Episode 111: A CLASH OF KINGS, THEON III: "Turncloak" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.          

Welcome to the one hundred and eleventh episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Turncloak: An Analysis of ACOK, Theon III,” in which Theon Greyjoy descends through the first five layers of hell, takes a look around, and decides that the fifth layer isn’t deep enough. He’s going for the sixth layer. 

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timbob
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
• Lord Anonymous
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
• Ser Sourcedelica 
• Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
• Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems (ladies and gentlemen)
• Lord Clint, Esq., Master of Absolutely, Positively NOT Serving As A Spy for Several Unnamed High Lords and Ladies In Order to Further the Secret Blackfyre-Style Conspiracy to Overthrow The Oppressive Small Council
• Haldivar, The Waiter for TWOW
• A-a-ron Damphair Prophet of the Forsaken and High Priest of Euron Crows Eye
• Lieutenant Glenn Lord of H town
• Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, Princess of Dragonstone, Mistress of Art, The Overworked, Queen of the Pencils, the Eraser and the First Draft, Queen of Monochrome, Devotee of the Great GOT, Portraitist of the Realm, Lady Realist of the Seven Kingdoms, Blender of Paints and Maker of Drawings
• Seanwell the Slayer
• Lord Adam T
• Lady Alexandra of Tarth
• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
• Lady Elizabeth, Mistress of Horse (Faced Lesbians)
• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
• Lady Ashley
• Lady Raj, Mistress of Horse
• The Dead Sheppard Reborn, Preacher of the Poor Fellows
• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea

Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Kaboth the Unfrozen, Lord of the Bricks and Castle Crimson Light, a high lord, asks the second part of his question:

Why doesn’t GRRM just come out with a mini-book that covers the two Battles? Because the problem is only going to get worse as it goes along in that having a book arc versus the series will be difficult, in my opinion.

Or if he is having problems trying to finish up the series in two more books, why doesn't he just call Feast and Dance one book, then he has three more books to finish up the series?

So, thank you Kaboth for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword of higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where we have monthly bonus ASOIAF and Fevre Dream episodes, show notes, Q&A and access to the NotASlack for our two highest tiers.

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Theon, he had gotten thoroughly pantsed by Esgred who turns out was his sister Asha before final war plans were made for the great conquest of the North. Let’s find out how Prince Failson bunglefucks something new in this synopsis of ACOK, Theon III.

Synopsis

Theon wiped the spittle off his cheek with the back of his hand. “Robb will gut you, Greyjoy,” Benfred Tallhart screamed. “He’ll feed your turncloak’s heart to his wolf, you piece of sheep dung.”

Aeron Damphair tells Theon that his fail-nephew has to kill Benfred now, but Theon wants to question him. Benfred defies Theon and tells him to get bent. Aeron Damphair is there invoking Article V of the NATO convention, telling Theon that a spit against one is a spit against all. Theon says he’s a big, strong man, and he’s in command. Aeron yells back that he’s here to counsel Theon, and Theon is all like Aeron was here to spy on him, and that no one liked him, but they liked Damphair. Or rather they were terrified of Nuncle Damphair’s religious ferocity.

Ah, doesn’t it feel good to be back in a Theon chapter?

Tallhart yells that Theon is going to get his ass, head beheaded and states that the Others are going to conduct a lewd sexual act on the Drowned God. Really, language, Benfred. Then Tallhart tries spitting again, and Theon realizes that Benfred just spit his life away. He orders his man Stygg to silence him, but then Damphair steps in.

“No,” Aeron Damphair declared. “He must be given to the god. The old way.” What does it matter? Dead is dead. “Take him, then.” 

“You will come as well. You command here. The offering should come from you.” 

That was more than Theon could stomach. “You are the priest, Uncle, I leave the god to you. Do me the same kindness and leave the battles to me.”

Theon waves them off, and they drag Benfred to the sea to drown him. The old way. Theon thinks this is a kindness, because Stygg wasn’t that good of a headsman, which … how is it a kindness to drown to death? And then Theon thinks back to Benfred and how he used to make fun of him when he came down with Ned Stark to Torrhen’s Square a few years back.

Anyways, enough memories for the moment. Theon hears his men hooting and hollering like Texans putting a dumptruck’s worth of barbecue sauce onto a single rack of ribs. So, he goes and investigates, thinking about how this wasn’t much of a battle. More of a slaughter. He climbs up onto a bunch of stones and watches as his men kill dying horses and loot the corpses of the dead northmen of their belongings. Theon thinks big daddy Balon would approve of this, but then a thought enters uninvited:

Theon thought of seeking out the bodies of the two men he’d slain himself to see if they had any jewelry worth the taking, but the notion left a bitter taste in his mouth. He could imagine what Eddard Stark would have said. Yet that thought made him angry too. Stark is dead and rotting, and naught to me, he reminded himself. 

Sure thing, Theon.

Theon notices a guy named Todric fighting with a Botley boy over a blood-stained wolfskin cloak. He realizes Todric is drunk, and he thinks that Ironborn bros would go into a berserker blood-drunk in battle, but this guy is just drunk-drunk. So, he orders Wex to get his bow and quiver. When it arrives, Theon notches an arrow and then shoots, hitting Todric in the stomach. Drunk-dude hits the ground hard and begins dying noisily. Theon orders the Botley men to silence him, and they slit his throat and loot his body before he bleeds out. It’s a regular, old touching Ironborn moment.

Theon starts chest-thumping about being a good war despite how some of his men thought of him as a soft-boi from the green lands. He asks if anyone else has a thirst before kicking over the Tallhart banner that Benfred’s dead squire still held. He sees a rabbitskin tied to the flag and wonders why they had rabbitskins. He never got to ask the question. He got spat on.

He tossed his bow back to Wex and strode off, remembering how elated he’d felt after the Whispering Wood, and wondering why this did not taste as sweet. Tallhart, you bloody overproud fool, you never even sent out a scout. 

That line. Hm. That line.

Theon then recounts in his head about the battle and how they ambushed the Tallhart bros coming down the road as the northmen were singing and joking around. They hit them with arrows first before Theon led the men-at-arms with dagger, axe and warhammer into the chaos. He ordered the leader spared.

Only he had not expected it to be Benfred Tallhart.

Theon heads back to the shore just in time to see Benfred’s body pulled from the water and looks out over his conquest.

Of the fishing village, nothing remained but cold ashes that stank when it rained. The men had been put to the sword, all but a handful that Theon had allowed to flee to bring the word to Torrhen’s Square. Their wives and daughters had been claimed for salt wives, those who were young enough and fair. The crones and the ugly ones had simply been raped and killed, or taken for thralls if they had useful skills and did not seem likely to cause trouble.

The sheer evil of that paragraph is stomach-churning.

