Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Davos III, ASOS

“I am the king’s man, and I will make no peace without his leave.”

Synopsis: Davos has his first dialogue with Polemarchus and his second dialogue with Adeimantus.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

Political Analysis:

As much as I like the Odysseian themes of the first two Davos chapters, it’s in Davos III where we get to the heart of what we remember as Davos’ ASOS narrative. It’s a fascinatingly minimalist chapter, with the stage stripped down to a bare prisoner cell, the lighting a single torch, and the main cast reduced to three people. And yet from this chapter, we get the first part of a dialogue where our smuggler-philosopher will confront his gaolers and wrestle with weighty questions: what makes for a just ruler and a good society? What is good and evil and why do they exist? Should ethics be evaluated on the outcome of one’s actions or the righteousness of one’s methods?

Built With the Stones of Hell

Setting the stage for his debate with Melisandre, Davos III begins with a description of his cell that emphasizes stark dualities of light and darkness, heat and cold, and (by extension) ice and fire:

The cell was warmer than any cell had a right to be.

It was dark, yes. Flickering orange light fell through the ancient iron bars from the torch in the sconce on the wall outside, but the back half of the cell remained drenched in gloom…

But Davos could not complain of chill. The smooth stony passages beneath the great mass of Dragonstone were always warm, and Davos had often heard it said they grew warmer the farther down one went. He was well below the castle, he judged, and the wall of his cell often felt warm to his touch when he pressed a palm against it. Perhaps the old tales were true, and Dragonstone was built with the stones of hell.

There’s a lot going on with this simple, binary location: in addition to setting up the Manichean themes that will be so central later, there’s an element of the cthonic here. Davos is buried deep below the earth, close to the land of the dead, in a cell whose warm walls make up a symbolic womb from which he will be reborn. There’s also something of a similarity to Plato’s Cave, in that the narrow confines of the cell reduces Davos’ world down to bore stone walls and a single torch in the darkness so that he may better comprehend the true nature of things, the metaphysical truth that hovers above history and politics alike (more on this later when we get to Melisandre).

However, because this cell was carved into the rock of Dragonstone, its hellish qualities invoke an important aspect of ASOIAF’s metaphysical geography. As the WOIAF notes:

“Hot springs such as the one beneath Winterfell have been shown to be heated by the furnaces of the world—the same fires that made the Fourteen Flames or the smoking mountain of Dragonstone.”

The law of conservation of detail alone suggests that it’s hardly an accident that the homes of the houses who symbolize ice and fire have this shared bond, or that these homes contain a bulwark against the White Walkers on the one hand and an arsenal of dragonglass on the other. As with the previous chapter, this underlying symmetry rather than absolute opposition suggests synthesis rather than dichotomy…something else to keep in mind when we get to Davos’ conversation with Melisandre.

Mind and Body

As with Davos I, this chapter starts with our protagonist in danger, a prisoner in the captivity of his enemies, accused of attempted murder. However, in a sense, this is a false danger, a clue that Davos’ story is not going to end up like the last POV hurled into a dungeon:

He was sick when they first brought him here. The cough that had plagued him since the battle grew worse, and a fever took hold of him as well. His lips broke with blood blisters, and the warmth of the cell did not stop his shivering. I will not linger long, he remembered thinking. I will die soon, here in the dark.

Davos soon found that he was wrong about that, as about so much else. Dimly he remembered gentle hands and a firm voice, and young Maester Pylos looking down on him. He was given hot garlic broth to drink, and milk of the poppy to take away his aches and shivers. The poppy made him sleep and while he slept they leeched him to drain off the bad blood. Or so he surmised, by the leech marks on his arms when he woke. Before very long the coughing stopped, the blisters vanished, and his broth had chunks of whitefish in it, and carrots and onions as well. And one day he realized that he felt stronger than he had since Black Betha shattered beneath him and flung him in the river.

Rather than letting him rot in an oubliette, or dragging him out to be unceremoniously executed, Stannis instead sends Davos medical aid and food. Not only does this serve the purpose of restoring Davos to fighting weight for the first time since Blackwater, but it’s also a clue that Davos has a way out of this cell by appealing over the heads of Axell Florent or even Melisandre.

However, man cannot live by lamprey pie alone, and what Davos lacks in his cell is a purpose, a reason to live now that his quest for revenge is over.

Neither sun nor moon shone in the dungeons; no windows pierced the thick stone walls. The only way to tell day from night was by his gaolers. Neither man would speak to him, though he knew they were no mutes; sometimes he heard them exchange a few brusque words as the watch was changing. They would not even tell him their names, so he gave them names of his own. The short strong one he called Porridge, the stooped sallow one Lamprey, for the pie. He marked the passage of days by the meals they brought, and by the changing of the torches in the sconce outside his cell.

A man grows lonely in the dark, and hungers for the sound of a human voice. Davos would talk to the gaolers whenever they came to his cell, whether to bring him food or change his slops pail. He knew they would be deaf to pleas for freedom or mercy; instead he asked them questions, hoping perhaps one day one might answer. “What news of the war?” he asked, and “Is the king well?” He asked after his son Devan, and the Princess Shireen, and Salladhor Saan. “What is the weather like?” he asked, and “Have the autumn storms begun yet? Do ships still sail the narrow sea?”

…They do not mean to let me die, he realized. They are keeping me alive, for some purpose of their own. He did not like to think what that might be. Lord Sunglass had been confined in the cells beneath Dragonstone for a time, as had Ser Hubard Rambton’s sons; all of them had ended on the pyre. I should have given myself to the sea, Davos thought as he sat staring at the torch beyond the bars. Or let the sail pass me by, to perish on my rock. I would sooner feed crabs than flames.

