Game of Thrones [Potential Book Spoilers]

Well I don't know, historical revisionism with select exceptions are rarely correct. Some people like to elevate individuals as better than people believe simply to sell books. This happens with Marie-Antoinette over the last twenty years, where people decided that just because she didn't say Let them eat Cake, she is automatically some persecuted darling rather than a traitor to her people.

That is Ned Stark more than Stannis. Stannis is decisive and bold.

Murdering Renly was a masterstroke. By killing Renly, he doubled his army with the cost of only 1 life and he marched to King's Landing. Bear in mind, that Stannis' defeat at Blackwater was very much an underdog victory. He should have won that. The only thing that prevented it was Tyrion, and Stannis could honestly not predict that such an unknown and unlikely figure would mount a defense he did. Saying "in retrospect" makes the mistake of presentism, of using closed history and inserting that on characters decision, rather than looking at that context.

That Stannis lost was absolutely down to stroke of good fortune for the Lannisters and to Tyrion.

All the things that had to happen and did happen for Stannis to lose Blackwater:

Send Melisandre away.

Get hit by a storm while sailing to KL.

Have an obstinate lord called Cortnay Penrose stall you.

Have Edmure beat Tywin in a battle and thereby delay him.

Have the pyromancers accidentally stumble on a shitload of wildfire.

Give Tyrion enough time to finish the chain.

Mace and Tywin had to join at the same time and get to KL at the exact right moment. If they had waited 4 hours it would've been too late.

There's a bunch of other stuff too but the Battle of Blackwater is basically Fate looking at Stannis and taking a giant shit on him because Stannis' life has to be as miserable as possible.

This idea is more Melisandre's than Stannis' imo and is basically him taking a huge risk on what Melisandre says.

edited 4th Feb '16 8:17:28 PM by MadSkillz

Marie Antoinette wasn't a traitor. She was Austrian.

She was also the worst person to be a French royal, since her very anti-formalities mother raised her without the political acuity to survive French court.

I only mentioned Marie as an aside about historical revisionism regarding Jean II. I don't want to make this a discussion about her. Anyway look up Flight to Varennes and Austrian committee and 1792 declaration of war about Antoinette's treason.

I think one problem with the show is that D&D bought into the tywin myth of supervillainy just like they bought into Ramsay's myth. They tend to present characters like tywin, renly and Ramsay as they see themselves rather than how they are. When in the books, its more subtle.

In the books, tywin is a Jack of All Stats who never wins a battle without an advantage. Now he works that weakness in his favour but he gets thrashed by Robb Stark repeatedly and doesn't do anything productive. In the show, they present the red wedding as a masterstroke for tywin to gloat about but in the books he makes it clear to tyrion that it was a desperation move and said that it was a cheap way to get rid of a dangerous enemy. I mean that's why the books are cool, just when tywin wins, we see him give signs of vulnerability.

I'm 100 % sure that D & D knew they were changing his character when they brought their "badass" Ramsay to life.

Not really. I think they projected certain things on Ramsay in the same way asoiaf fans do. I mean heroic Renly in the show is really an example of bizarre misreading since few fans really liked renly until the show.

Fan misreadings do have a big influence. I mean fans see Robb Stark as naive rather than Surrounded by Idiots as he is in the books thanks to misreading the books. So they think that edmure Tully's insubordination is down to Robb when edmure clearly exceeded his command in the fashion of many over ambitious generals in real life.

In the show they couldn't get that across so they basically imply that tywin is such a genius that Robb Stark was an idiot for challenging him. So Robb stark's strategic genius gets compromised

I am sorry, I missed the part where Renly's most powerful bannermen - some would even say the one true power behind Renly - aka the Tyrells joined Stannis.

Oh right, they didn't. Instead they joined the Lannisters. Along with the entire Reach give or take.

