The general consensus is that a lot has gone wrong in this last season of Game of Thrones. To quote a friend of mine, “Jon can’t pet Ghost, but Drogon can set fire to Twitter all the way from Westeros.”
And, look, Game of Thrones has done a lot right. The ratings are chart-breaking. The cultural footprint is ginormous. The money trucks backing up to HBO HQ are heavily loaded. All that is great and wonderful for all those involved. As amazing as it is, though, Game of Thrones isn’t as good as it could be. Both things can be true.
So spoiler warning, folks.
I’ve been writing and talking a lot about the stunningly stupid military tactics on Game of Thrones this year. And, yeah, there’s a lot more of such foolishness at hand in the latest episode, “The Bells.” Some examples:
- It should go without saying that Named Characters wear no helms in the latest big ol’ battle, though they are nevertheless protected by the invisible Plot Armor of Seasons +8.
- Grey Worm has usually been a welcome exception to this helmet-free stupidity, but Not Today. Sigh. And yeah, maybe they were trying to use this change to mark how after Missandei’s death he doesn’t give a shit anymore … but that only works if the rest of the characters are wearing helmets like they’re not dumbasses.
- Cersei, holding an extensively fortified city, sends a significant portion of her defensive force outside the walls for no logical reason whatsoever. (I’m not sure if this is dumber than when Dany and Jon did it at Winterfell.)
- Cersei has at least twice as many scorpion ballistae as Euron had last week. Those manning these machines have One Friggin’ Job. Last week they did great. This week they got one shot off and then were like “Durrrr, how do these things work?” (Dumberer?)
- Cersei does nothing to try to break up the opposing army. (At Winterfell, Dany and Jon at least managed to get one shot off from the line of trebuchets before their placement and the dumbass Charge of the Light Dothraki rendered them useless, so I’m leaning toward dumberer for Cersei.)
- I say King’s Landing is extensively fortified, but then it turns out there’s actually an entirely unguarded entrance into the bloody Red Keep itself that seemingly everyone who’s anyone knows about. How this wasn’t used before to assassinate someone or blow the complex up, High Sparrow-style, is truly beyond me. (Dumbererer?)
- Westerosi armor is apparently made of cardboard for all the good it does against, I dunno, weapons.
- Cersei’s leadership plan, as is her usual, is to stare in smirking pride.
- Jon’s leadership plan, as is his usual, is to stare in forlorn confusion. (Dang, How oh how did I miss all those red flags about my crazy aunt?)
- Dany’s leadership plan is Aaaaaaargh! Ragey madness!
I could go on, but with a day or two to think on the sins of “The Bells,” it isn’t all the military ineptitude that bothers me most. Yeah, those things frustrate me, given how easily they could’ve been fixed, but I think I’m just numb to the nonsense now. (It’s too late for Game of Thrones, but if any Wheel of Time producers are reading this, holler if you need a military history consultant; I even love the books!)
Nope. What bothers me most right now is Dany’s decision to commit war crimes. Because—make no mistake about it—that’s exactly what she did.
Among the post-episode Game of Thrones-related interviews I gave Monday morning was a lovely chat with a CBC broadcast out of Nova Scotia—ginormous cultural footprint, remember?—in which I was asked about this very point of war crimes. Isn’t there historical precedence for massacres after sieges?
There certainly are. History is horrifyingly full of examples of armies overwhelming a city after weeks or months of siege and the command and control structure completely breaking down as the chaos of looting and lusts takes over. If there’s one positive I found to the military presentation in this last episode, it is that they were unflinching about the utter terror of an over-running urban conflict.
But there’s a key difference between most of our historical precedents and what happened in “The Bells.” One, there’s the timing element. This “siege” lasted all of, well, a couple hours. But more importantly, it wasn’t a lack of control or communications that broke down and caused the terror. This wasn’t rogue elements of the force that had moved beyond operational control. When the bells at last were ringing, there was a clear moment when the carnage could have effectively ended. It didn’t. And it was the head of command who made sure it continued.
Again, sadly, we do have some historical precedents for the decision to kill oppositional armed forces despite their surrender, as Grey Worm does. No quarter was given at the battle of Crécy in 1346, for instance, though this was a clear declaration of both sides before the lines engaged rather than a command decision that occurred post-surrender. (And, anyway, it turns out that at least some prisoners were taken, despite the command.) The battle of Agincourt in 1415 has something a little closer, when King Henry V ordered the massacre of his disarmed French prisoners…but this was due to his worry about not having the men to guard the prisoners while defending against a second attack (that didn’t subsequently materialize). These actions weren’t just the result of mad rageyness.
Worse, Dany didn’t just continue the fight. This queen who built her self-identity around liberating the downtrodden and ending the systems of tyrannical abuse of the many by the few—this “Breaker of Chains”—actively and willfully broadened the fight beyond her armed opponents to encompass the entirety of the civilian population that she—::checks notes::—wants to rule.
Oh, and she makes this 180-degree turn because—::checks notes again::—her friend is killed and a boy doesn’t want to make out with her anymore.
Right.
So I’m going to set my military history hat aside and instead put on my writer hat to talk about what I think has gone wrong here (and, by extension, throughout much of this season).
Setting aside issues of misogyny and other thematic impulses, I’m going to suggest that in the end, this failure to sell a shift in character development is the result of an over-emphasis on plot development…and that the show had little choice in doing so.
The show’s plotting is colliding with the author’s pantsing.
[ETA: After this was submitted, I came across a lovely Twitter thread from Daniel Silvermint that makes much of this same point. Whether that makes us more likely to be right or equally deceived, I don’t know.]
For those who don’t know, pantsing and plotting are shorthand references for two fundamental ways writers can approach their works. A pantser typically drops a fully formed character into a relatively open-ended situation and, developing the story by the seat of their pants, sees what happens. A plotter, on the other hand, typically drops a fully formed plot onto a relatively open-ended character and then sees what happens. For pantsers, the character drives the plot. For plotters, the plot drives the character.
In truth, no writer is exclusively limited to one or the other of these approaches. Like most things in life, we imagine binaries where nature tends to create spectrums. And through the editing process, a lot of pantsers build in plot, and plotters build in character. There’s no one way to write.
Still, most writers generally lean toward one or the other end of the spectrum. I’d call myself a 70% plotter, for instance: for the Shards of Heaven trilogy, I had the historical facts of time and place in Roman history that I needed to work around, and then within that I had a working chapter-by-chapter outline of my fantasy plot. All that is the work of a plotter. But I also had characters who sometimes turned left when my plot said they were going to turn right… and rather than force the character to do something out of character for them, I adjusted my plotting. Frankly, I might write about magic, but the closest thing I’ve ever felt to magic was in those moments of discovery.
George R. R. Martin is, by all accounts, a rather devout pantser. The deep richness of his imagined world in A Song of Ice and Fire is at some level probably indebted to his own experience exploring it himself through the eyes of his nuanced characters.
David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the showrunners of HBO’s Game of Thrones, are almost assuredly plotters: keeping the plot moving is one the most essential aspects of their job.
Neither method of constructing a narrative is right. They’re just different. When they come together, as they did for much of HBO’s Game of Thrones version of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, the result can be compelling: the immersive world and multi-dimensional characters from a pantsed composition are streamlined into a more easily digestible greatest hits of the plot. Add in superb casting and some wonderful direction and you can get television history, which is what we’ve had in this show.
It’s easy to say that the things we don’t like about this season—like Dany going full War Crime Warlord—are the result of the show having outpaced George R. R. Martin’s novels, which means Benioff and Weiss being forced to construct plot themselves. This has been the cry on social media, where folks are currently going full-on mad queen on Benioff and Weiss.
Yet even as rage runs across social media like wildfire on the Blackwater, we might pause to consider that the end of things in the show, at least according to previous statements, comes via Martin. Benioff and Weiss are definitely taking their own route to get there, but the final destination is theoretically the same.
To return to Dany, then, the fact that she goes mad—perhaps even her turn to war crimes—could conceivably be from Martin’s outlines, not from those of Benioff and Weiss.
And the thing is, believe it or not, I understand that potential turn. I don’t say that just because I’m a fan of Martin’s work (though in full disclosure I am). I say that because it makes sense given the construction of his world and his character.
Or, perhaps better said, it could make sense. It doesn’t make sense in what we got Sunday night because Benioff and Weiss are no more or less than what they’ve always been: plotters. They’ve dutifully hit the plot point of Dany’s turn, but in no way did they nail down the character arc that should inexorably lead to it.
The problem we’re seeing is akin to Chekhov’s Gun. This is an old adage in writing circles that’s rooted in the writings of playwright Anton Chekhov. My favorite formulation of it is from a letter he wrote in 1889:
“One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.”
At its most basic level, Chekhov’s Gun is about narrative details: the information provided to the audience should have narrative value—whether that’s value in terms of plot (someone is gonna use the gun on the wall) or characterization (someone is the kind of person who hangs a gun on the wall). Another way of looking at the same dictum, however, is to say that if a gun goes off in Act 3, it better be on the stage in Act 1.
The seeds of Dany committing war crimes at King’s Landing need to have been planted in Pentos, and steadily cultivated ever since. Looking back across the run of Dany’s character—yes, even back to the early years—you can scrounge out the bits and pieces that might have led to her having such a change at the end. The seeds are potentially there. But instead of getting an organic growth from those seeds, we got a fast-forward to the end result—a tree of bananas.
The same is true, I think, when it comes to Varys’s arc. Jaime’s. Even Cersei’s. (And don’t get me started on their anticlimactic demises.)
So why aren’t we getting those smooth character arcs? For whatever reasons—by their own choice or by the restrictions of contracts or something else, I don’t know—Benioff and Weiss only had so much screen time in which to wrap this all up. They were, in that sense, set up for failure, especially given the perfect storm of the intense popularity of the series, fans’ intense levels of investment, and the fact that Martin’s pantsing had left them with so very many threads in need of resolution.
In the end, then, I’d argue that it’s all these missing stages—not the end results—that’s likely left most viewers dissatisfied and disappointed.
(Well, aside from those folks who named their children Khaleesi and the like. I suspect they’ve got a few other reasons to be disappointed.)
Finally, I said this on Twitter, but I’ll say it again here: after watching the brick-by-brick CGI destruction of King’s Landing, I think they can take that “no CGI budget for petting Ghost” excuse and shove it up their arses… along with all the helmets folks should have been wearing.
Michael Livingston is a Professor of Medieval Culture at The Citadel who has written extensively both on medieval history and on modern medievalism. His historical fantasy trilogy set in Ancient Rome, The Shards of Heaven, The Gates of Hell, and The Realms of God, is available from Tor Books. His new fantasy novella “Black Crow, White Snow” was released on Friday, May 3rd as an Audible Original.
I think you’re much too influenced by your experience with people on line. There’s a very vocal segment on line which dislikes the season. But when I’ve mentioned the show to casual watchers, they continue to enjoy it. Much as political twitter is unrepresentative of public opinion, so are on line debates about TV shows.
I’ve heard that the shortened final 2 seasons was 100% D&D’s choice, rather than a directive from HBO. I think they chose pure plot so they could end this thing already. They seem eager to move on to other projects.
Lol at Tree of Bananas.
Here’s something I’ve been wondering, reading the reviews but not watching the shows (and having read the 5 books): Jon’s oath to the night watch was to hold no lands and sire no heirs. Wouldn’t he face massive opposition to being king from every Lord who had sent a potential heir to the Wall? If Jon can come out of that unbreakable oath, couldn’t anyone else?
Is Dorne pro Dany or anti Dany at this point?
My mom, who by her own admission watches things fairly uncritically, definitely is enjoying it. And I’m enjoying it in the sense that it’s fun to watch and yell at the screen or what have you.
But yes, on a storytelling level it is unsatisfying and I think you’ve hit on the issue with Dany that many others here have tried to articulate – it’s not that Dany was not capable of such things, or even that these things weren’t hinted at. But the story didn’t provide a logical reason for her character to actually get there. I definitely remember thinking, even at the time, that I could see the plot strings moving. The plot demands Dany burns down the city, the show runners know it would be some amazing visuals, so she decides to burn down the city even though previously her ire has been specifically towards Cersei and the rulers. I have a feeling that’s partially why Arya is in KL too, not just to give us the eagle eye view.
Now, I actually don’t particularly care for Dany myself (I don’t hate her, but I don’t love her) and kind of figured she would end up at this point in the end (or, hey, be truly surprising and show her NOT going that way; her coin was still on the edge, after all) – but I can still see that this character shift was quite jarring.
@3 – I thought there was a comment in one of the recent episodes about the ‘new ruler in Dorne’ sending their support. I don’t know what state they are in though (or who that would be).
As for Jon, he peaced out of the Night’s Watch after his resurrection – his watch ended with death. I think Edd was Lord Commander at the time, although he got killed in the Battle of Winterfell.
@3 Jon died. He fulfilled the oath contractually speaking.
For the most part with GoT, it’s that Seinfeld episode where Elaine keeps buying these meh subs just to get a free sub, and maybe a captain’s hat. Ep 5 was definitely the free sub. Not sure if 6 will be the hat.
