Episode 139: A CLASH OF KINGS, DAVOS III: "Inferno (Part 1)" 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 thirty-ninth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Inferno, Part 1: An Analysis of ACOK, Davos III,” in which the Baratheon fleet sails up the Blackwater to victory, right? Right?

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

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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

Lord Travis, our Master of Ships on the Small Council, asks:

Davos is often appropriately compared to Odysseus: a loyal lieutenant in Greek mythology, depicted in Homer's Iliad as an advisor and counsellor to the Greeks in their decade-long war campaign against the Trojans. There's even apt comparisons between Stannis and Davos' relationship/personalities and Achilles and Odysseus' as well as many plot points in Odysseus' journey in the Homeric epics (being shipwrecked, fleets being driven off course by storms, being tempted by the gods and the sea, encountering cannibals, as some major examples). In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus finally returns home almost forgotten to find his wife fielding suitors and his kingdom being taken away from him. Odysseus famously strings a bow as part of the proof of who he is. So, how do you think Davos in the endgame will match Odysseus? Could we see someone from the Golden Company holding Cape Wrath? Might a Storm lord suitor move in to take what is rightfully the Onion Knight's? Will Marya struggle to remember the face of her husband? How might Davos prove himself to her? Do you think he'll return to his home, or will he serve King Bran as depicted in the show?

So, thank you Lord Travis 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-level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, merch, access to the NotASlack and bonus episodes!

Speaking of those bonus episodes, our next bonus episode is our annual holiday gift for you all, and we’ll be doing a full analysis on none other than Blackwater. That is Season 2, Episode 9 from the Thrones Show. So, you get a bonus episode as a patron (early) and you get a bonus episode as a non-patron. Everyone gets a bonus episode this month!

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Davos, he had successfully helped Melisandre liberate Storm’s End from the clutches of the terrorist Cortnay Penrose. Let’s find out what happens as Davos attempts to continue liberating shit in this synopsis of ACOK, Davos III, Part 1!

Synopsis

Blackwater Bay was rough and choppy, whitecaps everywhere. Black Betha rode the flood tide, her sail cracking and snapping at each shift of wind. Wraith and Lady Marya sailed beside her, no more than twenty yards between their hulls. His sons could keep a line. Davos took pride in that.

Hold onto that pride, Davos. You won’t be holding those sons ever again.

Davos hears warhorns across the sea, and he orders the sail brought up and oarsmen to man their oars. Sailors moved to their tasks, pushing past soldiers who were packed in tight aboard the top-deck. They were going to oars now just as Ser Imry Florent had ordered so as not to expose the cloth sails to enemy artillery.

Davos looks to the southeast and sees Stannis’ flagship Fury sailing with Imry in command where once Stannis has commanded the assault on Dragonstone. Davos knows that ship, knows that the massive deck, the three hundred oars and how the ship was large enough for two catapults one fore and one aft. The ship was also fast, or used to be until Ser Imry the Slow-Ass weighed the ship down with too many troops.

But then the warhorns are sounding. Davos feels his missing fingertips tingling as he orders his ships to form a line as the oarmaster’s drums pound. The three ships commanded by Seaworth men all dip oars into water as Davos orders a slow cruise. Davos watches all of the ships get into position but not as quickly as he would have liked. Some ships were lagging behind, some of them - like the ship known as the Swordfish (remember that ship’s name!) due to bad leadership. All the same, morale is high as the men are eager for battle and confident of victory, much the same as their commander Lord High Captain Ser Imry Florent:

Three days past, he had summoned all his captains to a war council aboard the Fury while the fleet lay anchored at the mouth of the Wendwater, in order to acquaint them with his dispositions. Davos and his sons had been assigned a place in the second line of battle, well out on the dangerous starboard wing. "A place of honor," Allard had declared, well satisfied with the chance to prove his valor. "A place of peril," his father had pointed out. His sons had given him pitying looks, even young Maric. The Onion Knight has become an old woman, he could hear them thinking, still a smuggler at heart.

Well, the last was true enough, he would make no apologies for it. Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run before the wind.

Still Davos of Flea Bottom? Is this George’s writing homage to Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny from the Block”? Wikipedia indicates that ACOK came out four years before “Jenny from the Block”. So, when is George going to sue Jennifer Lopez for copyright infringement, I ask.

All kidding aside, Davos would have done things a bit different if he were running this goat rope of a clusterfuck. He would have sent ships to scout ahead instead of moving in heedlessly. Davos had advised as much, but Imry had dismissed him with an aristocratic over the nose look down upon Davos the Onion Knight.

With four times as many ships as the boy king, Ser Imry saw no need for caution or deceptive tactics. He had organized the fleet into ten lines of battle, each of twenty ships. The first two lines would sweep up the river to engage and destroy Joffrey's little fleet, or "the boy's toys" as Ser Imry dubbed them, to the mirth of his lordly captains. Those that followed would land companies of archers and spearmen beneath the city walls, and only then join the fight on the river. The smaller, slower ships to the rear would ferry over the main part of Stannis's host from the south bank, protected by Salladhor Saan and his Lyseni, who would stand out in the bay in case the Lannisters had other ships hidden up along the coast, poised to sweep down on their rear.

Davos admits that the need for speed was reasonable as the winds were against them, and they had lost ships on the voyage up. Moreover, Stannis Baratheon had probably reached the Blackwater Rush days ago. It was a shorter route via the kingsroad than what they were facing on the waters of Shipbreaker Bay, the Narrow Sea and Blackwater Bay.

Meanwhile, the struggling clown car fleet had somehow managed to capture some fishing skiffs on the sail up. Imry thinks this is good plunder, but Davos, dutiful as he always is, interrogates the prisoners. He discovers that Tyrion is working on a boom chain to close the mouth of the river. The chain might even be complete by now.

[Davos] found himself wishing it had. If the river was closed to them, Ser Imry would have no choice but to pause and take stock.

Oh man, Davos, if you only knew.

Davos shouts for everyone to stay logged online. No, wait, misread that. He orders that all the ships stay in a line. The wind whips around him, and he’s thankful to not be a real fucking dumbass and wearing plate armor into battle like someone in charge of this fleet. But now all the ships finally lumber into a row, and they are coming in on the flood tide. Unfortunately, the Lannisters might have the advantage in that the Blackwater Rush is flowing out. The first line of ships might get decimated. Fortunately, Davos and his sons were on the second line. Fortunately.

