James_Miller comments on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Unless I missed an extremely large piece of evidence regarding the red-lord-of-light-lady's trustworthiness, I don't think we can say any assessment is "completely justified." My impression of Stannis' new advisor is someone with a nice looking bag of tricks that likes to take credit when things go right and likes to counsel faith and patience when things go wrong.
She could also be the real thing. She could also be the real thing but have her own selfish motives. She could be westerosi-satan tempting Stannis in preparation to suck him into eternal damnation.
While condemning Stannis solely on the "ick" factor of his actions is inadequate, so is calculating the utility of those actions starting from "the red lady is telling the truth."
Stannis has proof that the red lady has magical powers from when she ghearq uvz vagb n funqbj perngher fb ur pbhyq xvyy uvf oebgure. http://www.rot13.com/index.php
She may very well have magical powers, but the assumption that she is using them solely for his benefit and not misleading or manipulating him to her own ends is primarily what I take issue with.
Magical powers is not the same as powers divinely granted by a being that has your best interests at heart and whose servants have no agenda of their own. And, going genre savvy for a moment, the incident you refer to is pretty strong evidence that Mellie's powers tend to the less-luminous side.