Euron Greyjoy; uncle of Theon and Yara, is one of the new primary antagonist of Season 7 of Game of Thrones. He showed up last season, killing his brother Balon and managed to win over the Ironborn at the King’s Moot, becoming the King of the Iron Islands, causing Balon’s children to flee and join forces with the Dragon Queen. Recently Euron’s fleet attacked renegade Ironborn fleet, under the command of his Niece, and the Martell lead by Ellaria Sand, capturing both commanders and pretty much wiping out all their ships.
As the next episode of the show is called “The Queen’s Justice” we can imagine that Euron hands them all over to Cersei, who is not going to be very kind to them.

We can see that Euron is a man not to be trifled with, but what do we actually know about him? Being how he only showed up last season and was in about three episodes, we haven’t seen a great deal of him. So let’s us give you a brief history lesson on the Lord Reaper of Pyke.


Euron was the brother of Balon Greyjoy and Aeron Greyjoy (also known as Damphair; the priest of the Drowned God; the Ironborn’s deity, and who preforms the drowning ritual on Euron in season 6). Their father; Lord Quellon, joined Robert Baratheon’s rebellion against the Mad King and used the Iron Fleet to right against the King’s allies. The Ironborn are some of the greatest sailors in the world, and their fleets are spark fear into anyone forced to face them at sea, making them a great ally to have. Unfortunately the Lord of Pyke was killed in battle and the new self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands; his oldest son Lord Balon, decided to start his own rebellion a couple of years after Robert had managed to seize the Iron Throne from the Targaryen dynasty.

The first act of the rebellion was when Euron burned the Lannister fleet at Lannisport. The fires were so great that a young Tyrion Lannister remembered seeing them all the way at Casterly Rock. This gave the Ironborn command of the western seas and coasts of Westeros for a time.

Euron fought against Robert’s invasion force as they came to shut down the Greyjoy rebellion, and put up a worthy fight. While Robert’s main fleet was engaging Euron in an epic sea battle, the rest of his forces managed capture Pyke and forced King Balon to end his rebellion. This caused great tension between the brothers.
Eventually this lead to Euron being forced into exile. In the books he is sent away because seduced and raped his other brother’s (who is cut from the show) mistress, but in the show we are lead to believe that the failure of the rebelling lead to Euron choosing to go into exile himself.

While in exile, Euron and his crew became a gang of murderous pirates (or Reavers, as the Ironborn call them). They reaved all across the world, from Oldtown to Qarth and beyond. He has boasted about travelling to Asshai (the dark mysterious city where Melisandre and the other red priests and priestess comes from), and even sailed through the Smoking Sea to walked the ruins of Valyria.

One night during a storm on the Jade Sea, Euron lost his mind and attempted to throw himself overboard. His crew had to tie him down to the mast to stop him, although I bet they wish they hadn’t stopped him, because once the storm died down, Euron had all of his men’s tongues ripped out claimed that “I needed the silence”.


It is because of this that he has named his mighty ship; Silence, and as it is manned by a crew of mutes it is easy to see why it was able to sneak up to Martell and renegade Ironborn fleets in season 7.
Silence is a huge ship with a single enormous mast, black sails a red hull (which are painted red to better hide the blood soaked on them). On the front of the ship is a mouthless maiden, which is actually gigantic boarding ramp.

Euron now has return from his adventures around the known-world, calling himself ‘greatest captain of the fourteen seas’, to wreck havoc upon his enemies and form alliances with new the Queen of Westeros.
Despite the fact that he is now the King of the Iron Islands, Euron does not have much love for the people who followed his dear brother after bending the knee to Robert Baratheon. He also mocks their religion openly, calling himself ‘The Drowned God’.

So in summary, Euron Greyjoy is a dangerous and murderous pirate captain who does not care who he has to do to defeat anyone who would dare oppose him. Hopefully this makes it a little more clear as to why Theon might have jump shipped. I think given who unmerciful the Lord Reaper truly is, I would have most likely have done the same, especially if I did not have literally any balls.
The actor; Pilou Asbæk, has stated in an interview that Euron is the new big bad wolf of Game of Thrones and will make Ramsay Bolton look like a little kid, which are bold words indeed, so we will have to wait and see what other chaos Euron Greyjoy will cause this season and maybe even the next.

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