The Death Toll of Stannis (Serious Discussion)

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, kissdbyfire said:

One can argue that Renly having a personality change would work the same way

Renly doesn't need a personality change to agree to the idea though. Stannis does. Renly having a personality change doesn't effect Stannis not telling him what's going on for ages. Even if Renly has a personality change, Stannis is still maintaining silence for months so...

[kissdbyfire]

1 hour ago, Craving Peaches said:

Renly doesn't need a personality change to agree to the idea though. Stannis does. Renly having a personality change doesn't effect Stannis not telling him what's going on for ages. Even if Renly has a personality change, Stannis is still maintaining silence for months so...

That’s a straw man argument though. As I said, I wasn’t arguing about the merits of either one of their personalities or even anything specific, I just said that you can and will get a different result if you have a personality change in any of those involved in any given situation. 

[Craving Peaches]

7 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

As I said, I wasn’t arguing about the merits of either one of their personalities or even anything specific, I just said that you can and will get a different result if you have a personality change in any of those involved in any given situation. 

Ah, okay, I think I understand you point now. Sorry. I have not been 'on top' this morning. I stayed up too late...

[SeanF]

Overall, if one includes deaths by starvation, disease and exposure, as I think one should, then the death toll in WOTFK likely exceeds one million - based upon the estimates given by @Wertheadand @Ranof an overall pre-war population of 40-80 million.  The treatment meted out to the Riverlands was absolutely vicious.  Large numbers of Northern, Western, Stormlands, Reach, and Riverlands soldiers perished - and the deaths of young men make it harder then to gather in the harvests, increasing the overall death toll.

The death toll at Astapor - from all causes - is perhaps c.1 -200,000 , at the hands of Dany, Cleon, and the slaver coalition.  Probably, large numbers fled into the city from the surrounding countryside as the slavers closed in.   I could imagine that perhaps 20,000 or so died when Meereen was taken.  There are probably additional deaths caused by slaver armies, ravaging the Astapori and Meereenese hinterlands. 

 

[KingAerys_II]

Stannis became mad after meeting Melisandre, he became obsessed to sit on the Iron Throne, he lacks common sense. 

Only a fool could hope to take Storm's End without enough troops, Renly superiority was the reason why Melisandre used the shadows to kill him. 

After the Battle of the Blackwater he wants to conquer Westeros starting from the hugest, coldest part of the Seven Kingdoms, a March from the Wall, pure madness

[SeanF]

8 minutes ago, KingAerys_II said:

Stannis became mad after meeting Melisandre, he became obsessed to sit on the Iron Throne, he lacks common sense. 

Only a fool could hope to take Storm's End without enough troops, Renly superiority was the reason why Melisandre used the shadows to kill him. 

After the Battle of the Blackwater he wants to conquer Westeros starting from the hugest, coldest part of the Seven Kingdoms, a March from the Wall, pure madness

Initially, he plans to conquer the North.  That's actually a reasonable plan.  He'll install a Stark at Winterfell, while claiming the kingship of the Seven Kingdoms.  The North is  good base, as it is very hard to invade.

[sweetsunray]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Deliberate deaths are those carried out by the soldiers under orders.  Here, the Lannisters take the lead, followed by the Ironborn.  Both factions chose war, without cause, and chose to kill civilians, without cause.  Next comes Robb, who initially waged war in self-defence, but then extended it to a revenge campaign in the West.  Stannis, so far as I can tell, never deliberately targeted civilians to be killed, which gives him the cleanest hands of the four.

I agree with this.

When Tywin makes his comment about chopping the head of a snake to limit casualties, pretending that was what he was doing, then it's galling some people actually fall for his hipocritical argument. If there's one guy who loves and consistently uses excess violence towards innocents deliberately, it damn fucking Tywin.

Stannis ends up using the same philosophy, but at least he limits his casualties to the minimum: Renly, Penrose. Everybody else he actually executed so far was for treason or breaking the law, or got killed in action of war. We may abhor the execution method and it being framed in a religious sacrifice, but if he had chopped their heads of, we'd shrug at it. We may abhor the use of magical assassin or even a human assassin under flag of truce, but it's far less bloody for the men who were levied as well as the smallfolk.

Tarly alone has just way more blood on his hands after the murder of Renly: he has the levies of the Florents slaughtered. 2000 foot slaughtered because their lord went over to Stannis.

I don't even agree with Renly's argument how Stannis wasn't liked and therefore co. Littlefinger doesn't like Stannis. That's actually a positive. Mace Tyrell didn't like Stannis. And I can only think of one reason really why Mace doesn't: because Stannis didn't surrender SE, not even after a year long siege. People make fun of Mance because of it, and he pettily resents the man who withstood him and hurt his vanity (not even pride). It's not as if Robert favored the Tyrells, despite his charm and warmth - Tyrells didn't have any representative in Robert's council. 