Davos looks ahead and sees the Red Keep, dark against a lemon sky, with the Blackwater below. Davos sees the south shore of the Blackwater where Stannis’ army was running around, getting ready to cross. Davos hears trumpets and prays a silent prayer for luck.

Now Davos turns his attention to the order of the battle, and just to simplify it all here, it’s ten lines of twenty ships/line. Behind the battle lines, Salladhor Saan and his Lyseni comprised the rearguard, which Davos thinks is a mistake.

Ahooooooooooooooooooooooooo. The call rolled across whitecaps and churning oars from the forecastle of the Fury: Ser Imry was sounding the attack. Ahoooooooooooooooooooo, ahooooooooooooooooooooo.

Aw, yeah sound those horns. Get the attack going, baby! Davos orders a fast sail as everyone starts hooting and hollering, banging swords and spears against shields like a gaggle of West Virginians when their senator secures pork barrel spending to expand I-64 into fifteen lanes. Davos looks for the boom chain, but he doesn’t see it as the mouth of the river was open. Davos notices two new stone towers on opposite sides of the river, thinking that their position made them hard to attack. Stannis could only suppress them with archers which was what he was doing.

Something flashed down low where the dark water swirled around the base of the tower. It was sunlight on steel, and it told Davos Seaworth all he needed to know. A chain boom . . . and yet they have not closed the river against us. Why?

He could make a guess at that as well, but there was no time to consider the question. A shout went up from the ships ahead, and the warhorns blew again: the enemy was before them.

And that is the synopsis for ACOK, Davos III, Part 1! It seems cruel to cut off the chapter just before we get to the battle itself, but that allows us both to analyze the battle plan and give the battle and money shot of the explosion our full attention next week. What did you think of the first part of this chapter, ser?

Depth

Every Davos chapter is great, and this one is no exception. It’s a perfect mixture of detailed battle descriptions and slow creeping dread. It’s like a Tom Hanks “Everyman in WWII” movie that gets cannibalized by a horror movie. The payoff comes next week, but it wouldn’t be as effective nor as memorable without all the buildup George does in this part of the chapter. He’s pulling a headfake in terms of tone, but all these details really do have to be there to complete the trap Tyrion springs at the end of the chapter.

Nothing is extraneous. Davos himself might feel like he’s just along for the ride, but his unique perspective allows us to understand exactly what Tyrion has done, as well as how poorly the commanders of the Baratheon fleet were prepared for it. As I said last week, George succeeds in every aspect of writing the Battle of Blackwater, and Davos III is for my money the best chapter in the battle. It’s got everything I could want.

From the opening words of the chapter to the final, George sinks us into a sensory experience. I could see those whitecaps, feel the salt spray, hear the wind whipping the sails. But it’s the anticipation that I feel. Love how you describe it as slow, creeping dread. It’s that for me but I have to admit I always feel something else too. It’s excitement. I remember this feeling so well as a younger man on the eve of combat. The truth is that I wasn't like one of those poor bastards down in Marjah in being in the shit all the time in my war. But I remember what my much more limited exposures to combat and the anticipation of it felt like. Moving into battle, senses alert as you scan the horizon. The adrenaline carries you, slows your senses. Your ears can suddenly hear better, listening for any sounds out of the ordinary. You stare at the horizon with dread and excitement. And then you recite the battle plan in your head, the turns you’re going to make on the road, the objective. You rehearse in your brain the enemy’s most probable course of action and their most dangerous course of action.

The Battle of the Blackwater is an amazing literary experience for me, because as I’ve said before, George wrote one of the most realistic depictions of combat in modern fiction (until The Cautioner’s Tale gets published, of course). It felt so real reading this battle that when I did in 2012, two years after my own brushes with war, that I immediately thought George was a veteran. That’s a testimony to what George does in the Blackwater. Davos III catches me in my gut every time. And it catches me in the gut because more than my own conflicting feelings about battle and war, I feel Davos in this chapter. I know this man. He’s not me, but he’s the guy I’d follow into battle.

