Episode 140: A CLASH OF KINGS, DAVOS III: "Inferno (Part 2)" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

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

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

Welcome to the one hundred and fortieth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Inferno, Part 2: An Analysis of ACOK, Davos III,” in which Davos Seaworth and the Baratheon Fleet sails into the Blackwater Rush and defeats the Lannister Fleet. Nothing else happens.

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

• 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, the Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• 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
• Low Energy Dent, True Master of the Banefort and True Master of Coin
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Beyonce's Favorite Stan and Bastard of Chromatica, Rainbow Commander of the Theydes and Gentlethems
• 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, Maker of Drawings and the Michaelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• 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
• Lady Anna, The Lovely Castellan
• Pat Yronwood, the bloodroyal and guardian of the Boneway
• Lord Charles Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, Warden of the South, and The Heir of House Tyrell
• Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn
• Squid Pro Quo
• Master of Zorse
• Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Airship Arrogance
• Squire Matt S, future Ser Matt S, the one who will bring balance to the Kingdoms
• BWord, Queen Beyond the Wall
• Lord Kyle
• Lord Samuel Seaworth
• Ser Max, Lord Commander of the Constitutional Guard
• Blackberry the Bold, Champion of Feel Good Times
• Lady Ivory Dayne, aspiring noble author in the seven kingdoms, lady of Starfall, wardeness of the south, and patron of freewheeling bisexuals

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

Our Hand of the King WolfmanZack asks:

If lightbringer is demonstrably a false sword then how do we think that portion of the prophecy manifests in the actual story some wild fire or a dragon fire on it or magic involved or does it not even show up?

So, thank you WolfmanZack for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer her 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 become a patron and get show notes, bonus episodes (like our recent episode on Blackwater), merch, access to the NotASlack and more.

Absolutely. But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Davos, he had sailed on King’s Landing, doubting the plan and his fleet commander. Let’s see how Davos proves correct in just about everything in this synopsis of ACOK, Davos III, Part 2!

Synopsis

Davos looks ahead and sees galleys coming towards him, and he knows these ships from when he was a smuggler. The warhorns sound again, and Davos orders battle speed. Drums pound, and Davos glances over at Swordfish where his son Dale gives him a salute. Meanwhile, Swordfish continues lagging behind as the river widens into the bay with the Red Keep overlooking all. They would have to pass the castle to get to the harbor and then the city.

But now the Lannisters beat a retreat as the front line of the navy crosses into the river. Davos thinks the Lannisters are trying to mitigate their numerical disadvantage by constraining them in the river and then locking them in the river with the chain. But Davos starts to notice additional peculiarities. Some of Joffrey’s ships were out there, but there were more - like the Lady Lyanna - that were not. They should have been out here.

Davos tasted a trap, yet he saw no sign of any foes sweeping in behind them, only the great fleet of Stannis Baratheon in their ordered ranks, stretching back to the watery horizon. Will they raise the chain and cut us in two? He could not see what good that would serve. The ships left out in the bay could still land men north of the city; a slower crossing, but safer.

Yeah, Davos. Lots of clues that shit is amiss.

But then Davos sees pots of burning pitch flying at them. Most pots hit the water, but three pots hit the deck of the ship Dragonsbane, and then there was another volley. One man jumps into the water and sinks to the bottom. The first KIA of the day, not the last. Meanwhile, Joffrey’s banners stream: crowned stag on gold field along with the lion of Lannister in crimson. Burning pitch explodes. The ship Courageous catches on fire and burns the men-at-arms on deck. Davos knows he’s coming into enemy artillery range now as the ship pushes on.

Davos’ second line passes between the towers with the chain still beneath them. Matthos Seaworth hands his dad a helmet just before pots of burning pitch rain down all around them. Warhorns continue to sound, and Davos sees the first line of ships are exchanging arrow fire with the men on the walls.

South of the Blackwater, Davos saw men dragging crude rafts toward the water while ranks and columns formed up beneath a thousand streaming banners. The fiery heart was everywhere, though the tiny black stag imprisoned in the flames was too small to make out. We should be flying the crowned stag, he thought. The stag was King Robert's sigil, the city would rejoice to see it. This stranger's standard serves only to set men against us.

He could not behold the fiery heart without thinking of the shadow Melisandre had birthed in the gloom beneath Storm's End. At least we fight this battle in the light, with the weapons of honest men, he told himself. The red woman and her dark children would have no part of it. Stannis had shipped her back to Dragonstone with his bastard nephew Edric Storm. His captains and bannermen had insisted that a battlefield was no place for a woman. Only the queen's men had dissented, and then not loudly. All the same, the king had been on the point of refusing them until Lord Bryce Caron said, "Your Grace, if the sorceress is with us, afterward men will say it was her victory, not yours. They will say you owe your crown to her spells." That had turned the tide. Davos himself had held his tongue during the arguments, but if truth be told, he had not been sad to see the back of her. He wanted no part of Melisandre or her god.

The first of Stannis’ ships Devotion hits the shore and unloads archers as they move to shore holding their bows above their heads to keep their strings dry. And then Prayer and Piety hit the shores too. And then the knights fall upon the men forcing them back to the ships and into the arrows. Davos sees that one of the Lannister knights is none other than Sandor Clegane as he rides up onto the Prayer, cutting anyone down around him.

Davos looks out and sees that the harbor and riverfront are all in burned ruins. He realizes that he can’t land there, and he notices trebuchets sitting beyond the Mud Gate atop Visenya’s Hill. And then there’s the sound. Two galleys crash into each other, and then two more galleys, then two more. One of Joffrey’s ships was cleaved in half as Fury’s forward catapult thrum-thumps. Men fight ship-to-ship everywhere. And then Davos sees the trebuchets in motion.

Ashore, the arms of the great trebuchets rose one, two, three, and a hundred stones climbed high into the yellow sky. Each one was as large as a man's head; when they fell they sent up great gouts of water, smashed through oak planking, and turned living men into bone and pulp and gristle. All across the river the first line was engaged. Grappling hooks were flung out, iron rams crashed through wooden hulls, boarders swarmed, flights of arrows whispered through each other in the drifting smoke, and men died . . . but so far, none of his.

Black Betha swept upriver, the sound of her oarmaster's drum thundering in her captain's head as he looked for a likely victim for her ram. The beleaguered Queen Alysanne was trapped between two Lannister warships, the three made fast by hooks and lines.

"Ramming speed!" Davos shouted.

The drums start pounding, and Black Betha flies into battle. Allard Seaworth brings Lady Marya beside Davos, and they move toward the three ships tangled against one another. Davos prays to the Warrior to bring the enemy around broadside, and the Warrior grants Davos his prayer as Black Betha and Lady Marya smash into the side of Lady’s Shame (a Lannister ship).

