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The Fate of Shireen TWoW


Rubicante

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There's a lot of references in to chess, or chess-like games (cyvasse, anyone?), increasingly creeping into the books.

Now, one thing true of both chess and cyvasse: The king is everything. All the other pieces exist either to defend the king, or to destroy the enemy king. Sacrifice or exchange anything else, but keep your king alive while the enemy king falls, and you win. The Queen may be the most powerful fighting piece, and often the power behind the throne, but in the end even she is dispensable in the service of the king.

So... The one thing you can't do in chess is sacrifice the king. Your OWN king, that is. By all the logical rules of the game, that's an automatic loss - and that's the assumption that everybody in Westeros is working on. So it would be an almighty twist and upset the game completely if somebody did.

Which is why I seriously think that *that* may be the "shock twist" that GRRM puts in: a king, or a claimant to the throne, deciding that the person best placed to be sacrificed in the interests of either saving the world, or furthering the claim of his progeny, is himself.

Now remind me... which king, after attempting to play by the usual rules in the South, and losing but just managing to keep his own head on his shoulders, then saw a vision of a king burning away in flame?

And has been in the company of a priestess who believes in the sacrifice of royal blood?

And, even more recently, has been in the company of aging Northern clansmen who think nothing of sacrificing themselves (either by "going out hunting and not returning", or throwing themselves into one last battle to die a warrior's death because that is more honourable than freezing to death in the cold) so that their sons and daughters will have enough food to survive and keep the clan going through the winter?

And is alive in the books but dead in the show?

If Stannis meets Shireen and Melisandre, and there is a fire to hand, and there is a great need, and a belief that a sacrifice is necessary... I do not believe it will be Shireen that ends up on the fire.

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10 hours ago, messem said:

I agree (mostly) and come to another conclusion.

  • Stannis loses the battle of ice.
  • A beaten Stannis withdraws with a small force to Castle Black. Meanwhile Ramsay assumes Stannis is dead and writes the pink letter.
  • Stannis arrives at Castle Black and Mel R'hllor expects the greatest sacrifice.
  • Stannis burns Shireen.
  • Jon awakes. Stannis might become Lord Commander.

As a long time Stannis defender I still hope I'm wrong but that might be possible. 

 

Sure, that's possible. "But we will march, and we will free Winterfell or die in the attempt" makes him seem resolute in his stance.

Don't you think it's far more likely that Shireen is sacrificed by Mel in order to bring Jon back?

Hopefully we find out soon. 

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3 hours ago, Gannicus said:

Don't you think it's far more likely that Shireen is sacrificed by Mel in order to bring Jon back?

Yes, I do think it is far more likely that Shireen is sacrificed by Mel than Stannis. But I'm also getting warm to the idea that D&D portrayed Stannis as they did because they knew right from the beginning that he is going to sacrifice his daughter. 

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21 hours ago, messem said:

I agree (mostly) and come to another conclusion.

  • Stannis loses the battle of ice.
  • A beaten Stannis withdraws with a small force to Castle Black. Meanwhile Ramsay assumes Stannis is dead and writes the pink letter.
  • Stannis arrives at Castle Black and Mel R'hllor expects the greatest sacrifice.
  • Stannis burns Shireen.
  • Jon awakes. Stannis might become Lord Commander.

As a long time Stannis defender I still hope I'm wrong but that might be possible. 

Yeah, because the kind of chap who would burn his daughter would be chosen to be LC.

Stannis is a religious maniac. Things will not end well for him, nor should they.

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He is in fact NOT a religious maniac. He believes in R'hllor no more than in the Seven, or in the Old Gods: it was in Melisandre, not R'hllor, that he saw power.

"There will be no more burnings. Pray harder" - he is fed up with being asked to do terrible things in the name of a god, when without Melisandre personally, that god is proving of no more use than any other. Book Stannis (as distinct from Show Stannis) is NOT a blind follower of the Lord of Fire and Shadow. If anything he's an atheist: "all I ever saw of either (truth and justice) was made by men".

