Quote Originally Posted by jackvance View Post
The fact that he was so renowned for it shows it was not common at all though. I do fully agree that it is a lot more forgiving to be more exposed in medieval times because it is harder to kill someone, in later times with the advance of ranged weapon technology people of note would not go anywhere near the front lines anymore because they would just get sniped.

But still there is a notable difference between being a strong warrior king who fights alongside his men, and actually leading the charge into ranged weaponry, that is tactically not very sound. Or be the first to climb up the ladder in a siege. He could have very easily been killed there by people throwing down boulders, it is simply not worth the risk given they are all there with the solo purpose to make him king.
I think it has more to do with some of the choreography being off due to a limited budget. If this was Ridley Scott making the seige of Jerusalem, Stannis being on the front lines would have been more believable. The way it looked in GoT was that there was almost nobody defending where Stannis was, so it looked like a sore thumb.

Anyways, they've always been telling a story of Stannis being the most stalwart person in the history of forever. He's the first to put up the ladder because he's the rightful king, not because it's smart. Also, I think their plan was foiled by the wildfire i.e. Davos and several others were meant to be the first at the wall, but Strannis realized he had to go first in order to win


There's a story of the US general in charge of the Pacific front in WW2 being confused as to why the attacks he kept sending out were not successful, he found out that the soldiers were so scared of the Japanese that they weren't even flying to the targets, they were just flying to a perimeter then returning, without seeing any combat. Then the general put himself on the first ship of the attacks, and the missions began succeeding. Morale in war is a huge deal