The 30 most heartwarming moments on Game of Thrones

23. Yara gives Theon a pep talk (“The Broken Man”)

KATIE: For the most part, Yara takes the tough love approach. That seems to be the way of the Ironborn. She’s demanding and, quite frankly, lacks empathy or compassion in this speech. It’s not the sort of pep talk I’d recommend anyone try on survivors of trauma today.

But in the context of Yara’s relationship with Theon, it seems to be what he needs. After years of manipulation and torture, Theon needs a harsh talking-to from someone with his best interests at heart. Yara may be callous with him, but they’re bonded in such a way that she knows what he needs. Thankfully, her assumptions prove correct.

When Yara tells him that she’s “tired of watching you cower like a beat dog,” there is more than impatience in her voice. Gemma Whelan conveys pain—pain that Theon has suffered so much, pain that she couldn’t save him from it. She nearly lost her brother, now her only remaining family aside from the murderous Euron, to a madman, and she won’t let him keep ahold of him.

“You escaped, do you hear me? You got away, and you’re never going back.” This is the affirmation Theon needs—a reminder that it’s over. His suffering has come to an end, and now it’s time for him to recover and reclamation his identity.

SARAH: As a fellow big sister with an approach similar to Yara’s (my little brother can attest to my occasional meanness, but I also brought him to Disneyland, so he can deal), I have a lot of time for the eldest Greyjoy. In typical Thrones fashion, this scene did away with saccharine platitudes in favor of plain-speaking straight talk, to great effect. This isn’t a Hallmark Christmas movie starring Candace Cameron Bure—this is a medieval fantasy epic about a brutal, war-torn world. Yara is trying to become the queen of the most misogynistic society in Westeros, so really, she doesn’t have time for long, meaningful discussions about her feelings.

That said, she loves her brother with a ferocity that nobody can doubt. If my own brother had been forced to endure the torture that Theon suffered at Ramsay’s hand, I would have been chomping at the bit to rescue him, just as Yara was. She went after Theon in defiance of her father’s orders and was forced to return home knowing that she had failed. I can only imagine the pain that this knowledge caused her, and how she must have struggled to deal with it, entirely alone on an island where having feelings is seen as a sign of weakness. Theon is not the only Greyjoy who Ramsay hurt.

For all of her tough talk unsympathetic demands, Yara gives Theon his father never offered him—her love. She can’t go back in time and change what Ramsay did to him. She also knows there’s no benefit to dwelling on the past, and that her brother needs to learn how to rely on himself. Treating Theon as an adult who is able to handle his own problems inspires more confidence than if she had held his hand and promised to make everything better. All hail the rightful queen of the Iron Islands.