They impact so hard that Davos almost bites his tongue off, and Davos calls himself a fool before realizing this is the first time that he’s ever rammed another ship in his career. His archers fire, and Davos orders Black Betha back as the Lannister ship falls to pieces and men spill into the water, screaming for help as they drowned.

And then a brand new color arrives in the battle:

A flash of green caught his eye, ahead and off to port, and a nest of writhing emerald serpents rose burning and hissing from the stern of Queen Alysanne. An instant later Davos heard the dread cry of "Wildfire!"

He grimaced. Burning pitch was one thing, wildfire quite another. Evil stuff, and well-nigh unquenchable. Smother it under a cloak and the cloak took fire; slap at a fleck of it with your palm and your hand was aflame. "Piss on wildfire and your cock burns off," old seamen liked to say. Still, Ser Imry had warned them to expect a taste of the alchemists' vile substance. Fortunately, there were few true pyromancers left. They will soon run out, Ser Imry had assured them.

Davos pulls his ship out, and Allard gets Lady Marya out too as burning wildfire covers Queen Alysanne. Men burning with green fire jump into the water, shrieking as spitfires from the walls of King’s Landing fire death into the water and more trebuchet boulders are hurled from Visenya’s Hill. One hits the ship Bold Laughter, destroying it instantly.

Through black smoke and swirling green fire, Davos glimpsed a swarm of small boats bearing downriver: a confusion of ferries and wherries, barges, skiffs, rowboats, and hulks that looked too rotten to float. It stank of desperation; such driftwood could not turn the tide of a fight, only get in the way. The lines of battle were hopelessly ensnarled, he saw. Off to port, Lord Steffon, Ragged Jenna, and Swift Sword had broken through and were sweeping upriver. The starboard wing was heavily engaged, however, and the center had shattered under the stones of those trebuchets, some captains turning downstream, others veering to port, anything to escape that crushing rain. Fury had swung her aft catapult to fire back at the city, but she lacked the range; the barrels of pitch were shattering under the walls. Sceptre had lost most of her oars, and Faithful had been rammed and was starting to list. He took Black Betha between them, and struck a glancing blow at Queen Cersei's ornate carved-and-gilded pleasure barge, laden with soldiers instead of sweetmeats now. The collision spilled a dozen of them into the river, where Betha's archers picked them off as they tried to stay afloat.

Matthos shouts to Davos that a Lannister galley is coming to ram them, and Davos orders a starboard turn. The Lannister ship only glances off Black Betha, and Davos orders his men to board the ship. Grappling lines are thrown, and Davos leads the assault himself and meets the crew of the Lannister White Hart in battle. Davos and his men-at-arms fight their way across the deck, sweeping Lannister bros off the ship quickly. During the melee, a Lannister guy swings an axe at Davos, but it only glances off his helm, and Davos runs him through with his sword. The White Hart now belongs to Davos, and they are the calm within the storm of battle around them.

Davos surveys the chaos around him, seeing all of the ramming, boarding, ramming, watches as the true Baratheons take another of Joffrey’s ships. He turns back and sees that the entire fleet has entered the river now. Only Salladhor Saan’s ships remained outside.

Soon enough they would control the Blackwater. Ser Imry will have his victory, Davos thought, and Stannis will bring his host across, but gods be good, the cost of this . . .

"Captain ser!" Matthos touched his shoulder.

Oh man. You know what’s about to happen. I know it. I’m going to let George tell it.

It was Swordfish, her two banks of oars lifting and falling. She had never brought down her sails, and some burning pitch had caught in her rigging. The flames spread as Davos watched, creeping out over ropes and sails until she trailed a head of yellow flame. Her ungainly iron ram, fashioned after the likeness of the fish from which she took her name, parted the surface of the river before her. Directly ahead, drifting toward her and swinging around to present a tempting plump target, was one of the Lannister hulks, floating low in the water. Slow green blood was leaking out between her boards.

When he saw that, Davos Seaworth's heart stopped beating.

"No, " he said. "No, NOOOOOOOO!" Above the roar and crash of battle, no one heard him but Matthos. Certainly the captain of the Swordfish did not, intent as he was on finally spearing something with his ungainly fat sword. The Swordfish went to battle speed. Davos lifted his maimed hand to clutch at the leather pouch that held his fingerbones.

With a grinding, splintering, tearing crash, Swordfish split the rotted hulk asunder. She burst like an overripe fruit, but no fruit had ever screamed that shattering wooden scream. From inside her Davos saw green gushing from a thousand broken jars, poison from the entrails of a dying beast, glistening, shining, spreading across the surface of the river . . .

The payoff has exploded. Davos orders the ship back, and they cut lines just in time before the explosion hits Black Betha, and the ship disappears as Davos is lifted into the sky. He hits the water, spitting out water, sucking in hair, grabbing onto debris and holding on for dear life. Davos watches in horror as more and more ships go up in the wildfire blaze

The current catches hold of Davos, spinning him around as he tries to avoid wildfire. He thinks of his sons, but he can’t reach them now or find them in the chaos. Another huge ship blows up behind him as the Blackwater seems to boil.

I'm being swept out into the bay. It wouldn't be as bad there; he ought to be able to make shore, he was a strong swimmer. Salladhor Saan's galleys would be out in the bay as well, Ser Imry had commanded them to stand off . . .

And then the current turned him about again, and Davos saw what awaited him downstream.

The chain. Gods save us, they've raised the chain.

Where the river broadened out into Blackwater Bay, the boom stretched taut, a bare two or three feet above the water. Already a dozen galleys had crashed into it, and the current was pushing others against them. Almost all were aflame, and the rest soon would be. Davos could make out the striped hulls of Salladhor Saan's ships beyond, but he knew he would never reach them. A wall of red-hot steel, blazing wood, and swirling green flame stretched before him. The mouth of the Blackwater Rush had turned into the mouth of hell.

And that is ACOK, Davos III, Part 2! Whoaaaaaaaaaa baby. Here we are! It’s finally happened. Thrilled to be here. Thrilled that you all are listening. But most of all thrilled to be covering the Blackwater with you, ser. What did you make of the second half of this chapter, Emmett?

Depth

Imagine a dying star. It’s collapsing in on itself, getting denser and hotter, until finally it explodes into a supernova. ACOK is the dying star, and Davos III is the supernova. This is the full release of all the tensions we’ve been tracing throughout the book. Magic, politics, military matters--it all comes together, and then George literally blows it all sky-high. It’s an incredible setpiece in conception, but it wouldn’t be nearly as effective without being focused in execution through our POV Davos Seaworth, who watches his whole life burn up in an instant. Action scenes don’t come better than this.

