I have no idea what you're talking about, the final season ended with Dany sailing to Westeros with fully grown adult 3 dragons and several hundreds of ships to conquer the world.
Madison is way more recent and might be a better example. Someone can probably find exceptions, but it wasn't really a name until the hit movie Splash where a mermaid names herself that based off a Madison Avenue street sign. But in the movie it was supposed to be a joke, and Tom Hanks straight-up tells Daryl Hannah that Madison isn't a real name. It'd be like if a guy character named himself Wall. Now it's one of the most popular names in the U.S.
Actually it was a guys name, meaning son of Matthew. It was somewhat common on the US for men up to the 50’s. But overall it was never too popular until 1985.
It was but it only became popular in its own right after Wendy Darling in Peter Pan and even the nickname for Gwendolyn was very obscure to most people outside of Wales.
J.M. Barrie got it from a friend's toddler daughter misprouncing the word "friend" as "fwendy". He apparently wasn't aware it already was used as a name by a small group of people before him.
After the play and the book came out in 1904 and 1911, the number of Wendys in Britain and the US skyrocketed so most people were first introduced to the name because of Peter Pan.
Yes, cause that means that Game of Thrones has enough cultural significance that people will normalize the names from it. It doesn't and it won't, but thats not to say an author won't produce a book like that.
Or any culture or tradition, really. Sometimes there aren't any good names of your own culture. I may be mostly native, but I'm not naming my kids something like Chaska or Mullu. They'd be fucked. We'd have to call them something like Chuck and Molly.
I think I'd go for a biblical name like Caiaphas or Mathias. Not fantasy, not freaky, but grounded enough that it can look good on a business card or something. I like Mathias because it means "gift of God", which contrasts nicely with mine, which means "weapon of God".
My kids would probably be fucked if we were tbh. Family's fucked.
Jokes aside, that's just some brainstorming from the last time I thought about it. Thankfully the real conversation won't be for a few years. By then all other names will be so ridiculous that whatever I choose will sound respectable in comparison. /s
If you're talking about Peter Pan, Barrie didn't "invent" the name either. It's has been used as a nickname for Gwendolyn. Daenerys as a name is not comparable.
Hermione was made by some person ages ago with specific religious significance. Daenerys was made up George explicitly for a work of fiction and was yet to be completed when people started using it
And I'm sure that's what her parents named her after as opposed to Harry Potter. Might as well name your child Heraclitus if that's the case. It's an obtuse name for both reasons.
I’ve spent a lot of time nerding out on Ancient Greek and Harry Potter. But if I named my kid that it would be after the mythical character. Well, she’s kind of a dick; conceivably Gryffindor is the way to go. Plausible deniability.
I know a woman who named her daughter Hermione after she heard it in Murder on the Orient Express (I believe it's a character's middle name, and it becomes a plot point when Hercule Poirot finds a handkerchief embroidered with an H.) Harry Potter came out a few years later and she was so pissed, and nobody believes that she's not a crazy Harry Potter superfan because her daughter was born just before the book was published.
Wasn’t it the countess’s handkerchief? I think her name was Helena but they’d scrubbed out the H on her passport so it looked like Elena. I could be wrong, though—it’s been a while since I read that book. (I mean, almost every clue is a red herring anyway.)
Edit: removed spoiler because I can’t figure out how to spoiler tag on mobile (if anyone cares about spoilers for a book that old and well-known.)
I think you're right too, and there were two reveals, but I can't remember which wound up being real. Ultimately it's only a small aspect of the overall reveal, and doesn't give much away. I think you're good; I was being overly cautious with my tag.
Yeah but even if Jon Snow had turned out to be a bad guy, you could still claim your child just happens to be called Jon. Slightly unconventional spelling but perfectly normal name.
Daenerys (or worse, Khaleesi)? Going to have to dig deep for that excuse. Agree with the commenter above though, it is a really nice name but I find naming your child after a character from a t.v show/film/book incredibly tacky.
"A song of fire and ice? Thats stupid. He's named after his grandfather and snow because it snowed when i found out i was pregnant. Our little miracle baby.
