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Stannis Baratheon: The Theory of Everything | Crusader Chris | YouTubeToText
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This analysis delves into the complex character of Stannis Baratheon, exploring his motivations, moral ambiguities, and potential destiny as a pivotal figure in the fight against the existential threat of the Others, ultimately questioning whether he is a hero, a villain, or something in between.
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Yep, that’s me. Stannis of House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals,
the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and protector of the realm.
You’re probably wondering how I wound up limping in a forest and dying against the stump of this
tree. I’m R’hllor’s chosen, the warrior of fire; I’m Azor Ahai reborn, and the prince that was
promised - No, don’t listen to these infidels, I am that guy! So what am I doing here?
More than any of those other titles, I see Stannis Baratheon as the King Who Cared. That’s
how Samwell Tarly views him too; the Night’s Watch’s desperate pleas for help went unanswered
by Joffrey and Tommen, Balon and Euron - only Stannis came to their defense. Not that we should
pretend he’s this altruistic, selfless guy. If not for Davos Seaworth, Stannis would still be goofing
around in the South. And he only went north to win them to his cause, and use their soldiers
to take the Iron Throne. But that involves saving the north from the wildlings and from the Boltons
and eventually from the White Walkers as well. So, credit where credit is due. He’s a hero, and he’s
a proud, demanding monarch. A good trait does not wash out the bad, nor a bad trait the good.
But as we move forward through The Winds of Winter and into the Dream of Spring, the conflict for the
Iron Throne will take a backseat to the fight for humanity. “Stannis pointed north. ‘There is where
I'll find the foe that I was born to fight.’” "His name may not be spoken," Melisandre added
softly. "He is the God of Night and Terror, Jon Snow, and these
shapes in the snow are his creatures." Stannis Baratheon is the Red God’s champion,
destined to destroy the God of Night and Terror, the Great Other. His story is bigger
than a pointy chair in a red castle, so why is he, as we speak, currently stuck in a blizzard
with terrible betting odds to defeat Roose Bolton? This video will discuss all of that:
his fight for the North, his fight for humanity, and his own inner-fight to stay human himself.
You’re watching the fifth installment of my Winds of Winter predictions mega-videos. The first entry
does cover lots of Stannis stuff, but I wanted to get even more lost in the weeds, so here we are.
This is Stannis: The Theory of Everything. This video is brought to you by my Patrons. If
you enjoy my channel, please consider joining the Patreon to get access to these perks,
like early access and your name on-screen right here. Thanks.
I believe the essence of Stannis Baratheon’s entire character lives in a single quote from A
Storm of Swords. Melisandre says, “Westeros must unite beneath her one true king,
the prince that was promised, Lord of Dragonstone and chosen of R'hllor.”
"R'hllor chooses queerly, then." The king grimaced, as if he'd tasted something foul. "Why
me, and not my brothers? Renly and his peach. If he had done his duty by his brother, we would have
smashed Lord Tywin. A victory even Robert could be proud of. Robert . . ." His teeth ground side
to side. "He is in my dreams as well. Laughing. Drinking. Boasting. Those were the things he was
best at. Those, and fighting. I never bested him at anything. The Lord of Light should have
made Robert his champion. Why me?" Why me? This question is the core of
Stannis’s arc. It lingers behind every action he takes. Melisandre’s answer is that Stannis
is a righteous man; virtuous and deserving in the eyes of R’hllor. Davos Seaworth’s answer is that
Stannis is a just man; Davos keeps his own finger bones (which Stannis lopped off as punishment for
smuggling) in a pouch around his neck, a reminder of his king’s justice. A commoner like Davos,
punished for his crimes, rewarded for his heroism, raised to knight, then lord,
then Hand of the King. But after the Blackwater, Davos loses his pouch of bones. He loses his luck,
his reminder of Stannis’s justice. George Martin is telling us that the further he goes towards
Melisandre and R’hllor, all the blood sacrifices and burnings, Stannis is losing his justice.
He’s consumed by justice with an iron will. His entire story hinges on bringing justice to
the Lannisters, who have committed treason and incest, and who have stolen Stannis’s rightful
place on the Iron Throne. It would be easier and safer to sit on Dragonstone and do nothing. It
would be more efficient to ally with Robb Stark, or bend the knee to his younger brother Renly,
and smash the Lannisters with their super-army of Northerners, Rivermen, Crownlanders, Stormlanders,
and Reachmen. And this dichotomy is where I find Stannis fascinating. If his true goal is bringing
the Lannisters to justice, he should forget about his own crown and get it over with. But his own
crown is part of that justice, and Stannis can’t let one thing go in service of a larger goal.
We see this with his refusal to team up with Robb Stark. Maester Cressen
tells him, “... it is vital that you make common cause with Lord Stark and Lady
Arryn … you cannot hope to triumph without allies.” But Stannis won’t even think of it.
“I make common cause with no one … The Starks seek to steal half my kingdom, even as the Lannisters
have stolen my throne and my own sweet brother the swords and service and strongholds that are mine
by rights. They are all usurpers, and they are all my enemies.” He’s technically not wrong at all,
but makes things harder for himself by putting the law above everything else.
Another example is Stannis’s demand that if Jon accepts his offer to become Lord of Winterfell,
Jon must burn the weirwood tree. Rather than the king’s law, here Stannis is beholden to God’s law.
He’s a man who believes his eyes; he dropped three leeches filled with king’s blood onto a brazier,
and three kings died by the power of R’hllor. So who is he to allow infidel flora to remain alive?
Stannis would be so much easier to support if he wasn’t trying to burn your heart tree or tear
down your sept, but the law is the law. (To be clear, even if Stannis let Jon keep Winterfell’s
weirwood alive, Jon still would have refused the offer. George is trying to give Jon all these Ned
traits like doing his duty to the Night’s Watch and keeping his vows, which he can then subvert
when Jon finally does break his vows to save Arya. That’s just more interesting writing than Jon
accepting Stan’s offer, going to battle alongside him, and fucking dying in the blizzard I guess,
or just being rewarded with the thing he’s always wanted - Winterfell - for breaking his vows. Those
aren’t very likeable paths to take arguably the tied-for-first most important character in the
series. My point is just that Stannis doesn’t do himself any favors by demanding the whole country
convert to his religion. Following the rules of the law even when it’s inconvenient is probably
Stannis’s most important trait, but of course I’ll deconstruct this later on because let’s not give
baldy too much credit, all right?) Stannis says, “I shall bring justice to
Westeros … Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest
gutter rat. And some will lose more than the tips off their fingers, I promise you. They
have made my kingdom bleed, and I do not forget that.” The irony is, of course, Stannis is one of
those men making the kingdom bleed, but it’s all right because he’s righteous, and the rest are
treasonous. “I am king. Wants do not enter into it. I have a duty to my daughter. To the realm.