Those action sequences are so well-timed by George. The rising and falling action we see of Davos and the Baratheon Fleet engaging the Lannisters, the initial wildfire attack and then the initial victory. Given how hard the fighting was up to that point, Davos’ victory felt entirely earned. The Baratheons took casualties. They lost ships and men. It was not a flawless victory. And it’s in that moment, in the lull of fighting for Davos Seaworth, that it all explodes. The lull is as important as the explosion. It gives the reader and Davos a breather, but it’s the false type of breather. It’s the Rohirrim sweeping the field of the orcs besieging Minas Tirith only for the Haradrim and the Oliphants to show up. But this time, there is no ghost army coming to save the day. There’s only the jade holocaust and one man’s faith in his king and cause blown overboard and run up against the iron chain.

• The battle is joined
  • Davos watches as the Lannister fleet approaches, thinking about how well he knows these ships and their captains. It’s not because he’s a navy nerd
  • It’s because back in his smuggler days, he had to know whether that ship chasing him was fast or slow, captained by a young man or an old one
  • His life depended on it! And that mindset doesn’t vanish just because Davos is no longer a smuggler. It’s part of him--instinctive, intuitive
  • His noble-born peers lack this information, because they’ve never needed it the way Davos did. Their lives never depended on their wits
  • Once more, the fact that Davos had to work for a living has made him more competent than those who didn’t. In order to survive, he had to develop useful skills; their survival was founded not on their skills, but inherited wealth and status. It reminds me of that joke from Ghostbusters:
    • “I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!”
  • Davos leveraged these skills not only to survive, but to carve out a better life for his sons. Yet that dynamic has led the Seaworth men here: following the thoughtless elites to their doom. Their individual skills do not allow them to escape the system around them
  • As the Baratheon fleet ramps up into battle speed, Davos’ sons hold the line...but the Swordfish does not, a nice illustration of my argument
  • The Red Keep looms larger as they draw closer. As in our introduction to King’s Landing back in AGOT Catelyn IV, George describes the Red Keep as a monster, as if the castle is preparing to feed on blood. This battle is all about who holds that castle; either way, the power structure feeds
  • That imagery adds to the dread Davos is experiencing as he reads the battlefield. The Lannister ships are retreating, drawing the Baratheon ships in. Moreover, many of the best Lannister ships aren’t there
  • Again, Davos only knows this because of his experiences as a smuggler. Imry Florent has no such experience, and thus, remains totally oblivious
  • That’s not to say Davos’ experience saves him, nor his sons. He still doesn’t know about the wildfire, so all he can conclude is that the Lannisters mean to use the chain to cut the fleet in two
  • But George keeps emphasizing how different Davos’ worldview is from his noble-born peers, because it will make all the difference in ASOS
  • As the battle proper begins, Davos keeps drawing our attention to individual men and their struggles to stay alive
  • Davos notes the first man to die, thinking mournfully about how many will follow him. You think Imry Florent is doing the same thing? Hell no!
  • Davos hears men shriek as arrows find them. He feels a stab of sympathy for the men on the ships even closer to the walls than he is
  • I think it’s difficult to separate Davos’ background from his moral consciousness. Now, of course, simply growing up poor doesn’t turn you into an angel. But I think Davos empathizes with the common men like this because he is aware what a fluke it is that he became a knight
  • “There but for the grace of god goes I,” as the saying goes...and for Davos, King Stannis is his god. Only Stannis has prevented Davos from being one of the nameless unremembered commoners used as pawns
  • Yet it is also Stannis and his cause that has put them in this situation in the first place. That is the struggle that will become central to Davos’ story in ASOS: how do I both serve my king and do the right thing?
  • It’s a very in-between worlds feel for Davos Seaworth as he barrels down upon the Lannister Fleet
  • The sights of the glint of golden sunlight shining off the hulls of the enemy ships: that seems to represent the way Davos sees the endpoint of Stannis’ successful conquest of King’s Landing.
  • The endpoint is through that fleet, into the city and then Davos’ grandsons can joust with Velaryons and Celtigars as you’ve been pointing out so well.
  • But Davos also occupies an in-between state in his status as a captain out here on the Blackwater.
  • Davos thinks about safety in the context of whether the enemy ships were fast or slow or commanded by young men eager for glory or old men trying to survive to retirement age.
  • Davos is neither fast, nor slow: serving in the second line of ships on the advance and is also neither young eager for glory (that was him bringing salt fish and onions to Storm’s End) nor old: about to hang up his spurs.
  • Davos’ place is always in the middle: service to Stannis but not to R’hllor, obedience to Stannis but not at the cost of his soul ala Edric Storm.
• Melisandre and the fiery heart
  • You may have noticed that Davos III has so far ignored the batshit crazy ending to Davos II, with Melisandre and her shadowbaby
  • This is another sign that Davos was not a fully-formed protagonist in his own right in George’s mind at this point. If one of the original POVs had seen something like that, it’s all their next chapter would be about!
  • Davos in ACOK, however, is more a window onto events than he is the center of the narrative, so he only briefly mentions Melisandre
  • She only comes up in the context of the banner of the fiery heart flying over all of their ships. Davos wishes they were flying the Baratheon flag
  • He believes that the people would rejoice to see it--and I think he’s right, judging from what Jacelyn Bywater told Tyrion after the riot:
    • “Your eunuch must have told you, there is small love for the Lannisters in King's Landing. Many still remember how your lord father sacked the city, when Aerys opened the gates to him. They whisper that the gods are punishing us for the sins of your House—for your brother's murder of King Aerys, for the butchery of Rhaegar's children, for the execution of Eddard Stark and the savagery of Joffrey's justice. Some talk openly of how much better things were when Robert was king, and hint that times would be better again with Stannis on the throne. In pot-shops and winesinks and brothels, you hear these things—and in the barracks and guardhalls as well, I fear.”
  • Stannis has the raw materials for a popular campaign. Everyone liked Robert, no one likes the Lannisters, Stannis’ accusation carries weight
  • Stannis is ostensibly fighting for Baratheon restoration. But Davos notes, as at Storm’s End, that the stag inside the fiery heart is barely visible
  • All you can see from the walls is the icon of fire, which as Sansa told us, terrifies the people of King’s Landing; it promises another sack
  • Remember, Stannis never got along with his brothers, both of whom flew the Baratheon crowned stag. So even as Stannis declares himself Robert’s heir and goes to war on that basis, his flag demonstrates his resentment of his big brother’s legacy: an image of that crown on fire
  • Stannis himself might not believe in R’hllor, but the imagery of the Red God reigns supreme in his campaign, more than that of the Baratheons
  • Throughout the entirety of ASOIAF, Stannis has an enormous optics problem, and while Stannis reputation and the lies the Lannisters/Littlefinger push out aid that, let’s not fool ourselves, his poor rep is almost entirely of his own making!
  • The banner of the burning stag that Stannis took as his own, seems to be a reflection of Stannis’ belief that he needs to try a red hawk as the Seven never saved him.
  • And as he also reflects back in Davos I: he knows that the red god, that Melisandre has real power: power he hopes to attain.
  • And then because Stannis has to make it REALLY OBVIOUS what he’s thinking, he changes the Baratheon banner to his own.
  • Now, as we talked about back in Catelyn II, Renly had also changed the Baratheon banner, bringing in the golden stag on field of Tyrell green.
  • But the Tyrells are a known quantity, an entity that Westeros is familiar with. What Renly did was within bounds of how to modify sigils in Westeros.
  • What Stannis does is introduce something strange into the mix: a symbol which tells the residents of King’s Landing that they will face the fires if Stannis wins.
  • I’ve talked before about why the Red Wedding is so bad: it makes people like Brynden Tully unwilling to surrender peacefully. He has to fight to the death as he knows the promises of the Lannisters and Freys are suspect at best.
  • But consider that the fiery heart of R’hllor that overwhelms the small stag works similarly for the defenders of King’s Landing.
  • The sellswords and gold cloaks may have little love for the Lannisters, but if the optics are telling the story that they’re going to burn either way, they are going to die in battle rather than as executed prisoners.
  • I keep bringing this up about Stannis, but his reputation is one in which he’s “notoriously without mercy”. So, the burning stag only aids that reputation - no matter if it’s not #ObjectivelyTrue - and hurts his cause in the long-term.
  • And it is a strange banner after all!
  • Davos refers to the fiery heart as a “stranger’s banner,” which has multiple meanings. On the surface, Davos is saying R’hllor is a foreign god
  • The people of King’s Landing, by and large, worship the Seven. They’re not likely to accept the destruction/diminishment of that faith
  • But Davos’ statement also resonates within the Faith of the Seven. The “stranger’s banner” could refer to the Stranger, the Faith’s god of death
  • Sansa made this explicit in her last chapter: Stannis has become the Stranger, a fearsome figure of doom and judgment, for King’s Landing
  • The people light a few candles to him, but only out of fear, whereas the Baratheon flag might’ve inspired positive emotions. Stannis said at Storm’s End that he can only rule through fear. This is what he gets!
  • Davos is also reflecting on how Stannis has become a stranger to him, as he thought at Storm’s End: “what has she done to him?”