I notice that Stannis is somehow capable from acquiring men who are very loyal to him, more than Renly really: many of his king's men and the castellans on Dragonstone and SE. They've been through loss, defeat, shit, have potential hostages in the Stormlands, etc. It may not be Stark level inspiring, but he has a good core of men that are loyal to him, without having a rainbow or white cloak for it.

The only ones who stayed loyal to Renly were the people in love with Renly: Loras and Brienne... Everybody else was more or less an opportunist, some more benign than others: going from glory and fame (with many of his KG), for a high position at court (excepting Garlan here). Being popular with opportunists isn't much of a metric for long term viability. i don't think Renly ever accounted for that.

As for prolonging a war and biggest body count, there's only one man very high on the top of it all: Tywin Lannister.

 

[Craving Peaches]

21 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The death toll at Astapor - from all causes - is perhaps c.1 -200,000 , at the hands of Dany, Cleon, and the slaver coalition.  Probably, large numbers fled into the city from the surrounding countryside as the slavers closed in.   I could imagine that perhaps 20,000 or so died when Meereen was taken.  There are probably additional deaths caused by slaver armies, ravaging the Astapori and Meereenese hinterlands. 

I would put the total population of Astapor in the low hundreds of thousands. We know the city has been in decline for a while and is not as populous as Lys, Pentos or Qarth. I also recon Meereen would be more populous. I think Braavos has more than Pentos, and people were estimating Braavos to have ~1 million, so I think King's Landing and Oldtown would also be larger than Astapor. I estimate roughly ten thousand died in the initial attack, which was not serious enough to depopulate the city, which is why so many were left to starve and die in the slaver attack. So I would probably put 100,000 as the upper limit on Daenerys' casualties.

[Craving Peaches]

18 minutes ago, KingAerys_II said:

Stannis became mad after meeting Melisandre, he became obsessed to sit on the Iron Throne, he lacks common sense. 

Only a fool could hope to take Storm's End without enough troops, Renly superiority was the reason why Melisandre used the shadows to kill him. 

After the Battle of the Blackwater he wants to conquer Westeros starting from the hugest, coldest part of the Seven Kingdoms, a March from the Wall, pure madness

All indications point to him starving but I am not sure if that is actually intended by the author.

[sweetsunray]

2 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

I really doubt the Tyrells would join Stannis.

Agreed. Mace Tyrell would rather eat shit than being commanded by Stannis. And I do reckon that Renly's assessment of this would be correct, although Renly over generalized this.

And I also agree Stannis made a huge mistake by remaining mum on Dragonstone during aGoT. Had he reached out starting a line of communication from Dragonstone to WF directly, that might have had some influence on either Ned or Robb afterwards.

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, sweetsunray said:

Agreed. Mace Tyrell would rather eat shit than being commanded by Stannis. And I do reckon that Renly's assessment of this would be correct, although Renly over generalized this.

And I also agree Stannis made a huge mistake by remaining mum on Dragonstone during aGoT. Had he reached out starting a line of communication from Dragonstone to WF directly, that might have had some influence on either Ned or Robb afterwards.

If Stannis just spoke to Ned or even Renly or Barristan early things could have been better because they would all be able to coordinate before things kicked off into full-scale war. Might even have been able to prevent it.

[sweetsunray]

17 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

If Stannis just spoke to Ned or even Renly or Barristan early things could have been better because they would all be able to coordinate before things kicked off into full-scale war. Might even have been able to prevent it.

I think that I hold Stannis partially responsible for Robb's impasse who to declare for after capturing RR. Robb's first inclination was Stannis. But Stannis hadn't declared himself whatsoever to anybody at all yet. Only Renly had. And Renly not being the next brother after Robert, it legally having to be Stannis, made him reticent in declaring for Renly. And his response makes sense not just from a legal point, but he does have an assumed acknowledged bastard brother of the similar age. Robb cannot risk setting a precedent for Northerners to just pick and choose which Stark brother they want as lord, from his very personal pov. He couldn't declare for Stannis, and he didn't want to declare for Renly without knowing what was up with Stannis. And then Greatjon solved the dilemma in the short term by saying "fuck the Iron Throne and who gets to sit their ass on that horrible thing. You fight for you own kingdom," which was after all what he was sort of doing already - fighting for the North and the Riverlands.

Edited September 7, 2023 by sweetsunray

[SeanF]

39 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

I agree with this.

When Tywin makes his comment about chopping the head of a snake to limit casualties, pretending that was what he was doing, then it's galling some people actually fall for his hipocritical argument. If there's one guy who loves and consistently uses excess violence towards innocents deliberately, it damn fucking Tywin.

Stannis ends up using the same philosophy, but at least he limits his casualties to the minimum: Renly, Penrose. Everybody else he actually executed so far was for treason or breaking the law, or got killed in action of war. We may abhor the execution method and it being framed in a religious sacrifice, but if he had chopped their heads of, we'd shrug at it. We may abhor the use of magical assassin or even a human assassin under flag of truce, but it's far less bloody for the men who were levied as well as the smallfolk.