Theon had planned the attack on the village and then led the nighttime raid into the town. He wasn’t a big fan of what he did, but really guys. He had no choice. He had to do it. Besides, Asha was probably winning a castle of her own while he distracted the northmen with his raid against the Stony Shore. That would allow Asha to take Deepwood Motte.

And after all is done and won, they will make songs for that bitch Asha, and forget that I was even here. That is, if he allowed it.

From atop his ship Foamdrinker, Dagmer Cleftjaw, who Theon excluded from the battle to ensure Dagmer got none of the glory, calls down to Theon about how he should be exulting in battle, but Theon’s not smiling. Why? Dagmer smiles, and Theon thinks it a hideous sight — given that his face was split in half by an axe at an early age. And while Dagmer had grown a snowy white beard in the years since, the hair never grew over the scars. 

Dagmer talks about the songs the northmen were singing, and Theon quips that Benfred’s boys sang better than they fought. Dagmer asks how many were lost, and Theon asks if he’s talking about our men. If that’s the case, only the guy Theon had killed.  

“Some men are born to be killed.” A lesser man might have been afraid to show a smile as frightening as his, yet Dagmer grinned more often and more broadly than Lord Balon ever had. Ugly as it was, that smile brought back a hundred memories. Theon had seen it often as a boy, when he’d jumped a horse over a mossy wall, or flung an axe and split a target square. He’d seen it when he blocked a blow from Dagmer’s sword, when he put an arrow through a seagull on the wing, when he took the tiller in hand and guided a longship safely through a snarl of foaming rocks. He gave me more smiles than my father and Eddard Stark together. Even Robb ... he ought to have won a smile the day he’d saved Bran from that wildling, but instead he’d gotten a scolding, as if he were some cook who’d burned the stew. 

Dagmer is like the dad that Theon never had. I mean, this is just about the most touching moment in Theon’s story so far in ACOK. And that’s saying something. 

Father-figure Dagmer invites Theon onto his boat, and Theon climbs up and is led back to Dagmer’s cabin. There, Dagmer offers Theon a drink, and Theon says no. Hm. Theon reports that they didn’t capture enough horses. They’ll have to make do with what they have. Wait, Dagmer says, why would they need horses. They’re going to be sailing right? Well, Theon replies, he’s got a brand new scheme in mind that will blow your mind. Theon knows that he can’t possibly pull his plan off unless he has Dagmer at his side. So, when Dagmer says that Balon only wanted Theon and his crew to raid the Stony Shore, Theon senses either disappointment or interest in Dagmer’s expression.

So, Theon starts charming Dagmer, calling the Ironborn dude “his father’s man” and extremely skilled at everything he does. The best Ironborn there ever is. Ah, Dagmer puts in. That may have been true at one point but no longer. Andrik the Unsmiling, Black Lorren and Qarl the Maid are better now that Dagmer grew old. Theon notices that Dagmer’s hand is covered in jewels, gold and dragonstone all won via the iron price, and he continues by saying that Dagmer is wasted raiding and reaving. He’s Balon’s best man after all. 

Dagmer’s grin twisted his lips apart and showed the brown splinters of his teeth. “Nor for his trueborn son?” He hooted. “I know you too well, Theon. I saw you take your first step, helped you bend your first bow. ‘Tis not me who feels wasted.”

“By rights I should have my sister’s command,” he admitted, uncomfortably aware of how peevish that sounded.

“You take this business too hard, boy. It is only that your lord father does not know you. With your brothers dead and you taken by the wolves, your sister was his solace. He learned to rely on her, and she has never failed him.” 

So, Theon starts bragging about being one of the Blackfish’s picked scouts, how he did very brave battle shit at the Whispering Wood, and he so totally would have killed the Kingslayer. It was just that Daryn Hornwood came between Theon and Jaime.

Dagmer knows that Theon isn’t a coward which … hm. And Theon shoots back, asking if Balon knows this. This causes Dagmer to look a mite uncomfortable. He tries to soothe Theon, telling him that it’s not that Balon doesn’t value his son. It’s just, like, you know. That he doesn’t value his son. He was with the Starks too long. Theon counters that he’s no Stark, Ned saw to that. He is going to be a very strong kraken and totally be Balon’s heir. But he can’t do that unless he has some brave deed to prove his value.

Brave deed, huh? Well, Theon will have plenty of chances. He’s still young. They need to follow orders and raid the Stony Shore, right? No, Theon says. They’ll give that command to Damphair. They are going elsewhere. And yeah, Balon might have said to raid the Stony Shore, but seriously, fuck that. Anyone can do that. Theon needs Dagmer for a task that only Dagmer can do. When Dagmer drinks some more and asks what Theon means, Theon knows he’s winning the argument.

“If my sister can take a castle, so can I.”

“Asha has four or five times the men we do.”

Theon allowed himself a sly smile. “But we have four times the wits, and five times the courage.”

“Your father-”

“-will thank me, when I hand him his kingdom. I mean to do a deed that the harpers will sing of for a thousand years.” 

Dagmer had a song written about him back in the day after that axe split his face in half. So, Theon recognizes that Dagmer probably still wants a taste of glory still. 

When Dagmer asks what part he would play in Theon’s plan, Theon knows that he’s won. So, Dagmer’s role is to take most of the boys and march on Torrhen’s Square. Dagmer and his boys would be singing the whole way to let Leobald Tallhart know of his coming, and then Dagmer would conduct a sort-of siege on the town. 

But wait, Dagmer puts in, how would they take the town — especially when it has high stone walls. As to that, Dagmer will build catapults and siege engines. But wait, that ain’t the old way. They don’t besiege. They fight, dammit. Ah, but Leobald won’t know that. Leobald will call for aid. Don’t kill the ravens flying. Let them go. And then Ser Rodrik Cassel will come down from Winterfell to lift the siege. 

“Any force he summons will be larger than mine,” Dagmer said, “and these old knights are more cunning than you think, or they would never have lived to see their first grey hair. You set us a battle we cannot hope to win, Theon. This Torrhen’s Square will never fall.”

Theon smiled. “It’s not Torrhen’s Square I mean to take.” 

And that is ACOK, Theon III! This is one of the most forgotten chapters in ASOIAF as it’s short, it’s sandwiched in published order between the major storylines at Storm’s End, King’s Landing, Riverrun and Harrenhal. But it is not a forgettable chapter IMO. What did you think of this chapter, Emmett?

Depth

Theon III is in my opinion one of the more overlooked and underloved chapters in ACOK. I understand why that is! The show cut around this one, introducing both Dagmer and the plan to take Winterfell while Theon is still on Pyke. Even purely in terms of the books, it’s easy in memory to reduce Theon’s story in ACOK to the two chapters spent on Pyke and the three chapters spent in Winterfell. They loom so large, the twin towers of Theon’s life, the two poles of identity between which he hopelessly swings like a pendulum, awaiting the punishment that will still and silence his movements. 

