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The Raven Cycle starts out with a Ronan that’s comprised of little more than rage and fear. He hates himself so completely, probably because of his father’s death, because he failed to save his father. It’s a lot for a fifteen year old to deal with. Not only that, but he’s not allowed to go back to the only home he’s ever known or see his mother.

After his father’s death, we know that Ronan changes, but we don’t know exactly how he changed. Apparently, he goes on a self-destructive bent, lots of drinking, probably drugs. He gets his tattoos and he frequents Kavinsky’s parties. Gansey worries about him a great deal which is very Gansey of him, but also indicates how bad Ronan got at one point. In fact, it got so bad that Gansey believes that Ronan tried to kill himself. Now, Ronan lets him believe that and the evidence points to Ronan having killed himself, but for Gansey to not question why he’d try to kill himself, things had to be really bad.

By the time we get to the Raven Boys, Ronan has made some progress and some recovery. He’s still violent and angry, still self destructive but he’s managing it to a point that Gansey isn’t constantly worried about it. We don’t get a lot of Ronan in the first book, and what we do get is all feral dog. However, at the end you start to realize that he’s beginning to get a hold on his dream ability. The first thing that he successfully (as far as he knows) takes out of his dream is Chainsaw, but at this point Ronan is still dreaming haphazardly. He knows he can take things out of a dream and he even knows how, but he doesn’t know how to control what he brings out (which is why he pulls nightmares sometimes). It’s not until Kavinsky, who shoves him back into the super self destructive stage, that Ronan learns how to control what he wants to bring out of the dream. However, it’s not until Ronan stops hating himself that he can stop pulling nightmares. He needs something to fight Kavinsky with and the forest gives him a night terror. He voices his fear that the night terror will kill him and that it hates him. The forest tells him that it’s only him. He’s the only one who hates himself. This opens a whole new world to Ronan and lets him heal. Of course, he also goes back home and figures out a way to return home whenever he wants. That’s very healing to Ronan.

By the time he shows up in Blue Lily, Lily Blue Ronan is as well adjusted as he is likely ever to get. We even see him doing some things that are nice.

In BLLB Cabeswater tells the boys that The Greywaren is always safe, but the word that it uses is incorruptus which literally means uncorrupted. It’s not a word that would ever be applied to Ronan, or is it? From Cabeswater’s point of view, Ronan is uncorrupted. Kavinsky was corrupted by the power that being a Greywaran gave him. He took and took until the forest ran dry. Ronan has always been reasonably respectful what what he took, even before he understood what he was doing. With the exception of his time with Kavinsky (while he was learning) Ronan has only ever taken what he needed in some way (or what he couldn’t control).