Great masterstroke here bruh, managing to unite two great houses against you *slowclap* Incidentally, those great houses are respectively the one that supplies the most gold to the Realm, and the one that supplies the most food to the Realm. Oh, and the latter is also the most populated, so they will have a very large supply of soldiers, and has been rather spared by conflicts in the recent times unlike pretty much every other Kingdom. Even better, the one general that defeated your unbeatable brother in battle is one of their bannermen, so you can't even count on them having only idiots in charge.

I mean, if he was named Stannis Lamperouge, then by all means, masterstroke, but afaik his plan was to win, not to get soundly beaten and everyone ganging up on him.

edited 5th Feb '16 7:02:26 AM by Julep

All of Renly's other bannermen joined Stannis, that was still enough to take the Capital. That was Stannis' goal, take the capital and then the Tyrells will bend the knee because that is their nature. They are always at their best being The Man Behind the Man. The Tyrells are a powerful house but they are powerful as bridesmaids or in Margaery's case the Bride. They are not Prime movers. The only time they over-reached was backing Renly, which Olenna Tyrell herself said was a Huge mistake and something the Tyrells should have avoided.

Remember that the Tyrells are not a Kingly house nor that of a Great Lord. They were Stewards who leapfrogged others into becoming Lords of the Reach by the Targaryens. Once they had gone, there was no tradition left to support and back them.

Stannis "Siege of Storm's End"/"Fair Isle" Baratheon could handle both of them perfectly fine.

So? Stannis will institute Paper Money by Fiat and a treasury department and take Westeros off the Gold Standard just like Richard Nixon did when the French got huffy about the Vietnam War (as Nixon should be huffy, after all the French dragged the Americans into that war by refusing decolonization at the end of World War II). Gold is just a rock, remember. As Tywin himself says in the History and Lore videos. Remember King's Landing is Westeros' big port and can easily bloackade the ships coming into Lannisport. And Tywin doesn't have a fleet since the Ironborn humiliated him, and Robert sent Stannis to bail out his corporate sponsor.

They have what Catelyn calls "soldiers of summer", untested in battle and without experience. Being spared in battle in recent times means you miss out on the latest military innovations and new battle tactics while your soldiers have experience in the last war they fought...and the last war was the Siege on Storm's End where they tried to starve Stannis while Mace Tyrell feasted...real scary record there. The truth is that Stannis could have taken out both Tywin and the Tyrells had it not been for Tyrion's Wildfire plot and defense. If Stannis got into that city, he would have defended it against the Tyrells and Tywin. It was that combination of Tyrion delaying Stannis that left him vulnerable when he got attacked in the rear (historically that tends to defeat even armies of large numbers).

You act as if rulership should never involve risk. After all, the most peaceful monarchies are only peaceful because their predecessors fought and won their wars for them. The English Glorious Revolution would never happened without Oliver Cromwell. And in any case, having everyone gang up on him is what happened to Stannis' true historical inspiration, Richard III, the hero-villain of Bosworth Field who came so tantalizingly close to victory. If he had won, it would have been Richard III's grand-daughter sponsoring Shakespeare to write a play glorifying "England's Royal King".

Inexperienced soldiers are still soldiers. A novice can slay a master, especially if he has the support of a few talented warriors, which the Tyrells do have.

I'm assuming you're trolling by mentioning paper money. The ONLY people who could pull that off are the Iron Bank. MAYBE.

edited 5th Feb '16 8:44:29 AM by blkwhtrbbt

Going into "underdog" stories like that doesn't do credit to discipline and battle-tested leadership. In history, the Roman legions defeated armies several times their size because of their discipline and generalship, their experience in combat. They defeated Boudicca at Watling Street that way. In recent history, you have Nelson's ships defeating the French Fleet at Trafalgar even if the French had many times Nelson's number, simply because the English were a far better navy than the French or anyone else and Nelson was that good an admiral. Some people might cite the American Revolution, but contrary to myth, most of America's soldiers were professionals and volunteers were far fewer in number and in any case, the American strategy avoided pitched battle and preserved numbers, that's how General Washington lost almost every battle under his command but survived long enough for his diplomats to convince the French to provide "Tyrell-Lannister support" and defeat the English for him at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay/Yorktown.

