Stannis Was the Biggest Victim of Game of Thrones Season 5 

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The would-be king deserved better than what he got.

Stannis Baratheon, grammar pedant and genuinely loving dad, was on a good run for the first half of this

season—which, in Westeros, obviously meant he was headed for downfall. It was hard to love Stannis for most of his time on-screen, what, with all the brother-murdering, daughter-neglecting, innocents-burning, and endless scowling. But as more and more heroes fell, and as the North became dominated by White Walkers on one side and Ramsay Bolton on another, Stannis became a force of . . . not quite good, exactly, but at least the man had a code.

More accurately, he had two codes—the one that made him a calculating and efficient leader, and the one Melisandre preached about Lord of Light, and it was when he gave in to the latter that everything fell apart in what felt like no time. The speed at which each season of

must tell each story is understandable, but it made Stannis’s downfall particularly abrupt, going from calm-headed decisions about marching before winter strikes to sacrificing his only daughter in a few short scenes. We knew Stannis would do the terrible things that Melisandre instructed, which made Shireen’s potential death loom in the back of our minds all season. But whatever rationalization he made in his mind to go from military commander to religious zealot was, with few exceptions, kept largely away from us.

From the moment the season finale began, Stannis’s doom was clear—another expedient way to knock out his story line early in the episode and move on to other horrors. It was a small, righteous pleasure to see Brienne execute Stannis, but also a shadow of the moral conflict that could have been if we were allowed to still be on Stannis’s side. We saw at the end of last season what fascinating drama can result when two people we like square off—why not let that happen again? One of

many magic tricks over the years has been allowing our opinions on characters to evolve, seeing the goodness in killers and the darkness of girl heroines; Stannis experienced one of the most fascinating of those evolutions, only to toss it all away in the 11th hour at the service of . . . a quicker ending? Brienne’s justice? Getting Melisandre back to the Wall in time to revive Jon Snow?

Stannis was an emblem of the old world that the White Walkers are now poised to wipe out—he was playing the Game of Thrones while the world teetered on an apocalypse that would make it all irrelevant. As the events of “Hardhome” made it clear, no one as stubborn and unadaptable as Stannis was going to last long. But it was unfair to this brilliant and resilient leader to make him write his death warrant so abruptly, to skip so many steps that led to his single fatal mistake. His agony in watching his daughter burn didn’t make the decision any more explicable; his army’s defeat against the Boltons only made her death more pointless and cruel. We still don’t even know if it was Shireen’s sacrifice that actually melted the snow; we may only find out if Melisandre really does manage to revive Jon from the dead, a redemption for the character associated with House Baratheon who probably deserved it least.

had trouble trying to move too fast through a lot of plots this season—everything in Dorne, Sansa’s marriage to Ramsay, the mutiny at the Wall—but all of those stories have room to make good next season. Stannis, and essentially all of House Baratheon, is gone, leaving basically no one in Westeros to keep the old world intact. He deserved more time to properly orchestrate his own downfall, or he deserved to fend off the White Walkers, or he deserved to realize the error of Melisandre’s guidance. Whatever it was, he deserved better than what he got.

Katey RichKatey Rich is the editor of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood.

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