But! I’m going to argue here that Theon III is essential connective tissue in his story, and not only that, it’s a bleak, bracing, vital reading experience in its own right. A lot of the livewire nerve endings that make ASOIAF what it is are exposed here: in microcosm, in a forgotten part of the world, a forgotten part of the war, and a forgotten part of the story. 

George once talked about Robert’s Rebellion as having many skirmishes and minor battles that occurred away from the main action of the rebellion, and I think we’re seeing a sense of what those minor battles and skirmishes may have looked like. There are no Robert Baratheons, Ned Starks, Rhaegar Targaryens or Jon Conningtons here fighting titanic, sea-change battles which decide the course of Westerosi history. There’s only Theon, and the sickening war crimes he commits in a forgotten fishing village which leads to the slaughter of Benfred’s men. 

But this chapter also serves as microcosm for the type of character Theon is trying to be. We’re getting the continued tale of Theon’s identity crisis. He’s trying to put aside his soft boi from the green lands, ward of Ned Stark image and desperately play-acting as a Greyjoy and all to earn his father’s … respect? Admiration? Love? What depths will Theon descend to gain a father’s love, to gain an identity? We get a taste here in this chapter.

• Starting small: Benfred Tallhart’s spit
  • Theon III is a great example of George starting a chapter in medias res, skipping ahead of the plot to the most emotionally/thematically appropriate starting point
  • You could easily imagine this chapter starting with the raid on the village, or the ambush on Benfred Tallhart and his Wild Hares, or even after Benfred’s death
  • But just as Quentyn’s first chapter has to start with “Adventure stank” to communicate the shape and scope of his story, this chapter has to start with Benfred spitting in Theon’s face and screaming at him that he’s a turncloak
  • Everything flows from this. George will spend the rest of this chapter filling in the context, showing us how Theon got here and where he goes next
  • Benfred spitting and screaming is the primal scene of Theon III, the unshakable image that defines Theon’s position in both personal and political terms
  • We’re meant to flinch as readers--it’s as if our faces have just been spat in. It’s a jolting, uncomfortable way to begin the chapter, forcing us into the position of detectives trying to understand why and how this has happened
  • Before we get to Theon’s crimes, before we get into what he’s done and what he’s about to do, we start with the reaction. We start with the fallout
  • We start with the creation of the identity that will dog Theon the rest of the book and claim him whole in ADWD: Theon Turncloak, traitor to the Starks
  • He is a pariah to the people among whom he was raised, despised by and alienated from the only community he has known since he was nine
  • He is someone you curse and spit at when you see in the street, long before he is transformed into “Reek” by Ramsay. He is no one--an Other in every sense
  • George uses the POV structure to ground you in the shock of that feeling, utter rejection, before letting you know how much Theon deserves it
  • Why is that? I don’t think it’s to absolve Theon of his sins. Rather, George is trying to put the readers through the empathy wringer, forcing us into the queasy position of a man barely recognizing the consequences of his own actions
  • Theon is now looking at the North from the position of a true outsider, rather than someone caught in between. He has been kicked out. Robb, more of a brother to him than his blood brothers, is now someone who will come home to kill him
  • Moreover, Benfred is taunting Theon, calling him a coward and less than a man, pricking that masculine identity to which Theon clings so desperately in ACOK
  • Asha challenged that identity; Balon challenged that identity. Now Benfred is challenging that identity, but from a different cultural perspective
  • Balon and Asha (as Dagmer will say again later in the chapter) consider Theon to be a Stark in all but name, a weak foolish greenlander, no true Ironborn
  • Benfred believes the opposite to be true. Theon was supposed to be a Stark loyalist, but has turned out to be unforgivably Ironborn, just another pirate
  • Neither side is wrong, exactly. The difference is their understanding of to whom Theon owes loyalty. Does he owe service to the Greyjoys or the Starks?
  • Both sides take it as a given that he owes them loyalty, even as neither is willing to quite hold up their end of the bargain by treating him as one of them
  • Their causes and cultures are irreconcilable, yet they coexist within Theon, rendering it impossible for him to live with any of the choices available to him
  • We see that so clearly in this scene. After Benfred spits on and screams at Theon, Aeron Damphair cuts in to demand that he die for it
  • Nuncle Aeron is the voice of god, keeper of the Old Way’s flame; he says what’s Ironborn and what ain’t. Everyone goes in fear of him, far more than of Theon
  • He is the gatekeeper who rejected Theon upon his arrival on Pyke in Theon I, and it is he who finds Theon wanting in terms of Old Way masculinity in Theon III
  • As Theon points out, killing Benfred immediately is folly. There is valuable intelligence to be gained from him regarding the state of play in the North
  • But Aeron doesn’t care about that, because as a zealous politically active priest, all he cares about is using every hierarchical tool available to enforce dogma
  • This is the Ironborn campaign in microcosm: it’s not about actually doing what would be necessary to defeat the Northerners and secure a kingdom long-term, it’s about the expression of Old Way ideology, even in defiance of reality
  • Yet Theon’s objection to his uncle’s ideology is not rooted in a more considered, humanitarian approach. It’s rooted in his own pride and insecurity, as usual
  • Theon doesn’t like that Aeron is interrupting and giving orders; it’s bad enough he was sent to babysit Theon and cow all the men who don’t take him seriously
  • And when Benfred continues to insult and threaten Theon, the latter agrees to execute the former after all. Such thin skin, such a fragile ego!
  • Yet even when Theon finally gives the order to kill, he does it in such a way that Aeron respects him less instead of more
  • First, Theon orders that Benfred be beheaded instead of drowned. Then, after he agrees to drowning as the method of execution, he neglects to do the deed himself, making Aeron do it. Finally, he doesn’t even attend the execution
  • All of which signals to the men around him that Theon is not a real Ironborn leader, not invested in becoming one, and not worth taking seriously long term
  • The last we see in this book of Damphair, cultural gatekeeper, he is giving Theon a reproachful look; the latter has once more failed to be the man he wants to be
  • No matter what Theon does, he winds up getting spat on. That’s not to excuse the choices he makes, because he always manages to make the worst possible choice in this book! But the game was rigged against him from the start
  • The way Theon orders Benfred disposed of also speaks to this Theon-in-the-middle mentality where he’s not quite Stark, not quite Greyjoy.
  • He orders Benfred’s head off, but unlike Ned Stark, he’s passed the sentence, but he won’t swing the sword or axe in this case. Like Robert, Theon has a headsman for that.
  • But then when Aeron all but countermands Theon’s order and demands that Theon drown Benfred, Theon balks 
