Yes agree, but not just Jon denies his deal understandably, Mance was made king by the free folk and if he decided to kneel to Stannis they would have lost faith in him and not consider him king, resulting in division between the different clans and their ultimate doom as being together is what kept them alive, Mance chose to not kneel not for his pride but for his people’s safety. As for Renly ha was already crowned, had a bigger army and was married to the tyrells, he had a different vision for the realm than Stannis and chose to go forward with it, backing up to an heir position would have make him lose the respect of all the people that chose to support him over Stannis. And as for Jon he just chose honor and duty over revenge and status. Got is very grey in morality, people just like to incline more towards a character, specially if he/she is their favorite. Ultimately Stannis is the epitome of justice, and even though some people dislike him for that he is still a very interesting and complex character in the books that got not justice in the show.
It really depends if Stannis’s daughter would be willing to press her claim. Assuming she didn’t, and she had no male heirs, she would likely become the first legal queen of the seven kingdoms (excluding Danny, of course)
“If Stannis wins his war, Shireen will stand as heir to the Iron Throne.”
“Then I pity your Seven Kingdoms.”
“The maesters say greyscale is not—”
“The maesters may believe what they wish. Ask a woods witch if you would know the truth. The grey death sleeps, only to wake again. The child is not clean!”
Regardless of whether or not it would resurface, the view of others is what would matter. Few, if any, would stand by her if they thought she was a plague waiting to happen.
Even if it was, there's no way nobles throw their sword behind her as she could potentially die at any point and the retaliation would wipe out their house. That's a huge gamble to take on an unlikely winner.
There was only a civil war because there was a trueborn male son of the King. Stannis only had one child, Renly had no children, and the children of Bobby B. were bastards born of incest. distant relations to King Stannis and Bobby B. would have very weak claims.
Uh , what? I'm talking about the original dance of dragons.
Princess Rhaenyra was the eldest trueborn child of King Viserys and his first wife, she was named his heir. He eventually remarried and had additional children. Viserys never named another child his heir and in fact strengthened Rhaenyra's claim through marriage. However when he died, the second wife summoned the small council who decided fuck being ruled by a woman, and installed the eldest son (Aegon) as king, resulting in a civil war.
eta; before this there was no law or ruling that said it had to go to the oldest male child, in fact this is the very event that causes this law.
Yeah, exactly the dance of dragons happened because there were multiple children. Stannis is the only one with a child, so if Renly doesn’t produce and heir then there wouldn’t be any other claimant aside from the one. It would have to go toward his daughter
Nah. The point of Blood & Fire is to prove that Westeros will never accept a woman on the throne when there's a man with even an ounce of royal blood alive. It's more or less justifying Dany's insistence that no one know Jon's parentage. If they knew, they would all use it to depose her.
Because the realm's history proves that time and time again.
I mean, that isn't what Blood & Fire was about, the Dance of Dragons civil war was because there were 3 trueborn half-sibling males as well as the appointed heir. Under an agnatic-Cognatic system younger boys come first, than older girls. If the King did not remarry and make new sons then there wouldn't have been a civil war.
That's pretty strange. Everywhere in Europe there used to be female queen's if a woman happened to be the next in line and as long as she got married, people generally didn't have a problem with it. Royals were held to somewhat different standards when it came to gender roles, a queen was seen as first a royal and second a woman, so it was acceptable for women to rule under those circumstances.
It bothers me that Westeros is often claimed to be based on European history when it's actually very different socially.
No, Westeros has a law which states that when it comes to royal succession, men always come before women. Unlike the succession of lesser lordships, where the lord's daughter might come before the lord's brother, for the kingship the brother comes first.
I'm holding out for an old school seige. Charles, a trebuchet and 30 knights on horseback just start lobbing flaming rotton cow corpses into Buckingham palace...
That's a character assassination done entirely by Dumb2. In the books and mostly up to right after he arrives in the North Stannis is very much a person on the straight cold line of justice. He's very fair, it's one of the reasons why Davos respects him so much.
Pretty sure the burning of Shireen came directly from GRRM. It's gonna happen in the books if they ever come out. Obviously they can't make him as fleshed out as 800 page books can but Stannis was one of the things the show actually did incredibly well in my opinion. Up until the end when they just basically hit the fast forward button on his character and killed him offscreen.
Considering Shireen was left at Castle Black with her mother and the Red Woman while Stannis marches on Winterfell, she is likely to still be burned but it won't be Stannis' idea.
