceless Man to kill Balon and allow him to return to Pyke. Of note, this has parallels with another ironborn king of history, Harwyn Hardhand.

When Harwyn returned to the Iron Islands, he found his father Qhorwyn dying, and his eldest brother two years dead from greyscale. A second brother still stood between Harwyn and the crown, and his sudden death even as the king was breathing his last remains a matter of dispute to this day. Those present at Prince Harlan's passing all declared his death accidental, the result of a fall from his horse, but of course it would have been worth their lives to suggest otherwise. Beyond the Iron Islands, it was widely assumed that Prince Harwyn was behind his brother's demise. Some claimed he had done the deed himself, others that Prince Harlan had been slain by a Faceless Man of Braavos.

This isn't even near the only parallel Euron has with Harwynd, but those shall come later. Euron immediately claims the Seastone Chair, yet he is confident when Aeron calls for a kingsmoot, that he will prevail. Victarion says he will only do more of what Balon did. Balon's rebellions were meager and full of defeat; he could not go against the Iron Throne himself, and he could not hold the North. Asha calls for peace, to get the lands around Sea Dragon Point under ironborn control, while they ally with the North against the Iron Throne.

Yet ultimately, Euron succeeds in being chosen, for several reasons. Asha suggests to Victarion that if he made her his Hand, she would support his claim to the Seastone Chair. However, Victarion was too full of pride, and Asha was too forward thinking for him, thus dividing their supporters instead of uniting them. But the biggest factor is that Euron simply appealed to the ironborn in a way Victarion & Asha simply didn't.

Victarion's campaign slogan was literally "same as always", which doesn't really inspire confidence, whereas Asha's was "we can simply have peace". Euron's was "make the Iron Islands great again". Euron promised the return to when the ironborn were feared, when they held real power. No more meager raids along the shorelines, no more being in the shadows of the Iron Throne. This time, they will conquer, they will rule, they will be victorious. Added to the fact that Euron is well traveled and has some seriously intense loot (look at Dragonbinder), the Crow's Eye successfully keeps his hold on the Seastone Chair.

In many ways, Euron's ascension is similar to the election of Donald Trump as president of the US in 2016. Trump promised a return to make America great again (literally his slogan), appealing to the lowest common denominator, as well as religious fundamentalists, and the dregs of society that were previously hidden. By appealing to white supremacists, fascists, and evangelical Christians, Trump made them feel seen again and that they were an important to the country, thus solidifying his support base.

Also like Euron, Trump was a wanna dictator who craved power, domination, and whose leadership put the country in political ruin, setting the US back decades in the Supreme Court and other areas of government, and led to thousands of deaths from his own incompetence and desire to "own the libs". Euron's way is undoubtedly going to result in a massive decline for the ironborn while he gets a power high.

Regardless of real life comparisons, Euron as king now allows him the position in society to accomplish his ambitions. Once again, his ambitions are nothing about bringing glory to the ironborn, it's all about bringing him glory. He wants to be a god, he wants to sit the Iron Throne, and he wants to ride a dragon and marry Daenerys. The ironborn are merely a means to an end for him.

The full backstory to Euron paints a picture of someone whose curiosity led to him discovering something that he views as incredibly potent power that he can wield with great effect. If you are for the Old Way, then Euron is by far the man you'd want to chose. Only problem being that he'd let you die if it meant more power for him. Yet despite this, Euron's hold on the ironborn is only growing stronger (as we'll explore later).

The Death of Gods & the Birth of Another

Religion has been a large part of the world of Westeros and Essos, but it comes to the forefront post-A Storm of Swords. Bran learns more about the weirwoods and Davos learns more about the worship of the old gods, the worship of R'hllor is spreading among the smallfolk of the Riverlands, and the High Sparrow gains significant power after the Faith Militant are reformed. In Essos, the high priest of the red temple preaches that Daenerys is Azor Ahai reborn, and there are hints of a religious uprising stirring.

And of course, Euron is also part of this metaphysical plot as well. However, instead of contributing to religion, he is the antithesis to the religious revival of Westeros. An atheist, Euron does not believe the gods exist, setting him apart from nearly all other characters in the series, who either acknowledge the gods or worship them. Not only does he not believe in the gods, he himself wants to become a god. His ego and narcissism rivals even that of Cersei, as it takes the idea of craving power and rulership over others into the metaphysical realm.

What exactly Euron's apotheosis means in the long run is not known, but it might be less literal and more philosophical. One of his most famous quotes illustrates this point very well;

"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. "Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray."

His narcissism runs so deeply that even when people suffer at his hands, it's about him. What he is saying here is that because he makes people pious through fear, he has served the gods, thus making him godly. In fact, he views him as the instigator for Aeron's religious zealotry (in which case he's not entirely wrong);

Yet he is still an atheist. He constantly points out that the gods are powerless and false, especially to Aeron when he's torturing him.

"They pray to trees and golden idols and goat-headed abominations. False gods . . ." "Just so," said Euron, "and for that sin I kill them all. I spill their blood upon the sea and sow their screaming women with my seed. Their little gods cannot stop me, so plainly they are false gods."

"Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.”

The Crow’s Eye pressed the dagger in a little deeper, and Aeron felt blood trickling down his neck. “If your Drowned God did not smite me for killing three brothers, why should he bestir himself for the fourth? Because you are his priest?”

“That which is dead cannot die,” said Aeron fiercely. “For he who has tasted death once need never fear again. He was drowned, but he came forth stronger than before, with steel and fire.” “Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay drowned."

Euron makes people pious out of fear, yet the gods never intervene when he murders and rapes and tortures. In his mind, he has more power than any of the gods.

“That’s it, priest. Gulp it down. The wine of the warlocks, sweeter than your seawater, with more truth in it than all the gods of earth.”

Euron routinely drinks shade of the evening, so this sentence solidifies his belief that he is more powerful than any god. His use of blood sacrifice and magic also is worthy of note. Thus, his belief is that because he has power and the gods never stop him when he blatantly blasphemes and sins, he himself is the only true god. He makes people pious and he disproves the existence of the gods, all through his own actions.

In fact, we see in The Forsaken how Euron's hold on the ironborn is quickly growing stronger. When he first invades the Reach, he briefly gets ahead of himself by saying they should sail to Meereen, but the ironborn are still not thinking the way he is, and so he decides to instead stay with them reaving. Throughout the chapter he keeps Aeron imprisoned out of everyones view, only moving him at night when nobody would be awake. By the end, however, things have changed greatly. He now openly parades Aeron around and even ties him to the prow of his ship.

And the ironborn are starting to slowly come around to his way of doing things;

“Your curses have no power here, priest,” said Left-Hand Lucas Codd. “The Crow’s Eye has fed your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!”

How quickly they suddenly reject tradition, calling their deity Aeron's Drowned God, and now using blood sacrifice as common practice. Euron in the beginning did not want to be seen as a kinslayer, but now he has Aeron tied to Silence, possibly in a sacrifice, and nobody is objecting. Tradition no longer matters to them, only the result. In a way, Euron has already started a cult among the ironborn following him.

Euron is what happens when someone is a megalomaniac and gets a hold of great magical power. He is a villain straight out of Lovecraftian horror. He doesn't just want the Iron Throne, or Dany's dragons; he wants to be above it all as a god-king. He knows the end is near, and is taking advantage of it.

The Damphair & the Drowned God

On a first read through of A Feast for Crows, when I got to Aeron's first chapter, The Prophet, I found myself having trouble connecting to him. The chapter was great, but religious zealots are not the kind of people I enjoy, and I couldn't really get behind Aeron, due to all the horrible things he said about women and his extremely deontological view of the world. Little did I know that this chapter was merely hiding the absolute madness that awaited in The Forsaken.

When he was younger, Aeron & his brother Urrigon were close. They share a room in the seatower, and played the finger dance, a game where ironborn would throw a throwing axe and try to catch it in midair. They were also both sexually abused by Euron. As the Crow's Eye notes above, Aeron would pray every night before their abuser came to them. Because of the culture of the Iron Islands, Aeron blames himself for his own abuse, viewing himself as weak and full of sin (something that is also experienced by real victims of child sexual abuse).