When Aristotle argued that man is a political animal, he pointed to the fact that nature gave humans speech, which allows them both to form cooperative communities and to communicate moral concepts necessary for the functioning of a city-state. Davos’ instinctive reaching out to his gaolers speaks not just to a desire for human contact but to a specific desire for connection to the political world. Without that specific purpose, Davos succumbs to desire, mentally returning to the rock he began to the book on.

At this lowest point, he’s about to find purpose in the least likely venue.

The First Dialogue: Melisandre

Melisandre arrives in the narrative in a fashion that immediately evokes the themes established in the outside of the chapter, making it clear from the outset that she is implicated in the metaphor:

Then one night as he was finishing his supper, Davos felt a queer flush come over him. He glanced up through the bars, and there she stood in shimmering scarlet with her great ruby at her throat, her red eyes gleaming as bright as the torch that bathed her.

“Melisandre,” he said, with a calm he did not feel.

“Onion Knight,” she replied, just as calmly, as if the two of them had met on a stair or in the yard, and were exchanging polite greetings. “Are you well?”

“Better than I was.”

“Do you lack for anything?”

“My king. My son. I lack for them.” He pushed the bowl aside and stood. “Have you come to burn me?”

Even before she will directly liken herself to the light source in the room, Melisandre appears like a sudden burst of fire, bringing literal heat and color to a previously austere setting. Incidentally, I wonder whether Davos’ “queer flush” is a physical response to Melisandre’s unnatural body temperature that we learned about in ADWD, or a premonition of the uncanny. (I’m also curious how Melisandre suddenly appeared in the cell without Davos knowing, although I think that the mechanic to that prestige is more likely to be that Melisandre can get her hands on a key to the dungeon and is good at moving stealthily, perhaps aided by a minor glamour.)

This initial exchange sets up many of the themes of the dialogue: Davos is described as a man on the mend, who has salvaged himself from the shipwreck of his life and will rebound to more than he was before, but also as a man who is in want, who has a void in his life caused by the death of his sons and is looking to fill it up with a renewed commitment to his king. At the same time, Melisandre is simultaneously a participant in the debate, the subject of the debate since no small part of it will revolve around who she is and what she wants, and an Inquisitorial judge whose will can send men to a fiery death.

This fear and hostility sends their discourse in an interesting direction, because Davos’ mixed fear and hostility towards the woman he believes burnt his son and who he believes (quite reasonably) might burn him as well has to be dealt with before any other topic can be addressed. Thus, despite the fact that Melisandre has all the power here, she has to justify herself to the prisoner:

Her strange red eyes studied him through the bars. “This is a bad place, is it not? A dark place, and foul. The good sun does not shine here, nor the bright moon.” She lifted a hand toward the torch in the wall sconce. “This is all that stands between you and the darkness, Onion Knight. This little fire, this gift of R’hllor. Shall I put it out?”

“No.” He moved toward the bars. “Please.” He did not think he could bear that, to be left alone in utter blackness with no one but the rats for company.

The red woman’s lips curved upward in a smile. “So you have come to love the fire, it would seem.”

“I need the torch.” His hands opened and closed. I will not beg her. I will not.

“I am like this torch, Ser Davos. We are both instruments of R’hllor. We were made for a single purpose—to keep the darkness at bay. Do you believe that?”

“No.” Perhaps he should have lied, and told her what she wanted to hear, but Davos was too accustomed to speaking truth.

To me, this passage gets directly to the heart of why Melisandre is the most misunderstood character in ASOIAF. On the face of it, she is genuinely threatening here: not only has she had Davos arrested and imprisoned, but she has shown she will burn people at the stake for opposing her, and here she’s threatening him with the primal fear of perpetual darkness. However, what she’s actually doing here is trying to reach out to Davos through a parable of the torch, to explain that like fire she can both harm and protect, and that therefore both she herself and her god are ultimately benevolent forces in a hostile universe. And even though she’s doing so in a rather coercive fashion (Melisandre is not evil, but she is not nice), her POV in ADWD confirms that her outward presentation and inward self-image are remarkably close, that she is sincere in her belief that she is a “champion of light and life.”

At the same time, this passage also is a hint to what Davos’ role in this dialogue and his larger ASOS narrative; he’s not the righteous avenger, but rather he’s the truth-teller par excellence, the man who will speak his mind even when it’s not in his best interest to do so. The question then becomes, what is Davos’ truth? In the passage above, we start with a negative; Davos doesn’t believe that Melisandre is the righteous instrument of R’hllor’s will in the war against cosmic darkness. This builds towards an exchange where Davos sets forward his thesis about Melisandre and she, taking up the Socratic position for a change, tries to knock down his thesis:

“You are the mother of darkness. I saw that under Storm’s End, when you gave birth before my eyes.”

“Is the brave Ser Onions so frightened of a passing shadow? Take heart, then. Shadows only live when given birth by light, and the king’s fires burn so low I dare not draw off any more to make another son. It might well kill him.” Melisandre moved closer. “With another man, though…a man whose flames still burn hot and high…if you truly wish to serve your king’s cause, come to my chamber one night. I could give you pleasure such as you have never known, and with your life-fire I could make…”

“…a horror.” Davos retreated from her. “I want no part of you, my lady. Or your god. May the Seven protect me.”

Melisandre sighed. “They did not protect Guncer Sunglass. He prayed thrice each day, and bore seven seven-pointed stars upon his shield, but when R’hllor reached out his hand his prayers turned to screams, and he burned. Why cling to these false gods?”

“I have worshiped them all my life.”

“All your life, Davos Seaworth? As well say it was so yesterday.” She shook her head sadly.

So who is Melisandre; is she the “mother of darkness,” as Davos claims? We’ve seen her give birth to “horror” before, and far from attempting to display or downplay this image, she’s eager to do so again, as we see from her offer to Davos. Indeed, this blatant come-on really leans into the witch-as-temptress trope – the original Circe, Nimue and Morgause and Morgan Le Fay from Arthurian myth, Lilith from the Babylonian Talmud, the Whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelations, and so on – who seek to seduce men, lead them from the true path of virtue and approved sex roles, and make use of their seed (in this case, quite literally) to pervert nature and perform evil magic.

