Episode 118: A CLASH OF KINGS, DAVOS II: "Shadow of a Doubt, Part 4" 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 eighteenth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Shadow of a Doubt, Part 4: An Analysis of ACOK, Davos II,” in which Davos sails Melisandre beneath Storm’s End, where she gives birth to a beautiful baby boy with his Dad’s face.

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves, Captain of the war galley NIGHT WOLF, the ship that stalks the Seven Seas, and Wielder of the Valyrian Steel trident SUMMONER, the blade that brings the Deep Ones
• 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, who adds The Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort and the Kraken’s Bane to his title
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• 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
• The Dead Sheppard Reborn, Preacher of the Poor Fellows
• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Olaf, proponent of establishing a feudal, pseudodemocratic system of Great Councils, wherein every count votes
• Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
• Lord Nick
• Thucydides, Lord of Plagues
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• Lord Gene the Splendid, Master of Coin, Warden of Tampa Bay who claims that the recent repairs made to his enormous pleasure barge came about after a close friend of his named Royal T. Reasury left him an inheritance.
• Lady Anna, The Lovely Castellan
• Pat Yronwood, the bloodroyal and guardian of the Boneway
• And our newest members of the small council: 
  • The Heir of House Tyrell
  • Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn

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

Prince Matthew of House Targaryen, our small council Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the Fifth Book and Swing Dancer with dragons, asks:

I have a question relevant to the current Davos chapter the cast is covering. Could also be related to a future davos chapter, imminently to be covered over the course of 4 notacast episodes. Ser Courtney challenges Stannis to single combat, and Stannis ultimately gives him his wish. Stannis does not choose one of the chattering magpies around him for his champion. For his champion, he chooses the Shadows. This, along with some other comments that Emmett made in the first episode on this chapter, got me thinking of how Stannis compares with the mad king Aerys - who, in a different-yet-semi-comparable scenario chose Fire as his champion. As opposed to spending resources in the form of manpower, or risking their own person, both of these kings chose to wield the elements themselves so that they may pierce through the conventional armor of their foes, and strike directly at their flesh.  Stannis wielded magic itself, while the Mad King oft spoke of his fire with the perverse reverence that magic draws. While these examples clearly deal with two men with vastly different motivations behind their actions, I was wondering what you thought of Stannis' use of  a champion in his "red hawk" and the Shadows, and how that compares with leaders like the assorted targaryens, who chose dragons and fire as their champions.

So, thank you Prince Matthew for the question. 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 or higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, access to our NotASlack at our two highest tiers and bonus episodes -- like our recently-released second part analysis on TWOW, The Forsaken!

Absolutely, and over this past month, we had 69 new patrons who joined up with us. That’s incredible. Thank you to all new and old patrons alike. But! Enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Davos, he had another fateful conversation with Stannis and been ordered to shut up and color. Let’s find out how that coloring goes in this synopsis of ACOK, Davos II, Part 4!

Synopsis

And so it was that [Davos Seaworth] found himself once more crossing Shipbreaker Bay in the dark of night, steering a tiny boat with a black sail. The sky was the same, and the sea. The same salt smell was in the air, and the water chuckling against the hull was just as he remembered it. A thousand flickering campfires burned around the castle, as the fires of the Tyrells and Redwynes had sixteen years before. But all the rest was different.

The last time it was life I brought to Storm's End, shaped to look like onions. This time it is death, in the shape of Melisandre of Asshai. Sixteen years ago, the sails had cracked and snapped with every shift of wind, until he'd pulled them down and gone on with muffled oars. Even so, his heart had been in his gullet. The men on the Redwyne galleys had grown lax after so long, however, and they had slipped through the cordon smooth as black satin. This time, the only ships in sight belonged to Stannis, and the only danger would come from watchers on the castle walls. Even so, Davos was taut as a bowstring.

Melisandre huddles in her red clothes with only her face available. And this is contributing to his discomfort when he normally loved the sea. Melisandre comments that she can smell the fear on him, because that’s a normal thing one human person says to a fellow human person.

"Someone once told me the night is dark and full of terrors. And tonight I am no knight. Tonight I am Davos the smuggler again. Would that you were an onion."

She laughed. "Is it me you fear? Or what we do?"

"What you do. I'll have no part of it."

"Your hand raised the sail. Your hand holds the tiller."

Davos doesn’t have a counterargument to that; so, he keeps steering the ship towards the shore, watching the tide and floating away from Storm’s End.

"Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?" [Melisandre] asked.

Would a good man be doing this? "I am a man," he said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."

"A grey man. Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?"

"What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey."

"If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil."

Davos sees the fires from Stannis’ camp and the land fade behind him. He moves the boat through black water, hearing only the sounds of the waves crashing against Storm’s End. Davos turns the ship back to the shore and asks Melisandre if she’s good or not. 

That made her chuckle. "Oh, good. I am a knight of sorts myself, sweet ser. A champion of light and life."

"Yet you mean to kill a man tonight. As you killed Maester Cressen."

"Your maester poisoned himself. He meant to poison me, but I was protected by a greater power and he was not."

"And Renly Baratheon? Who was it who killed him?"

Her head turned. Beneath the shadow of the cowl, her eyes burned like pale red candle flames. "Not I."

"Liar." Davos was certain now.

Melisandre says that Davos is lost in darkness, and Davos says yeah, and a good thing too. It’s so dark and cold out that the guards will huddle close to fires and hopefully not see them come up onto Storm’s End. Anyways, they’re all about the god of darkness tonight, right Mel? Uh no. Davos is not to speak that name, or he’ll draw his dark eye upon them. Again, just normal people chit-chat on Mel’s part.

The wind starts to shift, and Davos asks for Melisandre’s help to tie down the sail. He’s Gendry’ing the rest of the way into Storm’s End. Also, who rowed Mel into Renly? She didn’t need to get rowed to Renly. He wasn’t protected. But Storm’s End has spells that block some of her … abilities. PS, not a big deal or anything, but no shadow can pass through the walls of Storm’s End.

"Shadow?" Davos felt his flesh prickling. "A shadow is a thing of darkness."

"You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows."

Frustrated, Davos orders her to stop saying cryptic shit as they approach the shore. Davos dips his oar into the water, but he can’t hear it. The roar of the sea grows as Storm’s End grows larger in front of them. Davos moves his boat in the same way he had come in during Robert’s Rebellion. He looks for the same cave that led into the castle, finds it and aims the boat through the cavern. He moves deftly through jagged rocks, churning water until he lets the waves push the boat into the cavern. 

Inside the cave, there’s only the drip of water, the echo of the water throughout. Ahead was the portcullis. And there could be no passing through it. When they reach it, Davos turns to Melisandre and whispers that they can’t go any further.

"Have we passed within the walls?"

"Yes. Beneath. But we can go no farther. The portcullis goes all the way to the bottom. And the bars are too closely spaced for even a child to squeeze through."

Melisandre doesn’t answer, but Davos hears a rustling. And then there was a light in the darkness. Davos reaches up to cover his eyes, and then it gets super fucking normal (Is that the word? No. It is not.)

Melisandre had thrown back her cowl and shrugged out of the smothering robe. Beneath, she was naked, and huge with child. Swollen breasts hung heavy against her chest, and her belly bulged as if near to bursting. 

Davos cries out to the gods, and Melisandre laughs, her eyes glowing like coals, her body drenced with sweat. She shines in the darkness. And then she squats. Nice! Someone in this fantasy series is finally doing squats! Wait a min ...