Yes, experience does matter a great deal. It does in the books. The show makes a mess of military presentation as seen in the Shirtless Ramsey Sue, Barristan and the Unsullied going down to back alley thugs. No real-life feudal military would work like that. But fundamentally, a Stannis victorious in Blackwater both in show/books would be a supremely difficult opponent to beat. Only Dany's Dragons and Robb Stark would have a chance, or if Tywin and Tyrion arrange some assassination of Stannis. But militarily, the Tyrells and Lannisters are in for a difficult fight especially...and eventually the Tyrells will betray Tywin and the Lannisters to Stannis to salvage some standing.

Not necessarily. During the French Revolution, the National Convention printed assignat paper money. Inflation-wise it was ridiculous but as war economics it worked and kept France solvent, with some improvised price controls, until the Directory found a fresh source of income by starting a protection racket amongst its daughter republics, which Napoleon followed with his Contintental Blockade of England and his even more sophisticated protection racket. And if Napoleon hadn't gone to Russia, he might have pushed The British Empire into economic crisis as he had planned. England's economy was badly affected by that blockade of English goods into European market. Ah, so close...

And besides, the Iron Bank will be more than happy to help Stannis convert away from the Gold Standard. They want their debt returned to them and Stannis' plan is a financial revolution that can only benefit them.

edited 5th Feb '16 9:09:38 AM by JulianLapostat

Not all the other bannermen - while the rest of the "Rainbow Guard" (the surviving ones at least) went to Stannis, other bannermen went with Loras and the Tyrells, so the loss wasn't just "House Tyrell". And it didn't exactly take an acute political understanding to see where the brains (and money) were in Renly's operation, and Stannis decided to spite them nonetheless - surprise surprise, it came back to bite him in the ass.

Not like it was unprecedented either - the Mad King angering Tywin was one of the main reasons he got defeated, because the Lannisters did not join his forces, and then turned on him. It's like Stannis could have seen that one coming, because afaik he was in this war.

Irrelevant. You mixed politics and war here. Stannis is a good general, no one denies that. But he is a terrible politician. See Robb Stark beheading Rickard Karstark, which is the Northern equivalent of Renly's murder.

I am sure blockading a port is the best way to deal with gold mines. Oh, and I would love to see the rest of the world - Iron Bank and all - accepting a new money standard because Stannis said so, especially since he is so famous for his ability to win people over.

And that is forgetting the fact that it is a bit tricky to pull a blockade when your smart political moves allied the Tyrells and Lannisters. They have food, money, and men. How exactly are you going to force them to bend the knee?

I mean, Stannis could have won the Tyrells over, because as you said yourself they are not leaders - which would have meant an ally with enough resources to quickly end the war. But he made the one thing that Machiavelli thought was the most stupid move possible - he made the Tyrells hate him. In retrospect, Renly's murder in-story is kind of a little Red Wedding: a move that looks good at first, since that gives you some immediate power, but becomes completely horrible in the long-run when you realize everyone hates your guts and actively tries to end you.

Irrelevant is back. Catelyn is watching knights. Not footmen, knights. So...about 1% of the army, the shiniest 1% I agree, but not the one that matters when you are fighting a war of attrition. Oh, I loved the part about Mace Tyrell, but you seem to forget that there also was Randyll Tarly in that army. Who incidentally did not defect to Stannis, and instead remained with the Tyrells.

Lucky Stannis. He got Renly's "soldiers of summer" for his war. What a political genius.

