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I think Euron is full off shit, and that is gonna disappoint some people.


politemom_

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As I only have the Swedish translations of the books at hand, I can't give you the direct quote; but there is a moment in AFFC when Euron is boasting about having travelled through Valyria and Rodrik "The Reader" Harlaw simply asks him "Have you?". After that Euron completely loses his cool and tells Harlaw to stick to his books.

Can't wait for everybody's "Euron Apocalypse" theories to go down the drain after realizing what a fraud he is :D

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  • 4 weeks later...

I don’t know if Euron will disappoint, but I find it highly likely that some of the popular predictions made since ADWD came out won’t come to fruition, which will initially cause some disappointment. Stannis might not beat the Boltons, Jon might not be King in the North, Arianne might not marry Aegon, Tyrion might not team up with Dany, Sansa might not kill Littlefinger, Cersei might not blow shit up. I mean, just look at how hard some people have taken the revelation that Bran isn’t going to become a magic tree (which was always one of the dumber predictions, in my opinion).

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It is a curious exchange but it'd just mean he hasn't been to Valyria, of which the implication would be what exactly? The shit the man possesses and is pulling in the sample chapter is already off the charts.

It should be noted that the exchange might just be seeding for the end of the Forsaken chapter where Aeron believes the question is answered by what Euron shows.

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I haven't gotten to Feast yet cuz I'm reading the books out of order, but I feel like Euron is a little bit pointless. The ironborn already seem to establish themselves as warmongers in Clash, so why bring in all this Cthulu-like nonsense? Yes, I know the books are supposed to be fantasy, but this is all going to be too much. There's so much going on already.

Euron also comes off as arrogant and sociopathic in a crazy way. He almost comes off as a Gary Stu. He torments his brothers and appears to have gotten no comeuppance for it. He was kicked out of the Iron Islands for getting someone's wife killed and isn't remorseful. In fact, he just uses his exile to go on an extended vacation. He has a bunch of people following his every command yet doesn't care about their loyalty and plans to cull them all once he gets what he wants. Yet he gets to be king?

I would've dropped Euron altogether and put more focus on Balon as a "stupid evil" type of villain. He won't learn from his mistakes and won't seek out even a truce with the North. His decision to invade the North is stupid and reckless and gets his men killed or put at the (lack of) mercy of the Boltons. He wants to uphold the Old Ways yet is willing to make his daughter his successor after he dies over his son, who was a hostage in the North. Wouldn't making a woman a ruler of the ironborn be a break from the Old Ways? 

The Ironborn plot should've been about the Ironborn being divided over the Old Ways and following Balon and the New Ways and turning over a new leaf with Westeros. Balon's death was utterly pointless to me.

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In this world people may slip their soul from their body into another beast or human and take them over. They may also cheat death by this method. This ability and those not yet fully revealed inherently bring with them all kinds of opportunities for horrendous depravity. To simply ignore these possibilities and pretend no-one ever has or would do these things would be rather naive, a blind spot, and other texts might do just that, but this is ASOIAF and so we have Euron.

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On 1/20/2022 at 6:47 AM, politemom_ said:

As I only have the Swedish translations of the books at hand, I can't give you the direct quote; but there is a moment in AFFC when Euron is boasting about having travelled through Valyria and Rodrik "The Reader" Harlaw simply asks him "Have you?". After that Euron completely loses his cool and tells Harlaw to stick to his books.

Can't wait for everybody's "Euron Apocalypse" theories to go down the drain after realizing what a fraud he is :D

I hope not. I want the Euroncalypse to happen given the amount of hints and foreshadowing

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Given that it's hinted that Euron does have some magical abilities, though as a greenseer and/or a skinchanger, and that he has gotten his hands on real mystical stuff such as the dragon horn as well as the valyrian armor and other items he showed in the Forsaken, I would say that he's surely going to be a threat and causes much destruction. 

Of course given his reaction to Rodrik's question about him having ever truly been to Valyria and his meeting with the warlocks from Quarth it's likely that he indeed never went himself to Valyria or at least not deep in the land to avoid suffering a very cruel death or something even worse and that the valyrian items were found and stolen elsewhere, at least that the horn belonged to the warlocks who intended to use it to gain control of Daenerys' dragons.

