Victarion Greyjoy is a bit of an odd choice for this ranking. Not because he actually is a good guy who’s just misunderstood by us readers or something. No. He certainly is not. He is an odd choice, because he is hardly the cruelest, the maddest, the most evil, the most selfish, the most disgusting or even the most boring character in ASoIaF. He is neither, I would even go so far as to say that probably nobody will seriously claim he were. So, why is the guy on our list? In other words: Why did so many of you vote for him?
It seems that being ironborn is pretty much a key asset if one plans to end up on this list. The ironborn represent the least‐liked culture or region of Westeros overall. Theon Greyjoy used to be among the characters …show more content…
Every reader is predisposed not to like the ironborn, because we see them through the eyes of their enemies most of the time. If the story began with a quite likeable Asha Greyjoy still missing her little brother that has been a hostage of cruel Lord Stark for over a decade now, whose son has turned him into more of a wolf by now, we might see things differently.
So, how despicable is Victarion in comparison with his siblings and his niece and nephew? First of all, all these characters show varying degrees of a tendency toward a certain casual kind of cruelty, which comes naturally to some of them, while with others it seems that they feel the need to emulate that casual cruelty. In Balon and in Euron we see it all the time. In the former it takes the shape of a felt necessity which he takes pride in being able fulfill unflinchingly, in the latter it is more of an instrument of sadistic pleasure. Asha and Aeron share the family trait to a lesser degree. We see it in her when she threatens Tristifer Botley, and in him it’s an actualization of the harshness of his god. Theon is clearly only emulating when he is playing Prince of Winterfell, for example.
Victarion is emulating, too, I think, only he has been doing it for thirty years and more. He has
It seems that being ironborn is pretty much a key asset if one plans to end up on this list. The ironborn represent the least‐liked culture or region of Westeros overall. Theon Greyjoy used to be among the characters …show more content…
Every reader is predisposed not to like the ironborn, because we see them through the eyes of their enemies most of the time. If the story began with a quite likeable Asha Greyjoy still missing her little brother that has been a hostage of cruel Lord Stark for over a decade now, whose son has turned him into more of a wolf by now, we might see things differently.
So, how despicable is Victarion in comparison with his siblings and his niece and nephew? First of all, all these characters show varying degrees of a tendency toward a certain casual kind of cruelty, which comes naturally to some of them, while with others it seems that they feel the need to emulate that casual cruelty. In Balon and in Euron we see it all the time. In the former it takes the shape of a felt necessity which he takes pride in being able fulfill unflinchingly, in the latter it is more of an instrument of sadistic pleasure. Asha and Aeron share the family trait to a lesser degree. We see it in her when she threatens Tristifer Botley, and in him it’s an actualization of the harshness of his god. Theon is clearly only emulating when he is playing Prince of Winterfell, for example.
Victarion is emulating, too, I think, only he has been doing it for thirty years and more. He has