Episode 153: A STORM OF SWORDS, DAVOS I: "Cast Away" Show Notes!

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.

Welcome to the one hundred and fifty-fifth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Cast Away: An Analysis of ASOS, Davos I” in which Davos Seaworth enjoys a well-deserved vacation on a tropical island on Blackwater Bay. While sunning himself, enjoying a bushel of crabs and drinking fresh water cured through volcanic rock, Davos meets the love of his wife: the Mother. Fuck, that got weird, didn’t it.

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Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

So, for this week, our question by Lord Jake Assistant to the Hand of the King will be found at the end of the episode. So, here, we’ll remind you that we just started a new patreon stretch goal of attaining 1,050 total patrons! When we hit that number, we will do a multi-part analysis of the Theon TWOW chapter! So, if you like hearing us wax about Winds, consider checking out our patreon at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF

Yes indeed! As of this recording, four new patrons have joined! We are inching forward with our goal! So, help Ser Frank B., the King’s Justice out. He’s already putting the pyre together for us if we don’t hit our stretch goal.

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Davos, he had sailed up the Blackwater Rush and despite heavy casualties, defeated the Lannister Fleet defending King’s Landing. If I recall correctly, I don’t believe anything else happened in that chapter. Let’s find out how Davos is enjoying the fruits of Stannis’ victory in this synopsis of ASOS, Davos I!

Synopsis

He watched the sail grow for a long time, trying to decide whether he would sooner live or die.

Dying would be easier, he knew. All he had to do was crawl inside his cave and let the ship pass by, and death would find him. For days now the fever had been burning through him, turning his bowels to brown water and making him shiver in his restless sleep. Each morning found him weaker. It will not be much longer, he had taken to telling himself.

Truly, every chapter opener to A Storm of Swords is happier than the previous chapter opener.

Davos Seaworth is sick, and he’s dying of thirst. There was no water to drink, save for the occasional rainfall. And the last rain was three, no, four days ago. The rain had brought some life for Davos to snuff out: crabs and such. The point is that it was growing difficult to remember the passage of time. And that water was all used up. It was almost seawater time, and then Davos would die.

Now, there was an island off in the distance, a large rock that jutted from the sea, and Davos could see the gulls landing there. He dreamed about swimming over and raiding their nests, but he knew he was too weak to make the swim and survive. So, Davos had taken to weakly throwing rocks whenever the gulls would land on his rock, but they would just get annoyed and screech at Davos whenever he would hit them with a rock.

Davos remembers that the Narrow Sea was windy, wet and rainy in the Narrow Sea, and all of this contributes to a worsening fever, chills and a bad cough. The only place Davos has is a cave that only provides him some shelter. Davos had tried to start a fire with driftwood, but he only got blisters from that attempt.

Thirst; hunger; exposure. They were his companions, with him every hour of every day, and in time he had come to think of them as his friends. Soon enough, one or the other of his friends would take pity on him and free him from this endless misery. Or perhaps he would simply walk into the water one day, and strike out for the shore that he knew lay somewhere to the north, beyond his sight. It was too far to swim, as weak as he was, but that did not matter. Davos had always been a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. The gods beneath the waters have been waiting for me, he told himself. It's past time I went to them.

But now Davos is looking at a sail on the horizon. It was small in the distance but growing larger. It was coming towards him when he knows that it shouldn’t. This part of Blackwater Bay was treacherous with all the rocks, called the spear of the merling king, just beneath the surface of the water.

Davos knows the ship is coming his way though, and the boat would be within shouting distance soon. He could find refuge there if he wanted it.

It might mean life. If he wanted it. He was not sure he did. Why should I live? he thought as tears blurred his vision. Gods be good, why? My sons are dead, Dale and Allard, Maric and Matthos, perhaps Devan as well. How can a father outlive so many strong young sons? How would I go on? I am a hollow shell, the crab's died, there's nothing left inside. Don't they know that?

Davos recalls the Battle of the Blackwater and how he and his sons sailed with the fleet up the Blackwater Rush. He remembers the sights and sounds of battle, and then he remembers the wildfire.

And then some vast beast had let out a roar, and green flames were all around them: wildfire, pyromancer's piss, the jade demon. Matthos had been standing at his elbow on the deck of Black Betha when the ship seemed to lift from the water. Davos found himself in the river, flailing as the current took him and spun him around and around. Upstream, the flames had ripped at the sky, fifty feet high. He had seen Black Betha afire, and Fury, and a dozen other ships, had seen burning men leaping into the water to drown. Wraith and Lady Marya were gone, sunk or shattered or vanished behind a veil of wildfire, and there was no time to look for them, because the mouth of the river was almost upon him, and across the mouth of the river the Lannisters had raised a great iron chain. From bank to bank there was nothing but burning ships and wildfire. The sight of it seemed to stop his heart for a moment, and he could still remember the sound of it, the crackle of flames, the hiss of steam, the shrieks of dying men, and the beat of that terrible heat against his face as the current swept him down toward hell.