Or is Melisandre a warrior for the lord? Her main counter-argument to Davos’ accusation is that “shadows only live when given birth by light,” paralleling her earlier argument that “Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.” (More on the idea that R’hllor is responsible for shadow-children assassins in a bit.) And the equinanmity with which she describes Guncer Sunglass’ immolation as a Elijah-like contest between gods marks her out as that most dangerous kind of true believer whose faith in the primacy of the soul over the flesh excuses any number of wrecked human bodies. R’hllor will know his own, it seems.

Or is Melisandre something in between, at the same time a true believer and a pragmatist? After all, as much as Melisandre claims otherwise, we know that shadowbinding is not exclusively associated with R’hllor, and since she’s the only red priest who uses this form of magic (Thoros, Moqorro, and Bennero use overlapping but distinct magics), the evidence leans towards her having learned shadowbinding in Asshai rather from the Red Temples. At the same time, we know from her ADWD POV chapter that Melisandre is not a corrupt, hypocritical cynic who clothes herself in the raimant of piety for personal gain, but rather a genuinely sincere and pious woman, who uses what she calls “the feeble tricks of alchemists and pyromancers” as a way to overawe and convert the credulous to the true faith. Indeed, if Melisandre has a flaw, it’s that she has a kind of pious vanity, that she sees herself as an instrument of the divine whose actions are justified (morally and practically) by prophecy and eschatology.

Indeed, Melisandre’s main justification in this chapter is through an appeal to a higher morality. We see this in her discussion of Guncer Sunglass, which she reduces to spiritual might making right. Likewise, when she describes Davos’ life as a mere blink in the eyes of the gods or speaks of her assassins as “passing shadows,” there is an implicit argument that Davos’ human considerations of right and wrong, natural and unnatural, are trumpted by a more profound understanding of the cosmos.

And to me, this is what differentiates between Melisandre the villain and Melisandre the anti-villain, in that Melisandre uses evil means for good ends, both in the past (the shadow assassins) and now (as we will see with Edric Storm). As a meditation on utiliarianism, she’s a mirror image of Varys – he’s a eunuch, she’s a temptress; he’s the enemy of all wizards, she’s a sorceress – but they are both happy to wade through oceans of blood to save the world.

We Stand At Armageddon and We Battle for the Lord 

It’s not immediately clear whether Davos buys Melisandre’s counter-argument, but what is clear is that she’s established enough trust that their dialogue can move on to her character to her beliefs, as Melisandre testifies (in the evangelical sense) in the hope of enlightening her counterpart:

“You have never feared to speak the truth to kings, why do you lie to yourself? Open your eyes, ser knight.”

“What is it you would have me see?”

“The way the world is made. The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good.” She took a step toward him. “Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war.”

“The war?” asked Davos.

“The war,” she affirmed. “There are two, Onion Knight. Not seven, not one, not a hundred or a thousand. Two! Do you think I crossed half the world to put yet another vain king on yet another empty throne? The war has been waged since time began, and before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand. On one side is R’hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Against him stands the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror. Ours is not a choice between Baratheon and Lannister, between Greyjoy and Stark. It is death we choose, or life. Darkness, or light.” She clasped the bars of his cell with her slender white hands. The great ruby at her throat seemed to pulse with its own radiance. “So tell me, Ser Davos Seaworth, and tell me truly—does your heart burn with the shining light of R’hllor? Or is it black and cold and full of worms?” She reached through the bars and laid three fingers upon his breast, as if to feel the truth of him through flesh and wool and leather.

“My heart,” Davos said slowly, “is full of doubts.”

As I’ve said before, Melisandre’s worldview is profoundly Manichean, in four distinct areas.

• First, she separates the universe into dichotomies; “night” and “day,” “black” and “white,” “ice” and “fire,” etc. are not merely binaries, but that the first category is inherently “evil” and the second inherently “good.”
• Second, these oppositions are not merely a category of ethics or morals but of cosmology: these sharp divisions are “the way the world is made,” because everything that is good in the world was created by the good god and everything that was bad was created by their evil counterpart. (This dualistic philosophy provides a neat solution to the problem of evil, which is why it shows up in so many historical religions from Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism and Mithraism, Catharism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism within Christianity, Druzism and Sufism in the orbit of Islam, to various Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist sects, although it does undermine the omnipotence of God, hence why it was rejected in most mainstream monotheistic traditions.)
• Third,  this cosmology is linked to an eschatology: the good god and the evil god are in conflict (“The war has been waged since time began”) and at the end of days there will be a final battle between them, which will determine either the salvation or destruction of everything.
• Fourth, this eschatology is linked to an assertion of free will, that human beings choose freely between the good god and the evil god (“before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand”). This theory imbues individual moral decisions with universal significance, for their choice might decide victory for either host on the field of Armageddon.

In so far as authorial intent matters, however, it’s worth noting that Melisandre’s lists of opposites overlaps pretty thoroughly with the list from Bran II – night and day, love and hate, ice and fire –  which is something of a clue that the red priestess is wrong, not so much about a conflict between life and death, but about the prophecy of the prince who was promised being about opposition rather than synthesis.

credit to mdp

Melisandre’s revelation here has a twofold purpose, appropriately enough. On the one hand, much of her justification for her actions flows from the existential stakes of the metaphysical war hovering over the secular war: “Do you think I crossed half the world to put yet another vain king on yet another empty throne?” In this, Melisandre’s approach resembles that of the classic mystery cults, which used multiple layers of doctrine to intensify devotion as initiates were made aware of the deeper truths. (More on this later.) On the other hand, Melisandre is also acting as an Inquisitor, assessing which side Davos is on:

Melisandre sighed. “Ahhhh, Davos. The good knight is honest to the last, even in his day of darkness. It is well you did not lie to me. I would have known. The Other’s servants oft hide black hearts in gaudy light, so R’hllor gives his priests the power to see through falsehoods.” She stepped lightly away from the cell. “Why did you mean to kill me?”