Even to Robert.” We see that Stannis is able to couch his hell-bent quest for the throne inside
the platitude of duty. And we the readers can discuss just how honest Stannis is being here? How
badly does Stannis want the throne, want absolute power, versus believing he must take it in
accordance with the law? How convenient it is that the law says Stannis must be the most powerful
man in Westeros. But that won’t stop his kingdom from bleeding, a kingdom who mostly doesn’t care
who’s on the throne anyway, and it won’t make his daughter any happier, it’s already gotten most of
Davos’s sons killed, and Robert is too dead to care about justice for Cersei’s crimes.
So why does Stannis carry on, even now that Robert, Ned, Robb, Renly,
Joffrey, they’re all dead. “Why me?” Aside from all the twincest and legal reasons
Stannis is the rightful king, there’s a reason that one of our purest, most well-intentioned POV
characters is also a Stannis head. George Martin is making a deliberate choice: when his nicest
characters believe in something, it’s probably the correct thing. Daenerys is a good person and
she hates slavery, so we the reader should hate slavery too. That’s an easy one. Samwell Tarly
is a good person and he wants to help Gilly and to help Jon help the Wildlings, so we the
reader should support Gilly and the Wildlings too. Of course, George doesn’t always make
it that simple. Brienne is perhaps the goodest character in the entire series, but she supports
Renly simply because of her own personal positive experiences with him. Brienne doesn’t care that
Renly has no claim; she just believes he’d be the best king. Ostensibly, Brienne is willing
to hand-wave a battle between kings Stannis and Renly in which thousands of men will die,
instead of preferring that Renly simply bend his knee to Stannis and crush the Lannisters together,
thus saving thousands of lives in the Riverlands who are being mass-murdered by Gregor Clegane and
other Lannister men. How can a good person reconcile that choice? Well, we need another
perspective. Brienne’s reasoning is that “rightful kings” don’t really exist anymore: Jaime killed
the “rightful” king Aerys, Robert Baratheon was a usurper who killed the lawful heir on the Trident.
“The gods don't care about men, no more than kings care about peasants.” Brienne believes that Renly
is a kind and gentle man, and he’d make a much better king for all the smallfolk of Westeros. In
this question of morality, it’s really a “damned if you, damned if you don’t” scenario.
So with those examples, let’s examine Stannis and Davos. Nobody questions that Davos Seaworth
is a good man. Born a gutter rat in King’s Landing, lived a life of crime as a smuggler,
but made a choice to save Stannis during the Siege of Storm’s End. Stannis made him a knight,
then a lord, and Hand of the King and Admiral of the Narrow Sea. “He makes me wish I had more
smugglers in my service. And fewer lords.” It’s kind of awesome that Stannis believes
in meritocracy, to some extent. You just don’t see that kind of upwards mobility given to a lowborn
by a highborn. The only other example that comes close is Aegon the Fifth raising Duncan the Tall,
but even then, Dunk made it to knighthood himself. Stannis raised Davos every step of the way.
You could argue, then, that even if Davos is a good person, his judgement is biased in favor of
Stannis, the man who gave him everything. Would Davos still be a Stannis head if Stannis simply
thanked him for the onions and sent him away? Probably not. But he’s also not a sycophant.
Davos routinely shows zero regard for his own skin by telling Stannis harsh truths,
truths that worse kings than Stannis would take his tongue for,
but truths that Davos knows Stannis wants to hear:
“Davos had come too far with Stannis to play coy now. "Last year they were Robert's men. A
moon ago they were Renly's. This morning they are yours. Whose will they be on the morrow?"
And Stannis laughed. A sudden gust, rough and full of scorn. "I told you,
Melisandre," he said to the red woman, "my Onion Knight tells me the truth."
But just because Stannis values the truth doesn’t mean he’s good. He’s certainly not totally good,
but is Stannis a good person at all? That’s really what I’m analyzing in this video, and it’s time to
get into it. After all, we pretty much only see Stannis through Davos and Jon’s points-of-view,
two of the most well-liked characters in the series. How does Stannis hold up on his own?
For starters, there’s no denying the bitterness in Stannis Baratheon. He was so bitter about Ned
Stark being made Hand of the King instead of Robert turning to his own brother,
that Stannis left King’s Landing without dealing with the incest-bastards conundrum. Stannis was
following the same exact breadcrumbs that Ned followed, except Stannis figured it out while
Robert was still alive. He could have done something about it, but instead he just told
Jon Arryn his suspicions and then fucked off to Dragonstone after Ned got hired. “I sat on his
council for fifteen years, helping Jon Arryn rule his realm while Robert drank and whored,
but when Jon died, did my brother name me his Hand? No, he went galloping off to his dear
friend Ned Stark, and offered him the honor. And small good it did either of them.”
Another point against Stannis is his selfishness. He stopped believing in religion due to personal
loss, and started believing again thanks to personal gain. When his parents died
in a shipwreck, Stannis figured that if any gods existed, they were monstrous. Monstrous
for slighting him and causing him grief. And he was sick of men attributing justice and goodness
to the gods when Stannis believes it comes from men. “I shall bring justice to Westeros … Every
man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat.”
But this new god is willing to help Stannis. The Seven never brought him anything,
so it was time to try something else. Of course, Stannis isn’t exactly an extremist, nor really all
that devout. When Melisandre wants to burn the statues of the Seven, Stannis agrees because he
doesn’t think it’ll really do anything. “It was wood we burned this morning.” He goes along with
it all for the sake of Melisandre’s power, and what that power can do for him. In book five,
Stannis admits that half his army is made up of unbelievers, and it doesn’t bother him at all. At
least, not until R’hllor demands a sacrifice, and that sacrifice can help Stannis’s cause.
He burned Alester Florent alive just so R’hllor would grant him favorable winds on his journey
to the Wall. Is a man who compromises with a human sacrifice religion for personal
gain really someone to admire? Well, no. But that’s what makes Stannis interesting: he’s
simultaneously so reprehensible yet so awesome compared to even worse criminals like Tywin
and Cersei or compared to failures like Ned and Robb. But I’m not done with his flaws yet.
Stannis is a total hypocrite about the law. All my allegations so far (like being bitter about
Robert and Ned, and doing business with a blood sacrifice god) aren’t very shocking. Is anyone
surprised that a rich, highborn lord who’s just declared himself king happens to be self-righteous
and demanding? Jon Snow feels this way about Stannis as well: “Stannis says it's not enough.