  • And then when Aeron proves relentless, telling Theon to drown Benfred himself as part of the old way, Theon tells Damphair to do it himself.
  • Theon allows the old way to occur but he still won’t go all the way through with the act.
  • This is a queasy moment, where we shirk away at Theon, but George is doing a masterful job of showing us Theon as still being between worlds — much as you were pointing out with how Aeron and Benfred both regard him.
• The big picture: raiding along the Stony Shore and ambushing the Wild Hares
  • Only with this hellish character dynamic established in the reader’s mind does George pulls back the camera to show us where we are and what’s happening
  • Theon is carrying out his part in the plan laid out by Big Daddy Balon back on Pyke in Theon II: raid the Stony Shore, try to lure out the local lords
  • They wound up luring out Benfred Tallhart and his Wild Hares, the rambunctious lads whose hero worship of Robb from afar led them to form a militia/gang
  • Compare this setting and these characters to the grand backdrops of the other POVs right now. We’ve spent our last few episodes in King’s Landing, Storm’s End, Winterfell; from here, we’ll go on to Harrenhal, Riverrun, Qarth. We’re dealing with the movers and shakers of Westeros and beyond, kings and wizards
  • Now we’re in a nameless village along the Stony Shore, among the remains of people who were just trying to maintain a modest livelihood, watching the execution of a man guilty of nothing more dramatic than immaturity 
  • The deflation is palpable, and deliberate. Just as Benfred’s songs collapsed in on themselves in a flurry of arrows and screams, Theon’s arrogant projection of his ideal self cannot be reconciled with the shame and grubbiness of this scenario
  • Benfred and his Wild Hares work like a northman version of the Renly’s knights of summer.
  • They come striding on, singing songs and joking — echoes of the feast and melee scene at Bitterbridge from Catelyn II
  • They’re young men, unblooded. None of these men went with Robb on campaign.
  • And now they’ve met a bitter fate at the point of a former friend.
  • We’ve talked a lot about microcosm so far in this podcast, and I think we’re seeing in the micro sense what will befall the knights of summer. Winter is coming as Catelyn fatefully says at Bitterbridge.
  • Most of the knights of summer will meet a bitter end at the Blackwater, many of them killed by their former Tyrell and Reachmen friends
  • For the survivors of the Blackwater, winter will come for them in TWOW as their allies will turn on them and Mace Tyrell in favor of Young Grift and those twelve or so survivors of all the battles will then face Dany and three fire-breathing dragons. 
  • In Theon III, Benfred and the Wild Hares got an early taste of what’s coming to the knights of summer.
  • In the midst of these personal and political crucibles we have the running inner monologue of our POV Theon Greyjoy, which is brilliantly used here
  • In Season 2 of the show, Luwin tells Theon that he’s not the man he’s pretending to be. That’s also true of Theon in the books, but the difference is that Theon’s inner self is just as bad as his outer self. If anything, it might be worse!
  • The man Theon is pretending to be at least has honesty of purpose. The Theon we know from inside his head is a delusional coward who absolutely refuses to face up to his actions, their consequences, and what they say about him
  • Show!Theon displays genuine torment about the decision to turn on the Starks, writing and then burning a letter to Robb; book!Theon never even gets that far
  • The role the Starks play in Theon’s inner monologue is not that of a family he has abandoned and lost. It is that of a standard against which he’s falling short--a moral standard in part, but also a standard of glorious battle immortalized in song
  • It is not an emotional connection between Theon and the Starks so much as Theon’s projection of a better life for himself, which is rooted in his experiences with the Starks. He’s having a conversation with himself, through them
  • I love this idea, and I agree. Here, it’s internal as Theon spars with the ideals of Ned Stark and the brotherhood Robb gave him in his head
  • But come Theon’s penultimate chapter, it becomes much more externalized through the dream sequence Theon has of the Red Wedding.
  • And then in ADWD, Theon is sobbing in front of the heart tree, begging to die when the tree takes on the face of Bran Stark.
  • It’s a thrilling ratcheting up of the narrative tension of Theon’s internal dialogue with the Starks to external in Bran as a vehicle for Theon’s character development
  • Victarion’s POV works the same way, in that he’s always tamping down troubling thoughts of both empathy and ennui so he can be a proper Iron Captain
  • But Victarion knows exactly who he is, culturally speaking; his rock of the Old Way is so solid that it doesn’t even feel wrong to embrace R’hllor as well
  • Theon lacks that stable foundation, so he’s trying to make one up on the fly, and we see throughout this chapter that it’s just not working out
  • He tries to tell himself that it’s a “kindness” to drown Benfred, because his neck is so thick that it would be tough to get an axe through it. Now, this is transparently absurd. Why is Theon telling himself this obvious self-serving falsehood?
  • Because thinking about Benfred’s neck makes Theon think about the time he spent in Benfred’s company, making fun of his neck. Back in peacetime, before Theon went home and was found wanting, when he still lived with the Starks
  • In happier times, these thoughts might’ve been a source of nostalgia for Theon. But now, these thoughts are painful, because they expose what he’s done
  • He has severed himself from the life he used to live, the life where he rode around with Ned Stark to places like Torrhen’s Square. It’s gone forever.
  • The young man Theon used to tease is screaming at him, spitting at him, and now he’s dead, his limp body being dragged out by the surf
  • When we first met Theon, he was laughing at an execution, kicking Gared’s head aside, showing no respect nor solemnity. A jester, a sly smile fixed to his face
  • Now all the laughter has died. Mockery has given way to fury and fury has given way to blood. Theon’s memory of life jars with his present day domain of death; you can see how well all this dovetails with what went down at Storm’s End
  • Renly rode to his death with a smile, his glittering young knights singing around him, until suddenly their songs turned to screams. Same thing happened here
  • All that’s left of them is their rabbitskins, their equivalent of the banners in Renly’s camp at Storm’s End. This might be a reference to the Dead Rabbits, an NYC street gang of Irish toughs in the 1830s-1850s, featured in Gangs of New York
  • Within Theon’s story specifically, though, the rabbitskin is a symbol of innocence defiled, like Renly’s peach juice giving way to his blood in Stannis’ dreams
  • Stannis will never understand what the peach meant, and by the same token, Theon ordered Benfred executed before he could ask him about the rabbits
  • I love all that you were putting together about the banners, and we see that Theon immediately turns from wondering about the rabbitskins to kicking over the Tallhart banner that Benfred’s squire held. So, spot-on!
  • For me, I spent the longest time wondering why George lends any narrative space at all to the rabbitskins, and I finally decided that the rabbitskins function similarly to the pretty ribbon tied around a knight’s sword.
  • The rabbitskins work as the northern version of this, giving a sense of chivalry and nobility to a deadly purpose.
