Why do people trust mages?

[Tyrion1991]

Pretty much all the mages George has introduced are blatantly malicious if not evil and have the worst intentions for the people around them. Mirri, Melisandre, Moqorro, Maggy the Frog, the Three Eyed Crow, Quiathe. Even in some of the expanded lore with Maegor trusting a witch at court. 

Why? I mean for one, a lot of fantasy tends to focus on precisely the mistrust and fear that magical powers would create. Including burnings at the stake, persecution and mass hysteria. Even in popular video games like the witcher, Dragonage as well as books like the Wheel of Time. It’s a common trope. This seems entirely absent from George’s world. People don’t seem to distrust witches on principle; certainly non of the POV characters has ever said “nope”  on first encountering a wizard. 

Like if Bran was a hero in a Call of Cthulu adventure and I pulled the cave thing with Crow, all the players would be shouting “kill it, kill it with fire”. I am not convinced by Georges insinuation that people are naturally trusting of the supernatural; if anything the opposite is true. People tend to freak out and view them with intense suspicion.

Also, it’s just so glaringly obvious that the heroes should ignore if not kill these people and most of their problems would go away. Almost invariably they are the cause of most of their problems. I am not sure why everyone is so easily convinced by them when they’re suggesting human sacrifice or all but cackling maniacally. Red flags. None of these have been normal people who have made any attempt to hide what they are. I’ve never once been surprised by these mages backstabbing the hero.

Maybe George intends to subvert this later on in the series where a character does kill a mage out of hand when they could have been useful. For example, Dany just straight up kills Marwyn once she learns he trained Mirri. I mean Dany I think says she was “wary” of mages but she’s still listening to Quiathe/HoU as gospel so she clearly isn’t that wary at all. But atm people seem far too trusting of mages and lack a natural hostility towards them. 

Even the characters that are hostile have to build up to it or have their views muddled with other issues. For example Davos. It takes the death of his sons to want to kill Mel and it’s got less to do with the supernatural elements and more to do with her religion (burnings) and her bad influence on Stannis. Varys does, but he never comes into contact with any mages so it’s irrelevant.

[Lyanna<3Rhaegar]

I think you have missed the mark here & I have to respectfully disagree. 

First - Mirri has ill intentions for those around her but there are plenty that argue that her actions are warranted. Prior to that she only ever healed people that we are aware of & seemed genuinely distressed over the townsfolk the khalasar slaughter. 

Melisandre has very good, even if possibly misguided, intentions for Stannis. I'll agree she doesn't have great intentions with everyone i.e. the wildlings, Cressen but to be fair Cressen was trying to poison her. 

I don't remember anything particularly malicious from Moqorro but could be just not remembering. 

Maggy didn't harm anyone, she merely told their fortunes like they asked her. It was the girls who mistreated Maggy, particularly Cersei.

The verdict is still out on Quaithe & 3ER but they haven't given Dany or Bran any obvious reasons to distrust them yet. 

 

How is it obvious they should be killed & their problems would go away? Not hardly. The only problem Mirri caused for Dany is killing her husband & possibly unborn baby - not to say that isn't soul crushing but as far as political issues or ANY issues besides emotional ones Mirri had no hand in them. 

Hard to say about Stannis & Melisandre. I'm not sure that Stannis would be in any better position had he killed her though. 

Killing Maggy most definitely wouldn't have changed anything for Cersei. She just wouldn't know it was coming. 

Quaithe may very well be actually helping Dany but either way she hasn't made any decisions based on what Quaithe tells her, she can't understand most of it. 

Same with the 3ER - he may or may not be the cause of Brans issues but he hasn't given Bran any reason to mistrust him yet. 

Not all of them are sacrificing humans, at least not openly. Only Mel  (maybe Moqorro) & while I personally think Stannis is an idiot for doing what Mel says she does get results.

Daenerys doesn't take Quaithe or the HoU as gospel. What decisions has she made based on something coming from one of them alone? 

I don't think it's unnatural for people living in a world where dragons have existed, CotF, direwolves, skin changing etc to not be blown away by magic. It's part of their world. 

 

 

 

[Tyrion1991]

41 minutes ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

I think you have missed the mark here & I have to respectfully disagree. 

