ASOIAF: Is Theon Greyjoy still himself after all he has been through?

Reek is Theon's true self. And Ramsay didn't create Reek so much as heunveiled him.

Of course he makes different choices now.

If he was the old Theon he'd be

• pathetically lording around 'allowing' women to give him blowjobs,
• hitting on the wives of his men
• and comforting women with the thought that he might have impregnated them;
• having the faces of little boys flayed off their skulls to save his own face;
• insisting that he is as kind and just a lord as Eddard Stark was while his men beat the practically mute gentle giant Hodor to a pulp with their spears;
• taking out his frustration by having brutal sex with his 'bedwarmer' til she weeps
• and generally doing everything he can do make the absolute worst moral choices he is make.

You know...He committed an act of bravery by taking Winterfell, I guess,  but he's  a coward.

And yeah, I have some sympathy for him for his messed up life even before his utter rape at Ramsay's hands;  but he  made the pile of straw he sleeps in himself.

But make no misake: the sniveling, whining, trembling,  pathetic, insecure, frightened man desperately eating the rat in the dark cell of the Dreadfort is who he was all along, deep down.

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art by Marc Fishman

Reek is the real Theon.

Reek is the Theon without the million-dragon smile, without the privelege of birth, without Daddy's name hovering over him, without the velvet black cloak and the gold chains and the heir to the Seastone chair conceit.

.Alone, unloved, bling-free, barely a man.

.Reek is pathetic because Theon was pathetic.

art by cabedfir

When Reek remembers his name, he doesn't revert back to the old Theon, the coward. He realizes that Reek and Theon are one and the same.

And he realizes that he has made these terrible choices. And he realizes that he is still free to choose.

So he decides to make a new choice. And maybe finally,  he has set himself free from the Smiling Coward at the top.

Written Mar 5