All he needed to do was nothing. A few moments more, and he would be with his sons now, resting in the cool green mud on the bottom of the bay, with fish nibbling at his face.

Instead, Davos took a deep breath and dove deep, moving through the murky water, past drowning men. He dove all the way to the bottom, even touching the soft, silty ground at the bottom of the Blackwater Rush. He starts swimming hard, trying to get underneath what he thinks is the chain. But then Davos loses his sense of direction, not being sure whether he’s swimming up or down.

Panic took hold of him. His hands flailed against the bottom of the river and sent up a cloud of mud that blinded him. His chest was growing tighter by the instant. He clawed at the water, kicking, pushing himself, turning, his lungs screaming for air, kicking, kicking, lost now in the river murk, kicking, kicking, kicking until he could kick no longer. When he opened his mouth to scream, the water came rushing in, tasting of salt, and Davos Seaworth knew that he was drowning.

The next he knew the sun was up, and he lay upon a stony strand beneath a spire of naked stone, with the empty bay all around and a broken mast, a burned sail, and a swollen corpse beside him. The mast, the sail, and the dead man vanished with the next high tide, leaving Davos alone on his rock amidst the spears of the merling king.

Davos was familiar with where he landed as it was a spot that few honest seamen (lol) ventured to. But Davos the smuggler knew the spot and had used it to escape notice in his smuggling days.

When they find me dead here, if ever they do, perhaps they will name the rock for me, he thought. Onion Rock, they'll call it; it will be my tombstone and my legacy. He deserved no more. The Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his girl in King's Landing and his girl in Braavos, they would all be weeping soon. Matthos would never captain his own ship, as he'd dreamed. Maric would never have his knighthood.

How can I live when they are dead? So many brave knights and mighty lords have died, better men than me, and highborn. Crawl inside your cave, Davos. Crawl inside and shrink up small and the ship will go away, and no one will trouble you ever again. Sleep on your stone pillow, and let the gulls peck out your eyes while the crabs feast on your flesh. You've feasted on enough of them, you owe them. Hide, smuggler. Hide, and be quiet, and die.

The sail was almost on him. A few moments more, and the ship would be safely past, and he could die in peace.

Davos reaches for his luck, his leather pouch of finger bones, but he finds that it’s gone. He remembers how he kept the bones as reminders of Stannis’ justice. It was his luck. But the fire had taken his luck and sons. He cries out to the Mother for mercy, to save him. The fire took it all.

Perhaps it was only wind blowing against the rock, or the sound of the sea on the shore, but for an instant Davos Seaworth heard her answer. "You called the fire," she whispered, her voice as faint as the sound of waves in a seashell, sad and soft. "You burned us . . . burned us . . . burrrned usssssss."

"It was her!" Davos cried. "Mother, don't forsake us. It was her who burned you, the red woman, Melisandre, her!" He could see her; the heart-shaped face, the red eyes, the long coppery hair, her red gowns moving like flames as she walked, a swirl of silk and satin. She had come from Asshai in the east, she had come to Dragonstone and won Selyse and her queen's men for her alien god, and then the king, Stannis Baratheon himself. He had gone so far as to put the fiery heart on his banners, the fiery heart of R'hllor, Lord of Light and God of Flame and Shadow. At Melisandre's urging, he had dragged the Seven from their sept at Dragonstone and burned them before the castle gates, and later he had burned the godswood at Storm's End as well, even the heart tree, a huge white weirwood with a solemn face.

Once again, Davos blames Melisandre, but then in a moment of self-reflection, he realizes that it was Davos who rowed Melisandre under Storm’s End. It was Davos who allowed Melisandre to birth a shadow child. It was Davos who stood silent and watched as the Seven were burned. Stood. Saw. And did nothing.

The sail was a hundred yards away and moving fast across the bay. In a few more moments it would be past him, and dwindling.

Ser Davos Seaworth began to climb his rock.

Boy, I don’t know. There’s something truly epic and moving about Davos climbing up that rock at this point of the chapter.

Davos gets himself up the rocks, still feeling feverish. He slips, knowing that if he falls, he’ll die. But he needs to live for a bit longer anyway. He has work to do. At the top of the rock, he crouches, waving bony arms, shouting for the ship and for the ship to save him. He sees writing on the hull but doesn’t know how to read. He screams for the ship to help him, and a crewmember sees him and points. Soon, other sailors come to gawk at Davos, and a small boat is launched from the ship to Davos.

When the boat reaches Davos, the man on the prow calls up to Davos, asking who he is. Davos says he’s a captain, a knight. He was in the battle.

"Aye, ser," the man said, "and serving which king?"

The galley might be Joffrey's, he realized suddenly. If he spoke the wrong name now, she would abandon him to his fate. But no, her hull was striped. She was Lysene, she was Salladhor Saan's. The Mother sent her here, the Mother in her mercy. She had a task for him. Stannis lives, he knew then. I have a king still. And sons, I have other sons, and a wife loyal and loving. How could he have forgotten? The Mother was merciful indeed.

"Stannis," he shouted back at the Lyseni. "Gods be good, I serve King Stannis."