First - Mirri has ill intentions for those around her but there are plenty that argue that her actions are warranted. Prior to that she only ever healed people that we are aware of & seemed genuinely distressed over the townsfolk the khalasar slaughter. 

Melisandre has very good, even if possibly misguided, intentions for Stannis. I'll agree she doesn't have great intentions with everyone i.e. the wildlings, Cressen but to be fair Cressen was trying to poison her. 

I don't remember anything particularly malicious from Moqorro but could be just not remembering. 

Maggy didn't harm anyone, she merely told their fortunes like they asked her. It was the girls who mistreated Maggy, particularly Cersei.

The verdict is still out on Quaithe & 3ER but they haven't given Dany or Bran any obvious reasons to distrust them yet. 

 

How is it obvious they should be killed & their problems would go away? Not hardly. The only problem Mirri caused for Dany is killing her husband & possibly unborn baby - not to say that isn't soul crushing but as far as political issues or ANY issues besides emotional ones Mirri had no hand in them. 

Hard to say about Stannis & Melisandre. I'm not sure that Stannis would be in any better position had he killed her though. 

Killing Maggy most definitely wouldn't have changed anything for Cersei. She just wouldn't know it was coming. 

Quaithe may very well be actually helping Dany but either way she hasn't made any decisions based on what Quaithe tells her, she can't understand most of it. 

Same with the 3ER - he may or may not be the cause of Brans issues but he hasn't given Bran any reason to mistrust him yet. 

Not all of them are sacrificing humans, at least not openly. Only Mel  (maybe Moqorro) & while I personally think Stannis is an idiot for doing what Mel says she does get results.

Daenerys doesn't take Quaithe or the HoU as gospel. What decisions has she made based on something coming from one of them alone? 

I don't think it's unnatural for people living in a world where dragons have existed, CotF, direwolves, skin changing etc to not be blown away by magic. It's part of their world. 

 

 

 

 

I am referring more to the fact that Mirri doesn’t act trust worthy. For example ominously saying “of course Khaleesi, I will help you” at the end of a chapter. She’s clearly shifty and doesn’t act like a normal person. She so blatantly is out to wreck Dany. Again, if I was doing a Pathfinder RP and I put that character in front of heroes they would just lynch her. 

My point is that they act like evil witches and warlocks. So, characters and people should reasonably view them with suspicion and hostility. If they have good intentions they’ve got a funny way of showing it.

If Dany had killed Miri immediately or just ignored her then Drogo and her child wouldn’t have died.

If Stannis had killed Mel he would be as he was in Storm, stuck on an island with no hope but with a lot less blood on his hands. Funny how trusting somebody who worships a Lovecraftian God is a bad idea.

Cersei’s paranoia from listening to Maggi becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. My point is she should have took one look at Maggy and been like “hell no.”

Quiathe is encouraging Dany to be paranoid and filling her head with creepy visions. It would not surprise me if Quiathe is pushing Dany into some sort of human sacrifice. 

We did read the same chapter where we have the corpse melted into his weir wood throne on piles of human bones beckoning Bran to drink deep from the darkness? Again, “hell no” is the natural response. Not “teach me what you know wise wizard”.

Mirri - “Only death can pay for life” Blood mage.

Mel - Burns people. Blood mage.

Moqorro - Think he burns some people to spur Vics ships. Part of Mels religion so very likely. Blood mage.

3 Crow - Looks at piles of human bones. Looks at reddish paste the kindly man wants me to eat. Wonders where Jojen has got to. Mistakes were made. Oh yeah, the tree he’s in bleeds blood.

These are all horrible people doing horrible things.

She embraces being a dragon at the end of dance as Q fills her head with visions. She takes seriously the warnings about the perfumed seneschal and the mummers dragon. She believes in the HoU vision of the slaves calling out to her when she rides out into them. 

You’re saying if one of these creepy people rocked up you would trust them? I keep bringing up the RPG point because most parties do not trust shifty characters. It should be reasonable that a normal person would accept them at face value. None of George’s mages do that. He seems to want to make a point of characters blindly trusting prophecy and magic.

I am not sure why there aren’t witch hunts to wipe out all the mages.