GoT S3: Stannis
SO I finally caught up on S3 of Game of Thrones! I'm still chewing over what I thought about the season as a whole (obviously it was very good! I'm just still collecting my thoughts) but I wanted to post some thoughts about Stannis, of all characters, that actually started when I finished ADwD a few months ago. There are a few paragraphs of book spoilers but they're marked and skippable and nothing big plot-wise. That said, my memory of the books is meh and so if there are differences between book and show characterization, this is show-verse.
The thing about Stannis is that he's a true believer, to the point where I don't think his conception of R'hllor is one that people usually associate with deities, but with forces of nature. This doesn't necessarily make him rare in fiction. There are usually true believers. His thing is that what he believes in matters to the choices he makes. Generally, a character who is acknowledged as an idealist/zealot/whatever will have everything they do turn on said idealism, and that idealism itself will be judged to be either a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Either they're an idealist and their genuineness is Good (or at best, a flaw that takes them down the wrong road with good intentions) or they are a zealot and that same genuineness is Bad. Or sometimes they're totally faking it for personal gain. They're not necessarily strawmen, though they usually are.
Stannis is different in that he is an absolutist about a specific belief system which is neither entirely congruent with or exclusive of the normative belief system of his society or ours. He has a bedrock certainty of some things - faith in R'hllor and in himself - and rather than warping his perspective on everything else, it often frees him up to make better decisions than many of our other players make in the same or similar situations. It's sheer Blue and Orange Morality using the language we're familiar with in context of religious zealotry. The reasoning behind his convictions - what he would say, what external factors might have influenced him, and also the subconscious predispositions and experiences which made him a person to which this particular belief system might appeal - is explored in a really thorough way I haven't seen often, if at all.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
So I don't disagree with the premises of a lot of the discussion posts I feel like I saw while the show was airing but I didn't read closely because I wasn't watching yet concerning Stannis' more pragmatic and modern-ish decisions, such as sending help to the Wall against the White Walkers and in expanding his talent pool past people of aristocratic birth, show him as a bright and interesting character. I do take issue with the conclusion of these arguments, which seem to be framed as a defense of Stannis against charges of rigidity. The latter is irrelevant to his belief system, while the former is actually an application of it.
Going to the Wall is first and foremost ideological for Stannis. The night is dark and full of terrors, and the White Walkers are the things that go bump in the night. There is only R'hllor and the Other(s). A key article of Stannis' faith is all about banding together against a common enemy. This is not motivated by pragmatism. It is holy war. But it's awfully convenient that R'hllor's directives dovetail with Stannis' political and military best interests. There are also tactical reasons for Stannis to make a bid for support at the wall. The Crows aren't much of a player in his conflict now, because Jon won't involve them in an active conflict south of the Wall. But the Wall is a good home base from which to start taking the kingdom from the North on down, particularly for someone like Stannis with nothing to lose in terms of his own home base. Fighting off the White Walkers will earn him some popular support, even getting support of the wildling immigrants. And so as the other kings have it out, killing each other and wearing down each other's resources and armies, Stannis can spend months building up a good relationship with what's likely to be the last armed force standing when spring comes again.
Neither does his choice of confidants in Davos and Jon Snow reflect ideological flexibility. They show not mere flexibility but a carefully-considered disregard for Westerosi aristocratic norms. It makes sense, as Stannis already knows he will have to build any support staff from the ground up, as the socially-acceptable existing talent pool has already passed on its chance to support him. This is unrelated to whether or not Stannis is willing to compromise on his true beliefs, because devotion to R'hllor is, as far as I can tell, silent on most social norms. Indeed, his willingness to flip the bird to this particular set of customs (the orthodoxy embraced by most of Westerosi society) shows a particular desire to set himself outside of it.
