The Guy Behind The Guy: An Appreciation of Davos Seaworth

The big personalities of Westeros have entourages that would make Ari Gold blush - the lords and ladies that flit around what has become a revolving door of rulers can be dizzying, but there is one constant companion any good king or queen needs, and that is a “hand” - a first-among-equals advisor who (in theory) can give their ruler the unvarnished truth and wise counsel while executing their superior’s orders. Tyrion Lannister is clever and Qyburn is sadistic, but give me Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight himself, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. 

Sure, Davos is a flirt (looking at you Missandei), has a good heart (RIP the Princess Shireen) and he may come from nothing and have a Flea Bottom accent, but for my money, he embodies the qualities a good hand should have - he is loyal to those he serves, he has a strong moral compass, and he sees the big picture. At three critical points during Game of Thrones it is this last quality that served Davos’s superiors well:

First, it was Stannis, on the balls of his ass after getting (literally) blown out of the water at the Battle of Blackwater Bay. His army in tatters and his dream of ruling the Seven Kingdoms all but snuffed out, Stannis and Davos make a journey to the Iron Bank in Braavos. Their goal? Get a line of credit from the stoic bankers to buy an army of sell swords for a second shot at glory. Things do not go so well for Stannis. First, he is left cooling his heels for hours, growing more and more impatient, then, when he is granted an audience, the money lenders are quick to dismiss his request. 

When all appears lost, and Stannis is about to sulk away, Davos steps up. He appeals to the bankers’ logic and reason even though he himself is uneducated and barely literate. Davos understands that the Iron Bank is most concerned with making wise “investments” (or “bets” as Cersei would call them in Season 7) and in framing the ongoing battle as one between a child king (Tommen) of questionable parentage (elliptically referencing the incestuous consummation that produced him) and an experienced military leader with a much stronger claim to the throne (as the brother of the deceased King Robert), Davos’s pitch carries the day. The pair walk out of Braavos with the money they need to make another run at King’s Landing.

Next, after Stannis’s defeat, Davos latches on to the Starks, traveling with them through the North in an effort to form an army that will retake Winterfell. Jon and Sansa are flummoxed and shot down by the brassy leader of Bear Island, ten-year-old Lyanna Mormont, who has no time (or fucks to give) for their sycophantry or bald appeals for fealty. It is only when Davos steps up (again, when it appears all is lost), that the worm turns. First, he relates to Lyanna, expressing empathy for her situation as a young ruler at a time of war. He then tells his own story of being a crabber’s son now addressing a leader of a “noble house.” His flattery is not forced, rather, he is acknowledging the difficult position a young girl has been placed in. Once he has established her trust (“go on, Sir Davos”), he makes his appeal, connecting her own family and the Starks, the threat of the Night King and the need to unite the North (which, incidentally, requires removing Ramsey) to prepare for the larger battle. Again, he prevails and 62 hearty Mormonts (along with their precocious ruler) come to Jon and Sansa’s aid.

Finally, Davos returns to Dragonstone, this time at Jon’s side, not Stannis’s, to meet Queen Daenerys, whose dragons the men are quite interested in appropriating to fight the White Walkers. Of course, Dany is more interested in Jon’s submission and acknowledgment of her claim as the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Jon is not a man of many words and his hair-on-fire warnings about the Night King (about whom Dany knows nothing) are falling on deaf ears even as she is flaunting the symbols of her power - the great throne room they address her in, the dragons that swoop over the island, and the Dothraki killers who serve at her command. 

Here again, Davos has an intuitive sense of the room, turning Dany’s words back on her to underscore the similarities between her and Jon. She birthed dragons and brought the Dothraki across the sea, he united the Wildlings and the North men. She is queen by birthright, he is king because a lot of “hard sons of bitches” chose him as their leader. His praise of Jon is matter-of-fact but it has its intended effect - a first meeting that looked to be spiraling toward disaster is instead converted into something approaching grudging respect, as Dany sends Davos and Jon off to quarters with baths drawn and meals on delivery. 

Davos may not be great at rolling off titles, but he has a fingertip feel for what strings to pull at what moment to diffuse a situation, which makes him a very valuable person to have standing next to you. 

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Varys -- Double Agent?

HBO wrapped the sixth season of Game of Thrones with a commanding image of Daenerys, her retinue of advisors and a massive armada steaming for Westeros. It was an impressive sight made all the more so by an alliance cemented by Varys in the waning moments of The Winds of Winter that brought the Dornish and the Queen of Thorns (House Tyrell) into the fold.

But what if instead of collecting what passes for a Westerosi version of the super friends, Varys was actually engaging in a deeper game on behalf of Queen Cersei? Judging from the first three episodes of Season Seven, the possibility of a mole within Dany’s circle may be the Occam’s Razor for why she is now, as The Ringer crew put it, in danger of becoming GoT’s 2016 Golden State Warriors – blowing a 3-1 lead to an inferior opponent.

Consider Dany’s military plan to conquer Westeros. It called for the siege of King’s Landing by the Dornish and Tyrells, with the Unsullied storming Casterly Rock to cut off a potential route of retreat for the Lannister army. It all made sense until Euron destroyed Dany’s fleet and captured Ellaria and Yara, Cersei sacrificed Casterly Rock (strategically unimportant) and moved her troops on Highgarden instead, not only snuffing out the Tyrell army but looting its gold to pay off the throne’s debt to the Iron Bank.