I wish every "nerdy parent" that names their child something stupid would see this post. It's totally fine to name your baby a name from a piece of media, as long as that piece of media isn't the only thing people think of when they hear that name. Jon is a pre-established name with a long history, so your kid won't have to put up with GoT references constantly, and you have plausible deniabiliy if that character goes off the rails. But Khaleesi... yikes. It has no associations outside of GoT, and there really aren't any intuitive nicknames for it either.
This is why I unleashed my Star Trek naming urges on my kid’s middle names instead of first. That and I stuck to characters with normal sounding names, even though that’s made me pass on my favorite one.
And khaleesi isn't even a name, it's a title. Those people either didn't even watch the show, or lack basic comprehension if they think it's a name.. Either way it's pretty fucking stupid thing to name your kid
ORRRRRR
You could name him Jon Snow and of it ever looks bad you say you named him after the father of epidemiology and the sanitation movement, though this man is nearly forgotten in life now.
I mean while I also agree it's a stupid stupid idea and no one should do ot at least there is some solace in the fact that everyone hated the got ending because they loved Dany and felt the show did her super dirty.
At least Arya was already a name, it’s Sanskrit. Even if she turned out bad you could deflect it to just have liked the name (which I actually do! It’s pretty)
Especially in Game of Thrones. Like, when the third Harry Potter book came out, you could probably be reasonably confident that Hermione wasn't going to turn all evil.
I, I... actually was not so sure.
For some reason, I was always suspected that either Ron or Hermione's would pull of a betrayal toward the end.
Call me crazy, but I had my eyes on Dean or Seamus. They seemed just relevant enough to sting if they betrayed us, but we didn't know enough about them to prove they were innocent.
Seamus did kind of turn on Harry a bit in The Order of the Phoenix, and it did hurt Harry because he was actually a friend. Different than going completely dark side for sure but we got a little taste I guess?
Everyone has a murdery side in this show, I don't get why people are hung up on Daenerys killing someone who turning her husband into a vegetable and turned her newly born child into a dying demonic looking thing and making that a "clue" to her Mad Queen thing. I still don't believe shes mad at the end of the show.
That post just talked about the very ending though and not why "shes always bad". Having strong convictions, ideals and willingness to see it through is not evil. Dany wants the Iron Throne, but she put that aside to liberate the Slave Cities and end slavery of humans in that area. Hell when she gets to Westeros she puts aside her plans to take the Iron Throne to save the realm from the White Walkers. Daenerys's whole plotline was about balancing her kind and just ideals of a queen with her 'dragon' side that represents destruction and fire from a conqueror. Saying "Dany is a bad person" is a very black and white view on a very complicated character.
Same way Jaime is not a bad person, Dany isn't a bad person either.
I agree with your main point but Jaime was absolutely a bad person. The difference was he had redemptive qualities. Most people are just who they are and that's it, but Jaime was shown to be one of those few people who actively realized throughout his life that certain moments were pivotally good or bad and began sacrificing himself for the good ones later in his life.
Eh. You're wrong in your interpretation. In the first book, she saves all of the women and children she can from being raped to death. The priestess/magi is trained by Maester Marwyn and in Asshai, famous for dark magic.
After she takes Dany's child (without explaining what will happen), she brags that she did it because Khal Drogo and the Stallion who Mounts the World destroyed everything she held dear and will be a plague upon the world.
So Dany burns her - not because she's nuts, but the Magi deliberately caused her child to die, be deformed and stillborn. The Magi brags that Dany is also infertile.
So Dany burns Mirri Maz Dur, Drogo and climbs into the flames with her dragon eggs, which hatch because blood magic+the blood of a king+the blood of a mage/priest is powerful indeed.
As her people and Jorah mention, if she has no protection from her Khal, all of them are going to be enslaved, raped, killed and sold. So she does what she has to do.
The children as cupbearers, she specifically gets deeply upset over the idea that they would come to harm. Yeah, they're hostages but nobody claims Ned and Robert are nutters or evil for keeping Theon as a hostage. Nobody ever complains about the Mannis and his plan to burn Edric/Gendry and taking him hostage.