“I will tell you,” said Davos, “if you will tell me who betrayed me.” It could only have been Salladhor Saan, and yet even now he prayed it was not so.

The red woman laughed. “No one betrayed you, onion knight. I saw your purpose in my flames.”

The flames. “If you can see the future in these flames, how is it that we burned upon the Blackwater? You gave my sons to the fire…my sons, my ship, my men, all burning…”

Melisandre shook her head. “You wrong me, onion knight. Those were no fires of mine. Had I been with you, your battle would have had a different ending. But His Grace was surrounded by unbelievers, and his pride proved stronger than his faith. His punishment was grievous, but he has learned from his mistake.”

Were my sons no more than a lesson for a king, then? Davos felt his mouth tighten.

Melisandre’s rhetorical strategy is another example of how she straddles the line between religious fervor and pragmatism. On the one hand, her actions are driven by her absolute belief in her god and the visions he sends her, whether on something as minor as Davos’ attempt to assassinate her, to the outcome of the Battle of Blackwater, to the end of days. Notably, Melisandre sees herself not merely as the passive recipient of prophecy, but as someone who can reshape destiny through her actions. It is this millenarianism that allows her to reintrepret a massive setback at Blackwater as a test of faith. On the other hand, Melisandre is also testing Davos to see whether they can work together or whether he’s going to keep trying to kill her – which suggests that she might already know (by mystical or mundane methods) that he’s going to be named Hand of the King.

By contrast, Davos’ position is grounded in his identity as a man who “has never feared to speak the truth to kings,” which as we see above is the reason he passes Melisandre’s test and likely saves his life. But rather than accepting Melisandre’s truth at face value, Davos insists on remaining a skeptic.

from the Cartoon History of the Universe, by Larry Gonick

Even with his heart on the metaphorical scales, Davos insists on a position of epistemic doubt, echoing the humble stonemason’s son above, whose rhetorical strategy he employs in this chapter. (Whether or not one can identify Davos with Socrates’ philosophy is a trickier matter, depending on one’s poisition on the Socratic problem.) Indeed, it is his ordinary humanity that allows Davos to hold his ground (even as he gradually relinquishes blaming Melisandre for the fire): because of the loss of his sons in the Battle of the Blackwater, he is unwilling to buy into the providential narrative which would consign their deaths as mere collateral damage in the War for the Dawn.

The Messiah or a Naughty Boy?

The dialogue between Davos and Melisandre ends with a discussion of the person they are ultimately fighting over – Stannis Baratheon – and their competing conceptions of his identity and purpose:

“It is night in your Seven Kingdoms now,” the red woman went on, “but soon the sun will rise again. The war continues, Davos Seaworth, and some will soon learn that even an ember in the ashes can still ignite a great blaze. The old maester looked at Stannis and saw only a man. You see a king. You are both wrong. He is the Lord’s chosen, the warrior of fire. I have seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames. The flames do not lie, else you would not be here. It is written in prophecy as well. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. The bleeding star has come and gone, and Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt. Stannis Baratheon is Azor Ahai reborn!” Her red eyes blazed like twin fires, and seemed to stare deep into his soul. “You do not believe me. You doubt the truth of R’hllor even now….yet have served him all the same, and will serve him again. I shall leave you here to think on all that I have told you. And because R’hllor is the source of all good, I shall leave the torch as well.”

With a smile and swirl of scarlet skirts, she was gone. Only her scent lingered after. That, and the torch. Davos lowered himself to the floor of the cell and wrapped his arms about his knees. The shifting torchlight washed over him. Once Melisandre’s footsteps faded away, the only sound was the scrabbling of rats.

As fits her mystery cult methodology, Melisandre’s position is many-layered (not unlike an onion). Melisandre’s confidently proclaims the second coming of Stannis Baratheon (“the sun will rise again. The war continues, Davos Seaworth, and some will soon learn that even an ember in the ashes can still ignite a great blaze) because she can see Stannis’ metaphysical self – his sacred body, in the parlance of monarchical theory – whereas Davos only sees his secular self. At the same time, there’s an interesting tension between the way that Melisandre depicts Stannis as a holy figure to be venerated here, and the extremely instrumental way she talked about his life-fire above; one does not normally make use of one’s messiah.

These is a similar tension with regards to the prophecy that is Melisandre’s foundation for her belief in Stannis. Melisandre believes because “I have seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames. The flames do not lie.” (This faith in her own ability to see the unerring truth in the flames is something we see at length in ADWD.) In addition to her own prophecies, “it is written in prophecy as well,” but the prophecy recorded in “ancient books of Asshai” has changed since we last heard it in Davos I of ACOK. While the emphasis on the “bleeding star” and the “darkness” are the same, we see a shift from “Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes” as the proof of Stannis being Azor Ahai reborn to a focus on Azor Ahai coming “to wake dragons out of stone,” which hasn’t been mentioned outright before (although Cressen’s discussion with Shireen do point in that direction). There is also a tension between whether Melisandre knows that Stannis is Azor Ahai because she has seen him leading the fight in the final battle (which is probably accurate) or because “Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt” from which the prophecied one is to be born (which, to the extent that alt and smoke does refer to Dragonstone, probably refers to Daenerys).

However, I do think we get the unvarnished truth when it comes to how she views Davos. Even though “you do not believe me. You doubt the truth of R’hllor even now,” Melisandre sees him as a cross between a virtuous pagan and a Doubting Thomas, because Davos has “served him all the same, and will serve him again.” (Which suggests that Melisandre’s visions of Davos in the future are partially guiding her thinking here as she tries, Doctor Strange-like, to bend fate to victory.) And this too has to be added to whether we view Melisandre as a villain, because her merciful attitude towards Davos will continue even after he opposes her on Edric Storm.

