Episode 109: A CLASH OF KINGS, CATELYN IV: "Judgment Day, Part 2" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.          

Welcome to the one hundred and ninth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Judgment Day, Part 2: An Analysis of ACOK, Catelyn IV,” in which King Terrorist Renly Baratheon is righteously vaporized by the magical equivalent of a drone strike. Man, I know you said Bran III with the harvest feast was the ultimate feel-good chapter in ASOIAF, but I think it might be this one! 

Thank you for our 900 patrons!

Special shout-outs:

• Shout out Learned Hands: Merry and Clint for a legal take on the thorny ASOIAF issues
• Micah joined the Planetos Podcast as a permanent co-host along with Travis and Brett!

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timbob
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
• Lord Anonymous
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
• Ser Sourcedelica 
• Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
• Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems (ladies and gentlemen)
• Lord Clint, Esq., Master of Absolutely, Positively NOT Serving As A Spy for Several Unnamed High Lords and Ladies In Order to Further the Secret Blackfyre-Style Conspiracy to Overthrow The Oppressive Small Council
• Haldivar, The Waiter for TWOW
• A-a-ron Damphair Prophet of the Forsaken and High Priest of Euron Crows Eye
• Lieutenant Glenn Lord of H town
• Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, Princess of Dragonstone, Mistress of Art, The Overworked, Queen of the Pencils, the Eraser and the First Draft, Queen of Monochrome, Devotee of the Great GOT, Portraitist of the Realm, Lady Realist of the Seven Kingdoms, Blender of Paints and Maker of Drawings
• Seanwell the Slayer
• Lord Adam T
• Lady Alexandra of Tarth
• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
• Lady Elizabeth, Mistress of Horse (Faced Lesbians)
• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
• Lady Ashley
• Thank you to all our counselors!

Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Guys:

One of the things that continues to astonish me is that King Robert Baratheon had no personal company of Baratheon soldiers around him. I get that George has to position the Lannisters both figuratively and literally as taking over the court, but why wouldn't a king in a strong feudal system with no standing army have a personal force that is loyal solely to him, not just the office and throne he occupies, like the Kingsguard and Goldcloaks? Interestingly, Game of Thrones S1 features Baratheon soldiers accompanying Robert to Winterfell; the same outfit/armor appears later in Season 2 in both Stannis and Renly's camps and armies.

Lord Travis

So, thank you Lord Travis, our master of ships and warden of the waves on the small council. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword of higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can find special posts, show notes and 26 ASOIAF and 8 Fevre Dream bonus episodes.

Speaking of those bonus episodes, our next patreon-only bonus episode will not be patreon-only or a bonus episode. Instead, as we’ve alluded to here, if you’ve been watching our livestream episodes, we’ll be taking a week off from doing our chapter-by-chapter focus to bring you … King Terrorist: our analysis of King Renly Baratheon! And this episode will be available to EVERYONE as part of our weekly livestream and will be out on our regular podcast feed as a sample bonus episode! (Of course, it will be available early to listen to for all our Poor Fellow and above patrons!)

We figured now is a good time to give you all a little treat and show you all the types of episodes you can hear as a Poor Fellow or above patron. So, we hope you enjoy, and we’ll be picking up with ACOK, Tyrion VIII on April 27th as a livecast with a general release date of May 4th.

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Catelyn, she had prayed to the gods, found comfort and had a plan for peace which was rudely dashed to pieces by Renly Baratheon. Let’s find out the consequences of not giving peace a chance in this synopsis of ACOK, Catelyn IV, part 2!

Synopsis

"I beg you in the name of the Mother," Catelyn began when a sudden gust of wind flung open the door of the tent. She thought she glimpsed movement, but when she turned her head, it was only the king's shadow shifting against the silken walls. She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, something was queer, wrong, and then she saw Renly's sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword . . .

"Cold," said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat.

Brienne turns, starts to say something and then screams as Renly stumbles into her arms. King Renly Baratheon tries to say a word, but he chokes on his blood, and Brienne throws back her head and screams in anguish.

The shadow. Something dark and evil had happened here, she knew, something that she could not begin to understand. Renly never cast that shadow. Death came in that door and blew the life out of him as swift as the wind snuffed out his candles.

Robar Royce and Emmon Cuy come bursting in through the tent flap with two men-at-arms behind them with torches. When they see Brienne, they immediately make a move on the jump to conclusions board and assume she murdered Renly. Emmon calls Brienne wicked, and Robar asks why Brienne did it.

Her rainbow cloak soaked red with blood, Brienne looks up, unable to verbalize what happened. Emmon grabs a battle axe from the table by the entrance to the tent and tells Brienne she’s about to die, but Catelyn screams NO. But it’s too late. The blood madness is on Cuy and the two men-at-arms. They rush Brienne.

What follows is Brienne displaying her incredible skill at arms, grabbing Renly’s sword and using it to defend herself against Emmon’s axe. She throws Renly’s body “rudely” aside. One of the men-at-arms thrusts a torch against Brienne, but it fails to light the rainbow cloak she’s wearing due to all the blood. The torch and the man-at-arms’ hand end up meeting the business end of Brienne’s sword. But the torch lights the tent on fire. The other man-at-arms attacks, and Brienne paries his blow. But then Emmon joins the fight, and Emmon and the man-at-arms push Brienne back, but she continues to hold them at bay. 

On the ground, Renly's head rolled sickeningly to one side, and a second mouth yawned wide, the blood coming from him now in slow pulses.

Catelyn notices that Robar, who was holding back, is now drawing his sword, and she begs him to stop. It wasn’t Brienne. Robar needs to help the girl.

Hear me, it was Stannis." The name was on her lips before she could think how it got there, but as she said it, she knew that it was true. "I swear it, you know me, it was Stannis killed him."

Robar asks how it could possibly be Stannis, but Catelyn doesn’t know. It was dark magic. Sorcery. A shadow. A shadow with a sword. She begs Robar to listen. Brienne loved Renly. More shouts and voices come from outside. And Catelyn tells Robar that Brienne is innocent, and she swears it on Ned’s grave and her honor as a Stark.

And in a moment that’s reminiscent of his brother in the Prologue, Robar turns out brave in the end.

"I will hold them," Ser Robar said. "Get her away." He turned and went out.

The fire runs up the walls of the tent as Emmon presses Brienne hard, forgetting about Catelyn -- that is until Catelyn doinks his head with an iron brazier, sending the knight to his knees but not killing him. Catelyn tells Brienne that they need to get the fuck out of here, and Brienne immediately responds by cutting a hole in the tent. They push out into the camp, and Catelyn urges Brienne to walk slowly and act like nothing was wrong. Yeah. That should be easy.

But Brienne is able to follow suit, holstering her weapons and walking next to Catelyn.

The night air smelled of rain. Behind them, the king's pavilion was well ablaze, flames rising high against the dark. No one made any move to stop them. Men rushed past them, shouting of fire and murder and sorcery. Others stood in small groups and spoke in low voices. A few were praying, and one young squire was on his knees, sobbing openly.

Renly’s army lines come apart all around the pair as they make their way through the camp as morning approaches. Storm’s End rises in front of them like a “dream of stone” while fingers of light make their way across the field. 

Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once, spirits returning to their graves. And Renly one of them now, gone like his brother Robert, like her own dear Ned.

"I never held him but as he died," Brienne said quietly as they walked through the spreading chaos. Her voice sounded as if she might break at any instant. "He was laughing one moment, and suddenly the blood was everywhere . . . my lady, I do not understand. Did you see, did you . . . ?"

"I saw a shadow. I thought it was Renly's shadow at the first, but it was his brother's."

"Lord Stannis?"

"I felt him. It makes no sense, I know . . . "

It made sense enough for Brienne. "I will kill him," the tall homely girl declared. "With my lord's own sword, I will kill him. I swear it. I swear it. I swear it.”

Catelyn and Brienne make it back to the small encampment of northmen and riverlanders. Hal Mollen states that everything has gone to shit. And uh, is Renly … Yep, he’s dead, Catelyn says. But they didn’t do it. What about the battle? There ain’t going to be a battle. 