Nine sons were born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, and I was the least of them, as weak and frightened as a girl.

He still has flashbacks to his abuse, involving the scream of a rusted hinge, usually with him waking up screaming Urri's name. He then has to reassure himself that it is only a dream and Euron has not come again. As he got older, he looked up to his eldest brother Balon, but Balon was anything but warm, instead showing him nothing but scorn:

Aeron feasted on goat for a year, and named the longship Golden Storm, though Balon threatened to hang him from her mast when he heard what sort of ram his brother proposed to mount upon her prow.

Urri died when he was only 14, after he lost several fingers that got infected after poor healing by a maester, following the finger dance, something that still haunts Aeron to this day. He participated in the Greyjoy rebellion, reaving with his older brothers, but when his ship sunk in battle, he washed ashore and was held prisoner in Casterly Rock for the rest of the war. Later, Aeron had another near death experience, this time when his ship went down in a storm. When he washed up on the shore, he thought the Drowned God had saved him, and thus he became entirely devoted to the Drowned God as his priest.

Aeron's religious fervor is a result of many traumatic incidences throughout his life. He describes how he has two pillars that hold him up in life;

Aeron Greyjoy had built his life upon two mighty pillars. Those four small words had knocked one down. Only the Drowned God remains to me. May he make me as strong and tireless as the sea. "Tell me the manner of my brother's death."

Because of his extreme devotion to the Drowned God, Aeron is seen as mad even by other ironborn. He is singular in his goals to follow his god and interpreting what he is to do. Because of Euron's extreme abuse of Aeron leaves a massive impression on him, it is at first unclear if Euron is truly as big of a threat as Aeron himself says he is. Yet eventually we learn that Aeron's first chapter was very aptly named; he was right about everything.

A storm was brewing, he could hear it in the waves, and storms brought naught but evil.

He was born a lord's son and died a king, murdered by a jealous god, Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, a storm such as these isles have never known.

Aeron tugged his beard, and thought. I have seen the storm, and its name is Euron Crow's Eye.

The decks of Euron's ship were painted red, to better hide the blood that soaked them. Victarion. The king must be Victarion, or the storm will slay us all.

Aeron constantly compares Euron to a storm throughout his first chapter, and later on Euron even calls himself the storm, after Rodrik the Reader calls him out on the problems with sailing the entire ironborn to Meereen:

"Where will you find fresh water, food? The first storm will scatter us across half the earth." A smile played across Euron's blue lips. "I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last."

As we see later in The Forsaken, Euron cares not for the ironborn, only himself and his own power. And in classic fashion, Aeron's calls against Euron go nowhere. Even in The Forsaken, when he tells Falia Flowers to leave, she does not listen to his warnings;

“Run. He will hurt you. He will kill you.” She laughed. “Silly, he won’t. I’m his love, his lady. He gives me gifts, so many gifts. Silks and furs and jewels. Rags and rocks, he calls them.”

And then come the end of the chapter;

He beckoned, and two of his bastard sons dragged the woman forward and bound her to the prow on the other side of the figurehead. Naked as the mouthless maiden, her smooth belly just beginning to swell with the child she was carrying, her cheeks red with tears, she did not struggle as the boys tightened her bonds. Her hair hung down in front of her face, but Aeron knew her all the same. “Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.” The girl raised up her head, but made no answer. She has no tongue to answer with, the Damphair knew.

This leads into the existential battle between Euron & Aeron. It only makes sense for Aeron's philosophical and moral enemy is the atheistic and nihilistic Euron Greyjoy.

Euron subjects Aeron to unimaginable psychological torture; demoralizing him, pointing out how the Drowned God has not answered his prayers, taunting him of his abuse, force feeding him shade of the evening, all to get Aeron to do what Euron truly wants him to; to pray to him as his god and make him his priest. Euron may have Aeron tied to the prow of Silence at the end of the chapter, but his actions go to show that his goal isn't to kill him;

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” “Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

Euron pressed the knife to Aeron’s throat. “Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.”

It is now time to come across the religious imagery and symbolism with regards to Euron and Aeron, because they are both full of it. It's rather easy to view Euron as Lucifer, with Aeron taking the role of Jesus Christ. Euron is a highly intelligent man, and every gift he gives comes with a price. As Victarion says, "Euron's gifts are all poison".

Upon winning the kingsmoot, Euron has Erik Ironmaker marry Asha (though it is a proxy marriage as Asha has fled), giving him stewardship of the Iron Islands and naming him the castellan of Pyke. At first it appears like he's simply rewarding Erik to ensure his loyalty. He is, but the truth of the matter is that Euron does not care for the Iron Islands, and couldn't care less what happens there to Erik Ironmaker, who was his rival at the kingsmoot.

After winning the Shield Isles, Euron gives the islands away to four new lords, a great honour. Yet, he allows the ravens announcing the attack of the isles to fly back to Highgarden, knowing that a force will be marshaled and they will be retaken. He says as much to Aeron;

“Your victories are hollow. You cannot hold the Shields.” “Why should I want to hold them?” His brother’s smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue and bold and full of malice. “The Shields have served my purpose. I took them with one hand, and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed, brother. It is up to the new lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts.”

And those four fools were no random picks either. Nute was one of the most loyal followers of Victarion Greyjoy onboard his ship. Andrik the Unsmiling was one of the champions of Lord Dunstan Drumm at the kingsmoot. Maron Volmark supported Victarion and was considered by one of the drowned priests the true heir to the Seastone Chair given House Volmark's relation to House Hoare, who ruled when Aegon conquered Westeros. Finally, Harras Harlaw was a supporter of Asha, and removed him as Rodrik the Readers heir in place of Hotho Harlaw, who supported Victarion.

Then there is Euron sending Victarion to Slaver's Bay, and the gifts he gives him. The dusky woman, calling back to the wife Euron impregnated and Victarion beat, and Dragonbinder, the dragon horn that binds dragons to the owners will via blood sacrifice. Just as Lucifer does, Euron promises great rewards, but they always come back to your face in some way.

Many times, Euron visits Aeron in the bowels of Silence, trying to tempt him to break his faith, to worship him as his god, promising to raise him as his own priest;

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” “Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

Euron pressed the knife to Aeron’s throat. “Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.”

In this manner, Aeron takes the role of Jesus to Euron's Lucifer, when Jesus crossed the Judaean Desert. While Jesus fasted in the 40 days and 40 nights he spent crossing the desert, the devil came several times to tempt him.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8–9)

Like Jesus, Aeron resists Euron's temptations, holding true to his religious fervor. He believes that the Drowned God is testing him and holds onto his faith. Yet, in an inverse to Christ's crucifixion, Aeron refuses to believe that the Drowned God has forsaken him. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the last words of Jesus were;

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46)

Whereas when Euron visits Aeron in the Silence;

“Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.” “You’re wrong.”

And of course, the very end of The Forsaken has Aeron tied to the prow of Silence, in a style reminiscent of Jesus's crucifixion;

They bound Aeron Damphair tight with strips of leather that would shrink when wet, clad only in his beard and breechclout.

Throughout all his torture, Aeron holds deeply to his religious beliefs, and as yet, Euron has been unsuccessful in breaking down his faith. He believes he will soon die and live an afterlife of joy in the watery halls of the Drowned God.

Yet, from the looks of things, I do not believe Aeron is going to keep his faith. Looking back at his Feast chapters, we see that Aeron's religious devotion is a response to the trauma he has suffered throughout his life. Yet, when he tries to use his religion to stop Euron, he fails. Every single time.

When he hears Euron has claimed the Seastone Chair, he decides to hold a kingsmoot, trusting the Drowned God to intervene and correct the wrong;

"The god took me deep beneath the waves and drowned the worthless thing I was. When he cast me forth again he gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to spread his word, that I might be his prophet and teach his truth to those who have forgotten. I was not made to sit upon the Seastone Chair . . . no more than Euron Crow's Eye. For I have heard the god, who says, No godless man may sit my Seastone Chair!"