That said, came across this yesterday: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/game-of-thrones-the-bells?# — a good read. Pretty much you have your expectations and then there’s what’s actually there/what you get.
YMMV dissonance will be measured by what trope comes up. The notion of karma which is high fantasy, where to answer for something means paying for it, versus the GoT trope, where if you’re strong enough your answer is the hammer, and everything else is a nail.
I rewatched the first season while I was sick this week. Honestly, there were seeds of Daenerys’ turn in the very first episode, in the way she glances at her terrible brother Viserys with absolute rage after he comments that he’d let the whole Dothraki army have their way with her if it meant he could get his army and take his throne.
I also think something that’s being overlooked in the Internet Rage Party is that Daenerys grew up in Pentos hearing tales of how the people of Westeros, and King’s Landing in particular, toasted to their health in secret and were anxious for the Targaryens to return and rule. None of that was true. And Daenerys’ journey was very much driven by that lie she grew up hearing — that the people wanted her to return, that she would receive a hero’s welcome. She learned it was a lie when she struggled to gain any amount of love or loyalty from the North. And when she went to King’s Landing, on her dragon, and saw the Red Keep (which her family built), and saw the people fleeing her and her dragon in terror… do you think it’s possible the combination of losing her most trusted advisors and friends, two of her dragons (whom she regards as her children), being rejected by Jon/Aegon, and the full weight of being rejected by Westeros and learning that not only was her claim to the throne weak at this point, but her entire journey to come to Westeros and take the Iron Throne was built on this lie that the people of Westeros wanted this made her snap? And turn her rage on the people of King’s Landing? The people who were running from her, as she swooped in on her dragon to “save” them from Cersei?
I think she’d been dealing with the fact that people in Westeros were not exactly eager to bend the knee and accept her as their rightful ruler for a few seasons now. You could say her choosing to burn the Tarlys for refusing to bend the knee upon first meeting her (and seeing their fellow soldiers slaughtered) as foreshadowing for this entire turn of events.
The obsession over the helmets is ridiculous. Name Characters were not wearing helmets because the show wanted the audience to be able to see who the character was and see the actors acting. In a chaotic scene, when you’re checking to see if your fave is still alive, it’s really helpful not to have a helmet on them that makes it next to impossible to tell who is who! It’s just a show, you should really just relax.
@6 You don’t get back your lands and titles after death. This is what you call bad writing. Both Varys and especially Tyrion know the rules, but the showrunners don’t, so it never comes up. Just like Cersei not facing any consequences for blowing up the Sept of Baelor. The world has rules, but that would conflict with what the showrunners want to do. So the rules have to be thrown out, every time.
I will miss you and your completely reasonable complaints about helmets when this show ends.
That said, I think there’s a narrative developing that Dany made a “heel turn” in this episode, 180 degrees like you said. It’s not entirely wrong: this is something that could have been orchestrated with more grace, and it was rushed. But Dany’s escalation has been in the show from the first season, and she’s been talked down from razing cities four times so far.
Still, in the episode there was a solid 45 degree turn. Her melting the Red Keep and everyone in it? Yes, logical. Her ignoring the Red Keep in favor of the smallfolk? Needed more insight into her motives and mindset. I think they were trying to keep the tension going as long as possible, to have you believe that she would never do that until the last possible moment, and in the interests of that experience (which did happen for many, many people) they skipped that last step in her character arc. There are lots of ways she could have rationalized it, or not, but we are left to speculate, and that is a gap in character logic.
@8: Excellent points. I’d add that I think Dany may have seen the bells as a trick. She doesn’t trust Tyrion any more (with good justification), and he’s the one who insisted she stop upon the ringing. Taken literally, that would have forced her to leave the Red Keep alone and perhaps allow Cersei to escape. That was never going to happen.
I go back and forth between the idea that Dany lost it for the reasons you suggested and gave in to her worst instincts; that this was “Targaryen madness” finally coming to the fore; and that her use of terror, whatever the motivation, was rationally related to her goals (see here and it links to an article I posted in the episode review thread yesterday).
I agree with @1. Every single one of my work colleagues loved it. When I mentioned people on the Internet didn’t like it, they all raised a quizzed eyebrow. They all thought it was plausible for Dany to torch King’s Landing, they weren’t shocked nor thought the producers did a bad job at portraying her character. Some felt Cersei’s death was anti-climatic, but overall they didn’t mind it nearly as much as what can be read within the fandom.
They all love Arya, but I will admit I am the only one who wants her to change her mind and become Gendry’s lady :-O Or who wants Tormund to come back for Brienne. Or is rooting for Tyrion to end up with Sansa :-O
Fandom as a whole tend to be much more polarizing than casual fans. In my experience, it can go both ways. When people are very invested within a fandom, they tend to either be over-criticizing or over-indulging. GoT isn’t perfect, many things could have been done better, but I don’t think it was the train-wreck many says it was.
I personally do not care about helmets: I want to see who is fighting, it is hard enough to follow battles, I wouldn’t want helmets being tossed into the lot, but I guess, to each our own.
Thank you Michael, something very interesting to think about in the contrast of approaches. Presumably, if Dany was worked out from the beginning to eventually go crazy, the books will get us there in a more convincing way, presuming they are ever written.
Please keep finding reasons to do Medieval Matters once Thrones is over. Love the series.
Copying this verbatim from another site:
In three years, the show writers finished something that GRRM himself hasn’t been able to do for the last two decades plus. A lot people bitch that GRRM would have done this better better, but he hasn’t, and it’s unlikely that he will, despite his only restrictions are himself and his ancient word processor. The first three books were tremendous and took GRRM about 6 years to write. But the last two books were meh and they took GRRM 11 years to write. He’s been working on the sixth book for 8+ years with no end in sight yet.
I think that all speaks to level of difficulty in trying to wrap up this storyline in some kind of satisfactory way. And the showrunners did something under the restrictions of TV and all the associated headaches of having a budget, schedule, 600-700 employees and about 20-30 main-ish actors with varying commitments. They had an near impossible task and they did it and it’s entertaining, but not perfect. I’ve made my peace with it.
@1 actually I hear of a general not positive opinions
@8, I don’t think a woman getting angry at her brother for suggesting he’d offer her up for gang rape can be considered a “seed” that will one day sprout into Genocidal Tyranny. People seem to be reaching for clues that prove her heel turn was inevitable. Sure, she could be ruthless to her enemies, but the whole point is that the civilians in King’s Landing weren’t her enemies. If she flew straight to the Red Keep and burned it down with Cersei and what passed for her “court” inside, I could understand that. But she deliberately burned down every other part of the city BUT the Keep first. This was a conscious decision to kill as many civilians as possible. I mean, she literally just fought a war to save everyone in Westeros, at great cost to herself and her forces. Now she decides that they should all die anyway? I’m sorry, but this is Occam’s razor here – the best explanation for her abrupt “madness” isn’t that we’ve been missing a myriad of subtle yet well-placed clues pointed towards this moment, but rather the show’s writers botched it.
I think the writing could be read as better if D&D didn’t shoot themselves in the foot with the post-show commentary. “Dany kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet.” “She decided in that moment to make it personal.” I can imagine all sorts of compelling reasons why Dany might have torched King’s Landing, but “oh, she just went crazy in that moment because the Evil Targ Gene triggered” coming down as Word of God is really not satisfying. Death of the author though, yeah?
There’s a simple change that could have explained so many of the rough patches this season: if Dany had torched the Tarleys’ surrendered forces along with them after the Loot Train battle. It’s an extreme action that she could have justified in the moment, and Varys and Tyrion’s misgivings early this season would’ve made much more sense.
From everything that I’ve read, Austin is right about who’s choice it was to truncate these last two seasons. Looking at it logically, HBO has zero reason to want fewer episodes, longer episodes, or for the series to end at all. It’s pulling in 12 million viewers a night. The friends, coworkers, and family members I’ve talked to about this season have all agreed that things feel rushed. The instant travel whenever plot requires, the character moments that seem to come off screen, the decisions that feel out of character, the general disappointment at the end of the white walker story line, and the Mad Queen turn would all have been better served (perhaps fixed) with two full length 10 episode seasons. We’ve spent all of this time with these characters, of course we feel cheated when they skip the parts that would help us understand the finale. They are doing great with the spectacle, but not with the motivations. I hope Martin fills in the blanks soon.
@8
“there were seeds of Daenerys’ turn in the very first episode, in the way she glances at her terrible brother Viserys with absolute rage after he comments that he’d let the whole Dothraki army have their way with her”
Just out of curiosity, how should one look at someone who just announced they’d happily hand you over and watch you be gang-raped by hundreds to get something they wanted? Minor irritation? Bemusement?
The problem with the “seeds” planted with regard to Dany’s earlier violence is they were in direct reaction to an action against her. That isn’t to say she was justified in her responses or she wasn’t cruel, but that they are fundamentally, qualitatively different from opting to massively, randomly slaughter thousands of innocents including children. This isn’t “more of the same” or a simple “escalation” of what we’ve seen. It’s a whole different thing entirely. Could she have turned on the populace? Sure, but we needed a reason–civil disobedience, throwing rocks at her, etc. Wholesale slaughter after she’s won not only makes no sense logically but is out of character as depicted (i.e. it could have been in character if executed well).
And of course, another problem is given that there is no ordered troop movement in the attack (we see Dothraki randomly careening down streets for instance), flaming entire swathes of the town means she’s just as likely to be incinerating her own people. So at Winterfell she oversaw wiping out half of the Dothraki (on a fool’s charge) and half the Unsullied (outside the castle), and now she’s not just getting them killed but literally killing them herself. One would think we’d see a military coup next week.
As for the other military problems, at this point one can only sigh and remove that part of the brain.
THIS is the closest thing to my personal feelings about all this…because I think a LOT of people over-invested in Martin’s “pants” related story…and I think (strongly suspect) that Martin himself can’t see how to get to the ending he’s laid out (which is why Benioff and Weiss are having trouble).
I think people are saying “bad writing” when *I* think it’s a poorly conceived idea that has a) the original author stuck, and b) has the showrunners forced to transparently paper over things just to damn well get from point A to point Z, and essentially, they’ve given up in frustration.
*I* think it’s easy for someone who’s never actually had to take two plot pieces that just REFUSE to line up and criticize someone who, for reasons of their book advance or their corporate masters, to have to do so. If you think that’s easy, it’s because you’ve never tried to do it.
@8 – Right on! Personally, I don’t think ‘Mad Queen’ is even an apt title for her. This wasn’t maddness – it was a cold calculated move to ensure that none of the Lords of Westeros would dare oppose her rule and back Jon. She does it because she feels she has to. You can see it on her face as she’s sitting there, working up the nerve to commit mass murder of innocents. She doesn’t want to but she feels it’s the only way to solidify her claim now that Jon is in the picture. She talks about it in the scene with Jon. Everyone will support his claim because they love him, but they only fear her. But she can’t have fear as a half measure so she opts for a course of action that will instill the maximum amount of fear possible. We may question that decision, but as the one on the dragon’s back, it’s her decision to make. And the precedent for that decision has been telegraphed all the way to season 1. I’m astonished by the people that claim this is all too “rushed” or out of character. It’s not – this is what happens in tragedies, people make horrible decisions that they feel they must and the consequences fall on top of everyone. And how on Earth is Cersei getting crushed and buried under the very castle she usurped an anticlimactic end for her? It could not be more fitting and poetic. What – did everyone want to see another “Dracarys!” moment? Would that have been better somehow? Was Jamie supposed to strangle her so the prophesy was slightly more accurate? No, I think the real problem is our current internet obsessed society isn’t content to watch a story unfold and enjoy it as the creators intend – they want to feel special, they want to participate.
@16, you are presuming that Daenerys’ quest to take the Iron Throne was ever about the people of Westeros. It wasn’t. It was about vengeance for the crimes against her family, restoring the power of House Targaryen, and coming into her own power. Everything she has ever done on this show has been for those purposes. She married Khal Drogo so the Dothraki would fight for the Targaryens (first her brother, then her.) She freed the Unsullied in Astapor, not out of principle, but so they would fight for her. She crucified the Masters in Meereen for the sake of conquering it, and to claim their fleet and sail to Westeros to take the throne. She was prepared to do just that, and returned for a little while to rule, before leaving Meereen in chaos (she never resolved the issues she caused by conquering the city) to sail to Westeros with her army and leaving it to Daario to sort it out. I guess the only thing that could be seen as divergent in her quest is conquering Yunkai, since there was little to be gained (and she turned down their offer for ships, but kept their gold), but even then, she ended up having her dragons torch the fleets and a few of the Wise Masters, which shows us all we need to know about Daenerys’ sense of diplomacy.
She fought in the Battle of Winterfell to win The North’s loyalty and army. It is clear that she considered this to be a transactional arrangement by how she reacts when Sansa suggests that maybe she should give everyone a little bit of time to recuperate before storming King’s Landing. And it is part of why she is frustrated that The North refused her their love and loyalty. Perhaps there were shades of actual fear for what could have happened to the living if she refused to help, and maybe she also liked that cute Jon Snow guy, but if it were a selfless act by a humanitarian… why would she have made such a big deal of insisting that Jon bend the knee before agreeing to help? Even after she’d seen the Night King and the wights? Because it was a transaction. She did not get what she was promised, in her opinion, and she was pissed off about it.
