i have a lot of incoherent game of thrones thoughts but most center around the importance of mad kings in the story.
we start begin the story with the death of a mad king, hearing about his reign of terror as opposed to seeing it. targaryen madness is mainly characterized as a product of their incestuous line, a burden/curse of their limited "blood" so thus their line is inbred to hell and gives them all sorts of issues.
however, what i find interesting are mad kings constructed outside of this targaryen line. in a way, stannis is his own mad king. he is a cultish, religious zealot that views his reign of terror as a means to an end. a normally nonreligious man, stannis' belief is gained through proof--no matter misidentified or attributed. to me, this characterizes his illness through the perspective of the mad. there is a perception of a disconnect from reality and psychosis as something without reason and cannot be explained---madness is disorder and disfunction made human. however, in the perspective of the mad, the experience of psychosis or disconnect from "rationality" is with personal logic. you believe what you believe for a reason. it doesn't need to be truthful or right or rational but you see this irrationality as rational. others see it as illogical but it is because they do not see your perspective; they are often times right but that is something you won't be able to reckon with in ur delusional state bc that's the whole thing. while the other mad kings are characterized as mad without reason, the perspective of stannis' story forces us to at least empathize and understand the steps he is making. we are holding his hand as he falls into "madness." of the 5 kings, stannis is thus the "mad king" of the lot.
we are left hanging with his madness. is it targaryen madness, his blood claim to the throne not visually apparent (he doesnt look targ) but characterized through his actions and beliefs ? is it simply that the concept of kings is madness ? all that power but also the burden of responsibility too much to consciously be given ?
or is it more simple ? more personal ? more individual ?
maybe it was a natural disposition---an outlier that kept diverging. the less favored middle child, in the dark shadow of his brothers. pressured too young and put in a terrible situation he bore no responsibility for getting into, simply was bound by familial ties. starved to the point of near cannibalism and then cast aside. barely second fiddle, more a forgotten double bass---keeping the rhythm but unsung and barely noticed. unhappy in his lot but also doomed by it. unliked to such a degree, maybe at times justifiably, bc of how he is. he pulls every short stick given.
"stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. he'll break before he bends."
this observation sits with me. is this breaking something we witness throughout his arc ? he chips and cracks as things happen, as things go wrong. will he break when he has gone too far; unreachable in a deep-end; unforgeable and unrepairable? is it triggered by killing renly, does that drive him mad ? is it killing shireen that is the last straw ? or instead did he break before the events of the main story---best understood as mentally unwell from the beginning ? we are seeing him broken under the pressure of everything; even shards can be weapons and breaking isnt the end, he doesn't have to end by breaking, he can instead become something different.
maybe his actions simply symptoms but not the cause; these deaths just make his decline worse but the ball is already in motion.
tl;dr: something something modern aus stannis' character NEEDS to cut off davos' fingers to be stannis in the same way he NEEDS to kill (or try to kill) renly to truly be himself as well.
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