But as for Davos, what conclusions does he come to at the end of their dialogue?

Ice and fire, he thought. Black and white. Dark and light. Davos could not deny the power of her god. He had seen the shadow crawling from Melisandre’s womb, and the priestess knew things she had no way of knowing. She saw my purpose in her flames. It was good to learn that Salla had not sold him, but the thought of the red woman spying out his secrets with her fires disquieted him more than he could say. And what did she mean when she said that I had served her god and would serve him again? He did not like that either.

In the end, Davos can’t reject Melisandre’s position outright. As a good empiricist (and/or Doubting Thomas), he can clearly see that Melisandre has supernatural power beyond his comprehension. (Whether that power comes from a conscious entity or secular magic is a question beyond Davos’ scope of experience or understanding.) At the same time, Davos can stand on the rock of his pain to retain his skepticism about Melisandre’s claims, both about R’hllor’s metaphysical truth and about Stannis’ purpose in life.

As we will see, Davos will construct a different rationale for Stannis’ kingship that does not rely on being the destined savior of mankind, and look for a different way to save the world that doesn’t rely on blood sacrifices and dragons woken from stone. (Whether this counts as another form of synthesis or an outright rejection is something we’ll have to keep an eye on going forward.)

credit to Chris Pritchard

The Second Dialogue: Alester Florent

Davos’ second dialogue works as a direct parallel and compliment to his first. Whereas the former focused on metaphysics and morality, his debate with Alester is much more in an Aristotelian vein on politics and ethics. What is duty and what is treason? How should an officer of the state balance their private interest against the general good? When should the state make peace or make war, and for what purposes?

Alester’s entrance immediately disturbs the secluded status quo in ways that point to the future of Davos’ narrative:

This was new, a change in his unchanging world. The noise was coming from the left, where the steps led up to daylight. He could hear a man’s voice, pleading and shouting.

“…madness!” the man was saying as he came into view, dragged along between two guardsmen with fiery hearts on their breasts. Porridge went before them, jangling a ring of keys, and Ser Axell Florent walked behind. “Axell,” the prisoner said desperately, “for the love you bear me, unhand me! You cannot do this, I’m no traitor.” He was an older man, tall and slender, with silvery grey hair, a pointed beard, and a long elegant face twisted in fear. “Where is Selyse, where is the queen? I demand to see her. The Others take you all! Release me!”

Ser Axell gave the gaoler a curt nod. “Let the traitors enjoy each other’s company.”

“I am no traitor!” screeched the prisoner as Porridge was unlocking the door.

The dominant theme here is a sense of threat – men being hurled into prison, accusations of treason being thrown around, ties of family loyalty being broken for political advantage, all the overtones of a coup d’état. And in the form of Axell Florent and his thugs “with fiery hearts on their breasts,” who represent the institutional evil side of R’hllor, we get Davos’ new antagonists to replace Melisandre. Underneath, however, we see a hint of an avenue of escape, “where the steps led up to daylight.” When the wheel of fortune turns rapidly, a man of twists and turns can take advantage of political change to liberate himself.

Introduced demanding to speak to a manager and shouting “don’t you know who I am,” Alester Florent is a perfect foil for Davos:

Though he was plainly dressed, in grey wool doublet and black breeches, his speech marked him as highborn. His birth will not serve him here, thought Davos.

Porridge swung the bars wide, Ser Axell gave a nod, and the guards flung their charge in headlong. The man stumbled and might have fallen, but Davos caught him. At once he wrenched away and staggered back toward the door, only to have it slammed in his pale, pampered face. “No,” he shouted. “Nooooo.” All the strength suddenly left his legs, and he slid slowly to the floor, clutching at the iron bars. Ser Axell, Porridge, and the guards had already turned to leave. “You cannot do this,” the prisoner shouted at their retreating backs. “I am the King’s Hand!”

It was then that Davos knew him. “You are Alester Florent.”

The man turned his head. “Who…?”

“Ser Davos Seaworth.”

Lord Alester blinked. “Seaworth…the onion knight. You tried to murder Melisandre.”

Davos did not deny it. “At Storm’s End you wore red-gold armor, with inlaid lapis flowers on your breastplate.” He reached down a hand to help the other man to his feet.

Where Davos is working-class, Alester is wildly privileged – GRRM uses “pampered” to suggest a spoiled, albeit grey-haired, child – and as Davos notes “his birth will not serve him here.” Where Davos can rely on a deep reservoir of internal strength to endure his imprisonment, Alester has a fundamental weakness of character that reveals itself in emotional prison drama theatrics. And as we’ll learn, where Davos both sees and speaks the truth, Alester is a self-serving liar to his very core.

There is one other, critical aspect in which Davos Seaworth and Alester Florent are mirror opposites, and it speaks to the central ground on which the onion knight has staked his truth:

Lord Alester brushed the filthy straw from his clothing. “I…I must apologize for my appearance, ser. My chests were lost when the Lannisters overran our camp. I escaped with no more than the mail on my back and the rings on my fingers.”

He still wears those rings, noted Davos, who had lacked even all of his fingers.

“No doubt some cook’s boy or groom is prancing around King’s Landing just now in my slashed velvet doublet and jeweled cloak,” Lord Alester went on, oblivious. “But war has its horrors, as all men know. No doubt you suffered your own losses.”

“My ship,” said Davos. “All my men. Four of my sons.”

“May the…may the Lord of Light lead them through the darkness to a better world,” the other man said.

May the Father judge them justly, and the Mother grant them mercy, Davos thought, but he kept his prayer to himself. The Seven had no place on Dragonstone now.