Catelyn turns to Brienne and tells her she can come with them. They brought twice the number of horses they need. But Brienne wants to get her own horse and her own armor first. Nope. Not going to happen. They need to ride out before anyone comes looking for them. They were with Renly when he died. And if anyone tries to stop them, kill them. I love this side of Catelyn.

As the long fingers of dawn fanned across the fields, color was returning to the world. Where grey men had sat grey horses armed with shadow spears, the points of ten thousand lances now glinted silverly cold, and on the myriad flapping banners Catelyn saw the blush of red and pink and orange, the richness of blues and browns, the blaze of gold and yellow. All the power of Storm's End and Highgarden, the power that had been Renly's an hour ago. They belong to Stannis now, she realized, even if they do not know it themselves yet. Where else are they to turn, if not to the last Baratheon? Stannis has won all with a single evil stroke.

I am the rightful king, he had declared, his jaw clenched hard as iron, and your son no less a traitor than my brother here. His day will come as well.

A chill went through her.

And that is the second half of ACOK, Catelyn IV! What a masterful chapter. So much of it really can’t be summarized well -- hence why half the damn synopsis was me quoting it. What did you think of this chapter, Emmett?

Depth

So here we are, no turning back. The age of wonder and terror. High fantasy invaded by horror. All the buildup of magical power we’ve been talking about since Dany’s dragonbirth, characters like Jojen, Jaqen, Quaithe, Pyat Pree, and above all Melisandre standing in for the influence of the supernatural on the natural world: it’s all been leading to this. The most well-liked king, with the biggest army, armed and armored, surrounded by his powerful lords and his Rainbow Guard, a glorious future ahead of him, the living embodiment of political power...

...and then it all falls apart, from the center outward, life blown out like a candle by a sorcerous presence that vanishes as swiftly as it arrives, like a bad dream. But this is a nightmare that no one can awake from: not Catelyn, not Brienne, not even Stannis, and certainly not the reader. When the sun rises at the end of this chapter, it rises on a different world and a different story, permanently changed by nothing more than a shadow on a wall. 

A lesser writer would make this chapter and especially the latter half of the chapter Catelyn serving as camera on events as they unfold, but GRRM does a remarkable job of integrating Catelyn into every detail while taking nothing away from the magic event which really changes the entire tone of ASOIAF. We have seen magic before. But it’s here that magic doesn’t feel like a one-off like Dany and her dragons or a “that’s creepy” with Cressen and Melisandre.

Here, magic unfolds in front of a POV character who is made of staunch, pragmatic stuff. George places this terrifying aspect of the magical eyes of Catelyn, skeptic of Stannis and Renly, Faith of the Seven believer. In Catelyn, GRRM chose a fascinating, unique POV to show the birth of the new world, a darker world.  

• The shadowsword
  • Before the Stranger in the form of the shadowbaby enters the tent to snuff out the light within, Catelyn makes one last plea for peace on behalf of the Mother
  • She’s speaking not only for the Faith of the Seven, but for herself, and for the mother who bore both Stannis and Renly. The latter starts to respond in jest; as much as he makes use of Faith symbolism, he doesn’t take it seriously
  • But Death interrupts his infinite jest. Renly’s last word is “Cold.” He’s puzzled by the sudden fatal interruption of his grand narrative. He is so invested in life, love, youth, song, summer, his peach, that he doesn’t recognize death even when it stares back at him wearing his brother’s face. It carries echoes of Poe (The Red Masque of Death)...
    • There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion, even by the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
  • ...and Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow):
    • Death has come in the pantry door, stands watching them, iron and patient, with a look that says: “try to tickle me.”
  • All the youth and wealth and laughter that defined Renly’s image, his shadow on a wall, dries up at once in the shadowy face of death, in the face of the Stranger
  • This is why the Mother was crying in the sept. This is why Catelyn saw the shadows lurking there. Death has slipped the bonds of the graveyard to haunt the summer knights. The party is over. The song is silenced. Winter has come.
  • Everyone goes through their own version of this. Most of us aren’t kings. Most of us aren’t killed by nightmare shadow versions of our own brothers. But all of us die. All of us get older, and all of us wonder, when did that happen, exactly?
  • We are all flowers that open up before the sun, and then wilt and pass away. Renly is associated with nature imagery in part to make this feel universal
  • All the rush of youthful energy that swelled up in Renly’s camp feels like it just hit a brick wall, which is what it always feels like when a young person dies
  • It’s the feeling of possibility dissipating, a future glimpsed in the flames only to burn up into ash, love replaced by entropy, the sad slow collapse of all things
  • This is focused like a laser through the prism of Brienne, the ultimate summer knight in some ways; she told Catelyn song would make them all immortal
  • Now she’s being shown the truth. Men are meat. It doesn’t matter how glorious Renly seemed or how special he made her feel. He has no power over death
  • And sure, Renly will live in legend and song. Garlan wears his armor to great effect at the Blackwater; Renly is sung of positively at the Purple Wedding
  • But that’s no comfort to Brienne, who never held him but as he died. It doesn’t erase the horror she experiences, nor the trauma she has to deal with later
  • The rainbow cloak he gave her, the one that made her face light up with pride, is stained red with blood, the red of anger and vengeance, the comet, and R’hllor
  • Her innocence dies with Renly; the image of her throwing back her head and shrieking in torment as she holds his corpse is one I’ve never been able to shake
  • Brienne spoke somewhat prophetically back in Catelyn II
    • Brienne regarded her with eyes as blue as her armor. "Winter will never come for the likes of us. Should we die in battle, they will surely sing of us, and it's always summer in the songs. In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining."
  • Literal winter never comes for the summer king, but the survivors like Brienne will experience it.
  • But what does it matter if songs are sung of those who experience metaphorical winter. They can’t hear the songs.
  • But of course, Brienne won’t be a POV until AFFC. Our eyes on Renly’s death are Catelyn’s. She’s much more worldly in many ways, but not regarding magic
  • This is as new and frightening an experience for her as it is for anyone else, and George does such a good job of writing the assassination through her eyes
  • At first, she thinks a gust of wind has blown into the tent. Which in a way, it has: the storm off the sea, the grief of the gods come home to roost, the wind of winter that kills summer, blows out the candles, and leaves you alone in the dark
  • This is the face that Catelyn refused to look at in the sept: the Stranger. And perhaps because she refused to look at Death, because it is so painful to look directly upon its works, she doesn’t realize at first what she’s looking at here
  • I cannot possibly heap enough praise upon George’s writing here, try as I might:
    • She thought she glimpsed movement, but when she turned her head, it was only the king's shadow shifting against the silken walls. She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, something was queer, wrong, and then she saw Renly's sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword...
      
