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Why didn't Quellon Greyjoy foster his sons across Westeros?


Oakhearts head

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So what we know about Quellon Greyjoy is that Quellon tried to reform the ways of the ironborn and integrate them with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms by freeing thralls, forbidding most reaving, discouraging salt wives, encouraging marriages with the mainland, and bringing maesters to the Iron Islands. Apparently, he was largely (but not completely) successful in this. Despite doing a lot to remove the Old Way from the Isles, he was considered a strong ruler and was respected among the Ironborn while forming solid relationships with other powerful lords across Westeros.

The isles were still a conservative place with plenty of old raiders though who could (and evidently did) fill his kids with the Old Way mentality. Why not send Balon, Euron, Victarion and Aeron to various large port cities/castles with strong connections to the Faith of the Seven for a few years, like Oldtown or Seagard? I'm not sure there is anything that could have curbed Euron's psych, but allowing his children to form friendships and sympathies to the mainland (a la Robb Stark and Theon, as well as Baelor Blacktyde with the Hightowers) couldn't hurt especially when your subjects apparently respect you anyway. So how could it have hurt Quellon to foster his kids away from Pyke?

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The relationship between the port cities that you mentioned and the ironborn were presumably not that great because of the history of reaving, so I think sending his sons to the those places would be like volunteering his sons to be hostages. If some ironborn don't listen to the Greyjoys and would start reaving the coast again, for example the Cape of Eagles, Seagard would be a very bad place for a son of the Quellon to be. 

I would think it is possible that Quellon first wanted to gain some trust on the mainland before thinking about fostering his sons off

 

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I suppose we could take Theon as an example here:

Although Theon was a hostage, he still spent half of his life in Winterfell with the Starks and was treated mostly as a ward. As we know, this greatly changed him from the little Ironborn boy he was when he was first taken from Pyke, but it lead to him being estranged from not just his family, but also his entire culture.

The Ironborn have their own culture and their own ideas about how things should be run and, as we know, old habits die hard. Unless you forcibly convert people (and have the proper army and reinforcements to put them down again when they inevitably rise against you), they are not just going to change their ways in just one generation.

Another huge thing for the Ironborn is the Drowned God; most of the Ironborn follow him and they would of course want a leader who is a worshipper of the Drowned God and follows their ways, and not a follower of the Seven or the Old Gods who might try to force them to change their way of life. Ask a mostly Christian nation if they would like a Muslim leader and you'll find that not many of them would be all too happy about that.

When Theon came back to Pyke, he had no friends, no allies, was barely religious and didn't even recognise his own sister, which I think Quellon thought would happen if he fostered his sons on the mainland; they would become estranged from their own people.

When the Hoares were kings, they on multiple occasions tried to suppress the Ironborn way and the Drowned God, which each time lead to disaster for them. I don't know if Quellon was a man of history, but it makes sense if he looked back at the Hoares and their attempts to change the Ironborn way and realised that forcing change was not the way to go, which leads me to believe that he wanted slow change, while keeping his sons close but still making them see that there are other ways, so they would not be estranged completely from their culture and the people of the Ironborn.

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1 hour ago, Vaedys Targaryen said:

I suppose we could take Theon as an example here:

Although Theon was a hostage, he still spent half of his life in Winterfell with the Starks and was treated mostly as a ward. As we know, this greatly changed him from the little Ironborn boy he was when he was first taken from Pyke, but it lead to him being estranged from not just his family, but also his entire culture.

The Ironborn have their own culture and their own ideas about how things should be run and, as we know, old habits die hard. Unless you forcibly convert people (and have the proper army and reinforcements to put them down again when they inevitably rise against you), they are not just going to change their ways in just one generation.

Another huge thing for the Ironborn is the Drowned God; most of the Ironborn follow him and they would of course want a leader who is a worshipper of the Drowned God and follows their ways, and not a follower of the Seven or the Old Gods who might try to force them to change their way of life. Ask a mostly Christian nation if they would like a Muslim leader and you'll find that not many of them would be all too happy about that.

When Theon came back to Pyke, he had no friends, no allies, was barely religious and didn't even recognise his own sister, which I think Quellon thought would happen if he fostered his sons on the mainland; they would become estranged from their own people.

When the Hoares were kings, they on multiple occasions tried to suppress the Ironborn way and the Drowned God, which each time lead to disaster for them. I don't know if Quellon was a man of history, but it makes sense if he looked back at the Hoares and their attempts to change the Ironborn way and realised that forcing change was not the way to go, which leads me to believe that he wanted slow change, while keeping his sons close but still making them see that there are other ways, so they would not be estranged completely from their culture and the people of the Ironborn.

Very good points here. If he sent away all his children or even most of them, on their return they would be foreigners in their own land who the ironborn won't respect. Take for Balon for instant, he earned the respect of the captains through his daring feats from a young age like reaving with Dagmer Cleftjaw at 15. If he had been tutored in Westeros he might become an accomplished jouster but that won't help improve his standing with his future subjects. 

While it is true Quellon was respected by his vassals I don't think they would have supported the fostering of all his children away to foreigners. Maybe Aeron and the younger brother (forgot his name) but I can't see Quellon fostering his eldest sons away going down well with the captains of the Iron Fleet and the lords. The fact that they reverted almost completely back to the Old Way under Balon within a decade or so of Quellon's death speaks volumes about how popular his Greenlander reforms were. 

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