Fair enough, but neither your experience nor mine is actually evidence of the wider public. That was my real point, which may have gotten lost because I threw in that extra sentence. My point is that it’s a big mistake to confuse the on line reaction to that of the public generally. The 2 may coincide (as in your experience) or may not (as in mine), but absent some representative sample of viewers, nobody on either side should assume that their own reactions reflect a majority.
@21, bollocks. I’m a writer who outlines major plot events and “pantses” the rest, and I’m baffled at the notion that connecting the dots of Daenerys’s characterization and the destruction of King’s Landing would be a difficult narrative step. “Cersei gathers human shields, Daenerys burns down the city with a dragon to get to Cersei” would have been 100% in character (she’s always gone Full Targaryen when faced with defiance) and still fulfilled the narrative requirement that Daenerys do something to horrify her advisors and undercut her Mhysa PR. “The city rings the bells, but then Cersei/Euron/some random soldier takes a final eff-you shot at someone Daenerys cares about, so she ignores the smallfolk and torches the city” would also have achieved the same narrative ends. But because that would have been 100% in character, it wasn’t a twist, so Benioff and Weiss jumped it up to an out-of-character “Daenerys deliberately targets civilians after the city surrenders, despite no political or personal gain in doing so, because…madness, we guess? Because she’s sad?” for shock effect.
They weren’t forced to do that. They chose to do that. Daenerys burning cities when pissed or defied and not caring about collateral damage has had tons of characterization buildup, and they chose to scrap that in favor of unprovoked slaughter of innocents. Speaking as a writer, they fumbled a really, really easy catch.
@16 & @20 — Fair enough that rage is an appropriate response to what Viserys said, but we saw that rage escalate over the course of 8 seasons where she pretty much torched anyone who pissed her off (including Mirri Maz Duur, and her brother, in the very same season). When she tried diplomacy in Slaver’s Bay, she failed miserably and ended up veering between torching people and flying away on her dragon. She also torched the whole dosh khaleen, eliminating all of the wise women of the Dothraki, because they suggested she honor their tradition and remain there with the other widows of past khals. Fire and blood has kind of been her thing from the beginning, and she was more than happy to burn anyone who got in her way.
No. She torched the khals, not the women, after they told her that because she hadn’t gone into permanent confinement as a widowed khaleesi should, they would rape and kill her. The dosh khaleen were were specifically shown to be outside and unharmed. In fact, Daenerys had enlisted one of them beforehand to block the entrances and keep the women at a safe distance.
I continue to be surprised at the surprise that Dany is violent and capricious. She left Essos a smouldering ruin. She places an extremely low value on lives that don’t “belong” to her — same as all the other contenders for the throne.
@27, Okay, you’re right, I just rewatched that scene. But she also does it for the explicit purpose of being able to take charge of the Dothraki army so she can conquer Westeros, per her monologue, and because the khals pissed her off. So, my point remains… she gets angry, she sets things on fire.
In terms of foreshadowing in season 1, for me, a better example is the look on her face while Khal Drogo is screaming he’s going to kill the men in iron suits, rape all their wives, and enslave all their children as a gift to her son.
She seemed… pretty into it.
Dany has always had two sides… conqueror and liberator.
So I think some of the theories here as to WHY Dany may have decided to torch civilians (to further dissuade anybody from pressing Jon’s claim, or out of the last straw being the realization that there weren’t a bunch of secret Targaryen supporters in the smallfolk) actually are quite compelling – but the show never really SHOWS these things, at least not enough. The ‘let it be fear’ line is perhaps one small step in that direction, but I do think there could have been some better character building to show her ruminating on these things more, especially at the moment of decision.
again, nobody is surprised that Dany is “violent.” Everyone recognizes she has done violent, cruel things. It’s the conflation of violence that is befuddling me and apparently others. Randomly slaughtering thousands of innocents and children who have done nothing to you after you have already won is not the same “violence” as selectively killing someone who treated you brutally, who when given the chance to surrender refused, who tortured and murdered children, who actively opposed you and/or tried to convince others to do the same. Whatever one’s views on her “justification,” the question is not whether Dany can do or has done horrible things, the question is what explains this particular horrible thing, which seems fundamentally different than all the others.
It simply isn’t true that “she gets angry, she sets things on fire.” She’s been angry a lot on this show and hasn’t set people or even the curtains on fire. When she’s been actively harmed or opposed or defied, she has, sometimes, set things on fire. She’s not “pissed” at the khans; they are actively standing in her way But the innocents of KL are not. Nor is she “conquering” because she’s already won; they’re nothing to conquer. The city is hers.
I’m not, and I think most critics, are not saying the writers couldn’t have offered up a plausible motivation, a precipitating event to tip her over. It’s that in our eyes they just didn’t bother. They could have. Kings Landing could have had civil disobedience when she tried to rule. They could have pelted her with dung and rocks. They could have tried to kill her. They could have plotted to put Jon on the throne or simply cheered him as their king. But they didn’t. They just fled an invading army and then a flaming dragon.
And given that she’s almost certainly killing her own troops, apparently we’re supposed to believe she also doesn’t care about the lives that do “belong to her” either.
Robert Farley has published The Strategic Case for Burning King’s Landing over at Slate. His argument is that in strategic terms a case can be made for the firebombing of King’s Landing.
Farley has also made the argument that The Army of the Living’s Battle Plan Wasn’t So Bad. Plus it’s always amusing to see an article followed by the disclaimer “The views expressed here are the personal views of Farley and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or the Army War College on the Battle of King’s Landing.”
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@33: One of the commenters to Farley expressed the theory of terror pretty well, I thought:
“The argument would be that before they surrendered they forced her to mobilize an army and besiege their town. They killed one of her dragons and one of her best friends and advisors. Then they actually made her attack the town and risk casualties.
So effectively they only surrendered after they had made their wager that they could win, extracted costs from Dany, and then lost. But Dany wants to preempt having to fight battles at all. By sending the message that from the moment you start any shit, you’re dead, she is trying to deter everyone from starting absolutely any shit.
There’s another candidate to be king? He better bend the knee now before Dany has to get involved. Your lord wants to rebel? Better kill him before Danerys gets there because if you don’t she’s going to burn your entire town to ash.”
I’m pretty much rejecting the “Targaryen madness” theory at this point. I think this is what Dany has always been. It’s certainly what the Dothraki were. I’ve decided to read the scene as Dany giving in to her worst instincts for various well-established reasons, with terror as both the natural and strategically beneficial consequence.
sends a significant portion of her defensive force outside the walls for no logical reason whatsoever. (I’m not sure if this is dumber than when Dany and Jon did it at Winterfell.)
You know this happened in Troy. But, having never read all of the Iliad, I think that happens in Homer’s version, because of the whole Achilles v Hector thing.
But I wonder if a 10,000 year old piece of fiction is where D&D got this idea that this is *good military tactics* comes from?
that seemingly everyone who’s anyone knows about.
Well Tyrion and Varys knew about it. And Tyrion told Jaime. There is no excuse for Euron, there never was!
Dang, How oh how did I miss all those red flags about my crazy aunt?
OK, I gotta nitpick on this, because yes there were red flags, but they were never flown where Jon would see them.
@1 But when I’ve mentioned the show to casual watchers, they continue to enjoy it.
Every casual person I’ve talked to is wondering what the hell happened to Dany, and are pretty offended that her messy hair was supposed to stand for her state of mind. But that’s because I brought them up. You are satisfied with the story, so casual conversations aren’t following the same route as people who aren’t. It’s just confirmation bias.
What’s striking to me, personally, is how many people I used to argue with elsewhere about how bad the show had gotten, have stopped defending it. That, and the actors reactions.
@3, The argument is, his watch ended, because he died. Their heirs are still presumably alive, so their watch continues.
@LG
Honestly, there were seeds of Daenerys’ turn in the very first episode, in the way she glances at her terrible brother Viserys with absolute rage after he comments that he’d let the whole Dothraki army have their way with her if it meant he could get his army and take his throne.
These arguments are getting so tired. There is a difference between being rageful towards a man who just said what Viserys had said, and being rageful at a city full of innocent people just trying to live their lives. I can’t believe I have to explain the difference.
She learned it was a lie
Yeah, only all the major houses rallied to her cause, the Greyjoys, the Tyrells, the Dornish. The only place she was outright rejected was Winterfell, a place she was at for all of a week. \
do you think it’s possible the combination …made her snap?
No, I don’t think it’s possible just because the simple minds of D&D think it’s possible.
You don’t get back your lands and titles after death.
He didn’t get back any lands or titles. He fulfilled his watch, began a new life, and won NEW titles and lands.
In three years, the show writers finished something that GRRM himself hasn’t been able to do for the last two decades plus.
I am so tired of this too. Y’all got no idea what us Dark Tower fans went through. King was HIT BY A GD CAR!!!!
@17, YES! Every time I hear something from them, it just enrages me more, because they just keep demonstrating that they JUST DON’T GET IT
it was a cold calculated move to ensure that none of the Lords of Westeros would dare oppose her rule and back Jon.
Bullshit, it’s easier, and less blowback to just kill Jon than all the free people in King’s Landing. This is a convoluted excuse that even the showrunners refuted.
@LG where she pretty much torched anyone who pissed her off (including Mirri Maz Duur, and her brother, in the very same season).
The brother that was threatening to run her through with his sword? That one? Or the woman who forced her to miscarry her son? That one? You act like all these characters did was step on Dany’s big toe, eliding the depth of harm they caused her, to try and draw a false equivalence here justifying the plot. And that’s why this argument is tiresome, it’s completely dismissive of what actually is driving Dany in those moments.
that Martin himself can’t see how to get to the ending he’s laid out
From what I’ve read, he sees it, he just can’t figure out how to get Dany out of Mereen, without making her a wholly un-redeemable character. She either walks away from the city in flames, or fixes the problems more easily than they should be, so she can leave. Or have Victarion kidnap her, but that creates it’s own problems for where he’s trying to go.
She also torched the whole dosh khaleen, eliminating all of the wise women of the Dothraki, because they suggested she honor their tradition of lifetime imprisonment????
I mean, I still don’t get the outrage over the khals.
I mean they were ONLY threatening to rape her for a lifetime.
And so what if she did it to get their armies?!?!? That’s what conquerors do! Sansa’s gonna marry Harry the heir in the books for an army to take Winterfell! Cersei fucked Euron for a fleet(and a plausible baby daddy). Women demonstrate strength or weakness to attain allies, and Dany demonstrated strength! She stayed within their laws, and didn’t use blades to do it!
I guess my question is, once she’s taken to Vaes Dothrak, what could she have done to free herself, other than what she did? Ignore the fact that it got her a Dothraki army, how else was she going to be freed?
@23: Yeah, you’ve perfectly explained the character’s actions throughout the whole series. A lot of people complain that she was previously only murderous towards her enemies and the common people of KL weren’t her enemies, but man, she has consistently acted like anyone who doesn’t submit to her is her enemy or a traitor. Then the nitpicks start about how she only killed certain types of people before.
I never liked the character, even way back when the books first came out, and dreaded reading her p.o.v. chapters because I felt the story was trying to make me cheer for a bad guy just because crappy things happened to her and was thus “justified” in being a ruthless conqueror and murderer.
She has never been a good ruler, and all the good things she’s done have been in the service of her own quest to retake Westeros. It baffles me that people want to excuse her previous behavior by saying things like, “No, she’s a good person. She first offered X or Y character mercy by giving them the option of submitting to her, and she had them roasted alive or killed only AFTER they refused her mercy”
Why wouldn’t someone who acts like total submission to her rule is the least everyone should offer to her react like the common people of King’s Landing aren’t here enemies for not rebelling against Cersei as soon as she walked in? In the thread discussing the Episode there’s a lot of discussion about the power dynamics at play and how she only killed those in power and that’s why her massacre of the smallfolk makes no sense. I think that it does make sense, because the change depends on how she perceives the people (as enemies for not rising up in her name) and because it underscores how, regardless of how she always fought those in power, she’s always used the power she gained for violence.
@26 Please try to come up with better examples because these do not really make your point. Since everyone seems to have forgotten the circumstances of the death of Viserys, I’ll deal with this one first. Viserys literally killed himself. He drew steel iin Vaes Dothrak. Something that is forbidden and punishable by death. He drew that steel and held it to pregnant Daenerys’ stomach saying he will cut the child out of her, in front of everyone. Is this really who you’re trying to hold up as so.e example of Dany being crazy?
Let’s go to MMD. When the Lhazarene are attacked by Drogo’s khalasar do you remember what Dany does when she sees the women being raped? Does she watch this and do nothing, as you seem to think it is in character for her to do? No. She literally asserts what little authority she has to get them to stop the mass rape going on. MMD kills Drogo, I don’t really have a problem with this, but then she goes after Dany’s child. So that’s a wannabe child killer and an actual child killer who you’re parading around on a pedatstal.
Someone else already answered you on the dosh kaleen. You’re not very good at this. You should at least remember what happened before trying to use these as evidence.
@39
she has consistently acted like anyone who doesn’t submit to her is her enemy or a traitor.