“My own son is safe at Brightwater,” the lord went on…

At the Battle of Blackwater, the ring-fingered Alester Florent lost his “slashed velvet doublet and jeweled cloak” and counts the loss of his chests as the “horrors” of war – contrast that against finger-shortened Davos Seaworth, who lost his sons, his crew, and his ship, not just flesh and blood but his very identity. This is not merely an indictment of Alester’s privilege, but is intended to link cause to effect: Alester’s wealth has cushioned him so effectively against the hard knocks of life that he is blinkered and ignorant, unable to judge right and wrong outside of narrow self-interest. Hence we can see Alester only just catching himself from saying the catechism of the faith of his raising to instead mouth the words of a faith he converted to solely for personal political advancement.

The dialogue between Davos and Alester begins with an important update on the military/political situation post-Blackwater, which turns out to be more informative than Alester had intended:

It had been Ser Imry Florent who led them blindly up the Blackwater Rush with all oars pulling, paying no heed to the small stone towers at the mouth of the river. Davos was not like to forget him. “My son Maric was your nephew’s oarmaster.” He remembered his last sight of Fury, engulfed in wildfire. “Has there been any word of survivors?”

“The Fury burned and sank with all hands,” his lordship said. “Your son and my nephew were lost, with countless other good men. The war itself was lost that day, ser.”

This man is defeated. Davos remembered Melisandre’s talk of embers in the ashes igniting great blazes. Small wonder he ended here. “His Grace will never yield, my lord.”

“Folly, that’s folly.” Lord Alester sat on the floor again, as if the effort of standing for a moment had been too much for him. “Stannis Baratheon will never sit the Iron Throne. Is it treason to say the truth? A bitter truth, but no less true for that. His fleet is gone, save for the Lyseni, and Salladhor Saan will flee at the first sight of a Lannister sail. Most of the lords who supported Stannis have gone over to Joffrey or died…”

“Even the lords of the narrow sea? The lords sworn to Dragonstone?”

Lord Alester waved his hand feebly. “Lord Celtigar was captured and bent the knee. Monford Velaryon died with his ship, the red woman burned Sunglass, and Lord Bar Emmon is fifteen, fat, and feeble. Those are your lords of the narrow sea. Only the strength of House Florent is left to Stannis, against all the might of Highgarden, Sunspear, and Casterly Rock, and now most of the storm lords as well. The best hope that remains is to try and salvage something with a peace. That is all I meant to do. Gods be good, how can they call it treason?”

Davos stood frowning. “My lord, what did you do?”

The military/political situation is seemingly quite dire, with Stannis reduced even lower than how he started ACOK, concentrated to a single point. But how accurate the former Hand’s account is remains uncertain: while it’s true that Stannis’ fleet was lost, not all of his bannermen have fled him; the Velaryons and Bar Emmons will fight for Stannis at Castle Black. Beyond the “lords of the narrow sea,” it’s easy to forget that Stannis’ public letter succeeded in drawing lords from other kingdoms to support him: Lord Lucos Chyttering, Sers Gilbert, Godry, and Bryen Farring, Ser Perkin Follard, and Ser Justin Massey are all from the Crownlands and will fight at Castle Black and beyond; Ser Rolland Storm, Lord Harwood Fell, Ser Gerald Gower, Ser Richard Horpe, Lord Lester Morrigen, Lord Robin Peasebury, House Wensington, and Ser Ormund Wylde are Stormlanders who continue fighting for Stannis after Blackwater. So as much as Alester would want it to be the case, Stannis is not wholly reliant on the Florents; if that were the case, the king’s men would have no base to recruit from.

But the subject of the debate is not a dispassionate calculation of political and military manpower, but a more philosophical qestion of whether the state should pursue war or peace, whether it is right to continue fighting when all hopes seems lost or whether it is better to give up. As Davos accurately perceives, Alester is not merely “defeated” but defeatist, downplaying every asset remaining to Stannis and often conflating the strength of individual lords with the strength of their Houses. The problem is that Alester’s analysis is self-motivated, rather than principled. The key phrase, which Davos immediately picks up on, is that Alester sought peace in order to “try and salvage something.” Which raises the question of what, or rather for whom, Alester attempted to salvage in peace talks:

“Not treason. Never treason. I love His Grace as much as any man. My own niece is his queen, and I remained loyal to him when wiser men fled. I am his Hand, the Hand of the King, how can I be a traitor? I only meant to save our lives, and…honor…yes.” He licked his lips. “I penned a letter. Salladhor Saan swore that he had a man who could get it to King’s Landing, to Lord Tywin. His lordship is a…a man of reason, and my terms…the terms were fair…more than fair.”

“What terms were these, my lord?”

“It is filthy here,” Lord Alester said suddenly. “And that odor…what is that odor?”

“The pail,” said Davos, gesturing. “We have no privy here. What terms?”

His lordship stared at the pail in horror. “That Lord Stannis give up his claim to the Iron Throne and retract all he said of Joffrey’s bastardy, on the condition that he be accepted back into the king’s peace and confirmed as Lord of Dragonstone and Storm’s End. I vowed to do the same, for the return of Brightwater Keep and all our lands. I thought…Lord Tywin would see the sense in my proposal. He still has the Starks to deal with, and the ironmen as well. I offered to seal the bargain by wedding Shireen to Joffrey’s brother Tommen.” He shook his head. “The terms…they are as good as we are ever like to get. Even you can see that, surely?”

“Yes,” said Davos, “even me.” Unless Stannis should father a son, such a marriage would mean that Dragonstone and Storm’s End would one day pass to Tommen, which would doubtless please Lord Tywin. Meanwhile, the Lannisters would have Shireen as hostage to make certain Stannis raised no new rebellions. “And what did His Grace say when you proposed these terms to him?”