Blood ran down her thighs, black as ink. Her cry might have been agony or ecstasy or both. And Davos saw the crown of the child's head push its way out of her. Two arms wriggled free, grasping, black fingers coiling around Melisandre's straining thighs, pushing, until the whole of the shadow slid out into the world and rose taller than Davos, tall as the tunnel, towering above the boat. He had only an instant to look at it before it was gone, twisting between the bars of the portcullis and racing across the surface of the water, but that instant was long enough.

He knew that shadow. As he knew the man who'd cast it

And that is ACOK, Davos II, Part 4! 

Depth

And so, somehow, finally, at last, we arrive at the point of all this. What everything else in the chapter has been but talking around, gesturing at, and slowly silently descending toward. The thing in itself, the thing no one can name, the living nothing that slit Renly’s throat like a sacrifice for its parents, and now in their name throws Cortnay Penrose from a tower like Bran before him. All the mystery and ambiguity and doublespeak we’ve been covering in the first three parts of the chapter suddenly just give way, and we’re alone with a dreadful light in the darkness.

But before the second shadow is born, this chunk of the chapter keeps the focus of its predecessors going: dialogue scenes that speak to both the profound urgent issues of good and evil at play in Westeros and the inherent complexity of whatever you try to do about it, two characters plunging headlong into the issues of political philosophy shaping the meaning of their actions. What makes this one different is that Melisandre, hovering in the background throughout the rest of Davos II, steps up to have a very important conversation with Davos.

At the Game of Thrones, Season 3 premiere, George RR Martin called Melisandre the “most misunderstood character in all of A Song of Ice and Fire”. It makes sense that George would say this in 2013, after the release of ADWD and Melisandre’s POV chapter. But I’d argue that, here, in one of the weirdest, most magical scenes in ASOIAF, we see complexities in Melisandre that aren’t apparent if you’re driving towards the endpoint: the shadow baby. 

Now, stating that Mel is misunderstood and complex is not airbrushing her misdeeds away. Rather, it’s George’s (and our) attempt to provide relatable human experience and emotion to what she does. As he once said: 

So, you try to see the world through their eyes to understand why they do the things they do. And we all have, even characters who are thought of to be bad guys, who are bad guys, in some objective sense, don't think of themselves as bad guys. 

Melisandre states very directly in this chapter that s he is “good.” And what makes her good? She is a servant of light, a priestess of the one true god. We scoff at that type of religiously-informed ideology/morality as moderns, but there’s millennias of human history where religiously-guided people and ideologies guided policy and ethics. George layers something else to this metaphysical power: real, tangible power: a shadow that violently ends Renly Baratheon and Cortnay Penrose’s lives. 