  • Of course, as we also saw at Storm’s End, Stannis is unwilling to consciously face the deal with the devil that he has made. His guilt, grief, and self-loathing is hidden away in his nightmares
  • So while Davos is glad that Stannis sent Melisandre back to Dragonstone because it means they’ll fight with “the weapons of honest men,” that’s not why Stannis sent Melisandre away
  • Stannis was on the verge of keeping the red woman with him...and then Bryce Caron warned him that Melisandre would get all the credit for victory
  • That’s all it took. Davos is the only one to appeal to the better angels of Stannis’ nature, because he’s the only one who cares about such things
  • Everyone else realizes that the quickest and surest route to getting Stannis’ attention is to prick his pride, fan the flames of his resentment
  • Stannis is happy to make use of Melisandre’s powers, but not if that means she becomes the center of attention. Stannis is all too familiar with the sensation of being passed over, of everyone preferring someone else
  • Stannis only just came into his power. For once, everyone’s buzzing around him rather than Robert and Renly. It would be a nightmare for him to take the throne at last, only for everyone to praise Melisandre for it
  • Davos is glad that Melisandre isn’t with them, and I can’t blame him! But Stannis’ reasoning does not speak well of his motivations. Davos thought at Storm’s End that Melisandre had transformed Stannis; Cressen thought the same. Here we see that this is not quite the case
  • If Melisandre was really puppeteering Stannis, he never would’ve sent her back to Dragonstone. He is still in charge, for better or worse
  • Davos thinks that he kept silent during the argument over Melisandre. Come ASOS, he will no longer stay silent
  • And ain’t that just like Stannis to also occupy this middle ground, same as Davos here.
  • Melisandre returns to Dragonstone, but Stannis is keeping a Melisandre-infused banner with them as they go into battle.
  • And it’s not quite accurate to say that it’s Melisandre’s banner. Of course, she influenced the design. But really. It’s Stannis’, and he owns that here on the Blackwater for mostly ill.
  • Stannis, man, I know we’re the one true re-read podcast, and we are talking about the man so much.
  • But man, George just goes out of his way to make his appearance and assault on King’s Landing complex.
  • It’s not the war shit I’m thinking about here. It’s the way that Stannis shows up as a complicated figure.
  • And he’s only shown up on-page in four chapters in ACOK (five if you count his shadow in Catelyn IV).
  • Next week we’re back with Tyrion, and I wonder whether that’s a deliberate contrast to Tyrion who George goes into an enormous amount of detail to demonstrate Tyrion’s complexity.
  • With Stannis,he’s not even going to show up on-page in his most famous in-narrative battle.
  • George seemingly decided on a less-is-more approach to Stannis in the narrative, and it works to great effect.
  • Why? Because as you and Sansa so awesomely pointed out: Stannis is the Stranger come to judge those who see the external image.
  • And the internal version that Davos glimpses is an introvert desperate for a little peace and quiet.
  • I can just imagine the amount of teeth grinding occurring on the south bank of the Blackwater.
  • Regardless, as we were saying in our episode on the Blackwater, the complexity for this battle is in not knowing which side to root for.
  • We know that Stannis’ claim to the Iron Throne is the correct one. And yet, we’ve also seen that he’s willing to use sorcery to kill people.
  • Is that the person we want to see on the Iron Throne?
  • On the other hand, do we want a psychopath in the form of Joffrey Baratheon to continue to rule?
  • Even as battle is joined, readers are still undecided. It’s George’s perfect encapsulation of gray characters and especially gray causes.
• The battle continues
  • After that brief flashback to the argument over Melisandre, Davos drags us back to the present as the battle ramps up
  • Once again, I yield military matters to Jeff, who knows of what he speaks
  • Remember that time when I kayaked out on the Chesapeake Bay when I was fourteen? Baby, it’s time for me to use that vast naval experience and apply it to the Battle of the Blackwater.
  • Last time we talked about the “planning” that went into the battle, and now we see how that shit-fuck awful plan gets executed. Into the breach.
  • So, now the fleet commits itself entirely into the Blackwater Rush moving on line in a full-frontal attack on the Lannister Fleet.
  • I referenced Daniel Sickles and briefly referenced his conduct at the Battle of Gettysburg. What this feels like is Pickett’s charge with the Baratheon Fleet occupying the Confederate Army role of moving on line, in echelon towards the objective.
  • And all the while, artillery is raining down on them as they’re exposed in open space.
  • Unlike the Battle of Gettysburg, though, the defenders are not holding a static line of defense in hopes of repelling the attackers.
  • Instead, the Lannisters engage in a modified Infantry Battle Drill #3: Break Contact.
  • (Again, I ain’t some fuckin’ squid. I fought in real wars)
  • Traditional Break Contact would have one element to provide suppressing fire to allow other elements to move back.
  • But this is a modified version. As Davos notes, the Lannisters begin backing water, and he realizes correctly that the Lannisters are hoping to draw the Baratheon Fleet farther into the river.
  • But then he notices some notable absences among the Lannister ships: Lady Lyanna, Robert’s Hammer and the Lionstar. Why weren’t the jewels in the Lannister Fleet on the river?
  • Because cheap bastards that they are, the Lannisters aren’t going to sacrifice their best ships to this trap. That Tyrion doesn’t fully commit to the bluff might be a fatal flaw in the planning if someone other than Imry were in command
  • Davos’ mind starts working, he looks back and checks to see if the rest of the ships he knows were missing are closing in behind. They aren’t.
  • Okay, so maybe they’re hoping to cut the fleet in half with the chain? That doesn’t make sense either as the Baratheons could land ships north of the city. Hey! My battle plan from two weeks ago!
  • Alas, the chain isn’t raised yet. The Baratheon Fleet plows forward into the river.
  • The first line comes into artillery range, and they start getting hit with pots of burning pitch shot from the walls.
  • Let’s pause and talk about those burning pots briefly. Martin is likely basing this on so-called ‘fire pots’: earthen pots which were filled with flammable liquids, set alight and hurled at opponents: typically at a static structure, location or a mass of enemy troops.
  • The pots would break open, things would catch on fire, etc.
  • Here, the pots are fired en masse at moving targets on the water. They aren’t very effective in scoring hits, but when they do they have their impact.
  • The danger is first to the men on the top deck who were all crowded in as part of the landing force.
  • But I don’t think the primary goal was to kill the men on the decks with the projectiles.
  • Instead, the primary objective here is to hit the sails and masts with the projectiles, slowing the Baratheon ships so that they have to go to oars against the current of the Blackwater Rush (flowing against the Baratheon Fleet). So as to bunch all the Baratheon ships up for the wildfire explosion.
  • This ends up driving some of the Baratheon ships to start beaching men on the shore.
  • Like I said two weeks ago, this is an excellent bit of innovation now that the docks were gone. It gets men to the north bank of the Blackwater.
  • Three ships hit the north shore and start landing men, but then Sandor Clegane leads a sally out of, I think, the Mud Gate.
  • As smart and brave the actions of these captains were in beaching their ships, the problem is that men coming off the ships are in the most amount of danger after landing.
  • And Sandor Clegane takes full advantage of that, sweeping his cavalry down along the shoreline, killing Baratheon men before they can mass or form a shield wall to hold against the cavalry.
  • I had forgotten that Sandor Clegane rides his horse onto one of the ships, killing his way aboard.
  • Given the white cloak he’s wearing, he’s the pale rider: the horseman of the apocalypse bringing death where he rides.
  • Few, if any, of these Baratheon soldiers and sailors survive the initial charge, but as Tyrion notes in the next chapter, eight ships make it to the north bank of the Blackwater and unload troops.
  • Back out on the water, Davos hears two ships ramming each other.
  • What happens next is an intentional mess of confusion that George uses to illustrate the fog of war and how the battle moves from pieces on a map to the chaos of battle.
  • But to clarify what I think is happening here: the first line meets the Lannister line of ships that’s stopped back-watering and is now pressing forward.
  • Again, the Lannister intent here is not to beat the Baratheons on the water. Rather, it’s to get everyone tangled up in battle.
  • I cannot imagine that Tyrion told the ship captains what he was planning to do here, because that wildfire is going to burn everything.
  • But I’m pretty curious what the orders were that these guys received! I feel sorry for the Lannisters who Tyrion is killing one way or another
  • A Baratheon ship Stag of the Sea rams a Lannister, sinking it immediately while Fury fires catapult bolts. Two other Baratheon ships Dog’s Nose and Queen Alysanne are set afire and locked in hand to hand combat with Lannister ships respectively.
  • Then Davos sees a Lannister ship Kingslander cut between Faithful and Sceptre. He orders his archers to fire, and the captain of Kingslander dies.
  • And then the trebuchets fire.
  • Normally, trebuchets are loaded with large boulders, but here, Tyrion has the trebuchet levers loaded with head-sized boulders that come down like hail.
  • The point, again, as I keep emphasizing, is that the primary use of these boulders is not anti-personnel. A boulder that size, flung from that distance, with that amount of velocity, can come straight down and make a hole in a ship, sinking it or slowing it as the projectile pierces through the decks and hull of the ship, allowing the ships to take on water.
  • But then Davos sees a chance to relieve the Queen Alysanne, and he orders Black Betha into ramming speed to ram Lady’s Shame. Allard sees the chance as well and Black Betha hits the ship with such a ferocity that Davos almost bites off his tongue. Ouch.