Tarly alone has just way more blood on his hands after the murder of Renly: he has the levies of the Florents slaughtered. 2000 foot slaughtered because their lord went over to Stannis.

I don't even agree with Renly's argument how Stannis wasn't liked and therefore co. Littlefinger doesn't like Stannis. That's actually a positive. Mace Tyrell didn't like Stannis. And I can only think of one reason really why Mace doesn't: because Stannis didn't surrender SE, not even after a year long siege. People make fun of Mance because of it, and he pettily resents the man who withstood him and hurt his vanity (not even pride). It's not as if Robert favored the Tyrells, despite his charm and warmth - Tyrells didn't have any representative in Robert's council. 

I notice that Stannis is somehow capable from acquiring men who are very loyal to him, more than Renly really: many of his king's men and the castellans on Dragonstone and SE. They've been through loss, defeat, shit, have potential hostages in the Stormlands, etc. It may not be Stark level inspiring, but he has a good core of men that are loyal to him, without having a rainbow or white cloak for it.

The only ones who stayed loyal to Renly were the people in love with Renly: Loras and Brienne... Everybody else was more or less an opportunist, some more benign than others: going from glory and fame (with many of his KG), for a high position at court (excepting Garlan here). Being popular with opportunists isn't much of a metric for long term viability. i don't think Renly ever accounted for that.

As for prolonging a war and biggest body count, there's only one man very high on the top of it all: Tywin Lannister.

 

Even with the Red Wedding, the death toll far exceeded a dozen at dinner.  Thousands were murdered.  As you say, Tywin is a liar.

Everything he does is excessive, from downing women and children, to having Tysha raped, to sacking a city that admitted him peacefully, to the treatment of the Riverlands.

No protagonist shrinks from making the smallfolk suffer in war, but some of them try to limit the harm, and punish wanton murder and rape among their own men.  Tywin maximises the harm.

[sweetsunray]

56 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Tywin maximises the harm.

Yes, and it puts him in a position where a peaceful resolution cannot be reached. If he'd had restricted his aggression in the riverlands to capturing castles and taking hostages, instead of "kill em all, rape em all, burn it all", he might have been much closer to come to some sort of deal with Robb even after Joff chopped Ned's head off. He's just committed to complete annihilation from the get go. He can't even see how it limits his options.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

Yes, and it puts him in a position where a peaceful resolution cannot be reached. If he'd had restricted his aggression in the riverlands to capturing castles and taking hostages, instead of "kill em all, rape em all, burn it all", he might have been much closer to come to some sort of deal with Robb even after Joff chopped Ned's head off. He's just committed to complete annihilation from the get go. He can't even see how it limits his options.

I guess Tywin is so used to power that he thinks he can get away with anything.

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, sweetsunray said:

Yes, and it puts him in a position where a peaceful resolution cannot be reached. If he'd had restricted his aggression in the riverlands to capturing castles and taking hostages, instead of "kill em all, rape em all, burn it all", he might have been much closer to come to some sort of deal with Robb even after Joff chopped Ned's head off. He's just committed to complete annihilation from the get go. He can't even see how it limits his options.

Tywin is perpetuating the circle of vengeance.

[Floki of the Ironborn]

I feel like GRRM made a huge mistake having Stannis know about the incest babies before Ned figures it out. It makes Stannis into a much more inconsistent character who, as it's been pointed out, sits on vital info which would have averted the war if only more people had known about it. 

GRRM needed Stannis to avoid the military coup in AGOT, but he also needed someone other than Ned to know about Cersei and Robert's kids. Picking Stannis might have made sense in the moment, but I don't think it works in hindsight.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Floki of the Ironborn

[sweetsunray]

43 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I guess Tywin is so used to power that he thinks he can get away with anything.

But it's always been part of his strategy even before he was Lord of CR. Yes, the Reynes and Tarbecks were insolent, but he also seemed to have deliberately provoked them into rebelling, when he decided to put things back straight, while his father was alive, going even straight against his father's will or decisions. Diplomacy was never his thing.

Edited September 7, 2023 by sweetsunray

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

4 minutes ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

I feel like GRRM made a huge mistake having Stannis know about the incest babies before Ned figures it out. It makes Stannis into a much more inconsistent character who, as it's been pointed out, sits on vital info which would have averted the war if only more people had known about it. 

Yeah, I always found it a bit confusing. The storyline of Ned and Jon Arryn makes it seem like a shocking discovery, but the way other characters talk about it makes it look like it was an open secret at court.

[Kal-L]

Tywin is a perverse individual who push people to their limits to "justify" his need dominate and crush them. He's been doing this all his life - from conflict his rebellious vassals, to the Lord of Duskendale, to the Starks and and finally with his own flesh -, with that feeling that he was above all men.

That's why his ending was unsatisfactory to me, he was never forced to ponder on whether he reached too far. He died indirectly through Varys' hand without having ever humbled. The world learned that at the end of the day Tywin Lannister was just a man, but Tywin himself never learned.

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Kal-L