And then it goes very very awry when Euron is elected king anyways. Yet Aeron rationalizes this by saying that Euron had his warlocks put a spell on the men to choose him;

"It was not the god who spoke. Euron is known to keep wizards and foul sorcerers on that red ship of his. They sent some spell among us, so we could not hear the sea. The captains and the kings were drunk with all this talk of dragons."

And thus Aeron goes into the sea, to take counsel with the Drowned God (which I will discuss more about in just a moment). Afterwards, he seems to be in high spirits again;

Aeron Damphair had struggled back to shore, full of fierce resolve. He would bring down Euron, not with sword or axe but with the power of his faith.

And then he is immediately kidnapped and chained in Silence by Euron's men. When Euron meets him and first force feeds him shade of the evening, Aeron curses him;

“I curse you,” Aeron said, when the cup was empty. Liquor dripped from down his chin into his long, black beard. “If I had the tongue of every man who cursed me, I could make a cloak of them.”

And of course, nothing happens to Euron. When he is imprisoned on Oakenshield and fed by Falia Flowers, Aeron tries to send a secret message to Victarion, but again, Euron defeats him;

“You must bear a message to my brother. Not Euron, but Victarion, Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet. Do you know the man I mean?” Falia sat back from him. “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t bring him any messages. He’s gone.” “Gone?” That was the cruelest blow of all. “Gone where?” “East,” she said, “with all his ships. He’s to bring the dragon queen to Westeros. I’m to be Euron’s salt wife, but he must have a rock wife too, a queen to rule all Westeros at his side. They say she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she has dragons. The two of us will be as close as sisters!” Aeron Damphair hardly heard her. Victarion is gone, half a world away or dead. Surely the Drowned God was testing him. This was a lesson for him. Put not your trust in men. Only my faith can save me now.

And then he prays to die so he can join his god, but this also doesn't work;

That night, when the tide came rushing back into the prison cell, he prayed that it might rise all night, enough to end his torment. I have been your true and leal servant, he prayed, twisting in his chains. Now snatch me from my brother’s hand, and take me down beneath the waves, to be seated at your side. But no deliverance came. Only the mutes, to undo his chains and drag him roughly up a long stone stair to where the Silence floated on a cold black sea.

When Euron next visits Aeron, Aeron doesn't believe that Euron is capable of kinslaying, only for Euron to prove the exact opposite;

“Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.” “Not even you would dare,” said the Damphair. “I am your brother. No man is more accursed than the kinslayer.” “And yet I wear a crown and you rot in chains. How is it that your Drowned God allows that when I have killed three brothers?” Aeron could only gape at him. “Three?”

And then he prays for his brother's death, yet he remains stubbornly alive. When the warlocks and other priests are brought to share the room with him, he fervently prays to his god, thinking he is stronger than all the other false gods. Still, Aeron's mental state is declining;

In his saner moments, Aeron questioned why the Crow’s Eye was collecting priests, but he did not think that he would like the answer. Victarion was gone, and with him, hope. Aeron’s drowned men likely thought the Damphair was hiding on Old Wyk, or Great Wyk, or Pyke, and wondered when he would emerge to speak against this godless king.

One last time, Aeron tries to warn Euron about the wrath of his god;

“Release me,” Aeron Damphair commanded in his sternest voice, “or risk the wroth of god!” Euron produced a carved stone bottle and a wine cup. “You have a thirsty look about you,” he said as he poured. “You need a drink; a taste of evening’s shade.” “No.” Aeron turned his face away. “No, I said.” “And I said yes.”

If the Drowned God is going to make the Crow's Eye pay, he's sure taking his time. When Aeron is finally brought up to see Euron's captains, it becomes clear that nobody seems to care about the Drowned God anymore;

“Have your gods been good to you in the dark?” asked Left-Hand Lucas Codd. One of the warlocks snarled some answer in his ugly eastern tongue. “I curse you all,” Aeron said. “Your curses have no power here, priest,” said Left-Hand Lucas Codd. “The Crow’s Eye has fed your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!”

By the end of The Forsaken, despite the excruciating torture at the hands of his demonic brother, Aeron still holds onto his faith. But the fact remains that when Aeron has attempted to do anything involving his faith to defeat Euron, nothing happens. This itself doesn't mean that Aeron will lose his faith, as seen in his chapters, these defeats are rationalized to fit his super religious worldview. However, there are small hints that his faith is merely a shield that is slowly being chipped away at.

Despite Aeron calling Euron godless and saying that the Drowned God himself said he did not want Euron on the Seastone Chair, it's quite clear that it's Aeron who doesn't want him because of his trauma. This isn't an invalid reason, Euron absolutely should not sit the throne, but the fact remains that the Drowned God did not tell him anything, it's all in Aeron's head. When Euron is elected at the kingsmoot;

Even a priest may doubt. Even a prophet may know terror. Aeron Damphair reached within himself for his god and discovered only silence. As a thousand voices shouted out his brother's name, all he could hear was the scream of a rusted iron hinge.

When Aeron faces the reality that his tormentor and abuser has succeeded, in the holiest of places, when he tried to use his faith as a weapon, he is unable to reach his god. Despite this brief moment where he is unable to comprehend his faith with the reality of the world, he quickly goes on to say Euron used sorcery to get the captains to vote for him.

After the kingsmoot, Aeron goes to speak to his god, in one of the most telling moments in The Forsaken;

And there and then, the Drowned God had come to him once more, his voice welling up from the depths of the sea.“Aeron, my good and faithful servant, you must tell the Ironborn that the Crow’s Eye is no true king, that the Seastone Chair by rights belongs to ... to ... to ...” Not Victarion. Victarion had offered himself to the captains and kings but they had spurned him. Not Asha. In his heart, Aeron had always loved Asha best of all his brother Balon’s children. The Drowned God had blessed her with a warrior’s spirit and the wisdom of a king – but he had cursed her with a woman’s body, too. No woman had ever ruled the Iron Islands. She should never have made a claim. She should have spoken for Victarion, added her own strength to his. It was not too late, Aeron had decided as he shivered in the sea. If Victarion took Asha for his wife, they could yet rule together, king and queen. In ancient days, each isle had its Salt King and its Rock King. Let the Old Way return.

If the Drowned God was actually talking to him, how come he isn't even able to finish his sentence? How come he doesn't even know who the true ruler is? Aeron is talking to himself, convincing himself that his voice is the voice of the god. Even though he uses his faith as a shield, he unknowingly uses his own thoughts and feelings to fuel his delusion that the Drowned God is talking to him.

It might sound like I'm being very harsh towards Aeron. I am an atheist, and like GRRM, do not like religious fanatics. The horror of what Aeron is going through is not just Euron being literally the most evil character in the universe, it's also the fact of what this torture means when you think about belief in the gods. The horror is that Aeron tries to find reasons to believe the Drowned God is still with him, yet the god never even intervenes. For some, the fact that Aeron still believes in his faith is seen as inspirational and uplifting; even though he has gone through an unbelievable amount of abuse, he's still holding onto his faith, winning over Euron who has been trying to break his faith down.

However, I see this as incredibly dark. On an existential level, the basic concept that staying faithful to God even as bad things happen and that god is all powerful is just frightening. If the god can intervene, why is he not intervening? The horror of The Forsaken isn't just from Euron's mad ambitions; it's in the fact that Aeron's god has not done anything observable to help him in the darkest of times. Even if it is to "teach Aeron a lesson" or "test his faith" it still comes off as horrifying. Who would worship a god that lets bad things happen to you in order to test if you are truly devoted to him? At worst, that's just another form of abuse.

Aeron's story is very dark. He's been abused, used, nearly died, tortured, and devoted to a god who isn't here for him. None of this is to say that if Aeron wasn't religious he'd be handling his torture better, or that Euron is in the right, far from it. I view it as a multilayered tragedy. There is a reason GRRM wrote Aeron as a religious zealot and Euron as a monstrous demon. Ultimately, they are both on the extreme opposite ends of the religious spectrum.

Everything Aeron does is for the Drowned God and is so singular in his devotion that he is blind to the fact that the Drowned God is not the answer to everything. Meanwhile, Euron is so vehemently against religion that he believes everything is nihilistic and is devoid of any and all compassion, serving only himself. While I am an atheist and have many problems with religion, both Aeron and Euron's worldviews are incredibly flawed and ultimately self serving and harmful.