The more you give a king, the more he wants.” But Stannis’s defining feature is his obsession
with law and duty. Apparently, though, only when it suits him. He knows the Night’s Watch isn’t
supposed to get involved in Westerosi politics, but still he demands all of this stuff from Jon
Snow. It’s borderline illegal, or maybe outright criminal, but that’s how it goes with Stannis:
it’s really easy to follow the law when I say that I’m the king and the king’s word is law.
Stannis is also willing and eager to pass over Sansa and give Winterfell to
some other northman, perhaps a Karstark. “I had hoped to bestow Winterfell on a northman,
you may recall. A son of Eddard Stark. He threw my offer in my face.”
“By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa.”
“Lady Lannister, you mean? Are you so eager to see the Imp perched on
your father’s seat? I promise you, that will not happen whilst I live, Lord Snow.”
“Which would you have as Lord of Winterfell, Snow? The smiler or the slayer?”
Jon said, “Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.”
“I have heard all I need to hear of Lady Lannister and her claim … You could bring
the north to me. Your father’s bannermen would rally to the son of Eddard Stark.”
Stannis’s concern about Lannisters controlling the North is fair, but even still, the lawful thing
to do would be to wait until after he’s defeated the Lannisters to let Sansa or her potential child
inherit Winterfell (assuming the name Stark). But Stannis needs Winterfell now, so forget Sansa, let
me just give the most prestigious castle in the North to another family. (By the way, it’s highly
possible I’m talking out of my keister here. There is no legal precedent, that we know of,
in ASOIAF for the current situation in Winterfell. Technically the Boltons conquered it from the
Starks during war, so they are the rightful rulers. When Robert conquered the Red Keep from
the Targaryens, Stannis wasn’t jonesing to give it back to Viserys. In fact, he wanted to murder that
child. So does Winterfell even belong to House Stark anymore? I think one of George Martin’s
main themes for this world is that there are no rules, men who have power do whatever they want,
and it’s up to the individual (including us) to decide whether they’re good or evil. Law doesn’t
exist, but Stannis thinks it does, and by breaking those laws we can glean who he really is.)
As I mentioned earlier, Stannis is okay murdering people for the sake of his new god, but when
Cersei does murder, he says it’s illegal! You might defend Stannis by saying he only murdered
traitors, but the only treason Guncer Sunglass committed was remaining loyal to the Seven,
and the only treason Alester Florent committed was doing his job as Hand of the King - you know,
speaking in the king’s voice when the king shuts himself in a tower and is only willing
to speak with the red-haired sorceress who’s making him stare at a fire all day
long and have flaming hot sex with her. Kinslaying is also suuuper illegal in Westeros,
but only for everyone else, not Stannis. It’s something worshippers of the Seven and
the Drowned God can agree on, but R’hllor doesn’t mind. R’hllor suits Stannis’s purposes. Stannis’s
kinslaying of Renly is a grey area. He was admittedly willing to kill Renly, only he intended
to do it via battle. It’s unclear if Stannis knew about Melisandre’s shadow assassin. But Stannis
was heavily considering burning his nephew Edric Storm alive for his king’s blood, until Davos
rescued the boy and removed that choice from Stannis. And George Martin has confirmed that
Stannis will decide to burn Shireen in The Winds of Winter. So depending on how you want to see it,
Stannis is either a sort-of kinslayer, an almost kinslayer, and/or a future kinslayer.
Finally, let’s not forget that while Stannis criticized Robert for his whoring and adultery,
he’s literally cheating on Selyse with Melisandre. He can rationalize it as doing what he must to
procure the magic to save the world, magic that kills Courtney Penrose and Renly Baratheon.
Obviously, it’s not illegal for a man in Westeros to cheat on his wife; but Stannis is being
a hypocrite. Luckily for us, hypocrisy makes for the more interesting characters.
Part of what makes Stannis so compelling is the contrast between how the world sees him versus
how he really behaves. Before we ever see him on page, we hear that Stannis is a cold man, proud
of his own honor. He’s nobody’s friend, his own brothers can’t stand him, and he’s made of iron,
hard and unyielding. His claim is true, he’s a renowned military commander, and he is utterly
without mercy. “There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.”
Based on these passages (which aren’t wrong, by the way), you’d think Stannis has no personality
at all. His heart must be empty, he must not act emotionally the way everyone else does.
Cold, composed of iron, and utterly without mercy. But it’s not true! Stannis is just as emotionally
complex as all of George Martin’s characters, and that’s why I love these damn books so much.
I’ve already mentioned how bitter Stannis feels about Robert naming Ned his new Hand of the King
instead of himself. But it goes deeper than that; Stannis thinks that Robert considered Ned more of
a brother than he ever considered Stannis: “Why should I avenge Eddard Stark? The man was
nothing to me. Oh, Robert loved him, to be sure. Loved him as a brother, how often did I hear that?
I was his brother, not Ned Stark, but you would never have known it by the way he treated me. I
held Storm’s End for him, watching good men starve while Mace Tyrell and Paxter Redwyne feasted
within sight of my walls. Did Robert thank me? No. He thanked Stark, for lifting the siege when
we were down to rats and radishes. I built a fleet at Robert’s command, took Dragonstone in his name.
Did he take my hand and say, Well done, brother, whatever should I do without you? No, he blamed
me for letting Willem Darry steal away Viserys and the babe, as if I could have stopped it. I sat on
his council for fifteen years, helping Jon Arryn rule his realm while Robert drank and whored,
but when Jon died, did my brother name me his Hand? No, he went galloping off to his dear
friend Ned Stark, and offered him the honor. And small good it did either of them.”
Stannis feels even more bitter about Renly getting Storm’s End:
“I never asked for Dragonstone. I never wanted it. I took it because Robert’s
enemies were here and he commanded me to root them out. I built his fleet and did his work,
dutiful as a younger brother should be to an elder, as Renly should be to me. And what was
Robert’s thanks? He names me Lord of Dragonstone, and gives Storm’s End and its incomes to Renly.
Storm’s End belonged to House Baratheon for three hundred years; by rights it should have passed to
me when Robert took the Iron Throne.” As Jon Snow says, “Stannis Baratheon with a
grievance was like a mastiff with a bone; he gnawed it down to splinters.”
