To mark the ten year anniversary of Radio Westeros E07 – Stannis- A Just Man, I thought I’d share this new Stannis essay that’s been brewing since I read Madeline Miller’s “Song of Achilles.” As usual, I’m strictly looking at book canon here. Hope you enjoy!

“Things are now as they are;

they will be fulfilled in what is fated;

neither burnt sacrifice nor libation

of offerings without fire

will soothe intense anger away.”

-Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Stannis Baratheon is the tragic Greek in a cast of characters that is pulled mainly from the pages of British and European history and legend. His stern and dark mien recalls Agamemnon and the cursed House of Atreus. Complete with his own Calchas in the person of Melisandre of Asshai, Stannis, like Agamemnon, is burdened with a family history of treachery, incest and kinslaying. 

This isn’t to say there aren’t other inspirations to be found in the person of Stannis Baratheon. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is there and Richard III as well, not to mention the Roman general Coriolanus. But it’s Agamemnon’s tragic story that seems to have the most resonance in the arc Stannis is moving along, and in spite of Melisandre’s promises about the future, perhaps Stannis would be wise to heed the advice of Aeschylus on the implacable nature of fate implied in the opening quote.

Our first PoV viewpoint of Stannis Baratheon comes in the Cressen Prologue in ACoK. Through Cressen’s eyes we see Stannis as a painfully awkward middle child, whose rigid devotion to duty and righteousness is more curse than blessing. And of course by the end of the chapter we see the Lord of Dragonstone as a sovereign dangerously in the thrall of a zealous witch. 

And it’s also in the Cressen Prologue that we get the first hint of where Stannis’ arc, and his red witch, are leading him, when his daughter Shireen tells Cressen:

I had bad dreams […] About the dragons. They were coming to eat me.

Now, Dragonstone is full of gargoyles carved in the likeness of dragons, and of course it comes with a grim history that would surely be accessible to an educated child. The tale of her ancestor Rhaenyra Targaryen being fed to a dragon by her half brother Aegon II in the courtyard of the fortress is one that certainly might have preyed upon Shireen’s imagination.  

But since, if nothing else, dragons represent fire, a dream of being eaten by dragons may actually be dream code for being burned alive. And so we should take careful note of Shireen and the ways in which her fate seems to be prefigured throughout the series. 

In ASoS, in Davos V, Stannis discusses his next moves in Council after hearing of the death of Robb Stark at the Twins. Some weeks previously, Stannis had burned three leeches full of the blood of his nephew Edric Storm and named for his rivals – Joffrey Baratheon, Balon Greyjoy and Robb Stark. Now we see his wife Selyse, her uncle Ser Axell Florent, and Melisandre all insisting that first Balon’s and now Robb’s deaths are proof of the power of King’s blood to manipulate Stannis’ destiny. All three are urging Stannis to give the boy Edric to Melisandre’s flames, to fulfill the claim that “king’s blood” would “wake the dragon”. When Stannis objects that all the sorcery his ancestors had attempted in order to bring back their fabled dragons had failed, Selyse was ready with an answer:

None of these was the chosen of R’hllor. No red comet blazed across the heavens to herald their coming. None wielded Lightbringer, the red sword of heroes. And none of them paid the price. Lady Melisandre will tell you, my lord. Only death can pay for life.

“None of them paid the price.” Stannis knows what that means — Melisandre of Asshai wants Edric Storm, and his supposedly magical king’s blood, for her sacrificial flames. “Give me the boy for R’hllor […] and the ancient prophecy shall be fulfilled. Your dragon shall awaken and spread his stony wings. The kingdom shall be yours.” Adding their voices to hers, both Axell and Selyse insist that Edric’s death will ensure Stannis’ triumph and the destruction of his enemies. 

While Selyse strives to convince him that it is Edric, the product of what she sees as Robert defiling her marriage bed with her cousin, who has has cursed their union and denied Stannis sons of his own, Stannis continues to insist that the child is innocent and cannot be held accountable for his own conception.  Melisandre, as ever, has an answer to his objections:

The Lord of Light cherishes the innocent. There is no sacrifice more precious. From his king’s blood and his untainted fire, a dragon shall be born.

Only Davos Seaworth, now Stannis’ Hand, remains unconvinced. Thinking of the screams of burning souls, he stands up to remind his King of a Westerosi taboo as old as civilization itself:

I know little of dragons and less of gods… but the queen spoke of curses. No man is as cursed as the kinslayer, in the eyes of gods and men.

It’s a simple statement, but one that has informed Westerosi culture for millennia. Along with a prohibition on violating guest-right, the taboo against kinslaying has helped to preserve the balance of society throughout history. As Rickard Karstark reminds Robb before his own execution: “Old gods or new, it makes no matter, no man is so accursed as the kinslayer.”