This is why I think, when Euron does whatever he's about to do with Aeron tied to the ship, Aeron's faith will falter. I don't think that GRRM wants Aeron's story of religious fanaticism to be one of triumph and success. His worldview will not be able to withstand everything, just as Euron's worldview won't be able to withstand everything. It's a very dark ending to one of the most tortured characters in the series, but The Winds of Winter is going to be very dark and things will get worse for many characters.

The Corruption of Victarion Flamehand

Older than Aeron, but younger than Euron or Balon, Victarion is sort of the middle child of the Greyjoy family. He, like Aeron, followed Balon loyally throughout his life. When Robert's Rebellion was raging, Victarion joined Balon and Euron in convincing their father, the progressive Quellon, to join in. This led to their fathers death, and Balon claimed the Seastone Chair. When Balon started the Greyjoy's Rebellion, Victarion served him loyally, commanding the standing royal fleet, the Iron Fleet, as its Lord Captain.

Although Victarion is a capable battle commander and naval captain, he is more of a follower, loyally serving his superiors. He is also devoted to the Old Way and reaving culture, wearing plate armour at sea for he does not fear drowning. He lives for fighting and battle, so much so that he wishes to fight some of the best warriors in Westeros;

He would give half his teeth for the chance to try his axe against the Kingslayer or the Knight of Flowers. That was the sort of battle that he understood.

Otherwise, Victarion is not the brightest person in the world (and we'll get to that).

Victarion also mistrusts laughter, as both Euron and Aeron mocked him using feigned praise when they were younger, which hurt him. Yet, he hates Euron for a much deeper reason. When it was learned that Euron impregnated his salt wife (either via seduction or rape), this dishonoured Victarion in the eyes of ironborn culture. To retain his honour, Victarion beat his wife to death, and nearly killed Euron, but Balon reminded him of the sin of kinslaying and instead sent Euron into exile, never to return as long as he lived.

Since then, Victarion has blamed Euron for his wife's death and has wanted to seek revenge. When the kingsmoot is called, he puts forth his claim, yet he is no poet, and all he says is that he will give the ironborn more of what Balon gave them. When Euron wins, unlike their younger brother Aeron, Victarion is resigned to the outcome;

"Drunk, and fearful of that horn. You heard the sound it made. It makes no matter. Euron is our king."

Despite Victarion's hatred of his brother, he follows him loyally. When Baelor Blacktyde refuses to accept Euron as his liege, Victarion blocked his escape with the Iron Fleet and delivered Baelor to Euron to be executed. He then follows Euron's plans to take the Shields, by blocking the mouth of the Mander to prevent the dromonds from returning to the isles while Euron swooped in and took them undefended. He also agrees to sail the Iron Fleet to Meereen to bring Daenerys back to Westeros when Euron asks him of it, but he plans to betray Euron and marry Daenerys for himself.

As noted above, Euron's gifts are poison, and Victarion is aware of that. One of the most interesting of gifts Victarion is given by Euron is the dusky woman;

As a reward for his leal service, the new-crowned king had given Victarion the dusky woman, taken off some slaver bound for Lys. "I want none of your leavings," he had told his brother scornfully, but when the Crow's Eye said that the woman would be killed unless he took her, he had weakened. Her tongue had been torn out, but elsewise she was undamaged, and beautiful besides, with skin as brown as oiled teak. Yet sometimes when he looked at her, he found himself remembering the first woman his brother had given him, to make a man of him.

Euron is very well aware of Victarion's hatred of him and his issues with women after impregnating his wife. The dusky woman as a gift is a different type of poison; a reminder of the power Euron has over Victarion. He took away Victarion's wife (again, as Victarion sees it), and just as easily gave him a new woman. As Moqorro later sees, Euron is the one behind the black strings that make Victarion dance. And dance he does.

When Victarion leaves to sail east with the Iron Fleet, he begins to change. For the first time, Victarion is truly on his own, with no one else to give him orders or advice. And here we begin to see Victarion change into a different sort of person. While he loathes Euron, Victarion also seems to look up to him. As the middle child, Victarion inevitably suffers from middle child syndrome, always walking in the shadows of his older brother, who gets all the credit while he obediently follows him from behind. Throughout the journey, Victarion thinks about Euron and what he'd do, and it influences his own decisions;

So he had slapped the Limper twice across the face and said, "The first is for the ships you lost, the second for your talk of curses. Speak of that again and I will nail your tongue to the mast. If the Crow's Eye can make mutes, so can I."

The Crow's Eye had sailed halfway across the world, reaving and plundering from Qarth to Tall Trees Town, calling at unholy ports beyond where only madmen went. Euron had even braved the Smoking Sea and lived to tell of it. And that with only one ship. If he can mock the gods, so can I.

But Moqorro knew these strange shores in ways the ironborn did not, and secrets of the dragonkind as well. The Crow's Eye keeps wizards, why shouldn't I?

But sailing around Yaros would cost him precious days. With Yunkai so near, shipping in the straits was like to be heavy, but he did not expect to encounter Yunkish warships until they were closer to Meereen. What would the Crow's Eye do? He brooded on that for a time, then signaled to his captains. "We sail the straits."

As the journey continues and he discovers Moqorro, he also begins to find a new confidence within himself, thanks to the red priests magical abilities. His hand was infected thanks to him not treating a wound he took in a previous battle, and when Moqorro healed it, it became something entirely different;

The arm the priest had healed was hideous to look upon, pork crackling from elbow to fingertips. Sometimes when Victarion closed his hand the skin would split and smoke, yet the arm was stronger than it had ever been.

Moqorro continues to give accurate predictions from his nightfires to Victarion, allowing him to find missing ships and hunt down other ships to add to his fleet. As he grows in his own newfound power, he also begins to take on the worship of R'hllor, sacrificing to him in addition to the Drowned God;

"Two gods are with me now," he told the dusky woman. "No foe can stand before two gods."

"With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the gods," he proclaimed, as the warships of the Iron Fleet rowed past the burning ketch. "Let these girls be reborn in light, undefiled by mortal lust, or let them descend to the Drowned God's watery halls, to feast and dance and laugh until the seas dry up."

This culminates when Moqorro sees the dragon horn Euron gave Victarion, and translates the runes inscribed on it;

"Here it says, 'No mortal man shall sound me and live.' " Bitterly Victarion brooded on the treachery of brothers. Euron's gifts are always poisoned. "The Crow's Eye swore this horn would bind dragons to my will. But how will that serve me if the price is death?" "Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you." Moqorro pointed to the band of steel. "Here. 'Blood for fire, fire for blood.' Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn's master. You must claim the horn. With blood."

With this, Victarion now has a plan to have three thralls sound Dragonbinder, after he has claimed the horn with blood, in order to get Daenerys's dragons bound to him. Suffice to say that his ambitions are starting to grow;

He brushed his hand across one of the red gold bands and the ancient glyph seemed to sing beneath his fingertips. For half a heartbeat he wanted nothing so much as to sound the horn himself. Euron was a fool to give me this, it is a precious thing, and powerful. With this I’ll win the Seastone Chair, and then the Iron Throne. With this I’ll win the world.

Yet throughout all of this, Victarion never questions why Moqorro is helping him or if he has an ulterior motive. Moqorro serves him and his needs, and thats all that matters to the Lord Captain. Although Moqorro is most certainly only going to be 100% faithful to Daenerys, as she is Azor Ahai reborn, he is ultimately using Victarion as a means to an end, yet he is useful to him in that regard. He must get to Meereen, and the best way is to get into the good graces of Victarion, and it does him no good to lie or deceive him when Victarion is the only person who doesn't want to sacrifice him to the Drowned God.

In addition, Moqorro has gained a convert to R'hllor, although begrudgingly, as Victarion still worships the Drowned God. He is also coming to ally with Daenerys, which gives him maybe more credit than if Moqorro were to be picked up by someone else. While I don't think Moqorro is lying to Victarion, he is still manipulating him, trying to convert him to R'hllorism and giving him valuable information so that Victarion doesn't kill him. It all works towards Moqorro's larger goal of serving Azor Ahai, aka Daenerys Stormborn.