  • Or to paraphrase Sandor Clegane from ASOS: Maybe the lance is prettier with rabbitskins hanging off it, but it will kill you just as dead.
  • But to take this metaphor even further, the rabbitskin lances are double-edged as Benfred and the Wild Hares find here. 
  • The lance was meant to do harm to those who had come to raid and despoil the North, but instead, it meant all of them died by ironborn sword, axe, arrow and dagger. 
  • Stannis and Theon both have condemned themselves to stand cold in the shadows. Their violent acts leave them exiled from the domain of youth and laughter and summer. They stare at peaches and rabbits, signs and signifiers and song and story, and can’t even comprehend what they’re looking at!
  • They’re too far gone to smell the roses, as George put it regarding Stannis. Theon belongs to death now, and cannot relate to Benfred’s naive optimism
  • It’s as if he’s ordering the execution of his own younger self, erasing him in favor of a reaver’s life just as Ramsay will erase the reaver in favor of Reek
  • Again, this is not a moral distinction I’m drawing here. Theon was always an asshole and never interested in becoming anything other than an asshole
  • The change is one of self-perception, a transformation that only stands out because Theon is a POV and George is so good at writing his thoughts
  • Theon used to be able to tell himself he wasn’t an asshole, because he was having such a good time and getting along with (almost) everyone around him
  • The best time of Theon’s life, the standard he keeps returning to, is the Whispering Wood. “But such a battle!” He never stops talking about it
  • At the Battle of the Whispering Wood, Theon Greyjoy felt like a figure out of the stories and songs. He had transcended this mortal vale. He walked on air; he spoke to the gods and heard them speak back. He achieved immortality.
  • More than anything, he wants to get that back; he wants to live inside that bubble for the rest of his days. But you can’t live inside the stories and songs, and ASOIAF makes clear again and again how much damage can be done if you try
  • Theon can’t understand why this doesn’t feel like the Whispering Wood. Why has his elation turned to ennui, summer to winter, joy turning to ashes in his mouth?
  • After all, this scenario has certain elements in common with that earlier battle. Benfred, like Jaime before him, was lured into a slaughter. Like Jaime before him, he was an “overproud fool” who failed to scout the situation properly
  • And Theon, like Robb before him, took expert advantage of the situation with archers and then a charge to finish them off, taking the enemy leader captive and losing none of his own men
  • So why, then, did the Battle of the Whispering Wood feel like transcendent glory and this battle on the Stony Shore feels like massacring “sheep fleeced in steel?” 
  • Because during the Whispering Wood, he rode side by side with Robb Stark, the brother whose company he enjoyed more than his blood brothers, who was himself in the process of becoming a figure of legend: the Young Wolf
  • Theon was there when that legend was forged, and he had none of Catelyn’s worries and fears to cloud his thrill at being at ground zero for the next great story
  • Moreover, they were riding against Jaime Lannister as we know him in the story so far, a sneering villain you love to hate. As Theon says in this chapter, they came this close to crossing swords. Heroic! Thrilling! Memorable! 
  • But this time? He went into battle alongside men he does not like and who do not like him, even though they’re supposed to be his people, unlike the Northerners
  • And they went into battle against a foe that offers no glory for Theon, and only makes him think of the way things used to be. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth
  • The Whispering Wood, for Theon, is where he became who he always wanted to be. In this chapter, he’s trying to be who he’s supposed to be, and it’s empty
  • Of course, this distinction between inner and outer self only matters for a psychological profile of his character. In terms of evaluating his actions, though...you are what you pretend to be. You always, always become the mask
  • There’s this fascinating absurdity as Theon starts to remember the battle where he thinks:
    • Tallhart, you bloody overproud fool, you never even sent out a scout.
  • On one hand, Theon obliquely refers to his role as “one of Brynden Blackfish’s picked scouts”, showing us that Theon is wise in the ways of war that Benfred was not.
  • But consider that Theon has taken the training and experience he’s received fighting on behalf of Robb Stark in order to kill Robb’s northmen.
  • So, on the other hand, Theon is feeling a subconscious guilt over what he’s doing in the North.
  • He externalizes that guilt by making it about Benfred not being a great warrior and not being much of a challenge.
  • Theon might be partially-thinking that he wanted a good fight like he had at the Whispering Wood and wanted an opponent like Jaime who he was *just so close* to actually crossing swords with.
  • Instead, Theon got Benfred Tallhart and the Wild Hares — a poor substitute for Jaime Lannister and his crack squadron of Lannister cavalry in the Riverlands.
  • These are northmen, not westermen. Northmen who Theon once shared meals and mocked back in the day.
  • But Theon has to kill him and his men anyways. Northmen who were his allies, and it fills him with a guilt that will remain throughout the narrative.
• Theon and the feasting crows
  • And then there’s Theon’s fellow Ironborn raiders: a pack of thieves, rapists, and mass murderers with no loyalty to each other, let alone anyone else
  • It’s difficult to overstate the obscene awfulness of their actions here. They’ve wiped out an entire village, none of the residents of which had committed any crime against anyone on the Iron Islands
  • Those they haven’t brutalized and killed, they’ve brutalized and enslaved, hauling them back to the Iron Islands to do all the work while the reavers keep reaving
  • Imagine all the moments in time that made up this village. Imagine weddings, imagine funerals, imagine celebrations of birth, of a good catch, of recovery from an illness. Imagine shy smiles around a campfire. Imagine a drunk singalong
  • All of it’s gone. Not only the people, but the place; all that’s left is cold ashes that stinks when it rains. Terror has passed over this land, and left only annihilation
  • Yet Theon’s men are not content with having inflicted this gauntlet of suffering on the living. The inhumanity extends to the dead, and beyond that to each other
  • “The rough noises of victory” are what Theon calls them: the spectacle of Ironborn raiders harvesting prizes from the dead
  • This, Theon thinks, is what “paying the iron price” amounts to: robbing corpses. These men who think themselves badasses, pinnacles of creation next to whom all others are subhumans, wiped out teenagers and are now stealing from them
  • This is the practice that Balon thinks makes him so much better than Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon and his own son Theon. This is the foundation of his political economy, the reason he and his men can survive on reaving. It is also the foundation of his cultural identity, the worldview known as the Old Way
  • George is ripping it to shreds in this chapter, exposing it as the self-justifying lies of shiftless bullies who lack the empathy and imagination to live any other way
  • And Theon is just smart enough to realize that this makes them lesser men, not better men. He’s just empathetic enough to be heartsick watching this display
