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Does Stannis still have your respect?


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Why would Stannis lose respect? He made the tough decision of sacrificing his own daughter against letting thousands of men die. If he turned back, he would have been snowed it and the people at Castle Black would die from lack of supplies. (It said so in the show!)



Stannis is still the Mannis. :)


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Satannis was already married to Selyse during the siege. He made his own wife and his men within the castle starve next to him rather than surrender. And they were under a siege. Now, they could've gone and get more food/resources. How many men Satannis has? Because he can send 200 (you know TWENTY for every of Ramsay's Loco Men) and solve the situation.


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Why would Stannis lose respect? He made the tough decision of sacrificing his own daughter against letting thousands of men die. If he turned back, he would have been snowed it and the people at Castle Black would die from lack of supplies. (It said so in the show!)

Stannis is still the Mannis. :)

Really? Balon Greyjoy says HI!!

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You mean having to murder his daughter when he could have given up his obsessive quest to take the Iron Throne and instead used his huge army to defend the Wall against an attack by an undead legion?

Note to self: Next time I engage in human sacrifice make sure to get clear information on what the sacrifice is obtaining, is it the end of a snow storm, vicotry against the Boltons, the Iron throne or victory against the Night King.

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In the context of GAME OF THRONES the TV SERIES:



1) We have Theon Greyjoy, murderer of two miller's boys for absolutely cruel and petty reasons, not wanting to be a weakling to Ironborn leaders. But he's still intended by the show to be sympathetic because he got tortured into Ramsay's meatsack. In the books, Theon (who is never entirely Reek) never forgives himself for that even after he becomes Theon.



2) Tywin Lannister who murdered Rhaegar's kids because he and his family were Johnny-come-latelys to the Rebellion and wanted a piece of a pie that they did not merit at all. Then he ordered the Red Wedding. But the show still makes him quasi-sympathetic and plays his death like the "Fall of a Great Man" (absolutely not true of the books).



3) The Boltons, the Mountain and the what-have-yous who rape, maim and flay all the time for no reason.



Stannis is in a desperate situation, driven by a heroic motivation of helping and fighting the White Walkers. Melisandre has actual magical powers, as real as the Dragons and the White Walkers. So in that context, his actions are terrible but not in any degree worse or on a lower order than what Tywin and Theon did, but for some reasons Stannis is seen as far worse.



The point is people watching the show, the showrunners themselves and the like are seeing this in a context entirely separate from the show itself. In today's world, you have stories in the news of parents committing murder-suicide or honor killings in India and other cult-like actions and the like, and they naturally compare Show!Stannis' actions to that. So they see Stannis' actions as super-evil because of the religious dimension it has in real life. But GAME OF THRONES is a fantasy where magic actually exists. Melisandre's fanaticism is more justified than that of the Sparrows because she has actual abilities and deeds to back it up all the time. If they say Melisandre's magic is fake than they need to make the White Walkers and the Dragons fake too.



This reminds me in a roundabout way about Arthur Miller's play The Crucible about the Salem Witch Trials, which he intended as a metaphor for political persecution. But one of his friends pointed out that, his play is useless because witches don't exist whereas communists and other political parties absolutely do. It's not much of a metaphor in itself if you put real magic in to the show and want it to be a political allegory for religious violence.


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