I enjoyed this post but I think this is oversimplified. I very much agree that Stannis is a top notch fictional character, the very definition of interesting and a man whose story is well executed in both literature and television. Stannis the Mannis is a supreme example of why we're all obsessed with this world. He is worthy of our devotion to his arc, love him or hate him. I don't think, however, that these points do justice to why this is so. The most radical, horrible, and intrinsically unfathomable thing he does - burning Shireen, hearing her cries, and remaining resolute to that fuckery - to me, is not based on the fact that he almost burnt his brother's unknown son, or that he sent a shadow to kill his own little brother. Those atrocities are not on the same scale as hearing your child cry out for you as you cause her death and don't have the guts to look her in the face. I mean, if he KNEW he was doing what needed to be done, he should've been able to stand before her as she burned. It's a much deeper madness to which he succumbed. All the times he questioned Melisandre and was unconvinced in his heart of burning hearts, these moments could not spare him from doing something he would never have imagined only fortnights before. He's a character whose moral code, even when it's so extreme, is something you're supposed to rely on, just like you can rely on Cersei to be awful to everyone but her kids or Tyrion to be be morally just to anyone who hasn't given him a reason to do otherwise. And then all of a sudden Stannis does this, which makes no sense, and has, thus far, provided no justification? That's what's fucking interesting to me.