But Stannis was defeated by a better strategic mind than his. Which isn't a shining achievement after you tried to sell me his military genius during entire lengthy posts. You can't say on one hand "Stannis is a military genius, he would have won" and "He only lost because he was unlucky and got beaten by a military genius". Either he is a military genius and he should have predicted the Blackwater, or he isn't. He isn't Schrödinger's Westerosi general.

Are you saying me this one post after saying that we shouldn't compare ASOIAF characters to historical figures?

Rulership should involve risk. But if you want to be seen as a great leader in history books, you need to win, so you need to be able to estimate if a risk is worth taking. As the entire series proved, making the Tyrells hate his guts was not worth the benefits for Stannis. He is a poor politician.

Stannis would've won the war if he had taken KL.

For one, Joffrey would be dead so no Tyrell marriage and Stannis would be holding the IT legitimizing his power.

The Tyrells probably would not have married Marge to Tommen at this point and that's assuming Stannis didn't find Tommen first or Tommen gets sold out to Stannis.

The only reason Stannis lost BW was because Stannis had awful luck, Tyrion's chain and wildfire plot, and LF negotiating the Tyrell alliance.

It certainly wasn't because Tywin had a better strategic mind.

edited 5th Feb '16 9:46:21 AM by MadSkillz

Exactly. Stannis wins people over from Essos like Melisandre, commoners like Davos, people outside the mainstream nobility of Westeros. Stannis being a natural meritocrat dislikes them. He is exactly the kind of people the Iron Bank like (they dislike nobility, titles and Mace Tyrell remember?). The Iron Bank have Iron deposits for currency they are not goldbugs. What matters to them are markets and trade, and the trade across the narrow sea is far shorter than going around the bottom to the other side of the Continent, introducing modern finance and merchants means that the Iron Bank will have more power than ever before. Shutting off the Reach means more food imports from Essos which means more trade for the Free Cities.

You act as if Randyll Tarly will get overall command of the theater. He would never get that, the Tyrells won't give him because putting your army under the command of the most hawkish guy is an invitation to a military coup. Machiavelli 101. Tarly is still a bannerman under Mace, and without the proper oversight he would never be a threat to Stannis. Merely one unwieldy column to contend with among others.

History's greatest generals Hannibal Barca and Napoleon, among others, were losers who came close and lost it all. The point of ASOIAF is evoking the romance of history, wondering For Want Of A Nail and What Could Have Been. Stannis losing doesn't mean that guy was doomed to fail, it means that he's a Tragic Hero who came perilously close to winning. He is a great military commander who was undefeated until falling to a dwarf with a stash of wildfire. It's Goliath losing to David. You don't say Goliath is a loser and was dumb to fight against David...David was the underdog. Tyrion was the underdog, and the arrival of the Lannisters/Tyrells was the triumph of the underdog over the favorite, only this time the underdogs are bad guys, which is its own trope of Villainous Underdog after all. Saying Stannis' defeat was foregone is presentism, just like saying that Napoleon was an idiot to hope to win against the British is presentism, when he came really close to winning.

I never said that, I merely said your comparisons with Jean II and Louis XI is based on weak analogies and is based on historical revisionism I'm not familiar with. Either my history is dated or yours is a fringe theory. You should definitely compare ASOIAF with history because the author is invoking specific historical references and has described the series as Historical Fiction meets Fantasy. The idea was to remove the handicap to historical accuracy and the Foregone Conclusion of history. I mean the War of the 5 Kings is a reversal of the Wars Of The Roses. The Lancasters lost that war badly while the Yorks won. Edward IV broke his marriage contract and triggered a rebellion from an ally but he dodged that bullet. His brother betrayed him but Edward IV had him killed and faced no consequences. In this book, the reverse happens, so the Lannisters win and the Starks lose, albeit by huge portions of luck, Robb Stark/Edward-IV pays for breaking his marriage and Stannis suffers for ordering a hit on Renly (the traitorous George, Duke of Clarence, buried in a Butt of Malmsey Wine, on the whole Renly should be grateful for the Shadow Baby). Our knowledge of history shows that things could have gone the other way...

