Why Melisandre Is The Real Hero in
Game of Thrones
She does not have dragons. She does not swing a battleaxe. She does not mingle with the political snake den of King’s Landing. She does not forge alliances or settle disputes with the lords and ladies in Westeros… So what in the seven hells does she actually do?
Lady Melisandre of Asshai burns people alive. She practices blood magic. She gives birth to shadow demons. She denounces the Gods and drinks wine from a goblet carved in the shape of a monster’s claw.
And she is the one who will save the fucking world.
Sure, a lot of people are immediately put off by her because of the whole Sacrificing-People-To-Appease-God thing, but is that really so bad in a universe where someone loses a limb at least three times per chapter? Seriously. Westeros is fucking brutal. This is a place where violence is about as common as the flu during winter. So why do people immediately shrink in fear when a super hot sorceress sets the stage for mayhem?
Melisandre doesn’t even appear in the series until A Clash of Kings, and right away we are told that she is bad news. She is described as “… Red, and terrible, and red.” Cressen even says that “… [Her] madness must not be allowed to leave Dragonstone.”
It is no secret that scarlet silks and pyromancy are about as out of the ordinary as influential women in Game of Thrones. Cressen, pictured above, is immediately freaked out by the raw feminine power that is Lady Melisandre. In his eyes, Melisandre is an evil zealot who is purposefully trying to ruin everything for everyone. He decides that he is the only one who can stop this insanity, so Cressen devises a plan to poison her wine. What he does not seem to realize is that the Red Woman is a fucking BOSS.
Melisandre drinks that shit. She downs the poisoned wine like it’s the most delicious poison of all time. It’s so good she’ll have a second glass of poison.
And she is not stupid; she knows she is drinking straight-up Murder Juice. Does she care? Nope. Not one bit. The bitter old man tried to kill her at the King’s feast, so it would only be fair that she ruin his day, right?
No. Because Melisandre is not an asshole. Melisandre even gives this guy a chance to back up and take it easy.
She met him beneath the high table with every man’s eyes upon them. But Cressen saw only her. Red silk, red eyes, the ruby red at her throat, red lips curled in a faint smile as she put her hand atop his own, around the cup. Her skin felt hot, feverish. “It is not too late to spill the wine, Maester.”
“No,” he whispered hoarsely. “No.”
“As you will.” Melisandre of Asshai took the cup from his hands and drank long and deep. There was only half a swallow of wine remaining when she offered it back to him. “And now you.”
- A Clash of Kings, 21
So she gives Cressen a shot to avoid the whole assassination thing. It’s not her fault he is a stubborn fool. Melisandre knows the world is bigger than a few old people, and she is perfectly willing to do some messed up things if it means stopping the god damned apocalypse, starting with…
THE PARANORMAL QUEEF
Everyone remembers that scene. Davos is smuggling the Red Woman to an undisclosed location in the tunnels of Storm’s End for a top secret mission. Along the way she goads Davos into conversing, despite his obvious displeasure. Melisandre tells him that he is either a good man or a bad man. “If half an onion is black with rot,” she says, “it’s a rotten onion.” While Davos insists that the world is not so black-and-white, Melisandre calmly explains that evil (shadows, in this case) can still be used as a tool if the purposes are pure.
“Shadows cannot live in the dark, Ser Davos. They are servants of light, the children of fire. And the brighter the flame, the darker they are...”
After this great little tidbit, Melisandre opens her legs and allows a shadowy demon to crawl out of her woman-parts. The shadow/demon/baby is part of a magic ritual that involves having tantric sex, and if there is one thing that Game of Thrones doesn’t lack, it’s tantric sex.
Melisandre is perfectly willing to get her hands (and woman-parts) dirty if it means preventing the end of the world. She offers bastard children with the blood of kings to the fires if it means appeasing the Lord of Light, her Red God, R’hllor. If anything, this is an admirable quality. A bit creepy, yeah, but still admirable.