Ok, but King’s Landing had submitted, so how does this line up?
I never liked the character
I am not the least surprised.
Why wouldn’t someone who acts like total submission to her rule is the least everyone should offer to her react like the common people of King’s Landing aren’t here enemies for not rebelling against Cersei as soon as she walked in?
I’ve repeatedly pointed out this is entirely plausible, if only D&D had spent more than one line of dialogue on it.
because the change depends on how she perceives the people
And the show should have spent more time on showing her changing perception, than making it about Jon.
Daenerys is terrible and always has been. This is known.
She wanted to burn down King’s Landing after losing Missandei, but that’s not the first time she’s talked about it. Only after Missandei, she really, really, really wanted to burn it down, and when the bells went off, she raged because she was being denied that. She lashed out because Daenerys is terrible and always has been. Anytime she has ever been denied something, we’ve seen her lash out. This time, she had a dragon and nothing to stop her.
Where people are getting this Princess of Peace thing from, I have no idea.
And what really confuses me is that everyone hated Dany a couple of seasons ago. It was all “white savior tropes!” and calling her a terrible leader. Now, when it looks like it might be a white dude on the Iron Throne, she’s all of a sudden the best candidate for the job?
Look, it’s not going to be Jon. Relax. This show is all about setting up one thing and doing another. If it looks like Jon’s going to win, he’s not.
But I guess we’ll find out in a few days if I’m right.
I didn’t know about that pantsing and plotting thing. Thanks, I just learned something new.
On the subject of Daenerys, here’s an article I enjoyed reading.
It’s about Sansa vs. Dany, and how they deal with lack of love in their lives. It’s very well written too. I don’t agree with everything she says, but it makes a lot of sense.
And it made me think. When we compare Sansa to Dany (and Jon), it’s clear they want us to believe Sansa would make a better ruler. The show has been rather heavy-handed about this. Especially in this last season. Let’s look back.
She’s the only one worried about food supply; Arya backs her intelligence; She’s worried about the future after the Long Night; She wants to stay in the battlements to support the troops, but listens to reason when confronted with a harsh truth; She knows the troops need rest after the battle; And she’s proven right for mistrusting Dany.
When she farts, it probably smells like roses too. Anyway, the point is that she has been right about everything so far (regardless of how much sense it made at the time).
However, that initial comparison is also interesting because there’s one thing she doesn’t have that both Dany and Jon do: Charisma. Maybe it’s the dragon blood, but people flock to them. They both have that charming magnetism which makes for a great leader. Sansa is certainly smart enough to rule, yet I see her more in a position like Tyrion’s. As the power behind the throne. Of course, that’s just my own interpretation.
I’m sure a lot of people will be pleased if Sansa ends up as Queen in the end. That’s a safe bet.
@39
“the nitpicks start about how she only killed certain types of people before”
I’d say noting a difference between killing someone who threatened to have you gang raped and slaughtering hundreds if not thousands of children is more than a “nitpick”
“It baffles me that people want to excuse her previous behavior”
It baffles me how people keep misreading this. Many of us have no interest in excusing her previous behavior, which is why I’ve repeatedly stated in commentary that it doesn’t matter whether or not one views her prior acts as justified. Just as many of us are not “fans” of Dany blinded by love for her character. I certainly never have been a fan or believed she was heading toward anything but tyranny. The criticism isn’t “what did you do to my favorite character.” The criticism is of the writing craft (or lack of it)
“Why wouldn’t someone who acts like total submission to her rule is the least everyone should offer to her react like the common people of King’s Landing aren’t here enemies for not rebelling against Cersei as soon as she walked in? “
Because she’s not done this indiscriminate “everyone is my enemy” before. Why didn’t she flame all the north who showed her more active hostility than the people of King’s Landing? Why didn’t she flame every city immediately? Why didn’t she flame the countryside as they marched down to Kings Landing? Why didn’t she flame the city on day one? She certainly didn’t need an army to do what she did. That was made obvious (another writing problem)
Fleeing an invading army is not defiance. Does she think Cercei is ringing the bells? Someone in the city is “submitting to her rule”. And doing so before she flames its citizenry. Heck, we actually hear all the people crying out to “Ring the bells”–the very people she flames after they have “submitted to her rule.”
As for the argument that she flames the city post-surrender so people follow her. Given that she has the north, Dorn, the Iron Islands, and now Kings Landing, who exactly is she trying to convince? Given her support from as far as I can recall literally everyone save Cercei in her Red Keep, slaughtering thousands makes her rule more tenuous, not less.
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I think there’s an argument that we were given Dany’s “heel turn” moment in the books:
“No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling further behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.
‘Fire and blood’, Dany told the swaying grass.”
This was after she tried to rule Mereen peacefully, yet had to flee for her life from the fighting pit. She’s vowing never to do that again.
As for the argument that she flames the city post-surrender so people follow her.
I know right? Again, killing Jon is the easiest way to solve this. Have Grey Worm do it, if Jon happens to survive the battle, so the North doesn’t revolt. Hell, have the Unsullied turn on the North after the battle while you’re at it, so they can’t be their kingdom! Can’t defend a kingdom without an army!
These are all things she could have done, if she were pursuing a calculated strategy of ruling through fear, instead of throwing a tantrum, as the showrunners have explicitly stated she is.
Given her support from as far as I can recall literally everyone save Cercei in her Red Keep, slaughtering thousands makes her rule more tenuous, not less.
Exactly, she’s now given the people an excuse to rise up and find a better ruler.
@48 Sophist
Is a hallucination experience while suffering from dysentary and a likely miscarriage really what you want to hinge that on?
@41: It lines up because she expects them to submit to her rule, and has said so or words to that effect more than once. They just surrendered for the battle, not bent the knee like she expects anyone to do automatically under threat of death. Plus, she’d explicitly threatened to burn the city now to ensure future peace.
And I said why I never liked the character, so spare me your snark, if you don’t mind.
I agree they did a crappy job of setting it up, though. It was not a cool-headed strategic decision. She did it during a hissy fit for not getting her way, like so many things before in the show.
@18: There’s a simple change that could have explained so many of the rough patches this season: if Dany had torched the Tarleys’ surrendered forces along with them after the Loot Train battle. It’s an extreme action that she could have justified in the moment, and Varys and Tyrion’s misgivings early this season would’ve made much more sense.
I’m not sure how effective that would’ve been, considering she later sacrificed almost everything to save the North from the Night King. Many viewers seem to be ignoring that selfless act.
If I were in the writer’s room, there’s one small change I’d make: have Missandei alive during the siege. Then, when the bells toll and the battle is won, Cersei can execute her as a last f*** you to Dany. That would’ve convinced me a little more, as her best friend’s death would be the inciting incident to finally break her sanity.
@33: Thanks for the interesting read!
I don’t really follow that line of reasoning for Dany’s actions, but I can’t deny its logic. One could certainly view it in that fashion.
It’s a shame I’m only discovering these great writers and reviewers when the show’s almost over. It would’ve been nice to read what they had to say to previous seasons and episodes.
@50: It’s hard to tell without another book, but if I had to bet, yeah I’d say that GRRM was going there. I mean, he told B&B that Dany would turn this way. If he didn’t have that moment in mind, he must have had something else.
There was an interesting theory going around that Varys was trying to poison Dany. Perhaps she was adversely affected by that in some way (a stretch I know but it explains why she looked like she was getting no sleep at all in that one scene).
”Well, aside from those folks who named their children Khaleesi and the like. I suspect they’ve got a few other reasons to be disappointed.”
LMFAO!!!
@40, Wow, way to be a jerk about it, but you’re incorrect. Khal Drogo killed Viserys, after a nod from Daenerys. Drogo looks to her, while her brother is pleads with her, and nods. She may not have dumped the melted gold on his head, but she not only allowed it to happen, she insisted on watching (despite Jorah telling her to look away). He was not a good person, but Viserys did not kill himself. He acted like a spoiled, drunken idiot, the Dothraki punished him, while his sister encouraged it and watched. So. Not really the Queen of Empathy there. And she’d spent a lifetime living with her idiot brother, but ultimately she was happy to rebel and have him killed when he stood in the way of her attaining power.
And as for Mirri Maz Durr, Daenerys “saved her” and kept her around so she could be of service to her. She tells Daenerys herself, three of the raiders had already raped her before she jumped in to say, “Hey, maybe don’t rape her?” and they burned her temple to the ground and murdered people she knew and healed at her temple. Daenerys stupidly expected loyalty, subservience and obedience from her because she “spoke for her.” Despite the fact that she didn’t apologize or taken accountability for the fact that her khalasar raped and pillaged her village and murdered her people; one act of mercy or kindness grants you a lifetime of servitude to Daenerys, apparently. And Daenerys explicitly asked Mirri Maz Durr to perform the spell, which she was warned was dark magic, and she didn’t care. Sorry she didn’t read the fine print. But she literally “saved her” to demand her services to heal Drogo’s wounds, then heal Drogo’s infection, then stop Drogo from dying, and then burned her alive. What a peach!
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Just to supplement my point in 53, the books contain lots of hallucinations that we’re supposed to read as true or prophetic: Ned and the TOJ; Dany in the HOTU; Jaime’s weird dream about the riders. So yeah, I think the passage I quoted could very well reflect Dany’s turn to the dark side in the books.
@56, He was not a good person, but Viserys did not kill himself.
Yes, he did. Drawing a blade in Vaes Dothrak is a capital crime. He’d already done it once to Dany right before that scene, but she didn’t tell anyone, just told him that he shouldn’t do it again because they’d kill him, and he did it again anyway.
And of course she didn’t look away, she’s not a wimp! Bran, and Jon and Robb all get cred for watching Ned execute a Night’s Watchman in the opening chapter, but Dany sentences her own brother to death, and has the decency to force herself to watch it, and she’s craaaaazy.
But she literally “saved her” to demand her services to heal Drogo’s wounds,
She offered to heal Drogo, Dany didn’t demand it. And regardless of what was done to MMD, killing Drogo and Dany’s unborn child was not justice. She didn’t treat Dany with justice, and Dany returned the favor. That does not elevate Dany into psychopathy.
@53 & 58, I am not saying that moment can’t be foreshadowing, I’m saying it’s flimsy pretext to hang this whole heel-turn on.
Like Ned’s hallucinations of the TOJ were just fevered remembrances of an actual thing that he experienced, so I don’t think they are the same thing. Dany’s visions in the HOTU were also constructed by the warlocks, so it could go either way, as to whether they are prophecy or misdirection.
Jaime’s weird dream about the riders I’m not recalling.
Of course, Dany deciding her course based on fever dreams would definitely put her into the mad category. But I don’t think that is intended to tell us much more than Dany is at her most vulnerable when the Dothraki find her.
@12 Total opposite at my work, we are all pretty upset with how empty or shallow these last two seasons have been, this season especially keeps bringing more and more anti-climatic endings.
Mind you Dany going mad was not at all a surprise to any of us, we all fully expected it, but was also felt like the execution and plot development of her journey to that state could have been handled WAY better.
This isn’t the same GOT of years ago, the intriguing plot twists, interesting character development and deep dialogue are just gone. If you weren’t watching for those reasons you probably still like the show and i guess thats ok…. for you.
No more complaining from me. I’m just going to wait until Martin finishes the books and HBO makes Game of Thrones: Brotherhood.
Jon is ALWAYS petting Ghost… WITH HIS MIND!
Cersie didn’t just kill Missandie and, arguably, a significant percentage of the defenders of Winterfell; dothraki, unsullied, and northern, by failing to attend, she also KILLED RHAEGAL! She’s significantly responsible for the collateral damage.
Can we please stop using that awfull “casual viewers liked it” falacy? A lot of people liking a turd doesn’t turn it into a sundae.
I think we have to add to the “stupid strategy list”:
-There are apparently no regular archers left in Westeros; not on the walls, not on the ships, not on the rooftops (which is very convenient, since Danerys doesn’t understand the usefullnes of armor).
-The lack of anti-dragon defenses inside the city should have tipped Danerys off to the fact that once the walls fell, the job was done.
-Were they seriously setting up camp JUST OUTSIDE the walls of KL? Like at sitting ditance, bellow a cliff? It’s a good thing that archers (and catapults) dissapeared from the real…
As for other inconsistencies in the show as a whole, I’d add things like the fact that after the destruction of the Sept by Cercei, religion seems to just have stopped playing a role in the world. Seriously no backlash for taking out the holiest place in the realm? You just defeat a belief system (that partially sustains your claim to rule) by burning the headquarters? The world looks like one where there are NO CONSECUENCES for anything… and we’re supposed to be worried about people hating Danerys now? Total inconsitency doen’t make for good (and re-visitable) writing.
Now, as for Danerys, I can’t possibly buy her turn at this point. Yes, she’s had the “seeds” of out-of-controll power since long; but the show has always made emphasis on the fact that she has emphaty, that she works based on her own (quite strict) code of justice. It also makes no sense when people use the “she was told people there loved her” card. First, she’s grown realistic enough as to accept that her own father was mad and not a saint; she’s also been on westeros long enough to see that those were fake tales to keep their pride up in exile. Her whole growth as character has been about “learning to rule”, and at every point the show told us she learned the lessons. She learned to forge aliances (many uncomfortable, as seen in Slaver’s Bay), she even punished her own for trangressing what she believed to be just (she even went against many Dothraki customs regarding prissoners and looting); so for her now to just “snap” and go herself burning civilians makes little sense. If the justification is “she’s mad because Trargaryen”, that’s the laziest and most insulting form of writing.
