Curtain Call: Tara Fitzgerald
The first time we met Selyse Baratheon, we may not have even realized it was her. She was one of the many people who watched Stannis Baratheon commit himself to Melisandre’s Lord of Light by lifting a flaming sword on high during “The North Remembers,” the Season 2 premiere. In that episode, she was played by Sarah MacKeever. Slight and willowy with frizzy hair, she had no lines, and didn’t appear again that season.
When Selyse showed up again in Season 3’s “Kissed by Fire,” she was played by Tara Fitzgerald and actually had lines, but that first, anonymous appearance is emblematic of the kind of person Selyse was. She was not someone with a strong personality, or someone people warmed up to easily. She was unhappy, dissatisfied with herself and her place in the world.
Observe how, in her “Kissed by Fire” scene, her eyes go wide with surprise when her husband opens the door to visit her. Selyse does not think of herself as someone worth the time of a man like Stannis. She would rather dwell on her failures, in this case represented by the bodies of her stillborn sons, which she had pickled and keeps in jars. As we’ve seen, in Westeros, a noblewoman’s worth was often defined by her ability to give her lord husband strong male heirs, and Selyse’s inability to do so must have eaten away at her.
It’s no wonder, then, that Selyse latched on to the opportunity to become a member in the Lord of Light’s army. Being part of a cult buoyed her self-esteem and gave her an identity beyond the sadness and regret that defined her day-to-day life.
Fitzgerald conveyed all of this with grace and subtlety, no easy task when you’re using pickled infants as props. Like many actors on Game of Thrones, she was a veteran of BBC television programs before being cast on the show. She’d also appeared in a great many independent films, something she continues to do, and once played Ophelia opposite Ralph Fiennes in a production of Hamlet at London’s Almeida Theatre.
Her Shakespeare experience would come in handy, because Selyse’s story was ultimately a tragedy. While she never successfully gave birth to any baby boys, Selyse did have a daughter: the precocious, sickly Shireen. Far from cherishing her daughter, however, Selyse saw Shireen as yet another failure. If the fact that she was a girl wasn’t bad enough, Shireen was infected with greyscale, a disease that made her a pariah in most circles. Selyse resented Shireen for not being the healthy son she wanted, and further resented herself for feeling this way.
In the end, Selyse was so devoted to the Lord of Light that she was willing to let Melisandre sacrifice Shireen by burning the little princess alive, the hope being that it would help Stannis’ war effort. However, as much as Selyse resented Shireen, she was still her mother, and in the end she wasn’t able to just stand by while her child died in front of her. In what was probably the most memorable moment for her character, Selyse tried to bum rush the pyre, but by then it was too late.
Selyse had convinced herself that it was the Lord of Light she wanted, and the realization of where her misplaced priorities had led her was too much to handle. Her suicide in “Mother’s Mercy” represented a sad end to a sad life.
Viewers probably won’t miss Selyse, exactly. She wasn’t a fan favorite, but her low-burning melancholia provided an effective counterpoint to some of the more bombastic emotions on the show, and Tara Fitzgerald’s considerable gifts in bringing her to life were appreciated. Goodbye, Selyse Baratheon. You were never happy in life—maybe now you can find some peace.
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