• Davos’ mood (bad)
  • Coming off part 2 of our series on “The Forsaken,” this part of the chapter felt very much in line with that released Aeron Damphair chapter from TWOW
  • There’s the same structure of a harrowing spiritual journey, a give and take between oppositional ideas, culminating in a terrifying apotheosis in the dark
  • And while Davos, of course, is not in nearly the peril or agony of Damphair in “The Forsaken,” his soul is in turmoil. He feels like he’s in chains
  • Like Aeron, Davos is being swept back in time as if by the tide, constantly measuring the gap between the past and present even as they swirl together
    • And so it was that he found himself once more crossing Shipbreaker Bay in the dark of night, steering a tiny boat with a black sail. 
  • He can’t help but note the similarity to the defining moment of his life, bringing the onions into Storm’s End during Robert’s Rebellion...but also the differences
  • The elements are the same: the sky, the sea, the salt smell, the sound of the waves, the thousand flickering campfires on the shore. But the specifics?
  • Well, those are not only different, they’re inverted. Last time, he brought life, shaped like onions. This time, he brings death, shaped like Melisandre
  • This is not merely a metaphor being employed by the author, but by the character. It builds on the philosophical, sweeping conversation with Stannis
  • It flows naturally also from the environmental descriptions in that Davos is engaging with the core elements of the universe, physical and metaphysical
  • The full range of human experience: life and death. Mercy and punishment. The smuggler turned knight turned smuggler again. The wheel of time closing.
  • Davos is the Onion Knight, whose social mobility is intimately tied to sustenance, his mercy, to his lifebringing qualities. Now, he brings the opposite of all of that
  • It is difficult to imagine a more perfectly constructed example of corruption, good ideals rendered bad by the presence of power, for power is what has changed
  • As Davos notes, he personally is in much less danger now. Last time round this wheel, the larger ships around him belonged to the Redwynes, who would hang him if they caught him. This time, the larger ships around him belong to Stannis
  • Yet Davos takes no comfort from this. The relative ease and security of passage guaranteed by his patron’s newfound power brings Davos no peace of mind
  • Why? Because of what they’re here to do. Because his cargo has transformed from life to death, mercy to punishment. Because winter has come for him
  • So the rise to power on which Davos has leveraged everything, the ability to be a knight among a large army, has failed him. His joy has turned to ash in his mouth
  • This feeling, of being on the winning side in the game of thrones, is what will give his family a better life...or so he keeps telling himself. But it doesn’t feel right
  • Something is being lost here, rather than gained, and so Davos feels like he’s betraying the moment that changed his life, going back over it with a coat of red
  • It is tainted, lost and irretrievable like his faith, like his luck. It has been sacrificed to the fire, and made a shadow of its former self. Davos’ god has failed him
  • Again like Aeron, the sea itself brings no comfort, where once it was the source of meaning and strength for Davos the smuggler, slipping up and down the coast
  • He used to love the sea, as he used to take pride in his memory of his lifechanging mercy at Storm’s End. But now, Davos is wielding the knife that cuts the fingers, and so the sound and smell of his old life becomes a curse to him
  • Everything is the inverse from Robert’s Rebellion.
  • The danger to Davos isn’t in the ships that blockade Storm’s End. These are now the ships of Stannis’ royal navy and Salladhor Saan.
  • The danger is beyond the walls of the castle itself: a garrison led by a Renly loyalist, and of course, Melisandre getting beyond the walls.
  • Stannis and Davos were besieged before. Now they are the besiegers.
  • Davos brought life via fish and onions to Stannis. Now he brings death in Melisandre as you (and Davos) were pointing out.
  • The physical and psychological inverses are important, because I think it serves as an ideological mirror to what we saw in AGOT: how the legacy of Robert’s Rebellion has been tarnished by the actions of the survivors.
  • Robert, muscled like a maiden’s fantasy and fighting a just cause against a mad king who ordered the murder of children turned into an obese alcholic who ordered the murder of children (Daenerys and Viserys).
  • Stannis, the stalwart defender of Storm’s End, who held out for nearly a year rather than take the easy way of surrender has now yielded to the temptation of a short-cut to take the castle.
  • Like Ned before him, Davos has to deal with the fact that Stannis is different from the man he knew 16 years ago. 
  • Remember this line from AGOT, Eddard IV?
    • "All justice flows from the king," [Eddard] told [Catelyn]. "When I know the truth, I must go to Robert." And pray that he is the man I think he is, he finished silently, and not the man I fear he has become.
  • The same line could have been said by Davos about hoping that Stannis pans out to be the man he was at Robert’s Rebellion, not the man he’s become in the years since.
  • Sadly, for Davos, Stannis is a different person from Robert’s Rebellion, willing to satiate the emotional wounds of his youth through lethal trickery/sorcery.
  • In Clash, like A Game of Thrones, we see that the legacy of Robert’s Rebellion, is a tragic one. This Baratheon, so alike, so dissimilar to Robert has failed to live justly in the wake of a just war in Robert’s Rebellion 
  • A rebellion which started with the promise of making things better has led to terrible outcomes, and the embrace of powers that no one but Melisandre truly understands.
• Metaphysics with Mel
  • That knife, that fire, that coat of red, is of course Melisandre. George slyly conceals the revelation that will blow the reader’s mind at chapter’s end
  • She’s wearing a large cloak, preventing Davos from seeing her pregnant belly. The reader, though, isn’t likely to take note, or will blame it on the environment
  • It’s easy to imagine a version of this scene that’s just Davos with his doubts rowing Melisandre in silently, and then the birth of Shadowbaby the Younger
  • But Melisandre’s character, along with Davos’, is greatly enriched by the conversation they have first, an intense and intimate one
  • Melisandre is a character with whom George engages eagerly on an intellectual and philosophical level, and so must we
  • Her signature move, from Cressen to Davos to Jon, is a disarming presumptuousness in which she acts like she’s already your confidant
  • One can only assume this is also how she got under Stannis’ stony calcified skin. There’s not much the other person in the room can do but play along
  • Her opening line here is so over the top it borders on parody:
    • "I can smell the fear on you, ser knight.”
  • But as Matt noted last week, Melisandre is an astute stage manager, and she considers her words carefully. Why start the conversation this way?
  • Is it just to intimidate, to prevent Davos from daring to go off-script now that Stannis isn’t watching? The rest of the conversation doesn’t go that way
  • Moreover, Melisandre already knows that Davos is Stannis’ confidant. This will come up again in ASOS: Melisandre knows that Davos is useful for Stannis
  • So rather, I would argue that Melisandre’s motives in kicking off the conversation at all is that she’s curious about the one man Stannis seems to care about
  • What does the protagonist of reality find compelling about this random supporting character? What are his beliefs? What is the content of his character?
  • She’s trying to cow him by opening the conversation this way, but not silence him: she’s interested in the nature of his fear, and therefore, the nature of him
  • This is a conversation about morality, metaphysics, the nature of the human soul, and all of it pays off in the freakiest way imaginable with the shadowbirth
  • Davos shoots back with a killer opening line of his own:
    • “Someone once told me the night is dark and full of terrors.”
  • See, I can repeat your mantras! You yourself are the terror in the night spoken of by your faith. I am afraid of you, for good reason, but I also see your hypocrisy
  • Calling out hypocrisy and deceit is a big part of Davos’ story, repeated on Dragonstone in ASOS and White Harbor in ADWD. He pricks consciences
  • Yet that does not resolve his own inner conflicts. He is not without hypocrisies of his own as he pursues both justice and mercy; it cannot be any other way
  • Tonight, he says, he is no knight. He is a smuggler again, and wishes she were an onion. He wishes nothing has changed, that he was still a merciful man
  • Melisandre digs further into the question of his fear. You’re not afraid of me, she points out. I’m something conveniently external to you, and also, you’re clearly not afraid of me, because you’re snarking off at me! You’re afraid of what we do
  • Davos responds that she and she alone is responsible for what is happening here. He will have no part in it. This is an example of his own hypocrisy
  • Melisandre immediately points that out. Davos’ hand is quite literally on the tiller. He is directing her to where she needs to be. He’s not running off and deserting
  • Davos has made the choice that service to Stannis means more than the feeling of corruption he is experiencing. That’s understandable, given his family’s fate
  • But it is a choice, and he does have to own it. Davos will finally wrestle with this in ASOS, how he is culpable in all that has happened and must redeem himself
