Game of Thrones S02E01 (The North Remembers) – The Burning of the Seven Gods (Anatomy of a Scene)

Remember this scene from the first episode of Game of Thrones this season? Our introductory scene to Stannis-Davos-Melisandre at Dragonstone. It’s interesting, in the show, we’re led to believe that Davos is pretty much an atheist (or maybe agnostic), he doesn’t believe in any god, old or new. But we don’t really know how devoted Stannis was to the Seven Gods before Melisandre convinced him to convert to the religion of the Lord of Light. Not that he seems all that convinced about the Lord of Light in this episode, he sounds entirely NOT convinced when he was saying the words “for the night is dark and full of terrors”.

Apparently they used THIRTY swords to shoot that scene where Stannis pulled out the flaming sword!

Mr Jefferson goes to Westeros

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think of Stannis Baratheon, heh. (Stephen Dillane played Jefferson is the HBO miniseries John Adams).

Jefferson: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Stannis: Hey, that’s what Melisandre said too! Except, not so much the blood of patriots and tyrants, but the blood of my brother’s child, and not so much for liberty, but to get me the throne.
Jefferson: Yeah, you’re totally not getting the point here.

Picspam, because I’m in a Stephen Dillane mood today 🙂 Apparently he’s EIGHT years older than Mark Addy, who played Stannis’ older brother Robert. You can kinda see it from the lines of Dillane’s face, but it helps that they never actually appear together on screen, hehe.

Thomas Jefferson versus Stannis Baratheon.

Game of Thrones – Stannis Baratheon

I’m being a bad, bad reader, all for Stannis. Borrowed A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords from my brother, and did that horrible, horrible thing only slightly better than peeking at the ending of a book – I’m reading the chapters related to Stannis only. After this week’s episode, I couldn’t contain my curiosity, but don’t have time to delve through thousands of pages right now.   

My brother: They’re mostly from Davos’ POV … 
Me: Yay! Awesome!!
My brother: … except a few from Jon’s POV.
Me: Ughhhh. Can you mark which chapters, pleaseeeee, so I don’t have to read a bunch of unrelated Jon’s chapters?
My brother: You’re going to skip Jon’s chapters, aren’t you, even when you get around to reading the whole thing?
Me: Errmm, no comment.

No, no, of course I will read the whole thing without skipping anything when I got around the reading it, it would feel like cheating otherwise. And hey, maybe book!Jon is not as tedious as show!Jon. A girl can dream …

I’m not that far along A Clash of Kings yet, but there are already a lot of differences from the show.

This section contains spoilers from A Clash of Kings:

I Miss Stannis

Two episodes without Stannis, and he’s not in the preview for the next episode either. How long does it take for his ships to get from whereever Renly’s camp was to King’s Landing anyway? Littlefinger did his world tour of Westeros mighty quickly, one minute he’s in King’s Landing, next he’s at Renly’s camp, all of a sudden he’s in Harrenhal spooking Arya. Father-of-murderous-shadow-baby, I miss you! I know Stannis is a world-class hypocrite with all his talk about honor and doing the right thing and all, but he’s still so much fun to watch.

On a less fun note, I accidentally read some spoilery stuff about the book, hinting that a certain character I can’t stand is supposed to be the chosen one or the savior of the world or something like that (I guess Melisandre got it wrong, heh). Whaaaat??? I’m struggling to get through his/her scenes now as it is, what am I going to do when he/she is THE major character with TONS of screentimes in the coming seasons?

Funny how Ned Stark is now a cautionary tale ….

I guess being beheaded will do that to you, heh.

Stannis: When Eddard Stark learned the truth he told only me. I’d not make the same mistake. Send copies of that letter to every corners of the realms, from the harbors to the Wall. The time has come to choose. Let no man claim ignorance as an excuse.

Tyrion: I don’t like threats.
Varys: Who threatened you?
Tyrion: I’m not Ned Stark, I understand the way this game is played.
Varys: Ned Stark was a man of honor.
Tyrion: I am not. Threaten me again, and I’ll have thrown into the sea.