      "Cold," said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat.
  • This is how the royal family dies, not with a bang but with a whimper. Four sentences, and everything has come apart: politically, physically, metaphysically
  • All the eerie cinematic imagery we talked about last week comes together into an unforgettable horror tableau, like fingers coiled into a fist and striking home
  • What horror is, in part, is the process by which the everyday transforms into the nightmarish. This reflects the real world, because even though the real world doesn’t have literal shadow monsters, it has people whose lives are shattered in an instant by abusers, disasters, and the revelations of loss and disease
  • Horror is about events that make you look at the world differently. Horror is a stunned gaze that no longer recognizes itself in the mirror, that cannot draw strength from home and family like it once did. Horror is the end of happiness
  • And so we see the corruption of one of the most ubiquitous of things: a shadow. Everyone has one! Yet precisely because everyone has one, shadows can be powerful sources of anxiety; they are mined for that quality in stories and myths
  • Shadows are symbols of the repressed self in certain strains of psychology and philosophy, and stand in for both maturation and death in many traditions; the shadow in Peter Pan is a particularly familiar reference point for Western folks
  • A shadow is an intimate thing that belongs to you, but it’s also a faded outline that lacks any of your features. It’s a thing without personality or individuality
  • It follows behind you, picking up your scraps, ignored, forgotten, denied the sun by your very existence (Stannis vis-a-vis Robert). You take it for granted
  • It can serve as a vessel for all the nasty thoughts you clamp down, the parts of yourself you’d like to forget: your dark side, hidden away behind Vader’s mask
  • But it’s also stalking you. Tracing your footsteps. With you when no one else is. Able to slip past armies and guards, because who looks twice at a shadow…
  • ...until it strikes. Until it moves on its own. Until its nonexistent sword somehow touches and cuts and kills the living. It is a horror to shake the human soul
  • It is all the more horrifying because Catelyn’s first fear--that someone has stolen into the tent--is assuaged. Oh, it’s only a shadow! Classic horror maneuver: the fakeout scare. The red herring shot, just before you go in for the kill
  • She assumes it’s Renly’s shadow because it’s a man’s shadow, but also because Stannis and Renly are brothers. Of course their shadows look alike
  • And doesn’t that perfectly capture the horror of what’s happening? Catelyn is only fooled because this is kinslaying. Because they are both Baratheons.
  • It’s a perfect visual that the sun king, the one Baratheon who overflows with color is killed by darkness
  • We keep hearkening to this concept of Stannis as being in the shadows and that being a perfect narrative springboard for him to become a shadow.
    • His lord's face swam up before him, not the man he was but the boy he had been, standing cold in the shadows while the sun shone on his elder brother. Whatever he did, Robert had done first, and better. 
  • And as we keep saying, Renly as Robert’s ghost works so well in the context of Stannis killing his sun-imaged brothers
  • The sun shone on the younger brother too, and he had claimed the crown first, his lords loved him when they never loved Stannis, and they’ll betray Stannis at the mere sight of Renly’s armor on the Blackwater.
  • But this whole month of Catelyn has put me in mind that all this talk of laws and armies and castles is window dressing for the true nature of the conflict: boys who never had a parent to step in and resolve their conflicts.
  • Robert was sent off at an early age to the Vale and only visited occasionally. And one of those times Robert visited was watching mom and dad die at sea. Traumatic, development-arresting shit.
  • The game of thrones (finding a bride for Rhaegar) consumed Lord Steffon and Lady Cassana.
  • And as much as Cressen tried to play as dad, there’s no real substitute for mom and dad.
  • So, now, the game of thrones consumes Renly, and Stannis will later claim (and I believe him) that he grieves for Renly in a way that brings it back home: 
    • "Fools love a fool," grumbled Stannis, "but I grieve for him as well. For the boy he was, not the man he grew to be."
  • The boy he was, because they’re boys still, their development arrested by war and not having a mom and dad to love them and care for them.
  • And this a major theme we’ve explored: how the game of thrones across multiple plot arcs rests on a bed of adolescent trauma.
  • But this union of adolescent trauma resulting in magic death and violence seen here in ACOK has a narrative forebear back in AGOT.
  • The “shadow shifting against the silken walls” should immediately put us in mind of Mirri Maz Duur’s shadows in her tent, another of the big magic acts in ASOIAF
  • As we’ve said, Melisandre and MMD have a lot in common, and even though the first time reader won’t have Mel’s involvement confirmed until Davos II, George is using a lot of the same images and concepts to establish his framework of magic
  • Dany was trying to save Drogo’s life, but as she thinks, she was also trying to preserve her dream of King’s Landing. So, too, is Stannis in his own way
  • In the process, Dany gives up Rhaego, the smiling perfect son in her dreams, given over to the fire as Renly is here; he haunts Stannis’ dreams in turn
  • MMD says Dany knew at some level what deal she was making. It’s left ambiguous whether that’s true; same with Stannis’ culpability here
  • In both cases, the loss of the central beloved sun king leads to the camp around them--Drogo’s khalasar, Renly’s army--falling apart and finding new leaders
  • And in both cases, it comes to nothing. Drogo’s new life isn’t worth living, and Dany mercy kills him. Stannis doesn’t take King’s Landing after all; his fleet feeds the fire. Sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to wield it
  • There are also some crucial differences, of course. Dany took full public responsibility for her actions, for better or worse; Stannis does not
  • Mirri Maz Duur was also present and visible as the source of the magic; Melisandre is back in Stannis’ camp, and will be hidden again under Storm’s End
  • This speaks to the different motivations at work with these characters. As I said last week, even as you have archetypes in common, humanity needs fleshing out
  • Dany is seeking a politically transformative moment, building on previous changes she’s made to the khalasar. While Stannis certainly wants Renly’s army, and he’s publicly backing R’hllor, he is not publicly condoning shadowbabies
  • Mirri Maz Duur had also gone full rogue and was trying to burn her oppressors’ world down around her. Melisandre, in her mind, is building a better world...and this is only an intermediate step, far from the most important thing she can do
  • So while MMD’s spotlight moment with the shadows dancing in her tent was a climactic one for the characters as well as the reader, Team Stannis has every incentive to try and cover up this shadow’s existence, as we will see in Davos II
  • Yet the coverup rings false, not only because Courtnay Penrose is there to rip it to shreds, not only because we see a second shadowbaby born, but also because unlike MMD’s shadows, we are in the tent for this one. We cannot forget
  • Seeing is believing. This is not a familiar face swimming across a chalk outline, summoned by hunger and grief. This is a shadow peeling itself off canvas to cut through steel and flesh with ease, before vanishing into the night
  • This is what it looks like when a god is real, when they’re not just stories and empty vessels to be filled. The gossamer veil parts and a hand reaches down
  • Power, for once, is more than trappings, more than a shadow on a wall...yet it’s also literally a shadow on a wall! That’s one of the many rich ambiguities of the shadow assassins
  • On the one hand, they are the literal embodiment of Varys’ riddle. Here we have this thing we call power: the shadow Stannis is casting on Renly’s tent walls
  • Again, we get the sense that the entire book has been leading up to this. All the political dialogue in so many different POVs was just rolling out the red carpet for the introduction of Power itself, getting its spotlight on the walls of Renly’s tent
  • But on the other hand, the shadowbabies themselves don’t fit Varys’ description of power. More precisely: they are exceptions that wind up proving the rule
  • They are not being given power by anyone believing in them. Stannis doesn’t seem fully aware of what he’s committed himself to (though I do think he gave the order in a very general sense), Catelyn and Brienne barely understand what they’ve witnessed, and lots of other people end up blaming one or both of them
  • You nailed it. Catelyn and Brienne just got sucker-punched by … what exactly?
  • And here we’re seeing how Catelyn’s POV is sublime here: in the moment, Catelyn reflects the readers’ shock at the event.
  • But then, she Tyrion’s on up and gets ahead of the reader to recognize who it was that cast the magic shadow as we’ll discuss later on.
  • But in that confusion of what’s going on, we see a principle that George has successfully imbued into ASOIAF: how tapping into magic is playing with something the characters (and readers) don’t understand.
  • As he put it in 2017:
    • Fantasy needs magic in it, but I try to control the magic very strictly. You can have too much magic in fantasy very easily, and then it overwhelms everything and you lose all sense of realism. And I try to keep the magic magical — something mysterious and dark and dangerous, and something never completely understood. I don’t want to go down the route of having magic schools and classes where, if you say these six words, something will reliably happen. Magic doesn’t work that way. Magic is playing with forces you don’t completely understand. And perhaps with beings or deities you don’t completely understand. It should have a sense of peril about it. - GRRM Interview, 2017
  • On a wider, narrative level, part of what I love about magic in ASOIAF is how it’s often used as a shortcut through thorny issues.
  • Magic nets short-term advantages for the people who use it: Daenerys will keep Drogo alive, Stannis is going to gain most of Renly’s army here but … these shortcuts don’t bring long-term benefits.
  • In fact, the gains dissolve.
  • That sense of peril in using a power that Daenerys and Stannis don’t fully understand is something that another shadowy character in the narrative is more aware of having had an early brush with magic at an early age.
  • This is a form of power that erases itself as soon as the deed is done, leaving no evidence behind. That couldn’t be more different from the idea that power resides where we believe it resides. This is an older source of power than realpolitik
  • Varys’ shadow on a wall framework only takes over after the assassination is done. That’s when power resides where people believe it resides--Brienne is blamed, Catelyn feels the need to save her, and events unfold as they do
  • So the rules reassert themselves, the game resumes...but Renly now lies dead, and the power that ripped apart his throat does not follow Varys’ framework
  • The shadowbaby is a temporary breakdown of not only the rules of reality, but also the rules of politics as defined by the most skillful political mind in the series
  • That’s why the shadows freak Varys out so much, I would argue. Not only because he was victimized by the forces of magic as a child, but also because his metaphorical shadow on a wall has just been challenged by a literal one
  • Maybe he’s thinking to himself: will this happen to Young Griff, my own shadow I’m trying to cast onto the Iron Throne? I have all these plans to gather armies around him, but what if they can’t protect him from the sword without a hilt?
  • After all, Varys seems to be in part modeling YG’s childhood on Egg’s, and while Summerhall remains shrouded in mystery, we know Egg climbed the fiery ladder