"Aye," said the man in the boat, "and so do we."

Fuck. Yes. And that is the synopsis for ASOS, Davos I. You got me, George. You really got me in the feels at chapter’s end. What did you think, ser?

Depth

I loved Davos’ chapters in ACOK. The only problem was that there weren’t enough of them! Davos is not one of those characters who springs fully formed into the author’s head; George invented him because he needed a POV on Stannis. So in Clash, he was a window onto important events: the Azor Ahai ceremony on Dragonstone, the shadowbaby under Storm’s End, and the wildfire inferno on the Blackwater. Davos himself didn’t have much of an arc going on compared to Theon, the other new POV.

That changes big time in ASOS. Davos gets twice as many chapters as he did in the previous book, and Stannis doesn’t even show up until halfway through! This is Davos’ story now: he starts the book as a lone traumatized survivor on the brink of physical and spiritual annihilation, and ends the book as the Hand of the King saving innocent lives and possibly the whole world in the process. Davos is no longer merely bearing witness. He is intervening, so plot and character work together. Everything works together in these chapters: the dialogue, the imagery, the big thematic statements, they’re all in harmony. This is perfect art, as immaculate as an Egyptian tomb or a Roman aqueduct. Davos is my favorite--nah, objectively the best POV in ASOS.

I accept that this is an opinion and one that you hold. And you hold that opinion with sincerity, even. But, no, seriously, it’s hard to argue with you, because Davos’ chapters are really excellent. As you talked about, Davos’ Clash chapters were primarily in service of establishing Stannis Baratheon: the character, his supporting cast, his quick rise and quicker fall. George said once that he didn’t want to make Stannis a POV, and that’s why he invented Davos Seaworth as a POV character. But while Davos’ Storm chapters further establish Stannis and his retinue, I love how we find out who Davos truly is in his chapters in Storm. And that starts here in Davos I. And what better way to flesh out Davos than to leave him alone with his thoughts, dying.