It is possible that GRRM actually started with one concept of the character and has changed it as time went on, and the show writers actually have their "prior knowledge" from the earlier version who is no longer the authentic version. Indeed, it is quite possible (and indeed probable) that this is true of more characters than just Stannis: the book Umbers would never have handed Rickon over to the Boltons, for example, and we haven't even *seen* much of the show Manderlys yet.

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My gut feeling is that Melisandre will burn Shireen without Stannis' consent in order to resurrect Jon Snow, whom she now believes to be Azor Ahai reborn. Selyse is a notorious religious fanatic who previously urged Stannis to burn Edric Storm to "wake dragons from stone", she will not be hard to persuade. Stannis, meanwhile, is miles away, preparing for a siege in a blizzard. I think we should assume he is innocent until GRRM tells us otherwise. The showrunners are horrendously biased towards their favourite characters and Stannis has never been one of them. Do the maths.

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As of her last chapter, Mel cannot see Stannis in the flames.  So we must assume she doesn't know what's happening with her King when that letter arrives.  

Believing that letter, I think Mel will burn Shireen in a desperate bid to save her king, only it ends up bringing Jon back instead.  We've also seen burnings affect the weather in this series, Mel did it to gain favorable winds for the sail North.  So I also think Shireen's burning will clear up the snow (just like it did in the show).  

Most of us believe Stannis has some grand plan prepared involving that frozen lake...so if it melts due to Mel's actions, she'll have inadvertently screwed Stannis over by sabotaging his plans.  I think that's what makes him lose, Mel fucking up his plans by burning Shireen.

That's how I see things playing out in Winds, I believe Stannis will lose, but not because he chooses to burn Shireen like in the show.  Mel will screw him over imo.   

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9 hours ago, Johnimus said:

Yeah, because the kind of chap who would burn his daughter would be chosen to be LC.

Stannis is a religious maniac. Things will not end well for him, nor should they.

To be fair he isn't religious in the novel. That was a great quote there

6 hours ago, JLE said:


"There will be no more burnings. Pray harder" - he is fed up with being asked to do terrible things in the name of a god, when without Melisandre personally, that god is proving of no more use than any other. Book Stannis (as distinct from Show Stannis) is NOT a blind follower of the Lord of Fire and Shadow. If anything he's an atheist: "all I ever saw of either (truth and justice) was made by men".
 

I also like this one.

I stopped believing in gods the day I saw the Windproud break up across the bay. Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed. In King's Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men.

 

 

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On 25.5.2016 at 6:01 PM, Johnimus said:

Yeah, because the kind of chap who would burn his daughter would be chosen to be LC.

Yeah, true, because an order of murderers, rapists and thieves might have moral issues with one of the best military commanders in Westeros leading them in the battles to come.

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I don't think Shireen will be "cured" from the grayscale. She will infect people with it. The things that happened in aDoD are huge setting for a plague outbreak on all fronts. To this point, asoiaf has been "all the aspects of medieval life spiced with magic and dark stuff" -except plague. Westeros will get that and it wil get it hard. While Dany's armies sail to Westeros (if they do) they will bring the other plague with them as well, and the final showdown is not even going to be between armies. My guess is the real ruler of Westeros will be the person who can handle winter, two huge epidemies and hold the wall.

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4 hours ago, Dex the Dog said:

I don't think Shireen will be "cured" from the grayscale. She will infect people with it. The things that happened in aDoD are huge setting for a plague outbreak on all fronts. To this point, asoiaf has been "all the aspects of medieval life spiced with magic and dark stuff" -except plague. Westeros will get that and it wil get it hard. While Dany's armies sail to Westeros (if they do) they will bring the other plague with them as well, and the final showdown is not even going to be between armies. My guess is the real ruler of Westeros will be the person who can handle winter, two huge epidemies and hold the wall.

Or she'll be blamed for an outbreak of it.