  • Young Griff is a particularly relevant reference point because as I’ve argued before, he is the Renly 2.0 to Dany’s Stannis 2.0: the completion of the archetype
  • You could argue that what we’re seeing here is an intimate preview of how things will go down in the second Dance of the Dragons between Dany and YG
  • Drogon will play the part of the black shadow, successor as he is to Balerion the Black Dread; both dragons are repeatedly described as shadows
  • Many of the same Reach and Stormlands lords currently gathered around Renly will probably be backing Young Griff by the time Dany arrives in Westeros
  • YG is also the logical candidate for the sparrow movement, meaning he too will have Faith symbolism all over the place (even more than he already does)
  • The “mummer’s dragon” prophecy suggests that Young Griff will win people over with charisma and magnificence like Renly before him
  • And of course, Duck stands in for Brienne, named in honor of her ancestor Dunk, who guarded Egg! It all comes around, the wheel of time
  • Young Griff may die at the height of his power like Renly, though I think he might actually claim the throne first. See, just like how the Baratheons are a bastard offshoot of the Targaryens, Stannis v. Renly is minor compared to Dany v. YG
  • Dany’s black shadow isn’t this immaterial thing that slips in and out, one kill only. It’s a living breathing beast she is now able to ride. And he breathes fire!
  • On the one hand, this makes Dany more dangerous than Stannis. The seductive quality of the shadowbaby is that it only kills the person you tell it to, and no more
  • Dragons, by contrast, are weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, they are animals Dany has raised. She loves them, and they love her
  • The shadowbaby is not a pet, and it’s not anything that anyone would love. This represents how Stannis’ heart has become more shriveled than Dany’s over time
  • So the passions of both love and hate will burn hotter in Dany’s case than in Stannis’. This is a preview, an exploration of elements that will pay off in full later
  • Of interest is that one iteration of Varys and Illyrio’s plans had Young Grift wedding the dragon queen and harnessing the power of her magical, fire-breathing dragons.
  • What that seems to communicate is that Varys and Illyrio are willing to embrace magic to Varys’ probable personal disgust if it means they can cast a larger shadow to seat their prepared prince onto the Iron Throne.
  • Another parallel to the death of Renly is the Red Wedding. We’re witnessing the death of a young charismatic king surrounded by his army, preparing for battle
  • Catelyn is our POV in both cases. This is an early tremor of the atrocity that will claim her body and soul, a prophetic vision of the horrors awaiting her and hers
  • Then there’s the parallel to the Long Night. It’s no accident that the candles go out, plunging the tent into darkness, nor that Renly’s last word is “cold”
  • Melisandre frames herself as the nemesis of the white walkers, come to Westeros to gather the forces of humanity together to fight the one true enemy
  • Yet when we look upon her works, we see uncomfortable echoes of the very evil she has dedicated herself to fighting. Is she their nemesis, or their mirror image?
  • The Others and their wights are associated with blue fire, the starfire in their eyes. Maybe these forces have more in common than they’d like to think!
  • Maybe instead of accepting this oppositional dichotomy on its face, we should dig beneath the surface and see what they have in common, for better or worse
  • For better: the existence of Jon Snow! For worse: both ice and fire demand blood. Which is Stannis’ true sword? The sword of fire, or the sword of darkness?
  • Where all that is heading, of course, is the burning of Shireen, in which Stannis will recreate the Night’s King atrocity (probably in the Nightfort itself), but in a vain attempt to defeat the Others, rather than empower them. That’s the final big parallel here, and the one that in my opinion grounds the rest emotionally
  • I understand why the show gave Renly a heart-punch death, visually speaking, but it’s really important in the books that shadow-Stannis goes for the throat
  • The slitting of Renly’s throat makes this scene feel like a sacrifice, like Renly is less a king than a lamb on an altar, being bled out to seek R’hllor’s favor
  • Stannis will consider sacrificing Edric Storm and will make the call to sacrifice Shireen. As with Renly, there is a detached big-picture justification at work
  • But there is also a clear internal emotional need to which Stannis is responding, every bit as much as the grand narratives of ice, fire, and thrones
  • As always, it’s about the hole Robert left behind. That’s what this scene is about more than anything else, in characterization terms at least
  • Renly is Robert reborn in Stannis’ eyes, the brother for which he gave it all and never loved him back, screwing him over once again and getting away with it
  • And so Renly, eager to claim Robert’s mantle in every other respect, must pay for Robert’s sins. He’s so used to seeing Robert in his glory days looking back from the mirror, but now he sees the shadow, not the ghost in a golden crown
  • Renly is an echo of Robert, the shadow is an echo of Stannis. For one last heartbeat, these specters of nostalgia and resentment stare each other down
  • For one last heartbeat, they know each other as they are. For one last heartbeat, they are still brothers. Then the shadow strikes; nothing will ever be the same
  • In his dreams, I have to imagine Stannis was killing Robert in this moment, not Renly. Finally taking vengeance for all those slights, for the hole left inside
  • For Renly, this one last heartbeat is all he gets to process that nothing in his life is going to work out the way everything and everyone around him said it would
  • He’s not going to win the throne like Robert. He’s not the hero. He’s a red herring, a rug to be pulled out from under the audience, a temporary obstacle designed to deepen the tragedy of Stannis, who is himself a secondary character
  • “Remember, thou art mortal.” Renly only realizes that when it’s too late.
    • Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.
  • Will this be Stannis’ final realization as well? 
  • We’ve talked before about how Tyrion always wonders if Tywin is always intending Tyrion to “hold the left” -- that is to do the grubby work and act as an arrow catcher for the people of import to the Lannisters (Tywin).
  • Tying that into Stannis: we’ve made the point that Stannis is the punisher, annihilating opposition on the field, clearing the way for the heroes of the story to gain and hold power.
  • Stannis sacrificed his body to hold the left for Robert during Robert’s Rebellion, he held the left and fought unglorious battles against Victarion and then took Great Wyk while Robert took the glory of attacking Pyke. 
  • Here in this chapter, he sacrifices part of his soul, his essence to propel himself forward to be the hero.
  • Like he’s portrayed in The World of Ice and Fire, Stannis was a page in someone else’s history book, and he’ll continue to be one come TWOW.
  • How tragic it’s going to be for Stannis to learn that he was right all along. He was only second fiddle to Robert, to Renly and in TWOW, he’s going to learn that he was holding the left, clearing the field of Boltons and Freys to allow the rise of Jon Snow, KiTN.
  • But there are always survivors left amidst the carnage, and they can be victims too. 
• The aftermath in the tent
  • As I’ve been saying, the attraction of the shadowbaby as a murder weapon is that it kills only the person it is supposed to, and no one else
  • Human assassins might have to kill guards. Poison might wind up in the wrong goblet. But the shadows with Stannis’ face stalk their prey singlemindedly
  • You can see how such a tool might appeal to Stannis. In a way, it’s a corrupted echo of the Stark ethos: the man who passes the sentence swings the sword
  • Stannis is technically the one swinging the sword here, and he’s carrying out the sentence of death for the crime of treason against Renly and Renly alone
  • The commonalities between Stannis’ ideology and campaign and those of the Starks will come up again in ASOS and ADWD, but so will the differences
  • Stannis delivers the hard personal justice associated with the Starks, but with none of their preservation of culture and life; he is all fire and no ice in this regard
  • So while this execution matches the letter of Ned Stark’s law, it does not match the spirit. It does not produce the lasting feeling and security of justice
  • That is in large part because of the secrecy and mystery surrounding the murder act itself. Ned Stark executed Gared (and was himself executed) ceremoniously in public. This is a ceremony of a different kind: older, spookier, more ritualistic
  • The political community does not have the chance to absorb a clear honest action in Renly’s case. As such, there can be no resolution, no proper catharsis
  • I’ll talk more about this in later chapters, but Renly’s death feels more like a modern political assassination: paranoid, ambiguous, inflected with media bias
  • And the #1 reason Renly’s death unfolds that way is that the shadow promptly vanishes. This allows Stannis to kill no one but Renly; you could say that makes it more ethical. But on the other hand, since Stannis and Melisandre are able to wash their hands of Renly’s death, someone else has to pay
  • Renly is a king, and a popular one at that. Cynicism about him only sets in after he’s dead. In the moment, in absence of a clear killer, scapegoating is inevitable
  • The consequence of Stannis using a murder weapon that vanishes upon success and sounds unbelievable afterward is that someone innocent gets blamed
  • Stannis papers over this in Davos II: “The Lord of Light willed that my brother die for his treason. Who did the deed matters not.” In the moment, he’s trying to skirt around his own culpability in Renly’s death
  • But in light of Catelyn IV, what Stannis is also doing is allowing rumors of Brienne and Catelyn’s culpability in Renly’s death to spread, knowing them to be false
  • This debate is never going to go away. Tell me, is it more just to kill one man in his tent with two taking the blame or kill ten thousand in battle?
  • Tywin, as we know, is utterly full of shit in that quote I paraphrased as thousands of men, women, boys and girls die at the Red Wedding
  • But applying this quote to Stannis’ action here is something worth discussion.
  • From a purely utilitarian (and please note: John Stuart Mill and I aren’t friends) standpoint: Stannis just saved thousands of lives in exchange for Renly’s (and Brienne and Catelyn’s in the abstract. Emmon and Robar’s in reality)
  • But did it truly save lives in the long-term?
  • Did the shadowbaby really save people from death on the Blackwater?
  • Not really! At best, the shadowbaby maybe bought these men a month or two of extra life
  • Will it save these summer knights from the coming war with the Golden Company or against Daenerys and her dragons when they arrive?
  • Again, not really!
  • tbf,  I think you do have to examine this particular action in a vacuum before looking at it in a broader context.
  • GRRM himself alluded to this back in 2001 in a convention appearance where it’s noted that: A short discussion on Stannis' slaying of Renly. Martin just sat and listened. I made the point that killing someone on the battlefield is different from assassinating someone in their sleep, and Martin asked "Is it really? Are you saying that you would not have participated in the attempted bombing of Hitler? Instead, you'd prefer to kill him in battle where he'd have a fair chance in fighting?"
  • But even in that narrower context, the action still implicated two innocent people in the death of Renly.
  • They are tainted by this. Brienne has already lost her king, now she loses everything else and must throw in her lot with strangers in a strange land