  • Davos pulls his ship back, and the Lannister galley falls to pieces in front of him which must have been quite a sight
  • And then there’s the shout of wildfire. We’ll cover this more a bit later, but here, it seems like the initial volley of wildfire was intended to infect the Blackwater Rush with the substance for the future kaboom.
  • Davos and Allard pull their ships away from the spreading substance, but it’s too late for the Queen Alysanne which goes up in green flame.
  • We’re going to fast-forward the narrative a bit, because we want to give the wildfire our full attention.
  • Out on the water, after the rows of skiffs and junk boats come at the Baratheon Fleet, a Lannister galley attempts to ram Black Betha.
  • Davos pivots hard to starboard which prevents Black Betha from getting rammed.
  • Instead, both ships are side-by-side, and Davos orders the Lannister galley to be boarded.
  • Now, naval boarding is a fascinating historical subject. I talked about how the Romans ran legionary tactics on the Mediterranean. What I meant by that was that the Romans weren’t so much into the naval artillery/ram ships thing. They did boarding, and this proved decisive against the Carthaginians.
  • Here we see this in practice as Davos orders grappling lines fired at the Lannister galley, and then he leads his men from the front into the Lanniser galley, fighting hand to hand.
  • The idea behind boarding is to kill the enemy by stabby-stab or literally pushing them over the side of the ship into the water.
  • Davos succeeds in taking the Lannister galley but is almost killed when someone swings an axe at his head.
  • Thanks goodness Matthos had him put on a helmet as those projectiles were raining down on him! Helmets may be hardly heroic, but they save lives.
  • So, that’s basically the rundown of the battle as far as I see it. I will note one detail that really stood out to me after the ship to ship fighting.
    • He took off his helm, wiped blood from his face, and made his way back to his own ship, trodding carefully on boards slimy with men's guts.
  • It’s fun to see Davos as a swashbucklin’ bro, and I think George wants us to admire his bravery. Still, the horror remains: a deck covered in blood and guts is a horrific sight and worse smell.
  • The aftermath of Davos’s heroism lingers with me, and I think even as George turns on the pyrotechnics, we’re intended not to marvel at the green explosion but to shrink away as men burn to death or drown horrifically.
  • There’s also plenty to chew on here in terms of symbolism. George doesn’t just choose any ships to land troops on the northern shore
  • He chooses Lord Sunglass’ ships: Piety, Prayer, and Devotion. There are multiple layers of irony at work here
  • First of all, Sunglass himself is a prisoner, and may already have been executed. Yet here his men are, dying for the king who imprisoned him
  • Secondly, Stannis has abandoned the Faith of the Seven. Those ships named in the Faith’s honor are forced to fly the flag of R’hllor instead
  • Thirdly, all the prayers to the Faith from the men on those ships and the civilians inside the walls like Sansa do not go answered. The soldiers are promptly slaughtered by Lannister men-at-arms due to poor strategy
  • Finally, they are specifically slaughtered by Sandor, who warned Sansa against believing in things like piety and prayer and devotion
  • Lord Sunglass, like young Catelyn, believed in a just world overseen by smiling gods. But now he’s going to be burned alive for a different god, and his men are wiped out by a broken man wearing a monster mask
  • All of this is relevant to Davos, because his piety, prayer, and devotion are for Stannis, his god. He too is about to watch his men die for that cause
  • When we covered Sansa V, you talked so well about how George establishes the Battle of Blackwater in auditory terms, not visuals
  • Same rule applies here: Davos hears the battle joined. The hideous, cacophonous sound of wood exploding
  • Davos leads his Black Betha toward an enemy ship named the Kingslander. He orders his men to loose their arrows upon it
  • Davos then has to watch the captain of the Kingslander die, and admits to himself that he’s forgotten the man’s name. This stood out to me on reread
  • Davos is directly responsible for this man’s death, and feels that in his heart. He tries to grant this death some dignity by recalling the man’s name, but he can’t. So that dignity, that empathy and humanity, is gone
  • It’s a sign of how distant Davos is from his old life. He talks about coming home to his city, he talks about knowing every ship so well, but the plain facts are that Davos has not lived here in a long time and he is not getting any younger. That life and everything that went with it is fading
  • Again, George isn’t choosing these ship names at random. Davos himself is a “kingslander,” so he has symbolically ordered his own execution
  • He has used the authority of his new life to sacrifice his old life, like he accepted the loss of his fingers if it meant a better future for his sons. He has forgotten the man’s name just like he has left that life behind
  • Coming back on reread after ADWD, I can’t help but think about how Dany forgets Hazzea’s name at the end of that book. That life is over now
  • George is walking a tightrope here. He wants to excite his audience, but also make the point that it can be unwise to think of war as exciting
  • So he gives us the tightly paced structure of a classic naval battle, a more blood-and-guts version of something Patrick O’Brian might write
  • Davos takes in the battlefield, makes quick decisions, leads his men into battle, sinks and takes enemy ships--everything he is supposed to do
  • But the pervasive tone of dread and horror undercuts any thrill we might be feeling. George maintains that tone with details specific to Davos
  • The other captains, from Imry Florent down to Davos’ own sons, are fixated on glory. Davos is the one who hears the pleas of drowning men
  • As a useless civvy myself, I can still get a sense here of what you described before, about how it seems like George himself has served:
    • “Men died...but so far, none of his.”
  • I can’t imagine a more succinct expression of what it’s like to bear responsibility for your men, knowing that the battlefield involves so much chaos that you can’t really keep them safe. Attewell nails it per usual:
    • ...there have been thousands of Waymar Royces throughout history, brave but stupid aristocrats who’d gotten their men killed because of their fear of looking cowardly or inexperienced. It is also true that there have also been thousands of Davoses, working class non-commissioned officers given orders by men without an ounce of their experience or ability, orders they knew to be stupid and pointless, trapped by the class structure and the chain (ha!) of command, who tried in the midst of clusterfucks, FUBARs, and SNAFUs … to keep their men alive. To hell with the Pattons of history – these men are the real heroes of any war.
  • It’s hokey, but I recall a motivational poster I once saw, and hey, I found it just as I was writing this part of the doc! It shows the difference between a “leader” and a “boss” with the boss sitting atop a platform directing the underlings to pull the platform forward while the leader is out in front of the men leading the way.
    • 
  • We have a boss and a leader present on #TeamBaratheon at the Battle of the Blackwater.
  • Davos is the leader, Stannis is the boss.
  • Now, look, before you jump on me: I get it, okay? Stannis is in the rear with the gear doing the strategic oversight of the battle.
  • But does he have to be behind the men dying in battle here? What made Robert a legendary and successful commander is that he led from the front.
  • And if you want to say that the king’s personage is of the utmost importance, again, look at the example of Robert on the Trident: leading from the front and fighting Rhaegar Targaryen in personal combat.
  • For Stannis’ part, he does do better at the Battle of the Wall we’ll get to in about a year and a half or so when Jon sees the royal banner flying past him (meaning that Stannis is taking part in the fighting).
  • But as we were saying back in Davos II, that’s the last time we’re going to see Stannis on the page until Davos’ fourth ASOS chapter!
  • Two weeks ago, I was batting around some different options as to who could have commanded the naval expedition besides Imry Florent, and I think I have a new suggestion.
  • You’d want someone with a wealth of naval experience, someone who has commanded amphibious assaults before, someone who is tactically adept and able to modify a plan when cold reality steps in.
  • I’m talking about Stannis Baratheon, victor at Fair Isle, who led the amphibious assault on Dragonstone!
  • Why isn’t Stannis out here aboard the Fury leading the attack on King’s Landing, inspiring his men as a leader, exposing himself to the same dangers they face.
  • Yes, yes, I’m aware that the naval engagement is the shaping operation, but Stannis has the wealth of experience to make the shaping operation successful, or to reconfigure his plan and then potentially lead the decisive operation after the shaping operation.
  • At the Blackwater, it all goes back to The Stranger imagery that’s surrounding Stannis’ attack on King’s Landing.
  • It’s like Ned told Robb Stark:
    • "Know the men who follow you," she heard him tell Robb once, "and let them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger."
  • Robb Stark took that advice to heart and led from the front, winning the loyalty and love of his men, minus a few very minor exceptions like the Freys, Bolton and Karstarks.
  • Davos and the crews out here on the Blackwater are Stannis’ men, but the King is nowhere to be seen.
• Kaboom
  • ACOK Davos III builds to the wildfire explosion as flawlessly as the Red Wedding builds to “The Rains of Castamere” or as Dany’s time in Astapor builds to “dracarys.” George sets it all up, and then sweeps it all away
  • As with the Red Wedding and “dracarys,” George insists on playing fair with his audience. He follows the Hitchcockian rules of suspense: giving us all the component pieces of what’s about to happen, but preventing us from putting the big picture together until it’s already happening
  • We know that Tyrion has been hard at work on the wildfire, and Davos has told us that he senses a trap. George could’ve just left it there
  • Instead, he misdirects us:
    • A flash of green caught his eye, ahead and off to port, and a nest of writhing emerald serpents rose burning and hissing from the stern of Queen Alysanne. An instant later Davos heard the dread cry of "Wildfire!"

