Skahaz mo Kandaq is a former member of the Ghiscari nobility who, in order to show his devotion to the new regime and his abjuration of his former status (since the Great Masters of Meereen characteristically wear their hair in fanciful updoes), shaves his head. He is the leader of a group of ex-nobles who share both his hairstyle and his politics.
To follow along with my Reconstruction analogy: if the Unsullied represent black Union soldiers and the freedmen represent, well, the freedmen, the Shavepates represent:
“…a very specific historical counterpart, the so-called “scalawag.” Disparagingly named after a kind of runty horse, the scalawags of American Reconstruction were Southern white unionists – residents of the mountainous regions of West Virginia, East Tennessee, the western Carolinas, and Northern Alabama who had resisted secession from the outset, as well as Southerners from other regions who had turned their backs on the Confederacy during the war (through draft resistance or desertion) or after the war (most famously the former Confederate General James Longstreet, who would go on to lead African-American state militias against the paramilitary “White League” in Louisiana).”
Skahaz has something of a Longstreetish parallel, as the leader of the Brazen Beasts who combat the Sons of the Harpy – a parallel to the state militias who tried (usually unsuccessfully) to combat white terrorist organizations like the White League or the Klan. However, in his personal politics, Skahaz is more of a Robespierre stand-in, pushing Dany to adopt ever more militant policies (from torturing suspects to taking hostages to conducting reprisal killings) in response to the ongoing terrorist campaign against her new regime.
Unlike many ASOIAF commentators, I don’t think Skahaz poisoned the locusts. At the same time, I absolutely believe that Skahaz is taking advantage of the situation to try to regain the power he lost following Hizdahr’s rise to power, and to try to complete the revolution that Dany left unfinished. To that end, I’m sure that, while Barristan (and Victarion and Tyrion) wins the Battle of Fire outside the walls of Meereen, Skahaz will solve the problem of the Sons of the Harpy and the threat of counter-revolution by putting the entirety of the Great Masters (including the child hostages) to the sword. Whether he’ll survive Ser Barristan’s reaction, I don’t know.
As I’ve said before, the Shavepate is not a nice man, nor a good man. But he’s also not wrong about what’s going on in Meereen.
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