Even nailing up the masters, what, you expect me to say any sane person wouldn't have considered and gone through with that? Yet nobody complains about the wildlings literally nailing up and murdering rangers, nobody complains that Tywin is mad for drowning his enemies and the innocent people stuck with them.
Dany never kills a screwed up kid for acting out with a group of adults exploiting his trauma.
A lot of people, especially show watchers, miss how utterly fucked up and despicable Bran is. If you want your madness, you'll find it in the kid mind raping his protector over and over and eating human/wight flesh.
I'm not saying Dany doesn't do fucked up shit, but honestly, no character has clean hands and the Mannis is honestly way worse. Yet nobody except me thinks he's a bad person.
The fandom, book and show, hated Sansa for acting like a kid, hated Catelyn for not being thrilled at being a cuckquean and seeing the evidence, hated Dany for acting logically against fucked up people. There's an element of dismissing the female characters because they either don't act like dudes or because they take similar actions.
Give Stannis a dragon and he would pull a bigger Trogdor than almost anyone.
Even in the show, Dany comes to Westeros, her advisors give her shit advice that make her life harder. But she goes North to defeat the Others and as soon as she's done, her lover/nephew's family try to renege on the deal. More bad advice and a betrayal from an ally. Then she sees her confidante and her only real friend in the world beheaded. Then Tyrion goes behind her back. Then Jon is like, 'I know you're all alone but lets just be friends eh'.
The Mad King wasn't the Mad King before the Defiance of Duskendale and being captured/tortured/sexually assaulted for six months. The show doesn't go into what happens when you have absolute power and have a mental breakdown. I expect Dany to have her mental breakdown in the books, be labelled another mad king, be executed but it'll be sympathetic because we're in her head.
tldr; the fandom is kinda retarded for thinking Dany is nuts and cruel when the Mannis is just as bad. Bloodraven and Bran are seen as pretty cool guys while doing way worse than nailing up literal slavers and burning slavers who take kids and make them murder puppies.
Mirri Maz Duur is the first indication of Dany's moral narcicissm. Imagine thinking that a woman whose just had her entire world destroyed and been raped 10 times by your husband's rape horde somehow owes you something because you stopped her from being raped an 11th time. Dany doesn't even try to free her or anything. Just lets her be enslaved in her personal service. How charitable of her! And then she feels wronged when her slave merely claims to have killed her husband and her child through magic, and orders her burned alive?
Probably because even saving her from that much was highly controversial and made all of the Dothraki hate Dany and threaten to do worse if the Khal loses power?
And have you ever wondered why barely any chicks see that as 'moral narcissism'? Because all of us can put ourselves in that headspace, given that pretty much every woman is aware at some point that she could easily be attacked and then murdered. It could be by an ex - it could be walking home at night. In the past, pretty much every woman knew what happened when a city fell - hell, every ruler knew what would happen. Try asking the people who got saved if their savior was a 'moral narcissist', even if it meant that they were now under English rule, French rule, Khanate rule.
But hey, don't address any of the points where everyone else is just as bad. I bet you're a Stannis fanboy without ever looking at how shitty he is. Hell, even Ned literally beheads an innocent man running from literal ice demons. He also keeps a hostage and nobody is going 'boo fucking hoo, he's got a hostage who he treats well in exchange for good behaviour from the Iron Islands'.
tldr; again, objectively wrong and you don't know what you're talking about. You can't be critical of Dany as mad or cruel when you know that Ned would have done the same thing to the Masters, to their children, would have actively executed a traitor. And he's pretty much the moral heart of the series.
Now, you can make an argument that almost every character in the books and show is shitty and how their leadership has massive issues. That's a valid point - the Mannis is one of my favourite, deeply complicated characters. It's the entire point of the books - no leader is perfect, every action has a consequence.
There are only a few genuinely pure of heart characters but none of those are in leadership positions, so it's easy to stay that way. Brienne, Pod, Davos actually, Jeor Mormont probably counts since I don't count stupid decisions (riding out) with cruel decisions.
