The Most Disturbing Thing About the Shireen Scene on 'Game of Thrones'

Rounding out this week´s discussion on Stannis Baratheon

And once more: ths night is dark and full of SPOILER,
read only if you are sullied with knowledge....

"As I wrote in my roundtable entry about the episode, modern culture rarely depicts non-insane parents harming non-insane children. But the idea of innocents sacrificed by their fathers lies at the center of some of the most influential stories of all time—see: Jesus. Many viewers have pointed out that Shireen has a close mythological precedent in Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. As Amanda Marcotte summarized in an insightful post at Slate, “Every beat of the Greek myth is the same as Stannis’s story. The troops are stuck and starving and the general, Agamemnon, must sacrifice his own daughter to turn the fates to their favor. The mother begging for mercy, the disapproving second-in-command who can do nothing to stop it, the daughter who says she will do whatever it takes to help—it’s all a clear echo.”"

read the analysis by Spencer Kornhaber > 

The Most Disturbing Thing About the Shireen Scene on 'Game of Thrones' - The Atlantic