He grimaced. Burning pitch was one thing, wildfire quite another. Evil stuff, and well-nigh unquenchable. Smother it under a cloak and the cloak took fire; slap at a fleck of it with your palm and your hand was aflame. "Piss on wildfire and your cock burns off," old seamen liked to say. Still, Ser Imry had warned them to expect a taste of the alchemists' vile substance. Fortunately, there were few true pyromancers left. They will soon run out, Ser Imry had assured them.

• The first time reader is likely to assume that this is all Tyrion intended for the wildfire. We saw him instructing Jacelyn in this tactic, after all
• So the agonizing shock of the explosion is doubled, because just like Davos, we were led to believe that the danger had passed
• Next, Davos spots a flock of small Lannister boats he refers to disparagingly as “driftwood,” thinking they can only serve to get in the way
• This is George’s beloved “threefold revelation” strategy at work. We were introduced to the wildfire in Tyrion V, and reminded about it in Tyrion XI
• There’s also a threefold structure in this chapter: first the catapults use wildfire, and then Davos spots the boats. The tension is ramped up
• Right before everything goes to hell, there is a pause in which Davos takes in the full sweep of the battlefield
• Stannis’ army is beginning to cross the river, the necessary condition for victory. Davos thinks that Stannis will take this important step forward
• But he’s not sure the cost has been worth it. This encapsulates his entire story going forward as he struggles to reconcile these values
• Davos has dedicated himself to this cause, trying to bring his family to paradise...and it is now that he doubts it that George condemns him to hell
• The Swordfish dooms them, of course. The ship that exemplifies how the arrogance of the nobles outstrips their intelligence, getting everyone killed
• The sail of the Swordfish has caught fire, giving it a nightmarish head of flame. George is drawing from Christian imagery here: the tongues of flame hanging above believers on Pentecost, embodying the Holy Spirit
• For the true believer, these flames offer purification, filling us with God’s gift of life. For the lapsed believer like George or Davos, however, this head of flame represents the folly of assuming oneself to be in the right
• Personification of Stannis’ burning crown too from ASOS.
  • "I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning . . . burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?"
• It’s the same imagery associated with Kraznys mo Nakloz after Drogon lights him on fire:
  • A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head.
• The Swordfish is charging one of the “driftwood” ships. Davos sees that it’s leaking something thick and green. He knows wildfire when he sees it
• As George writes it, Davos’ heart stops beating. The heart banners they’re flying are about to burn, as are his sons, his metaphorical heart
• Davos’ heart stops beating out of fear, of course, but on another level, it represents how he has become a dead man in this moment, losing everything for which he was living. He reaches for his fingerbones one last time, before his luck is taken away along with his sons. He realizes now, far too late, the nature of the deal he has made with Stannis
• The captain of the Swordfish, as Davos thinks about it, is intent on spearing something with his “ungainly fat sword”
• The sexual metaphor is clear. The ram is a symbolic penis, the captain of the Swordfish is a horny man aiming for a “plump tempting target”
• George used similar language to describe Dany bringing the dragons back: a marriage of sorts that produced magical children
• So in a sense, the wildfire explosion is the child of the Lannister and Baratheon fleets, produced by them coming together
• Sex and swordplay, fighting and fucking, George often links them together. The war is the metaphorical child resulting from the clashing kings
• You can also see this as a parallel to Melisandre and her shadowy children, with the captain of the Swordfish playing Stannis’ role
• As with Dany’s dragons, George brings some of his most vivid imagery to bear on the birth of this abominable “child”
• The Lannister ship bursts asunder like a mother dying in childbirth (as happened with Jon, Dany, and Tyrion, the three heads of the dragon?)
• George describes the ship as an “overripe fruit,” which reaches back to the description of Aerys’ wildfire pots and forward to the blood oranges of Dorne, which are “well past ripe.” It’s a way of illustrating how the sins of the father linger and rebound upon the children
• The wildfire itself is described as “poison from the entrails of a dying beast,” which is such powerful imagery it makes me jealous! It again connects the wildfire explosion to the primal forces of life and death
• It glistens, it shines, it spreads across the water...the reader’s eyes are growing big, our hands are gripping the pages so tight they might rip…
• Davos lets loose with a Big No and orders his ship to retreat. The oars of Black Betha slide into the water, but not nearly fast enough to escape
• I’ve compared the wildfire explosion to the Red Wedding, but George lingers over that horrorshow at length
• Not so for the wildfire. This has more in common with the shadow assassination of Renly: in the space of a paragraph, everything falls apart
• The end of Davos' world announces itself with nothing more than a woof in his ear. The floor literally falls out from beneath him
• His ship, his sons, all the signs of his rise in fortunes--it's all gone in an instant. He's back in the water from which he came, unsure what way is up, nothing left to him but his seaworth. All he can do is hold on
• Then Davos looks up, and sees something that nothing in his life has prepared him for
• It's one of the great magical images of the series, the eldritch horror of the shadowbirth under Storm's End ramped up to a colossal scale:
  • Fifty feet high, a swirling demon of green flame danced upon the river. It had a dozen hands, in each a whip, and whatever they touched burst into fire.
• What is this thing, this burning light in the sky? No one else ever makes mention of it. Tyrion doesn’t seem to see it; he talks about “plumes of fire,” not something that looks almost...alive. It exists only for Davos, and for us
• For high fantasy fans, the most immediate reference point is Tolkien’s Balrogs. Imagine a hobbit staring a Balrog down without Gandalf’s help
• Tolkien, of course, didn’t invent the notion of a furious deity wielding whips of fire. There are echoes of the Greek Furies here, as well as the Gaulish deity Ogmios or Ogmia: he was sunburnt, wielded a whip, and used chains to bind his followers to him. That all checks out!
• The fire in the sky also resembles Agni, who is the Vedic fire god within the Hindu faith and also a metaphorical stand-in for the universe’s flow of energy. He is born of two fire-sticks, and ultimately consumes his makers. He is typically represented as having multiple arms and eating all that is offered to him, which is similar to the wildfire inferno
• Agni is also central to Hindu wedding rituals, embodied by the fire around which the couple ritualistically move as they say their vows
• The sense of corruption, however, is pure Catholic energy on George’s part. Stannis made a deal with the devil; this is how deals with the devil tend to work out. The very power he tried to master has turned on him
• One cannot grasp fire, but that doesn’t stop us from trying, and burning ourselves in the process. Just ask Icarus, or Quentyn Martell
  • I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.
• That Promethean fire of the gods is too much for the human heart in conflict with itself to handle. The captain of the Swordfish proved it
• This inferno is R’hllor. Or rather, it’s as close to R’hllor as we’re going to get: an elemental force, a godlike avatar of flame
• The key line here is “the demon was eating his own.” In the moment, it refers to the wildfire destroying Lannister ships as well as Baratheon ones. But it also suggests that R’hllor will happily feed on its own followers
• From the very beginning with the arrival of autumn, ACOK has been about a changing world. The forces of wonder and terror are reshaping the landscape, along with every individual soul
• We’ve seen flashes of that transformation at Storm’s End, at Winterfell, at Craster’s Keep and the Fist of the First Men. Now we see it in full: the political expansion crashing headlong into the magical expansion, both kinds of power giving birth to the fiery ladder. The very river seems to boil
• That imagery of the river boiling is incredible. George really leans deep into his Catholicism and Biblical imagery: Revelations 16:3 is probably what George is thinking of:
  • And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.
• Even before we get Tyrion’s perspective next week, we see the military sense of what Tyrion was planning.
• He didn’t only want the wildfire to destroy the ships. He wanted everyone on the water dead, boiling those who managed to evade the wildfire on the water.
• In a modern setting, this is very much a war crime: killing sailors in the water as sailors become non-combatants after they’re in the water. A German U-boat captain by the name of Heinz-Wilhelm Eck was convicted and executed for killing sailors after his U-boat sank a merchant vessel in the Atlantic.
• And then there’s the chain that awaits behind him.
• The fleet is burning, and they’re chained into a fiery apocalypse by a great chain.
• The boiling water superheats the chain now stretching across the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, meaning that those who get swept out by the current face a red-hot piece of metal.
• Ships hoping to escape
• There’s some possible symbolism at work here with Davos assuming his own chain of office in the next book with the fires of R’hlloric sacrifice all around him on Dragonstone.
• But I feel here that George isn’t going for a foreshadowing bit here.
• Instead, Davos has made his bargain, thrown in with Stannis and his fire god.
• He’s leveraged good service to advance his family, and he’s now lost his family.
• It’s a devastating denouement in the narrative, killing Davos’ dreams for his sons and killing his sons all in one fell swoop.
• Now, finally, we understand the dreadful brilliance of Tyrion’s trap; we will have more to say about that when we return to Tyrion’s POV
• From Davos’ perspective, he is now being eaten alive by “the mouth of hell,” an image which resonates with my earlier references to fire gods
• This is Moloch and Mammon, the inferno of industrialism recast as divine punishment; again, I get the sense Tolkien would approve of his successor
• But the gods don’t actually mean all that much to Davos of Flea Bottom, and those are soldiers dying all around him, not priests
• So while the inferno is a spiritually significant moment, the Hand of God reaching down, it’s also a distinctly military disaster, in which technological changes transform the conventional wisdom of the battlefield
• It reminds me of the naval clash between the Monitor and the Merrimack in the American Civil War, the first battle between ironclad ships:
  • Then Mother occured a scene I shall never forget. Our Engineers behaved like heroes every one of them. They fought with the gas, endeavoring to get the blowers to work, until they dropped down--apparently as dead as men ever were … What to do now we did not know. We had done all in our power and must let things take their own course. (Lt. Samuel Dana Green)
• It also reminds me of napalm and the nuclear strikes on Japan, as we will discuss more next week
• Above all, though, it reminds me of Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen’s poem about the mustard gas in WWI:
  • Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