@59 I agree totally with what you said about Vyserys but not so much with MMD (though it’s been a while since I’ve seen that episode)
MMD could see the writing on the wall, killing Drogo and their unborn child was not just about justice (eye for an eye type) but preventing what they were from spreading any further, stopping the child from being what he inevitably would have been through current circumstances (the Stallion that Fs the world was it?). Don’t forget that this is a world where prophecy is a real thing, if a holy person tells you what will/would have happened you can’t just dismiss it as paranoia.
Dany did not see the full consequences of her actions because they were mostly unimportant to her. She ‘saved’ MMD from being raped when it was happening right in front of her but did not look to see the full scope of what her own actions were responsible for. When it was clearly laid out for her by MMD once it was too late it hardly lead to her having an epiphany about consequences, it just resulted in cold fury.
I don’t think there were any war crimes in the King’s Landing fiasco. For there to be crimes there have to be laws against it. From all evidence so far, any Lord can at any time kill anyone lower than them with no repercussions except from other Lords who may not appreciate it.
Look at a really small list:
Cat Stark arrests (on what authority exactly) Tyrion for the attack on Bran. She then takes Tyrion to her sister’s place and puts Tyrion on trial (on whose authority?)
You see this pattern repeated over and over and over again to the point where it becomes a joke. There is no law deserving of the name.
but preventing what they were from spreading any further, stopping the child from being what he inevitably would have been through current circumstances (the Stallion that Fs the world was it?)
As I said in another thread, this is the “Is it OK to kill Baby Hitler” question, and I emphatically fall on the No side of that question. The way to stop violence and horror from spreading, is by not perpetuating violence and horror. If MMDs true motive had been what you claim, she forgives Dany, and helps her on her quest to temper the Dothraki’s violence, and help her raise her son in kindness and justice.
Instead MMD scorns Dany in such a traumatic way, that people are pointing directly to this act as the precipitation in Dany’s whole downfall, this resulting in a fate, as equal or worse, to that of the Stallion that Mounts the World.
You end the cycle of violence, by not perpetuating violence.
And here is the thing, the number of people who could actually do this, are few and far between. It’s not a capacity for grace and forgiveness that many of us had. I think to some of the women who survived the church shooting in Charleston, SC, who have forgiven the man who murdered their friend. I couldn’t do it.
Now could MMD have intended to prevent the rise of the Stallion that Mounts the World, but was misguided in her own wisdom of how to attain it? Sure. But if Dany doesn’t get credit for her good intentions when she does something terrible, neither does MMD.
Don’t forget that this is a world where prophecy is a real thing
Is it, though? At this point I’m not sure. I mean the show has completely disregarded them all. Maybe the don’t actually mean anything. I believe in Bran’s power to see the past, but I don’t think we’ve been given concrete proof prophecies are real, for all that they are widely believed.
On an off topic note, anyone else notice how a lot of the audience has assumed Bran can see the future, and constantly hold him responsible for not warning people about stuff?
I also don’t agree that she doesn’t consider the consequences of her actions. Her desire to stem Dothraki violence arises long before she ever meets MMD, though I know this isn’t really covered in the show, but if I’m to believe this ending is what Martin is working towards, I have to take what Martin has shown me about her into account.
One thing a lot of show only people claim about Dany is that she looks bloodthirsty when Drogo makes his big speech about invading Westeros, after the assassination attempt. But that’s not what that is. That moment, when Drogo does that, was the closest thing Dany had ever experienced to an expression of love. She adores him in this moment, because he acts like he adores her. And the poor girl, I don’t begrudge her that, that she’s blinded by what all that really means, because she’s just reveling in the thought that finally someone cares if she lives or dies.
It’s this moment, how she sees that Drogo has come to care for her, that makes her bold enough later to try and cajole Drogo into changing how the Dothraki act. She knows she has to start small, she can’t ask them to save all the women.
But she can save this one. She can start here.
And she has that repaid, with well fire and blood.
So no, I can’t give MMD any credit for trying to avert tragedy in the world.
But that is often the way with magic in this world, which is why I don’t believe it’s “good” for the world in this context, because all evidence show magic is generated and pain and suffering, and that means people who are likely to abuse are those most likely to access it. It’s never used to make things better, only worse.
Re Miriz, or Miril, or Moomoo, or however the hell the witch was named: Can’t remember in the show, but in the books Dany saves her from getting raped and killed by the Dothraki. She repays Dany by killing her unborn… whatever that thing was, and leaving Khal Drogo alive but catatonic. OF COURSE she deserved more compassion, and it was so wrong of Dany to kill the poor innocent thing.
Both Book Dany and Show Dany have been doing everything in their hands to be firm but just. Both of them have only resorted to extreme measures when given no other choice. And so far, she had never been crueler than necessary, particularly given her pseudomedieval context, in which she’s practically a saint. Those “seeds” people keep talking about are nowhere to be seen.
I’m with Aeryl and Livingston: to sell Genocidal Daenerys, you need more than what we have been given. Like, a LOT more. You can get from that A to this Z, sure, but you have to sell the hell out of it, and that never happened.
A while ago (before this season started), I actually read an article about the Red Cross. They had done an analysis on Game of Thrones, to see which of the contenders for the throne had commited the most war crimes. Dany was already very high up in the list, with way more violations than everyone except Ramsay Bolton.
I’ve said this before, but all the way from the first season I did actually see her as ruthless and without mercy for those who (according to her at least) had a choice to follow her but didn’t (or chose to do so ‘too late’). The people in King’s Landing ‘chose’ to follow Cersei, and that combined with the fact that she snapped… It was extreme, but I wasn’t all that shocked or surprised that it happened!
@8 Thank you! Finally someone who gets it.
I really don’t understand how people can think what Dany did was out of character. Calling it “random” does it absolute disservice. She is not a computer program and she is not a machine – we are talking about a human being. Her decision does not have to make logical sense, you just can’t judge any dramatic work that way. Think of any other character on good dramatic TV shows that have done bad things because of emotional reasons (e.g. Walter White). Her decision makes emotional sense, and that is all that counts, because it was an emotional decision.
Her own protector, Jorah, died. Missandei died. Another of her dragons died. She hasn’t been eating for too long. Hasn’t been sleeping either going from her looks. Pretty much everyone she loved, with whom she wanted to conquer and rule Kings Landing, is dead. Some things are only worth doing if you can share the joy of it with someone. And who is left? Furthermore, after everything she has gone through, she learns that Jon is actually the rightful heir to the throne? And she just KNOWS people are going to want him on the throne, because she has seen people behave around him and how they behave around her. Every time she liberated a city, she has mostly seen love from people. This is was she was used to. How she has seen herself. She comes to Winterfell, helps them, and all she gets is distrust and loneliness and being told that she is not actually the right ruler.
What does that do to someone?
Believing your whole live that you should rule over the seven kingdoms, doing everything in your power to make that happen — and then losing everything and everyone. Even her claim. She did not burn the city because it makes logical sense or for some military reasons. She was enraged by everything that happened. What happens if you give a machine gun to someone in rage? That’s why police are told to calmly deescalate a situation when the attacker is acting emotional. They will not act rationally. She has a dragon and the power to do REAL harm, to let it all out, everything that she has been feeling at that moment.
You ever hear of people who murder their whole family, but when you ask their neighbours and other family members about him, they all say good things and that they were surprised? That’s because, even though the murderer might have been a decent human being usually, something triggered him emotionally that made him lash out. (“But if he was enraged because of his cheating wife, why did he kill the children too? It makes no sense!” It does indeed make no rational, logical sense, but we are not trying to understand why a machine malformed, we are looking at the psychology of a human being.)
If you want to understand her decision, you have to understand and feel her EMOTION, and I’m surprised people are not able to, or push it aside as being a random decision, which it very clearly is not. When I saw her make the decision to burn everything down, I absolutely loved it. I totally got her. It’s not something I would do, or something she would normally do either, but something she could do at that moment with the way she is feeling right then and there? It makes sense, emotionally. I did not have to read peoples opinion on how there was enough buildup in the first seasons etc., it made total sense in that moment.
That being said, I can, to some degree, understand this might feel a bit rushed. That is a valid point. But it is not as much of a big thing as people make it out to be, in my opinion.
Her decision makes emotional sense,
Except Dany’s emotional core has always been one of empathy and mercy.
And she just KNOWS people are going to want him on the throne, because she has seen people behave around him and how they behave around her.
Except the people she saw behaving, were Jon’s most loyal followers. She could not possibly judge how she’d be accepted anywhere else, based on how the people of the North felt about Jon.
And need I remind everyone, again, that nearly every lord with a scrap of power allied with Dany when she first got to Westeros.
That’s because, even though the murderer might have been a decent human being usually, something triggered him emotionally that made him lash out.
OK, I can’t even anymore. But no, murderers are rarely “decent people usually” they are just very good at hiding it, something Dany is not. Too much true crime television has convinced people that “snapping” is actually a thing, and it’s not. Look at these school shooters, there are TONS of warning signs, it’s just that we, as a society, don’t take these warning signs seriously.
“But if he was enraged because of his cheating wife, why did he kill the children too? It makes no sense!”
I mean, this is honestly hurtful(I am legit shaking at my desk). It’s actually perfectly sensible why a man who would kill a woman for cheating would kill the kids too. A man who would do that views his family as something he has proprietary ownership of, and as such, it’s perfectly sensible to throw the whole family away when one part is “defective”. That man did not “snap” because of her precipitating action, he was always a scumbag who viewed his wife and children as property, because men who don’t view their wives and children as property, just file for divorce when they are cheated on.
If you want to understand her decision, you have to understand and feel her EMOTION,
I have literally spent four days deeply exploring and understanding Dany’s emotions, which is why I can tell you, her emotions doesn’t get you here.
I’m sorry but this is such a shallow reading of human nature, and of Dany’s character.
If it didn’t bother you, that’s fine, I am not in the business of telling people they have to dislike what I dislike. But your attempt to use pop psychology to justify Dany’s arc here is legit harmful to DV survivors, so please stop. We actually understand a great deal behind the things you claim can’t be explained, and are just purely emotional reactions that can’t be controlled.
I think this is the key to the disagreement. I never saw Dany that way, and I suspect those disagreeing with you here didn’t either.
There have been very clear signs that Dany has some issues through the entire series. She’s repeatedly done some really horrible things to people, so to say that killing a bunch of people she sees as a problem is out of characther is a stretch. In the last few episodes her emotional support completely erroded. I think this is EXACTLY how people go from normal to monster. It’s not a visible, slow building momentuem where we all say “we know what’s coming…”. In real life, people go from fine to f&^%ed up, seemingly overnight all the time. Everytime someone interviews the neighbors of serial killers there is always those that say “He was so nice… I never would have guessed this of him…”. Nah, this is PRECISELY the kind of crazy thing a power hungry, power wielding person with serious trauma disorders would do.
@72: Exactly. I’d expect a person with an emotional core of empathy and mercy (inasmuch as it’s possible to be that way in the world of GoT) to act like Ned Stark or even Brienne or Podrick, certainly not like Dany has acted throughout the entirety of the show.
I’ve seen a ton of these kinds of “reviews” after the last few episodes criticizing the supposed stupidity in the battle scenes. It seems to me the one thing these “reviews” have in common is the attitude that, if I don’t see every little detail of the battle, then it didn’t happen.
Which is more stupid than anything that happened on-screen.
@sophist
I never saw Dany that way, and I suspect those disagreeing with you here didn’t either.
Have you read the books? Because as I said in another thread, if I’m to believe Dany ends up here(something I can believe she does) in the books as well, then I have to take Martin’s characterizations into account. And the Dany in the books(and the show) usually only turns to violence, after her offers of mercy are rebuffed. I don’t know how people don’t see Dany this way, and it’s really bothering me how so many people could miss something so essential to who she is as a character.
Again, Dany is a dichotomy, and people here now only want to look at one side of her, and pretend her other side never existed at all.
In real life, people go from fine to f&^%ed up, seemingly overnight all the time.
No they don’t. Please stop using fake pop psychology!
Everytime someone interviews the neighbors of serial killers there is always those that say “He was so nice… I never would have guessed this of him…”.
Because most people don’t pay attention to their neighbors! Or they notice the neigbor beats his wife “But it’s not my business” and then act surprised to the news when she turns up dead, because they don’t want to face the fact that they ignored the warning signs.
Pathologies like serial killing become entrenched over time, there is never a “all at once” precipitating event, the start with smaller crimes and escalate. The moments of violence can be triggered by external events, but they were the person who could do this for a long time.
There’s this illness of current shows that they want to have shocking surprises, which is in direct conflict with foreshadowing if not done well.