  • He’s able to see through it just enough to realize that these aren’t godlike heroes drunk on battle. They’re everyday assholes drunk on booze, nothing more
  • But just as his uncle Victarion always immediately clamps down on the better angels of his nature in favor of knuckling under to the Old Way, Theon cannot bring himself to take the next step and implicate himself in these horrors
  • He tells himself that while he dislikes the “taste” of all this, he has no choice. He thinks that the horses deserved better, without a thought for the men, and he only cares about the horses because he needs them for his crazy scheme
  • And when Theon imagines how horrified Ned Stark would be by all this, he quickly tells himself how silly he’s being for thinking of Ned Stark in the first place
  • Unlike the show, I don’t think this is quite because Theon thinks of Ned as his true father. Ned remains a dark shadowy figure of suspicion and fear in his mind
  • Rather, it is once again about the kind of life Theon wants to live, the self-image he desperately wants to maintain, which is irreconcilable with the Old Way
  • To be clear: Theon’s projected wish-fulfillment self-image absolutely lines up with the idea of the Old Way, transmitted in the “old red tales” told on the Iron Islands
  • But it turns out that the realities of bumrushing fishing villages does not line up with that heroic image. Nor does it line up with the feeling Theon got at the Whispering Wood, when he was fighting with Robb, on behalf of Ned Stark
  • So it’s not so much that Theon deep down believes in Ned’s justice and feels bad about betraying it. Again: he was introduced kicking Gared’s head and laughing!
  • What Theon believed in was the same thing Sansa and Bran believed in, albeit from a very different perspective: living a life like the main character in a story
  • Theon recognizes that his life doesn’t feel like that anymore, but he’s unwilling to make the connection to a larger moral critique of his actions and his father’s
  • Instead, he keeps thrusting out in all directions trying to find a performance that will allow him to fit in and lead, and it’s both hilarious and sad to watch him fail
  • He sees Todric and the Botleys squabbling over plunder, and decides to “give them a shot to talk about.” In his mind’s eye, he’s imagining a slo-mo Zack Snyder shot of his arrow zooming past Todric, plucking hairs from his beard
  • He’s trying to both prove himself to them and recreate that Whispering Wood feeling, to be the man he wants to be...and it goes as wrong as it possibly could
  • These men aren’t just pawns in the chess game of Theon’s grand adventurous life. They have agency of their own, and so Todric trips right into Theon’s arrow
  • Theon has not proven himself to be a badass worthy of song and support by his fellow Ironborn. Instead, he has committed murder; the only man of his to die in this campaign so far has died by his hand. That’s...not a good sign! 
  • Does this prompt any self-reflection on Theon’s part? Does he start to wonder whether his grasping drive to fulfill his ego will leave behind him a trail of blood?
  • Nope! Instead, he hastily tries to cover it up by suggesting he killed Todric on purpose because he had ordered no drinking and no squabbling over plunder
  • So Theon has doubled down on the worst possible version of himself, even though he only stumbled into that version of himself by accident, because if he doesn’t, everyone will laugh at him. That’s Theon’s arc in a nutshell!
  • “Now they know I mean what I say,” Theon thinks to himself, even though he didn’t mean to do that. But such is the corner he has backed himself into
  • It’s not like he’s killing the Botleys for squabbling with Todric. Instead, he has them slit Todric’s throat; they rob him even as he’s dying. Chilling stuff
  • These raiders lack even the basic fraternal loyalty of soldiers to each other; you could argue they’re worse than the Mountain’s men, which shouldn’t be possible
  • Theon is not one of them, but he’s willing to be as bad as them or worse to be seen as one of them, to avoid being seen as a green boy from the green lands, to avoid being seen as a Stark, even as the Northmen hate him more and more for being one of the Ironborn. Again: no good choices, Theon picks the worst one
  • Theon is the Ensign Newbie of this pack of veterans. (TVTropes is so great). He’s the new platoon leader of the group, desperate to earn the respect of subordinates who think he’s green.
  • I was thinking of this scene as GRRM being inspired by Oliver Stone’s 1986 movie Platoon and Theon playing the part of Lieutenant Wolfe, desperate to earn the respect of his men.
  • In the movie and here in this chapter, the green lieutenant ends up engaging in hellish crimes as civilians are brutalized and a village burns in the mid-arc climax.
  • But Theon (and LT Wolfe) never earns the respect of the war criminals he commands.
  • His failed attempt to instill respect in his men leads to everyone hating him for fragging a comrade in arms.
  • But it’s more than Theon being a total buffoon that separates him out from his men.
  • Ultimately, he’s a poseur tryhard, attempting to violence his way into a culture that looks at him like a greenlander.
  • That’s the thing about that though. Violence is a component of the old way, but it’s the act of a (fucked up, revanchist) community.
  • And Theon ain’t part of the club. 
  • In narrative fiction, though, the Ensign Newbie is usually paired with a Sergeant Rock (a tough NCO who the men respect. Thank you again, TVTropes), and thankfully for Theon he has his very own Sergeant Rock.
• Introducing Dagmer Cleftjaw
  • The only one of these guys I kinda like, the closest thing to a ray of light in a dark chapter, is Dagmer Cleftjaw, captain of the Foamdrinker and Theon’s true dad
  • He doesn’t take part in the reaving, nor the battle; Theon orders him to stay back and guard the ships. Now, of course, Dagmer would have happily taken part; he’s a lifelong reaver, we even learn in AFFC that he taught Balon the pirate’s life
  • But by not showing us Dagmer taking part, George sets him apart from the rest of the raiders, and follows that up by telling us that Dagmer didn’t get envious nor prideful in response to Theon telling him to stay back. He took it in stride
  • Taking things in stride is exactly what Theon can’t do right now. He’s itching under the skin with thwarted ambition and is desperate to do something about it
  • Dagmer is the closest thing in his life to a source of wisdom, a font of serenity, a man who knows who he is and what his life is all about
  • That’s why Dagmer was fine with being left back. His perspective offers him a sense of proportionality; he has a firmer grasp than Theon on what matters in life
  • He’s already the Cleftjaw! He’s already a legend, just like the Halfhand. He doesn’t need to prove himself to anyone. He’ll fit into the bigger picture snugly
  • But Theon is an outsider wherever he goes, and so turns to the ultimate insider to help him pull off his plan 
  • Theon is also just turning to Dagmer for general guidance and support, however, because Dagmer is clearly the closest thing Theon had to a father
  • When he thinks of Dagmer, he thinks of smiles. More specifically, he thinks of smiles as a reward for masculine achievement, for accomplishing one’s goals
  • Dagmer smiled when Theon proved himself, so Theon associated the feeling of proving himself with Dagmer’s love. Not just acceptance, but love, family warmth
  • So Theon calls him “uncle,” despite him not being a Greyjoy; it’s similar to the relationship between Asha and her own found father, Rodrik the Reader:
    • “...you have three uncles."