No, Renly was the poor politician. He died before Stannis and he didn't win. So by your logic of "great leader" needing to win, Renly is instand-disqualified.

Me I don't judge politicians or leaders in narrow terms. If Stannis won militarily and took King's Landing he would be a different person entirely and no one can tell what decisions he would make, because events transform and change you. The Robespierre from the start of the Revolution upto late 1792 would not have been the man we know him today had things been a little different. In ASOIAF and GOT, no one could have predicted that Tyrion would eventually kill Tywin, but he finally did do so.

edited 5th Feb '16 10:28:18 AM by JulianLapostat

The Tyrells already had a grudge against Stannis before they hitched their horse to Renly that's why you didn't see Mace propose Willa's' hand in marriage to Shireen.

Stannis refused to ally with Renly (understandable) and Robb(much less understandable). This cost him dearly, made sure he wouldn't have enough forces to take KL. If he had swallowed some of his self-righteous pride, he would have acknowledged Robb as KITN, gave up a single westerosi kingdom to take the other six, and had Robb swear allegiance to Stannis, making Stannis _effectively_ King of the Seven Kingdoms. If he had allied with the Starks, the Starks wouldn't have been so starving for men they walked right into a Lannister trap, and the trick with the Wildfire wouldn't have done shit to prevent the Starks defeating the Lannister cavalry preventing Tywin from ripping a victory right out of Stannis' hands. Stannis is a classic example of pride before the fall.

I mean honestly, he said himself: "9 battles out of 10, the side with the greater numbers wins"

and then he goes and rejects any and all possible allies. Except pirates. and mercenaries. And summoned demons. Because those guys are totally reliable in a pinch.

edited 5th Feb '16 12:01:52 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Show only but we are having a book conversation and this is the show thread so maybe we should shift this over to the other thread

But as long we're throwing in show stuff, I will say that in the show the reason why Stannis might not want to ally with Robb is more understandable.

TV Robb knows that his father proclaimed Stannis the one true king but he goes against that anyways.

edited 5th Feb '16 12:08:24 PM by MadSkillz

If Robb is a king in his own right and still swears fealty to Stannis, that would make Stannis a High King or even an emperor.

I really feel like Robb was the kind of guy who would have graciously accepted a Martell-like agreement had Stannis proposed him. Something along the lines of "I get some kind of Regal title because my House was horribly wronged by the crown, but I remain a vassal to King's Landing nonetheless". Problem is, Stannis would never have proposed something like that.

Mace Tyrell. The guy is a self-aggrandizing fool, of course practical institutions like the Iron Bank would loathe him. But I doubt a bank would love someone unprincipled like Stannis either, who could very well screw extremely interesting deals because one of his principles is violated and he refuses to negotiate. Banks have no honor, on the contrary they need flewible people who will be able to get the best out of any situation. As for his ability to draw commoners, it is admirable, but it is not sufficient to conquer a country such as Westeros, unless you plan some kind of Khmer-like ethnic cleansing. You also need to be able to draw the nobility to your cause.

I don't know. Consider the Lannister/Tyrell alliance: Tywin obviously wants to undermine the Tyrell influence as much as he can. What better way to do so than to give responsibilities to their most efficient general, knowing that no one is a proper military leader in House Tyrell itself? Tywin kind of sucks as a military commander himself except when he gets the opportunity to fight at 3 against 1 (and even then...), but Gregor Clegane shows that at least he has some notions on how to best use the assets he has. If you give him "the guy that defeated Robert in fair battle", and that guy isn't a direct threat to him, I'm sure he would be more than happy to push for a Tarly command of a main military force.

It's a lot of "Ifs" but it wouldn't be out of character. I don't see Olenna refusing either for that matter: she knows her son is a fool, her grandson no leader, and she is probably persuaded that she is smart enough to avoid any issue with Tarly's growing glory (which she might very well be).