• Davos’ initial observations
  • Sansa V started within earshot of the battle and then moved inward to the “castle within a castle” of Maegor’s Holdfast with Cersei
  • Davos III plunges the reader right back into it: the sudden shock of wind and water. It’s supposed to make us uneasy to match Davos’ mood
  • The water is rough, the wind howling in their sails...and yet Davos’ sons hold the line, sailing forward beside their father in his Black Betha
  • He’s proud of them. Davos takes comfort in that pride; it’s a refuge as everything gets worse around him. In his first chapter, as Davos watched his gods burn and the Dragonstone gargoyles seem to stir in response, his thoughts flew to his sons, the better life Stannis had secured for them
  • That’s been Davos’ struggle in this book. He is increasingly uncomfortable with what Stannis is doing and asking of him, but unlike the noble-born who can (and will) jump ship to the Lannisters, Davos is tied to Stannis
    • If Stannis falls, they will pull me down in an instant.
  • His only hope for his family to rise (jousting with the Velaryons, marrying into the Celtigars, etc) is for Stannis to win this battle and take the throne
  • Jaime filled his head with thoughts of Cersei when forced to watch Aerys’ descent. When Davos feels doubts, he looks to his sons to banish them
  • That makes it all the more tragic that four of his sons die in this battle, sacrificed to the very cause that was supposed to secure their futures
  • Davos’ pride turns to ash along with his ship and his boys; it is reborn in ASOS as shame, that he led such strong smart sons to that hideous end
  • For the moment, though, the Seaworth clan hangs together. The warhorns boom like monstrous serpents. Throughout this chapter, George describes the ships as though they’re alive. This technique has multiple effects
  • First of all, it enhances the aura of the fantastical hovering around the Team Stannis storyline. Gargoyles on Dragonstone, shadowbabies at Storm’s End, and now horns moaning like monstrous serpents
  • Secondly, it enhances the tragedy when the wildfire strikes. We mourn the ships as well as the people (unlike Joffrey, who mourns only the ships)
  • Thirdly, it captures how Davos feels. He knows these ships so well; like Abner in Fevre Dream, he is united with his fellow men through them
  • The drumbeat is like a heartbeat, he thinks, and his men are all pulling as one. They are united, a hivemind like the “singers” north of the Wall
  • That can be a positive thing--Qhorin Halfhand’s closeknit band--but it also describes how the Others hold their human servants in thrall
  • You were referencing Qhorin Halfhand, and it struck me that the Sansa/Davos POV of the horns works similar to the way the Night’s Watch uses horns up on the Wall.
  • For the Watch, the horns are a way to signal rangers returning, wildlings attacking or the Others. It’s a communication tool for the Watch.
  • For the Free Folk, the horns signal dread: their sworn enemies are nearby and communicating with each other. And those two horn blasts might mean their deaths.
  • And then George switches that horn(y) dynamic up in Jon’s final two ACOK chapters with the wildling band using hunting horns to track and chase Qhorin down in the Frostfangs
  • Here at the Blackwater, the sound of the horns going off as serpents across the water doesn’t strike me, as the reader, as particularly good.
  • It makes me think of last week’s chapter on Sansa V with her hearing the sounds of battle, knowing subconsciously that she and the rest of the people behind the walls of King’s Landing are in danger of what those sounds signal: the possibility of getting roughed up, raped or murdered by the attackers.
  • But the sounds mean quite the opposite to Davos. They’re signals for movement to achieve victory for Stannis, his sons and for Davos.
  • George constantly adjusts how we as readers perceive what we see and hear in ASOIAF and uses his POV characters to great effect to accomplish this recontextualization.
  • They are uniting as one to serve Stannis. Is Davos still on board with that cause? As the orders come back, he feels his phantom fingertips twitch
  • That sums up both what Stannis gave him and also what he took away; both come together at the Battle of Blackwater
  • As at Storm’s End, Davos is drawn back into the past, forced to take stock of the full sweep of life, now that it has led him to these moments of crisis
  • At Storm’s End, he remembered how as a smuggler, he’d risked his neck to save lives at Storm’s End, and now as a lord, he brings only death
  • King’s Landing is just as personal for Davos, but in a different way. Storm’s End is where his life changed. This is where his life began
  • Before he ever invented the name Seaworth for his sons and grandsons, he was Davos of Flea Bottom, living one step ahead of the law
  • Unlike all the noble-born POV characters, Davos sees King’s Landing not as the seat of government but as a place people live and love and die
  • That perspective informs his understanding of the changes Tyrion has made, as we’ll get into later in the episode. But it also informs his understanding of war itself. His sons long for glory, because they want to prove themselves as members of the nobility, as Seaworths
  • They see only the sail, and close their eyes to the onion, as Davos said. His view of the war machine is that of a smuggler avoiding conflict
  • Young noblemen like Davos’ sons or Edmure or the knights of summer can think only of battle, because that’s really their only profession!
  • Davos had to work for a living, so from his perspective, combat is a nasty bit of business that ruins your cargo and throws off your schedule
  • Alas, it is Davos’ dread that proves correct, rather than his sons’ enthusiasm. Coming home feels like his noble pretensions have been stripped away. The battle is a crucible that takes everything away from him
  • A trope we see often with warfare is the excited young men eager to prove themselves on the battlefield and war-weary old men who are once more into the breach because it’s their duty.
  • George plays with this trope with Davos taking on the role of the war-weary old man, but as you’re saying, the emotional heart of Davos’ conflict is over duty and ambition.
  • Davos believes that his duty lies with Stannis, but it’s a duty that Davos takes on due to his ambition and because Stannis raised him up.
  • Often, ambition gets coded as a negative character trait, but I disagree that it’s inherently a bad thing.
  • Davos is the proof of ambition not being an inherently bad thing. He wants his sons and grandsons to rise high through his service and duty. Davos wants them to have better lives than he had when he feared that one son (Allard) might have ended up on the Wall rather than commanding a ship in Stannis’ navy.
  • This may be very off-kilter, but when I read Davos, I get that feeling of WW2 men who went off to serve stints in the service to earn the GI Bill, VA housing loans and lived comfortable middle class lives and passed that lifestyle onto their boomer kids.
  • That feels like Davos Seaworth to me. The tradeoff for the WW2 generation and for Davos is that they have to serve on behalf of a flawed institution (The U.S. and Stannis Baratheon) and survive and win a war to provide for their boomer kids.
  • And that whole surviving the war thing seems less certain with the command team in charge of this operation.
• Lord High Captain Ser Imry Florent
  • In the show, Stannis put Davos in command of his fleet. I understand why--the show didn’t have room for tertiary characters, especially early on
  • That meant, however, stripping away an interesting and important dynamic from this chapter: Davos’ perspective on his commander, Imry Florent
  • At this point in his story, Stannis has yet to promote Davos above his noble-born peers. That only happens in ASOS, after his setbacks
  • As it stands, Stannis is now surrounded by Renly’s former supporters, as we saw at Storm’s End in Davos II. He needs them, as he admitted
  • So the politics of his coalition led Stannis to promote his brother-in-law.

That turns out to be a terrible decision, because Imry Florent is an incompetent commander. I’ll leave the military specifics to Jeff