  • Catelyn, as we’ll get into in a bit, loses a huge political opportunity for her side of the war because of the need to get away lest she or Brienne be blamed 
  • Anyone else in that tent automatically becomes a murder suspect. I’m emphasizing this because it undercuts the justice of Stannis’ actions
  • As soon as Renly is dead, as soon as the deed is done, we see the ripple effects. We see the consequences. We see that this will not, in fact, just claim Renly’s life
  • Sure, the shadow itself only killed Renly. But the shadow’s nature means that violence will immediately beget violence as the survivors blame each other
  • When we talk about the blame to be laid at Team Stannis’ feet here, we must include the deaths of not only Renly but Robar Royce, Emmon Cuy, and the men-at-arms wounded and killed, as well as Brienne’s emotional suffering
  • That is not to excuse Loras for killing Robar and Emmon, nor to excuse Emmon for giving way to his bloodlust against Brienne. Everyone makes their choices!
  • But this is representative of the ethical pattern in Stannis’ story, where decisions he and Melisandre would like to think of as isolated tests actually spill out well beyond their control, having devastating domino effects
  • None of those people die if Stannis kills Renly by conventional means. If you can point to poison or a bribed archer, all of those people get to live
  • Sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to wield it. Once you start climbing the fiery ladder, you can’t always control what gets burned
  • Robar and Emmon come raging in, the splendid Rainbow Knights in all their youth and finery, representative of Renly’s whole appeal...to find him dead
  • This is a much greater blow than the death of a leader in a more bureaucratized decentralized system, because everything is caught up in Renly
  • The manner by which all power flows to and from the sacred figure of the king/lord can be politically advantageous. As we said in our GNC episode, all the likes of the Manderlys and the mountain clans have in common is the Starks
  • Having Renly in common is what brought all these querulous lords together in the first place, producing a 100,000 strong army in a matter of weeks. Impressive!
  • But the flipside of that is when Renly dies, there’s literally no reason for these thousands of people and all their infrastructure to be sharing the same space
  • The idea of the army, the organizing principle that made one fist out of all these fingers, was thoroughly tied to Renly. He had no heir, no larger political program, no millennia of loyalty and service to call upon like the Starks
  • So while he’s alive, his army seems unbeatable. But after he’s dead, it’s no longer an army at all.
  • Again, we saw the same force at work in Drogo's khalasar after his fall: community is a dream we agree to share. It vanishes when we wake up and stop agreeing. All they agreed on was "Renly is king," and now the king is dead
  • This is George damning Renly for having a vision which never extended beyond himself.
  • And that was immediately reflected in the lords who backed Renly. 
  • Like we said last week, the stormlords and Reach lords chose Renly, because they thought he would best represent their interests and ensure their continued economic prosperity.
  • Give Stannis’ minor lords and minor houses this: those that remain at Stannis’ side, back Stannis to the bitter end, because they actually believe in something. 
    • (R’hllor? Justice? The Rightful claim? Does it matter? Yes, but …)
  • But roughly four-fifths of Renly’s lords and knights who arrive at Storm’s End are in it because Renly was their overlord. And where he goes, they follow. Or they’re opportunists as outlined a minute ago.
  • The remaining and extremely important one-fifth of Renly’s army that fled Storm’s End to book it back to Bitterbridge weren’t principled any more than those that remained. Rather, they followed their liege lord’s son (Loras) or saw no profit in sticking around Storm’s End.
    • I do like to think that Mathis Rowan and Randyll Tarly, in particular, figured that Stannis wanted their necks on the chopping block for nearly starving him to death at Robert’s Rebellion and then signing up with Renly in 299, but hey, I don’t know this for sure. But the mental picture makes me smile.  
  • But those that remained made the easy choice (to them) to simply switch sides to Stannis. 
  • Hilariously, Davos will observe several of them try to impress Stannis with fervent devotion to R’hllor at the parlay with Cortnay Penrose or pretend that Stannis’ claim is now the right one, but we really know that these grifters are ensuring their bread is always buttered.
  • What I’m really asking is: whence goes the MAGA crowd in 2024? I kid, but I don’t.
  • Panicked self-interest immediately sets in. Everyone starts thinking about grabbing the biggest piece of the pie, escaping all the blame and taking all the credit, and working out the bloodlust they now won’t be able to work out in battle
  • George stopped the politics dead for a magical fireworks show, and now the politics resume more fast and furious than ever in response to the disruption
  • Robar and Emmon both promptly blame Brienne. You can see why, to a certain extent: she is holding his body, and there’s no one else in the tent except Catelyn, who doesn’t exactly track as a major threat
  • But if either man took a second to assess the situation rationally, it would become clear that Brienne is probably not the killer
  • She is screaming her head off and clutching a corpse that has clearly fallen into her arms. She does not have a sword. His gorget has been cut open, which as Loras will point out in ASOS, is nigh-impossible for a regular steel sword
  • That’s the whole point of wearing a gorget, after all! The fact that Renly’s armor was useless is evidence that something beyond the ordinary has occurred
  • If Robar and Emmon had asked Brienne and Catelyn what had happened, there’s no guarantee they would’ve believed the shadow story
  • But they would avoid the blood madness, the immediate escalation in which death prompts no reflection but only the desperate desire for more death
  • We are seeing the grand tragic movements of the story in microcosm: the gods thunder down upon mortal men, and we tear at each other in their wake
  • Robar and Emmon have been put in an unfair unreasonable situation, and they somehow manage to make it even worse. That’s humanity for ya! 
  • Varys’ shadow on a wall has snapped back into place now that the shadow cast by his magic mirror Melisandre has faded away
  • Once more, power resides where men believe it resides, and power abhors a vacuum. Brienne is guilty in the court of public appeal, threatened with death and dishonor by men who moments ago were her comrades-in-arms for life
  • Of course, a lot of what’s happening here is about gender. Brienne was barely welcome in this company in the first place because she’s a woman; she is denied knighthood on the same basis, and we know from AFFC how she’s been treated
  • Like how Drogo’s bloodriders closed in around Dany as soon as she lost Drogo’s protection, Renly was the only person keeping Brienne even somewhat safe here
  • This is again about power residing where men believe it resides--emphasis on men in this case. They don’t think she has the right to be in the halls of power; this pre-existing mindset informs their understanding of what has occurred
  • They are taking out not only their grief at Renly’s death, their panic at the instability of their situation, and their hot-bloodedness before battle
  • They are seizing the opportunity to be rid of an outsider. As Davos thinks to himself: if Stannis falls, those who were born to lordship will pull him down too
  • Lords, bloodriders, Night’s Watchmen are eager to call it a failed experiment and slam the door shut behind them in order to preserve their social class.
  • Brienne is a not-knight, member of the kingsguard, but they have to put up with her, because her father is Selwyn Tarth and Renly is publicly kind to her.
  • Davos is a peasant raised to knighthood to lordship that those with thousand+ year lineages put up with, because their overlord and king is promoting him.
  • The greater good for these knights and lords isn’t upward social and economic mobility; it’s that they hitched their star to Renly and Stannis and tolerate their social “lapses.”
  • But never doubt that these motherfuckers wouldn’t threaten to toss Davos over a bridge at Dragonstone or think Brienne immediately guilty of murder if they knew the consequences.
  • Thankfully, Brienne of Tarth is Brienne of fucking Tarth, one of the most ridiculous badasses in the entire story, as we already saw in her introduction at the melee
  • Before her tears have even dried, she’s snatching up her dead king’s sword and taking on multiple opponents at once with equal parts speed and strength
  • Even in a very chaotic and fast-moving sequence, George makes sure the reader takes note of how impressive a sword fighter his truest not-knight really is, because Brienne’s going to be getting into quite a few scrapes going forward
  • Meanwhile, though, Renly’s body is “thrust rudely aside,” and he continues to bleed out as the fighting breaks out and the fires spread through his tent
  • Again, we are being shown the sudden mantle of mortality settling on the image of the untouchable warrior-king who will live forever in the stories and songs
  • He’s a body like any other, given no dignity, roadkill on the side of a lost highway. Already, the tone and themes of AFFC are emerging as the war spreads
  • They’re ostensibly fighting about Renly, but the man himself is far gone and overwhelmed; same thing happens to Tywin/Balon/Oberyn/Lysa in AFFC
  • Catelyn, meanwhile, slowly recovers from the horror she has witnessed, and thinks only of intervening on Brienne’s behalf; this is one of her finest moments
  • She tells the truth, however crazy it might sound, and leverages first her honor and then her own body to save Brienne’s life, because she is innocent
  • But this heroic impulse would come to nothing if she couldn’t convince Robar Royce, who gets a minor tragic arc all to his own in this storyline
  • Catelyn previously thought of him as a frivolous, thoughtless young man like his king, less mature than Robb despite having a handful of years on him
  • But though he assumes Brienne’s guilt, he doesn’t rush in to kill her like Emmon and his men-at-arms. He holds back, giving both Brienne and Catelyn a chance
  • Catelyn knows she looks and sounds like a “madwoman” to Robar, going on about a shadow and sorcery. But when she begs him for assistance in the name of her honor and family, he feels duty-bound as a chivalrous knight to act
  • This is one of the very rare cases of the summer knights adhering to their vows and proving themselves worthy of the title...and Robar dies for it
  • This is a big fuckin’ theme when it comes to these Royces -- first Waymar in the AGOT Prologe and now Robar here in ACOK Catelyn IV.
  • They seems like self-satisfied Sigma Tau bros who like to boss around the work, 
  • But when it comes to a moment when they have their own no chance, no choice, they’re walking out into the rain, sword-in-hand.
  • ASOIAF has a deserved rep for bad or good characters going good or bad respectively, and I think that reversal for both Waymar and Robar is quite effective and affecting.
  • The Royce who joins the Night’s Watch for a chance to command one day due to his last name and lineage and the Royce who is only backing Renly, because he can’t win more glory and coin as a tourney knight both go down swinging, bravely doing the right thing for no better reason than it’s the right thing.
  • Presumably minutes after Catelyn and Brienne walk away, Loras Tyrell storms into his king and lover’s tent, and the sight of Renly’s corpse inspires in him a blood rage more powerful even than Emmon’s
  • Just as Emmon turned on his fellow Rainbow Guard Brienne, Loras kills Emmon and Robar for their failure to defend Renly, though they couldn’t have saved him