• The end of Davos III finds George weaving so many strands of military history and religious symbolism into his own poetic expression of the horrors of war, destroying our hero’s happiness and delivering him to hell
• His story in ASOS is all about rising from that hell, which wouldn’t be so emotionally effective without this low point. As you say, it’s devastating
• You were referencing Steve Attewell’s analysis of Davos III earlier, and something I wanted to highlight is the stirring way Steve talked about his grandfather Reginald Attewell from WW2.
• Everyone should go and read his take on Davos III after you finish this episode. It’s stellar, moving stuff and makes me feel things.
• I’m going to borrow a leaf from Steve and talk about my own family war legacy in the form of my grandfather: Franklin “Hank” Hartline.
• For us, the military is what we call “the family business.” We’ve been soldiers for three generations with my grandfather and his half-brother starting the tradition by serving in WW2.
• My grandfather was a junior officer who commanded a rifle company at Pearl Harbor and was heading out to play a round of golf on a bright Sunday morning in December 1941.
• Later in 1945, my grandfather was battlefield promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and held a battalion command at the Battle of Okinawa: the last major battle of the Second World War.
• Amidst a brutal advance across the island, the Japanese counter-attacked, and I’ll let Robert Leckie, author of Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II describe things:
  • On the night of April 21-22 the Japanese counter-attacked three times against a battalion of the 382nd commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Hartline. In one charge Staff Sergeant David Dovel lifted his machine gun to fire it at the enemy full-trigger, severely burning his hands on the red-hot barrel. Dovel was also wounded in both legs, but survived. Meanwhile soldiers firing light or 60 mm mortars elevated their small stovepipes to a dangerously close eighty-six degrees, dropping shells only thirty yards to their front. Colonel Hartline joined the battle, throwing grenades and firing the weapons of the fallen.
• A first-hand account of the battle written by a survivor in 2002 described what happened next:
  • Lt. Colonel Hartline, the former West Point football star, was awarded the Silver Star for his actions on April 21st. He deserved it.
• That survivor may have thought my grandfather deserved his medal, but my grandfather thought differently, believing that it was his men who earned the medal.
  • My grandfather never wore his Silver Star medal. Even in the picture from my mom and dad’s wedding where he wore his dress blues: he only wore one decoration: The Combat Infantryman’s Badge.
    