• Okay, FINE. I’ll talk about this strategy with the reluctance of a cop on his last day on the job, getting too old for this shit.
• No, but seriously, this is just ugh. Stannis. What the fuck are you doing?
• Let’s start with the obvious nepotism at work here. Imry Florent is introduced as Selyse’s brother, and he has a “ser” in front of his name.
• Those are the only qualifications that he has, and it drives me bananas.
• Has he commanded a fleet before? Ever been aboard a ship before this moment? (Maybe as Brightwater Keep is relatively close to the Sunset Sea as well as the Honeywine and Mander Rivers back in the Reach) Does he know what bow and stern mean? Port and starboard? Does he read maps and know that obviously, the blue part on it means land?
• If there’s one virtue to Stannis, it’s his limited meritocratic view of promoting people despite their status. Like Davos, a smuggler who became a knight who became a lord who became a hand. Or, I guess, Jon, who was a bastard who Stannis wanted to legitimize and name Lord Jon Stark.
• But again, it’s much more limited than the Stannermen would lead us to believe, and we see that with Imry Florent’s appointment to command.
• That said, even if Stannis wanted to put a nobleman in charge of the naval portion of his attack on King’s Landing, Stannis had such a set of noblemen who could command the attack
• Stannis has seasoned fleet commanders that can work as subordinate commanders: Davos Seaworth is mentioned often as one such commander. Yolkboy from Radio Westeros has suggested Salladhor Saan.
• I love Yolkboy’s suggestion of Salladhor Saan, but I understand why Stannis didn’t select him. He’s Lyseni and would have undercut Stannis with his subordinate lords -- ones that only recently joined Stannis’ cause.
• And with Davos, look, it ain’t right, but I get it within a feudal Westerosi context. He’s a lowborn, upjumped smuggler. Plus, he’s never had naval command experience as he talks about in this chapter.
• So, I would offer the alternative of Narrow Sea lords who lived their lives on islands and aboard ships.
• Lord Ardrian Celtigar or better-yet Lord Monford Velaryon, descendant of the Sea Snake, who seems to have a knack for initiative and strategic thinking (he urged Stannis to go right for King’s Landing rather than attack Storm’s End. Plus, he’s got Aurane Waters for a bastard half-brother. So, he’s crafty or crafty-adjacent. And he’s just my type.)
• Anyways, I digress. Let’s talk about this fucking shit plan, because boy, when I was writing about this, I was a little drunk and angry on behalf of the Baratheon sailors and soldiers who all died on the Blackwater Rush for fuck-all.
• Now, I’ll talk about what I would do were I in command of the Baratheon Fleet at the end of this episode; so, here, I’m just going to dunk on Imry and then Stannis for about five minutes. Strap in.
• First, let’s talk about the plan in pure military terms: The overall task and purpose is straightforward: Task: Take King’s Landing. Purpose: seat Stannis onto the Iron Throne.
• That’s simple enough, but there are a lot of subordinate tasks and purposes to that.
• Like, boy, if we were doing a Warfighter Exercise on this, I’d have a lot of nerdy military war shit to say about the plan that would leave you all intermittently bored and listless.
• But to make this interesting the two major subordinate tasks and purposes are:
  • Task 1: Defeat the Lannister Fleet.
  • Purpose 1: To clear the way for Stannis’ army to make it across the Blackwater Rush
  • Task 2: Ferry Stannis’ army across the Blackwater and provide Support by Fire to Stannis' army assaulting the walls.
  • Purpose 2: To allow the main element to attack the walls of King’s Landing to breach the gates and allow the flow of the main element into the city itself.
• Here’s the thing: what the fleet is doing is a shaping operation -- that is that they are preparing the battlefield for the main element to perform the decisive operation of attacking and seizing King’s Landing.
• Let’s turn to the tactics that Imry employs to accomplish these tasks and purposes.
• Imry divides his fleet into four echelons: the forward line of 20 ships commanded by Imry aboard the Fury, the second line of 20 ships in command of Davos, the third echelon of 20 ships/line that would bring archers and spearmen to the north bank of the Blackwater and the rearguard commanded by Salladhor Saan.
• All ships are supposed to move in a straight line with the idea to sweep the Lannister fleet from the waters and provide deck-mounted support by fire once the transport ships dock in the harbor and gain their foothold on the north bank of the Blackwater Rush.
• Seems sensible at first blush. The problem is the geography.
• I spent a fair amount of time looking over a map of King’s Landing from The Lands of Ice and Fire, and I’m flabbergasted by this shit fucking plan.
• In the Narrow Sea or the Blackwater Bay, these tactics make sense. The Lannister Fleet is smaller; so, Imry can use his first line of 20 ships to pin the Lannister fleet while the edges of the front line of ships can turn the flanks of the Lannister navy and defeat them quickly.
• Or, use the front line to suppress the Lannister Fleet while the second line splits off to one of both flanks and assaults through the smaller Lannister Fleet, ramming or boarding ships that are already engaged with the first line of ships.
• But in a goddamn river, Imry is negating the tactical advantage of his larger fleet by constraining them within the far-narrower Blackwater Rush.
• Davos notes how close the front line and his line of ships are together. They are doing a frontal assault with no maneuver space to turn the flanks of the Lannisters.
• The Lannister Fleet can meet the Baratheon Fleet and defeat them in detail, and it’s only fortunate that the better leadership and ships of the Baratheon Fleet defeats the Lannisters or pushes them farther up the river.
• But now everyone is bunched up which inevitably leads to the wildfire we’ll cover next week.
• Next, Imry opts for a basic movement to contact battle drill in that he’s moving his fleet into battle without knowing the disposition of the enemy.
• I’m not a sailor, and my tactical knowledge is entirely infantry-based, but MTC is typically used when you don’t have the time or ability to conduct a reconnaissance of an area to do a proper attack.
• Davos, being much more fair than me, concedes that Imry Florent is facing an obstacle in time to move the fleet into action, but I disagree with Davos’ assessment!
• Imry did not need to keep all his ships anchored in Shipbreaker Bay for the weeks that Stannis took to take Storm’s End. He could have dispatched ships up from Shipbreaker to Blackwater to determine the defensive posture of King’s Landing prior to the movement of the main element.
• What fucking fleet was potentially on its way to lift the blockade and attack Stannis at Storm’s End? You don’t need 200+ ships to blockade Storm’s End to compel it to surrender either. Just. AHHHHHHH.
• Okay, I’m over it. No I’m not. AHHHHH
• Yes, they knew about Tyrion’s chain for reasons we’ll talk about in a moment, but they had no idea about anything else. Maybe they could have determined that the Lannisters had trebuchets that could throw projectiles at the fleet moving into the rush, and maybe that would have deterred them from the attack direction directly into the kill zone within range of the trebuchets.
• But they didn’t, and they settled on one plan without any modification.
• The final piece of it is the amphibious assault on the north bank of the Blackwater.
• This is the one spot that makes tactical sense to me. They need to establish a foothold on the north bank of the Blackwater in order to hold the docks for the main element to cross the river from south to north to hit the gates to prevent the Lannisters from pushing cavalry out to sweep the army back into the river.
• But there are two major problems with this plan.
• The first is that the Baratheon Fleet is sailing against the current of the Blackwater Rush. That is that the water is flowing west to east. This slows the movement and forces the Baratheons to use sails and oars to get into the river. Moreover, it places the Lannisters in the position of using the current to their advantage, increasing their speed and maneuverability in the constrained space of the river.
• More importantly, though, is the fact that there is no landing. Tyrion has burned the docks and suburbs along the Blackwater back in Tyrion X.
• Perhaps Imry would have known this had he done a fucking recon of King’s Landing!