  • Then again, there are layers to Melisandre’s argument here. She is also talking about Stannis as well as Davos. As I said last week, Davos (like Stannis) wants to excuse Stannis of culpability and put all responsibility on Melisandre
  • But Stannis’ hand is on the tiller and the sails in a figurative sense. He is still the guiding decisionmaker at the heart of Team Dragonstone, more than Melisandre. We’re going to see that in Davos’ next chapter when he leaves her behind
  • Davos must accept that in ASOS, and that informs how he handles himself as Stannis’ new Hand of the King. Here, though, he is confounded by this argument
  • This is a really great early-midpoint climax Davos’ overall arc. 
  • So far, he’s only willing to question Stannis’ decisions, but when the order is given to shut up and color, Davos had never felt so sad.
  • I’m not saying that Davos is a good German here as he has the sense to question the order being given. But he’s not so far from that mentality!
  • We get back to that opening remark about the nature of good and evil and why “evil people” do evil things.
  • Davos isn’t evil as we’re going to chat about here in a bit, but he’s participating in a deed which he believes to be immoral and wrong — even if he doesn’t know what exactly Melisandre is going to do.
  • And he does so, because to continue George’s quote from earlier: 
    • We have our rationalizations when we do bad things. "Well, I had no choice," or "It's the best of several bad alternatives," or "No it was actually good because God told me so," or "I had to do it for my family." We all have rationalizations for why we do shitty things or selfish things or cruel things.
  • Davos has made Stannis his god, and he has to obey God, lest the older families of Westeros tear his own family down.
  • That’s the rationalization for why Davos is doing this bad thing, and it makes logical, not ethical sense.
  • As you were saying, Davos does a better job in ASOS of acting justly when his king refuses to.
  • He has to go through a lot of trauma, pain, loss and sadness to get there, and these are benchmarks for his arc. 
  • But to get to that point, Davos first has to start learning that he’s not an empty vessel to be filled by Stannis’ iron will. (Is this #Stavros content?)
  • Of course, Melisandre is not exactly arguing from a dispassionate position, let alone a good-faith position. She is trying to seduce Davos into a sunk cost fallacy in which because the corruption has begun, it must inevitably continue 
  • Once more, this is clearly the same way she has seduced Stannis (in a figurative sense), and George is using this scene to give us a glimpse at that dynamic
  • You’re already part of the team, Davos, so you may as well come all the way. And this is how Melisandre views, well, basically everything, all human ethics
  • She again asks a hilariously presumptuous question:
    • “Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?” 
  • Melisandre is acting as though Davos is a member of her faith, and so she has the right to speak this way to him. But she’s also curious about his answer
  • Davos, being a genial obliging sort whose social status makes him eager to please, considers this thoughtfully instead of just telling her to fuck off
  • Her question once more pricks his guilt:
    • Would a good man be doing this?
  • The very fact that his hand is on the tiller, as she says, makes him think he’s ultimately not a good man, but rather a loyal man. Those used to be identical
  • Now they are separate. Now Davos is split. And that is his honest answer:
    • "I am a man," he said. "I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I've broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m'lady. Good and bad."
  • This is clearly George’s follow-up to Stannis’ declaration earlier:
    • "A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.”
  • Stannis was addressing the duality of man, how we all have both angels and devils within us. The difference is that Davos ultimately sides with mercy
  • Stannis believes that because we are “mixed,” we deserve both reward and punishment. The problem, as I said last week, is that Stannis assumes an objective position from which to judge, and his punishments tend to last longer
  • Davos believes that because we are “mixed,” we deserve mercy. We deserve to be spared divine punishment, because the gods made us heroes and villains in the same skin. We are all just struggling to work that out
  • We are not good people, nor are we bad people. We are just people, in Davos’ formulation, none of us really all that different from anyone else
  • The only time we become different is when we forget that, when we act like the various forms of power literally ennoble us, lifting us above everyone else
  • Within the life of Davos the individual, he has both been kind to his wife and committed adultery. He has tried to help his sons, though he’s worrying more and more these days that he has ultimately failed them. He has broken many laws…
  • ...but he never felt evil until tonight. It is power that has changed him. He is no longer simply an individual, trying and often failing to do right by the people around him. Now he wields the power of punishment as well as mercy
  • This is one of the central points of ASOIAF: we are all “mixed,” with good and bad parts within us, but the structures of power give weight to our devils
  • Davos believes not only that he is a “grey man, neither white nor black but partaking of both,” but that most men operate the same way. Good and evil are abstract concepts; in execution, they’re almost always muddled, because the battlefield between good and evil cuts through every human heart
  • This is what George believes is lacking in a lot of lesser fantasy, imitating the surface of Tolkien without the substance, reducing good and evil to collective sides in a literal war, rather than interlinked sides in an internal war
  • To quote Rules of the Game, as I did during the Stannis v. Renly standoff: the terrible thing in life is that everyone has their reasons. No one is reducible
  • If you believe you are hopelessly evil, you have no reason to try and do good. If you believe you are inherently good, you will overlook your own capacity for evil
  • These divisions, however well-intentioned, are too strict, too simplistic to engage with the lived experience of humanity in any meaningful way. We are all grey
  • Melisandre engages sincerely with that idea, teasing it out of Davos. She is the one who gives voice to the notion of being a “grey man,” not him
  • So she does not dismiss it out of hand. Melisandre is intellectually authentic, a Socratic philosophy professor as much as a religious inquisitor
  • But she does ultimately disagree with Davos, putting forth her own worldview:
  • To her mind, good and evil are not part of a spectrum. They are absolute opposites that do not mix. They are rigid poles with nothing in common
  • She puts it in terms of an onion, which again indicates she is trying to talk to Davos on his own terms, putting her beliefs in a form he can relate to himself
  • In her mind, evil is not something generally decent men carry around with them. Rather, evil is an infection, a corruption, that inevitably taints good
  • If you are half rotten, you are rotten. If you are half evil, you are evil. Once it gets its claws in you, it cannot be held back. Evil will have its way with you in the end
  • Much as I generally come down on Davos’ side of these arguments, George is going out of his way here to communicate that Melisandre has a point to make
  • What Melisandre is saying about evil is identical to what I was saying about power. By its very nature, it is impossible to contain. It is seductive, all-consuming
  • The great irony here once more comes back to hypocrisy, of the impossibility of all these flawed blinkered mortals making sweeping statements with any heft
  • Melisandre is right about corruption...but she herself is an agent of corruption. Her actions have led to both Stannis’ and Davos’ moral compasses going awry
  • It’s not that she’s totally wrong about the nature of evil, it’s that she refuses to apply this logic to herself, her messiah, or her Lord of Light. They are exceptions
  • Or so she thinks. But she’s wrong. Her path to hell is paved with good intentions, but that doesn’t change the destination: the sacrifice of Shireen
  • Her inability to accept the coexistence of good and evil, her insistence that you must be one or the other, leads her not to good, but to evil. For humanity is far more successful at perfecting evil than we are at perfecting good
  • If she was able to accept Davos’ worldview, her own worldview would not be this razor-sharp binary unable to accept the fallen nature of humanity as a given
  • That version of Melisandre might not get in her own way. The very zealotry she thinks is necessary to save the world is sabotaging her own efforts to do so
  • It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you insist that every half-rotten onion is a rotten onion, then all you will see in the world are rotten onions in need of a purge
  • Meanwhile, in ASOS, George offers a quiet rebuttal to Melisandre’s metaphor:
    • When Craster's wives brought onions, he seized one eagerly. One side was black with rot, but he cut that part off with his dagger and ate the good half raw. 
  • See? Good can be preserved! We can work to fight the devil within us and honor the angel. Within Melisandre’s worldview, there would be no point in that attempt
  • The conversation reminds me of the dialogue between Melisandre and Cressen from the ACOK Prologue.
  • The optics are a bit different. Davos and Melisandre are not surrounded by the entirety of Stannis’ court.
  • But the purpose (from Melisandre’s POV) is the same. She wants to understand Davos’ viewpoint and convince him that her viewpoint is the correct one.
  • I was thinking back to the feast scene from the Prologue and how Melisandre questions Cressen’s skepticism regarding R’hllor You think not? when Cressen says that gods make for uncertain allies.
