Pyke

Seat of House Greyjoy

A castle of black stone strung across sea-stacks and rope bridges, battered by the Sunset Sea.

The fuller tale

Pyke was a castle on a headland once; the sea has been editing it ever since. What remains is a keep on the cliff and a scatter of towers marooned on bare sea-stacks, laced together by swaying rope bridges over a churn of grey water ÔÇö the Great Keep, the Kitchen Keep, the Bloody Keep with its old murders remembered in the name, and the Sea Tower on the outermost stack, ringed by spray. Nobody would build a castle this way; the point is that nobody had to. The ironborn simply refused to move as the land drowned under them, and Pyke became what it is ÔÇö a house argument with the ocean, unresolved after a thousand years.

The Greyjoys rule the Iron Islands from here under the sigil of the golden kraken, heirs of the Grey King and keepers of the Old Way ÔÇö the creed that iron is paid for, not sown, and that a crown taken by reaping outranks any granted by a king on land. Nine years before the story opens, Balon Greyjoy tested that creed against RobertÔÇÖs realm and lost everything at his own gates: the walls breached, one son dead in the fighting, the last surviving boy carried off to Winterfell as ward and hostage. The rebellionÔÇÖs wreckage is the storyÔÇÖs inheritance.

TheonÔÇÖs homecoming is the castleÔÇÖs defining scene in the early tale ÔÇö the heir returning after nine years to find his father contemptuous of his southern silks, his sister risen into the place he thought was his, and the Old Way waiting like a debt. Pyke does not welcome him back; it re-auditions him, and every disaster he authors afterward ÔÇö the seized castle, the murdered boys, the burned home of the family that half-raised him ÔÇö is him failing the audition twice over, once for each family.

BalonÔÇÖs death on one of his own rope bridges hands the islands to the storyÔÇÖs wildest card. Euron CrowÔÇÖs Eye comes home from the worldÔÇÖs far edge with a smile and a fleet, takes the driftwood crown, and turns Pyke from a brooding backwater into a genuine power in the endgame ÔÇö while his niece and the broken heir he helped shape carry the islandsÔÇÖ other possibility, the one where the kraken fights for something besides itself. Pyke endures throughout as it always has: half-drowned, unbowed, and convinced the sea will blink first.

The page and the screen

The tellings crown Euron differently. In the books BalonÔÇÖs fall from the bridge happens in a storm with EuronÔÇÖs hand only suspected, and the kingsmoot is held not at Pyke but on Old Wyk, beneath the ribs of Nagga, where Euron wins the driftwood crown with a captured dragon horn and promises of conquest. The show puts the kinslaying on screen ÔÇö Euron introducing himself to his brother mid-bridge ÔÇö and compresses the kingsmoot into PykeÔÇÖs shadow, trading the horn for pure bravado. Asha in the books becomes Yara on screen, one character under two names.

The chronicle here

Theon Greyjoy comes home to Pyke and finds his father unimpressed and his sister commanding ships. (S2┬ÀE2)
Theon comes home to Pyke and finds contempt: his father plans to take the North with iron, not join it, and his sister has his ship. (ACOK 12)
Maester Aemon calls the question at last: Sam's quiet lies bring Cotter Pyke and Denys Mallister to withdraw in favor of a compromise no one saw coming. (ASOS 79)