THE RED GOD’S CHOSEN
Under normal circumstances, any sort of religious zealotry would be disavowed without a second thought. Out of all the crazy things that go on in Game of Thrones, however, it’s hard to say for certain which gods are running things considering there are so many religions in this universe; Old Gods of the North, the Drowned God of the Iron Islands, the Black Goat of Qohor, the Bearded Priests of Norvos, the Great Stallion of Vaes Dothrak, the Faith of the Seven, etc. There are literally hundreds of gods, and the only evidence of them we have seen lie with the Old Gods and Melisandre’s Red God.
And the Red God actually does shit for his faithful subjects. In the show we see Thoros resurrect Beric Dondarrion like seven times. Beric has been stabbed, hung, beaten, and yet he can’t just sit down and stay dead because his best friend is a Red Priest and — TOTAL SHOCKER — The Red Priests have power.
The religion of the Red Priests is rather Manichean and is focused on the duality of good and evil. Melisandre claims that there is a constant battle between the forces of light (fire) and darkness (ice). Since this is not Frozen and Queen Elsa isn’t around to control the snow zombies from consuming the world, things are a bit scary for the people dealing with said darkness.
Well, they aren’t scary for Melisandre because she is going out of her way to stop this blight from happening. She knows something is going on beyond the Wall and she wants stop it in its tracks. With prophecy on her side, she aligns with Stannis Baratheon because she believes he is Azor Ahai reborn.
Wait.
WHAT THE FUCK IS AZOR AHAI?
Azor Ahai is the name of the last hero who defeated the Others, also known as the Whitewalkers. This was like a few thousand years ago. The hero’s lore is barely mentioned on the show, but the books tell us that Azor Ahai forged a sword called Lightbringer and plunged it into his wife’s chest. The blood and soul of his wife literally poured into the sword, which was then used to defeat the shambling ice corpses.
Still, it seems odd that Stannis would be the resurrection of this chosen hero. For one, he’s Stannis. He doesn’t exactly have a winning personality, and that’s putting it lightly. The guy is tough and fair, but he is far from a likable hero. Still, there are a few good reasons why Melisandre thinks he is the one to rid the world of darkness. This ultimately opens up a whole bunch of questions, like…
WHO THE FUCK IS AZOR AHAI?
When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.
There are lots of ways to interpret this. The bleeding red star clearly refers to the red comet that we saw for like 5 minutes in season 2. Melisandre believes Stannis is Azor Ahai because he lives on a smoky, salty rock called Dragonstone. Stannis’s grandmother was Rhaelle Targaryen, so he does actually have “Blood of the Dragon” flowing in his veins. You can’t get more literal than that!
Or can you? (You can.) Some believe Daenerys Targaryen is Azor Ahai born again because she came out of a pyre, naked and covered with dragons that hatched from stone eggs. Others posit the theory that Jon Snow is actually the son of Rhaegar Targaryen (Daenerys’s older brother) and he is the one who will slay all the Whitewalkers. But this is all conjecture. Even the Holiest of Holy Book Readers cannot confirm this with 100% certainty.
Yet the evidence mostly stands in favor of Daenerys, but Melisandre does not know who Daenerys even is. She is not from Westeros, so she has no idea that a secret Targaryen princess escaped Robert’s Rebellion and started liberating the shit out of slave cities in the East. Is it really Melisandre’s fault that news travels really fucking slow? And if Melisandre was wrong, guess what? She would probably own up because she is surprisingly humble.
It is mentioned multiple times that prophecy is a tricky business. The Lord of Light can send Melisandre messages, but she insists that it is her interpretations which can be wrong. Despite there being other soothsayers and fortune tellers who throw prophecies around, Melisandre is the only one to say that the messages are not as clear as some might make them look.
Prophecy is nothing new in the series; strange predictions and unique theories seem to grow like summer grass as the books progress. The funny part is that these messages are never exactly obvious, and Melisandre is one of the few who gets it wrong at times. Oh well. Nobody’s perfect, after all.