"Four."

"Three kraken uncles. I do not count."

"You do with me.”

• Theon and Asha had to find love elsewhere because they got none from their father, because there is no love within House Greyjoy these days
• Moreover, as Theon thinks to himself, he never got that smile from the Starks, either; there’s a parallel to the hole inside Stannis where Robert’s love should be
• Theon wants respect, fame, adulation. Yet all his attempts to achieve these things turn to ash, and the body count piles up. What he fails to understand is that only Dagmer gave him love, and that love is worth far more than badassery
• An enduring quality of ASOIAF is how you are by where you’re standing.
• Robb Stark is a noble warrior, fighting for the independence of the North, a loving brother to his northmen
• But to the Lannisters, he’s a beastling who can turn into a wolf and savage his enemies.
• As to Dagmer, Bran will think of him as a “monsterous war chief” attacking Torrhen’s Square.
• For Theon, though, Dagmer is a father figure, giving him his first bow, giving him the smiles that Balon never gave him.
• Theon’s famous for his wicked smile, but that smile only lasts as everyone’s playing along with his projected self-image. Dagmer’s smile has more meaning
• Dagmer smiles through the pain, smiles despite a mouthful of rotten teeth, smiles despite the hideous scar that will never go away
• He smiles because it was worth it to trade his teeth for a sense of satisfaction, the security of knowing who he is when he wakes up and goes to bed each day
• Theon has a set of perfect teeth, but as Dagmer notes, he’s not smiling. His drive to regain that smile at any cost delivers him to Ramsay, who breaks those teeth
• If only he could heed Dagmer’s advice: “The living should smile, for the dead cannot.” But the essence of youth is to ignore that advice until it’s far too late
• Theon’s crazy scheme
  • Everything we’ve talked about so far has laid the groundwork for what happens next, in which Theon commits himself to a plan that makes so much sense in character terms I’m willing to forgive how nonsensical it is in the big picture
  • Theon’s ultimate takeaway from all the blood he has spilled along the Stony Shore is not that he should stop doing that, or that the Old Way is unworthy
  • Instead, his takeaway is that his actions here will not propel him into legend, into the immortality of song and story he briefly tasted at the Whispering Wood 
  • That’s why Theon has lost his signature smile. Not because he’s committing evil deeds, but because these evil deeds aren’t spectacular enough for him
  • Definitely that’s what he’s outwardly thinking and emoting here. I do think the subconscious has him feeling guilty over what he’s doing given all his asides about feeling sick over what he’s witnessing his “fellow” ironborn doing.
  • It’s also this supreme feeling of inadequacy he feels over how his dad regards him.
    • "Why do you tell me [about your deeds in battle]?" Dagmer asked. "It was me who put your first sword in your hand. I know you are no craven."
      
      "Does my father?"
  • Dagmer gives Theon a look that all-but-confirms how Balon sees Theon, and that moment has to cut deep for Theon. He can’t measure up as an ironborn warrior. He can’t measure up as Balon Greyjoy’s son. 
  • Worst of all, his sister has the love of the ironborn and Balon
  • And just as in his last chapter, Theon decides that all of this is Asha’s fault. Not his fault, not their father’s fault, not the Old Way’s fault. Nope, it’s all Asha’s fault
  • She is effortlessly leading the life he wants to live: a war hero taking a castle and earning their father’s love, the ultimate Ironborn hero of the “old red tales”
  • And she’s doing that despite being a woman, which makes Theon feel even less like a man. His identity is rooted in his dick, and she’s beaten him without one!
  • Dagmer tells him that the way to deal with this is to keep his head down, follow orders, and prove himself gradually over time, as Asha did
  • Again, Dagmer is the closest thing to a source of wisdom in Theon’s chapters. This is the best advice Theon gets...but of course, he doesn’t follow it
  • He has both sympathetic and unsympathetic reasons for refusing Dagmer’s advice. Sympathetic: as I said, he’s caught in between no matter what he does
  • When Theon insists that he’s had battle experience, that the Starks used him properly as an asset, he’s right! But he’s still missing the point on a cultural level
  • Theon’s exploits in the war so far won’t impress his fellow Ironborn, because Theon’s war stories all involve him fighting alongside Ned Stark’s son
  • So while these stories made him sound like a sexy badass on the mainland, they only remind the Ironborn that Theon is like a brother to the son of the man who helped break Pyke and end Balon’s first rebellion. Even as Theon tries to live up to the Old Way image, even as he strives to be an insider, he remains an outsider
  • Dagmer says that Asha has never failed Balon. Theon says that he has never failed Balon either. And that’s heartbreaking, because it’s true, but doesn’t help
  • Theon never had the chance to fail Balon or to make him proud. He’s not a failure. He’s something far worse: a stranger. There’s nothing he can do about it
  • Dagmer knows and loves Theon, but that’s not enough for Theon, because he wants approbation on a public, political level. Love is not enough. If only it was!
  • And so Theon comes up with his plan to exceed his orders and take Winterfell, and this is where he veers right back into unsympathetic territory for me
  • Right away, George shows us that Theon’s crazy scheme is not rooted in logistical realities, but the projected ideal of glory from the stories and songs:
    • "We did not capture enough horses. A few, but . . . well, I'll make do with what I have, I suppose. Fewer men means more glory."
    • "Asha has four or five times the men we do."
      