I think that Euron's original plan for Victarion was simple. Have him travel to Meereen, plot to betray Euron, get obsessed with Dragonbinder, then blow the horn and die as a result (or some other way), gifting Daenerys a dragon horn and a fleet of ships to bring her to Westeros. Despite Euron's manipulation and psychological trickery usually working out for him, Moqorro is a potential wildcard that throws his plans out of balance. It is because of Moqorro that Victarion is now on the verge of acquiring dragons. It is because of Moqorro that Victarion has this newfound power and confidence. It is because of Moqorro that Victarion did not die of his hand wound that he previously refused to treat.

This is also why I think Victarion will be successful in acquiring his own dragon (for a time). With Moqorro's knowledge, which Euron could not have possibly foreseen, Victarion now has the capability of acquiring a dragon. Although it's certainly plausible Moqorro's information is faulty, the information we have is consistent with what we know, and as stated above, there are ample reasons to believe Moqorro isn't trying to get Victarion killed. Story wise, if we are to up the stakes, then someone taking control of one of Dany's dragons would be a big way to change things and show the power that Dragonbinder possesses.

Despite all the talk of manipulation, Victarion's goals are still his own. It's why his chapter titles switch from his roles (The Iron Captain/The Reaver/The Iron Suitor) to his name (Victarion I). He is becoming more himself, he's just being given the tools that allow him to do so while also suiting other peoples agendas. And the more he becomes himself, the uglier he seems. Between his increasingly graphic human sacrifices and his almost delusional want for immense power, he's becoming more selfish and villainous than before.

In fact, while he is coming into his own, it's also very noticeable that he is slowly also becoming more like Euron. He is starting to use magic for his own ends, has a red priest coaching him in magic, and starting to reject some teachings of ironborn culture by also worshipping R'hllor. This is rather significant, as I'll discuss later, but Victarion becoming like Euron is more than a result of him being jealous about living in the shadow of his older brother; despite the fact that Euron's way is not like the Old Way, he has more in common with Victarion than Victarion cares to admit.

He objects to Euron selling the captives of the Shield Isles into slavery, when the ironborn practice thralldom, which is essentially a form of slavery. He objects to Euron supposedly using his warlocks, but then Victarion decides to use a red priest. Most importantly, however; he does not accept responsibility for his wifes death. Ironborn culture is incredibly misogynistic and terrible, and Victarion being who he is, follows through even though he didn't want to.

Yet, although Euron definitely knew what he was doing and what Victarion would do, he cannot be to blame for what Victarion did. He chose to beat his wife to death because she was impregnated by another man. The fact is that Victarion is a villain who undeniably believes himself to be the hero, and works through psychological loopholes to put the blame on someone else. Euron and Victarion are opposites, yet also identical in a way. They are both villains, but while Euron knows he is a terrible person doing terrible things for his own gain, Victarion thinks he's a good person and serving his gods while doing terrible things for his own gain.

Of course, there is also the factor that Euron is actually competent; he's highly manipulative, politically aware, and perceptive of how to play people. Meanwhile, Victarion is dumb as a stump, easily manipulated, and never considers what other peoples motives might be (even though he does with Euron, he ends up just not thinking about that at all). It makes for a rather entertaining contrast between the two.

Sailing on a Sea of Blood

Having now talked about Euron and his relationship with his brothers, it's time to look at what Euron is going to do in the future, and The Forsaken is the starting point to build off. It is one of my favourite chapters in the entire series; it is a masterpiece of psychological horror, with big twists, reveals, and terrifying moments. There are also many visions that Aeron experiences from being force-fed shade of the evening. The section will be split into three different parts.

The first will be viewing at the general visions, deciphering their possible meaning to the story. The second will be specifically looking at the visions and other text that might pertain to the coming naval battle Euron is planning to engage in. The third will be exploring what exactly Euron is going to do. I will also be taking bits from different chapters as well as I see fit. Since it was a sample chapter for an unreleased book, it is important to note that the visions Aeron has may change in the final product. But since we don't have the final product, we'll be sticking with the one we know.

To begin our journey into madness, we have Aeron's first set of visions. These occur at the beginning of the chapter when Euron first force feeds Aeron the wine of the warlocks. It begins with Urri, Aeron's dead brother;

“Urri!” he cried. There is no hinge here, no door, no Urri. His brother Urrigon was long dead, yet there he stood. One arm was black and swollen, stinking with maggots, but he was still Urri, still a boy, no older than the day he died. “You know what waits below the sea, brother?” “The Drowned God,” Aeron said, “the watery halls.” Urri shook his head. “Worms ... worms await you, Aeron.”

On a subconscious level, it'd make sense for Aeron to have dreams of his faith being false. Dream Urri tells him that nothing but death awaits him in the sea, no Drowned God, no afterlife. This is potentially prophetic, as it goes nicely with another vision later on;

When he laughed his face sloughed off and the priest saw that it was not Urri but Euron, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.

The scale dark as onyx might refer to the Valyrian steel armour Euron wears at the end of the chapter. And here we see the true Euron; his smiling eye, the blue eye that represents the face he shows the ironborn, is hidden, and now his blood eye, the black eye filled with malice that represents his true monstrous self, is visible. Him sitting on a mound of burned skulls with dwarves at his feet, and that burning forest, probably represents his way of acquiring power and how he views himself.

He is bringing untold death and destruction in his wake, all in a quest to gain ever more power. In his view, everyone else is insignificant and he towers over them. It also fits nicely with the general apocalyptic aesthetic these dreams have, which is important to the next part where Euron says;

The mention of the red comet is interesting. Over the POVs we learn that the comet has many different meanings to people. However, we also know that from the Azor Ahai prophecy, which states;

"There will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him."

So Euron at least knows what the red comet signifies, or perhaps even knows about the Azor Ahai prophecy. Whatever the case, he knows that something apocalyptic is coming and is taking advantage of it. I do not believe in the theories that Euron is in league with the Others and wants to lead them or anything; he is simply aware that very bad times are coming and is using it as an opportunity to gain power.

The symbolism regarding the dragons, krakens, and sphinxes is mostly straightforward- the dragons representing Daenerys coming to Westeros based on his own actions, and the krakens being the ironborn he rules over- although the sphinx is much harder to figure out. Historically, sphinxes are known for killing those who cannot answer their riddles, acting as spiritual guardians. Perhaps this represents Euron's own hubris when it comes to power; the warlocks of Qarth have hidden knowledge, thanks to their shade of the evening, but Euron has now gained that knowledge after dominating them. Perhaps the warlocks might be represented by the sphinxes, guarding their ways closely, but Euron has bypassed that and can now tap into them. Who knows, sphinxes are purposefully tricky.

And the first vision set ends with one of the more disturbing images in the chapter;

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” “Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!” “Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.” Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood. Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith ... even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath. And there, swollen and green, half-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest, seawater still dripping from his hair. Then, Euron Crow’s Eye laughed again, and the priest woke screaming in the bowels of Silence, as piss ran down his leg.

As Euron getting Aeron to worship him as his god has been discussed elsewhere, we'll move right past that and talk about Euron's goals. Here it's clear that he doesn't care for the Iron Islands, or the Seastone Chair, or hell, even the ironborn. He is merely using them for his own ends in acquiring what he truly wants; the Iron Throne.

The bodies of the gods impaled on the Iron Throne represents Euron's goal to be seen as a god, and the fact that he holds all the gods false. In his mind, he is the only true god, and all the others are false. There is possibly more to this, but that will come later. Afterwards, there is at least a few weeks before Euron once again forces the vile LSD wine into his mouth, and the visions get more terrifying and mysterious;

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea.

As I'll discuss later, this is most likely a view at the upcoming naval altercation Euron is about to have with the Redwyne fleet, so we'll explore this in detail in a moment;

He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed ...

Aaaaaand we have gone to Lovecraftian horror. Euron in this vision is supposed to invoke the imagery of Cthulhu, who is a cosmic entity worshipped by various cults and the source of constantly subconscious anxiety in the works of HP Lovecraft. Sounds a lot like Euron, doesn't it? I don't think that this vision is meant to be literal, in that he will turn into a squid demon, but it's definitely meant to represent the existential horror he brings.

