Spoiler alert: this blog is published after Game of Thrones airs on HBO in the US on Sunday night and on Foxtel in Australia on Monday. Do not read unless you have watched season seven, episode two, which airs in the UK on Sky Atlantic on Monday at 2am and 9pm, and is repeated in Australia on Showcase on Monday at 7.30pm AEST.
There’s been every shade of psychopath on Westeros. For flippant, whimsical cruelty we had King Joffrey Baratheon. For psychosexual sadism (in fact, sadism of all kinds) there was the bastard Ramsay Bolton. Now, unfortunately for them both, Joffrey and Ramsay are dead. But stepping into their psycho shoes this week was Euron Greyjoy and his own particular brand of horror.
Euron is the King of the Iron Islands, home of the seafaring folk the Ironborn who have an unhealthily fascination with drowning. Their motto reads - “what is dead may never die” - though Euron has spent most of his time since he first appeared in Game of Thrones’ last season disproving the point.
He first turned up at the Iron Islands’ castle The Pyke on a rope bridge, obscured by a cowl. Seconds later he’d chucked his own brother off the rope bridge to his death. The brother, Balon, also happened to be King and Euron soon set about trying to claim the throne for himself.
Euron duly became leader of the aqua men, but not without meeting resistance from Balon’s daughter Yara and her brother Theon, aka, Alfie Allen, aka Reek, Ramsay Bolton’s neutered slave. Yara and Theon refused to recognise Euron’s rule and ran off with the Ironborn’s famed fleet of ships. This week Euron got his revenge and didn’t spare the lashes.
Euron’s type of psychopathy is the gleeful kind. He loves a fight, a face full of blood and the feeling of someone’s windpipe crushing between his hands. Played by Pilou Asbaek (who made his name as Kasper Juul in Borgen), Euron likes to signify his bloodlust with a wild cackle, a toothy grin and a bulging eyeball.
Having somehow snuck up on Yara’s fleet, we don’t quite know how, Euron destroys all the ships that were the pride of his kingdom by setting fire to their sails with flaming arrows. He storms the main vessel, and a gory fight ensues. There are swords into guts and axes into heads. The Dornish queen Ellaria, herself familiar with intra-familial betrayal, is captured but saved from death for a worse fate (viewers will be in little doubt as to what that will mean). On deck Ellaria’s daughters, known as the Sand Snakes (who so memorably flirted with Jerome Flynn’s Bronn back in season five), face off against Euron and are killed one by one.
The scene comes to a climax with Yara fighting Euron herself. But as brave as she is, Yara has never been as indefatigable a warrior as Jon Snow or Brienne of Tarth. She was ultimately outdone by Ramsay when she stormed the Dreadfort in season five and was beaten by Euron to the Iron Crown in the first place (though sexism amongst the selectorate may have had something to do with that). As hard as Yara fights she soon finds her uncle’s axe against her neck as Euron challenges Theon to rescue her. Rather than save his sister, however, the heavily traumatised Theon reverts to his Reek persona and runs for safety, jumping into the cold sea. The last shot we see is of him clinging to wreckage as Euron’s black dreadnought slips off into the distance.
Yara could be dead, we don’t know, though the suspicion would be that her psycho uncle has plans for her yet. Likely she will be handed to Cersei Lannister as a gift. Meanwhile the Dornish royal family have been gutted, the Iron fleet is a pile of cinders and Theon has proven himself untrustworthy once more. All this is bad news for Daenerys Targareyen who’d been relying on the fleet to lay siege to Kings Landing. By contrast, Cersei will be feeling pleased with herself. Which, to be fair, is par for the course.