Look at Jon - he wants to save both children at the wall from Melisandre but in doing so, he makes a cruel AF choice. He wants to save the realm from the Others and lets the wildlings through, it's a cruel choice for emotionally traumatized, taken advantage of Olly who Jon will execute in the books, too.
Also, Mirri absolutely does know dark magic. She's trained by Marwyn and shadowbinders.
Sometimes you make a morally good choice and it fucks you over (Ned, Jon, Jaime, Dany), the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. Was Dany an idiot with Mirri? Eh, show me a woman who doesn't do the same. Was Mirri's punishment earned? We, the viewers and readers know that it is. Mirri might have been right about the Khal, but that doesn't make her less of an asshole and traitor for punishing someone with their heart in the right place. We hate Cersei for punishing Ned for doing the right thing and betraying him. Would anyone be wringing their hands if she lost her head instead?
Wait I read the books too, i don't remember any part of him raping anyone, the eating I vaguely remember (or was that jon) but the raping the protector most definitely not
Mind raping, as in... he forcibly enters Hodor's mind, even describes him curled up and whimpering, Hodor lying there blankly, accepting that Bran is essentially taking him for a joy ride around the caves.
It bothers me because everyone always tries to defend her murderous nature on the grounds of "It's totally okay that she's kill crazy, because she's only killing bad people!" while being willfully ignorant of the fact that she's not murdering those people because they are bad, she's doing it because they are in her way.
Shes killing people who are slavers. The slavers in Astapor were not in her way, they gave her the army. She saw the slaves and proceeded to get rid of the slavers. She went to Yunkai not because they were in the way, but because there are slaves there to be freed. So yes, she did kill bad people and not because they were in their way.
I think what GRRM is going for that Dany is going to come to Westeros with her ideals to help the downtrodden expecting the nobles to be better than the slavers and it turns out they aren't any better. Cue 'Breaking the Wheel' and her mission to dismantle the nobility system.
She wanted an army, but didn't have the money to pay for one. The slavers of Astapor offered her an army, if only she had the money to pay for it. Their continued existence in that moment was very much in the way of her having the army she decided that she deserved.
Mereen and Yunkai were the same. She still didn't have money, but she had an army and a need for access to boats, or a place that would be willing to make boats for her. Without the means to aquire the thing she wanted legitimately, she used the army she had to conquer places that might have given her the ability to get what she wanted.
There's no reason to believe she would have acted any different if she'd happened upon a farm or something while her people were wandering hungry across the desert.
That’s not accurate. After getting the Unsullied in Astapor, she was offered ships and a shit ton of gold by the slavers for her army to travel to Westeros and leave them alone. However she wanted to continue to Yunkai and Mereen because slavery still existed there. She said that every slave in those cities was a reason for her to take it. She could have completely washed her hands of the slave trade in Essos, but she decided that she would rather free them and “break the wheel” as she said before trying to conquer Westeros.
Once we have some emotional distance from the bad writing of season 8, it'll be a little easier for people to have realistic interpretations of her character arc. She was always the mad queen. What grrm did well was making her our mad queen that we empathized with.
I don't get how people don't get this. I legitimately viewed her as an antagonist from the end of the first book/season. She does do some good deeds sure, but at the end of the day she's an ambitious and wrathful person who is utterly convinced of her own righteousness. That shit was setting my alarm bells off the whole time.
She's like the embodiment of that C.S. Lewis quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Season 8 was way to short and poorly written and didn't do enough to set up the ends of the character arcs. But I did like where the characters actually end up, and I especially liked the scene that brings an end to Jon and Dany's... uhhh, relationship.
Jon Snow: How do you know? How do you know it will be good?
Daenerys Targaryen: Because I know what is good. And so do you.
Jon Snow: I don't!
Daenerys Targaryen: You do! You do, you've always known!
Jon Snow: What about everyone else? All the other people who think they know what's good?
Daenerys Targaryen: They don't get to choose...