There’s a lot going on in this passage, so it deserves a thorough breakdown. First, there is the issue of treason and authority: Alester claims that because “I am his Hand, the Hand of the King,” he cannot “be a traitor.” (More on this in a bit.) However, this theory of rulership assumes that the interests of the Hand and the interests of the King are one. Keen-eyed Davos undercuts Alester’s defense against by inquiring as to whether Alester ran his proposal by Stannis because his methods (bypassing royal review of the terms of the treaty, and then turning to a pirate to smuggle them to Tywin behind the King’s back) are clear evidence that there is a divergence between the interests of the Hand and the King.

Second, there is the matter of the terms. As much as the former Hand blusters that “the terms were fair…more than fair,” or “as good as we are ever like to get,” it is clear that Alester’s terms benefit Alester more than they benefit Stannis. As “even” an onion knight can see, “the return of Brightwater Keep and all our lands” is a better prize than Stannis being “confirmed as Lord of Dragonstone and Storm’s End,” because Alester has a living son to keep castle and lands in House Florent’s hands, whereas Stannis only has a daughter and therefore “Dragonstone and Storm’s End would one day pass to Tommen…[and] the Lannisters would have Shireen as hostage to make certain Stannis raised no new rebellions.” (The irony is, of course, that Alester is trying to get back lands that Tywin has already given away to Mace Tyrell for his continued support, making it a hiding to nothing to begin with.)

Third, even more important than the clear fact that Alester has sold out his king to maintain his own position, this treaty touches not only on “our lives” but also their “…honor.” As much as Alester claims love and loyalty for Stannis, his terms require Stannis not only to marry his daughter to any enemy (which is common enough in medieval peace treaties) but specifically to a child who he has publicly proclaimed is an abomination born of incest, to the death of Stannis’ honor:

“He is always with the red woman, and…he is not in his right mind, I fear. This talk of a stone dragon…madness, I tell you, sheer madness. Did we learn nothing from Aerion Brightfire, from the nine mages, from the alchemists? Did we learn nothing from Summerhall? No good has ever come from these dreams of dragons, I told Axell as much. My way was better. Surer. And Stannis gave me his seal, he gave me leave to rule. The Hand speaks with the king’s voice.”

“Not in this.” Davos was no courtier, and he did not even try to blunt his words. “It is not in Stannis to yield, so long as he knows his claim is just. No more than he can unsay his words against Joffrey, when he believes them true. As for the marriage, Tommen was born of the same incest as Joffrey, and His Grace would sooner see Shireen dead than wed to such.”

A vein throbbed in Florent’s forehead. “He has no choice.”

“You are wrong, my lord. He can choose to die a king.”

“And us with him? Is that what you desire, Onion Knight?”

“No. But I am the king’s man, and I will make no peace without his leave.”

Not only does Alester confirm that he did indeed act without Stannis’ knowledge or consent, but he goes further, all but explicitly stating that Stannis is mentally incompetent to rule, and that since “Stannis gave me his seal,” he also “gave me leave to rule,” making Alester Regent in all but name. This extends and elaborates on his earlier argument that Hands cannot commit treason, and does so all the way up to the point of a coup d’état. (The fact that Alester told his plans to his younger brother and entrusted the letter to Salladhor Saan makes me wonder whether Alester was betrayed by Axell, Salladhor, or both. I lean to the first option, but the third is also possible.)

This claim is significant, not merely because of the philosophical issues invoked – can one separate the authority of the King from the person of the King, can a Hand act against the King’s person in the King’s name – but also because Davos will shortly become a Hand of the King who will also come into conflict with his king. Indeed, in Alester’s offhand mention of “this talk of a stone dragon,” (which is incidentally the first time that the Tragedy at Summerhall, or Aegon III’s attempt to bring back the dragons is mentioned in all of Martin’s work, suggesting a cross-pollination between The Hedge Knight and A Storm of Swords) we get a mention of what will give rise to that conflict. (Sadly, in Davos’ response that Stannis would “sooner see Shireen dead” than dishonored, we get another clue as to her unhappy fate.)

So….what is the relationship between the Hand and the King, and can the Hand act against the King’s will for the sake of the greater good? Alester Florent, albeit from a highly self-interested position, argues yes, since “The Hand speaks with the king’s voice.” Davos takes the position that “in this,” the Hand does not, since the Hand is taking a position he knows to be against not merely the King’s desire but his inherent character. Even in a situation where that might result in his own death, Davos follows the Hagakure in pledging loyalty above life, because “I am the king’s man, and I will make no peace without his leave.”

This suggests a contradiction, since Davos will act without the King’s leave and against his will. However, as I will argue in the future, I think there is an argument that he constructs from Davos IV through to Davos VI, that the Hand should act out of loyalty to the King’s better angels, only when absolutely necessary to ensure that the King upholds the social contract of defense of his subjects as opposed to out of self-interest, and even then should be ready to accept the consequences of disobdience rather than protesting against his sentence.

The second major question between Davos and Alester is the question of what to do when one finds oneself “in dubious battle on the plains of Heaven”? While I think Alester exaggerates for effect, I don’t think he’s entirely wrong that Stannis is at a tremendous disadvantage and that surrendering would no doubt spare some lives. However, this is where I disagree with Stefan Sasse’s thesis about Brynden Tully, because I think this chapter places Alester Florent squarely in the wrong for arguing that there is “no choice” but surrender in the face of overwhelming odds, and Davos in the right for arguing that it is better for Stannis to “choose to die a king,”  or “the royal purple is the noblest shroud” to quote the original authoress. While George R.R Martin hates war, he also describes himself as “an objector to a particular war,” distinguishing between wars fought for a good cause and a bad cause. Here, Davos is arguing the existential case: when surrender requires you to proclaim the truth to be a lie, when surrender requires you to be complicit in injustice, then the only correct action is to do the right thing no matter the odds.

Historical Analysis:

This is not going to be a very long historical analysis section, in part because this essay is already incredibly long, but also because I’ve already discussed the major historical topics that come up on this chapter. I discussed Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism here, and I’ve talked a little bit about the downfall of ministers here.

