When Stannis blames (and nearly strangles) Melisandre for his defeat at the Blackwater, she predicts that Stannis shall commit even greater betrayals than the murder of Renley (sorry, Shirreen) and rewards him with-guess what-another unreliable vision in the flames. ![]() But there is real magic to Melisandre: she survives a drink of poison wine offered by Maester Cressen and gives birth to the Stannis shadow baby that kills Renley Baratheon. She even admits to using some combination of real magic and trickery to Stannis’ wife, Selyse. While some of her predictions prove spookily accurate, her fire visions are notoriously suspect. Melisandre’s archetypal Shamanic elements are always hard at work (she is a witch, after all), though not without serious misfires. The cold breath of winter will fill the seas … and the dead shall rise in the North.” -Melisandre (“The North Remembers,” S2/Ep1) After the long summer, darkness will fall heavy upon the world. Take them and cast your light upon us, for the night is dark and full of terrors. “Lord of Light, come to us in our darkness. Melisandre burns effigies of the Seven, hands a burning sword talisman named Lightbringer to Stannis, and delivers a speech crackling with warning: A former slave born in Essos, Melisandre is a High Priestess of the Lord of Light and claims supernatural abilities, including prophesy, blood magic, and shadowbinding. When we first meet her in the court of Stannis Baratheon at Dragonstone (Season 2), she has already converted Stannis and many of his followers to her religion. Melisandre’s character proves formidable right from the get-go. She is on a quest to find a savior to defeat the White Walkers. And, dark and manipulative as Melisandre is, her actions in the name of the Lord of Light, no matter how depraved, are ultimately dedicated to the salvation of Westeros. Melisandre does not arrive on the Hero’s doorstep with a call to adventure like Gandalf (a Herald/Mentor figure) to Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit she is more of a mysterious seer akin to the Witches in Macbeth. Though she is full of warnings and challenges, she is not a traditional Herald archetype. Like most Game of Thrones characters, Melisandre is complicated in terms of her archetypal function and personal motivations. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit the time for a passing of a threshold is at hand.” -Joseph Campbell ( The Hero with a Thousand Faces) Or it may mark the dawn of religious illumination… But whether small or great, and no matter what stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always on a mystery of transfiguration-a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. It may sound the call to some high historical undertaking. “The Herald’s summons may be to live … or, at a later moment in the biography, to die. If he survives his current ordeal in some fashion, he’ll need to be called to action. She seeks to attach herself and her powers to a leader worthy of the communal defense, a leader who can ensure the survival and propagation of her religion, and in the beginning she believes this savior to be Stannis Baratheon At the end of Season 5, her path has led her to Jon Snow. Melisandre is keenly aware of the danger coming from the North and she sounds the alarm. ![]() The herald figure is so important to Greek myth that one of the Gods, Hermes (his Roman equivalent is Mercury) performed this storytelling function. The Herald’s main purpose, as identified by Joseph Campbell ( The Hero with the Thousand Faces) and refined by Christopher Vogler, is to warn and challenge the Hero and launch him upon his journey of passage and transformation. However, factoring in the possibilities of the upcoming Jon Snow story line, it is arguable that one of Melisandre’s most important functions is to serve the archetypal role of the Herald, so we’ll look at that today. Ergo Melisandre: she oozes elements of the Shadow, Shapeshifter, and Shaman archetypes. ![]() ![]() Christopher Vogler ( The Writer’s Journey) reminds us to look at archetypes not as “rigid character types” but rather as “flexible character functions” which shift, expand and illuminate the story. The Game of Thrones character of Melisandre is wonderfully slippery and multifaceted as far as archetypes go.
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