It has always been true that, as long as certain conditions are met, people will be nice. But once certain conditions are not met anymore, people behave very differently. We could argue about this point, how Dany burned her prisoners alive, and threatened to burn cities to the ground etc., but I don’t think that will convince you otherwise as you have been reading about this for days, as you say.
Yes, rationally she shouldn’t, emotionally she absolutely can. You never felt isolated? Never felt alone even though you’re surrounded by friends? She was used to a different treatment altogether. People mostly loved her, she was their savior. Look at how she calls herself “Breaker of Chains”. That’s how she sees herself, but she does not get the emotional fulfillment that she needs with the people around her. She could lose the throne to Jon. She lost her closest friends. Almost all her dragons.
Again, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a rational decision. You never had someone hate you and you couldn’t understand why and you obsessed over it a little bit even though pretty much everyone else loves you? Why would it matter to you? Because you are a human being with human needs. This is not what she is used to, she is emotionally isolated.
I know these seem like stupid comparisons to you, but many people like me understood those feelings instantly.
I’m of course not saying that all of them are, I gave you a very specific example of someone who is known as a nice man but who still murders his whole family.
An snapping/triggering is totally a thing. Read Mindhinter by John Douglas, who is a former FBI agent and one of people who introduced criminal profiling. And Obsession. Or better yet, read The Anatomy of Motive. (Again, you don’t need this knowledge do understand her, millions of people like me did it without.) They are primarily about serial killers, but you learn a lot about human beings in general.
But yes, many people who do terrible things did terrible things before. I had a paragraph where I explained that, even though there are real people who snap, with Dany we even see that she is capable of destruction, but I deleted it to keep my post short. Yes, killing innocent civilians is not the same as killing people who wanted to rape her or deny her the throne, but that anger and using brute force to get to her goals is there. You say they are signs, and there are signs here aswell. She was not all good and happy and nice all along and then suddenly turned to violence. It was always there, but as long as the conditions were right, she could be a nice person.
I am honestly surprised you did not see what you did here. You say it is perfectly sensible why that man would kill the kids, even though there is no rational connection whatsoever. If you are angry at the wife, it should be directed at the wife, but you did actually understand that emotionally that anger is not only towards her. You are just retroactively saying that he must have been a bad man all along, while beforehand you might have just had the clues but no definitive answer. You understood the emotional state of mind of that man before he murdered his family, apply that to Dany.
Also, why are you shaking? This is just a civilized discussion on some website. It’s funny that we are talking about understand emotions, but I can’t understand yours right now. Where is that reaction coming from?
And I respect that you feel that way, but why did I and many others not need to research the web to understand why she acts that way? We understood her emotions in a millisecond. I have been following this show from the early days and read the books, and her reaction at that moment in time does not feel far fetched.
This is not pop psychology. See my references to John Douglas before. But again, I didn’t need those explanations, I instantly understood like many other people. Also, I don’t know why you want to misrepresent my point on being about domestic violance while I was just making a point about otherwise “normal” human beings who can have a terrible violent outburst when feeling put in the corner emotionally. Knowing why something happens is not justification for it, nor does it reduce the pain it causes. It does not mean they are actually decent human beings who made an error — they chose to act that way and are terrible for it. It was a very specific example as a setup for my following explanation.
@75: Agreed. And almost all the criticisms are complete nonsense or are based on assumptions that are very unlikely to be true.
@76: Yeah, I’ve read the books several times. I love Dany’s character, but I see her mostly — not entirely because she’s not a caricature — as ruthless. I like that trait when it comes to dealing with slaveholders, but I’m not surprised that it extends to others who are more sympathetic. And while she has her moments of empathy, such as the father of the child Drogon killed, that’s been diminishing in the later books.
I think one of the potentially clever (it’s hard to say for sure since we haven’t seen the actual conclusion of the books yet) things GRRM did with Dany’s story is to make the liberation of slaves such a fundamental component of her rise to power. Readers, who presumably find the concept of slavery utterly abhorrent, are drawn to her as a liberator and are willing to overlook her troubling behavior, just as often happens with real-life would-be messiahs.
That being said, I am definitely in agreement with those who say the show did not lay the groundwork for Dany’s decision to firebomb the entire city with her dragon.
This sounds very much like a defense of the ideas in something like ‘The Killing Joke’, that we’re all one bad day away from becoming the villain. I think the point is here that ‘good’ people don’t just ‘snap’ – it’s that actually they WERE bad people (or rather, had bad ideas or bad impulses, etc) and we just didn’t see them, or maybe the person themselves didn’t even know they had them. But usually, the clues are there.
The only case of snapping I truly know of involves a brain tumor which actually altered the parts of the brain responsible for personality.
Agree with the article author. D&D’s complete devotion to hitting plot points like hop scotch squares with zero regard to story or character development have completely destroyed this once great show. Once the crutch of Martin’s books was removed, they were exposed as either complete hacks (e.g., Lost) or guys that just didn’t care anymore. Either way, they failed miserably.
I’m sure Martin would do a far, far better job of laying the stage for Dany’s madness in the books. But D&D didn’t. Over the course of about a decade, in a position of some power, she killed a few hundred people. But virtually all of those people were slave masters, assassins, witches, wizards, murderers, maimers of children, rapists or traitors. For every one of hosed cases, it was in some way to protect herself, her people, her dragons, or quite simply the downtrodden small folk. There’s no logical step from that to mass murder of a few hundred thousand innocent people. At least not as D&D presented on screen.
I have to defend the tactics in the Battle of Winterfell a bit. Normally, yes, you’d hole up INSIDE a castle ’cause that’s what they’re there for and just have a crapton of archers, boiling pitch, etc. But, but… they were (a) fighting against the army of the dead, who can starve you out; (b) clearly never had enough archers (it looks like they weren’t quite done preparing for the siege, but this is down to D&D not really giving us a sense of time anymore); (c) the whole point was to slow down the army until the the Night King decided to come out, when they would roast him. And lastly, (d), there was no one coming to reinforce them.
They also knew that the NK’s dragon basically made their walls useless (Tormund would attest to how easily the big wall fell), so the last thing you want is to put your army inside a giant microwave-unsafe bowl.
So the idea was for the Dothraki to ride out, hopefully soften the army (along with the trebuchets) and hopefully draw out the NK before they hit the main force. Then Dany & Jon would ride in and nuke the NK. Of course, the plan went to crap almost immediately, and I guess no one was counting on however many wight giants (in a prev ep they show two, in the battle you only really see one) there were or that the dead would just climb over each other. I suspect fighting at night didn’t help either, I’m honestly amazed more people weren’t skewered by each other.
All of this could have been set up better – per the whole season in general – with everyone understanding that they were literally cannon fodder, since anyone killed could become a soldier for team blue. Since we’re never told how big the combined force is it’s hard to judge exactly how utterly outgunned they are. There’s no scouts relaying helpful information (like “hey they’ve got some giants, maybe dig a deeper pit or something’).
It doesn’t excuse putting the fire pit BEHIND the soldiers, but a lot of the rest of the battle makes more sense when you realize the end goal wasn’t to stop the army, but to delay/thin them out long enough for the NK to show up.
The helmet issue (as well as the general lack of shields etc.) and tissue paper armor is a whole separate problem. I think the largest issue with helmets is just figuring out who’s who if everyone’s all wearing helmets. The movie “Prospect” solved this beautifully BTW – everyone’s wearing environment suits but they’re all pretty much custom and differently colored.
Anyway, I agree with your “plot” vs “pants” analysis, and I also agree that Dany’s crazyturn could have been set up so much better.
@81: Except, strangely, the actual arguments being used are that Dany had bad ideas and impulses all along, and we all saw them all the time, but somehow she was still an empathetic and merciful character all along and though we understand she could snap, it doesn’t make sense in the show because it was not perfectly set up and, despite everything I mentioned in this paragraph about the history of the character, she is supposed to have snapped out of nowhere and those of us who don’t find it farfetched are somehow ignoring the information the show/books provided about the character.
The show and books include enough information to argue either point with some validity, so it’s ultimately like Sophist said. Some of us don’t agree that Dany is a fundamentally merciful and empathetic character, while some do.
Follow-up note – It’s been pretty clear to me since Season 1 that Dany was problematic, at the very least. Her first act as Khaleesi was to burn the witch that cursed her husband, despite said witch making some very valid points and the fact that they had more in common . She’s solved pretty much all her problems since then with firepower, rather than diplomacy or negotiation. This goes to a larger problem – the White Savior narrative that D&D never really addressed. But that’s for another post.
I think I might be the only one who thought Dany was cray from the beginning and wasn’t at all surprised by her city burning. And I don’t think that her friend dying and her nephew betraying her would be her main motivations. Cerci killed her kid. She’d already lost one kid and now her other kid is murdered. Mama bear doesn’t care about war crimes. And I also only think we can talk about war crimes if this were in, like, the real world. I think it’s completely irrelevant otherwise. This was the first episode this season that I actually liked. I hated the dark battle so, so much.
@Em, I’ve read every single one of John Douglass’ books, which is why I know you’re mistaken here. He explicitly states in all of them that violence is an escalating thing, it is part of an unsubs established behavior patterns LONG before they ever get to outright murder.
Yes, people “snap” and act our violently when pushed by external pressures. But they were always people who violently lashed out, and they don’t do thing they weren’t already capable of when they snap, which is the problem with Dany’s portrayal here. Dany has always strived to protect the powerless from the powerful, and her actions in King’s Landing are the opposite of that. I’ve stressed repeatedly about how Dany identifies with the slaves of Essos, but doesn’t identify with the people of Westeros, because they live a life of relative privilege compared to a slave, and how this lack of identification leads her to dehumanize the residents of Westeros.
But the show has to spend more than one line on that, which is all they gave it. Up until that one line, Dany’s most defining character trait was wishing to end the cycle of oppression(Break The Wheel). She does not lash out at the powerless.
Again, just two weeks ago in the show, Dany was sacrificing herself, her dragons and armies to save the people of the entire continent, and now she burns them all.
I gave you a very specific example of someone who is known as a nice man but who still murders his whole family.
And I’m telling you that man was never a nice man, no matter what people thought they knew about him.
Also, why are you shaking?
Because I had to get my best friend away from a man who wanted to kill her and her kids because she cheated, and I knew he was always a scumbag, so I have a lot of personal experience in the example you are blithely (and incorrectly)invoking to make a cheap point online.
but why did I and many others not need to research the web to understand why she acts that way?
I haven’t been researching the web, I’ve been on this website, talking about it, making my case as to why people are seriously misconstruing Dany’s motives and drives. My particular problem with arguments in this discussion, is people ONLY want to talk about the terrible things Dany’s done, while ignoring the good things she’s tried to do, and ignoring her motives that drove her to do the terrible things she’s done. It portrays a very one sided view of a multi-dimensional character. And that’s crappy analysis. Yes, her terrible things must be examined in determining how she got here, but her good things can’t be ignored just because it makes the plot contrivance inconvenient, which is what people want to do.
Also, I don’t know why you want to misrepresent my point on being about domestic violance while I was just making a point about otherwise “normal” human beings who can have a terrible violent outburst when feeling put in the corner emotionally.
The example you used was literally a husband who murdered his family because his wife allowed someone else access to her vagina. I don’t know why you don’t understand that’s the literal definition domestic violence, or that the only people who react with “terrible violent outburts when put in the corner” are terribly violent people not “otherwise normal” people.
Now Dany certainly qualifies as someone who prone to terrible violent outbursts, I’ve never disputed that.
But as Douglas would do to profile an unsub, you have to look at the victim pattern. WHO is the target of the violence? For most serial killers it’s vulnerable populations, sex workers, children. One way Douglass is quickly able to determine a copy cat, is when a victim comes from a different population than previous victims.
The people you use in your own examples, are people who lash out at those with less power than they have, i.e. a sexist patriarchal husband vs his wife.
Dany’s victims have always been people who do evil things. Assassins and slavers, people who abuse children, rapists, evil warlocks and politicians.
Now, serial killers will stray outside their preferred victim class, when denied access in one way or another to that preference.
But Dany wasn’t denied access to the most evil woman in Westeros(before that day). She was right there in the Keep, that Dany could have attacked directly, and still killed plenty of innocent people that Cersei brought in to be human shields, which would have had the same story impact, without feeling so out of character. Instead, Dany dracarys’d a whole bunch of people who’s cries of surrender SHE COULD HEAR.
Speaking one writer to another, though the transition could have been done better, the gun in act one was a set of Dragon eggs. You can’t leave Fantasy fans without a total Dragon conflagration! Dany is a Targarian. They’re known for being a bit mad. Dany went there with revenge in her heart. A peaceful surrender was too anticlimactic for a life spent working toward conquest, set on fire by Cercei’s casual execution of her friend. Jon needs to become disillusioned with his queen if he’s going to take up his birthright. Add all this up and you get The Bells.
Great article. Here’s a different explanation for the arc problem.
One of the great things about the series is the organic and convincing character arcs. And that’s missing in this last season. The reason why is this. In previous years, the characters were spread out all over that world. So while we watched the slow arc of Clegane or Jaime, or the descent of Cersei, the story jumped around to various storylines. This jumping around(and the same applies in novels) enables the show(or book) to hold audiences with a mixture of action and drama, danger and humor, character moments and set piece scenes.