However, I did want to extend my remarks about the latter topic to include the role that attainder and impeachment played in the downfall of medieval and early modern ministers, and how those legal concepts have carried on to the present day. Both attainder (which strips nobles of their titles, lands, and occasionally their lives, because losing one’s noble status meant they could be tortured and executed in ways that only commoners were exposed to) and impeachment (which allows the legislature to punish high officials with removal from office or jail or even execution, without the executive being able to protect them through the power to pardon) are legal vehicles to punish the powerful and/or one’s political opponents without having to go through the judicial system.

And in the hurly-burley of medieval and early-modern politics, attainder and impeachment were the means by which the “you win or you die” stakes were set: attainder, for example, historically was used as a way for monarchs to show their mercy by reversing the attainder in return for pledges of good behavior, up until Henry VII. No small part of so-called Tory absolutism came with Henry VII’s 92 unreversed attainders against the nobility of England whose political loyalties were suspect or whose claims to the throne of England were problematic; Henry VII also pioneered the use of conditional reversals, which required continued good behavior in order to hang onto title, lands, and life. His son Henry VIII would go on to use attainder as a way to get guilty verdicts against Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard for marital reasons, but also against the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Surrey for having too much Plantagenet blood and political ambitions, and against Margaret Pole for the trifcecta of both of those and being a fervent Catholic who wanted to overthrow the English Reformation.

However, attainder was something of a double-edged sword for monarchs: during the conflict between Parliament and Charles I, Charles’ favorite the Earl of Strafford was attainded following a failed impeachment, as was his favorite Archbishop Laud, because unlike impeachment you didn’t need to name or produce evidence for specific crimes for attainders, and so both men were beheaded. Charles II struck back by having John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and Tomas Pride retroactively attainted, but that failed to stem the tide against the House of Stuart, since William III had James III (son of the deposed James II) attainted, and George II had several dozen Scottish noblemen attainted for their support of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Jacobite Rising of 1745.

Impeachment was a more consistently anti-monarchical tool, ever since its first use during the Good Parliament of 1376, which reacted strongly against perceived corruption and incompetence in the Royal Council (led by our good friend John of Gaunt) by impeaching and imprisoning Richard Lyons (the Warden of the Mint and collecter of wool taxes, who had engaged in some astonishing acts of extortion, price manipulation, tax evasion, and bribery) and the Baron Latimer (the King’s Chamberlain and Lyons’ business partner, who was accused of stealing pretty much everything not nailed down in Brittany, incompetence in the field against the French up to and including selling them back a strategically vital castle in the middle of war, as well as comprehensive and wide-scale embezzlement of royal funds).

Impeachment fell out of fashion under the Tudors, since as stated you didn’t need to actually try people under attainder, but it became incredibly popular during the conflicts between Parliament and the Stuarts since impeachments did not require the assent of the monarch:

• In 1621, the famous scientist Francis Bacon was impeached as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor, supposedly for taking bribes from litigants but more accurately because Sir Edward Coke was his rival as to who the greatest lawyer in England was.
• In 1624, the Earl of Middlesex was impeached for opposing war with Spain on financial grounds.
• Between 1625 and 1627, In the Duke of Buckingham was impeached twice for his repeated and incredibly costly failures in wars against France and Spain, leading Charles I to dissolve Parliament twice to prevent him being convicted, before he was assassinated to great public acclaim.
• Between 1639-1641, as previously stated, both Laud and Strafford were impeached for a combination of religious policy and military defeat against Scotland, before being attainted.

Both of these legal mechanisms made it into the U.S Constitution, albeit in very different forms. Because bills of attainder had at least been rumored to have been passed against various Patriots during the American Revolution, the U.S Constitution specifically outlaws bills of attainder being passed by either federal or state governments. Impeachment, by contrast, was explicitly included as a power of Congress that can be used to remove officers of the Federal government (including but not limited to the President of the United States), but partly due to the history of impeachment being used to imprison or execute people for vague or petty offenses, the Constitution limits the penalty of impeachment to removal from office and ineligibility to hold the office in the future, and limits its application to a narrow (albeit vague) list of crimes.

What If?

So there isn’t really much of a hypothetical for this chapter, as the only thing coming close to a choice I can see is “what if Davos lies to Melisandre,” and that one just disproves itself.

Book vs. Show:

As I discussed last time, HBO’s Game of Thrones goes badly out of whack when Davos gets to Dragonstone and encounters both Melisandre and Stannis, two characters who Benioff and Weiss have neither liked nor understood from Seasons 2 through to the present.

This became especially clear in Season 3 when they omitted this scene from Davos’ arc – Davos still gets imprisoned for an attempted assassination attempt against Melisandre, he still has his meeting with Stannis, and still frees a young boy with Baratheon blood to prevent his sacrifice, but he never has this heart to heart with Melisandre (who instead goes haring off to the Riverlands to find Gendry for gross purposes, more on that later).

The result is that we never get a meeting of the minds between these two characters to complicate their relationship from Davos as the angel and Melisandre as the devil on Stannis’ shoulders, a trend that continued straight through to the end of Season 6 where Davos convinces Jon to exile her from the North for burning Shireen. Rather than really getting to understand Melisandre’s complicated religious world-view, or to see her acting as a compassionate and merciful person to Davos, in Season 3, Melisandre comes across as the stereotypical Evil Witch, buying slaves from the Brotherhood Without Banners (waaay more on this in future chapters), and molesting teenage boys before sacrificing them.

I’ve previously speculated that this is because Benioff and Weiss getting advance knowledge of the ASOIAF end-game from George R.R Martin meant that they came to certain strong conclusions about Stannis and Melisandre being villains, without really understanding the context of their actions which are meant to make them tragic rather than villainous in nature. However, given the horrific things that Cersei has been up to which haven’t stopped Benioff and Weiss from trying to make Cersei a more sympathetic figure (even after her mass-murder), so…