He would still have won had the Lannistyrell army not rooted the remains of his army. And the Tyrells & bannermen on his side might very well have been enough to hold Tywin while he was taking the city. I also think that Stannis was used to pull victories against the odds, and completely failed to consider that maybe others could too - sure there is the Rule of Drama at play, but there also is his own pride at work.

Uh, yes? I don't think that Renly was a better politician to win this war, and never said that. I do think he would have been a better ruler if you imagine any one of the kings winning (he was slightly more savvy than Robb), but I don't consider him a shrewd politician at all. His flaw was actually the opposite of Stannis': he did not hurry enough while being reckless could actually have served him when he commanded the largest army near King's Landing.

I don't think hurrying would have served Renly much at all though? Slowly starving KL was working pretty effectively for him, as was letting Tywin and Robb bleed each other. If Stannis ended up taking the Iron Throne (which, from what I can gather, was what Renly expected Stannis to do instead of trying to fight him in the stormlands), most of Renly's biggest political adversaries would be taken care of with no blood on his hands, and Renly could still starve the city. And with Stannis's PR record, maybe spur a few riots.

Stannis knows how to withstand starvation tactics though XD

Davos might have to lose some fingers on the other hand lol

If Stannis took the city starving them wouldn't work as well against Stannis as he wouldn't be blockading the city.

He also has good PR in the city bookwise anyway.

Yeah apparently Stannis had the middle class and merchant class supporting him. A shame that both those classes are so small in feudal societies.

And yeah if Stannis had the city, Renly wouldn't be able to starve him as the Iron Throne's fleet belonged to him.

I suppose at that point Melisandre would assassinate Renly.

The Bank is not that dumb. To them the Iron Throne sending a guy like this to deal with them is not a message they will take lying down...they'll be like, oh we were expectin Kevan, maybe Jaime but you send us this...The Braavosi are going to the mattresses.

You are misreading the Iron Bank terribly. Medieval banking institutes were more honorable then the Kings and Rulers. For them words and deals mattered a great deal. Try and understand that the old Kingdoms of Europe were always on the verge of bankruptcy and they struggled to run the economy. I mean the reason King Philip IV murdered The Knights Templar was because he was strapped for cash.

That's an extreme metaphor...there are plenty of popular general-leaders who won over the common people without ethnic cleansing, Julius Caesar for example. He was an enemy of the aristocratic senate and beloved by the poor and working people of the Empire. A closer royal parallel to your line of thinking would be Ivan the Terrible, beloved of the Russian people and hated by the aristocratic Boyars. Maybe Stannis, since he's introducing a new religion, will be like the Pharaoh Akhenaten (who introduced monotheism to Egypt) or for that matter, the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate who tried to halt the rise of Christianity. Of course the real parallel is King Richard III who was a highly popular King. His wedding had the record for being the one with the greatest popular attendance ever.

Again the Tyrells are too smart to allow Tywin anywhere near that level of control. They would see this a mile coming and Tywin wouldn't risk that. The Tyrells and Lannisters are far from a unified contingent, its more an opportunistic meeting but fundamentally they don't get along to the extent that Tywin would order them around...the only time you see that unity is with Robb Stark in the Riverlands, where the North and Riverlands are bros to each other.

edited 5th Feb '16 8:24:01 PM by JulianLapostat

Uhhh Tywin was able to order Loras to marry Cersei.

Against both Tyrell wishes as well as Cersei's. I'd say he could definitely grant lands, titles, and command to the Tarlys.

Hell an idiot like Cersei Lannister managed to get both Margeary and Loras Tyrell imprisoned, even if it did cost her a week of licking water off stones and a walk of shame.

Also

Julius Caesar was murdered by his best friend and some senators. He also converted Rome into a dictatorial empire.

edited 5th Feb '16 8:23:20 PM by blkwhtrbbt