Game Of Thrones: Final Season --SPOILERS!

[The Romulan Republic]

I can't think of a worse person for Master of Whispers than Stannis. He'd thank every spy who gave him Intelligence, tuan have their tongues removed for speaking against their lords.

Really? Even if they were acting in accordance with their duty to a superior lord (the King?) I know you don't like the guy, I don't particularly either, but that seems a somewhat caricatured reading of the character to me.

[FaxModem1]

I can't think of a worse person for Master of Whispers than Stannis. He'd thank every spy who gave him Intelligence, tuan have their tongues removed for speaking against their lords.

Really? Even if they were acting in accordance with their duty to a superior lord (the King?) I know you don't like the guy, I don't particularly either, but that seems a somewhat caricatured reading of the character to me.

Ask Ser Davos why he can't play patty cake anymore after getting much needed food to Stannis.

[The Romulan Republic]

I can't think of a worse person for Master of Whispers than Stannis. He'd thank every spy who gave him Intelligence, tuan have their tongues removed for speaking against their lords.

Really? Even if they were acting in accordance with their duty to a superior lord (the King?) I know you don't like the guy, I don't particularly either, but that seems a somewhat caricatured reading of the character to me.

Ask Ser Davos why he can't play patty cake anymore after getting much needed food to Stannis.

Davos's punishment, while harsh, was for technically illegal acts (smuggling). I don't think, say, a knight supporting the crown over a traitor lord is.

[FaxModem1]

Really? Even if they were acting in accordance with their duty to a superior lord (the King?) I know you don't like the guy, I don't particularly either, but that seems a somewhat caricatured reading of the character to me.

Ask Ser Davos why he can't play patty cake anymore after getting much needed food to Stannis.

Davos's punishment, while harsh, was for technically illegal acts (smuggling). I don't think, say, a knight supporting the crown over a traitor lord is.

It shows Kantian thinking on Stannis's part, in which doing anything immoral or illicit for the greater good is worth punishing, which is rather incompatible with being a spymaster, in which you need people willing to play the game, rewarding loyalty and taking out those who are potential threats to you and your administration. A lot of this has to be done through bribes, assassination, and/or coercion. Stannis expected a lot of such services to be done in utter loyalty to him, and couldn't reconcile that fact with the fact that those with experience in such fields aren't looking to serve the boss out of loyalty. Ser Davos is the outlier in that regard.

During the American Civil War, the Confederacy embraced the blockade runners as heroes. How long do you think they would have lasted if they were punished by the Confederacy for smuggling goods to them? The fictional Rhett Butler would have stayed very far away from such leaders. Same when it comes to assassins, who are technically committing the crime of murder. Same for spies when they are stealing documents from other lord's castles in the name of espionage are guilty of the crime of theft. Could Stannis reconcile that difference? Or would he view it as acts of injustice that need to be fixed?

[Ralin]

\Could Stannis reconcile that difference? Or would he view it as acts of injustice that need to be fixed?

Yeah, probably. Stannis has an exaggerated reputation for inflexibility in and out of setting. After Renly died he gave pardons to a whole bunch of lords he knew damned well were opportunistic jackals and traitors. He grit his teeth and hated it, but he did it. Davos is an extreme example of his lawful above all tendencies, and let's not forget it was accompanied by a lordship. There were actually good practical reasons to make to clear that you can't spend your life flouting the law then get lucky by helping someone important and get off scot-free.

Rewarded, sure. Pardoned, yes. But no wiping the slate clean.

It shows Kantian thinking on Stannis's part, in which doing anything immoral or illicit for the greater good is worth punishing, which is rather incompatible with being a spymaster, in which you need people willing to play the game, rewarding loyalty and taking out those who are potential threats to you and your administration. A lot of this has to be done through bribes, assassination, and/or coercion.

You mean like kin-slaying and assassinating enemies via adulterous sex-based shadow baby magic?

[Ralin]

An utterly corrupt city watch in the capital, a bankrupt treasury with massive debt to some very nasty people, and a gigantic succession crisis ready to explode the moment the old king bought it.

Yeah, it wasn't working well at all. Although I'll give Jon Arryn credit for managing to paper over the cracks for the better part of two decades.

Eh. I mean, I think mostly working for that long is an achievement by itself. The secession crisis was mostly unconnected to Robert’s actions and ruler and was more a consequence of the personality of him, the queen and Jaime.

Honestly, there are multiple ways the succession crisis could have been nipped in the bud or at least ended quickly with a relatively clean victory for one side or the other. Joffery not executing Ned and keeping him around as a bargaining tool, a few battles where Robb ended up being a prodigy and exceeding everyone’s expectations, Renly taking his time and deciding to deal with Stannis first, etc. The treasury being bankrupt was in many ways an on paper thing that could have been rectified by squeezing the money Littlefinger embezzled out of him since it’s pretty clear that Robert didn’t really beggar the Realm with his extravagances.

What we saw in the books was in many ways a perfect storm of worst possible outcomes. I dunno if Robert was a good king, but his reign had a lot going for it.

Until it didn’t. But that’s true of most governments.

They gave House Lannister outsized influence, alienating other parts of the realm, and ultimately leaving Robert dependent on a single disloyal house and open to betrayal.

Outsized, for one of the richest houses in the Realm, Warden of the West and someone the king needed as an ally. Robert probably could have haggled and demanded more concessions from the Lannisters and so on relative to what they did for him, but they were going to be hugely influential regardless.

Granted, but one doesn't need to know finance to recognize that Littlefinger is sleaze incarnate.

I put that mostly on Jon Arryn, though. Robert just took his recommendation.

He probably wasn’t obviously sleazy to Robert and a lot of other people. Part of why he managed to get his position in the first place was because he came off as no possible political threat. Partially that’s because Robert et al viewed the world like aristocrats and not like bankers, but he probably kept his slimier tendencies under wraps around people he didn’t have a personal emotional connection to like Ned, Catelyn and Sansa.

Yes I know he had never met Ned before the first book, but he was Catelyn’s husband and Brandon 2.0 so presumably he had strong feelings about the subject regardless.