The shadow in woman's form has been subject to much theorizing and debate, but I ultimately believe that this is meant to be Daenerys. Aeron, who has never met her, does not know her, but given that Euron is mad and cruel, it is reasonable for him to assume that Daenerys is also mad and cruel, otherwise why would Euron want her? It is also important to note that Euron has also never met Daenerys, and this may also be how he views her; a partner in conquering and surviving the apocalypse. The dwarf imagery, again, speaks to the dominance Euron wants him and Daenerys to have, ruling as gods over everyone else.

Aeron dreamed of drowning, too. Not of the bliss that would surely follow down in the Drowned God’s watery halls, but of the terror that even the faithful feel as the water fills their mouth and nose and lungs, and they cannot draw a breath. Three times the Damphair woke, and three times it proved no true waking, but only another chapter in a dream.

This is the last vision Aeron has, and it goes back with the very first vision he had. Urri told him that nothing glorious awaits him in the sea, no afterlife, just death. And here in this dream, Aeron is afraid as he drowns. Drowning at sea is considered one of the most holy ways to die in Ironborn culture, yet Aeron is fearful. Of course, this is definitely subconsciously something he is afraid of, but given evening's shade has a magical component to it, it might foreshadow his real death. There is more support for this, when Euron visits him;

And thus the visions come to an end. But where does this leave us? What is to happen next? Well, we did skip over certain parts for this purpose, and now is time to look back at that. About midway through the chapter, Aeron is joined by several other priests in Euron's custody;

It was in the second dungeon that the other holy men began to appear to share his torments. Three wore the robes of septons of the green lands, and one the red raiment of a priest of R’hllor. The last was hardly recognizable as a man. Both his hands had been burned down to the bone, and his face was a charred and blackened horror where two blind eyes moved sightlessly above the cracked cheeks dripping pus. He was dead within hours of being shackled to the wall, but the mutes left his body there to ripen for three days afterwards. Last were two warlocks of the east, with flesh as white as mushrooms, and lips the purplish-blue of a bad bruise, all so gaunt and starved that only skin and bones remained. One had lost his legs. The mutes hung him from a rafter.

Here we have three septons, a red priest, followed by the two warlocks of Qarth joining a Drowned Priest in this dungeon. There could be more, however. I find it rather unlikely that a red priest would be found in Westeros, as it is a primarily Essosi religion. When looking back to the vision of the gods impaled on the Iron Throne, it could also foreshadow Euron's upcoming blood sacrifice. If it does, then he might have more priests from the other gods we see. One thing to note as well is that Aeron does not see the old gods, as they would not have priests.

Regardless, Euron is collecting these priests for a special purpose;

He stepped back and sheathed his dagger. “No, I’ll not kill you tonight. A holy man with holy blood. I may have need of that that blood ... later. For now, you are condemned to live.”

In the canon of bloodmagic, we've only ever heard of kings blood, as Melisandre notes it has great power. She and Stannis nearly burned Edric Storm to wake dragons out of stone because he was the son of King Robert. Holy blood is something entirely new. However, he also is using a pregnant Falia Flowers in the ritual as well. Their child has kings blood, so Euron might end up using kings blood anyways. This mixture of holy blood and kings blood suggests that he is trying to tap into different forms of magical power. Euron is also ready to sacrifice the warlocks, who may not be priests, but are magical people.

There is also the possibility that these won't be the only people he sacrifices. In two visions, Euron is associated with the image of a sea of blood. This first appears when Moqorro tells Tyrion about the people who are seeking Daenerys;

"Only their shadows," Moqorro said. "One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood."

The second, of course, is this line from Aeron's nightmare visions.

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea.

The burning ships might indicate that the ironborn will suffer large casualties in the coming battle with the Redwyne fleet. Euron himself knows that the Redwyne fleet and Hightower fleet are trying to trap him in the Redwyne Straits using a pincer maneuever;

“Count yourself blessed, Damphair,” said Stonehand. “We are going back to sea. The Redwyne fleet creeps toward us. The winds have been against them rounding Dorne, but they’re finally near enough to have emboldened the old women in Oldtown, so now Leyton Hightower’s sons move down the Whispering Sound in hopes of catching us in the rear.”

And yet Euron knows this and sails into battle anyways. The Redwyne fleet is also the largest in Westeros, around 200 warships. Meanwhile, with the Iron Fleet gone, Euron's main source of seapower is gone. His fleet, as Aeron sees, is also far smaller than the one they are about to enter conflict with;

And so, Aeron Damphair returned to the salt sea. A dozen longships were drawn up at the wharf below the castle, and twice as many beached along the strand. Familiar banners streamed from their masts: the Greyjoy kraken, the bloody moon of Wynch, the warhorn of the Goodbrothers. But from their sterns flew a flag the priest had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil beneath an iron crown supported by two crows. Beyond them, a host of merchant ships floated on a tranquil, turquoise sea. Cogs, carracks, fishing boats, even a great cog, a swollen sow of a ship as big as the Leviathan. Prizes of war, the Damphair knew.

Only 36 longships and an unknown number of ships they caught from their raids. Militarily, the fleets of the Reach have the numerical and tactical advantage, with larger fleets and ships built for naval combat. Euron is also very confident about what he is doing, and given that there is no way he can defeat them conventionally, it's most likely that he is about to use magic. While the Reach fleets want to lure Euron into a trap, Euron himself is luring them into a different kind of trap, and the perfect bait would be to send some of his fleet to do battle, perhaps as a sacrifice of sorts (more later).

This image of a sea of blood appears as visions from two different sources; one a red priest far away in Essos, and the other Aeron. Being shown far from each other suggests that this event is important magically and metaphysically. It has shades of when Daenerys saw a vision of the Red Wedding in the House of the Undying, far away from Qarth or anything she was involved with. When considering what Euron is exactly doing here, one possibility is that he is summoning krakens. Krakens are apparently drawn to the surface by blood, and capable of pulling under large galleys, as Arianne is told by the Tolands in Dorne;

"And krakens off the Broken Arm, pulling under crippled galleys," said Valena. "The blood draws them to the surface, our maester claims. There are bodies in the water. A few have washed up on our shores."

In the Iron Islands own history, krakens also appear in large numbers when there are heavy casualties from sea battles. From Fire & Blood, we know that after the death of King Harren Hoare, the Iron Islands were thrown into chaos and battled one another with their own kings;

Other claimants around on Great Wyk, Pyke, and Orkmont, and for more than a year their adherents battled one another on land and sea. It was said that the waters between the islands were so choked with corpses that krakens appeared by the hundreds, drawn by the blood.

Krakens being drawn to the surface by the blood from the large casualties seems possible, but this would not be the main reason for the sacrifice. Given how much build up there is, the fact it spans two continents, I think that something far more magical and powerful is happening. One of the most curious, and severely underrated, portions of The Forsaken is the detail in Aeron's vision that the blood-red sea is boiling. It could definitely be from krakens appearing, but as noted, there seems to be something more happening. It also invokes the image of the Doom of Valyria, where the Smoking Sea is said to boil in places.

Going back towards the idea of a set of ships being sent as bait to the Redwyne fleet, there might be more reasons for this to happen. Instead of being just bait, these ships and the ironmen on them could also be sacrifices. It would justify the scale of what Euron is doing, using a huge amount of death to accomplish it. Steven Attewell suggests that Euron is planning to sacrifice his entire fleet, deliberately having thousands killed, while he uses the priests as talismans or ways of focusing magical energy to complete the ritual.

While I don't agree with everything written in the post, I think that Euron is definitely going to deliberately sacrifice at least a portion of his fleet, and use the priests sacrifices to amplify the power of the death from the naval battle. And Euron is definitely preparing for battle, not just a sacrifice;

Euron Crow’s Eye stood upon the deck of Silence, clad in a suit of black scale armor like nothing Aeron had ever seen before. Dark as smoke it was, but Euron wore it as easily as if it was the thinnest silk. The scales were edged in red gold, and gleamed and shimmered when they moved. Patterns could be seen within the metal, whorls and glyphs and arcane symbols folded into the steel. Valyrian steel, the Damphair knew. His armor is Valyrian steel. In all the Seven Kingdoms, no man owned a suit of Valyrian steel. Such things had been known 400 years ago, in the days before the Doom, but even then, they would’ve cost a kingdom.