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It has been building for some time. I always said that only Shireen fitted the role of Nissa Nissa for Stannis, the guy literally loves nobody else...

I think all the talk about sacrifice of king's blood from Melisandre was just she slowly making Stannis get used to sacrifice people (specially relatives like Edric Storm) for power.

 

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And that's why I wonder if the twist will be that he sacrifices himself instead of her - whether out of a belief that it will do more good, or out of a despairing belief that if the world requires him to murder his daughter, it is not a world worth fighting or living for.

Again, it would wreck all the above "chess" or "cyvasse" imagery - that the survival of the king equals the survival of the realm, your own king (which, in the game *as* a king, is "oneself") is the one piece you cannot sacrifice - and, as such, upset the Game in a way that very little else could.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On April 12, 2016 at 11:05 PM, Gannicus said:

For the record, I don't think Stannis orders Shireen to be sacrificed. D&D did implicitly say this, but they don't explicitly say Stannis. And who the heck knows where George Martin takes it?

 

Stannis's "final orders" to Justin Massey is a clue of where GRRM is heading with this. Stannis orders Massey to set up Shireen to be win the Iron Throne. Hence, highly unlikely he would then later order her sacrificed no matter how desperate... Because he is already at the brink when he gives this order.

Stannis also tells Massey to ignore potential rumors of his demise. Hence we should apply reverse logic here (GRRM is tricky like that). We should actually assume that the coming rumors are actually true and that Massey be forced to ignore the rumors. Why you ask? Because this forces him to fight with Melissandre for Shireen's life.

Why does Mel want to burn Shireen? Perhaps not to revive Jon but rather to revive Stannis. The WTF moment is that Jon revives rather than Stannis.

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Ramsey was most likely telling the truth in the Pink Letter about destroying Stannis.

Mel will sacrifice Shireen to bring Jon back to life.  The moral dilemma readers will have is terrible.  On one hand Jon is the hero of the story, on the other hand Shireen is an innocent.  The decision will weigh heavily on Jon as well.

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On 11 June 2016 at 2:28 PM, sifth said:

When asked last year about this scene from the show GRRM confirmed he hasn't written it yet.

 

Take that for what you will, but it sounds fishy to me.

 

Its true. It was on his blog for everyone to see before he deleted the comments. Someone asked him angrily about D & D butchering Stannis's character and if that really happens. To the best of my memory he replied "I won't talk about chapters I haven't even started writing yet".

 

That just turns everything on his head since he wrote the entire Battle of Ice years before ADWD was released so then where does Shireen's burning take place? A long way into TWOW is my guess. I'd put money on it being the reason for Jon's resurrection or an apocalypse end of the world situation where Stannis must make the ultimate sacrifice. The worst thing you can possible do is take anything that happens on the show as what will happen in the book. 

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9 minutes ago, aFeastForDragons said:

 

Its true. It was on his blog for everyone to see before he deleted the comments. Someone asked him angrily about D & D butchering Stannis's character and if that really happens. To the best of my memory he replied "I won't talk about chapters I haven't even started writing yet".

 

That just turns everything on his head since he wrote the entire Battle of Ice years before ADWD was released so then where does Shireen's burning take place? A long way into TWOW is my guess. I'd put money on it being the reason for Jon's resurrection or an apocalypse end of the world situation where Stannis must make the ultimate sacrifice. The worst thing you can possible do is take anything that happens on the show as what will happen in the book. 

Dont forget the book exclusive twist for a dead S5 character having a 55% possibility of being about Stannis

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2 hours ago, Ruhail said:

Dont forget the book exclusive twist for a dead S5 character having a 55% possibility of being about Stannis

 

There are other characters in the books who are still alive though. Ser. Barry, Cat, Green and Pype for example.

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28 minutes ago, sifth said:

 

There are other characters in the books who are still alive though. Ser. Barry, Cat, Green and Pype for example.

He said in a later interview with IGN that the character was killed in S5 which narrows it down alot. So thats Barristan, Myrcella, Mance and Stannis from what i can remember

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