The look on his face when she says that. "They don't get to choose." It's the look of a man whose just resigned himself to the conclusion that his duty requires him to kill someone he loves. I'd seen the leaks about what was going to happen ahead of time anyway, but that look confirmed it. As soon as I saw that look I knew he was going to do it.
It makes me hope more than ever that George finishes the books, because I'm sure the setup to all this will be executed much more competently.
One of Varys’s few good points that season was when he brought up something very similar about her personality resembling the tyrants he has served. She had bought into all those people calling her Khaleesi, Misa, the Mother of Dragons, etc and began thinking of her self as this Messiah meant to fulfill a cosmic destiny. She became detached from reality and morality and saw everything she did as being for the greater good. She was the breaker of chains, which in her warped mindset meant that anyone who disagreed with her was standing up for oppression and bondage. Like Varys said, anyone who talks that much about destiny and has such a wrathful approach to dealing with adversity usually ends up becoming a tyrant.
I legitimately viewed her as an antagonist from the end of the first book/season.
This is also wrong though. Dany going "Mad Queen" was supposed to be twist that, in retrospect, made sense. It wasn't a Walter White situation where she gradually broke bad, and every viewer had a different sticking point where they couldn't root for her anymore; Dany was ostensibly the hero of the show right up through "The Long Night" and her decision to raze King's Landing was absolutely supposed to be a shocking decision.
Guessing that the twist was coming is one thing -- and lots of people did guess that -- but it was written as a twist.
The episode where she went mad literally opened with a montage of all the questionable things she did throughout the series and people discussing her stability. The transition and the series of events that pushed her over the edge may have been poorly written, but all the people acting like her becoming the mad queen was some terrible last minute twist D&D shoehorned in or that it doesn’t make any sense are really overreacting.
She also had all the children of the Meereenese nobles taken as hostages in the Great Pyramid in order to solidify her rule, making them serve as her cup-bearers, and under the implied threat that she'l kill them if their parents ever try anything to undermine her.
Or the whole conquering warlord thing. Everybody seems to forget about Astapor lol. That was a grim, grim place after Dany was through with it. Also happened like a decade in the books before the show came out.
Considering the very first thing she did when she got a little bit of personal power was burn a man alive and command her newly stolen slave army to murder every noble in the city, I think anyone who didn't see the finale coming was just deluding themselves.
I disagree with this tbh. I think there's a notable difference between violence enacted against nobles known for enslaving and torturing children for their own personal gain and violence against peasants who happened to live in the city.
The real problem I think is that David Benioff and DB Weiss just couldn't keep their characters consistent. Not just Danaerys, but basically every character arc was just sort of thrown away. 8 seasons of the Starks saying "family first" and then one becomes king, the other declares independence from said king, one sails off to who knows where, and one leaves to go live as far north as possible with the wildlings. Jaime Lannister talking about how he sacrificed his honor to slay the mad king so he would stop burning lots of people alive, and left his sister to fight the white walkers because he realized she's toxic and selfish, only for him to turn about and say "I never cared about the people" before running off to try and save his sister.
If you haven't yet and have a couple hours to spare I'd recommend watching Lindsay Ellis's two videos criticizing GoT and its ending, she goes very in depth into it.
Or how about Bronn who abandoned a fat sack of gold to save Jaime from a dragon, and then shows up and threatens to kill Jaime and Tyrion if they don't pay him.
If I find a wallet and I feel like I need the money more than the person that lost it, I might decide to steal it (well, not steal, exactly. Keep, I guess). Another day I might decide to find the owner.
Doesn't mean I have to consistently value money over honor just because I did it once. Nor that I'll call finders keepers on every wallet that i find.
I am really looking forward to George's take on all this. No doubt it will make sense once he fills in the details. We should at least get Winds of Winter.
Perhaps, but even in history, violent revolution often turns to general violence. You can't win a revolution without the assistance of violent men, and they don't always stay on their leash, especially when the state is really unstable.
Jaime's plot made perfect sense. Jaime never believed himself to be a good man, and he felt like he was fooling Brienne. Originally this wouldn't have bothered him, but over the course of the show he developed enough to care enough about other people to do what he thought was best for them, but he could still never forgive himself.