Similarly, his conflict throughout S3 as to whether he may/must sacrifice Gendry to R'hllor is quite beside the point. He knows that Gendry doesn't have to die to harvest the king's blood, because he knows Melisandre has been using his blood and he's doing just fine. He's hesitating because he damn well knows it's not Gendry's life versus the lives of everyone who will die in the War of All the Kings Ever. That's the choice he makes every day as a military commander, is how to minimize those sacrificed and maximize those preserved. I think his real problem was the same as the Lannisters': that even a bastard son of Robert's was a threat to his own claim to the throne. Indeed, Stannis likely knows that having wedded himself so thoroughly to a countercultural ideology makes him a good deal less appealing to the establishment than a naive young smith who would be highly malleable to the right advisers. And, of course, the boy is a reminder of Robert, in all his sloppiness and success. But admitting these things might be his motivation is a threat to his certainty in his righteousness, and so he works that much harder to avoid acknowledging it.
But I don't think this is just a collection of incidents which show a person haphazardly rationalizing acting in his own best interests. Of course, Melisandre would say that it's a straightforward demonstration that Stannis is the dour little apple of the Lord of Light's eye, that what ought to be done morally just happens to be in his best interests anyway, but I tend to think Stannis is a really interesting study in how and why people select belief systems. While I believe the faith of R'hllor provides Stannis with a lot of guidance and certainly shapes his decisions - his convictions are real - I think he's characterized as being someone to whom R'hllorism would appeal. As someone who's consistently overlooked when there are multiple choices, I think he likes the idea not necessarily of being the chosen Azor Ahai, but simply of a worldview where right and wrong are clear. He has at least one brother too many; is it such a psychological jump to believe the Faith has six deities too many? Certainly Melisandre seems to be the real deal (if refreshingly straightforward about the human imperfections of being the real deal) and so there's more than wishful thinking in reasons to believe her, but he still has to be willing to keep her around.
I also really like what's happening with Melisandre, in that she doesn't seem to be screwing with him. She pretty much reads to me as a thrill-seeker, who trusts in R'hllor and wants to be at the center of the action. (Notably, she doesn't seem to think of herself as exceptional among R'hllor devotees? She thinks "WE are more right than non-believers" quite frequently, but IIRC, her POV doesn't show her status-jockeying among other R'hllorists.) There's a genuineness to her that I find really intriguing. And how great is that relationship? She takes his shadow. She convinces him that he's only his good traits so that she can control his worst instincts, and he comes to depend on her ability to talk him into absolving himself of them. And yet on some level she must know it's self-defeating, that R'hllor needs the Other, that without darkness there is no light.
IMO this massive compartmentalization project is also why Stannis likes Davos: because Davos gives him a touchstone outside of Melisandre's ethereal logic, but won't muck up his cognitive processes with gross nasty practicalities when it counts. The easiest argument to preserve Gendry's life was the cool utilitarian one that a living Gendry can keep the supply of king's blood flowing indefinitely and a dead one can't. Gendry is the quintessential goose that lays the golden egg. But Davos is so busy digging in his heels against Melisandre, so invested in seeing himself as righteously Other than R'hllorism, that he doesn't actually argue his case except in black and white (and therefore ultimately nihilistic) platitudes.
So between Melisandre and Davos, Stannis gets to honor his doubts about sacrificing Gendry by acknowledging a conflict, but one that he can safely intellectualize as superego versus superego, justice versus justice, outside himself entirely. And that is the sine qua non of his existence. He can't admit emotional bias, because then he is not the righteous crusader for the dispassionate Lord of Light/laws of succession/whatever Great Justice. He cannot admit that he needs to think strategically, because aside from the unpleasantness of anxiety anyone would suffer, the fact of that uncertainty means that he is not quite as confident in his destiny as he needs to be.