  • Not only does Robar’s bravery get him killed, but he suffers the same fate as Emmon, who gave way to his prejudices and bloodlust. What worth heroism?
  • That’s not to say that Robar’s sacrifice doesn’t matter. It allows Brienne to escape, and Brienne does a lot of good! But it doesn’t spare him from death, just as Renly’s glory and power didn’t save him. It rains on the just and unjust alike
  • “No chance, and no choice.” Do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because you’ll be rewarded with a happy ending. Everyone just gets an ending.
• Walking and then riding away
  • Catelyn knocks down Emmon Cuy and leaves him to die on Loras’ blade; Brienne cuts their way out of Renly’s beautiful tent, now ablaze
  • Following on the visual metaphors from last week, we have the center of Renly’s rule sacrificed to the fire as he was, throat slit by the shadow cast by R’hllor’s fire
  • Around them, the camp collapses as the information spreads. Like the shadow, like the idea of an army, the information is an invisible source of power:
    • Renly's battles were already coming apart as the rumors spread from mouth to mouth. 
  • Wherever it touches, it lights the metaphorical fire of disunion and panic; the more sober-minded conspire, while others are brought to tears by the loss
  • That tent which looked so glorious as Catelyn enters it at the mid-point of this chapter is easy cut through and burns the cinders.
  • Tell me that tent isn’t a metaphor for Renly himself: bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day.
  • Catelyn tells Brienne to walk, not run; if they act guilty, they will be seen as guity, because power resides where men believe it resides. All the world’s a stage
  • In this moment, without seeming to realize it, Catelyn begins to act as the mother figure Brienne has never had: informing her how to act in public to save her skin
  • Their relationship is born in this moment, baptized in blood. Catelyn’s first gift to Brienne was saving her life; her second gift is teaching her how to grieve
  • Brienne must lock her sorrow inside and walk away from her beloved dead, just as Catelyn had to with Ned. This, Catelyn comes to believe, is a woman’s role
  • She must always watch, and watching is tied to grieving. You are there to watch others live and die, and so give their life and death meaning by your presence
  • Brienne is now the keeper of Renly’s flame whether she likes it or not: the last person to touch him, to see him alive, one of the few to remember him
  • Catelyn is here to teach her how to wear a composed mask even as the loss eats away at her underneath; in Catelyn’s case, it’s preparing her for Stoneheart
  • It’s all part of the process of growing up and re-evaluating your relationship to the world of your childhood, as Catelyn did last week with her gods in the sept
  • What I love is that Catelyn spends so much of the proceeding day, reflecting on her losses and how she made a poor diplomat but a good mourner.
  • The gods, fate, whatever was preparing Catelyn for this mentorship role to Brienne to be there for Brienne when her version of Ned/Brandon died.
  • Throughout the story, George continually ties the process of maturation to a changing relationship to death: what it means to grieve, what it means to kill
  • This reckoning with the reaper taking place within the characters is externalized onto their environment, as we see with another passage full of inspired imagery:
    • The nightfires had burned low, and as the east began to lighten the immense mass of Storm's End emerged like a dream of stone while wisps of pale mist raced across the field, flying from the sun on wings of wind. Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once, spirits returning to their graves. And Renly one of them now, gone like his brother Robert, like her own dear Ned.
  • As I said, political power snaps back into place after the shadow disrupts it. Storm’s End emerges from a “dream of stone” to resume its reassuring solidity as the fires (and their shadows) burn low. But everything is different now
  • Stannis will wake from his own dream to find that it wasn’t just a dream. It was real. The sun dawns on a world without Renly; Storm’s End lacks its lord
  • Ghosts fly from the sun, as they always do; the shadows and the Others, like so many creatures of death and vengeance before them, work only by night
  • They fly on wings of wind, like the winds of winter, like the wind off the sea that is the vengeance of the gods, like the wind that blew Renly’s death into his tent
  • Renly now belongs to this other world. George described him in Catelyn II as a “ghost in a golden crown,” and how true that is now! A memory of a king...
  • He joins Robert and Ned among the biggest casualties of ASOIAF so far; Renly’s death is by far the most significant one we will experience in ACOK
  • Absolutely! Our first major death since Drogo’s and really: our most important death until Robb and Catelyn Stark’s at the Red Wedding.
  • I find that detail really fascinating that GRRM doesn’t kill-off a major character for a whole book. 
  • It’s as if we’re supposed to meditate on Renly’s life and death for an extended period of time.
  • So, how does the narrative want us to feel about Renly’s death? 
  • This farewell to him is bittersweet, neither sanctifying nor condemning him; it is merely a recognition that he lived and died, like anyone else, like everyone else
  • Brienne, meanwhile, calls our attention back to the act itself, because from her perspective, Renly’s throat just suddenly exploded, without any rhyme or reason
  • Catelyn tells her how she knows the shadow was sent by Stannis: she felt him. This is another of the chilling ambiguities that define the shadow assassins
  • On one hand, she acknowledges it’s an opaque statement. She doesn’t describe the shadow as having Stannis’ features, which would be an easier shorthand
  • On the other...I know what she means on some level. She sensed his presence. A whiff of him on the air. His essence. All contact leaves traces, as Qyburn says
  • This frames Stannis himself, not just the shadow, as the Stranger, a chilling embodiment of Death who will break past every guard and every taboo to strike
  • This dreadful feeling informs Catelyn’s state of mind as the chapter ends. She joins forces with her guards and tells them that there will be no battle, and that they must ride like hell and kill anyone who tries to stop them. All has changed.
  • The sensation, once again like the sensation as Mirri Maz Duur danced and Drogo’s khalasar collapsed around her, is that the combination of political and magical transformation is breaking the world apart at the seams
  • We get one more beautiful passage to capture how everything has and has not changed in the wake of Stannis’ shadow on Renly’s wall:
    • As the long fingers of dawn fanned across the fields, color was returning to the world. Where grey men had sat grey horses armed with shadow spears, the points of ten thousand lances now glinted silverly cold, and on the myriad flapping banners Catelyn saw the blush of red and pink and orange, the richness of blues and browns, the blaze of gold and yellow. All the power of Storm's End and Highgarden, the power that had been Renly's an hour ago. They belong to Stannis now, she realized, even if they do not know it themselves yet. Where else are they to turn, if not to the last Baratheon? Stannis has won all with a single evil stroke.
  • It’s all back! The imagery, the colors, the rainbows, the gorgeous pageantry that defined Renly’s shadow on a wall. It turns out it never belonged to him at all
  • As he inadvertently gave away at the parlay in Catelyn III, the power actually belong to the men holding those banners, and they belong to Stannis now
  • Well...for the most part. As we’ll get into starting next week, a very significant chunk of them led by Loras Tyrell and Randyll Tarly defect back to the Reach
  • We’re going to get more in-depth on the numbers in Davos II and as the narrative bends towards the Blackwater, but to give an idea of the army Stannis gains:
    • He starts with some 3000-4000 or so outside of Storm’s End
    • Stannis will later say he has 20,000 in Davos II, and Davos will say “nearly twenty thousand men, all mounted” in Davos III
    • That’s a 600% increase in soldiers
  • It’s the force that Stannis will need to make the attack on King’s Landing.
  • Yet it is not enough. It has never been enough.
  • But for the moment, there’s again the bittersweet feeling of the signifiers of power standing immortal, in contrast to the mortal men who lay claim to them. The bright colors and rich fabrics that Renly loved so much have outlived him
  • The “long fingers of dawn” lend them their beauty, but we’ve just seen the long fingers of night at work. Even as this bright shiny army tries to move on with Stannis at the center instead of Renly, the shadow of the shadow lingers
  • Catelyn does not feel the warmth of the sunlight. She does not take heart from the beauty of the banners. She feels the chill of night and death around her heart
  • In the context of the parlay in Catelyn III, Stannis’ threat against Robb’s life didn’t mean more than a political failure on his part. It was a hypothetical, after all
  • Now it no longer feels so hypothetical. Now Catelyn has seen a young king surrounded by devoted guards and a huge army struck down because Stannis Baratheon came, with his iron jaw and iron eyes, to declare that he must die
  • It’s as if Catelyn bore witness to the Field of Fire and must carry word back to Torrhen Stark about the King on Dragonstone and his deadly black shadow
  • Or it’s as if she bore witness to the fiery end of Young Griff and must carry word to Jon Snow about the Queen on Dragonstone and her deadly black shadow
  • Instead of carrying the word of Stannis’ death as Renly intended, she carries the word of Renly’s death, and not only the word but the image, chilling her heart
  • Stannis declared that Robb will be next. How will Catelyn ever sleep easy knowing that word could come of her son’s death at the hands of an assassin who vanished into thin air? How could she sleep easy with Stannis as king?
  • Whatever else Stannis has done here, he has made himself not only an enemy but a figure of fear and death in the mind of a woman who could have been a crucial ally; all because Stannis thinks he can only rule through fear
  • And because of this fearsome act and its consequences, because of how the magical and political shadows interact, Catelyn loses a chance to save her son
  • Think about it: if Catelyn wasn’t in that tent, she wouldn’t be a suspect, and so might leave with Loras and the other Renly loyalists instead, back to Bitterbridge
  • By the time she got there, she’d be in a prime position to pre-empt Littlefinger and win the Tyrells and their allies over to the Stark side instead of the Lannisters
  • I think George wants us to consider this AU because he hangs a lampshade on it in ASOS, having Catelyn think wistfully about Robb marrying Margaery instead of Jeyne; if he was going to break his vow, why not do so for a powerful House?
  • A Stark-Tyrell alliance completely changes the war; even if Tywin can stop Stannis in time himself (which he probably can’t), he’s then facing down a massive army under Robb, who has repeatedly outsmarted Tywin
  • And Catelyn could’ve still made this happen despite being in the tent when Renly died...if, and only if, she was willing to throw Brienne under the bus
  • And that gets back to the point you were making back in Catelyn III, part 1: Stannis had a golden opportunity to present himself as the alternative to Renly and Joffrey
  • And he fucked it up by declaring Robb Stark a traitor with his time coming soon.
  • Imagine an AU where Stannis hadn’t declared Catelyn’s son a traitor. Renly still dies, but Catelyn returns home to Riverrun.
  • I don’t imagine Catelyn would be too keen on Robb swearing to Stannis given the context of Renly’s death.
  • But I wonder whether she’d be a bit less ambiguous about it as she is in Catelyn V:
    • "He is gone, Brienne," she said, as gently as she could. "Stannis and Joffrey remain . . . and so does my son."
      