I also don't think that he'll truly conquer Oldtown and the rest of the Reach, such as Highgarden. Even with Euron having some magic tricks the Ironborn remain too few in number and inadapted for land warfare and holding castles and cities out. Even if he defeats the Redwyne Fleet and breach Oldtown's defenses I think he'll just quickly take as much plunder as he can and perhaps some stuff in the Citadel and retreat before the Hightower and Tyrell reinforcements arrive. 

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On 1/19/2022 at 9:47 PM, politemom_ said:

As I only have the Swedish translations of the books at hand, I can't give you the direct quote; but there is a moment in AFFC when Euron is boasting about having travelled through Valyria and Rodrik "The Reader" Harlaw simply asks him "Have you?". After that Euron completely loses his cool and tells Harlaw to stick to his books.

Can't wait for everybody's "Euron Apocalypse" theories to go down the drain after realizing what a fraud he is :D

The things we already know about him are more than enough. 

That he's never been to Valyria was always pretty clear to me, just as Dragonbinder doesn't serve the purpose he says it does. 

The interesting thing about him is his complete lack of morality, which makes him dangerous, no matter which angle you choose to look at him from. 

Aeron's TWOW chapter confronts you with how far Euron's own willingness extends about basically anything, that's what made him a main villain, not horns, money, or lies. Altough if u ask me, he defo has a kraken, in a Davy Jones style. 

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I am of the opinion that the Forsaken chapter of TWOW confirms earlier hints in AFFC that Euron will indeed play a significant antagonistic role in the larger magical plot of the series. However, I do think that Rodrik scene establishes that Euron is not everything he says or thinks he is. So, how to reconcile being a significant threat while also being somewhat of a fraud?

Here's my speculation, walled off because I see that there are folks who haven't finished the series here:

Spoiler

Euron will engage in powerful blood magic in order to become a god himself. I think, one way or another, he will set off a cataclysmic event that will destroy the Wall and/or bring on a new Long Night. That's in keeping with ASOIAF ultimately being a critique of humans inviting disaster upon themselves. You could say that Euron is somewhat like the mayor in Jaws who ignored the many red flags for selfish reasons, but I think the Crowseye will ultimately function as a play on a Lovecraftian trope: the mad ambitious human who wakes the Great Old Ones, only to receive madness or his own destruction in return. So, while he's not the godlike supervillain he thinks he is, he will play a pivotal role in unleashing the true existential threat of the story.

 

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1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Altough if u ask me, he defo has a kraken, in a Davy Jones style. 

I think the kraken and/or Chthulu references are a bit of a feint on GRRM's part. He's definitely signaling that Lovecraftian eldritch horror will play a role in his world, but the how of it is very important, and will be his own twist. My wild conjecture, based on some textual analysis, is that the "krakens" will in fact be gigantic animated weirwood roots, juiced up by blood sacrifice.

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54 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I think the kraken and/or Chthulu references are a bit of a feint on GRRM's part. He's definitely signaling that Lovecraftian eldritch horror will play a role in his world, but the how of it is very important, and will be his own twist. My wild conjecture, based on some textual analysis, is that the "krakens" will in fact be gigantic animated weirwood roots, juiced up by blood sacrifice.

I don't necesarilly disagree with you, except for the fact that we have actual living krakens in the story. 

The story is pretty simple, I read the books after S7, meaning at that point Euron was a pretty established character. I knew he is meant to become a villain as I read the books. Then, reading ASOS, Varys mentions the Small Council the news of dragons and a kraken that attacked an Ibbenese ship, somewhere around Claw Isle, the seat of house Celtigar, which puts the beast somewhere in between the southern Narrow Sea and Blackwater Bay. However, both the dragons and the kraken are dismissed really fast by Tywin, as there had been more important stuff to discuss other than fairytales. But oh boy, we know neither of them are fairytales, and the whole scene is pretty ironic since we know dragons are really a thing the King of Westeros should worry about. So, being mentioned along with dragons, who will definitely become important to Westeros as well, makes me think this little sea creature may belong to someone, and I don't think I have to explain why that person is Euron. Not to mention that he at that point in time had to be on his journey back to the Iron Islands. We of course don't know if he crossed the Stepstones, to make the Narrow Sea a part of his journey, but he didn't necesarilly have to either, and after all, what doe we actually know about Euron's journey? Little more than nothing. 