So not only is it proven in Stannis’s very first appearance that he’s not devoid of
emotion and personality, it goes even deeper than that. Stannis is legitimately kind of
fucked up over his relationship with Robert, and his issues require a level of psychotherapy
that just doesn’t exist in Westeros. He laments how he and Renly couldn’t team
up to destroy the Lannisters, “a victory even Robert could be proud of.” He admits that he’s
always lived in Robert’s shadow, and he even dreams of him. “I never bested him at anything.”
Stannis believes he has a duty to uphold to Robert, even after his death, to destroy the
Lannisters for making a fool of him. “He loved me but little, I know, yet he was my brother.”
Not only is Stannis jealous of Robert’s martial strength, he’s jealous of how friendly he could
be. “I would have thrown Grandison and Cafferen into a dungeon, but he turned them into friends
… My brother made them love him, but it would seem that I inspire only betrayal. Even in mine
own blood and kin.” Stannis knows that, on paper and in practice, it benefits a king to be sociable
and forgiving. Aegon the Conqueror adopted Westeros’s religion, let them keep their customs,
forgave the lords like Loren Lannister who defied him. But Stannis is not Robert and he’s not Aegon
Targaryen, and he must get by being himself. Being Stannis. These traits humanize Stannis so much,
and I think we can all relate to wishing we were more like our older brother sometimes,
or our stronger friend, someone for whom everything that’s hard for you comes easy.
The most humanizing aspect of Stannis’s story - and the biggest indicator that he isn’t an
emotionless robot - is how rattled he gets about Renly’s death. First off,
let’s remember that Stannis was asleep when Renly died. The shadow baby that he tells Davos to help
Melisandre birth inside Storm’s End, that was for Courtney Penrose, not Renly. The HBO series
didn’t include the Courtney Penrose stuff, so the shadow baby in the show was for Renly, and Stannis
knew it was for Renly. The books are different. Stannis was in bed, stuck in his sleep, and the
subtext here is that Stannis’s subconscious was being used by Mel’s magic to kill Renly. “It was
a dream. I was in my tent when Renly died, and when I woke my hands were clean.”
Afterwards, Stannis appears visibly more gaunt and weak, as if Melisandre’s magic sucked some
life out of him in the creation of that shadow assassin. If only death can pay for life,
here we see a part of Stannis’s life paying for Renly’s death. Davos thinks he looks half
a corpse, years older than he had just been.” Before his death at their parley, Renly offered
Stannis a peach, fresh and juicy from Highgarden, where he’d just married Margaery Tyrell. “Would
you like one, brother?” Renly asked, smiling. “From Highgarden. You’ve never tasted anything
so sweet, I promise you.” He took a bite. Juice ran from the corner of his mouth.
“I did not come here to eat fruit.” Stannis was fuming.
“A man should never refuse to taste a peach … He may never get the chance
again. Life is short, Stannis.” Stannis thinks Renly is mocking him,
but that image of the peach sticks with him. “Renly offered me a peach. At our parley. Mocked
me, defied me, threatened me, and offered me a peach. I thought he was drawing a blade and went
for mine own. Was that his purpose, to make me show fear? Or was it one of his pointless jests?
When he spoke of how sweet the peach was, did his words have some hidden meaning?” The king
gave a shake of his head, like a dog shaking a rabbit to snap its neck. “Only Renly could vex
me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him,
Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother’s peach.”
Of course Stannis loved him. He held Storm’s End for a year against Mace Tyrell’s siege,
when he was eighteen and Renly was only five. Reduced to eating rats and nearly corpses,
to killing surrenderers. A horror these brothers faced together. He doesn’t want to kill Renly,
he wants Renly to bend the knee like he’s supposed to, hold Storm’s End like he’s been holding it,
and even be Stannis’s heir to the throne until if/when he has a son. It’s Renly who’s being
weird according to Westerosi standards, but it’s Stannis who must pay the emotional price.
George Martin told us what the scene meant. “The peach represents... Well... It's pleasure. It's…
tasting the juices of life. Stannis is a very marshal man concerned with his duty,
and with that peach Renly says: "Smell the roses", because Stannis is always concerned with his duty
and honor, in what he should be doing and he never really stops to taste the fruit.
Renly wants him to taste the fruit but it's lost. I wish that scene had been included
in the TV series because for me that peach was important, but it wasn't possible.”
So George says the peach was a very simple message: stop to smell the roses before it’s
too late. And even though George didn’t say this, I wonder if Renly was also doing a bit. Instead of
offering Stannis a peace, he offers him a peach. Renly knew the joke would be lost on Stannis, but
that’s fitting for Renly’s character. He’s always smiling and cracking jokes; to him, life is fun,
life is a game. To Stannis, life is a chore. But it’s also curious that this isn’t the only
time one character offers another a peach in A Clash of Kings. Jorah offers Daenerys a peach,
so sweet that she almost cried, savoring every mouthful. After the starvation in the Red Waste,
a simple peach means everything in the world to Dany. To her, the peach
is literally “the juices of life,” as George Martin said. Daenerys is able to appreciate it,
whereas Stannis only sees it for a mockery. I think Stannis knows - even though he doesn’t
outright admit it - that he was subconsciously an accomplice to the magic that killed his brother.
Stannis stewing about the hidden meaning of Renly’s peach is sort of a coping mechanism.
A way for him to feel remorse about Renly’s death without admitting his own role in it.
I’ve explained why Stannis is a lot more emotional and human than folks give him credit for. But how
can we reconcile that he’s not a heartless robot with the potential of Stannis burning his own
daughter alive as a sacrifice to R’hllor? Will Stannis even do it? Or will he finally see the
error in accepting this jealous god, in giving Melisandre so much influence over him?
If you’ve seen my videos before, you already know I assume Stannis will burn Shireen in The Winds of
Winter. I take it not for a possibility, rather an inevitability. George Martin explicitly said
that Stannis burning Shireen in Game of Thrones came from him, and I’m not really into conspiracy
theories that rely on George straight up lying to everyone. So for the sake of this video,
let’s accept that Stannis will burn Shireen and let’s analyze how he’ll get there,
and how he’s gotten this far gone already. I believe the burning of Shireen will be the
climax of Stannis Baratheon’s story. It’s where he’ll either bend or he’ll break. It’s
the hardest decision he’s ever had to make and the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. And his entire
story has been leading to this moment. Remember what Martin said about plot twists:
Stannis is the murderer who George has foreshadowed for decades now,
and it’s not going to change. In addition to the “why me?” quote,
there’s another passage that tells us a ton about Stannis’s character, this time focusing on his
plot rather than his brain. “I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head,
but so long as I am the king, I have a duty . . . If I must sacrifice one child to the
flames to save a million from the dark . . . Sacrifice . . . is never easy, Davos. Or it
is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my lady.” And Melisandre brings up Azor Ahai’s sacrifice:
Nissa Nissa, his love. “If a man with a thousand cows gives one to a god,
that is nothing. But a man who offers the only cow he owns…” Nissa Nissa was Azor Ahai’s one cow,
the most precious thing in the world to him. And Shireen is the most precious thing in the
world to Stannis. (The most precious life, at least. Stannis loves duty and honor and law,
but you can’t toss those into a fire. By killing Shireen, Stannis is breaking the
law and ruining his honor for the sake of fulfilling his duty to the realm.)