But that’s no longer possible this season because at this point all the storylines have converged. So storylines end up being more rushed.
Most people didn’t care for the second Star Ways trilogy. But it does do a fairly good job of showing the descent of a good character to evil. And it takes three feature-length films to do it.
More time was needed to convincingly show Danerys’ descent to evil/madness. But even if the creators were willing to do more episodes(and they should have done a full season), it would have had a problem, because all the storylines had converged.
They should have done a full season. To make this possible, they should have had storylines away from the center of action. They could have even introduced new characters to do this. Maybe Martin was unwilling, I don’t know. It’s too bad. This has been the greates TV series ever made. But like many great shows, it’s going to leave us feeling it more ran out of gas than had a memorable and believable conclusion.
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Snapping is no longer a thing? Is there any evidence of this statement besides “these school shooters?” As if they are all the same. People snap every day in real life. One can be fine one minute and not fine the next. Hell, it happens to me, and I’m even pretty well-adjusted imo. How has television invented this? Television simply dramatized it.
There have also been TONS of warning signs about Dany throughout the seasons, YOU just chose not to take those warning signs seriously. You wanted her to be a hero. Admit it. And you are complaining that you didn’t get what you wanted. That’s not poor writing. The fact that so many people are wigging out about this actually kinda makes it excellent and topical writing.
Really like the article by the way – the “pantsing” and “plotting” angle is interesting. Far better than many other articles out there about this topic. I’m also a fan of most of the discussion here. I still think the show is better than how Lost turned out.
@91, I will thank you to not mischaracterize my comments, which are much more nuanced than you assert here.
If you want to talk about this episode and what you think worked, you will find I am a prolific commenter and will be happy to talk you arm off.
However I will not waste my time with someone who engages in bad faith, as you are with this reductive “You wanted her to be a hero. Admit it. And you are complaining that you didn’t get what you wanted. ” crap.
The thing that has always made Dany an interesting character is her capacity to be either the hero or the villain. And just two weeks ago(in the actual show’s timeline, it’s been two weeks since the Long Night, not just since the episode. Jon arrives in Dragonstone 3 days after Dany lost Rhaegal, don’t ask me how), two weeks, she was the legit hero, along with Jon. A few uncomfortable glances, while her remaining trusted advisors are actually plotting against her, does not tell the complete story of how she falls that far, that fast.
Am I disappointed that the story didn’t turn out the way I want? Sure. My exact on words on this were that if they had gone the other way with Dany, she could have been groundbreaking.
But that is not why I continue to discuss this, and argue my perspective. No more than the reason you’re commenting to me is to gloat that you were always right about how that brutalized little girl was gonna break bad, right?
To address your comments about “snapped” I’m also going to do the courtesy of assuming you haven’t slaughtered your family, or massacred a city in snit of anger. I mean, you aren’t really claiming to have committed violent crimes on an internet forum, are you? Because that’s the context under discussion, is whether what appears to be “sudden violence” really all that sudden. And the very criminologist cited by the commentor I’m responding to, is very explicit that people who commit serial/spree crimes almost always give signals of their intent, it’s just that too many people write the behavior off as insignificant. Have you every heard of the homicidal triad?
You’re welcome to try this again, if you want to make an argument that actually addresses what I’m saying.
@92, I have never seen Lost, so I can’t judge, but based on the vitriol that show still gets a decade after the fact, I will say I don’t think it’s that bad.
I will say for anyone still reading who’s missed me say it elsewhere, that for all my criticisms, I do like the show. They come from a place that thinks it could be better. The actors are amazing, and one thing the show has always done well is character interaction, and the dissatisfaction of these episodes comes from that lack more than anything. Episodes 1 & 2 were incredible for that reason, but 3-5 have all been about plot conclusion.
I hope we get a solid mix of both in the finale.
Aeryl brought up an interesting “detail” (huge cuotation marks please) I’ve not seen on any of the comment here or in the previous eppisode-comment thread (I might have missed it despite of me reading almost all comments): THe show made it really clear that everyone could hear the claims of the people for surrender.
This makes the pseudo-argument of “Danny considered the people of KL sided with Cercei” completely null. Everyone, including Dannerys herself can see 1- that the fighting men surrendered 2- that there are no more relevant defenses left 3- that there is a clear rift between the ruler and the people… If Danerys argument was “they didn’t revolt”, this makes it clear that they aren’t represented by their ruler. As Aeryl said many times before, in this context the current state of character devellopment of Dannerys would have made it completely acceptable if she had flown to the keep and burnt the hell out of it with everyone inside… but the people (and arguably her own troops too)? At this point it makes no sense.
As I said before, her whole story so far has been, ammon others, about how she’s been learning to rule, to coexist with the power she wants in Westeros. That’s what she learned in Slaver’s bay, to negotiate, compromise, plan ahead and think midd to long term. I’d like to remind everyone that she accepted a strategic marrigae in order for her to create stability in a place where she wasn’t “loved” by those with power (becuase the masters still had power, despite the overturn). Out of all the characters in the show she’s the one who best knows the lesson about winning hearts and minds of the masses, because that’s how she got half of her titles. That’s why the last couple of eppisodes make no sense. THe Dannerys that has been build up till now would have used the defeat of the dead as a powerfull propaganda tool, she would have tried to speak directly (or as directly as she could) to the people of Westeros in order to promote a general revolt. And don’t tell me “she couldn’t because the people were inside KL”. We saw how, untill the very last minute there was people entering the city… they came from the surrounding lands, which evidently are not under Cercei’s controll (and we are also told that most houses have sided with Danerys). Wouldn’t they make for fine “ambassadors”?.
Glob!… If we go down that route and take in account the nilitary experience Dannerys has accumulated in the east, she could have burned the fleet, even the wall mounted scorpions to show her power, and then laid back and besiege the city into surrender. Tyrion himself reminded us that the people of KL are very trigger happy wen it comes to revolts. Intellugent writers would, at this point, used what they’ve been sowing and, for example, cashed in the destruction of the sept. Do you really think the “common people” aren’t goint to feel a littel bit stung by the fact that their queen basically tried to destroy their religious belief? Have you seen how batshit crazy go in our real-world-21st-century when someone (especially a government) touches their faith? Noe even the USSR could erase religion and we’re supposed to think everyone is ok with Cercei basically nuking the local Vatican and then ignoring a easy-to-piss-of Targaryen lady with a dragon.
By the way, I’ve been following your posts since the eppisode commentary thing Aeryl, and I totally support like 98% of your thoughts. It hurts to see how people resort to cheap falacies and intentional missreading of your carefully constructed analysis instead of providing a good critically backed one of their own thought process. Many of those enf up boiling down (IMO) to people confusing (or settling for) cheap foreshadowing for good character building and a sensiblly written arch.
What do you not understand by the word, D-R-A-G-O-N???
You have Dragon, you burn the place if you like.
So what strategies and small details are you talking about?? @Michael
I really enjoyed the episode “Bells”, I liked how the producers envisioned the war of King’s Landing, I loved the camera angles, I loved the visual effects, I liked the episode direction, I understand why Daenerys turned mad (I have a million excuses for that and we witnessed them building up since the first time Jon told her and also during the fest for the Triumph of Winterfell), she is hurt, she’s hurt from love. What do you not understand by the word L-O-V-E or even better, love hurt???
I loved the ending of character Cersei. Buried, buried alive, buried forever, accompanied by her other half. Together in womb, together in tomb.
I strongly believe the episode was mint! A perfect experience for the TV medium. Well done and congrats to all that took part in it.
I think you are all bitter because we loose all these that the GoT world and characters were giving us. So we hate the show now because we will have no more…
And I really enjoyed her turning mad and bad. Wow!! Who would ‘ve thought of it?? Who would expect such a turn. Wow!
P.S. And we have one more episode left…
As usual, interesting analysis. I agree with this post, but I wanted to highlight the sharp analysis and great writing of these two parts:
Hilarous and accurate!
This could be applied to so many things. It’s almost an aphorism. I love it.
This is kind of a dumb question, but would the average person know Cersei specifically engineered the Sept of Baelor explosion? Would they know what wildfire is, and that she knew about the caches? It might be suspicious that she was conveniently not there, but she could theoretically also just say she was late, on her way, etc.
@95: Yeah, but that argument only works if you consider that surrendering is automatically the same thing as bending the knee. I’d say it doesn’t, since she had absolutely zero problem barbecueing the Tarlys after they surrendered but refused to pledge their allegiance to her. And yeah, she DIDN’T give the people of KL a chance to actually make that choice, but, you know, she was saying that she was going to torch the place no matter what happened in the battle until Tyrion pleaded her to refrain from doing so if the people rang the bells, to which she begrudgingly agreed. Why would a person who’s merciful and good have to be convinced before a battle by her advisors not to kill the innocent?
My point is, there is enough evidence in the show to argue either stance and by consequence enough evidence to argue against either stance, so even if I disagree with you guys about whether or not this twist makes sense, I do agree that the main problem about it is how badly it was set up by the showrunners/writers.
But hey, whatever you say, man. If you can’t see that you guys are doing exactly the same thing you complain about by purposefully misunderstanding arguments, ignoring things in the show or books that don’t support your conclusions, using logical fallacies, bringing your personal baggage into the discussion, and consistently implying that those who disagree with you are stupid, well, I don’t know what to tell you.
I believe that her actual agreement was to call off the assault if the city surrendered (that is, before the attack). As was pointed out in a quoted passage in one of my comments above, that’s not how the system worked. In the Middle Ages and before, if a city surrendered before the assault, it stood a good chance of being spared. If they waited until after, too late. There are plenty of historical examples of this. And the reason is clear: the defenders took a gamble that the assault would fail, hoping they could put the attackers at risk and still save themselves. Not surprisingly, the attackers took a dim view of that kind of moral hazard so they sacked such a city as a warning in the future.
Now, did Dany do this? I don’t know. I linked one article which argues that her behavior was perfectly rational on this score, but there are lots of folks arguing that no, she sacked the city because she “snapped” (like Thanos, I guess). I’m leaning to this theory myself. And if she did “snap”, then she presumably would ignore the cries for surrender just as she would if she behaved like the Medieval commanders I just described.
Here’s the key point, as I mentioned above: many of us, certainly including me, saw her as drawing the exact opposite lessons from her experience in Slaver’s Bay. Yes, she did try the things you mentioned. But all those attempts failed. That pushed her in the direction of her first instincts, which were usually “fire and blood”.
@96: I think The Bells is a terrific episode, though I liked The Long Night even better. The direction and cinematography were fantastic. The episode showed the horror of the sack of a city as well as any fictional work I know of. It was great too at showing how Jon lost control of his troops, an all too common event in history, and his nearly shell-shocked reaction to the horrors surrounding him which he couldn’t stop. The acting was outstanding, as it’s always been, with Maisie, Emilia, and Lena being exceptional.
I’m encouraged by the fact that I’m starting to see push back on line against the “worst season ever” crowd. JMHO, but I think it’s the best season since S4.
@Lisamarie, aside from the fact that she was supposed to be there for her trial, and was conspicuously absent?
ignoring things in the show or books that don’t support your conclusions,
Let me sum up my argument, real quick here.
Dany as a character is carefully crafted to have the potential for either great heroism, or great villainy.
She’s progressed through the story, demonstrating a capacity for both, constantly questioning whether what’s she doing is right.
Then we get to Mereen. She makes a lot of poor decisions that have terrible repercussions, leading people to feel she doesn’t strive to find compromise and share power anymore, that she’s become more power hungry. But it’s at the same time she meets Tyrion, who tends to have a pretty good judge of character. And he believes in her kindness, justice and mercy, and promises to serve her so long as she acts that way.
Are we supposed to doubt Tyrion? That Danaerys is a good person, who only wants what is best for the small folk? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. But then Dany arrives in Westeros, finds a strong base of local support, makes a few military forays, taking care not to ravage the countryside, sending the more disciplined Unsullied instead of Dothraki.
Then she learns the whole world is in danger, and resolves to help.
Are these the actions of a villain or a hero? I’m not denying Dany potential to be a villain, but her actions since conquering Mereen, aside from a few provoked expressions of violence, have mostly been the actions of a hero, but in a few short weeks, we supposed to believe she falls so far?
I mean, you can accept that, but to me it reflects my fundamental problem with this series, characters aren’t allowed to grow. Dany can’t have matured past the scared little girl who lashed out with violence when threatened, Jaime can’t actually get over Cersei, Arya can’t decide to turn away from vengeance on her own, Jon can’t stop being Jon. Sansa gets to grow, which is just weird because D&D are on record as hating her character.
Now in what way, is this purposefully misunderstanding arguments, ignoring things in the show or books that don’t support your conclusions, using logical fallacies, bringing your personal baggage into the discussion*.
You may accept that sort of outlook on life, but I read stories to see people grow, so that sort of nihilism drives me away from fiction. That we come at this from different places doesn’t mean I think you’re stupid, I think we’re incomprehensible to each other.
*FYI, feminism is a perfectly valid vector of critical analysis, using that vector isn’t “bringing in personal baggage”.