  • Melisandre was only partially-interested in Cressen's point of view as she uses the opportunity back in the prologue to tell Cressen that he should wear Patchface’s fool’s crown for “speaking such folly”, using mockery as a tool to win more converts.
  • In contrast, Melisandre seems interested in Davos’ perspective, or in Davos himself — hence all the questions!
  • And why wouldn’t she be? For a lot of us who have grown up and lived in secular households, we might think of religious people as close-minded and intolerant of other points of view.
  • But Melisandre is not merely a religious fanatic. She’s an evangelist, a missionary. She’s come to convince heathen Westeros of the truth of R’hllor.
  • I’ve been around missionaries and evangelists all my life. Hell, to reveal something personal about myself: I even was a short-term missionary when I was 18 years old: a story for another time.
  • The point is that evangelists and missionaries don’t last long and don’t gain converts if they are close-minded and uninterested in debate.
  • And what better way to demonstrate the faith of R’hllor if she was to win over Davos Seaworth: one of the king’s men, one who seems uninterested in joining with the queen’s men to gain station in life.
  • As a side-note, it’s fascinating that GRRM had a mini-Melisandre POV chapter here several books before she gets her own POV chapter. You can see why he made her a POV character given the characterization that he already has for her here in ACOK. 
  • But Davos, like Cressen before him, only sees Melisandre as the font of evil, the deliverer of death, the deceiver of the king.
  • At this point, they have sailed out as far as they’re going to go, figuratively as well as literally. Melisandre’s argument takes place far out to shore, literally distant from the lived experience of humanity; Davos swings us back around
  • As he does so, he counters her argument, turning it around as he’s turning his ship around, forcing her to look in the mirror and apply her worldview to herself
    • "You speak of men and onions," Davos said to Melisandre. "What of women? Is it not the same for them? Are you good or evil, my lady?"
  • Melisandre, unlike Stannis, does not get angry about Davos calling her a hypocrite. Why? Because Stannis is experiencing profound doubt, and so Davos touched a nerve. He fears Davos is right; that’s why he reacted so explosively
  • Melisandre is experiencing no such doubts. She is terrifying in her serenity and certainty. She merely chuckles at Davos’ thrust, and parries it. I am good.
  • Why is she good? Because she is the champion of the Lord of Light, and he is good. He is the essence of light, life, summer; she expands on this in ASOS
  • She is herself a knight of sorts. Again, George is using this scene to complicate her character, expanding her beyond the surface misunderstood for substance
  • Melisandre is a wicked witch in many reader’s minds, and it’s difficult to move beyond that image, because she does so often fulfill that trope perfectly
  • But here she is arguing that she’s a different trope entirely. A knight--like Davos, like the good guys in the stories who set out to slay the wicked witch
  • This is an idea George has been playing with from Melisandre’s introduction, in which Cressen described her as “taller than most knights”
  • The opposites are brought together. That which you thought is your enemy is actually a reflection of yourself. That’s Luke’s face inside Darth Vader’s mask
  • Angel and devil inside the same skin. The human condition, and Melisandre is no more inhuman than Stannis is a god. She’s a person like Davos, like anyone else
  • But again, even as she makes this important point, Melisandre dodges the insight. She ignores how she is deconstructing her own simplistic worldview
  • If she can be both wicked witch and heroic knight, than people are more complicated than her good/evil binary suggests. She, too, is grey, like Davos
  • If the flames move and are never still, as she told Stannis, casting multiple shadows across the future, than her onion metaphor is total bullshit!
  • People are vast and contradictory. Stannis and Melisandre are perceptive enough to recognize this, but not perceptive enough to live with that truth
  • They insist that this liminal gray status is something to be resolved in one direction or the other, rather than the permanent human condition
  • As Davos immediately asks, how can Melisandre call herself a champion of life when she has come to deliver death? Didn’t she kill Maester Cressen, after all?
  • Well, no, she didn’t. Once more George is complicating our perspective, preventing us from coming down on Davos = Right/Good and Mel = Wrong/Bad
  • Melisandre responds with what the reader already knows: Cressen got himself killed while trying to assassinate Melisandre. He was the agent of death, not her
  • The king’s men, in pursuing what they believe to be the righteous destruction of inherent evil, end up falling into the trap of Melisandre’s own simplistic worldview
  • By trying to eliminate their fears, their enemy, they become their enemy. They see red, literally and figuratively, and commit themselves to spilling blood
  • Come ASOS, Davos will fall deeper into this trap and must reason his way out of it, coming up with a way to resist Mel that doesn’t adopt her way of thinking
  • Here, once more, Davos has not fully developed a counterargument, and can only poke holes in Melisandre’s. What about Renly? Didn’t you kill him?
  • As with Stannis, the mention of Renly’s death seems to throw Melisandre off. This is indeed the fly in her ointment, the clear flaw in her argument
  • Melisandre turns to study him, and her eyes are like pale flames under her hood. The light of judgment, the light of the truth. She says she did not kill Renly
  • Once more, Melisandre is technically right while dodging the deeper implications. It was Shadowbaby the Elder who struck the blow, not Melisandre herself. Moreover, as she thinks about it, R’hllor is ultimately responsible for all of this
  • Perhaps, here, Melisandre believes that Stannis was the one who cast the shadow and thus was the one who killed Renly.
  • The best theory, I believe articulated by redditor cantuse, is that Melisandre had to put Stannis in close proximity of her targets and then use the murderous hatred Stannis felt to fuel the birth of the shadowbaby.
  • So, R’hllor, the shadowbaby, but possibly Stannis too.
  • If she’s implying it’s Stannis, is that a good faith argument on Melisandre’s part? Go back and re-listen to our debate on part 2 of our analysis of ACOK, Davos II! 
  • Like Stannis, however, Melisandre does not want to engage with Davos’ deeper argument about culpability and the struggle between mercy and punishment
  • Even though she just pointed out to Davos that because his hand is on the tiller, he bears partial responsibility for what’s about to happen, she cannot apply this logic to herself. Did she not raise the sails (so to speak) for Renly’s death?
  • Back to “The Forsaken.” If God isn’t there, or at least not listening, then there is only us, with our angels and devils, bearing responsibility for what both do
  • Melisandre wants to think of herself purely as a vessel for her god’s will, as Davos thinks of King Stannis as his god and himself as merely a servant
  • But both are wrong. They are making decisions, they are struggling between their angel and devil halves, and they cannot use their gods as fig leaves forever
  • Melisandre laughs that Davos is lost in darkness and confusion. She’s not wrong! But she, too, is lost in darkness and confusion, and so many people pay the price
  • The seduction of power, like the seduction of fate, is that we are not truly in control, but merely in service to a larger structure. Responsibility lies upward
  • Free will is liberating but also terrifying in this regard, because it is a judgment that comes from within. There is no escaping it, no externalizing it onto god
  • Once you accept yourself as the master of your own destiny, the easy binaries fall away, collapsed within your own heart and mind. Davos knows this
  • And so he argues to Melisandre that he is glad to be lost in the darkness, because the darkness is shielding them from the men on the castle walls
  • As Bloodraven says to Bran in ADWD: 
    • "Never fear the darkness, Bran." The lord's words were accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head. "The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong."
  • Darkness speaks to isolation, confusion, not being able to see your path unfold. But it also allows for rest, sleep, dreams, self-examination, reforging of strength
  • As Davos notes, it is the cold driving the men on the walls to huddle around torches, and so not be able to see Davos and Melisandre pass. Winter is harsh and brutal, associated with death, but we need death as well as life
  • An eternal summer would ultimately be just as bad. The sun would bake everything dry. An exploding population would overwhelm natural resources
  • Moreover, on a more spiritual and philosophical level, we need bitter as well as sweet to give life meaning. We need changes to recognize and spur the changes within us. We need structure, the flow of time. We need balance in our lives
  • This is the hard-earned philosophy of Davos Seaworth, and it is a philosophy that George clearly favors. But he doesn’t rest on it. He complicates it further
  • After all, Davos doesn’t want this mission to succeed! Part of him would be secretly very glad if those men on the walls saw them and stopped them
  • So while his argument is sound in the abstract, it breaks on the specifics like water on rock...which is what I’ve been saying about Melisandre’s arguments
  • Moreover, she has a comeback. The torches are truly what is hiding them, blinding the men on the wall to their presence. R’hllor’s grace at work!