    
• I never knew my grandfather. He died one month before I was born, but I know his father was dairy farmer from upstate NY, and I have to imagine he wanted a better life for himself and went to West Point and served in the Army for most of his life to achieve that for himself and his family.
• My grandfather later served in the Korean War, and his three sons: my two uncles and my father all joined the Army after him, serving after him in Vietnam and in peacetime. My two cousins and I continued the legacy thereafter
• Steve concluded his analysis of Davos III by saying that whenever he reads Davos III, he thinks of Reg. Whenever I read Davos III, I think of my grandfather Hank.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

This will not be the last time that Stannis doesn’t take Melisandre on campaign with him as that’s what occurs in ADWD as he attempts to liberate Deepwood and go for Winterfell. The only difference in ADWD is that Jon plays the Davos role, but Melisandre is already planning on staying behind at the Wall.

Davos sees that Salla’s ships are safe beyond the chain, establishing that Stannis still has ships to take him back to Dragonstone (and eventually Davos as well).

Davos reaches up and touches his pouch of fingerbones for luck one last time as he sees the Swordfish plowing into the ship heavy with wildfire. This will be the last time Davos touches those bones, and he’ll later talk about losing his luck on the Blackwater.

Theory/Discussion

Did Stannis make the right call sending Melisandre back to Dragonstone?

Conclusion

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