He's not wearing that for no reason. He intends on a fight, with magical assistance. But what exactly he is doing is a lot harder to parse out. Perhaps the Doom of Valyria example is close to the mark. Euron himself has many artefacts and ideas that are rather deeply rooted with Valyrian culture. He had Dragonbinder, he has a suit of Valyrian steel armour, he wants to marry Daenerys and get her dragons. His antitheism is even reminiscent of Valyrians view on religion, although he is not tolerant;

Some scholars have suggested that the dragonlords regarded all faiths as equally false, believing themselves to be more powerful than any god or goddess. They looked upon priests and temples as relics of a more primitive time, though useful for placating "slaves, savages, and the poor" with promises of a better life to come. Moreover, a multiplicity of gods helped to keep their subjects divided and lessened the chances of their uniting under the banner of a single faith to overthrow their overlords. Religious tolerance was to them a means of keeping the peace in the Lands of the Long Summer.

He is also practicing blood magic, which the Valyrians also famously practiced. It's possible that this sacrifice is something rooted in Valyrian magic. Him needing "holy blood" also strikes me as him trying to tap into some sort of divine power, something that could be considered an act of god.

When thinking about Euron's goal to become a god, we can get caught up in the idea that he wants to literally become a god and this ritual is his way of trying to do that. However, he already believes himself to be more powerful than all the gods, as he does horrific things constantly without ever being stopped by them. Instead, I believe Euron is doing this ritual to do something that makes him appear as god-like, instead of literally making himself a god.

What exactly that is, I'm not sure. The visions are vague, and the boiling sea could mean any number of things, whether it be krakens being summoned, or the Redwyne Straits literally becoming the new Smoking Sea. He has been planning it for a while, as he mentions needing holy blood halfway through the chapter, long before the end. Perhaps he was waiting for the right time, when there would be massive casualties as a result of a massive sea battle, to do this ritual. In that case, he could try to make himself a god in fact, or gain power in some way, rather than simply do his own act of god.

He is noted as not caring much about material wealth;

She laughed. “Silly, he won’t. I’m his love, his lady. He gives me gifts, so many gifts. Silks and furs and jewels. Rags and rocks, he calls them.” “The Crow’s Eye puts no value in such things.” That was one of the things that drew men to his service. Most captains kept the lion’s share of their plunder but Euron took almost nothing for himself.

Despite being narcissistic, he doesn't seem to really care about having the most powerful stuff. This could be that his real goal is to try to gain some sort of power or godly ability, and gods have no need of material wealth. It's not what he wants, he wants deification. There are three things I'm sure of, however; 1) Aeron will not be able to comprehend what he will see. 2) The Redwyne and Hightower fleets are fucked. 3) It's going to be horrifying and exciting to read about.

The Future of the Crow's Eye

The final section is going to explore what Euron will do in the story beyond weird pirate warlock god-king shit, his next moves, as well as his inevitable end. As frightening and imposing a figure he is, I don't believe he will be the "final villain" of the series. The main antagonist of the series has always and will always be the Others. This doesn't mean that Euron won't succeed in doing some serious damage, however. Mad, bold, and malicious, he is going to and has already started to do things that significantly move the narrative.

His presence in the Reach means he is a very near and significant threat to Sam and others at the Citadel in Oldtown. He has already sent Victarion to Slaver's Bay, and whatever he does there will be because of Euron. The probability that Daenerys is going to use the Iron Fleet to reach Westeros is also pretty high, as it would be a waste of narrative space for the fleet to be sent to her and them leaving without her. We will return to Daenerys and Victarion later, but first a look at some of the historical parallels to Euron.

The image of someone wearing an eyepatch and having a bright blue eye is also found with Aemond Targaryen, from the Dance of the Dragons. Unlike Euron, he had only one real eye, but the eye he lost was replaced with a sapphire gemstome, which he usually kept hidden with an eyepatch. He was also the second born brother of the king, and a narcissist who remarked that he looked better wearing the crown (when named Prince Regent after Aegon was wounded) than Aegon II ever did. However, beyond that, he doesn’t share much more with Aemond.

This leads us back to Harwyn Hardhand, who we mentioned much earlier. Like Euron, he (probably) hired a Faceless Man to kill his older brother and then take the Seastone Chair. And, like Euron, he spent much time away from the Iron Islands;

His son Harwyn had no use for peace, but much and more for the arms and armor that his father forged. A belligerent boy by all accounts, and third in the succession, Harwyn Hoare was sent to sea at an early age. He sailed with a succession of reavers in the Stepstones, visited Volantis, Tyrosh, and Braavos, became a man in the pleasure gardens of Lys, spent two years in the Basilisk Isles as a captive of a pirate king, sold his sword to a free company in the Disputed Lands, and fought in several battles as a Second Son.

After his time away and returning, Harwyn then invaded and conquered the Riverlands, which the ironborn would hold for three generations. This is worth noting as the ironborn are not great on land, but Harwyn’s time with sellsword companies in the Disputed Lands made him a worthy commander on land and sea. Euron is strictly a very skilled naval commander, but he has also learned about the power of blood sacrifice and magic, which the ironborn are now also utilizing. His deceptive tactics have also begun to find use in some of his reavers;

"It grieves me that honest men must suffer such discourtesy, but sooner that than ironmen in Oldtown. Only a fortnight ago some of those bloody bastards captured a Tyroshi merchantman in the straits. They killed her crew, donned their clothes, and used the dyes they found to color their whiskers half a hundred colors. Once inside the walls they meant to set the port ablaze and open a gate from within whilst we fought the fire. Might have worked, but they ran afoul of the Lady of the Tower, and her oarsmaster has a Tyroshi wife. When he saw all the green and purple beards he hailed them in the tongue of Tyrosh, and not one of them had the words to hail him back."

Sam notes that the ironborn are far bolder than ever, no doubt emboldened by Euron’s victories. With the Arbor having been sacked, and with the Redwyne and Hightower fleets dealt with, Euron is now free to raid Oldtown. It’s likely that he will use some sort of deception, as Oldtown is a strongly fortified city and the Hightowers are preparing to deal with them. Once again, look no further than Harwyn Hardhand;

Harwyn assembled a host and led it across the bay on a hundred of his father's longships. Landing unchallenged north of Seagard, they carried their ships overland to the Blue Fork of the Trident, then swept downstream with fire and sword.

Given the obvious parallels with Harwyn Hardhand, succeeding in conquering most of the Reach, this is another way Euron could parallel Harwyn. While some of the ironborn attack Oldtown straight from the Whispering Sound, he has others land south of Oldtown, carry their longships around to the Honeywine, then strike Oldtown from the north where they least expect it. If they get a hold of Oldtown, they then have another base they can use to launch even more raids all along the Honeywine, far inland into the Reach.

There is, however, the possibility that Euron might not succeed. Oldtown is set to be an important location in the future, and we currently have Sam Tarly there as a POV. When Jon tells him to go to Oldtown to earn a maesters chain, he also tells him to keep up his practice with archery, and he does, joining the red archers aboard the Cinnamon Wind to send out a volley of arrows against ironborn trying to hunt them down. He even manages to have his arrow hit the ship by the end, which shows he is improving. Thus far he has worked with Ulmer of the Kingswood Brotherhood, Kojja Mo aboard the Cinnamon Wind, and is now to be looked after Alleras (Sarella Sand), all of whom are very skilled archers. In addition, the sigil of House Tarly is a striding huntsmen atop a horse with a bow in hand.

I think it’s possible Sam actually does kill Euron, but even if he doesn’t, he might prove important to the battle or rescuing Oldtown in some other way. If he’s successful in sacking Oldtown, I imagine he will be continuing to raid the Reach, all to prepare for Daenerys to come to Westeros and maybe impress her with his own deeds. Yet, I do not believe things will work out for Euron exactly as he wishes, because events in the east are going far beyond his control.