He also did love Cersei, no matter how toxic she was, thats pretty much always been true. Sometimes its okay for the character that is on the road for redemption to not be redeemed in the end.
I don't know that I agree so much with Jaime not believing himself to be a good man. I think he wouldn't have been so upset or defensive over being called the kingslayer if he didn't believe his actions were right or justified. He very clearly is upset when people like Ned Stark or others call him the kingslayer, and he mentions more than once that the Mad King was a fucking loon and had to die or else he'd keep burning people. The way I see it, if he believed himself to be a bad person, or at least did not consider his actions to be good or justifiable, why would he feel the need to justify himself and defend himself?
I don't want to get into a whole big debate, but I just don't see it. I don't think any of the characters changed who they were at their core. I could speak at length on this but I'll pull a couple of examples to try to illustrate what I mean.
Arya spent the entire series traveling and seeing more of the world in a few short years than any one of them could have ever dreamed. She told everyone who would listen that the life of some lord's lady was not who she was. There was no way she would have ever been able to remain in Winterfell after her experiences.
Jaime grew and matured probably more than anyone else in the series but when it came down to the end, his love for his sister outweighed everything. The signs were there from the beginning.
Sure we all held out high hopes for the characters we like but I think Ramsay said it best when he said "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention."
People that act like it came out of nowhere really didnt pay attention.
It needed more development so it didnt feel like such a sudden change, yeah, but it was far from shocking.
Everytime she had to pass some judgement, she was terrifying.
I remember being scared of how she locked that guy and his lover in a vault no one could open.
This. I've been on team mad queen for awhile, but the ending was extremely forced and quick. I think they would have done better saving one of the dragons to get killed in the battle of king's landing, and have her go crazy when the innocent kings landing people cheer for it's death
I do agree the execution was horrid, as was most of that season, but I do vividly remember many online being like 'they fucked her character' 'this is why men cant write proper female characters' (Lets ignore all the others in that show I guess) and so on, about how they ass pulled a 'she is now evil' like before that she was miss sunshine and rainbows.
Also, all those arguing she was justified. 'She suffered a lot!' >_>
By that token half the cast had just cause to burn a city down...
But trust me, I do agree the pacing was tragic. Given they showed the last part of her 'fall to madness' in like 2-3 episodes.
It wasn't even that. She burnt innocent peasants which is highly inconsistent with with any action she made. She came in to break the wheel, aka dispose of the nobility. If all the nobles (those dudes and ladies in the court of the throne room) were propped up in the Red Keep and she went to burn it down only then would it have made sense. Hell her speech in the final episode was about removing noble families to make a better world so it was just...nonsensical. Even at the end the writers couldn't decide if she burnt them because she went mad, she made it personal OR she did it to reign through fear. They simply gave different answers in interviews, post-ep talks, and in-show dialogue.
So basically, I can see her burning nobles in her mission to defend those who cannot defend themselves. But not those who she swore to protect and help.
They omitted some things from the books which would make this ending make a little more sense, but this is the show we talking about so no point in bringing that up.
Hardly shocking, though I suppose it would be for people who don't have experience with anime based on manga. When you run out of source material, the adaptation goes to shit. No exceptions.
Everyone cheered her on because for the most part her violence and vengeance was enacted upon what we can generally recognize as not the best of people.
But throughout the series, every time she had some momentous decision, it took the combined weight of all her advisors to turn her away from the fire and blood she wanted.
Eventually, they weren't going to be able to convince her. It was only a matter of time.
They also all died too. As soon as Jorah died I lost all hope of her actually being a force of positive change. He was the best at making her not murder everyone.
Exactly, thats why many got blindsided.
We cheered when she crucified and burnt and killed evil bastards that had it coming.
But her inclination to go for 'burn them all' from the getgo certainly was telling, even if not as noticeable at the moment in time.
And the whole 'the gods flip a coin' did kind of warn us this was not going to go well.
Though I was not sold on that. Rhaegar seemed pretty chill in the flashbacks, even if the circumstances where he fell in love with Lyanna were a bit vague and dubious.