• Life on the rock
  • Davos’ last chapter in ACOK ended on a hideous cliffhanger: he lost his ship and his sons to the wildfire, before sinking into what he described as the mouth of hell. The first time reader might assume he’s dead
  • We turn the page, see Davos’ name, and go...really? Still?? The same goes for Stannis, and the Baratheon cause that Davos serves. It seems irrelevant now! As Tywin said: Stannis’ sun set on the Blackwater, fitting the sun-king imagery of the Azor Ahai mythos. Night has fallen for him
  • The Lannisters and Tyrells comfortably hold the seat of power. The reader is prepared for them to turn against the Starks now, and beyond that we know they’ve got the Ironborn to deal with, and the wildlings, and the white walkers, and Dany...plenty of pieces left on the board
  • We might expect the stag piece to be removed at this point. The first two books were in part about the downfall of House Baratheon, the royal family. Robert is dead, his line usurped by the Lannisters. Renly is dead too, killed by Stannis, who is now political roadkill. Why are we here?
  • What’s so brilliant is that’s exactly the question Davos is asking himself. That’s how this chapter opens: with Davos trying to decide whether he wants to live or die. Should I keep my story going? He has to justify every breath he takes, every day he manages to survive, because it seems like he should be done as a character as well as a person
  • The drama here is existentialist, bleak but exhilarating in how directly it addresses the big scary questions we all work to keep at bay
  • Why am I alive? Why am I suffering? If there’s an author up there, what do They want me for? Can I do any good in this world? If not, why not just lay down and die? As Davos admits to Melisandre in his final chapter in this book, he has no answers to these questions. No one does!
    • “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.”
  • The struggle is the point, because the struggle generates meaning: we find individual reasons to live, candles we light in the darkness
  • By the end of the book, Davos embraces his own capacity to act, to be the change he wishes to see in the world. In the process, he revitalizes Stannis’ flagging campaign and spirits, offering what might be the most succinct political statement in the series, one that has only aged well:
    • “A king protects his people, or he is no king at all.”
  • It’s such precise, focused storytelling, taking us through Davos’ rise step by step from rock bottom to the top of the tower
  • Similar to last week where the choice of Tyrion and next week with Sansa to display the apex of Lannister power and triumph, George loves his down and outs and chooses his POVs thusly.
  • For all intents and purposes, the Baratheon star set on the Blackwater as you were saying, but it begs the question why the Baratheon faction is still in this book.
  • In due course, we’re going to find out with all the dense drama on Dragonstone and adventures up in the North, but why overall?
  • Partially, I think, the idea is that defeated people are more interesting to write about than victorious people.
  • The larger dynamic, though, is that it’s great fodder for dramatic tension and the extreme choices that George likes to push his characters towards.
  • I am not saying that Stannis would have never considered burning Edric Storm had the Blackwater not gone the way it had, but the lowest places make extreme choices more palatable.
  • In a way, the way we find Davos at the start of A Storm of Swords is a metaphor for the Stannis cause: he and it are barely alive, not sure whether they want to go on living, but to survive, they need to find out who they are and face extreme choices.
  • In order for that to land, George has to first strip Davos down to his core, and then rebuild him anew. Davos starts his story in this book with nothing
  • No king to serve; no ships to sail; no onions to smuggle, no sons to raise, no backdrop. Only him, alone on his rock, an empty stage
  • It’s the human condition in its most naked and plaintive form. Davos has nothing to do but wake up from his nightmares of the battle and decide whether he wants to try and make it through another day
  • While later Davos chapters will contain some of the story’s best dialogue, this chapter is more about interior monologue and stark simple imagery
  • His world is the raw elements of sea and sky and stone, and his only companions now, as he thinks, are exposure, hunger, and thirst
  • This minimalist style stands in contrast to the maximalist imagery of Davos’ chapters in ACOK. We have to focus on him; nothing else to see!
  • The “person gets stuck on an island” scenario is a very familiar one. Every medium and generation has their own version of it, from Lost to the Swiss Family Robinson, from the epic romantic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to endless Gilligan’s Island marathons
  • Only a month after ASOS was released in the USA, we got Cast Away, with Tom Hanks as Davos and Wilson the volleyball as the Mother
  • The tone is different, the stakes change, the quality is all over the place, but we can’t let this story go. It resonates in a lot of different directions
  • On the one hand, you could frame it as the idle fantasy of bored audiences craving novelty and adventure--but only so much! I think you can see that with the idea of books/albums you’d want on a desert island
  • On the other hand, this scenario can make for a compressed dramatic gauntlet--a way to cut past illusions with no mercy, expose your characters
  • George nails the way Davos’ life on this rock feels like a wasteland, almost post-apocalyptic: he’s in a world without food or water or hope
  • Like Aeron in “The Forsaken,” he feels cut off from not only humanity, but his gods. He’s been abandoned on this bleak earth to scrape for survival
  • Davos’ situation mirrors that of Stannis. The king, too, is sitting on his rock (Dragonstone) and licking his wounds after the battle. He, too, is increasingly hopeless. Nothing to do but wait to die
  • Davos I is bookended by Tyrion I and Sansa I, two chapters set in King’s Landing that show us the winners of the battle consolidating their gains
  • In between we get this chapter, all about what it feels like to have lost the battle, and so much else. It really does feel like the sun has set
  • Bronn told Tyrion that the city is full of food and drink now; contrast that with the grim details of Davos surviving on rainwater and the occasional crab. He throws rocks at birds, but is too weak to kill them
  • The Tyrells are all bright colors and rich fabrics. Davos can’t even start a fire to protect him from the elements, which quickly have him shivering and sweating in the grip of a fever. He’s afflicted with diarrhea, like Dany out on the Dothraki Sea at the end of ADWD--very similar chapters!
  • I compared it to a postapocalyptic wasteland, but it also feels like we’ve gone back in time. Davos is like the first human, our ancestor who washed up on the waves, all alone. No man is an island, but Davos feels like one
  • You mentioned shipwreck stories, and I think those are inspirations for Davos, but I also think George is borrowing heavily from religious asceticism here as well.
  • I’m reminded of the Desert Fathers from early Christianity who lived alone in the Sinai peninsula or monastics from medieval Christianity who cloistered in monasteries, adopting vows of silence, poverty, etc.
  • The story of Jesus and the forty days of going without food and the temptation of Satan also come to mind -- and something we talked about in our Forsaken patreon episodes with Damphair.
  • The point in these ascetic religious experiences is that man does not live by bread alone but on the word of God.
  • More than the religious side of the experience, scarcity and lack sometimes display humans at their core.