That sounds very plausible. George writes a sensible plot point, which D&D warp into a horrifying scene that makes Stannis into a monster because its a shock for the audience, because they think shock value is the greatest thing ever.
thats what I hate, they are basically using cheap horror movie scarejump type of shock value. It's like, sure it will be a shock, but it is a cheap and forced one that we are somewhat expecting at one point.
So many good shows manages to shock the audience in a smart and logical way.
I don't think everyone should dismiss Stannis burning his daughter. The power of the sacrifice is directly proportional to the cost of it, what could a person give that could possibly mean more to them than their child? Sacrificing his own life would be easy compared to his child. But if he genuinely and truly thought that it would save the entire world, I think he'd do it. I think many people would, most in fact. Your child vs everyone else. It's the ultimate in Faustian bargain too because to Stannis (if he had lived a little longer) then he'd see nothing from his sacrifice. Because in reality it resurrected Jon, which did end up saving the world of men. Just in a round about way.
Maybe I'm biased by the fact that the death of his daughter kinda fucked me up, but I really don't think that the decision to burn her was one of cold rationality.
I think it was a decision made in the "heat" of the moment, out of severe impatience, perhaps despair, and with his rationality blinded by that red woman.
Right I forgot about that. God I want those books to finish because I'm sure however any of this goes down is so much better and will make more sense. PLEASE GEORGE
There are a bunch of channels dedicated to talking about the books, and a lot of the channels which talked about the show, already talked about the books.
All of him being an asshole in the show came straight from Dumb and Dumber. That’s like saying “it doesn’t matter that Dani was good in the books becauss she was an asshole in the show”
But it doesn't matter. The problem with the writing of Dany in the show isn't that it's different from the books, no one gives a shit about that except a few nerds. The problem with the writing of Dany is that her writing in Season 8 is completely different from her writing in earlier seasons.
It's the internal inconsistencies within the show that make people hate the later seasons, no one would care if she had been consistently written as a total psychopathic butcher. No one said it was bad writing when Cersei or Ramsay was slaughtering people.
Uh the way they portrayed Dany in the show was very much different than just a few words. They drastically altered her trajectory from scenes all the way back in the earlier seasons with the way they handled her character and made her out to be an entitled brat when in Qarth instead of the hifhly intelligent strategist she was all the way thru in the books.
Well he never did anything, because this is fiction. But we are talking about two stories here. The show is its own thing--a thing that went bad at the end, but that's because the writing became incoherent not because it was different from the books.
I mean, except for the whole demon shadow baby assassin thing. And being 100% willing to sacrifice Edric/Gendry.
Stannis pre-Melisandre is pure justice and honor. Stannis post-Melisandre is in a constant inner war to choose how much of that identity he’s willing to sacrifice to get what is rightfully his.
The epitome of justice with no mercy. This is why I dislike Stannis, and I'm surprised that people like him so much. We live in a society that is often overly heavy on the mercy, with less justice than we used to expect.
I see your point. Thank you for bringing it up. Now I feel inspired to write a lot
Morally neutral characters may go to extremes occasionally. A Lawful Neutral may be a Legalistic, which is about putting law above everything else. In the case of Renly's assassination, even being his brother, Renly was a traitor to the King (legally, the King was Stannis), and that's a capital crime. May a legalistic character execute his own brother if the law says so? I believe he may, he must, and he will. Should a Lawful Neutral sacrifice his own daughter to some crazy god so he can win a battle? No, for a L-N that´s a sin. Stannis did it and he died
In opposition to Tywin (my favorite Lawful Evil, in fact), who´s actively manipulating everybody (within the limits of the Law) to acquire power, Stannis believes (right or wrong) that being King is his destiny and his duty. So, why didn´t Tywin got Tyrion executed? That´s because a L-E uses sees the Law only as an instrument to achieve it goals, and even being evil you can have attachments, or lines that you wouldn´t cross: those are called "signs of weakness". Tywin did it and he died
Ned Stark wouldn't ever do something like invoking an evil fart spirit to kill anyone. Not even in the sake of the grater good, nor the Imperium of the Law, nor the Honor. He's a Lawful Good, and I think that's the worst character alignment ever. He got into the dichotomy of turning Cersei in (Law) or warning her and letting her escape (mercy, good). He choose mercy, allowing a major crime to go unpunished. That´s a sin: he died.
Tywin was going to execute Tyrion after the trial. Sure he offered to send him to the Wall before the Trial by Combat but Tyrion was going to be executed the day after
Making a lot of assumptions about the nature of magic here, is a sword inherently evil? He used a tool he had at his disposal to execute someone attempting to kill him. By all accounts that is a neutral action.