      "He wouldn't . . . you'd never make a peace with Stannis, would you? Bend the knee? You wouldn't . . ."
      
      "I will tell you true, Brienne. I do not know. My son may be a king, but I am no queen . . . only a mother who would keep her children safe, however she could."
  • Loras is as inclined to blame Brienne as his fellow Rainbow Guards. If Catelyn frames her, he’d be inclined to see her as an ally and bring his family along
  • Catelyn would have powerful allies, Robb would be safe, the Lannisters would be back on their heels. The only one who would suffer in all this is Brienne
  • And Catelyn simply cannot do that to her. We will get into why in Catelyn V, but for the moment, it’s important to note how many tragedies are at work here
  • The big one is Stannis and Renly, but under the surface, characters ranging in importance from Catelyn to Robar Royce have their own thorny gauntlets of choice and fate to navigate. They try their best, but the house always wins
  • If there is one takeaway from both halves of Catelyn IV, it’s that we are all morning ghosts, condemned to one day fly from the sun on the winds of winter

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Brienne might fulfill her vow to kill Stannis; we saw that play out in Season 5 of the show. But this could also be a red herring, as Brienne’s story in the books goes in a considerably different direction (literally and metaphorically). Moreover, as a POV, the only time she even thinks about Stannis is to realize that he was telling the truth about the twincest all along.