 

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On 1/19/2022 at 1:47 PM, politemom_ said:

As I only have the Swedish translations of the books at hand, I can't give you the direct quote; but there is a moment in AFFC when Euron is boasting about having travelled through Valyria and Rodrik "The Reader" Harlaw simply asks him "Have you?". After that Euron completely loses his cool and tells Harlaw to stick to his books.

Can't wait for everybody's "Euron Apocalypse" theories to go down the drain after realizing what a fraud he is :D

I take it you haven't read The Forsaken chapter.

Fraud, wannabe-evil-sorcerer or actual evil sorcerer, whichever way you slice it, it doesn't matter. Euron is bad news, if only for his complete lack of morality. @Daeron the Daring said as much but I would go further to say that Euron not only has a complete lack of morality but a complete lack of loyalty, care and familiarity. He doesn't care about friends or family or legacy or anything outside of his own immediate person. I'm not even sure that he cares about himself. He is fearless. That, in and of itself, makes him more dangerous than both Littlefinger and Varys combined.

When you consider his family name/bloodline and his position as the leader of an army and a nation of people who are not only basically illiterate but have neither intellectual curiosity nor a sense of history....he becomes three times as dangerous.

He's stated several times that he is okay with destroying the world and "starting over." Not a single villain in this story thus far has expressed such desires. The closest person to that would be Littlefinger but he seems intent on turning the system inside out and destroying so that a lowborn boy such as himself can be powerful and have any girl he wants. And that's only in Westeros.

Then there's the point that @chrisdaw made. We disagree on a lot of things but in a series where people have magic powers that allow them to control minds, see the future, raise the dead and bend the elements to their will, you need to have a villain who takes it way too far.

And everyone forgets that he is after Daenerys Targaryen. People in this fandom are very outspoken when it comes to sexual violence, domestic abuse and power imbalances. And there was a HUGE outcry with the Sansa/Ramsay pairing in the TV show (all the logical, thematic and narrative errors aside) was a massive controversy. It was horrible. Nightmare fuel.

What do you think will happen to Dany if Euron gets his way?

People in this fandom are also very outspoken when it comes to governance and how Robb/Catelyn/Ned made a lot of stupid mistakes, how Cersei is an evil idiot, how Jon ruined everything and how Stannis would not be a good king because he's too harsh/strict, etc.

What happens when you have a smart and evil person with less than zero morals in control of everything?

 

I just think Euron is the ultimate political and magical human threat of the series.

Even if he's full of shit, he is far from harmless.

We talk about how Melisandre isn't that good at magic and pretends to know more than what she actually does. And then Thoros really doesn't know what he's doing--he never was very serious about his religion. But at least they both try hard to do good.

Even if Euron is a complete amateur in all things magical, you wouldn't want him summoning spirits or making a blood sacrifice anymore than you would want a drunken 16 year old behind the wheel of a 18-wheeler

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1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I don't necesarilly disagree with you, except for the fact that we have actual living krakens in the story. 

We have sailor's reports of krakens. I think Tywin is foolish to dismiss the stories as fairy tales, but it's also quite possible that the sailors witnessed what looked to them like enormous tentacles rising from the sea and pulling down a ship. It's not lying or confabulating--they would be making a reasonable interpretation from a limited vantage point.

We'll have to wait and see how it unfolds in the later books. But I'm betting a small sum of money that the kraken tentacles will be milk-white, or oily black. :)

 

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4 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

We have sailor's reports of krakens. I think Tywin is foolish to dismiss the stories as fairy tales, but it's also quite possible that the sailors witnessed what looked to them like enormous tentacles rising from the sea and pulling down a ship. It's not lying or confabulating--they would be making a reasonable interpretation from a limited vantage point.

We'll have to wait and see how it unfolds in the later books. But I'm betting a small sum of money that the kraken tentacles will be milk-white, or oily black. :)

 

So you think Varys would've reported the goddayum Small Council of mermaids as well? He clearly adressed the issue as something entirely inside the borders of reality. Especially the kraken. In case Euron is actually connected to Bloodraven, he may as well have skinchanging abilities, making it possible for him to bond with a kraken, maybe.

Funny how you outrule the possible existence of a creature that is considered an actual thing by the characters of the franchise.

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6 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

So you think Varys would've reported the goddayum Small Council of mermaids as well? He clearly adressed the issue as something entirely inside the borders of reality. Especially the kraken. In case Euron is actually connected to Bloodraven, he may as well have skinchanging abilities, making it possible for him to bond with a kraken, maybe.