• And now that the docks are gone, the Baratheon third line will improvise on the spot and beach their ships on the north bank and try for a straight up Omaha Beach amphibious assault to seize their toehold on the north bank. Props to whoever was in charge of the third line. That’s awesome improvisation. Give that admiral a ranger tab, or I guess a less prestigious eagle, globe and anchor emblem. (Lil’ interservice rivalry joke for you all)
• Amphibious landings are fucking hard to do. You are vulnerable on the crossing of the river, and you are vulnerable as you attempt to make it onto shore as your mobility is limited as you move through the water to the land. Oh, and you’re weighed down by your armor, weapons and the pack you’re carrying. And you’re under fire from archers, scorpions, catapults and the trebuchets.
• And then the problems get worse as you tend to come onto land as individuals and not massed. So you’re exposed, vulnerable and operating independently until you can mass together.
• The Lannisters can charge cavalry across the narrow strip of land and kill the Baratheons before they can mass together (which is what Sandor Clegane does as we’ll talk about next week).
• So, putting an advance party on the north bank is conceptually smart, but it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you have a harbor for ships to dock at IOT offload archers and spearmen to establish that foothold on the north bank of the Blackwater.
• This doesn’t occur, because the docks aren’t there. They should have known that ahead of time and would have had they done the bare minimum of scouting ahead of time.
• All of this is criminally-poor planning, and yes, Ser Imry Florent deserves a lot of blame for this, but let’s not kid ourselves here: the buck stops with Stannis.
• In one of our Davos II episodes, contrarian that I was, I argued on behalf of Stannis deciding to take Storm’s End first rather than rush up to King’s Landing, but you really see the fallout from that decision here.
• Imry Florent had to rush the fleet up to Blackwater Bay, didn’t conduct reconnaissance and couldn’t make adjustments to the battle plan.
• I wonder whether a part of this is due to the Florents coming late to Stannis’ cause as they had been Renly loyalists before Storm’s End.
• Perhaps Ser Imry Florent, if he had doubts about Stannis’ strategic plan - and it’s not at all clear that he did, didn’t have the standing to suggest a different plan to Stannis given that he wasn’t a supporter of the king prior to when it became politically expedient for him to support Stannis.
• Back in Davos II, Stannis was all about fixing his newfound noble supporters with hard stares and harsh words, reminding them of their place and talking with Davos about how they all should have been executed for their treasons.
• Moreover, all of those stares and snapping words came when they suggested different courses of action in dealing with Ser Cortnay Penrose
• Were you one of those former Renly-loyalists, you’d be disinclined to suggest a different plan as it might be your neck on the chopping block of someone who Catelyn described as notoriously without mercy.
• As we said back in Davos II, Stannis’ new vassal lords are shitheel assholes who are dumb and spineless pots of unethical behavior.
• So, we sympathize with Stannis dismissing these idiots as chattering magpies.
• But at the same time, we noted in those Davos II episodes that Stannis is only telling these lords and knights that they suck and to shut up, but he’s not doing anything else.
• That creates an atmosphere of simping fear for these lords, and more importantly, it doesn’t improve them or make them better leaders for the battle to come.
• That’s on Stannis, and in a modern context, we’d call what Stannis does as a “toxic command climate” c.f. The recently-released Ft Hood report for a shameful example of a very recent toxic command climate at some of the highest leadership levels of United States Army.
• More importantly than the political elements, Ser Imry simply didn’t have the time, because Stannis stalled at Storm’s End.
• And the reason he stalled, as you put it so well in Davos II, was because Storm’s End was vitally important to Stannis’ ego, finally taking the castle that was hIS bY rIGhTs (even if there was some strategic/tactical sense in having the castle for reasons of having a line of supply/retreat from King’s Landing too)
• It’s always time with Stannis, and he never has enough. I think about ADWD (as I do) when Stannis made a campaign plan and had just enough time to make adjustments to the plan (with Jon’s aid) to achieve victory at Deepwood Motte.
• That was the only time that Stannis had the time necessary to make a pretty good battle and campaign plan, but it’s the only time when this was possible.
• Here in ACOK, Stannis is hamstrung by time. He doesn’t have enough of it, and the reason he doesn’t have enough time is because of his own decisions.
• Even if the strategy goes right over your head, though, you can tell just from how George writes this chapter that Imry Florent sucks at his job. I think the author wants military neophytes to pick up on that too
• As the chapter begins, Davos keeps mentioning this Imry fellow we’ve never heard of before. Every paragraph seems to end with his name
• This is a clever way of expressing Davos’ doubts about Imry’s competence. It’s not at the forefront of his mind--he has a job to do
• But it is in the back of his mind, eating away his confidence and fueling his dread instead, just like his doubts about Stannis back at Storm’s End
• Davos was uncomfortable with that doubt, and the same holds true here. Davos is accustomed to bowing and scraping before his lord and now king
• So he doesn’t even want to think the thought “Stannis screwed up by putting this asshole in charge.” Instead, he externalizes his “grave doubts” onto the Swordfish and her captain
• Of course, Davos is right to worry about the Swordfish, as we will see next week. But George describes the Swordfish the same way he describes Imry’s flagship, the Fury. Both ships are too heavy and lagging behind
• I think George is being sneaky--he’s having Davos describe his doubts about Imry with the pretense of it being about the captain of the Swordfish
• The Swordfish is top-heavy because of its ram; its captain winds up triggering the wildfire explosion because he desperately wants to prove that ram is useful
• That’s what Imry is doing with the fleet as a whole: charging ahead to destruction, driven by a childish desire to hit something hard
• How ironic that Imry mocks Joffrey for his immaturity (calling his ships “the boy’s toys”) when he, a grown-ass adult, has the same character flaw
• Imry is associated with the soldiers currently taking up space on the ships. Davos notes how they get in the way of sailors like him; they’re ballast, and they’re eager to get into a position where they can fight and kill
• As Davos says, Imry feels the same way, and that’s his fatal flaw. He’s more interested in seeming like a winner than in sensible strategy
• Just look at how he paces the deck of the Fury in his glittering armor, as showy as his uncle Alester at Storm’s End
• Davos is dressed simply and lightly, because they’re about to fight a naval battle, and he doesn’t want to increase his odds of sinking
• We’ve already seen this vanity turn lethal at the Battle of the Camps in book one. Tyrion thought the same as Davos, albeit more sardonically
• Even before the battle begins, George gives us a little case study to demonstrate both Imry’s foolishness and Davos’ intelligence
• On their way north, the Baratheon fleet came across some fishing boats. One by one, they were taken and boarded. Imry calls this a small spoonful of victory that will make his men eager for the real deal
• Like so many members of Team Renly, Imry cares only about the surface, not at all about what lies beneath it
• There’s nothing inspiring about a military fleet overwhelming fishermen. Imry calls it a victory, but I wouldn’t even call it a battle in the first place!
• Davos understands that the utility of capturing those ships is not the glory of doing so, but the military intelligence to be gained from interrogation
• The fishermen tell the Baratheon captains about Tyrion’s chain boom. Davos recognizes this as vital information, though he misinterprets it
• Imry doesn’t even get that far. There’s no indication he takes this information into account. Davos is reduced to hoping the boom chain is closed against them, so that Imry has to pause and rethink his approach
• Think about that. Davos is hoping that the enemy’s strategy succeeds.