All of this sounds like a big "aha!" against the character, but tbqh, it makes me like Stannis quite a lot. I don't believe there are people who are entirely aware of or real with themselves about their own motivations, and so a character who is those things rings hollow. But I can respect a person who at least commits to rigorous thoroughness about his chosen commitments. Moreover, I get why Stannis gravitated toward these particular commitments. After decades of deranged Targaryen chaos, followed by civil war, being basically the only one who could see the crash-and-burn course Robert and his family were on...who wouldn't value a little order for the sake of Order? Who's to say he's even objectively wrong for doing so? And that's a pretty complicated narrative trick, I'm really enjoying it.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/305870.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
The thing about Stannis is that he's a true believer, to the point where I don't think his conception of R'hllor is one that people usually associate with deities, but with forces of nature. This doesn't necessarily make him rare in fiction. There are usually true believers. His thing is that what he believes in matters to the choices he makes. Generally, a character who is acknowledged as an idealist/zealot/whatever will have everything they do turn on said idealism, and that idealism itself will be judged to be either a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Either they're an idealist and their genuineness is Good (or at best, a flaw that takes them down the wrong road with good intentions) or they are a zealot and that same genuineness is Bad. Or sometimes they're totally faking it for personal gain. They're not necessarily strawmen, though they usually are.
Stannis is different in that he is an absolutist about a specific belief system which is neither entirely congruent with or exclusive of the normative belief system of his society or ours. He has a bedrock certainty of some things - faith in R'hllor and in himself - and rather than warping his perspective on everything else, it often frees him up to make better decisions than many of our other players make in the same or similar situations. It's sheer Blue and Orange Morality using the language we're familiar with in context of religious zealotry. The reasoning behind his convictions - what he would say, what external factors might have influenced him, and also the subconscious predispositions and experiences which made him a person to which this particular belief system might appeal - is explored in a really thorough way I haven't seen often, if at all.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
So I don't disagree with the premises of a lot of the discussion posts I feel like I saw while the show was airing but I didn't read closely because I wasn't watching yet concerning Stannis' more pragmatic and modern-ish decisions, such as sending help to the Wall against the White Walkers and in expanding his talent pool past people of aristocratic birth, show him as a bright and interesting character. I do take issue with the conclusion of these arguments, which seem to be framed as a defense of Stannis against charges of rigidity. The latter is irrelevant to his belief system, while the former is actually an application of it.
Going to the Wall is first and foremost ideological for Stannis. The night is dark and full of terrors, and the White Walkers are the things that go bump in the night. There is only R'hllor and the Other(s). A key article of Stannis' faith is all about banding together against a common enemy. This is not motivated by pragmatism. It is holy war. But it's awfully convenient that R'hllor's directives dovetail with Stannis' political and military best interests. There are also tactical reasons for Stannis to make a bid for support at the wall. The Crows aren't much of a player in his conflict now, because Jon won't involve them in an active conflict south of the Wall. But the Wall is a good home base from which to start taking the kingdom from the North on down, particularly for someone like Stannis with nothing to lose in terms of his own home base. Fighting off the White Walkers will earn him some popular support, even getting support of the wildling immigrants. And so as the other kings have it out, killing each other and wearing down each other's resources and armies, Stannis can spend months building up a good relationship with what's likely to be the last armed force standing when spring comes again.
Neither does his choice of confidants in Davos and Jon Snow reflect ideological flexibility. They show not mere flexibility but a carefully-considered disregard for Westerosi aristocratic norms. It makes sense, as Stannis already knows he will have to build any support staff from the ground up, as the socially-acceptable existing talent pool has already passed on its chance to support him. This is unrelated to whether or not Stannis is willing to compromise on his true beliefs, because devotion to R'hllor is, as far as I can tell, silent on most social norms. Indeed, his willingness to flip the bird to this particular set of customs (the orthodoxy embraced by most of Westerosi society) shows a particular desire to set himself outside of it.
