Discussed here, here, and here.
Here’s my thinking, which is somewhat different from @poorquentyn‘s theory. I don’t think Euron was contacted by Bloodraven as an adult, any more than Bloodraven waited for Bran to become an adult before he contacted him.
I think Euron had some sort of health crisis/near-death experience at a young age – a drowning, an illness, etc. – that acted as a shamanic calling. Bloodraven contacted him in that moment, and showed him this:
And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks…
Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.
Whereas Bran’s vision has compelled him to seek out the three-eyed crow and try to cancel the apocalypse, Euron became a metaphysical nihilist – because in the face of the truth of the heart of winter, all gods are lies – and confirmed the non-existence of divine judgement from an early age.
Agreed! I don’t think we actually do differ on this count; I don’t recall suggesting that Euron had been visited as an adult. It’s “when I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly,” after all.
Fair enough. To me, though, that changes the tenor of Bloodraven’s interactions with him – it’s not that he saw someone who was evil and decided to use him anyway, it’s more of a “the Master staring into the Time Vortex” thing.
RFTIT Tumblr Backup 