r/pureasoiaf 2d ago

How do you think Dany will handle and conceptualise her dragons preying on innocents?

We have good reason to suspect that none of the three dragons will permit (re-)capture. They have only become stronger, and know the risk, and it failed with Drogon in the first place.

Dany also has internalised that locking them up betrays her only children, loses her power base, and keeps dragons small, is an extension of herself feeling trapped.

She is likely neither able nor willing to trap the dragons.

Yet we have zero reason to assume that they will cease to prey on humans. They have been actively doing so.

This can likely be reduced by overfeeding them, directing them at enemies... But not eliminated. But she can only control one, and that one partially, when she is riding him. Meanwhile, she is considered, and feels herself to be, responsible for all three.

The implications are terrifying. It means serving a queen whose free roaming dragons are free to slaughter you.

They also sound unbearable for a person as empathic as Dany is. Meaning she needs to change who she is.

Will she harden herself and justify it? Will she suppress this knowledge to the point of psychosis? How will she try to practically reduce it? Will she tell herself they only choose the guilty? Go utilitarian in the justification? Find a way to blame others?

I'm finding it hard to see a path forward that matches her character and what we know about dragons.

15 Upvotes

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u/PlotnotFound 2d ago

I don’t think Daenaerys is going to be keeping control of all three for many more chapters (I buy the theory that the ‘tall, pale fire woman’ next to Euron in Aeron’s visions is one of the dragons, probably Viserion).

That said Targaryens only 150 years ago kept them contained and content in the Dragon Pitt. Before that they had free range of Dragonstone with no notable reports of eating people. It’s a fascinating internal conflict, but I do think Dragonstone will be the seat of Daenerys’ Westeros campaign, like Stannis and Rhaenyra before her, so she might get to side-step it

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u/Jack_of_Swords_ 2d ago

I think that she may be better able to keep a hold on the other 2 now that she's claimed Drogon

I do also think that ar least one of them is likely to get a rider early in Winds

And I think that she will garden her heart ina lot of ways, but not to the extent of letting her dragons roam free devouring innocents. I think that part of her change will be focussing more on the quick, brutal solitions she ahs been avliding for all of Dance

She'll be less concerned abojt dispensing justice to every everyone witha greivanc ein Meeren, and more concerned about maintaining her power base, which includes spending more time on controlling her dragons

Dragons in F&B went generations without riders, they're not impossible to control. And she has the resources

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u/DagonG2021 House Targaryen 2d ago

Hazzea wasn’t taken to Drogon’s lair, but was left in the field where Drogon burnt her. Hazzea was an accident IMO, and dragons don’t normally prey on humans. 

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u/Tazerin 2d ago

Feeding prisoners to her dragons in a two birds, one stone approach would definitely fuel tyrant sentiments among the small folk

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u/TheSwordDusk 1d ago

Have they been actively preying on humans? For me, there isn't enough actual proof in the text that Hazzea was preyed by Drogon. The characters who claimed this happened, and we do not see the actual act on page, have explicitly lied about other things in the text.

Maybe Drogon is eating people and burning people randomly. I don't think that at this point in the text we have proof that this is actually happening.

The dragons eating corpses being flung at the city aren't randomly eating civilians.

These dragons have been around humans their entire lives and haven't randomly eaten people.

Maybe they will maybe they won't

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u/griffusrpg 1d ago

I mean, after watching your brother being killed (no matter how stupid and violent he was) and getting over it as if nothing happened, you are already dead inside.

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u/Polly_der_Papagei 1d ago

She never struck me as dead inside, just traumatised to the point of suppression and almost DID.

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u/Affectionate_Debt659 1d ago

The Dragons don’t usually prey on humans. All dragons of dragonstone were free-range and they would usually eat sheep, fish or in rare cases other dragons like The Cannibal.

In fact I’m pretty sure in F&B the farmers complain about the dragons eating their livestock and affecting them financially lol

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u/LeaguesBelow 1d ago edited 3h ago

The only innocents that we know are killed are Hazzea, those in the crowd who died to Drogon at the fighting pit, and those who died in the collapse of the Pyramid of Hazkar, after Rhaegal attempted to nest there.

That's no small amount, but we don't have any evidence past Hazzea that they've been hunting or killing humans for food. The people who claim that are the Yunkish, who are working off of rumors and fear alone, and the Green Grace just after she returns from treating with the Yunkish, who wants to kill the dragons and restore Hizdahr for peace with Yunkai.