Theon Greyjoy

Theon was born on Pyke, the third son of Balon Greyjoy and Alannys Harlaw, and grew up taking beatings from his older brothers, Rodrik and Maron. It was Dagmer who put his first sword in his hand.

He was ten when the Greyjoy Rebellion was crushed and both his brothers died in it. Overnight he went from third in line to heir of his house, and Eddard Stark took him from Pyke as hostage and ward — the guarantee that the Iron Islands would not rise again.

Winterfell raised him for nine years alongside the Stark children, under the same lessons from Maester Luwin and the same sword training from Ser Rodrik Cassel. He treated Robb like a brother and barely spoke to Jon Snow. He came to see Eddard as something like a second father, though underneath he always felt a certain coldness from him, and as a boy he dreamed that Eddard might marry him to Sansa and claim him as a son of his own.

In 296 he traveled with Lord Eddard to Torrhen's Square and spent two weeks mocking Benfred Tallhart's thick neck. Among the women of Winterfell and the nearby villages, Theon built himself a reputation as a womanizer long before he built one of his own.

When the Stark children go to watch a Night's Watch deserter beheaded, it's Theon who hands Eddard the greatsword Ice, and afterward kicks the severed head as a joke. When King Robert comes north to ask his old friend Ned to be his Hand, Theon joins the royal hunting party; he stays behind at Winterfell when Eddard rides south.

With Eddard imprisoned, war breaks out, and Robb — acting Lord of Winterfell — makes Theon his right hand in battle, his messenger to Ser Brynden Tully, and one of his personal guards. At the Whispering Wood he came within a hair of crossing swords with Ser Jaime Lannister, and after the Battle of the Camps he argued, unsuccessfully, for storming the Twins and executing the Kingslayer.

He followed Robb to Riverrun, where the northern bannermen proclaimed him King in the North.

King Robb sent Theon as an envoy to the Iron Islands to seal an alliance with his father. On Pyke he ran first into his sister Asha's contempt, and then into Balon's real plan: not an alliance with the Starks, but a war of his own to invade the North. Theon was handed a minor command, and the insult stung more than his loyalty to Robb.

Raiding along the Stony Shore, he decided to disobey his orders and gamble on his own: he sent most of his men to distract the garrison at Torrhen's Square while he took a nearly empty Winterfell.

With the castle in his hands and Bran and Rickon as hostages, Theon found holding Winterfell easier than ruling it. When the boys escaped with help from Jojen and Meera Reed, Osha, and Hodor, he couldn't find them, so he beheaded two miller's sons and passed off their bodies as the Stark boys'. He asked Asha for help; she came, pulled some of her men out, and told him to run with her. Theon stayed.

Without knowing it, he freed a prisoner from the dungeons who called himself Reek — really Ramsay Bolton in disguise. When Bolton's men fell on Ser Rodrik Cassel's returning garrison and wiped it out, Theon nearly surrendered the castle and joined the Night's Watch on Maester Luwin's advice. He didn't make it in time: Ramsay revealed who he was, took him prisoner, and burned Winterfell to the ground.

Word reached from the Dreadfort, signed by one Ramsay Snow, that Theon had burned Winterfell while trying to defend it from a northern attack. Worse news followed: that Ramsay had flayed him alive as punishment.

Lord Tywin Lannister briefly considered marrying Theon to his daughter Cersei. None of that mattered once Roose Bolton sent Robb Stark and his mother Catelyn a strip of skin flayed from Theon. With Balon Greyjoy dead in a fall at Pyke, Roose convinced Robb to keep Theon alive until the question of who would inherit the Iron Islands was settled. It was during that wait that the Red Wedding took place.

At the Dreadfort, Ramsay turned Theon into someone else. He flayed the fingers off his hands and feet, and his genitals too; he broke his teeth because his smile annoyed him. He wasn't allowed to bathe, was smeared with filth, and was made to sleep beside his master's bitches. When someone asked his name, he no longer answered Theon Greyjoy. He answered Reek.

The torture changed his body too: he lost weight, lost teeth, his skin dried and wrinkled, and he began to walk like an old man on his mutilated feet. He could no longer draw a bow.

With help from Kyra, an old lover from Winterfell, he managed to escape the castle. The escape was another of Ramsay's traps — he gave them a day's head start before setting out to hunt them with his hounds. Theon was taken alive again; Kyra was killed by Ramsay's dogs.

When Roose Bolton announced his return north, Ramsay had Theon dressed and cleaned up and sent him to Moat Cailin to offer the ironborn holding it safe passage in exchange for surrender. Once they surrendered, Ramsay flayed every one of them and hung their bodies along the road to the ruined castle. He then had strips of Theon's skin carried to his sister Asha at Deepwood Motte, and to Dagmer at Torrhen's Square, as a warning to leave the North.

Ramsay became betrothed to the girl everyone believed was Arya Stark. When she was brought before him, Theon recognized at once that she wasn't Arya at all, but Jeyne Poole, daughter of Winterfell's former steward. He said nothing about what he knew. She, for her part, begged him to save her.

At the bedding ceremony, Ramsay forced Theon to undress her and rouse her, then made him watch as he degraded her. All Theon could do was wish for Stannis to come and kill Ramsay.

Lady Dustin was one of the few people at Winterfell who spoke to him without contempt, and one afternoon she asked him to take her down to the Stark crypts, where she told him about her history with Brandon Stark and the resentment she still carried against Eddard. When a string of murders sowed distrust among the Bolton, Frey, and Manderly men, it was Lady Dustin who argued that Theon lacked the strength to have committed them.

Lost in the godswood, Theon thought he saw Bran Stark's face in the weirwood and heard his own name whispered; for a moment his mind came back to him. A singer called Abel and his women used the chaos of the killings to smuggle Jeyne out of the castle, and Theon helped them. The two of them jumped together from the walls and escaped, until Mors Umber caught them and brought them to Stannis Baratheon's camp. There, Asha — a prisoner of Stannis herself — barely recognized Theon, changed by Ramsay's torture.