  • Who is the real person underneath when he’s been stripped of the comforts of life? Who is he if he’s been stripped of everything?
  • That’s where George has Davos as a Job-like figure here. And I think that’s the better religious inspiration for Davos in his first chapter in ASOS.
  • Job, for the godless out there, was a righteous man whose life God allowed Satan to destroy to test whether Job was truly faithful when his life went very badly.
  • And though Job remained faithful to God, he grew depressed, questioning God’s goodness.
  • And then God showed up in a whirlwind to challenge Job’s questioning: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
  • The point was the mind of God is unknowable by human means. Why do we suffer when God is good? The answer is beyond human understanding -- according to the author of the Book of Job.
  • That’s where we find Davos at the start of ASOS: stripped of everything and questioning why when everything has gone to shit.
  • Will the gods answer Davos similarly as they did Job?
• Aftermath of the battle
  • So let’s back up. How did Davos come to be suffering on this rock? Where the hell is this rock, anyway?
  • Davos tells us that a series of sea monts lurk just outside Blackwater Bay. They poke up above the surface, but like an iceberg, most of them waits underneath the water, ready to rip up any boat that comes close
  • They represent the temptation of power for Stannis. He thought the ends would justify the means, but then the Lannisters used hideous means as well. Stannis didn’t see the threat under the surface until it was too late
  • As Davos remembers, they’d sailed up the Blackwater under the banner of the fiery heart: the Lord of Light, who would surely protect his chosen ones
  • And then some vast beast let out a roar. The fire betrayed them, the green flames dancing all around, eating up ships, soldiers, and sailors alike
  • That much we remember from ACOK. What’s new is what comes next. Davos realized, while sinking into hell, that all he had to do was let go
  • Just sink into the mud with your sons; let the fish nibble at your face. It reminds me of how Gared talked about the cold getting inside you
  • Instead, Davos chose to live, as he will in this chapter. He swims past drowning men, burdened by plate and mail--unlike Davos, because he was a smuggler before he was a knight. Unlike them, he’s always prepared for the worst, always ready for the bottom to fall out
  • Davos swims deeper and deeper into hell, knowing the only way out is through. That sums up his story in ASOS and ADWD: sailing into treacherous waters, sustained by faith that he’ll weather the storm
  • Something brushes against his leg. A drowning man, or a fish? Davos can’t tell. The wildfire inferno was a pure horror image. This is more about the ambiguity of Davos’ perspective: making life-or-death decisions when you can’t see what’s around you. Davos thinks he’s drowning; George conveys the animal panic of realizing you’re about to die
  • As the book goes on, Davos will feel like he’s drowning in ethical terms. Stannis and Melisandre create agonizing situations with no clear resolution for him
  • The other part that really stuck out to me is how after he determines he’s going to swim up, Davos realizes he isn’t sure what’s up or down.
  • He’s so disoriented by holding his breath that his mind can’t logically make out where he’s supposed to swim.
  • In the real world, this phenomena of losing one’s sense of direction underwater is known by various names such as spatial disorientation or my favorite term I found: topographic disorientation.
  • This disorientation occurs for Davos, because he’s been underwater for too long. The lack of oxygen in the brain dulls the brain’s natural ability to sense direction.
  • And, wouldn’t you know it, but that sense of disorientation that Davos feels at the bottom of the Blackwater Rush serves a story purpose as well.
  • Davos; (and Stannis’) story in ASOS is all about that disorientation, not knowing what’s up or down, or ... what is right or moral.
  • Obey your king when he contemplates burning an innocent child? What if burning that innocent child will save a million other children?
  • It’s all so murky when you get down to the depths, and what’s right or wrong or up or down becomes so goddamn confused.
  • Davos’ story is divine this way. We, as moderns, don’t have the same loyalty or obedience to feudal monarchs.
  • Yet the moral struggles Davos faces and Stannis faced are framed in a way that makes us empathize with the struggles of these medieval-ish men:
    • “Aerys? If you only knew . . . that was a hard choosing. My blood or my liege. My brother or my king."
  • Everything comes down to these hard ethical questions for Davos, and, unlike the outcome of Davos’ drowning here where blind luck or chance saves his ass from drowning, he has to make the conscious choice to swim up to the light.
  • Like Catelyn’s first chapter in the book, Davos’ first chapter is the most intimate version of the ideas that will grow in scale later on
  • The sea calls to him, as the sky calls to prisoners in the Eyrie like Tyrion back in book one. It seems to offer escape, but Davos knows the only way off his rock, the only way off this barren Earth, is death
  • If he drinks seawater, the end will come soon. If he tries to swim to shore, it’ll come even quicker! Still, the ocean calls. It’s always been home, hence his House name. Davos came from the sea; to the sea he shall return
  • But now, suddenly, there’s a sail. George constructs this chapter beautifully: starting with the image of the sail, then filling us in on Davos’ physical and mental state so we understand how he’ll react to it
  • It offers him the agony of choice, which is the central theme of his story in this book. He has to do more than serve; he must decide, he must choose
  • The sight of the sail brings him no relief, because now he can’t just passively wait to die. The possibility of survival brings with it a painful reckoning: to live, he has to face everything he’s lost
  • Davos wants to die in part because of the sheer physical misery of this existence; that’s why he thinks of hunger and thirst as friends who will eventually take pity on him and let him out of this watery prison cell
  • But he’s also traumatized by the battle and haunted by grief. He survived. His sons did not. As they burned, he swam away. He hates himself for it
  • He doesn’t think he deserves to live. He’s unworthy of this miraculous second chance that has only made his suffering continue
  • He would rather never have to face the world of the living again. As far as he’s concerned, he’s already dead, dead on the inside
  • Davos compares himself to a hollow shell left behind by a dead crab, fitting the oceanic imagery of his story. The stuff of life is gone, leaving only the structure, the pretense.
  • That’s Davos’ legacy, he thinks: Onion Rock, a testament to a man who thought he was doing it all for his kids, only to watch them burn. That right there may well be Stannis’ legacy: a shield with nothing left to defend
  • We didn’t get to know Davos’ sons all that well in ACOK, but George includes details here to ground us in Davos’ grief. It’s all about the lives they could have lived. Matthos will never captain his own ship; Maric will never have his knighthood. They wanted to climb the ladder like Dad, but as in Qarth, the ladder was a fiery one with nothing at the top
  • Most painful of all is the memory of Dale; he and his wife were trying to conceive. Davos could’ve been a grandfather, watching a generation of Seaworths who had never known poverty. It’s all been taken away