  • She’s not wrong, exactly, but she’s once more ignoring the deeper implications of his point and keeping things strictly on the surface. What about the cold driving them to warmth? Moreover, isn’t R’hllor still employing darkness as a tool?
  • Melisandre wants to think of cold and darkness as belonging to a single evil nameless god with a dark eye. Euron is auditioning for that role, of course!
  • But it doesn’t actually exist as a separate entity. There is no objective god of cold and dark and death and winter; that’s why Euron can try and take over the job
  • Rather, these are forces which coexist with warmth and light and life and summer, and these forces coexist not only in the world, but in the individual
  • Melisandre simply cannot deal with that, because it demonstrates that she’s wrong about the nature of the universe, and therefore, wrong about everything
  • When Davos tires of her sophistries and tells her to have it her way, she insists that this is his way, R’hllor’s way. Just another fig leaf to avoid responsibility
  • Call it a minor pet peeve, but I find the idea of Melisandre and Davos as respective devil and angel on Stannis’ shoulders aggravating.
  • The Game of Thrones show (Have you heard of it?) plays into this imagery repeatedly in Seasons 3 and 4. I’ve included an image for our patrons to look at.
  • 
  • The reason why I find it aggravating is as you were saying: Davos thinks of himself as a servant of god. His god, though, is King Stannis Baratheon.
  • Melisandre is speaking similar to Davos. She’s a mere servant, no will of her own. Her god speaks, and she bends.
  • They’ve cast themselves into these roles as instruments of their respective gods when they’re not, and they both bear culpability for what’s going down here at Storm’s End.
  • Davos is a knight. Melisandre is a “knight of sorts”, and as you were saying earlier, a knight is not a stand-in for “good person.”
  • There are knights like Ser Arthur Dayne and knights like Gregor Clegane. And there are knights somewhere in the middle like Ser Hyle Hunt (who I totally do not look and act like).
  • Religion, knighthood, loyalty: the beliefs and the job you hold are not what distinguishes your morality.
  • Faith without works is dead. 
  • The wind shifts, and Davos requires Melisandre’s help to bring in the sail. Again George is showing us how they are brought together, one and the same in their service. Their worldviews are opposing, but their arguments come together
  • As they work, Davos decides to give Melisandre’s conversational techniques a try--again, the opposites come together. He presumes intimacy and asks:
    • “Who rowed you to Renly?”
  • So rather than ask her if she killed Renly and try to navigate her half-true answer, he just takes it as a given that she did, and asks who helped her in that case
  • Whose hand was on the tiller? Who shared the responsibility? Did you have this same conversation with them? She approves of Davos’ presumptuousness and responds honestly. As it turned out, Melisandre needed no help with Renly
  • This would seem to admit her guilt--but again, she’s already fobbed it off onto R’hllor, so she need not lie further about her own role in Renly’s death
  • As for Cortnay’s death, though, this is different, because of Storm’s End. There is power woven into these walls--old powers, sorcerous powers to counter hers
  • This reminds us that Westeros isn’t exactly pure and virginal where magical power is concerned. The fiery ladder is baked into Westerosi political power
  • Once again we go back to Melisandre’s argument. If this is how power has always worked in Westeros, how can she be said to be changing things? The onion was already half rotten, and so entirely rotten. What’s the difference?
  • The problem with her argument, as with Stannis’, is that she presumes a flawless knowledge of the nature of good and evil, and that she’s on the side of good
  • But if Storm’s End boasts a large curtain wall protected by magic, then it is once more an analogue to the Wall...which puts Melisandre on the side of the white walkers, who snuck their zombified servants past those spells back in book one
  • Opposites collide. That which you think is a rigid binary is in fact a mirror. In your zeal to defeat the enemy, you have become the enemy. All things come around. Far from defeating the terrors in the night, you are the terrors in the night.
  • Melisandre is red, and the Others are blue. Her shadows are black; the white walkers are, well, white. But these are surface oppositions. Under the surface, the forces of ice and fire are one. The same wonder, and the same terror
  • Mel’s shadows cannot get past the magical defenses of Storm’s End, like the dragons can’t get past the Wall. Davos points out that shadows are darkness
  • Mel shoots back that shadows are only given existence by light, not darkness. The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows. Once again, she is undercutting her own point, demonstrating that all things contain their opposite
  • If bright lights cast dark shadows, then Azor Ahai, Warrior of Light, can commit deeds of great evil. Robert cast his shadow on Stannis; look at the result
  • Moreover, she’s wrong that there are no shadows in the darkness. The Others and their servants are described as such:
    • Then he saw it, a shadow in the shadows, sliding toward the inner door that led to Mormont's sleeping cell, a man-shape all in black, cloaked and hooded … but beneath the hood, its eyes shone with an icy blue radiance…
    • Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness.
    • A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees.
    • They were loosing fire arrows at shadows in the dark.
    • The longhall was dark with shadows, black and blacker. 
  • ...as is Jon Snow and the Night’s Watch.
    • All in black, he was a shadow among shadows, dark of hair, long of face, grey of eye.
    • Qhorin decreed that they would rest here until the shadows began to grow again. "Shadows are friends to men in black," he said.
  • For even in dark times, even when all else has forsaken you, it is still possible for things to get worse. It is still possible for you to make it even darker outside
  • Melisandre’s mantras only sound coherent and logical in the abstract, in her own mind and Stannis’. In Davos’ mind, in the lived reality, they fall apart
  • Yet they are just powerful enough that Davos cannot immediately take them apart. That, like so much else we’ve been talking about, will wait for ASOS
  • You know, a lot of the conversation feels like a dorm-room debate from Melisandre’s perspective.
  • She knows what’s about to happen; so, now she’s shooting the shit about shadows, morality, culpability with Davos.
  • And sure, she’d like it if Davos joined up with R’hllor, but that’s not the priority at the moment.
  • That’s definitely not what Davos is experiencing as they row up to Storm’s End. 
  • Davos feels “tense as a bowstring”, because he finds this entire ordeal challenging to his loyalty and sense of right and wrong.
  • On the water of Shipbreaker Bay, Davos is having a crisis of faith, a moment when he doubts that his god (Stannis) is the true one and worth his loyalty.
  • Melisandre confidently believes that she’s moving in R’hllor’s holy light and Davos feeling the agony of consciously doing the wrong thing makes the power dynamic compelling.
  • Reading between the lines, you never get the sense that Melisandre and Stannis had the type of conversation that Stannis and Davos had about the morality and ethics behind what’s about to happen.
  • Stannis saw the power that Melisandre had in the prologue when she survived the poison that Cressen intended for her and has opted for a red hawk thereafter.
  • When we do see conversations occurring between the two in A Storm of Swords, there’s a fascinating role reversal where Stannis plays the Davos role, questioning Melisandre about the validity of her prophecies w/r/t the leeches and the dead kings.
  • The reason why this reversal occurs, I think, is that Stannis becomes “tense as a bowstring” after he stops receiving benefits from R’hllor.
  • He’s not willing to examine premises that benefit him until after his defeat on the Blackwater. How human, Stannis!
  • The Blackwater becomes Stannis’ crisis of faith, and it’ll wait for further exploration in ASOS.
  • For now, though, Davos’ boat nears Storm’s End, his emotions run high and tension reaches a fever pitch.
• The cave and the shadow
  • And so Davos runs out of words as we come up against Storm’s End. The union of magical and political power in defiance of the gods, about to be toppled
  • Davos steers Melisandre and the reader back in time--back to his first journey down this dark gullet, and back much further to “the storm lords of old”
  • There were other people last time around the wheel, starving men who welcomed Davos and the life he brought. But this time, there is no one to welcome him in the cave, because he is bringing only death
  • There’s a primal power to this moment, as this elaborate expansive chapter shrinks down to a tiny tunnel into the dark, as the smooth stone face of power gives way to an ancient hidden weakness known to very few
  • We are finally reaching past all the faces power has worn in this chapter, arriving at truth, a light in the darkness, the thing in itself. We are being reborn
  • Appropriately enough, there’s clear sexual imagery and womb imagery in this scene, Davos metaphorically impregnating Storm’s End where Stannis literally impregnated Melisandre. We are entering a new world, a new generation
  • What has made this possible? It is not Melisandre’s powers, not yet. It is the smuggler’s skills that have not abandoned Davos of House Seaworth
  • His knighthood is now a curse, rendered a noose around his neck like his fingerbones, contributing to his corruption in the garden of good and evil
