She was trying to bang Jon Snow because he had king’s blood and would have helped her make a shadowbaby, which would have probably eliminated the need for Stannis to sacrifice his only daughter and heir. Somehow, I think Stannis would have been okay with that alternate reality.
That scene, where Mellisandre looked back at him as she left and said, “You know nothing, Jon Snow” exactly like Ygritte was all I needed to convince me that she is the real deal.
Has anyone brought up the fact that, if the God of Light and Melissandre were such good seers of the future, why didn’t she tell Stannis NOT to leave Castle Black at the moment he did, which ended up with his troops being stuck in a storm facing certain death for his entire army?
Why doesn’t Stannis ask Melissandre this? “You know Mel, you could have warned me about coming to this shithole in the middle of winter. Where are your flame prophesies about this?”
And regarding Shireen, I’d burn the whole world before I do anything bad to my daughter…
I don’t think anybody is under the delusion that the Red God is some good guy (amongst the viewers, I mean… Melisandre seems convinced he is, and that’s an evil vs good fight in the Zoroastrian fashion… which makes me suddenly think that fire played an important part in this religion… It might have been a source of inspiration).
My latest take on the Lord of Light (dating back from about one hour ago) is that it’s possibly…well…fire. That is, most certainly an adversary of darkness and a potential source of comfort, but also a merciless destroyer. He’s probably neither good nor evil, rather some primal force engaged in a constant struggle against darkness and satisfied with enlisting humans in this fight, especially if they feed him some potent royal blood. And if he were to definitely triumph, the result would probably be as palatable to the human race as a definitive victory of the white walkers. The fate of Valyria is probably nice by comparison with what the world would be like under his dominion.
My mistake so far might have been to try to guess his nature on the basis of the monitheist or polytheist religions we’re familiar with, to try to place him on a good<-----> evil axis that is probably irrelevant to him. Maybe in this world what really matters is…Ice vs Fire. And maybe what humans must do is to keep a balance between both, lest they would be destroyed.
The shadowbaby that killed Renly was produced when Stannis and Melissandre had sex. So remind me; what resulted from Stannis burning people alive previously? Does he know for sure that burning his daughter alive will help?
I meant the shot of the hand-holding was an unmotivated close-up. The director lingered on it, IMO, to show the greyscale being transferred. I’m not convinced I’m wrong about that, but if I am I’ll certainly own up to it.
Because if he wasn’t stuck between a rock and a cold place, he wouldn’t sacrifice his daughter. Melissandre believes this is necessary to defeat the Boltons and continue Stannis’s rise to king of all Westeros. She did it intentionally.
I’m not sure why people think this. He could have simply sent his wife and daughter back to Castle Black as The Onion Knight suggested.
For those convinced that the hand-holding meant anything more than just Dany forgiving Jorah and seeing that he really does have her best interests at heart, why would Jorah knowingly pass on the infection to Dany? The woman he has protected for years, the woman he loves, the woman he would die for. What would the motivation there be? That doesn’t make any sense.
Right. They could have gone with Davos. It wasn’t a certainly that they would die no matter what.
Remind me, because it’s been a few years since I saw it and I forget the details, when Stanis had Robert’s bastard and used the leeches on him, he didn’t kill him right? And then later on when they created the shadowbaby, they didn’t kill anyone? So why did they have to kill Shireen and not just take her blood?
He thought they were all going to die, and wanted very much to hold the hand of the woman he loved before they did?
Taken by itself I don’t think that first close-up meant anything, but to then linger on a close-up of Dany holding hands with Missandei? That’s two unmotivated close-ups pretty close together after going out of their way to remind us of Jorah’s greyscale at every opportunity. Like I said, I’ll certainly admit I was wrong about this if nothing comes of it, but I can’t overlook it.
Because the priestess with the very real powers sez it is the Lord of Light. You seem to forget how powerful religion and faith was then,Thousands and thousands of men journeyed to the Holy Land and gave up years of their life- or even their life- just to get a free ticket to heaven.
And when you have someone who can actually do miracles, then there’s no reason not to believe.
She has repeatedly shown him visions in the flames. Is immune to heat and cold. etc.
(what priest brought back the dead?)
Sure. Maybe they’d get there, maybe not. But Castle Black doesnt keep women. Still, Stannis and 20000 men would die, something not to be idly ignored. And when Stannis and all his men died, Stannis has been told the White Walkers and such will sweep down from the North and kill everyone. Including his daughter and his wife, who will then join the undead hordes.
She did. And he* had* to leave Castle Black otherwise his men and the men stationed there would all starve.
And Stannis made a different choice. Does that mean the writing is bad or the show is manipulative? Does that make Stannis a bad man or a bad king?
No and no.
Yes and yes.
However, the people of Westeros don’t seem to be as deeply religious as people from the middle ages. And many amongst the educated seem to be able to express their doubts about the gods without causing shock. People seem, IMHO, to be more superstitious than very religious on the overall.
Also, I don’t think any equivalent of heaven has been mentioned (or any other kind of afterlife, for that matter). Maybe I’m mistaken and it was (I suspect the faith of the seven has some equivalent), but in any case, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. If a similar story was depicted in the real midde-ages, we would probably have been served with many mentions of heaven and hell in a number of scenes (before battles, when people are dying, when cursing those who victimized them, etc…). I don’t remember any funeral ceremony amongst the many cultures we have seen (old gods followers, seven followers, Dothrakis, wildlings…) that included a reference to a soul, either.