  • What was my climb for? Davos thinks he’s unworthy in part because of his low birth. Better men than me, and highborn, died on the river. Why should I live? “Hide, smuggler, and die.” It’s significant that he calls himself a smuggler in this moment. Going forward, one of the major factors in Davos’ story is the tension between his noble self and smuggler self
  • His noble self is the one that led his children into the fire; Davos feels that man died there, like the corpse that washed up on the rock with him
  • Davos has lost his luck, he thinks, clutching at his neck where his fingerbones used to be: four lost fingerbones for four dead sons
  • All that’s left is the smuggler-self. That’s who I really am; I was pretending to be that other man, and my innocent children have paid the price
  • Part of that dynamic for Davos is survivor’s guilt, or the idea that Davos did something wrong by surviving a traumatic event.
  • But as you’re saying, it’s not simple survivor’s guilt that’s animating Davos’ emotional state here.
  • The decisions Davos made, the loyalties that he carried out - far beyond human reasoning - led Davos and his sons into the green flames.
  • Stannis was Davos’ true god as he said in ACOK, but Stannis right now looks like the god that failed Davos.
  • Except … and this is SO George’s lapsed Catholicism here: it’s not God’s fault that shit has gone so bad.
  • No, no. It’s the sinner’s fault. It’s Davos’ sin that led to his sons’ death.
  • Davos had risen too high, loved Stannis too much, grasped the star, overreached and fell.
  • Back in ACOK, Davos thought at length about how Stannis had raised him, and that all he had in this life he owed to Stannis.
  • But now in ASOS, that service has resulted in tragedy and heartbreak for Davos.
  • It’s not explicitly stated here or back in ACOK, but this chapter mentions how Matthos was standing right at Davos’ elbow when the wildfire exploded.
  • Perhaps Matthos absorbed the shockwave from the wildfire blast which prevented the blast from hitting Davos as hard as it did.
  • In other words, Matthos took the bullet - metaphorically speaking - that was meant for Davos.
  • Of course, that’s not how reality works on the battlefield. You stand in one spot, and you live. You stand in another, a few feet away, and you die. Random, dumb chance.
  • But for Davos, there is no random chance. He’s alive while his sons are dead, because of his sin.
  • Interestingly, Davos does not frame his sin as his service to Stannis; rather, his sin was in aiding and abetting Melisandre.
  • Davos may have thought that something was wrong when he talked with Stannis back in ACOK, Davos II, but he’s not at the point where he blames Stannis for what Melisandre did.
  • No, no. Davos has taken my position when we had that argument back in one our fifteen episodes on ACOK, Davos II: that Stannis didn’t know. That Melisandre had birthed the shadow and sent it to metaphysical evil.
  • But all of that Christian imagery and connection Davos makes between sin and suffering leads Davos in an unexpected direction, or rather: into an unexpected conversation: with the gods themselves. Maybe. Probably not.
• The Mother
  • All of the above feeds into Davos’ vision of the Mother, which is the heart of the chapter. Everything builds up to it
  • On one hand, you’ve got the bleak material realities of Davos’ situation, which seem to speak to a godless world. If the Seven are really there, why have they forsaken Davos? Why allow his innocent sons to die?
  • On the other hand, it’s a miracle that Davos has survived at all, and as he’ll argue in his next chapter, it’s also a miracle that this ship turned up near his rock, given how notorious this area is for shipwrecks
  • So we don’t even get the dignity of a clear answer! If we could say for certain that there’s no one up there watching us, at least it would end the torment, the open questions that make up the human condition
  • The gods offer us examples, parables, as instructions in the abstract. We are the ones who have to put it into practice; we always inevitably fail
  • “The Father protects his children.” That’s what the septons taught Davos: we are all god’s children, and he will not abandon you. If you would be a good man, a good father, be like him
  • But Davos failed to protect his children. He led them into the fire. In peacetime, children bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children
  • The fire scoured his world and his soul, leaving him on a bare rock. Why did the Father Above lead me into this hopeless mess? Davos prays to the Mother for mercy...and a voice answers
  • We’ll talk more about what’s going on here later in the episode. In terms of Davos’ arc, the point is that the Mother confronts Davos about his choices
  • “You called the fire,” the voice whispers, like the echo of the waves you can hear in seashells. “You burned us....burned us...”
  • That’s how Davos’ first chapter began: watching the gods burn and blacken like his sons on the Blackwater. According to this voice, one led to the other. You allowed Stannis’ fury to consume your family along with us. You broke the cosmic order, the Chain of Being; all will suffer for it
  • The gods didn’t lead you here, you led yourself here. You stood, watched, and did nothing. Worse than that, you sailed Melisandre under Storm’s End and helped her kill Cortnay Penrose:
    • "Your hand raised the sail. Your hand holds the tiller."
  • What’s remarkable about this is that, like Catelyn’s experience in the south, it arguably demonstrates the Faith’s power more if it’s not real
  • It shows how deeply the Faith has sunk into Davos, that the Mother is who appears to him. Guilt is a difficult thing to deal with, especially when combined with physical deprivation and trauma from the battle. His brain needs someone to tell him he’s bad, so he can defend himself...and then realize that his defense doesn’t hold up. “You are not guiltless, no.”
  • This brings Davos to the catharsis he needs, a cleansing honest look at himself. It’s extremely painful, but it’s what allows him to move forward. It’s what gives him reason to live. I have to redeem myself, to make up for what I’ve done. We’ll talk more about his methods of doing so in Davos II!
  • There’s a Saul on the Road to Emmaus thing going on here from the Book of Acts.
  • When Paul was Saul, he was a persecutor of the Christian sect, going from town to town to persecute early Christians into returning back to Judaism or, barring that, to stone them to death ala Stephen.
  • But on the Road to Emmaus, Saul had a light fall around him and heard the voice of Jesus asking: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
  • Davos is not the active persecutor of the Faith of the Seven. As we’ll find out in later Davos chapters in ASOS, that’s much more Selyse and Melisandre (and Stannis by extension, but we’ll get to that argument in Davos II)
  • But now he’s hearing the voice of the Mother, calling him back to his faith.
  • At the same time, the voice of the Mother is rather accusatory, isn’t it? You burned us, burrrrrrned ussssss.
  • Davos did no such thing. He didn’t burn the gods! No, ser. He merely watched as it happened.
  • In my synopsis, I alluded to a similar dynamic in Barristan’s story in ADWD: how Barristan never raised a torch to Rickard Stark or tied the rope around Brandon Stark’s neck.
  • But he stood, saw and did nothing while these terrible things happened, taking the view that his duty to Aerys II was of greater value than his knightly vow to defend those who cannot defend themselves.
  • That’s what Davos is experiencing here: that guilt over not rising to protect the gods from Melisandre’s flames.
  • What’s fascinating is that while Davos experienced guilt watching the Seven burn back on Dragonstone, his perspective at that time was much less devout:
    • Allard kicked at a stone. "The Others take our onion . . . and that flaming heart. It was an ill thing to burn the Seven."

