☆ a song of ice and fire [book series] ☆ & ☆ game of thrones [tv show] ☆
i've only read portions of the books due to not meshing with grrm's prose, so my interest and understanding of theon is largely based on the tv series with bits of the books filtering in. i dropped got entirely partway into season 4 and only really care about theon in seasons 1 and 2. after season 2, the writing gets murkier (despite alfie still killing it). i refuse to acknowledge anyone as a theon fan if they can't love him in those two seasons.
[☆ Posted: Jan. 25, 2023.]
happy over ten years to this poor motherfucker and my intense love for him!
because, yes, i have a complicated relationship with the game of thrones tv series (passionate adoration that crashed and burned with me ditching partway into s4), but theon. theon. i need you to imagine me loudly crying his name in the way that old guy from umineko yells beatrice. the drama, the love, the fixation. we have it all here, between me and this sad sack of daddy issues.
no. i'm really serious. i love theon greyjoy. i collect those nice pvc figures of anime characters and thus have a number of nendoroids, but i still gleefully accepted a funko pop of theon because it was some of the little merch of his s1-2 self that i could ever scrounge up. he sits next to a painted portrait of my cat and my beautiful wedding zero two figure. i cherish that thing because it is theon, and theon is love, theon is life.
while i am often attracted to characters with a divisive reputation, theon was fully organic. i began watching game of thrones while the second season was airing, and when i got to early s2 episodes where theon is traveling back to the iron isles, my slow transformation into a theon stan began. i resisted at first because have you seen this little asshole? i did not want to love him. this is an important part of the hatching process: you, the burgeoning theon stan, have to fight every step of the process. you don't want to like him, but oh shit, you are starting to get him. he's a little turd, but you understand, and now you're beginning to even sympathize with him.
he's an outsider, a squid amongst wolves if we want to put it in a silly way. but he is an outsider. family is important in westerosi society. kinslaying is a vile crime because it's not just murder, it's murder of your family. your family name (and whether or not you are legitimately born because whew, boy, bastards is a whole other discussion) defines you whether you like it or not.
and theon is a greyjoy. he was a child when his father rose up in a revolt that ned stark helped to crush and made theon into his father's sole male heir. so because of that, theon is taken from his birth family as a ward (a nicer word for what theon really is: a political hostage) by the starks. the starks are kind to theon, treating him well enough. a much unkinder family could have been the ones to take responsibility for theon; his circumstances could easily be worse, but that doesn't diminish that kind captors are captors all the same.
the starks are not theon's family, and that is always made so expressly clear to him. he is friendly with robb, but he is not ned stark's son. he is the insurance that kept the iron isles down. if balon greyjoy rises again, his heir loses his head. ned tasks theon with carrying his blade for an execution in the show's opening episode as a reminder. theon is fed and clothed and given shelter, but this is not his home and these are not his people. they never let him forget that.
theon goes "home" in season 2. on behalf of his friend robb stark, theon means to petition his father to support robb. balon takes a single look at the son he hasn't seen in years and years and disdains him. theon looks and talks like a stark. balon's already made other arrangements and raised theon's sister, asha, as his replacement heir. the iron isles already have plans in the work to attack the north even if theon hadn't wandered back home. theon means shit to his birth family, and his crisis of identity spirals into a series of terrible decisions that end with him taking winterfell, pretending to have killed the two youngest stark boys, and then failing to hold winterfell.
theon isn't a stark because he was not born into that family. he's their hostage, their means of pacifying balon greyjoy. but theon isn't really a greyjoy either because his father doesn't want him. he's a worthless hostage whose life hanging in the balance was not enough to stymie his father's ambitions. but theon has to be a greyjoy because that's what he fell back on for the half of his life he spent in winterfell. everyone looked at him and called him a greyjoy, so what the hell is this shit where his father is now rolling his eyes because wow, theon, you sure dress and talk nice like some kind of hoity-toity northerner.
how does theon become enough? how does theon earn his place? how does theon carve out an identity?
he gets desperate and stupid, and one of my absolute favorite scenes of his is when he wants the fucking horn to shut up because he's cornered and bitter and defeat is a matter of time. it is the thesis statement of theon's character.
theon: "first time i saw winterfell--first time i saw winterfell, looked like something that had been here for thousands of years and would be here for thousands of years after i was dead. i saw it and thought 'course ned stark crushed our rebellion and killed my brothers.' we never stood a chance against a man who lives here."
maester luwin: "lord stark went out of his way to make it your home."
theon: "yes, my captors were so very kind to me. you love reminding me of that. everyone in this frozen pile of shit has always loved reminding me of that. know what it's like to be told how lucky you are to be someone's prisoner? to be told how much you owe them? and then to go back home to your real father--"
i love him. i love him so terribly much. theon is a mess of identity issues, and he owes the starks nothing. i will die on this hill of how little he owes the starks. kind captors are still captors, and theon did not leave winterfell without damage from that. he's too greyjoy for winterfell, and he's too influenced by the starks now to return home to the iron isles. so he makes arguably terrible decisions designed to eke out a place for himself as a greyjoy, and it goes so badly because his father does not care and cannot be made to care.
he's here to stay forever in my heart.
my number one favorite fictional character of all time.
this goddamn wonderful hot mess of a boy.
if you only like theon post-reek, you are fake theon fan to me. you must love him at his worst in seasons 1 and 2. you must love him when he is bleeding terrible decisions from his desperation for a place to belong. you must love him before the show just makes you feel so, so, so bad for him that well, he was wrong, but this is a bit much punishment.
i remember his tag on tumblr when season 3 was airing. it was an ocean of gifs of that one moment where ramsay is wiggling a sausage because theon's trauma and forced castration is very funny. we don't like him, so it's hilarious. let's repost this gif some more and have zero sympathy for theon's grievous torture because he really wronged his captors.
it's been years, but i still am so goddamn salty. unless you can love theon before he became reek, you don't really understand his character and do not deserve him.
THE BOY OF BOYS. NUMBER ONE IN MY HEART. NUMBER ONE UNTIL I DIE. THEOOOOOON!!!!