That passage comes from book three, when Stannis was tempted to burn Edric Storm to wake stone
dragons and win the war. Edric was a Shireen-lite. His relative, but only his bastard nephew,
not his own daughter. But he has king’s blood all the same, Stannis’s king’s blood. Of course,
Davos rescued Edric and bailed Stannis out of having to make that choice. But Davos probably
won’t be around when Stannis decides to burn Shireen. In fact, Stannis believes Davos is dead,
that the Manderlys hanged him, and he’s not all that broken up about it. He’s desperate to
destroy the Boltons, get the entire North behind his cause, and lead the effort against the Great
Other in the War for the Dawn. First Stannis destroyed Dragonstone’s
sept and burned the Seven statues on the beach. This was just a light appetizer,
and went down easy for Stannis who never particularly believed in the gods to begin with.
Second there’s Renly. Killing him was easier for Stannis because he was a traitor, but he was still
his brother, a big step up from burning some statues. Third there was Edric. Here’s a young
boy who’s completely innocent; his only crime was being born Robert’s bastard, conceived in
Stannis’s own marriage bed which Robert defiled. But even Stannis doesn’t fault Edric for that,
and Shireen is friends with him. A much harder sacrifice than statues or even Renly, and based
on his conversation with Davos, we can see the turmoil it puts Stannis through. He’s trying to
get Davos to see his position, that trading one innocent boy’s life in exchange for the power
to save Westeros is no big deal at all, because if Davos the truth-teller agrees, then Stannis
knows it’s okay. Thankfully, Davos defies him. The fourth and final test will be Shireen. An innocent
child like Edric, but now his own daughter, his heir. Without Davos or Jon Snow to stop him,
and surrounded by Melisandre who’s eager to burn just about anyone if the sacrifice is worthy,
and Val who has this curious dialogue where she’s adamant about sacrificing Shireen and even calling
her “death”... These are the conditions in which Stannis will burn Shireen.
It doesn’t really matter, in my opinion, what happens at Winterfell. The outcome of
the Battle of Ice won’t change anything regarding Shireen. I personally think Stannis will win the
battle but be unable to infiltrate Winterfell. Or even if he does take the castle, his Northern
support will abandon him once they realize Arya isn’t there to be saved. It’s mentioned
again and again that the mountain clansmen and Northerners only follow Stannis to save Arya.
Recall that at the end of book five, Theon rescues Jeyne Poole, who everyone believes is Arya Stark,
and brings her to Stannis’s camp. In Theon’s Winds of Winter preview chapter (which was released in
2011 and is, I suppose, subject to change) Stannis tells Justin Massey to bring Arya (Jeyne) with him
and leave her at Castle Black before he heads off to Braavos. If Stannis’s northern lords
hear about this, then they’ll believe Arya has already been saved. After defeating the Boltons,
there’s no point fighting for Stannis anymore. And if Stannis keeps fake-Arya’s escape a secret, then
Stannis’s northern lords will realize she isn’t there after they take Winterfell, and then there’s
no point fighting for Stannis anymore. The point being: regardless what happens at Winterfell,
Stannis will lose his northern support. Ultimately, Stannis will find himself still
lacking the strength to fulfill his destiny, to save Westeros from the Great Other,
the enemy of R’hllor. Whether Shireen comes down to Winterfell or Stannis goes back to the Wall,
Stannis will sacrifice her to wake stone dragons. And instead of the literal stone
dragon-shaped crenellations of Dragonstone or any fossilized dragon’s eggs Stannis might find,
the dragon who awakes will be Jon Snow. He’s a dragon because Rhaegar’s his dad,
yada yada, and his rebirth comes from the burning of Shireen’s stone greyscale face,
etcetera etcetera. I’ve been through this theory a lot, and my mind still hasn’t changed.
This will be, in Stannis’s eyes, a failure. He just burned his own daughter alive and instead of
dragons, R’hllor gave him Snow. What does Stannis want of the bastard Lord Commander who’s already
refused to join his war? Of course, this will be an epiphany for Melisandre. Mel admits that
Red Priests can sometimes misinterpret their visions in the flames, and she’s been wrong
about Stannis this whole time. “I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me
only Snow.” Melisandre will abandon Stannis for Jon, and Stannis will be broken.
George uses this quote twice in the books, from Donal Noye, the dearly departed former blacksmith
of Storm’s End who knew all the Baratheon brothers personally. “Stannis is pure iron, black and hard
and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends.” I’m not totally sure
if this quote is all that meaningful, since we do see Stannis “bend” or compromise a few times.
He changes his plan to attack the Dreadfort and instead takes Jon Snow’s advice, and wins the
mountain clans’ support and Deepwood Motte. He also settles for just the Nightfort instead of
forcibly taking everything he demanded of Jon, and lets Jon keep the wildlings instead of adding them
to his own army. But even if this quote doesn’t describe Stannis one-hundred percent of the time,
I think George still wants us to think of Stannis as someone who will break before he bends.
Stannis will not bend in the matter of Shireen; he’ll insist that she burns. When the sacrifice
fails (at least in his eyes), Stannis will break. But what does that mean? What will Stannis become
after he’s lost everything? No closer to the Iron Throne, way up in the freezing North with
the Others approaching, killed his own daughter, his most loyal man Davos is believed to be dead,
Melisandre loses her faith that he’s still Azor Ahai reborn… what will Stannis become?
First, I wanna take us back to this quote from Stannis’s conversation with Davos about
sacrificing Edric Storm. Stannis says, “Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things
in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning . . . burning,
Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need
Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?” Stannis saw his own death, and interprets the
vision to mean that he must be willing to make this sacrifice of Edric Storm, or else it will
be the death of him. In my opinion, Stannis is half correct: this was a vision of himself dying,
but it has nothing to do with Edric. So what will be the circumstances of Stannis’s death?