"When did you grow so devout?" Davos said. "What does a smuggler's son know of the doings of gods?"

• And now the smuggler knows of the doings of gods. He’s seen a magical shadow cast by Melisandre and has now heard the Mother’s call.
• And all of those religious awakenings have pierced Davos with an intimate guilt -- a guilt that he has to atone for.
• It’s so powerful to read Davos step forward to take control of his destiny, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how his shortened fingers slip
  • Ser Davos Seaworth began to climb his rock.
• Once again, this is a microcosm of what happens with the Team Stannis plot as a whole. Stannis responds to the signal of the Night’s Watch letter, giving him reason to go on, just as Davos responds to the sail here
• But Stannis would never have even seen the Night’s Watch letter without Davos! Everything depends on this moment, the fate of so many people coming down to this common-born man deciding he’s not worthless
• He screams into the wind for help, begging to rejoin humanity. The sailors demand to know who he is. That’s the big question for Davos in ASOS
• Who are you after you lose everything that makes you who you were: your ship, your sons, your luck? You must remake yourself: the self-made man
• Rebirth is painful, just like birth; the early chapters of ASOS hammer that home over and over again
• Who was Davos? According to him: “a smuggler who rose above himself, a fool who loved his king too much and forgot his gods”
• So King Stannis is no longer Davos’ god, as he put it in ACOK, and he’s no longer able to reconcile his knight-self and smuggler-self
• Davos is a contradiction now, a proper human mess rather than a supporting character in Stannis’ story
• He used to pride himself on speaking plain and direct, but now he can’t even communicate who he is. All he can say is that he was in the battle; he was a captain, he was a knight. I was, I was. But who am I?
• Who do you serve, they ask? There’s a tense moment in which Davos wonders if they might serve Joffrey...but the Lysene stripes on their sails give them away. They were sent for me, Davos thinks
• And whether or not that’s true is less important than how it lifts Davos out of the hole inside him. He remembers that he still has other sons, and a wife at home waiting for him. How could he have thought of abandoning them? There’s still love to be found on earth
• Moreover, the fact that the Lysene are still in Blackwater Bay means that Stannis lives, and Davos will return to his service...but as a king, not a god
• Davos feels he owes his life to the gods beneath the waves, and considers returning to them. Then the ship arrives; Davos will later argue that the Mother sent it. Who really sent it? George did! It’s a message from the author, the one true god of this universe, that he has need of Davos. We’ll start learning why in Davos II when we finally meet Edric Storm.
• The brilliance of the end of the chapter where Davos isn’t sure whether the ship is Joffrey’s or Stannis’ is something that goes deeply unexplored by fans!
• Most fans look at Davos and see a man who is almost blind in his loyalty and obedience to Stannis.
• They see a Davos who is so loyal to Stannis that he does the right thing on Stannis’ behalf to spare his king a moral event horizon by doing the right thing.
• But that Davos makes a logical deduction that the ship is a Lysene ship, rather than one of Joffrey’s ships, makes Davos’ loyalty much less blind and potentially something else entirely.
• When Davos declares that he serves Stannis, and the sailors reply, “Aye, ser, and so do we”, we shouldn’t take these as face-value statements.
• Come ADWD, these same Lysene sailors will make off with Salladhor Saan for the Stepstones, leaving Stannis’ service entirely when Stannis fails to pay Salla the gold owed him.
• Come TWOW, will Davos stay loyal to Stannis in the long-term? Will he stay so loyal to Stannis when he finally crosses that moral red line when he burns Shireen?
• Or more to the point, given Davos’ deep guilt he feels over his sons, when he finds out how his family is endangered back in the Rainwood, will Davos stay at Stannis’ side.
• Or will he, Odysseus-like, make the voyage back to Marya and his young sons to save them from the flames of war?
• Ultimately, the hypothetical here is what Davos would have said if he identified the sail as Lannister crimson.
• And I think Davos would be less like the knights from Sansa’s final ACOK Chapter, facing the execution block rather than forswear their allegiance to Stannis.
• That may be a precursor to things not yet published until next week or the week after.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