That’s how bad things are at the top for Team Stannis right now. Leadership is so incompetent that the most loyal supporter Stannis has finds himself hoping for failure to force his commander’s hand

• When Davos brings his concerns to Imry, he runs up against the class barrier that has defined both his old life and his new life in different ways
• As a smuggler, the lords took no notice of him. He was beneath their attention, beneath their empathy; the only interaction would be execution
• As a knight, Ser Davos of House Seaworth now officially has a seat at the table. But more often than not, that’s all it amounts to: he’s a mute witness
• He’s not allowed to actually have an impact on policy, to put his hard-won expertise to use for his king. He is still considered a lesser man
• Imry is polite to Davos’ face; that is the sum total of what Davos has earned from his noble-born peers. Imry’s eyes tell the truth
• Like Davos’ sons, Imry considers Davos’ caution to be a mark of cowardice, rather than intelligence, a sign of his shameful peasant roots
• The same prejudice is at work in Imry’s dismissal of Salladhor Saan. If you don’t fit in with Imry, he doesn’t think you have much of a part to play
• Throughout much of human history, armies and navies weren’t commanded by the best-suited people. They were typically command positions conferred upon the wealthy who earned their rank by their wealth and aristocratic status.
• The thinking went that it was only the wealthy who had the time and education to lead, and that thinking is … well, it didn’t work out a lot of the time!
• In an American context, one that George is familiar with, we can look at the American Civil War as a spot where wealthy men often purchased their rank and command positions.
• A prominent example of this is the New Yorker Daniel Sickles.
• If you’ve never read up on who Daniel Sickles was, boy, at least read the wiki entry on this guy. He was a trip.
• Born into a wealthy NY family, he was a congressman and murderer who pleaded temporary insanity after he murdered his wife’s lover (the son of Francis Scott Key).
• And then using his money and connections, he joined the Union Army in 1861. This line from the wiki entry is excellent summation of his career.
  • Despite his lack of military experience, he served as a brigade, division, and corps commander in some of the early Eastern campaigns. His military career ended at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, after he moved his III Corps (without orders) to an untenable position where his Corps was decimated, yet slowed General Longstreet's flanking maneuver. He was wounded by cannon fire and had to have his leg amputated. He was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
• In the immortal words of someone I served with, who will remain anonymous, in this organization, fuck up, move up.
• So, all this history is interesting in and of itself, but I think what Martin does with Imry is play on the history and show us yet another example of the failure of feudalism as a way to organize governance and society.
• For every Ned Stark, Baelor Breakspear or Aegon V who inherited their position from their birth and did well at it, you have Roose Bolton, Aegon IV or Aerys II who inherit power and suck.
• Most of us modern readers of ASOIAF ideologically oppose feudalism for how it undemocratically tramples the smallfolk and creates a protection racket.
• Ideology is important, but when you get down to the base of it: feudalism ends up killing people it shouldn’t -- even if that killing isn’t coming down from the arm of an evil lord or king.
• Ser Imry Florent is not the best man suited for this command billet, but he’s got the job, and that resulted in people getting unnecessarily killed.
• And these people die, because Imry doesn’t have to listen to the son of a crabber who was a criminal. He’s SER Imry fucking FLORENT. His line can be traced back to the Gardener Kings
• But let’s un-abstract this even further. The people who this nepotism, social snobbery and feudalism kills have names in the book: Dale Seaworth, Allard Seaworth, Matthos Seaworth and Maric Seaworth for a start.
• These men died because of feudalism. And y’know, ultimately, Ser Imry Florent died too as a result of his own incompetence and because of his bloody awful plan that he refused to modify after a seasoned sailor gave him advice.
• Feudalism eats its own, and I submit that more people dying than should is as good a reason as any to oppose this or any shitty system.
• Approaching the river
  • Davos describes the sea as full of sound, the same emphasis on the auditory we talked about in Sansa V. The drums beat, the oars slap the water, and Stannis’ men on the southern shore blow trumpets
  • Amidst the shouting on the ships, Davos offers a silent prayer for luck. He’s wrung free of the bravado that characterizes the summer knights
  • Davos’ gods burned in his first chapter; he saw them replaced in his second chapter. He no longer knows the words to keep him safe
  • In some ways, this chapter feels like the “fire” equivalent to the “ice” chapter of Sam retreating from the Fist of the First Men in ASOS
  • Sam is reduced to repeating “mother have mercy,” but he knows the mother has no power beyond the Wall, where the old gods rule
  • Davos, too, is bereft of the smiling comforting faces of the Seven, lost in the domain of a different god. All he can do is reach for his fingerbones
  • That’s his true religion: Stannis raised me up, and redeemed my life. I delivered mercy, and sacrificed part of myself for the future of my family
  • Davos, like Quentyn Martell, has to believe that the sacrifices so far have been worth it. And like Quentyn, he ends up sacrificing more to the fire
  • George keeps the focus on Davos’ fingers (wink wink) when we get to the Blackwater Rush itself. Davos is bewildered by the new stone towers
  • He says it’s as if his hand sprouted two extra fingers. It’s as though he’s gone back in time, an appropriate feeling for a homecoming
  • Davos’ home has been changed. His old life is unfamiliar to him. He sacrificed his fingers for a new life, but now those fingers have (metaphorically) grown back, and they are ushering them to their doom
  • Davos sees that Tyrion has thought through every detail, constructing the towers so as to make it very difficult for Stannis to take them
  • I think we were talking about this in either pre or post episode for Sansa V (or maybe Tyrion XII), we were both excited to find things that we hadn’t seen previously, and the winch towers were one such spot.
  • Previously, I wrote about how Stannis failed to take the initiative at the Blackwater by seizing the winch tower on the southern bank of the Blackwater, and this is what allowed the chain boom to be raised behind his fleet, trapping them in a green hell.
  • But here, I finally saw what kept Stannis from taking the tower. It’s our old friend geography:
    • Shading his eyes against the westering sun, [Davos] peered at those towers more closely. They were too small to hold much of a garrison. The one on the north bank was built against the bluff with the Red Keep frowning above; its counterpart on the south shore had its footing in the water. They dug a cut through the bank, he knew at once. That would make the tower very difficult to assault; attackers would need to wade through the water or bridge the little channel.
  • 
  • For our patrons who can read our show notes we post ever Monday after the main release of our episode, I’ve posted an image of the Vivari Channel in the country of Albania which may have served as inspiration for George for the tower on the southern bank.
  • But it would not have been easily possible to take the tower given the flowing water and the small channel linking the tower to land.
  • Stannis had archers positioned to shoot arrows at men in the tower who popped up, but he was not easily able to take the building and chose not to focus on it.
  • Had he known what Tyrion was planning, I imagine that Stannis would have never stopped attacking the winch tower until it was taken.
  • Davos also sees the chain boom, but it lurks motionless beneath the water. The Lannisters have left the river open. Why?
  • Davos senses a trap, and the first time reader probably does too...but neither of us have enough information to put it all together
  • There’s a saying in comedy that the perfect punchline is one that the audience figures out right after the comic says it
  • Same structure here: George shows us what’s coming in bits and pieces, so when the trap closes, we feel both shock and comprehension. That’s the holy grail; George also pulls that off with the Red Wedding