Similarly, his conflict throughout S3 as to whether he may/must sacrifice Gendry to R'hllor is quite beside the point. He knows that Gendry doesn't have to die to harvest the king's blood, because he knows Melisandre has been using his blood and he's doing just fine. He's hesitating because he damn well knows it's not Gendry's life versus the lives of everyone who will die in the War of All the Kings Ever. That's the choice he makes every day as a military commander, is how to minimize those sacrificed and maximize those preserved. I think his real problem was the same as the Lannisters': that even a bastard son of Robert's was a threat to his own claim to the throne. Indeed, Stannis likely knows that having wedded himself so thoroughly to a countercultural ideology makes him a good deal less appealing to the establishment than a naive young smith who would be highly malleable to the right advisers. And, of course, the boy is a reminder of Robert, in all his sloppiness and success. But admitting these things might be his motivation is a threat to his certainty in his righteousness, and so he works that much harder to avoid acknowledging it.
But I don't think this is just a collection of incidents which show a person haphazardly rationalizing acting in his own best interests. Of course, Melisandre would say that it's a straightforward demonstration that Stannis is the dour little apple of the Lord of Light's eye, that what ought to be done morally just happens to be in his best interests anyway, but I tend to think Stannis is a really interesting study in how and why people select belief systems. While I believe the faith of R'hllor provides Stannis with a lot of guidance and certainly shapes his decisions - his convictions are real - I think he's characterized as being someone to whom R'hllorism would appeal. As someone who's consistently overlooked when there are multiple choices, I think he likes the idea not necessarily of being the chosen Azor Ahai, but simply of a worldview where right and wrong are clear. He has at least one brother too many; is it such a psychological jump to believe the Faith has six deities too many? Certainly Melisandre seems to be the real deal (if refreshingly straightforward about the human imperfections of being the real deal) and so there's more than wishful thinking in reasons to believe her, but he still has to be willing to keep her around.
I also really like what's happening with Melisandre, in that she doesn't seem to be screwing with him. She pretty much reads to me as a thrill-seeker, who trusts in R'hllor and wants to be at the center of the action. (Notably, she doesn't seem to think of herself as exceptional among R'hllor devotees? She thinks "WE are more right than non-believers" quite frequently, but IIRC, her POV doesn't show her status-jockeying among other R'hllorists.) There's a genuineness to her that I find really intriguing. And how great is that relationship? She takes his shadow. She convinces him that he's only his good traits so that she can control his worst instincts, and he comes to depend on her ability to talk him into absolving himself of them. And yet on some level she must know it's self-defeating, that R'hllor needs the Other, that without darkness there is no light.
IMO this massive compartmentalization project is also why Stannis likes Davos: because Davos gives him a touchstone outside of Melisandre's ethereal logic, but won't muck up his cognitive processes with gross nasty practicalities when it counts. The easiest argument to preserve Gendry's life was the cool utilitarian one that a living Gendry can keep the supply of king's blood flowing indefinitely and a dead one can't. Gendry is the quintessential goose that lays the golden egg. But Davos is so busy digging in his heels against Melisandre, so invested in seeing himself as righteously Other than R'hllorism, that he doesn't actually argue his case except in black and white (and therefore ultimately nihilistic) platitudes.
So between Melisandre and Davos, Stannis gets to honor his doubts about sacrificing Gendry by acknowledging a conflict, but one that he can safely intellectualize as superego versus superego, justice versus justice, outside himself entirely. And that is the sine qua non of his existence. He can't admit emotional bias, because then he is not the righteous crusader for the dispassionate Lord of Light/laws of succession/whatever Great Justice. He cannot admit that he needs to think strategically, because aside from the unpleasantness of anxiety anyone would suffer, the fact of that uncertainty means that he is not quite as confident in his destiny as he needs to be.
All of this sounds like a big "aha!" against the character, but tbqh, it makes me like Stannis quite a lot. I don't believe there are people who are entirely aware of or real with themselves about their own motivations, and so a character who is those things rings hollow. But I can respect a person who at least commits to rigorous thoroughness about his chosen commitments. Moreover, I get why Stannis gravitated toward these particular commitments. After decades of deranged Targaryen chaos, followed by civil war, being basically the only one who could see the crash-and-burn course Robert and his family were on...who wouldn't value a little order for the sake of Order? Who's to say he's even objectively wrong for doing so? And that's a pretty complicated narrative trick, I'm really enjoying it.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/305870.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.