And we have only to look at the most significant example of mass kinslaying in Westerosi history to see the presumed curse in action. In the Dance of the Dragons, House Targaryen nearly destroyed itself in an orgy of kinslaying and dragon-slaying that reduced the once mighty dragonlords to a single surviving male heir, and removed their dragons from the game of thrones, apparently for all time.

These are Stannis Baratheon’s forebears, and he references their failed subsequent attempts to restore their dragons and the glory of their house when his wife urges him to sacrifice his bastard nephew to Melisandre’s flames. He does not make the connection of kinslaying with the nadir of House Targaryen, but examining the history of their civil war all those generations ago leads one to the inescapable conclusion that, for House Targaryen at least, there is a through line from kinslaying to an accursed and irreversible diminishment.

But Melisandre remains insistent about the fate of Edric Storm. Reminding Davos and Stannis that in her worldview there is only R’hllor and the Other, who are the very ones requiring the sacrifice and thus cannot be responsible for cursing the sacrificer, she states: “Only death can pay for life, my lord. A great gift requires a great sacrifice.”

Davos obstinately refuses to accept her claims, and reminds the council that, for all Melisandre’s claims, only two kings have died, and those at the hands of others. “Who did your leeches kill?” he asks, which elicits a rare laugh from Stannis: “Two is not three.” But the Red Woman, as ever, has an answer, one which chills Davos Seaworth to the bone:

If Joffrey should die in the midst of all his power, surrounded by his armies and his Kingsguard, would not that show the power of the Lord at work?”

When Stannis grudgingly agrees that it might, something is set in motion that may one day lead him into the darkest of places. Though Davos remains to press his lord about the fate of Edric Storm, Stannis will not hear him. He is too busy wrestling with the implications of what may be required of him. Speaking of his duty to the realm he asks his Hand a question:

How many boys dwell in Westeros? How many girls? How many men, how many women? The darkness will devour them all, she says. The night that never ends. She talks of prophecies… a hero reborn in the sea, living dragons hatched from dead stone… she speaks of signs and swears they point to me. I never asked for this, no more than I asked to be king. Yet dare I disregard her? […] We do not choose our destinies. Yet we must… we must do our duty, no? Great or small, we must do our duty.

Reminded of the cost — to Edric, to Shireen who loves her cousin, and to his own soul — Stannis states the question that is consuming him: “If Joffrey should die… what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” 

For Davos Seaworth, the answer is everything. Stannis, it will turn out, has been placed on a dialectical path to a very different answer — that the life of one child is a reasonable trade to save millions. And in fact, when word comes some days later of Joffrey’s death at his own wedding, and Melisandre once again asks for the boy, Stannis proves himself nearly ready to accede, asking for one final confirmation: “You swear there is no other way? Swear it on your life, for I promise, you shall die by inches if you lie.”

Melisandre promises to give him his kingdom if he gives her Edric Storm, but Davos has foiled them. Forewarned of Joffrey’s death by Sallador Saan, Davos had spirited the boy away to safety with the assistance of a handful of men who remained loyal to Stannis rather than to his Red Woman. Insisting that he was only fulfilling his own oath of service to his King — to give honest counsel and protect his people — Davos confessed to his transgression and stood his ground, knowing that his life was on a precipice.

The frustrated king once again made the case that his own duty to protect his people required a sacrifice of him:

I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head, but so long as I am the king, I have a duty… If I must sacrifice one child to the flames to save a million from the dark… Sacrifice… is never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my lady.

And it’s Melisandre’s answer that is the keystone of the foundation that’s been assembled step by step throughout the whole debate about the fate of Edric Storm that meanders through ASOS. Only in hindsight does it seem obvious that the foundation is not about Edric Storm at all, but about a very different sacrifice that will, one day, be required of Stannis:

Azor Ahai tempered Lightbringer with the heart’s blood of his own beloved wife. If a man with a thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who offers the only cow he owns…

As we know, Davos saves his own life by reminding Stannis of his duty to the realm and revealing the threat that is coming from the North, as described in a letter sent by Stannis’ great-great-uncle, Maester Aemon of the Night’s Watch. Stannis will head north to the Wall, in a fleet propelled by winds bought with the sacrifice of his wife’s uncle Alester Florent, and it will fall to Jon Snow to remove the bearers of king’s blood that are found there — Mance Rayder’s infant son and the ancient scion of House Targaryen, Maester Aemon— from Melisandre’s orbit.

