Eldest surviving son of Lord Quellon Greyjoy by his second wife Lady Sunderly, and the ninth of his name to wear the driftwood crown since the Grey King. Balon rejected nearly every reform his father had pressed on the Iron Islands and made the Old Way his creed: no man was an ironborn who did not pay the iron price. In 289 AC, six years after inheriting Pyke, he crowned himself King of the Iron Islands and burned the Lannister fleet at anchor in Lannisport. Robert Baratheon answered with the Greyjoy Rebellion, sailed his fleet through the gap Balon's brother Euron and Stannis Baratheon had broken open, and stormed Pyke itself. Balon's two eldest sons died in the war; his youngest, Theon, was taken north as a ward of Eddard Stark, and Balon bent the knee.
Ten years later, while the green lands tore themselves apart in the War of the Five Kings, Balon set his crown back on his head and named himself King of the Isles and the North, putting his daughter Asha and his brother Victarion to the harrying of the western coast. He died in 299 AC, fallen from a swaying rope bridge between two of Pyke's towers in a storm, or so the maesters wrote. His brother Aeron and many ironborn after him believed Euron Crow's Eye, returned at last from exile, had hired the price.