MELISANDRE TAKES ACTION
But here’s the thing: Melisandre gets shit done. Or, at least, she tries to. Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms and beyond seems to be so preoccupied with who is sitting on the Iron Throne and which brother is sleeping with which sister. (In the Lannister’s case, brother and sister sleep together! HEYOOO!) Nobody recognizes that there is a huge army of Whitewalkers advancing towards them. They have had FIVE books to prepare for this shit.
But no one seems to care. The highborn lords can sit around and procrastinate because they’re highborn lords. They’re the 1%. They are the Mitt Romneys and Donald Trumps of Westeros. When the men of the Night’s Watch knock on their castle doors and say “Hey, there is a serious threat that needs to be dealt with. Everyone is gonna die. Please help,” these noblemen shrug their shoulders and go back to getting drunk off Dornish wine in their golden palaces. Even Tywin Lannister, one of the greatest minds in the Seven Kingdoms, scoffs at the idea of helping the Night’s Watch. He calls them “…a pack of thieves, killers, and baseborn churls.” What a dick. It’s like nobody cares!
Nobody but Melisandre, Davos, and Stannis, that is. Melisandre is often at odds with Davos, but she is willing to concede when he is correct in his summation that this threat is bigger than a throne. Stannis himself is initially reluctant to help fight Whitewalkers. The poor guy barely has enough soldiers, but the two of them convince him that heading north is the right call. In the finale of season 4, we were given the chance to see this decision pay off big time. After all…
“I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.”
- A Storm of Swords, 867
Go ahead. You can try and make Stannis humble. It’s not easy. And to top it off, it’s all thankless work. Melisandre finally gets her own Point-Of-View chapter in A Dance With Dragons and we actually get to witness her inner dialogue firsthand. What we learn from her is that she actually cares for Davos, the guy who is always bringing her down and working to undermine her.
Davos lost all of his eldest sons fighting in the war, but Melisandre kept one as her servant. She admits that the boy would rather be fighting by Stannis’s side, but she feels that Davos has already lost enough at this point, and his son would be safer by her side.
Yeah, what a fucking monster she is.
HANGING OUT IN ASSHAI-BY-THE-SHADOW
Let’s play with some hypothetical scenarios for a bit. If Melisandre decided to stay in Asshai, nothing would have been done. Asshai is so, so far away that few people even go there. You can’t just hop on a horse in Asshai and head over to Westeros. Seven hells, if only things were that easy.
Put it this way. Consider how far Daenerys is from the Iron Throne in terms of distance. Now, add a few other countries and seas to that. That’s really far. Like, really, really fucking far. Now, consider what we actually know about Asshai…
Not much is said of this city in the books or the show. What is actually written can be found in The World of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin’s massive atlas that covers most of the fabled lands mentioned in the series. The section for Asshai barely covers two pages, but we are told it is a rather grim place.
“Few places in the known world are as remote as Asshai, and fewer are as forbidding. Travelers tell us that the city is built entirely of black stone: halls, hovels, temples, palaces, streets, walls, bazaars, all. Some say as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, that it seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearthfires alike. The nights are very black in Asshai, all agree, and even the brightest days of summer are somehow grey and gloomy.”
-The World of Ice and Fire, 308
Sounds a bit like London, doesn’t it? The passage also details how Asshai is a welcome place for magic, and that shadowbinders will always find a home in the city. Those who practice dark arts can safely hone their crafts in Asshai, so it is clear that Melisandre has done a lot of shady things to become as skilled as she is, but it’s all for the greater good.
Melisandre must have had some damn good reasons to go all the way to Dragonstone based off of ancient texts and prophecies. Once again, she knows something is up and she plans to act on it. Someone has to be the Lord of Light’s instrument, and it’s definitely her. Melisandre might not be the one swinging the sword and slaying the Whitewalkers, but without her around, would there even be anyone to try stopping the apocalypse?
—
Unless Daenerys uses her dragons or something. I don’t know.