TWoW will find Stannis and his army camped in an icy crofter’s village in an increasingly hopeless situation. Food is scarce and the weather is brutal, preventing them from seeking shelter elsewhere. The specter of desperate cannibalism stalks his troops. There will almost certainly be attempts to gain the favor of R’hllor through sacrifice — Stannis holds several Karstarks— distant relatives of the one-time Kings in the North— captive, as well as both Theon and Asha Greyjoy, children of a man who claimed kingship. The idea of waking dragons with king’s blood, which had previously reached its peak in the desperate aftermath of the loss at the Blackwater, will no doubt once again be raised.

For the moment, Shireen is at Castle Black with her mother and Melisandre. But who can say what will happen in the aftermath of Jon Snow’s stabbing and Stannis’ presumed last ditch effort to take Winterfell from the Boltons? As things get truly desperate for Stannis’ cause, one has to wonder what the adherents of R’hllor might propose if they run out of sacrificial victims. Will Stannis, or Selyse, or their followers, recall Melisandre’s words about sacrifice: “If a man with a thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who offers the only cow he owns…”? 

Let’s suppose Stannis hits rock bottom in his fortunes— perhaps he sees everything slipping away, or perhaps the Others begin to make inroads south of the Wall. At the same time, he retains his absolute belief in his duty and his destiny. Will he start to wonder about “the only cow he owns…” and look around for prospects? What happens if he has sacrificed his captives to no avail, or has simply lost his control over them, and he feels the desperate need for some king’s blood to finally fulfill that prophecy that’s been just out of reach for him all these years? Will he look at the one obvious candidate, through whose veins flows his own kingly blood, the innocent child who could very much — more so than Edric Storm ever could— be described as “the only cow he owns”? Will he recall his conviction when, after hearing of Joffrey’s death, he finally came to believe in the power to king’s blood to affect his destiny? Could Stannis ever conceive of sacrificing his own child if he thought it would save the world?

In answer we must only look as far as his own words to Davos Seaworth when he had, finally, allowed that he must give his nephew Edric Storm to Melisandre’s flames:

If I must sacrifice one child to the flames to save a million from the dark… Sacrifice… is never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice.

As for Shireen’s fate, we return to that first time we saw her, in the Prologue of ACOK: “I had bad dreams […] About the dragons. They were coming to eat me.” As previously stated, dragons are the personification of fire. Perhaps Shireen’s lifetime of nightmares about dragons are her drop of dragon blood shrieking a warning to her. Because a man who was willing to allow the murder of his brother and sacrifice his innocent nephew to the flames, who is so far down the all consuming path where duty and destiny overshadow his most basic human instincts, would surely not stop at making the ultimate sacrifice, the hardest sacrifice of all, to purportedly save humanity. 

In Greek mythology, the Greek army gathers at the port of Aulis to prepare to sail for Troy to retaliate against the Trojan abduction of Helen of Sparta. But Agamemnon had offended the gods and for that the entire fleet lay becalmed, unable to sail and unable to retreat. It was Agamemnon’s prophet Calchas who declared that Iphigenia, the eldest daughter of his lord, must be given in sacrifice to appease the gods and change the winds.

In ASOIAF we see Melisandre sacrifice Alester Florent for a favorable wind to speed Stannis’ fleet northwards, perhaps a small nod to where this story is headed. In some versions of the Greek story, Iphigenia is rescued at the last moment by the intervention of the goddess Artemis. In all versions, her father took the fateful decision to make what would surely have been considered the ultimate sacrifice — his own child’s life in exchange for the successful attainment of his destiny.

Though we cannot know exactly how things will play out in TWOW and ADOS, we have compelling prefiguring in ACOK, ASOS, and ADWD that, when push comes to shove, Stannis Baratheon will be willing to sacrifice a child if it means he is doing his duty and fulfilling his destiny of saving the world. Of course, much and more can and has been said about Melisandre’s errors of interpretation as far as the prophecy goes, but what will matter in the end is Stannis’ absolute belief in it. The gift of his precious and innocent only child to what Davos Seaworth thinks of as “the red woman’s demon god” will exactly fulfill all of the rhetoric we saw on the subject in ASOS pertaining to Edric Storm. 

Ultimately Stannis will sacrifice his daughter Shireen in the desperate belief that the act will save humanity. However, while Agamemnon had the immediate arrival of fair winds to justify his own decision, it seems very unlikely that Stannis will be so blessed. What follows will be the culmination of the tragedy of Stannis Baratheon. Like all Greek tragedies, Stannis’ story will end with an exodus and he will depart the stage abandoned and cursed by the gods. As all good Westerosi know:

Old gods or new, it makes no matter, no man is so accursed as the kinslayer.