  • Here in the literal and moral darkness, with Davos’ god having left him forsaken, everything trembling on the edge of death and rebirth, Melisandre steps forth
  • Before we get into what’s waiting for us under that cloak, we should pause to talk a little about suspense, catharsis, and how George manages this moment
  • When you step back from the sheer vivid terror and beauty of this as an image, it’s interesting to consider how much information we have going into it
  • Really, there’s not much we don’t know! We’ve already seen a shadow assassin at work. We already know it’s linked at some level to Stannis, and Melisandre just reminded us about it in case we were unclear that it’s also linked to her:
  • We just spent several episodes breaking down how Cortnay Penrose ended up on Team Dragonstone’s kill list. So it’s pretty clear, even to a first time reader, that a second shadow is about to be dispatched to kill Cortnay 
  • We have the who, the what, the when, the where, and the why. So where does the shock come from? It comes from the how. As a first time reader, if you’re inclined to guess at all, you might expect Mel to summon a shadow with a wand
  • Hitchcock talked about the difference between shock and suspense. Shock is a bomb going off without warning; suspense is showing the audience the bomb and letting them wait for it to go off. There is an element of agony at work
  • The French called it a film d’angoisse, a film of anguish, crossing the lines between horror and thriller. Thrillers and horror movies both rely on suspense and catharsis, but broadly speaking, they make different use of them
  • Thrillers gear their suspense and catharsis around plot events. The villain of The Fugitive is exposed; the killer in Collateral is targeting the love interest, oh no!
  • Horror gears its suspense and catharsis more around revelations about the nature of reality and its characters, the basic state of play the plot inhabits
  • Michael Myers can’t really be killed; look at him get up again, and again, and again. Are the ghosts in The Shining real? Well, they finally intervene once.
  • Our beloved Fevre Dream certainly has a major plot beat that twists everything around, but its most memorable and distinct moments are these kinds of moments: horror revelations about what it is exactly we are dealing with
  • These produce different structures: thrillers feel like they’re rocketing you forward, horror movies feel like they are swallowing you whole
  • The film d’angoisse produces a horror tone within a thriller structure, delivering the sunken revelations of horror within the ruthless pacing of a thriller
  • Forward from Hitchcock: Don’t Look Now, Silence of the Lambs, and No Country for Old Men are well-received movies that fit this half-horror half-thriller form
  • George achieves a similar effect here. He gives us almost all the information we need to know what’s going to happen (the agony of suspense), but the catharsis, rather than smoothly flowing in, brings everything to a shrieking halt and completely reframes everything we’ve been talking about in the chapter so far
  • The thriller pacing and the horror imagery produces one of the most viscerally powerful stretches of writing in ASOIAF, all the more effective because the audience has been so effectively wrung dry of tension by that point
  • We understand just enough to be utterly gobsmacked by what we could not have seen coming, a final revelation, a second coming, a reshaping of reality itself
  • Davos is alone in the darkness and a light blooms. The light of god. The light of fire. The light of birth, rebirth, the hero’s journey, the rise of the savior of the world
  • ...or is it? Are we witnessing a miracle, or a curse? Mary’s baby or Rosemary’s? Cleansing fire or smothering shadow? Rise of the hero, or rise of the villain?
  • The physical mechanics of the light blooming seem to be in keeping with Melisandre’s ability to manipulate light and heat.
  • She burns Varamyr’s eagle and has a chest of potions and powders
  • She can light a sword on fire without wildfire
  • The question I have is whether there really are physical properties at work or if this is a supernatural miracle?
  • Yet it’s hard even now to process any of this intellectually, because Melisandre seems to literally shrug off all of that debate in favor of the thing in itself
  • All the discourse that has defined this chapter and our endless series of episodes on this chapter pales before her. It is all sound and fury. It is all moot, mute. 
  • This is what it feels like to watch a new god rise. The old world falls away, and all is reborn in a new image. It’s precisely the effect Melisandre wants to have
  • We know how Davos feels. Our jaw drops, our hairs stand up, every word drills deep. It’s as heart-poundingly effective as horror imagery gets
  • Melisandre is not abandoning her earlier arguments, so much as she is carrying them forward from the purely verbal to the physical and beyond
  • She fearlessly makes herself naked, so sure of herself and her truth. Love her, hate her, you cannot question her presence, her power, and thus, her god
  • The scene in the show adds a genuinely interesting layer in having Melisandre tell Davos that she knows he wants to see what’s under her robes.
  • I say interesting, because it helps set up the attempt by Melisandre to seduce Davos in ASOS/S03.
  • But also interesting, because I wonder if the shoe makes the subtext … text.
  • Does Davos desire Melisandre? Is the fear he feels to her rooted in some sexual desire for her?
  • Davos recoils when Melisandre offers her body to him in ASOS, but he contextualizes that through the shadows that Melisandre wants to birth with Davos’ seed. 
  • She is pregnant--but in no position of vulnerability, no hint of pain or discomfort until this point, no presence of midwife nor doctor, no partner of any kind needed
  • All she needs is a witness, the man whose mind she has been trying to change, the one doubting heretic in this barren land whose opinion her messiah respects
  • This is her proof of concept. If power works so differently than you can even comprehend, Onion Knight, than should your morality not change as well?
  • As I’ve been saying, one’s moral compass is always determined to a large degree by one’s access to power, and therefore, one’s understanding of power
  • Davos said that King Stannis was his god. His north star. His eternal flame. But the meaning of his god has changed. Who is he to call that evil? His hand was still on the tiller. He knew they would kill. Not like this, but what does that matter?
  • Part of me thinks this is basically no different from sending in someone to poison Ser Cortnay’s goblet. What’s the ethical difference, really, between that and this?
  • But another part of me disagrees, because of the way in which this scene is written, the way in which Stannis won’t talk about it, and what it does to Davos
  • This scene is not written as a thriller revelation of espionage, but a horror revelation that reshapes our understanding of the material world at play here
  • We’re going to talk more about the nature of the shadowbirth later in the episode, but I wanted to note the effect it has on both Stannis and Davos emotionally
  • For Stannis, it has turned him to ash and dust inside, a burnt out corpse only technically alive. It stripped him of his shadow, part of himself, and he did it again
  • For Davos, it has already left him feeling miserable and forsaken, questioning all his life choices; now his mighty pillars are being corrupted beyond recognition
  • He whispers “gods preserve us” as some last forlorn hope of luck, of mercy, of the old world for which he sacrificed his fingers...and Melisandre laughs
  • She laughs like Stannis laughed earlier in the chapter, but unlike Stannis, she is laughing at Davos. At his gods. At his feeble foolish pretentions turned to dust
  • There is a new god in town. This is a new order. And for all Melisandre is described as a light in the darkness, her eyes glowing like hot coals is hellish
  • What is the cost of her new world? It is Stannis’ soul. The shadow rising above Davos bears his face. It is the dark side of the crown. It is the guilt and fear from earlier in the chapter given form, a shadow of a doubt, hideous self-knowledge
  • Corruption, corruption, the fallen nature of man. We turn our faces from the light. We climb to heaven only to populate it with horrors. The light itself, the fire that makes us who we are, casts darker shadows the brighter it gets
  • Melisandre is powerful, but she is not her god, and her god is not what she thinks it is. She is mortal, flawed as Stannis, Davos or anyone else; she is overpowered
  • Even as they climb the fiery ladder, Team Dragonstone becomes shadows of their former selves, turned to ash by the fire they grasp. This is how power operates. Power corrupts. Always. It demands you throw your heart in the fire.
  • Earlier in ACOK, we met with a certain fellow by the name of Craster.
  • Craster had only daughters. He had no sons. Or did he?
  • As is hinted to Jon and all-but-revealed to Samwell in Storm, Craster did have sons, and through sorcerous means shown in GoT, S04 and likely to be seen in TWOW, and he gives them to the cold. They become the white shadows. The Others.
  • Stannis has only one daughter, Shireen. He has no sons. Or does he?
  • The shadows that Melisandre births to kill Renly and Cortnay are his sons. Black shadows created by sorcery.
  • As we come to the close of our analysis of another Stannis-centric episode, it’s uncomfortable to draw the comparison between Stannis and yet another villain in ASOIAF
  • But here we are. The extremes of fire and ice have brought shadows into this world, and the shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord. The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay, my lord. 