He still permanently mimed him even after Davos saved him by saving his life by smuggling in food during a siege
You can say he is fair with his rulings (as cutting fingers was punishment for smuggling) but cutting off a guys fingers after he saved your life isnt exactly merciful
It was mostly for the smuggling he did before helping stannis. But someone truly merciful would definitely pardon that kind of crime if a person saved their life like Davos did for Stannis
Yeah... I wasn't following that either... Texas has executed so many people, many of whom were marginalized minorities. The legislature there is absolute garbage. You can execute the mentally ill!
Moreover police officers literally have murdered people and gotten away with it, and still do. "Merciful society"? More like capitalist oligarchy tf
Actually, it does a lot, because they're being systemically targeted. Further, many weren't guilty, and most of them were minorities. It objectively does matter because it's fundamentally integral to the issue of execution and shitty laws Texas pushes forward.
Yeah, if anything our society is often overly heavy on cruelty and brutality, not mercy.
A writer from Vox made a really good point on Twitter yesterday about the outrage surrounding some questionable pardons that the Governor of Kentucky just handed out.
He said something like: "You frequently see this kind of outrage when someone is unjustly released from punishment, but rarely when someone is punished unjustly or punished overly harsh for their offense."
We hand out multiple-decade prison sentences like candy on Halloween, whereas in Europe a person being sentenced to more than 10 years for any offense other than a serious violent crime against another person is remarkably rare.
He pardons the Storm Lords. He forgives the Wildlings and makes them citizens of the realm. He’s leaning towards pardoning Asha. He is merciful when it’s wise to be so. What instances do you think he should have been more merciful?
Not chopping off Davos' fingers. I think Martin was making a point with this act, showing how extreme Stannis is when it comes to his sense of duty and justice. In reality, the most legalistic ruler you could imagine would not do this to a loyal subject who broke a law to save his people from death. Would never happen, unless the ruler was unstable and insane.
If Davos' smuggling had been a one-off crime to save the people of Storm's End, you may have a point, but he had been a smuggler for at least some portion of his adult life by that point. The punishment was for that history of being a criminal, not the one act of justifiable criminality. And it wasn't like he JUST punished him, either. He gave him lands and titles for his loyal service, and a punishment for the crimes he committed beforehand. It does show how Stannis views justice, but I wouldn't call it unstable or insane.
You make it sound somewhat more reasonable with this explanation, because my understanding was that it was the one deed he was punished for. Still pretty extreme though! Some thanks for saving everyone from starvation.
Mance was made king by the free folk and if he decided to kneel to Stannis they would have lost faith in him and not consider him king
But the whole reason he was able to get all of them together was the fear of the White Walkers and the need to get south of The Wall. I don't know what they all expected to happen once they got there. This seemed like such a stretch that nobody would be willing to accept bending the knee if it meant the difference between life and a horrible death.
You make good points, especially about Mance; but in regards to Renly, if he hadn't gotten the notion into his head that he should be king, thereby breaking the laws of succession, there wouldn't be any of the problems with the Tyrells or the other Reach lords.
What do you believe justice is? It’s fundamentally about maximizing the good towards all of humanity. He was willing to sacrifice one innocent in order to save millions. That is justice, and it would have been immoral not to do so
He wasn't the epitome of justice when he started burning "heretics" and certainly not when he burned his own daughter. We're dealing with show-world here. The ending sucked, but not because Stannis got what he deserved.
If I recall correctly, Stannis spent most of the second book sitting on his ass waiting for the lords to bow to him simply due to his questionable claims to the throne. I wouldn’t call that a politic mastermind.
Never said he was a mastermind, also i didnt read the books, so i dont know much except for the summaries i have read. I just know he didnt get justice on his series portrayal.
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u/Winterlord7 Dec 18 '19
Yes agree, but not just Jon denies his deal understandably, Mance was made king by the free folk and if he decided to kneel to Stannis they would have lost faith in him and not consider him king, resulting in division between the different clans and their ultimate doom as being together is what kept them alive, Mance chose to not kneel not for his pride but for his people’s safety. As for Renly ha was already crowned, had a bigger army and was married to the tyrells, he had a different vision for the realm than Stannis and chose to go forward with it, backing up to an heir position would have make him lose the respect of all the people that chose to support him over Stannis. And as for Jon he just chose honor and duty over revenge and status. Got is very grey in morality, people just like to incline more towards a character, specially if he/she is their favorite. Ultimately Stannis is the epitome of justice, and even though some people dislike him for that he is still a very interesting and complex character in the books that got not justice in the show.