Perhaps the ending of Queen Selyse in Game of Thrones is actually George’s ending for
Stannis. He can’t live with himself for burning his only child, especially when he
sees the sacrifice earned him nothing, so he’ll go mad and hang himself. I’ve also seen Stannis
compared to Tolkien’s Denethor, with Jon Snow as an Aragorn parallel. George Martin is a massive
fan of Lord of the Rings and was greatly inspired by Tolkien, despite some weirdos’ online obsession
with pitting them against each other. But I must admit I’ve never read Lord of the Rings,
even though I probably should… I’ve tried, all right, but it’s just not for me. So I’m relying
on not-my-own-brain here, is my point. Tolkien said that Denethor “deemed himself
appointed by destiny to lead [Gondor] in this desperate time.” Stannis deems
himself appointed by R’hllor’s divine will to lead Westeros in their desperate time.
Denethor uses a palantir to absorb Sauron’s strength, but is actually in way over his head.
When Sauron’s army arrives at the gates of Gondor, Denethor falls into despair. Tolkien calls him,
“a man of great strength of will and maintained the integrity of his personality until the final
blow of the (apparently) mortal wound of his only surviving son.” Believing his son Faramir dead,
Denethor builds a funeral pyre for them both, and he lets the fire consume him. For Stannis, the
despair will come after he believes he sacrificed his daughter for no good reason. The only one left
to sacrifice is himself. Could Stannis’s story end on the pyre? It would be fitting for him to meet
the same cruel fate he arranged for others. If Stannis does end up going mad, it doesn’t have
to involve his own suicide. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Stannis trades Dragonstone (a
place of fire) for the Nightfort (a place of ice). Dragons versus the Others. Light versus Dark. If
Melisandre abandons him for Jon, Stannis will feel betrayed by R’hllor, the god of light. Perhaps the
god of darkness will do him better, and Stannis will switch from fire to ice. He’s planning to use
literal ice to his advantage during the battle against Ramsay, but perhaps Stannis will make
a sacrifice to the Old Gods as well. Asha Greyjoy urges Stannis to give Theon to the weirwood tree,
to kill him before the weeping eyes of the Old Gods. “Theon slew Lord Eddard's sons. Give him to
Lord Eddard's gods. The old gods of the north. Give him to the tree.” Could Asha be trying
to ensure her brother gets a quick, easy death rather than getting burned alive? Asha witnessed
a burning firsthand, so terrible she could taste bile in the back of her throat. She tells herself,
“Close your eyes … Close your ears. Turn away. You do not need to see this.” Asha doesn’t need
to see her brother burn and scream. The idea that Stannis will embrace the Old
Gods and in some way align himself with the Others is a long-standing theory. Here’s a
great forum post from 2012 that I happened upon years ago, before I ever even read the books. It
was so interesting even though I had no clue what any of it meant. All I knew was that I
wanted to learn more about this King Stannis Baratheon, and Justin Massey my beloved.
Basically, Stannis is a Night’s King analogue. You all know the story: the 13th Lord Commander of the
Night’s Watch, who might have been a Stark, met a pale icy woman who was probably a female Other,
and he fell in love with her, started doing blood sacrifices to the Others,
and used magic to bind his brothers of the Night’s Watch to his will. They ruled as
Night’s King and Corpse Queen for thirteen years from the Nightfort, until eventually
being defeated by the dynamic duo of King Brandon the Breaker and King-Beyond-the-Wall Joramun.
The parallels to Stannis are obvious and inverted. Instead of a Corpse Queen, Stannis falls for a
Red Priestess, a sorceress of light and fire. Red eyes instead of blue, warm skin instead of
cold. Just as Corpse Queen took Night’s King’s soul, Mel takes part of Stannis’s soul in the
creation of her shadow babies; Stannis is visibly aged afterwards. Instead of the Others, Stannis
makes blood sacrifices to R’hllor, the Great Other’s enemy. Instead of using magic to bind
humans to his will, Stannis uses magic to bind a shadow assassin to his will. Are the similarities
stopping there, or will they go even further? George Martin wrote in A Feast for Crows
that, “... history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has
happened before will perforce happen again…” Maybe Archmaester Rigney is just full of bunk, or maybe
he’s onto something. Stasis is a big theme in the world of Ice & Fire: for thousands of years,
things have stayed almost exactly the same. The Starks have ruled in the same castle for millenia,
and in real life history, dynasties tend not to last even as long as the Tullys have lasted,
for three hundred years as Lords Paramount of the Riverlands. How long did they rule
Riverrun before that? At least a thousand years according to book one’s appendix. The Ottomans
lasted about six centuries, the Plantaganets and Romanovs for three. The Lancasters and Yorks,
who Martin based the Lannisters and Starks on, lasted only 200 and 100 years, respectively.
Technology hasn’t evolved in Westeros since the Andals brought ironworking over from Essos, and
that was between two and four thousand years ago. Lord Commanders of the Night’s Watch keep getting
elected, kings keep killing each other, the Iron Throne keeps changing hands, as it always has,
forever. Dragons were born, dragons died, and dragons were born again. It’s a cycle,
a wheel. Just as the Long Night happened before, many characters expect it will happen again.
And if the Night’s King was real, shouldn’t there be another one this time around?
Stannis will be our Night’s King, not a Stark but a Baratheon, still the brother of a king, ruling
from the Nightfort… so who will be his Corpse Queen? Honestly, it could just be Melisandre. An
icy version of her fiery self. Melisandre does say that her power is stronger at the Wall, surrounded
by the cold and the approaching Others, stronger here even than in Asshai. “Her every word and
gesture was more potent, and she could do things that she had never done before. Such shadows as I
bring forth here will be terrible, and no creature of the dark will stand before them.”
What magic will Melisandre unleash? It could simply be that Melisandre resurrects Jon Snow, but
that isn’t all that special; we’ve already seen Thoros do it for Beric Dondarrion, and Beric did
it for Catelyn. This will be a new type of magic. Melisandre is pale of skin, red of eyes and hair.
She’s a weirwood heart tree; R’hllor’s symbol is a flaming heart. As awesome as I think it would be
for R’hllor and the Old Gods to basically be two sides of the same coin, and not adversaries at
all, I don’t that’s George Martin’s intention. He is purposely drawing these connections,
like Melisandre and the heart tree, but for all their similarities, they’re still opposed. Jon
illustrates this idea when thinking about his direwolf Ghost: “Red eyes, Jon realized, but not
like Melisandre's. He had a weirwood's eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a
heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one.” So if Stannis abandons the Red God for the Old
Gods, perhaps after giving Theon to the tree, as Asha suggests, he’ll be making a real change.