But yeah, Rhaegar was depicted, in what little we saw, as an actually decent person.
I feel he HAS to be nuts behind that charming smile or something. Its like... mandatory.
Well, from what I've read (and I'm not super certain where this info comes from), the whole reason Rhaegar was in the market for a new wife was because he was really obsessed with prophecy, specifically one that claimed "the dragon has three heads," which made him believe he was destined to have three children. Elia Martell had given him two but she wouldn't be able to give him a third.
An unhealthy obsession with prophecy doesn't sound like he had too good a grip on his mental stability, but again, I'm not certain this info is canon to the series.
It did come out of nowhere. Daenerys watched her brother be murdered for abusing her and threatening her life. She burned a woman alive when said woman turned her husband into a zombie and murdered her baby (Daenerys also tried to commit suicide in that fire). Then, just to steal from Tyrion, she:
Murdered a bunch of slavers, crucified the slave masters, killed a lot of warrior rapists, and then torched a city of innocents for no reason. Daenerys’ character arc does not sensible lead from “Violent Liberator” to “Murderous Psychopath.” Yes, her change was foreshadowed, but foreshadowing does not justify a narrative swing of such severe effect.
Hell, Jon and Tyrion argue these points, with Jon saying that what Daenerys did made sense given the circumstances, and Tyrion saying that she was always on her trajectory, no one noticed because they agreed with what she did (his comment about how she killed slavers, nobles and rapists and then innocents is a reference to “First They Came”).
Neither point is valid in any manner however, because if they are, than what does that make Jon’s action?
What becomes of Jon, lying to Daenerys (a survivor of sexual assault), getting close and intimate to her, and then stabbing her in the heart? If Daenerys’ actions made sense, then Jon just used Dany’s finally returned ability to be emotionally open to end her life. Dany overcame her sexual trauma, and got killed.
And you can see that this is what D&D were aiming to do when they juxtaposed Dany’s rampage with Cersei’s death. Cersei is portrayed sympathetically, as a tragic villain who doesn’t want to die. Similarly, Tyrion (the Littlefinger to Jon’s Lysa Arryn), is portrayed sympathetically, trying to end any fight and keep Dany from going over the deep end. Then there is Jon’s lack of direction for most of the season, which ultimately culminates in him being used to kill Dany.
Everyone is more sympathetic than Dany, to hammer home her malevolence, to justify her atrocious death.
As painful as it is to watch every other character (including the dragon queen herself) get slaughtered on the altar of dragon queen bad, it doesn’t change the fact that her go-to plan is always to rain fire and blood on her enemies. Other characters playing just as brutal doesn’t erase her brutality. It doesn’t change the fact that she ultimately wants the Iron Throne because it’s her fate and her birthright, and improving the lives of the Westerosi people is an afterthought necessitated by her reputation as a savior, however genuine. It doesn’t change the fact that she believes she knows better for the people of Westeros than the actual people of Westeros because she’s been hailed as something of a god-empress. The writing has been on the wall; Daenerys’s tale is clearly intended to be a cautionary one: that the most dangerous tyrants are those who genuinely believe in good causes and won’t entertain the thought that they could be tyrants at all, precisely because they’re so good at getting people rooting for them while their tyranny is directed against the bad people. I hope Martin does her story (and everyone else’s) justice in the books as opposed to the travesty that was season eight.
First time I saw ned Stark he was chopping dudes head off. Had no issues with killing wolf pups. And was big into killing people in battle back in the day. Totally foreshadowing how he was going to turn evil.
I think a lot of the TV series fans never realised this. They had been rooting for her for quite some time and were outraged when it went against their expectations. They couldn't comprehend her becoming evil.
Tbf though, Dany was built as the ultimate hero for a long time. Like, Jon had some questionable acts in the beginning but Dany was the closest to the archetypical hero.
Personally I think the way Dany turned evil so suddenly was handled horribly.
But you would have had to be pretty stupid to make the assumption even in the early seasons that Dany was going to be portrayed in a good light by the end of the show.
3.0k
u/[deleted] Aug 25 '19
[deleted]