So now we finally return to Meereen and now I can wrap this whole thing up. There is a strong possibility for Victarion to succeed in binding a dragon to him, as discussed before. The big question is how Daenerys might react to this. On the one hand, she might not be super happy with Victarion taking one of her children, and she has been warned by Quaithe not to trust “the kraken”. On the other hand, the House of the Undying tells her “three heads has the dragon” and she thinks to herself;

The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon and his sisters.

Yet when we look at the House of the Undying visions, I think it becomes clear that Daenerys will allow Victarion to ally with her, possibly even marry him too;

. . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . .

It’s most likely that the one to bed is Drogo and the one to love is Jon Snow. The one to dread could refer to her being a dragonrider with Drogon, but if we go along the themes of a lover or a husband, it could refer to someone else, possibly Euron or Victarion. This would be ambiguous to me if it weren’t for more obvious visions that Dany receives from the Undying;

Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .

She is called “bride of fire” and we have her silver gifted to her by Drogo, her husband, so these all likely refer to significant marriages in her life. The corpse at the prow of a ship with grey lips smiling sadly, in my mind, almost certainly refers to a Greyjoy (what with the ship and the allusion of grey lips smiling being a sort of pun on the name Greyjoy). Victarion is already present in Meereen and Euron is hundreds of miles away. With an offer of marriage, and a visual of a future husband matching Victarion or another Greyjoy, it seems to me she will marry a Greyjoy, and Victarion makes the most sense to me.

Why he is a corpse at the prow of a ship is tricky; perhaps he did actually die and Moqorro brought him back to life (although I prefer to think he was just healed with fire magic). Or he is a dead man walking whose time is limited. There’s a lot to think about for this. Drogo was important to Daenerys, as she ended up falling in love with him (as problematic as I find that entire storyline), and his death did lead to the birth of her dragons. Jon Snow, one of the other main characters of the series, is likely to have a significant impact on Dany as well (there is an almost overwhelming amount of foreshadowing for the two getting together but we’ll save that for another time).

If we keep with the pattern, perhaps Victarion might be important to Daenerys as well. I find it difficult to imagine this, but GRRM has done this sort of stuff before, and perhaps I am underestimating Daenerys in that regard. And there are reasons why Daenerys might marry Victarion, even if she won’t fall in love with him. For one, Victarion is rather easy to manipulate, and he would do anything to get into Daenerys’s good graces. He might have some severe issues with women, but something tells me he would do whatever she told him if he meant he would get her as a reward.

On the other hand, he has many things to offer her; he has Dragonbinder that Euron gave him, and he has the Iron Fleet. One reason why Quentyn failed to get Daenerys to marry him (apart from the fact she was still trying to integrate into Meereenese society) is because he only showed up with two of his friends and a signed marriage pact. In other words, nothing present and material that she can see. But if Victarion helps in the defeat of the Yunkish, defeats the Volantenes, and has a massive fleet he commands, it would prove to her that he is a useful ally to have.

In addition, she is now of a mind to finally just head to Westeros and leave Essos all together, and so marrying a Westerosi lord would be important to her, even if he is a fucking Greyjoy. All together, although I found it to be strange at first, there is a strange amount of evidence and logical reasons for her to marry Victarion. It is an inverse to Quentyn’s quest, where both go over a long journey and have similar end goals, but where Quentyn failed, Victarion will succeed… at least for a bit. And, as Euron tells Victarion;

"When the kraken weds the dragon, brother, let all the world beware."

Except the kraken marrying the dragon is Victarion, not Euron. If this happens, then Daenerys comes to Westeros with Euron as her antagonist, not a potential suitor. This leads to the final point (finally) I want to discuss. How will Euron meet his end? He’s a legit villain and a major threat, but there is no way he will survive the series. I brought up the theory of Sam the Slayer killing Euron, but it is equally plausible that Euron kills Victarion and in revenge Daenerys burns Euron to death with her dragons. I have another theory, however.

In Victarion’s first chapter alone, kinslaying is brought up four times, and in his next two it is mentioned thrice more, all in reference to Euron;

Euron was still his elder, no matter how much bad blood might be between them. No man is as accursed as the kinslayer.

He would give half his teeth for the chance to try his axe against the Kingslayer or the Knight of Flowers. That was the sort of battle that he understood. The kinslayer was accursed in the eyes of gods and men, but the warrior was honored and revered.

In addition, there are references to Victarion thinking about Euron while also thinking about killing him with his own hands;

Victarion's hands closed into fists. He had beaten four men to death with those hands, and one wife as well. Though his hair was flecked with hoarfrost, he was as strong as he had ever been, with a bull's broad chest and a boy's flat belly. The kinslayer is accursed in the eyes of gods and men, Balon had reminded him on the day he sent the Crow's Eye off to sea.

Victarion would not speak of kinslaying, here in this godly place beneath the bones of Nagga and the Grey King's Hall, but many a night he dreamed of driving a mailed fist into Euron's smiling face, until the flesh split and his bad blood ran red and free. I must not. I pledged my word to Balon.

"He put a baby in her belly and made me do the killing. I would have killed him too, but Balon would have no kinslaying in his hall. He sent Euron into exile, never to return . . ."

He drank in the darkness, brooding on his brother. If I do not strike the blow with mine own hand, am I still a kinslayer? Victarion feared no man, but the Drowned God's curse gave him pause. If another strikes him down at my command, will his blood still stain my hands?

"The Crow's Eye fears you, my lord, why else send you so far away? He does not mean for us to return." Victarion had thought the same when he met the first storm a day out of Old Volantis. The gods hate kinslayers, he brooded, elsewise Euron Crow's Eye would have died a dozen deaths by my hand.

And now Victarion has a volcano arm with supernatural strength. Victarion may be stupid and a brute, but if he was going to die, then it’d feel a bit weird for Victarion to die so soon after getting it without playing some other purpose. It’s not just this that makes me consider the possibility Victarion is the one who deals the final blow for Euron. Throughout his journey to Meereen, he begins to imitate Euron, worship R’hllor, and become more his own person, not 100% following ironborn tradition.

If he is becoming more like Euron and less like a typical ironborn brute, then it’d fit for him to become a kinslayer, having the power to finally stand up to his demonic brother and kill him. Alternately, him thinking about if he would be a kinslayer if someone else did it at his behest might suggest he has someone else kill him instead. It would be a great bit of irony that Euron, arguably the smartest Greyjoy, and the atheist of the family, sent away Victarion, the dumbest Greyjoy, to die, only for the will of R’hllor to find Victarion and give him the strength to kill his own brother.

A simple death is so incredibly fitting for a sorceror king who wishes to become an invincible god. In many ways, Euron is a deconstruction of the dark lord trope that GRRM has been critical of from Tolkien imitators. Euron is 100% a dark lord, and also has many parallels with Sauron. Both become more powerful through the use of magic. Both want to conquer Westeros/Middle-earth to rule as its god-king. They even have similar banners/flags and imagery. Compare the Eye of Sauron with Euron’s nightmarish personal sigil.

Yet, I think GRRM wants to tell us a very human lesson with Euron. He may want to become a god, believe he is a god, stronger than all the gods. But despite the blood sacrifices, extreme sadism and torment, his intent on ruling in the aftermath of a massive apocalypse as a god-king, and his confidence, Euron is, at the end of the day, still human. He is mad and ambitious but he is not all powerful or beyond mortality;

"The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."

He is playing with forces he does not understand, and there will be a price to what he does, which is as human as you can get. He is not a god, and he can still be killed by normal mundane means. He is absolutely a terrifying demon in human skin, as close to absolute evil as anyone can be, and not to be dismissed out of hand. But he can still be brought down and killed just like anyone else, and his want for power and the consequences of his own actions will be GRRMs way of making Euron human.

Fuck an overview conclusion, I already wrote everything and I spent dozens of hours on this… to anyone who finished this and read every word, thank you. I will never write anything this long in my life ever again, I swear it on my grave. I hope this doesn't break anyones browser as it did mine.

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