Theory/Discussion

Does King Renly Baratheon, First (and Only) of His Name, deserve what he gets here?

• Yes and no!
• On the one hand, as we said last week, Renly goes to his grave declaring that he is happily committing himself to a show of force, rather than Catelyn’s Great Council
• Be careful what you wish for, right? “Now we see who is stronger.” And then Stannis kills him. Guess we saw who was stronger! Renly has been hoisted on his own petard. There’s a karmic quality to that, and I think it’s meant to reduce reader sympathy
• Even before that moment, though, I don’t understand what it is that Renly honestly expected Stannis to do in response to Renly claiming the crown
• For reasons of both temperament and backstory, it was never likely for Stannis to bend the knee to Renly, especially because he’s telling the truth about the Lannister twincest
• I get that Renly doesn’t expect a shadow with his brother’s face to slit his throat, but how does he not see a Faceless Man coming? Or Stannis bribing one of his guards?
• Renly played the game of thrones. You win or you die. There’s a closed-loop quality to it that makes it tempting to just move on, as many of his followers do, as Stannis tries to
• But Stannis can’t. He looks awful afterwards, and not just because the shadowbaby saps your soul. He can politically justify why Renly’s death was acceptable, as I just did, but it goes deeper than that. At a personal, emotional level, he hurts more than he anticipated
• I have a younger brother myself. We’ve spent so much time together over the years. We’ve shared amazing experiences, hurt each other, come back together, grown together. I can’t think of anything he could do that would make me think it’s OK to slit his throat and let him bleed out. Definitely not just breaking the law or claiming a crown.
• Kinslaying is taboo for a reason, just like guest right is taboo for a reason. Breaking this sacred bond makes it very difficult for you to act like a trustworthy member of society
• If Stannis has proven willing to shed his own family blood, why should anyone else (whose bonds with him are less sacred by definition) sit easily with him in power?
• I think the best argument in favor of killing Renly is that the murder method preserved (most of) his army intact, allowing Stannis to command them against the Lannisters. Stannis would’ve been much weaker after a battle, so you could say this is better
• But that argument is going to immediately fall apart, because Stannis delays at Storm’s End to stare down Courtnay Penrose instead of moving on to King’s Landing
• He thinks he must rule through fear, since men don’t love him like they did Robert...and Renly. That worldview is dangerous and frightening, more so than Renly’s death itself!
• And this worldview and this delay leads Stannis to defeat at the Blackwater. Had he moved on King’s Landing sooner, Tywin and the Tyrells would have been too late
• So it was all for nothing. I think you could say that Renly’s death is justified in the moment but becomes retroactively unjustified when Stannis blows the opportunity
• But I’ve been talking all about the consequences, and not about the act itself. George sometimes frames deaths as cathartic: Brienne killing Rorge, Jon executing Janos Slynt
• More often, however, he uses character deaths to remind us of the humanity of even unsympathetic people, how frail and frightened they are in the face of the grim reaper
• We saw that in book one with Viserys. We’ll see it again in book three with Joffrey. And in between those two dead kings, we see it with Renly in book two
• Of course, Renly isn’t nearly as nasty and personally violent as those two! But again, he commits himself to kinslaying right before he is kinslayed. So why mourn him?
• I think George uses several tricks to make us lament Renly’s death as an event even as we don’t necessarily miss him personally, a careful balancing act
• One, as I said, is that Stannis loses to the Lannisters anyway, so it comes to nothing. Another is how Loras mourns him and speaks very movingly of him in ASOS
• It’s also in how this scene is written, however. The shadowbaby attack is not framed as the righteous execution of a cartoonishly unjust unreasonable man, a la Janos Slynt
• It’s framed as a nightmare! It’s framed as a sickening departure not only from taboo but from the world of reality. It feels wrong, no matter how you feel about Stannis or Renly
• Brienne is screaming, Renly is choking on blood, everyone’s shouting and sobbing...this isn’t what justice should feel like, is it? 
• Just like how we might want to see Theon and Cersei punished for their crimes until we see from the inside what that looks like, I think our skepticism of Renly’s politics is supposed to (at least in part) melt away in face of the sheer horror of his death
• So much of ASOIAF is about the transition from summer into winter, about the moment righteousness turns to ash in your mouth. We can justify Renly’s death in the abstract, but in the execution, well...Stannis will go to his grave thinking of Renly’s peach.
• I think you really get at the heart of it. In the abstract and the policy level, the act was justified. Emotionally and personally, it’s Stannis setting his own heart afire and not for the last time.
• As you all know, because I can’t shut my trap about it, I deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, and thought of the Taliban as a faceless enemy, worthy of only death and/or defeat.
• But for me: I saw the face of a dead enemy, a man who had strapped an explosive vest to his chest and then exploded, killing one of my guys as well as himself.
• I really can’t speak to anyone else’s experience but mine in that moment but looking at this guy’s face, I saw the vestiges of a person in there. I won’t wax about it or talk about the gnarly horror that was that scene nearly ten years ago to the day when we’re recording this episode, but I wondered about whether he had a family back home in Pakistan. What would his mom think when he found out?
• I do not want this to be crass comparing a real-world traumatic experience to Renly in ASOIAF, but the way you were talking earlier about Brienne and Loras’ reactions to Renly’s death sparked those memories.
• To me, Renly is a villain, someone who was furthering the chaos and permanent war-footing Westeros was getting itself into.
• He seized power for complex-seeming reasons but ultimately for his own vanity.
• Renly wasn’t a reformer, his vision was wholly centered on himself.
• But watching him die in a horrific manner, a shadow sword through the throat makes me wince and feel a horror shock at Renly dying.
• But GRRM frames his death in ACOK as a wholly upsetting experience, and the impact of his death fans out emotionally to those left behind -- Brienne, Loras, Margaery, Stannis.
• And that’s why I come down to your perspective: Yes, Renly’s was justifiably droned as policy, but that takes nothing away from the emotional tragedy to the people who loved him and the overall tragedy of a man cut down by war and violence before his time.

Conclusion

• Thanks for listening!
• Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Soundcloud, Podbean etc.
• Check out our Patreon at patreon.com/notacastasoiaf
• Follow us on Twitter @NotACastASOIAF, email us at NotACastASOIAF@gmail.com
• Emmett’s social media, Jeff’s social media
• Thank you to our High Lords and Ladies on patreon!
  • Lord of the Squishers and Warden of the Deep
  • Lady of a Thousand Words
  • Septon Eastwood of Introvert Isle
  • Septon Merrybald, the Shoeless Sage
  • Sister Winter - Lady of the Wolfswood
  • Nessie the Elusive, warden of the Neck, Defender of the North and Keeper of Secrets
  • Sandie the Dragon, Blood of Queen Daenerys & Lady of Jameson
  • Lady Britt, Bastard Mistress of Harrenhal
  • Ser Thomas the Raven Knight, Lord of Blackwood 
  • Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
  • Lady Dilsdale, the StarSpear of Crescent Hill
  • Ser Way of Course
  • Matt, Warden of the Sanguine Shore
  • Lord MarConnington, Heir to Griffin's Roost
  • Lord Sam K
  • Ser Michael Mertyns
  • Wisdom Benjicot, Alchemist of Sets and Quanta, Mage of the Arts of Boole and DeMorgan
  • Tibs the Great of House Catnapping
  • Lady Raj, Mistress of Horse
  • Lord J Manderly, Baker of the Frey Pies
  • Septon Merifullheadofhair 
• Join us next week as we interrupt our regular chapter-by-chapter flow to bring you an episode all about *sigh* Renly Baratheon. This will be our Patreon episode for the month, but we’ll also be doing it live for all to see on Monday 4/20 at 830 PM EST!