Even our new sincere and fanatic High Septon didn’t make any reference to some kind of reward or punishment in the afterlife as far as I remember. He says the edicts of the gods should be obeyed and that they want justice, but apparently, the kind of justice he has in mind takes place in this world.
I have to take issue with the second one. Who would you rather have as king… someone who is willing to make massive, even horrifying and cruel, personal sacrifices for what he perceives as the good of the realm; or someone who sacrifices the good of the realm to selfishly benefit his own family members?
I guess there are two fairly different lenses through which one can see Stannis’s actions… one way to look at it is that he was selfishly power-hungry, and was willing to sacrifice anything to achieve power. Another is that he was a terrible situation in which he could make the selfish choice (keep himself and his close family alive) or the choice which helped a larger number (sacrifice something precious to him to keep his army alive).
There’s probably some truth to each, but what I think argues against the first interpretation is that Stannis has never been seen to seek power for its own sake. As far as we know he was perfectly content to be Robert’s someone neglected brother as long as Robert was king, and would have been happy to follow Robert’s sons, had Robert in fact had true-borne sons. And he’s known for years that Melisandre could work miracles with king’s blood. If he was purely selfish for power he would have sacrificed Shireen years ago just to help win some random battle or other. Instead he resisted and refused until the situation was truly horribly dire and he was left in a no-win situation.
So are we going to see half of next season Dany, wherever she lands, dealing with Greyscale?? Ugh…get on it with it already. (it being the main plot)
edit: The other reason for the close-up could have meant to help indicate that Dany is prepared to die, and not telepathically summoning her dragon.
To quote the greatest movie ever made about British chickens, “Are those the only choices?”
I’d prefer a king with the wit, wisdom, and foresight not to put himself in a position where he has only two options - indeed, a king clever enough never even to accept that he has only two options, but to constantly seek and find middle-ground alternatives. I’d rather a king who can adhere to his own principles without being bound by them.
Ultimately I see it like this: if an obviously shady witch with her own agenda, whose own moral compass is (to put it generously) a bit skewed, whispers in your ear that you are Special and You Are the One True King, and if you accept this and act accordingly… then probably, she’s telling you the thing you want to believe anyway. Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad guy, and sure, Stannis uses the idea of protecting the realm as a fig leaf to salve his own conscience. But history is full of people who did terrible things because somebody told them it was for the greater good, and you don’t get a moral pass just because a witch told you to do it.
And let me stress - I definitely DON’T think this is bad writing… I actually think it’s awesome. I think that Game of Thrones has pretty consistently suggested that the right path is usually never one of the extremes. It is never wise to adhere too tightly to your principles - lest you end up getting Ned Starked - but it is also never wise to have none. In the long run, the folks who abandon all ethics wind up with no true allies, no good options, no better than poor old Ned… eventually they’ll end up Joffreyed.
I mean, I don’t think Stannis is going to be king - do you? Do you think that’s where the story is headed? I don’t. I think he burned his daughter alive and abandoned the last of his principles and it will avail him little, because he let an awful person tell him to do awful things and he did them. The people who are being set up for success - Danerys, Tyrion, Jon Snow - all of them have in common that they are at neither of these extremes… they have strong personal principles but they find ways to move forward without abandoning them.
I agree with part of this. The fact that Stannis got himself into a situation where he was faced with only two possible choices, both of them horrible, reflects badly on him. On the other hand, I think it’s a bit facile to say that there’s always a third choice. No, sometimes there isn’t. Robb Stark sacrificed 1000 men in a diversionary battle in order to win a major military victory and capture Jaime Lannister. Each of those 1000 men was someone’s beloved son or husband. They had all sworn allegiance to Robb and he had sworn to protect them. Should he have refused to make that sacrifice, and kept looking for a better alternative?
It’s also worth pointing out that the reason Stannis is up north in the first place is that he sailed way the hell out of his way, far away from where the main struggle for power is going on, in order to protect a part of the realm which is vitally important but which no one cares about. And he did so at Melisandre’s urging. Whatever her motivations may be (and I agree that they’re murky from our perspective, although I think you may be overstating that case) they don’t simply seem to be “power at all costs”, as it’s hard to see the political advantage gained from defeating a bunch of wildlings.
Sure, and history is also full of people who did terrible things that DID end up being for the greater good, and people giving advice who ended up being judged kindly by history.
I think that it’s easy to let our real-world prejudice affect our judgment of Melisandre. In the real world, we know that there is no magical God of Fire. So in the real world, we are certain that she would be a conman (con-woman?) of some sort. But Westeros operates by different rules, so there’s at least a fairly real possibility that she is sincere and well-intentioned. (And of course the possibility that she herself is sincere and well-intentioned, but misled.)
I don’t think Stannis will be king. But I think you are being more absolute in your condemnation of both him and Melisandre than is deserved.
Worth bringing up, by the way: we generally think of Davos as being a good guy and Melisandre as being shady or evil… but there’s a reasonable chance that if Stannis had ignored Davos’s advice and brought Melisandre along, he might have won the battle of blackwater. Granted, that would have involved killing Tyrion, who we like. But it would also have involved killing Cersei and Joffrey, who we hate. Point being, things are murky.
Yes, he got into this deep shit by saving the World.
And, fercrickiessake it’s a fantasy world. With dragons who breathe fire no less.