All that talk of how armored men sank to the bottom of the Blackwater reads as early inspiration for Lord Admiral Idiot Pirate Victarion Greyjoy who wears full plate armor into the Battle of the Shield Isle in AFFC and doesn’t plan on stopping wearing full armor into battle anytime soon. I wonder how that will work out for him ultimately ...

Davos guesses that the ship belongs to Salladhor Saan, and he’s right--they take him right to Salla in his next chapter.

Davos thinks he doesn’t know the ship’s name because he never learned to read...but he will by the end of his arc in this book!

Theory/Discussion

Lord Jake, Assistant to the Hand of the King, asks:

We always hear about how useless the Seven are in terms of power (And if they are even real) but Davos believes they rescued him for a reason- actually "hearing" the Mother speak to him. Do you think this might be a hint that the Seven actually has any real power? Was it another of the gods, R'hllor maybe? Or even just boring ol' luck?

• George has said that he intended this moment to be ambiguous, FWIW
• I follow the New Information test for supernatural occurrences. Does the god or entity or whatever give you new information, or just stuff you already know?
• When Quaithe shows up in ADWD Dany II, she gives Dany info about characters Dany hasn’t heard of yet. Clearly, that’s a legit supernatural phenomenon
• But here? All the Mother tells Davos is that it sucks that you burned us, bro. Maybe you shouldn’t have done that! That’s already where Davos’ head is at
• It’s not like the Mother goes “Davos, they just burned my loyal servant Guncer Sunglass on Dragonstone! Go avenge him!” That would be new information
• As it stands, I don’t think anything supernatural happened here. This is Davos talking to himself. In his deprivation, grief, and trauma, his brain conjures up a familiar image so he can reckon with his own conscience
• It’s like how Catelyn saw familiar faces in the chalk outlines of the gods down at Storm’s End. This is a psychological projection, filling an emotional need
• I think it’s telling that this is the only time in the story it’s even suggested there might be some metaphysical power behind the Faith of the Seven
• In ADWD, Tyrion visits Andal territory, the place the Faith of the Seven was born...and it’s all just hills and estates now. Nothing magical to be seen
• We’ll talk a lot more about this in Davos II, but I think this spiritual revelation for Davos is meant to parallel Melisandre. Even as Davos declares holy war on the red woman and her god, he’s actually talking and acting a lot like her
• The gods are what we make of them, ultimately, whether the magic is real or not
• Bingo! You hit the nail on the head throughout but especially with your last few thoughts..
• Sometimes it feels like people project their own gnawing doubts about whether the divine exists in the real world into ASOIAF.
• Obviously, the Seven don’t real, because god does not exist or some such.
• And a lot of folks take George’s personal agnosticism/atheism as a barometer for whether the divine exists in the world of ice and fire.
• But I’m not sure whether knowing GRRM’s perspective obscures more than clarifies.
• Take Tolkien. Despite Tolkien coming from a very TradCath personal perspective you can read LOTR and read the world as magical but somewhat godless.
• (Yes, I’m aware of what or who Gandalf and Sauriman represent. LAY OFF.)
• My own perspective on the Seven is similar to yours in that I don’t see a lot of evidence for the Seven for the reasons you outlined
• The best evidence for the Seven is this chapter. It’s not strong evidence for the reader!
• And yet, it’s compelling for Davos. The Mother speaks to Davos, and it’s not as important from a character perspective whether it’s true or not — though it’s probably not actually the Mother, again, for the reasons you outlined.
• The gods - especially the Seven - are a play on the shadow on the wall concept.
• Where does divine power lie? It's where men say it lies.
• That’s the power of the gods for Davos. He believes that the Mother spoke to him, and that’s enough for Davos to decide to start living again

Conclusion

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• Join us next week for ASOS Sansa I, in which it’s just us girls (and Loras), hanging out, having fun. Nothing else at work in the chapter.