A lot of Game of Thrones watchers probably wondered what was going on with all that stuff about the Iron Islands. It was mostly swallowed beneath the waves of the massive Hodor reveal in “The Door,” but the murderer Euron Greyjoy is now the head of a massive band of pirates perfectly positioned to harass the Boltons and maybe bring Daenerys across the water.
And that could be really bad news.
George R. R. Martin’s recent public reading of a chapter from the ever-upcoming The Winds of Winter led to revelations about Euron Greyjoy that will make even seasoned viewers of the show realize that he represents an entirely new kind of evil.
The chapter, “The Forsaken,” is told from the perspective of Aeron Greyjoy, a priest in the Iron Islands. Euron has imprisoned him and fed him hallucinogens, which may have offered a window into just how dark his story is going to get.
One of the visions Aeron has is of Euron sitting on the Iron Throne surrounded by the corpses of 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 in green heft devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the Red Sea Horse, still dripping from its hair,” the chapter reads.
Another vision Aeron has points to a pair of theories that Euron might attempt to make a deal with the Night’s King and attempt to become a god.
“[Aeron] saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human,” Martin writes. “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.”
The theories go that Euron represents a metaphysical threat. It’s broken down in more detail here, but basically it goes like this: He’s a dark sorcerer who has covered himself in religious artifacts while perverting them to his own use. Theorist Poor Quentyn writes that Aeron might attempt to summon the Drowned God to stop Euron, which could lead to a cataclysmic reckoning at Old Town. Coincidentally, that's where Sam is going to train to become a Maester, and it's traditionally thought of as the seat of Westerosi knowledge and magic. Got all that?
The second theory is a little more tenuous. And it supposes that Euron might team up with the Night’s King to help conquer the North. This theory posits that the white woman is the famed Night’s Bride, and that Aeron is seeing Euron attempting to curry favor with the new undead overlords. We can’t imagine that this will go over well.
Now, there's more evidence to support the theory that Euron is a dark sorcerer within the chapter. It concludes with him leading the Iron Islanders against a much larger King's Landing fleet. But Euron is brimming with confidence since he’s lashed a priest of each faith to the prow of his ships. Aeron ends up chained to the prow of Euron’s ship, alongside a pregnant woman whose tongue Euron has cut out.
So...yeah. Fuck that guy, is what we’re saying.
Read a complete transcript of the chapter here.
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