While it is possible that Jaime and Euron are military geniuses and Tyrion a fool, in this show, so pregnant with deceit and double-dealing, Varys’s position within Dany’s small council points to a different solution. After all, if Varys was working for Cersei, she could not ask for anything more than having all her enemies huddled under one tent to then be picked off one by one with inside intel on their military plans. Not only would the destruction of old houses allow her to insert new leadership beholden to her (see, Randall Tarly) but would make her rule unquestioned, with no enemies (or dragons) to deal with.

Dany sensed this in her tense back-and-forth with Varys, ticking off his prior betrayals and putting to him the question of why she should trust him. His “I choose you” declaration sounded sincere but for a show that fetishizes the idea of a man’s “word” having great value, the successful players of the game deftly sense when their allegiance should sway in order to move up the ladder. Indeed, with Little Finger ensconced in Winterfell with the Knights of the Vale at his command and always one for a heel turn when it suits his purposes, he could deliver Sansa to Cersei and be richly rewarded even as Jon is now marooned at Dragonstone – the walls of the Resistance could crumble before they even had a chance to form.

And while unsatisfying to those who see Cersei as a cruel and evil woman, it would not be at all inconsistent with either the show or the books’ idea that “good” men and women do not always triumph in this world. Indeed, it is often those who are willing to assert their power, regardless of who is killed in service of the wielding of that power, that triumph. Of course, this could also just be a massive head fake to stretch the drama, this is television after all.

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Game of Thrones - Season Six

The sixth season of Game of Thrones was a Fourth of July fireworks display that began with the resurrection of Jon Snow and culminated with Cersei Lannister executing an “inside job” terrorist attack on the capital that destroyed her enemies and inadvertently elevated her to the Iron Throne. It was a lot to absorb. The show has always been ambitious, but this season embraced its cinematic tendencies and turned the dial up to eleven: Dothraki leaders burned alive, a set piece battle outside Winterfell with bodies piled thirty deep, Dany’s dragons unleashing hell on the Masters seeking to reclaim Meereen and of course, the poignant end for Hodor – one of, if not the most haunting image in a series rich in them.

The show has never shied away from spectacle, whether it was lopping off Ned Stark’s head, the weddings-cum-assassinations in Red and Purple, or the battles in Blackwater Bay or Hardhome, shit is always real in Westeros, but with the show pivoting towards its final bow, the immediacy of each new plot twist has become more acute. And while many of the jaw dropping moments from earlier seasons were known to book readers ahead of time, freed from George R.R. Martin’s text and perhaps nodding to fan criticism, the show runners made female empowerment the dominant theme this season. It was not just the ascendance of Cersei to the Iron Throne or Dany’s voyage to begin her invasion of Westeros, it was 10-year old Lady Lyanna Mormont flashing more swag than Kanye, Ellaria Sand burying a knife in Prince Doran’s heart, Yara Greyjoy refusing to accept the usurpation of her claim to the Salt Throne, Sansa Stark calling in the Knights of the Vale to steal victory from the jaws of defeat, Arya Stark embracing the lessons of cold-blooded assassination but in service of her own vendettas, and Brienne continuing to swing the biggest sword in the Seven Kingdoms. In season six, sisters were truly doing it for themselves.   

For a show that prides itself on spectacle, this season was exemplified by the many great conversations that, to borrow from Tyrion, took place in elegant (and not-so elegant) rooms. From Jorah and Dany’s parting to Brienne and Jamie’s reunion, the emotional high notes abounded. And this is where fans are truly rewarded. Sansa and Jon’s reunion is colored by regret and the deep scars we have seen each suffer. Lady Olenna’s dismissiveness of Cersei as she watches King’s Landing consumed by the High Sparrow’s strict orthodoxy is wrapped around a history that includes the former hatching a plot that resulted in the murder of the latter’s son and would end with the latter annihilating the former’s son and grandchildren in an explosion of wildfire. Having invested so much time into the cultivation of these characters, the small two-person scenes that dotted this season oftentimes packed more wallop than the grandest CGI display.

Of course, any show completing its sixth season will inevitably attract naysayers. Indeed, thought pieces suggested Battle of the Bastards was the show’s “jump the shark” moment for the apostasy of giving fans what they wanted – the brutal death of a vicious character and a victory for the good guys. And there may be something to be said for diminishing returns from constantly upping the ante, but do not tell me for one second you did not stare at the screen blankly as Tommen took a header out his window even as the flames rose from the destroyed Sept of Baelor.  Any TV show closer to its end than its beginning will inevitably find its universe shrinking; it is a simple matter of arithmetic. There is only so much time left to tell the rest of the story and like chess, the sport Game of Thrones is often compared to, there are fewer (but more important) pieces on the board at the end than the beginning.

Those chess pieces are now clearly established. Cersei is the queen of a rapidly sinking ship. She has alienated her house’s allies, all of her children are dead, and judging from Jamie’s look as she is crowned, may have lost him as well. Jon is “King in the North,” but it was Sansa who saved his skin and Littlefinger looms ominously in the background. Lastly, the idea of Dany as some sort of Westerosi Barack Obama bringing together a disparate coalition under a “Yes, We Can” umbrella is contra the show’s history but also contains an interesting piece of irony. The Mother of Dragons has now merged forces of the Dornish and the Dothraki, the Iron Born and the Unsullied, all in the name of taking down the Lannisters, yet her closest advisor is the brother of the current occupant of the Iron Throne. The kingdom has been in an almost perpetual state of war since the series’ inception, which makes Dany’s vision of a world left better upon her death both refreshing and a bit naive. After meeting Tyrion and musing about the various houses jockeying for power, Dany says that she does not want to stop the wheel, she wants to break the wheel; but restoring her family to power will merely reinvent it.

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