Funny how you outrule the possible existence of a creature that is considered an actual thing by the characters of the franchise.

I'm not ruling it out; that's why I say we'll have to see. I'm just saying that Varys relayed a report from sailors on something that was a clearly supernatural event, but could easily have been honestly misinterpreted due to a lack of sufficient reference knowledge (like Bran assuming Jaime and Cersei are "wrestling," because sexual among humans is not something he's seen before). Moreover, GRRM has used passages conflating trees with krakens elsewhere in the books, and has the animated weirwood at the Black Gate drip salt water from its mouth.

But to be clear, I'm not saying that the krakens are actually trees. I'm saying that whatever the hell the weirwood species may be, it's regarded as a kraken, a tree, and perhaps the giants that wake from the earth, depending on the context. In real world kraken lore, they are often mistaken for islands. GRRM will likely do something similar, where the background scenery suddenly comes alive.

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9 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Moreover, GRRM has used passages conflating trees with krakens elsewhere in the books, and has the animated weirwood at the Black Gate drip salt water from its mouth.

This is true.

Nagga's Cradle on Old Wyk where the kingsmoot was help looks like a barren weirwood forest.

I still think that there are actual krakens and other submarine created (maybe even mermaids) that will appear in the story as either purposeful familiars of Euron or as monsters that Euron accidentally unleashes

But the weirwood idea is not unreasonable or impractical.

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I should maybe rephrase my position, as I think my wording was a bit confusing. 

I think people are turned off by the idea that the kraken may "merely" be a weirwood. But such a plot twist would reveal that our understanding of the weirwoods has in fact been extremely limited. Those weirwoods? They're gigantic kraken beasts! Those krakens? They're enormous weirwood creatures! I mean, it doesn't get more Lovecraftian to have an ancient, gigantic lurking entity with an incomprehensible shape and nature. One that might yield differing impressions from different people and different limited contexts. 

But yes, I do concede that it is possible that the kraken is "merely" a kraken, and not at all related to the weirwoods. But beyond the possible textual allusions linking the two creatures, I just don't find the "kraken as kraken" plot thread to be too interesting, other than added chaos to an already chaotic situation.

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42 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I'm not ruling it out; that's why I say we'll have to see. I'm just saying that Varys relayed a report from sailors on something that was a clearly supernatural event, but could easily have been honestly misinterpreted due to a lack of sufficient reference knowledge (like Bran assuming Jaime and Cersei are "wrestling," because sexual among humans is not something he's seen before). Moreover, GRRM has used passages conflating trees with krakens elsewhere in the books, and has the animated weirwood at the Black Gate drip salt water from its mouth.

The comparison with the case of Bran not realising what Jamie and Cersei does is terrible. Bran didn't know what he saw because he was an 8 year old child. In case krakens exist in ASOIAF (and they do), sailors are likely aware how does it look like. They are adult people, krakens should be something they know about due to their profession. I can see them mistake a kraken for a small island, but it is closer to me to imagine Ibbenese whale hunters had mistaken a kraken for a whale, in case they tought it's anything else but a kraken. The other important thing is how real-life sailors had this kind of shit made up, but Planetos has actual krakens lurking its oceans, without a doubt. especially because Varys doesn't present the issue of a kraken as something barely believable, and the reason Tywin dismisses it is not the same why he dismissed the rumour of dragons. He just didn't care about the kraken. He couldn't do much about it, why care.

And it isn't our business to speculate how people got to know about this whole incident. Maybe another ship saw it from a distance, maybe someone trough a telescope, maybe the ship it took down was directly beside another. Maybe someone survived the whole thing. We just don't know. What I also don't know is what kind of event can be interpreted by a human eye, from any distance, as a kraken attacking a ship. So far the only thing I personally can think of is a kraken indeed doing it so, not sure about you.

Either way, with the context (and I mean presenting this information along the news about dragons) and timing of this whole kraken story, I can hardly imagine this not being connected to Euron (who precisely could've been just there at that point) in one way or another. You know, house Greyjoy and their kraken sigil.

But either way, as I said earlier, I am not questioning what could a kraken indicate or symbolise in a game of words, I don't really have much to say or add to this, I'm thinking about it as a somewhat remote subject.

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