Basically, I think Melisandre’s original vision was correct, the vision that prompted her to find
Stannis on Dragonstone in the first place. “He is the Lord's chosen, the warrior of fire. I have
seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames. The flames do not lie,
else you would not be here.” Except Melisandre is sort of balls at interpreting her visions;
she mistook the grey girl on the dying horse for Arya when it was really Alys Karstark; she mistook
Garlan Tyrell destroying Stannis on the Blackwater for Renly Baratheon’s ghost. I think Melisandre
is correct that Stannis will be the champion of a god, but not R’hllor: rather, R’llor’s adversary,
the Great Other, the God of Night and Terror. All right, but why? Even if Stannis gives Theon
to the tree, if Melisandre and his northern lords abandon him, if he falls into despair and madness
after giving Shireen to R’hllor for nothing… what makes Stannis align with the Others? Why do Others
need Stannis at all? Well that one’s actually pretty easy. Sam Tarly has that old warhorn from
the Fist of the First Men down at Oldtown with him, the horn that may be the Horn of Winter,
which Euron might blow and bring down the Wall, thus letting the Others through.
Maybe. Or maybe that’s a little too easy. We already know there’s a passage through the
Wall at the Nightfort: the Black Gate. I did a whole video on it - it’s really weird.
Stannis holds the Nightfort. He holds the Black Gate, and he can let the Others through.
There’s one problem: the only time we see the Black Gate being used, he asks who are you?
and Samwell recites a portion of the Night’s Watch vows, hinting that the Gate only opens
for brothers of the Watch. Non-Night’s Watchmen can pass through, like Bran and Jojen and Gilly,
but it won’t open for them alone. I think there’s a bunch of really interesting ways
George can solve this. Maybe the Gate is really easy to trick, and Stannis can just recite the
vows. Or maybe Stannis will take the black after killing Shireen; being a Night’s Watchman makes
him an even closer Night’s King parallel, especially if he’s elected the 999th Lord
Commander while Jon Snow is still dead, or if Jon leaves the Watch like in Game of Thrones.
There’s also this idea that the Wall’s sorcery prevents the Others from passing through,
but I’m not sure. If the Corpse Queen really was a female Other, she passed through the Wall. And
while they weren’t Others, Jafer Flowers and Othor were wights animated by the Others,
and that magic worked through the Wall. Or here’s another idea: Others can only pass through the
Wall if they’re invited by the Night’s Watch. The Night’s King must have asked the Corpse Queen to
come through, and Jafer and Othor were brought back to Castle Black by Jon and Sam and those
guys after they said their vows. So Stannis, if he really does become the new Night’s King,
will invite the Others to pass through the Black Gate. And maybe the horn of winter really does
bring down the Wall, and that’s how the bulk of the army of the dead get through
later on. You don’t put a 700 foot high wall in your story just to leave it standing by
the end. It’s chekhov’s wall, probably. This version of Stannis is a far cry from the
Stannis we know, but that’s a good thing. Characters changing and evolving is good
writing. Stannis becoming mad with despair and rage is a really cool idea, and it would be an
extension of his own quote from book two. “The Iron Throne is mine by rights. All those who deny
that are my foes.” Renly says that the whole realm denies it: old men and unborn children,
the Dornish and the Wall, no one wants Stannis for their king. So that means
everyone is Stannis’s foe, and Stannis will descend upon the realm with an army of Others,
an army just waiting to find its leader. Where there was once justice in Stannis Baratheon,
now there is just… ice. Sorry. Stannis becoming a villain means that a hero needs
to stop him. Or rather, two heroes, the two halves of Azor Ahai reborn. Let’s revisit Melisandre’s
original vision in Essos that led her to Stannis: “Stannis is the Lord's chosen, destined to lead
the fight against the dark. I have seen it in the flames, read of it in ancient prophecy. When the
red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt
to wake dragons out of stone. Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt.”
Okay, Melisandre. Suppose Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt. Smoke from the volcanoes and
salt from the sea. But are you sure it’s Stannis, just because he’s currently the lord there?
Stannis is a Baratheon of Storm’s End, he’s only lived in Dragonstone since 283 (about 17 years),
and most of that time he’s been living in the Red Keep anyways, sitting on Robert’s small council.
Daenerys Targaryen, however, was born on Dragonstone, amidst smoke and salt. Literally
born, not “reborn” in the light of R’hllor, or however Mel wants to justify believing in
Stannis. And unlike Stannis, Daenerys has already wakened dragons from stone. Again,
literal dragons from literal eggs turned to stone, not some kooky belief that Stannis will animate
the stone dragons decorating Dragonstone’s walls. Stannis himself says, “She talks of
prophecies . . . a hero reborn in the sea, living dragons hatched from dead stone . . . she speaks
of signs and swears they point to me. I never asked for this, no more than I asked to be king.
Yet dare I disregard her?” Apparently no, you don’t dare. But maybe you should have. Stannis was
duped by Melisandre’s faulty reading comprehension - that is, her reading of her own visions.
Melisandre should have went to Qarth or Slaver’s Bay and attached herself to Daenerys, although
Dany would be a much less willing participant than Stannis. Dany who already has three dragons,
and a bigger army than Stannis, and she’s an actually kind-hearted person who would never
even think about burning an innocent child alive for the sake of her own power. She’s exactly the
type of leader who should be Azor Ahai reborn, but because she’s not desperate the way Stannis is,
Melisandre would have zero luck converting her to the Red God. And then Stannis’s entire character
arc would never happen. I don’t know why I’m even explaining this, but whatever: from our omniscient
viewpoint as the reader, the hero Melisandre is looking for must be Daenerys. But from
Melisandre’s flawed, limited viewpoint, she thinks it’s Stannis. Anatomy of a plot, I guess.
Also it’s sort of funny that all of Melisandre’s colleagues, the Red Priests of Essos, are now
proclaiming Daenerys is Azor Ahai reborn, proselytizing about Dany without her even
knowing about it. Maester Aemon says so as well, and Aemon is right about a lot of stuff.
But Daenerys isn’t the only one. As lonely as she feels, there is another, a nephew roughly her same
age who she’s never heard of, who’s never heard of her, but whose death howl she heard while roaming
the Dothraki Sea. Maybe. I just think that would be neat. Jon Snow is probably dead right now,
his consciousness warged into Ghost and his body lying on the frozen ground. When he’s resurrected,
he might become the other half of Azor Ahai reborn. Stannis wants to wake a dragon from stone?