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

As Stannis’ conversation with Davos earlier in the chapter was in part laying the groundwork for the (even more intense) version of that conversation they will have on Dragonstone in ASOS Davos IV, this conversation between Davos and Melisandre is a dress rehearsal for the (even more intense) version of this conversation they will have on Dragonstone in ASOS Davos III. 

Theory/Discussion

So...the shadow babies. What’s their deal?

• What Melisandre does here is a phenomenon known in-universe as “shadowbinding.” The only other character we’ve met referred to as such is Quaithe, though she has yet to demonstrate any powers in this regard 
• For all that Melisandre declares the shadowbabies to be creatures of light given birth by R’hllor, shadowbinding does not appear to be synonymous with the faith of R’hllor
• After all, Quaithe doesn’t serve the red god, and none of the other red priests we meet (Thoros, Benerro, Moqorro) have anything to say about shadowbinding
• Of course, none of those priests possess wombs or vaginas, and judging from this chapter, I’m tempted to say that you need those in order to practice shadowbinding
• This seems to be just another way in which Melisandre has gone rogue. A lone wolf spreading god’s word, in opposition to the institutional Red Temple in Volantis
• I think this is right as Moqorro only gives voice to the “shadows” one time, and it’s not a positive connection.
• Tyrion asks him whether he can see the identities of the people he glimpses in the fire, and he replies that he can only see their shadows
  • "One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood."
• To put this in a religious context, Melisandre and her sect functions as a sort of take on Daeva or “a demon” in Zoroastrian faith.
• Perhaps, we can see Melisandre’s heresy to traditional R’hllor worship in the thesis of Chris Ghan: “The Daevas in Zoroastrian Scripture”: 
  • “I reject the daevas”, the traditional confession of faith begins, placing this duty squarely upon the shoulders of the Mazda-worshipper. The daevas 76 therefore have, from the beginning, represented the opposition to the Zoroastrian religion, a shadow that has followed the faith from its origins down the centuries. 
• Perhaps in orthodox R’hllorism, shadows are regarded as evil, as demons, as creatures of darkness, but Melisandre has gone rogue on this practice and believes them to be creatures of light who she can draw power from.
• Thoros drifted from the flock in one direction, that of the lapsed believer; Melisandre drifted in the other direction, into more zealotry and power than her faith offered
• She wanted to become a succubus, a witch less in the vein of the literal witches of Macbeth, and more in the vein of Lady Macbeth herself
• She journeyed to Asshai by the Shadow...and yeah, that name gives away where the power to birth shadow assassins comes from! The nightmare city of the far east
• Or rather, just beyond the nightmare city, as TWOIAF elaborates:
• The Shadow by Asshai seems to be this quasi-sentient state of affairs surrounding the “corpse city” of Stygai, a city whose name is referencing the River Styx
• In other words, this is the gateway to death, an underworld from which few return. The equivalent to the Land of Always Winter up north beyond the Wall
• Heart of Winter v. Heart of Darkness. These are the crossover points, where man becomes god, where the world is broken and remade, where new gods are born
• Melisandre can’t make any more shadows with Stannis, because it’s taken too much out of him. Davos refuses her out of horror, but she learns nothing, thinking that the power of the Wall, the nearby Heart of Winter, will make for new and improved shadows
• Once again, Melisandre’s zeal to defeat the Others prevents them from seeing her own face in that icy mirror. The god of the sun and the god of the moon, the god of summer and the god of winter--these must be brought into balance, not just one side winning
• You can see clearly that Mel is the equivalent to Night’s Queen here--journeying beyond the curtain of light and back, to win the heart of a fearless king of men and create nightmarish new children together. Stannis is playing the Night’s King role
• Melisandre thinks she comes from light, but she actually comes from darkness. Same goes for the white walkers, pale as snow but associated with the Long Night
• We are ground zero at a new crossover point, Melisandre’s body a portal between this world and something entirely Other. Yet humanity is not erased; rather, it is corrupted
• The corruption of childbirth is clearly the main thematic takeaway from the shadowbirths; our friend Lauren aka ShakespeareOfThrones has written very well about how the witch as an archetype inverts positive traits commonly associated with femininity 
• The crone’s guiding wisdom becomes opaque riddles; the maiden’s innocent loveliness becomes seductive temptation; the mother’s nurturing support dries up and is poisoned
• Witches tap into both fears and hopes surrounding what happens when women break out of these roles while attaining new powers, magical or otherwise
• We can clearly see that framework at play with Melisandre. She seduced and tempted Stannis with her opaque riddles, and now her quickened womb, the source of life, produces a nightmarish mockery of humanity that lives only to kill and then die
• Her beauty and power goes hand in hand with corruption, the loss of meaning. By that, I don’t mean that childbirth is generally a thing of sweetness and unicorns and rainbows
• Childbirth is an ugly, messy, painful experience--and that’s when everything goes right! Sometimes the fetus doesn’t make it, sometimes the process kills the mother, sometimes the mother sinks into such a depressive state they can’t even look at the kid
• So the fact that the shadowbirth is an ugly, messy, painful experience is not what marks it out as as a corruption of childbirth. The difference lies in the progeny itself
• We don’t get the details of how shadowbirth works, exactly--George likes to keep his magic occult and irrational, which I think is a good move
• But presumably, Stannis and Melisandre have sex, and then she does whatever it is she learned from the Shadow beyond Asshai, and then the seed in her womb transforms into smoke and grows massively (don’t know the gestation period, but it must be pretty quick)
• So the life for which one goes through the ugly, messy, painful experience of childbirth has been transformed, rotted, eaten away of all that makes life worthwhile
• We have lost the sweet and are left only with the bitter, the black resin left over after humanity’s striving burns out into ash. These are the remains of the fiery ladder
• You can’t really blame Melisandre for concocting a theological hierarchy in which the shadows serve the fire. At a metaphorical level, it makes sense...just not how she thinks
• The sun is our source, the foundation of the life force. The shadow is our legacy, our imprint, what results from us standing before the sun, walking forth as an individual
• Stannis is Robert’s legacy, bound to his big brother by blood even as he sets his face in the opposite direction, and he is obsessed in turn with his own legacy
• As he says in the show: “I will not be a page in someone else’s history book.” His desperate desire to claim his own legacy, at whatever cost, burns down that legacy
• Renly hit this sore spot like a bullseye during the Baratheon bros’ standoff at Storm’s End: How many sons do you have, Stannis? Oh, that’s right. None
• This rot, this decay, this blank future with no foundation, just dust between your fingers, undercuts proud patriarchs like Stannis...or Tywin, for that matter. Per The Departed:
  • “Is that what this is about? All that killin’, and all that fuckin’, and no sons?”
• Robert had too many kids, little seeds sown everywhere, while his garden at home was co-opted by the Lannisters. Stannis has too few. These are his sons, his legacy: the corrupted form of a human, an imprint, a scorch mark. A legacy of fear that vanishes
• It’s a corruption of what it means to be a person. You’re born a shadow of your parents, you stagger around blindly, you kill, and then you die. That’s what it all amounts to
• Stannis will sacrifice his only child to Melisandre’s god, and when the shadows lengthen, he will have no sons to comfort him, to provide him with a hope of the future
• He left his sons here at Storm’s End, and they vanish, leaving only their own legacy of wonder and terror

Conclusion

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