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

While Davos considers Salladhor and his ships wasted in the rear, this does allow them to survive the wildfire and ferry Stannis back to Dragonstone; it also allows one of Salla’s ships to save Davos from his rock after the battle.

Later in ADWD, Quentyn will compare Dany’s dragon Viserion as “a great green serpent”. Perhaps the warhorns sounding like serpents as they approach King’s Landing is a subtle allusion to the dragons returning to the city. (I don’t know if this is a stretch! Let me know if it is!)

Theory/Discussion

If Lord Jeff Hartline was in command of the Baratheon fleet, what would he do differently?

• Intro
  • Any asshole can poke holes in a plan, but it takes a special type of asshole to sit there and talk about what they would have done if they were in command. So often it’s someone talking about how the Wehrmacht could have defeated the Red Army at Stalingrad or Kursk or how Lee could have beaten McClellan at Gettysburg. Weird, how those assholes are always roleplaying the genocidal racist side. So weird!
  • In the biz, we call these special assholes: armchair generals.
  • Hello. I’m an armchair asshole this week, but not that type of asshole.
  • Let’s get some caveats out of the way. As I referenced before, I am not a sailor. I was an infantryman, once and young. However, when I was a kid I used to kayak on the Chesapeake Bay though. So, this gives me all the expertise I need. I’m teasing. What I mean by that caveat is that I’m not going to focus on the specific naval maneuvers or even use a lot of naval terminology.
  • Additionally, I once remember hearing Mike Duncan (I think) of the History of Rome podcast describe Roman naval tactics as the Roman Legion on the Sea, meaning that the same basic tactics used by the legionary armies on land ended up being utilized on the water.
  • Given how this battle we’ll unpack next week is described, I think George roughly hews to this with a touch of magic napalm to give it that fantasy element.
  • And now constraints: so many of those armchair assholes stack the deck in their favor and ignore the real-world constraints placed on the commanders of various historical battles caused by events that preceded them, or they rewrite the background to be in their favor.
  • So, I’m going to basically start from the end of Siege of Storm’s End and work our way north to the Blackwater. Hell, I’ll even forgo my idea of dispatching a small portion of the fleet to scout ahead while Imry blockaded Storm’s End I suggested before.
  • That out of the way, no shit, there I was, Ser Imry of House Florent aboard the deck of the Fury in the year 299 AC ...
• Recon
  • So, we haven’t sent ships north to the Blackwater, but now we’re moving up to Blackwater Bay.
  • That’s okay! I know I have slow, large galleys and plenty of fast ships. So, I start to get into some task-organization of my fleet.
  • I place my fast movers at the front of the formation and push them ahead to scout out the Blackwater Rush to find out if y’know there is a chain boom ahead, Tyrion’s defensive posture, weaponry on the walls and the disposition of the port we’re supposed to land.
  • These scouts would then report back saying that the original plan is shit, and it’s not going to work in its current form.
  • I have a few weeks of hard sailing ahead of me when my scouts return. So, I get a message off to Stannis marching up the kingsroad with the information, and Stannis agrees with my assessment and asks for a FRAGORD to modify the plan.
  • Am I being a giant hypocrite and stacking the deck in my favor? You bet your ass I am. I’m a podcast co-host of … the NotACast.
• Altering the plan: Avoid the Blackwater Rush
  • So, the plan to drive up the Blackwater Rush and land troops to take the docks is shot. We need to figure out a new way into King’s Landing. So, what are doing instead?
  • Time is still vital here (even if we don’t know that Tywin and the Tyrells are coming in force from the west). We need to get into King’s Landing, but we can’t go up the Blackwater Rush easily.
  • Instead, we’re mostly avoiding the south altogether. We know that Tyrion has aligned most of his defense to face the south, because our scout reports (which I heroically dispatched) indicated as much.
  • This makes sense as most of Stannis’ army is south of the Blackwater Rush. Those men are staying there for the time being to keep Tyrion focused away from my main effort. Wait, the main effort?
  • Indeed. The decisive effort of this battle is shifting away from the Blackwater Rush. We’re going someplace else.
  • Again, I had a good long look at the map of King’s Landing from The Lands of Ice and Fire, and I think I’ve found a good landing spot that takes us away from the constraints of the river and lack of harbor: northeast along the Rosby Road running southwest to northeast from King’s Landing.
  • So, we’re conducting a nighttime landing northeast of King’s Landing far enough away from the Tyrion’s trebuchets sitting on Visenya’s Hill as the ships are a valuable resource.
  • So now we’ve landed a few thousand troops northeast of King’s Landing while Stannis’ army sits on the south bank as bait.
  • Keep those troops in mind. And keep in mind their location. They’re in the kingswood with lots of cover and concealment.