      Theon allowed himself a sly smile. "But we have four times the wits, and five times the courage."
  • Theon doesn’t have enough horses or men to carry out his plan. His response is not “well, guess I can’t do the plan, then,” but “awesome! Larger slices of glory pie for everyone!” Even a first time reader can smell disaster on the wind
  • Yet in response, Dagmer does not point out that Theon’s plan breaks from reality. Instead, he points out that it breaks with the Old Way. We don’t ride horses!
  • But Theon rides horses, because as we see throughout this chapter, Theon doesn’t give a damn about the Old Way. He just wants it to seem like he does
  • So even before Theon’s plan starts to go horribly wrong with Bran and Rickon escaping, we already know it’s not going to win him the acceptance he craves
  • That only becomes more clear as his conversation with Dagmer continues. Theon’s talking about siegecraft, pitched battles against cavalry, all sorts of things that are not in the Old Way wheelhouse. This is not who we are!
  • Yet that raises the question of how this Ironborn invasion was ever going to work, if they can’t take castles in the interior. So while Theon’s plan is bad, it’s at least an attempt to seize the heart of the North, which Balon doesn’t bother to do
  • Again, we return to the topic of how short-sighted Balon’s invasion of the North was
  • The entire plan hinged on Theon harassing the Stony Shore to bait the northmen into not recognizing that the aims of the ironborn were to take Moat Cailin and Deepwood Motte
  • So, now those castles are taken, and then what, Balon? 
  • Remember in Theon II how Balon’s only thought about Winterfell is that it would hold out for a year against the ironborn?  Whyyyyy
  • Give Theon credit for this: he takes the initiative to try to stab the North through the heart where Balon’s plan was incredibly dumb and extraordinarily unlikely to succeed in the long-term
  • Now immediately take away the credit from Theon’s plan to take Winterfell, because as Asha will point out in Theon V: 
    • "Your prize will be the doom of you. Krakens rise from the sea, Theon, or did you forget that during your years among the wolves? Our strength is in our longships. My wooden pisspot sits close enough to the sea for supplies and fresh men to reach me whenever they are needful. But Winterfell is hundreds of leagues inland, ringed by woods, hills, and hostile holdfasts and castles.” 
  • So, Theon is cut off from a line of supply, in hostile territory
  • And then there’s the martyrdom aspect.
  • As Asha will point out: murdering “Bran” and “Rickon” means that every non-ironborn man is their eternal enemy. He’ll make martyrs of the boys.
  • But he’s also making a martyr of Winterfell itself: the heart of the North. 
  • There’s power in the symbol of Winterfell, home of the Starks, harvest feast, green gardens and winter town.
  • Winterfell has a near-religious symbolic importance to the northmen.
  • So, violently seizing Winterfell makes the castle a rallying cry for the northmen who want to right the desecration that Theon the foreign invader has brought to the North. 
  • Or maybe he’s not so foreign of an invader.
  • But the only reason Theon’s plan to take Winterfell has a prayer of working is that he knows Ser Rodrik and Leobald Tallhart well enough to predict their actions. Why does he know them so well? Because he spent years in the North
  • So every move Theon makes to try and establish an Ironborn identity winds up exposing the Northern identity underneath. And yet, Theon has now sacrificed that Northern identity, as we saw at the start of the chapter with Benfred
  • There’s no exit for him. So he has to conjure one out of thin air, composed entirely of the person he wants to be in the stories and songs
  • And that appeal to immortality in legend is precisely how Theon wins Dagmer over to his plan. Theon might not remember much from his childhood on the Iron Islands, but he remembers how much Dagmer loves the songs about him
  • Even as his mortal flesh ages, even as his teeth go rotten and his hair goes white, Dagmer feels young and strong again when his song is playing
  • The power of fiction to temporarily dispel and defy reality is one of the main reasons we keep telling each other stories; it’s a power to be used for good or ill
  • Sometimes, the shadow on the wall inspires our best self, as with Catelyn making one last plea for peace after her spiritual journey in the sept
  • But other times, our projected image of who we want to be inspires our worst self, and that’s what happens in Theon III to both our POV and his father figure
  • The person they want to be, the main character of reality, is a mirage that leads them over the edge; when Theon wakes up, he’s alone with the Bastard of Bolton
  • Theon kinda reminds me of the alcoholic who tries to drown his sorrows in bigger and better drunks
  • Theon’s underlying sorrows are that he can’t measure up to a culture he was ripped away from and can’t gain the respect of his father.
  • So, he drowns his grief in violence. Committing a war crime in this village is Theon’s first blood-drunk as ironborn. It leaves him miserable as you articulated so well!
  • But hey, that’s because this was unglorious! 
  • Go to Winterfell, commit more violence, do more terrible shit. Earn the respect of your people and dad
  • That’s the ticket: do a bolder deed, do more violence. Get even more blood-drunk!
  • But as Theon is going to find out at Winterfell and at the mill outside of the castle, all the violence Theon commits doesn’t earn him respect. It doesn’t grant him a father’s love.
  • It strips the humanity off Theon — long before he’s flayed.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Theon thinks that Benfred was lucky to escape the axe, because it might've taken a few tries to behead him...which is exactly what happens when Theon executes Farlen at Winterfell. 

Dagmer mentions three Ironborn fighters that rival him in the stories and songs these days. One of them, Black Lorren, accompanies Theon to Winterfell and dies there fighting Ramsay's men. The other two--Andrik the Unsmiling and Qarl the Maid--will appear in the flesh come AFFC.

Theory/Discussion

Will Dagmer Cleftjaw ever return to the narrative? If so, how?

• Dagmer goes along with Theon’s plan, laying siege to Torrhen’s Square in the hopes of luring Ser Rodrik out of Winterfell. It works; Rodrik marches south with a large force
• As Asha reports in Theon V, Rodrik easily defeats Dagmer and sends him reeling back toward the Stony Shore...but then Rodrik hears that Theon has taken Winterfell
• Rodrik immediately leads his men back to Winterfell, including Leobald Tallhart, castellan of Torrhen’s Square. This is where the Dagmer chronology starts to break down
• At some point, Dagmer apparently goes back to Torrhen’s Square, and finding it undefended after Leobald and his men die at Winterfell, goes ahead and takes it
• We first hear about this near the end of ASOS, when Stannis tells Jon that the Ironborn hold Torrhen’s Square along with Moat Cailin and Deepwood Motte
• The Ironborn presence in Torrhen’s Square is mentioned a couple times in Cersei’s AFFC chapters, and in Asha’s ADWD chapters, it’s confirmed that Dagmer holds the castle; some of Asha’s men want to retreat there and help him hold the line, assuming that the Northerners will try to retake the Square now that Moat Cailin is theirs again
• This potential showdown is interrupted on both sides by Stannis’ campaign in the North. He retakes Deepwood Motte from Asha, and his presence forces the Bolton coalition to march north to Winterfell, rather than sticking around at Barrowton for the Ramsay-Jeyne wedding and presumably dealing with Dagmer at some point after that
• As such, Dagmer Cleftjaw and Torrhen’s Square remain off page for the entirety of ADWD as they did for ASOS, leading to the question: why is he there at all?
• It’s never made clear why he bothered to take the castle or what his long-term goal is. He pokes multiple logistical holes in Theon’s plan in this chapter, going along with it only out of a desire to further cement his place in the “old red tales” of the Ironborn
• Taking Torrhen’s Square doesn’t fit with that motivation, nor does it help Theon’s plan, nor does it really further the overall goal of Ironborn conquest of the North
• Aeron just goes back to the Iron Islands after his part in the war is done. Why doesn’t Dagmer? Why doesn’t he go home for the kingsmoot, as Victarion does?
• I think the only reason Dagmer took Torrhen’s Square and then stuck around this long is that George needs him to, because Dagmer is Theon and Asha’s ticket back home
• After the struggle for Winterfell is done--Boltons dead, Jon resurrected and crowned, Stannis rejected and sent running to the Nightfort--Theon and Asha will presumably escape or be sent on their way. But how are they to get back to the Iron Islands?
• Dagmer Cleftjaw, that’s how! He has men, he has boats, he’s someone they can trust. He can sail them back to Harlaw; they can forge a coalition with Rodrik the Reader, overthrow Euron’s puppet Erik Ironmaker, and rule the Iron Islands wisely and well 

Conclusion

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