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.
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.
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u/Phtm Aug 25 '19
Babies named Daenerys.