  • And now I’m swinging my navy back into Blackwater Bay and feinting towards the Blackwater Rush with my two rows of 40 ships in total, using ship deck-mounted artillery fire (catapults and scorpions) to clear the walls of enemy troops and their own artillery, directing Tyrion’s eyes farther towards the east and south.
  • Meanwhile, I’m shuffling my transport ships south to the north shore of Blackwater Bay to pick up some good lads to transport across Blackwater Bay and outside of trebuchet range back to the Rosby Road invasion point.
  • And this is where the fun begins.
• Attack King’s Landing from multiple fronts
  • So now Tyrion’s defenders are engaged in the south by my navy with what appears to be Stannis’ army waiting to cross from the south bank to the north bank of the Blackwater.
  • Effectively, I’m creating a lot of smoke and noise to keep Tyrion distracted.
  • And that’s when the main effort makes their attack assaulting two gates to the northeast of King’s Landing: the Iron Gate and the Dragon Gate.
  • We’re attacking two gates to spread out any of Tyrion’s garrison that’s sitting in the north side of the city.
  • That disperses any of Tyrion’s army along the walls, and now it becomes a clock management game.
  • Baratheon ground troops need to quickly get up onto the walls of king’s landing with ropes and ladders and seize the gatehouses and turrets overlooking the gates quickly and/or move a battering ram quickly into knock down those gates.
  • And this has to happen fast before Tyrion realizes what is happening and pulls his force off the southern defenses and rushes them across the city to the Iron and Dragon gates to repel my attack.
  • Perhaps here, I’d launch another feint along the southern bank -- send a thousand of my guys across the Blackwater Rush in pontoon boats and start making the attack on the walls as a way to keep the ruse alive that the main attack is coming from the south.
  • Look, this is not a nice part of the plan, because most of those guys are dying in an attempt to deceive the enemy, but sacrifice is never … How's that phrase go again?
• After-Action Review
  • Anyways, in my best case scenario I’ve just won the battle for Stannis as his men are inside the city, and I’ve got another couple thousand coming across the Blackwater to join in the fray.
  • I keep ferrying men to the north shore until they’re all across, and then the city is won for Stannis Baratheon.
  • In my worse-case scenario, what happens is that Tyrion quickly realizes what’s up and rushes Sandor Clegane to the northeast to put down the attack on the northeast shore, and then I’ve got two separate elements on the north and south shores cut off from each other and no entry into King’s Landing.
  • However, it’s my estimation that what would occur would be something resembling a middle of the way scenario: At least one of the city gates would be taken, and there’s be a few thousand Baratheon troops inside King’s Landing, and they’d have to face down a similarly-sized army of defenders.
  • But the Baratheon troops, better-led and actual soldiers as opposed to an army of mostly sellswords and poorly-trained gold cloaks, would win in a force on force street fight as the Lannister defenders within King’s Landing are mostly comprised of sellswords and gold cloaks.
  • Bronn warned Tyrion that the sellswords would kill for Tyrion, but they wouldn’t die for him. And Jacelyn Bywater told Tyrion that if shit went south, most of the gold cloaks would throw down their spears and run.
  • Meanwhile, at best, maybe one boatload of Stannis’ troops are able to shove off from the north bank of the Blackwater before Tywin Lannister and the Tyrells show up and destroy the Baratheons remaining south of the Blackwater.
  • But then Tywin and the Tyrells find themselves in similar straits as Stannis’ army: they can’t easily cross Blackwater Bay as the docks and ‘burbs are destroyed.
  • Plus, they haven’t been working on boats for weeks the way Stannis’ army on the south bank of the Blackwater has. As we learn from Brynden Tully in ASOS: Tywin and the Tyrells took barges down to the headwaters of Blackwater Rush and then double-timed their cavalry along the south bank of the Blackwater to intercept Stannis.
  • What that means is that I think in this scenario, Stannis still takes most of King’s Landing save for maybe the Red Keep while Tywin holds the south bank.
  • The irony is that then Tywin immediately has to besiege King’s Landing to save any of his family who might be holding out in the Red Keep. But he has to build boats. So, Tywin becomes Stannis who is already a Tywin archetype and …
  • Anyways, that’s my plan. I’ve won the battle for Stannis. Mostly. Promote ahead of peers. Send to ILE ahead of peers.

Conclusion

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  • Lord Clay
  • Ser Small Paul, Guardian of the Stone Haven, Defender of Dunnottar Castle
  • Septon T-Bone
  • Refined Wrangler of Icy Arachnids
  • Lady Veronica, Caretaker at the Inn at the Crossroads
  • Lady Danielle of House Lannister
  • Titanium Pirate
  • Lady Carly
  • Lady Joan Lady-Ranger of the Frost Fangs
  • Lady Aemy Blackfyre, Analyzer of Chinese Literature and Dismantler of the Patriarchy
• Join us next week for the second half of ACOK Davos III, in which Tyrion springs the trap.