He’ll do that when he burns Shireen, waking Jon from the ashes of Shireen’s greyscale face. After
all, Daenerys and Jon are the core of this story, one ice and one fire. Together, they’re the ones
who must defeat Others and end the Long Night, which might include a Night’s King Stannis.
At least, I believe Daenerys will kill Stannis. In A Storm of Swords, Daenerys has a dream,
perhaps a prophetic dragon dream. “That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the
Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper’s rebel host
across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away
like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming,
but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I
have only now awakened.” Remember Archmaester Rigney’s quote from earlier, about history
being a wheel? Maybe the Battle of the Trident happens again, but the Baratheon is Stannis,
Robert’s brother, and the Targaryen is Daenerys, Rhaegar’s sister. Still fighting their older
brothers’ battles. There’s even a couple rivers in the North that are forked like the Trident,
but not necessarily three-pronged: the Milkwater and Antler River. And that part in Dany’s dream
about the Usurper’s host being armored in ice… that’s pretty obviously meant to evoke the Others,
whose armor is described to reflect the light around it, sort of like ice. Their touch is
icy cold and their eyes burn blue like ice. So in Dany’s dream, she’s seeing her future self
burning Stannis’s army of Others with dragonfire. This also connects to a vision Stannis had in the
flames, when he saw himself burning, his crown consuming his flesh, his body crumbling into ash.
It will be Drogon who does this to him. I also think it’d be a little poetic for
Daenerys to kill Stannis all these years after Robert chided him for letting Viserys and Dany
escape Dragonstone after the Rebellion. That baby born during a horrible storm,
cast away to another continent, come back to kill him and avenge her brother.
So if we accept that Daenerys will kill Stannis, it doesn’t make sense that she’d kill him in her
quest for the throne. Dany isn’t all that obsessed with obtaining the throne in the first place,
certainly not nearly as bad as Stannis wants it. She delays going west over and over again,
staying in the east to many readers’ chagrin (and to my delight). There’s really no way for Stannis
to put up a realistic fight against Dany for the throne; he’s already dealing with the Boltons,
and even if Dany comes west and immediately seeks the throne, Stannis isn’t in her way.
Her southron enemies are Cersei and Tommen and Euron probably, and I guess Aegon but probably not
because that’s also her nephew and she says over and over again how much she wants a family.
So if Dany’s killing Stannis, she’s killing him as the Night’s King. At the House of the Undying,
she sees, “Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king
who cast no shadow.” The red glowing sword is Lightbringer - Stannis’s fake Lightbringer.
The blue-eyed king holding it is Stannis, who not only has blue eyes already, but also so do
the Others. If Stannis gets “Otherized” his eyes would be even… bluer. From dark blue to
bright blue. And the reason Stannis casts no shadow is because he’s holding Lightbringer;
Lightbringer is false, like Stannis is the false Azor Ahai; the sword is an extension of
his own falseness. So maybe Stannis’s Lightbringer casts no shadow and that’s what this quote means,
or it could refer to Stannis himself no longer being capable of casting his shadow assassin.
It sucks part of his soul out of him, and Melisandre talks about Stannis being too
weak to make another. By the way, I wonder if Stannis’s shadow guy is still out there somewhere.
Maybe he’ll come North and kill Stannis in some fucked up version of suicide.
Anywho, Daenerys is called the “slayer of lies” in the House of the Undying. Lots of folks consider
Aegon to be the lie she must slay: instead of Rhaegar’s true son, he’s actually a Blackfyre or
perhaps nobody at all, a pisswater prince. But I think that’s boring as hell, and I’ve already said
that Dany isn’t going to slay him! But she will slay Stannis; he’s the lie of Azor Ahai.
Or maybe not! But those are my theories, and I’m sticking to them for now.
Before I go, I want to express how, aside from the numerous ways we can argue about how good of
a person Stannis really is and what his role will be in relation to Azor Ahai and the Long Night,
Stannis is a bit underrated just in his impact on the story. In a meta-sense, I mean, looking
at the plot from an architect’s viewpoint. Stannis is a glue guy, because everything
else sort of crumbles away without him. In the first two books, consider how none of
southron Westeros wants anything to do with Stannis. Varys and Littlefinger both chose
the Lannisters and their incest over Stannis, since Stannis would self-admittedly kill both
of them. Varys lurking behind the Mad King’s ear, and Littlefinger the brothel-keeper who
betrayed Ned Stark… Stannis would execute them immediately. Also, the Tyrells, who own the most
resource-rich territory of Westeros, basically have to choose Renly because they were the ones
who nearly starved Stannis to death during Robert’s Rebellion. Of course, little Renly
was also a victim of that siege, but Renly doesn’t nurse grievances the way Stannis does. Lysa Arryn
gets the hell out of King’s Landing right after she kills her husband, and proceeds to not give
Stannis the Vale’s support, since Lysa is creepily protective of Sweetrobin, and Stannis had been
arranged to take Robin to live with him as his ward. Basically, the whole plot of the first two
books (the war of the five kings) happens because nobody wants anything to do with Stannis.
Stannis’s arrival at the Wall saved Jon Snow’s life. Jon was meeting with Mance Rayder with
the express order to kill him, which meant Jon would be killed by Tormund or Mance’s guards
before he made it ten feet out of that tent. Jon became Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch,
let the Wildlings through the Wall, sent Samwell and Gilly and Aemon south, helped Stannis get more
soldiers to use against the Boltons, and made his own choice to march and save Arya which got him
stabbed up anyway. None of that happens without Stannis. Tyrion’s whole Hand of the King arc in
book two is impossible without Stannis, since Tyrion’s main goal was organizing the defense
of King’s Landing against him. We only get Davos’s plotline, particularly in North with the Borrells
and then Wyman Manderly’s famous “The North Remembers” speech, because Davos is campaigning
for Stannis. Theon is only still alive because Mors Umber declared for Stannis, and set up camp
outside Winterfell’s walls, where he was able to help Theon and Jeyne after their escape.
My point is that it’s amazing how much Stannis is able to move forward so many plotlines and make
the whole story make sense, despite the fact he’s not even a main character and he’s never had a POV
chapter. I truly believe Stannis Baratheon is one of the finest written characters I’ve ever read.
I’m a young boy still and I hope to read many more books before I die,
but I’m thankful for Stannis existing, and I’m thankful for George RR Martin.
Let me know down in the comments how you feel about Stannis Baratheon. Would he actually be
a good king? And where do you think his story will go in The Winds of Winter? If you like this video,
consider joining my Patreon, where you can get early access to every new video and a few
other perks, and probably some exclusive content in the future. Thanks everyone.
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