@70 “She is not a computer program and she is not a machine – we are talking about a human being. Her decision does not have to make logical sense, you just can’t judge any dramatic work that way”
Asking for understandable character motivation based on prior characterization is not the same as expecting people to act sans emotion. Nor is it, to forestall another possible complaint, asking for complete consistency of character. It’s just asking for an understandable logic—within that character’s emotionality as portrayed. And people judge good writing/film based on whether actions have been set up by character all the time. It’s one of the major foundations of criticism. Sure, by its nature criticism is subjective, so people can (clearly) disagree, but to argue it is wholly off the table seems odd.
“all she gets is distrust and loneliness and being told that she is not actually the right ruler. What does that do to someone?”
That’s a great question. And one many of the critics wish the writers had taken time to show us. Instead of having her leap from not sleeping and being sad/angry to slaughtering hundreds or thousands of children and her own troops
“She did not burn the city because it makes logical sense or for some military reasons. She was enraged by everything that happened.”
But that’s not actually what we are shown, is it? We are shown her doing a very methodical, logical, strategic take out of military targets. She comes out of the sun, she takes out the mobile ones first, then she takes out the castle ones, then she takes out the wall and the defending force. None of that is mindless fury or vengeance. it’s all calculated, sticking to the plan and strategy. Then, somehow when she hears the sounds of victory, she supposedly becomes so mindlessly infuriated she wipes out thousands of innocents, children, and her own people.
Even therefore in the show’s own presentation of her mindset at the time, the reading of her acting out of blind savage fury doesn’t fit. Doing it after they take down her dragon? Absolutely. But Despite that everything you listed had already happened to her, and despite the immediacy of that act, she doesn’t turn to flaming fury. Same with the death of her loved aide. Instead, she only turns blindly, savagely, indiscriminately murderous when she wins. And, conveniently, in the penultimate show. Which is why, to some of us, it feels not organic to character but shoehorned in for plot.
Many of us could have lived with it being an “escalation,” but going from killing people who actively harmed or defied you or brutally tortured and murdered children to torturing and murdering children yourself by the hundreds of thousands isn’t an “escalation”; it’s a hyperspace leap to many of us. Many of us could have lived with her killing KL “innocents” who openly or actively defied her. But that isn’t this. Many could buy her flaming some innocents when the city refuses to surrender to use terror to get it to do so. But that isn’t this. Many of us (not all clearly) have never liked her, or thought she was heading anywhere but tyranny, have never thought her a kind or merciful character whatever good acts she did or who she did bad things to (I.e. bad people). but not being a good leader or feeling overly entitled or autocratic isn’t this. Not yet.
(Apologies for typos—traveling)
@99: Do you realize there’s a fundamental difference between a “lord” (or lady in charge) of a great house and “the people”? The Tarlys surendered militarily, but they decided not to pledge their aligerance to House Targaryen, so they couldn’t be accepted “back” into the flock (since Dannerys conserd herself as the rightfull ruler). You can stop a battle trough surrender, but this isn’t the same as the poilital implications of loyalties, so it makes a lot of sense she would execute them; especially given her history of brutal justice based on a strict code. The people, the everyday person, on the other hand, have about as much power and influence as an stone in Westeros; so all they can do, and all that matters, is whether they surrender or not. You can’t demand long-term aligerance (aka, bend the knee) from an amorphous collective in the middle of a chaotic situation. In most European medieval monarchies (the basis or ASoIaF) the coronation is understood as the ceremony by which the monarch gets the aligerance of the people; although it’s more of a one sided thing in the other direction… since, like said, the people don’t really matter much as far a desition making goes. So your attempt to paralel the Tarlys’ burning with the slaughter of KL isn’t really valid. There is a reason why Dannerys didn’t burn all the captured soldiers after the victory against the Tarlys; only the leaders who didn’t surrender AND explicitly joined her.
she was saying that she was going to torch the place no matter what happened in the battle until Tyrion pleaded her to refrain from doing so if the people rang the bells, to which she begrudgingly agreed
It’s interesting that you bring this up, because I never said that only the moment of the (cheap) snap was braking the character’s arch. I think that very moment you brin up was totally out of character. I would believe it easily if they had done it in an organic way. Show us how Danerys starts feeling rejection from the people down south, show us how she turns her hope of being loved and accepted into spite and resentment… but we didn’t get anything like that at all. The people of KL aren’t even “Lannisters” (in a geopolitical sense). The show could have done this easily having her army march down south instead of doing military idiocy on the sea. We could have seen how people fear her, contrasting with her experience being worshiped in the east. We could have had her hopes that “it’s just the northerners who are really uncool with foreigners” crumble at the face of people hiding in their homes instead of comming out to see the parade. We could even have seen her troops drag people out of the homes to watch them or something. Escalate, tense her… the cheap instant-snap I don’t buy. Like many have said beore, Danerys has all the right ingredients to go berserk, but vague forshadowing isn’t enough to make it believable. The show had a good record of harvesting their character delopment in a fair way. And I’m saying fair to the narrative work put into it, not to the expectation of fan-service thirsty audiences. Ned Stark died in a believable way because his character acted out in a way that made sense to what was build up; Cercei escaleded the power structure believably because every step she took made organic sense (so much so, that we barley ever question ourselves if the people of Westeros would have accepted her as full-blown Queen after the death of her last son).
By the way, I’m not taking the bait of your last paragraph… just turn it arround and apply it to yourself. Your combo of ad hominem and strawman is cute, but not very effective ;)
@98: At first I’m positive that people would be super confused. Cercei probably would have activated some sort of propaganda machine blaming whoever (probably Dany or the northerners, since… easy targets); but KL is famous for being unrully and very porous when it comes to information. I have no doubt that in short time people would have sarted to suspect, to talk, to gossip (we’ve seen how brothels are basically the wikileaks of Westeros). Thae fact that Cercei wasn’t attending would rise more than one eyebrow, and her antagonic relation towards the faith after her punishment wouldn’t have gone ignored. Also… who would have so much wildfire anyways? KL people already know that the crown has access to that stuff since the battle of the Blackwater.
I just came across this little video analysis. It picks up several of the imporant point I think some people here have been pointing out and I very much agree with most of it. Give it a try:
Foreshadowing Is Not Character Development
I really like and agree (and would emphasize) with the idea that it’s not fair for people who defend the “danyfall” to pretend the one who aren’t buying it are all just in denial or just don’t want to accept “their” faves to go all tragic and rotten. Many of us have said again and again that the issue isn’t that it happened, the seeds were there, but that the way it happened makes little sense; especially in a story that shined through well written characters and surprising, but earned turns.
@106: Your last paragraph seems to me to raise the fundamental point of division: viewers saw Dany’s character pre-Snap (can’t resist) in 2 very different ways. Show defenders didn’t need more buildup — it was already there for them. Dany’s defenders weren’t seeing that, so they say the writing was bad. It’s really just all one argument best I can tell.
@105 The Tarlys surendered militarily, but they decided not to pledge their aligerance to House Targaryen, so they couldn’t be accepted “back” into the flock
Yes, but they could have been exiled, or offered the chance to take the black. That’s one of those things that culturally specific to Westeros, an opportunity to exchange a death sentence for a lifetime of servitude to the realm. Dany didn’t offer either of those options, and it’s understandable why some people would be upset that she went against Westerosi tradition, in a way very similar to Joffrey, who executed a man who was going to take the black for his crimes.
@107 Show defenders didn’t need more buildup — it was already there for them.
But to already be “there” is admitting you have ignored the ways in which her character was growing AWAY from thoughtless violence. Now, like I said, you could just be like “well I knew it was never going to stick” which, ok, whatever, but what a lot of people who are saying that they are “there” are doing instead, is acting like the story never showed us Dany becoming more hero than villain.
Now, of course this is crazily different in the books. The Tyrion that meets up with Dany in Mereen will not be Show Tyrion. Book Tyrion at this point is bitter and angry, and will only be too happy to stoke Dany’s genocidal impulses, taking the character to a different place.
But honestly, the show, aside from a few minor moments, has been a pretty straightforward fantasy, without all of the shocking defeats of our nominal heroes, since the Battle of the Bastards. Since that’s the route the show went, in specific divergence to the intent of the books, they should have gone for a different ending.
“Dany burns King’s Landing” is a place you can still get Dany to in the books, but that’s not a place Dany in the show would go. based on how they’ve established her character these past 3 years.
IMO, she was moving towards thoughtless violence. It was always there in her character, but she listened to her advisors counseling against it. But as that failed, she reverted more to type. And I say this even though she’s no worse than my third favorite character (I go back and forth between her and Jon).
I don’t think either side to this debate is ignoring anything. I think people just interpret events in fundamentally different ways. The psychology studies of this on, say, the ways witnesses interpret a scene, demonstrate that this happens all the time. It’s a huge and often unacknowledged problem for the legal profession. To say nothing of politics……
The Tarlys were given the choice of taking the black. Tyrion offered it and Dany allowed them to choose it if they wanted to. Randall said that as Dany wasn’t their queen, she couldn’t do that and they rejected it.
@@@@@ 105: “The show had a good record of harvesting their character development in a fair way.”
THIS, in a nutshell. I’m with KaosNoKamisana (nice to meet you, I’m Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto undercover) and Aeryl. I wouldn’t have been happy with Dany descending into madness and horror, but I would have accepted it as you accept whatever fate befalls to characters in literature and film. But Dany didn’t descent into madness and horror; she just up and went there overnight.
@@@@@ 108: ““Dany burns King’s Landing” is a place you can still get Dany to in the books, but that’s not a place Dany in the show would go. based on how they’ve established her character these past 3 years.”
EXACTLY.
IMO, she was moving towards thoughtless violence.
OK, but you aren’t providing examples to demonstrate how her thoughtless violence was escalating, to counter my examples. I’ve pulled out example after example of how she’s been acting fairly restrained, or engaging in onlystrategic violence, especially in her conquest of Westeros, and the rebuttal is “this thing that happened 5 seasons ago”
@Liz, if that’s the case(I legit don’t remember), then I take it back. I mean, she could have still exiled them I suppose, but I don’t think in Westeros anyone is actually exiled, Jorah was an “exile” but that’s because he fled his charges, not because that was the sentence fo his crime.
@@@@@ Aeryl: The sole arguments of people who are fine with Suddenly Postal Dany are either “this thing that happened 5 seasons ago” or “she killed innocents!” meaning the Tarlys, who were warrior lords of Westeros, not innocent women and children, and were given every choice before execution.
It is the genre equivalent of that Andre Gide’s character who threw a guy from a train for no reason, or Albert Camus’ equally inexplicable murder in The Stranger. It could be said that Game of Thrones brought existentialism back.
Who won the Battle of the Bastards? (Sansa) Who got the credit and the crown after the Battle of the Bastards? (Jon) When there are rival claims to the throne, what usually happens to the losing claimant? (Death) At the time the bells ring, who would be considered victor by Westeros? (Jon) Who gets the crown as a result of the victory and what happens to the other claimant? (Jon, death) Dany is a woman being passed over for promotion in favor of a less qualified man in a world where being passed over equals death.
Right, because being a monarch is such a merit-based position.
Doesn’t matter anyway. Jon’s not going to end up king.
I guess I would place myself halfway between nerd and non-nerd territory, but for all intensive purposes this is my opinion of why fandom (nerds) are starting to dislike Game of Thrones.
1-Despite all their claims to the contrary, nerds continue to indulge in a kind of romanticism that indicates a lack of attention to reality. Their expectations of mythical superheroes are far beyond those of the average person, and – in the effort to preserve their superhero they will dissect the entire plot to figure out the turning point at which the heroine fell apart. The truth is more simple: the heroine was never actually a heroine. You just put her on an unnecessary pedestal. True in life, true in fantasy fiction.
2-The internal misogyny of nerds goes further than romantic disappointment though – it verges on finnicky perfectionism. There are currently a number of female characters left on the show – all of which are disappointing as romantic heroines. Arya looks like a lesbian, Cersei is incestuous, Sansa is beautiful but too jaded to enjoy talking to, Brienne of Tarth is physically intimidating. With the dissolution of Dany into mad queen, the show has officially lost any semblance of having a perfect female romantic lead. I think this is wonderful, because perfection doesn’t exist. Fandom however, consists of people that are doing their best to escape reality, and THEY WANT THEIR BLONDE HEROINE with beautiful blonde locks and nice boobs, DAMMIT.
3-Along with unrealistic expectations of women’s character and beauty, and the small statistical probability that the best looking woman will also be the one with exceptional character, nerds (including myself I would say) are consistently shocked by the reality of human behavior. And in reality, it is almost always the most superficially nice people that end up doing something that is completely unhinged, criminally insane, and seemingly out of character. That’s why whenever they discover who the next unibomber is – they always have a neighbor that says something along the lines of -‘he was such a nice guy’ i cant believe it!!! In reality – not fantasy – the obscene shock that comes with experiencing an asshole, a tyrant, or both comes with no warning. And like in real life – I think it’s fine for the characters to come to terms with it in the next episode to put together the pieces of what actually happened – whether that happens in the church, on the battlefield, in front of a shrink, or wherever it is that people go to recover – I think it’s pretty safe to say that it IS pretty true to life for assholes to tear through people’s lives with absolutely zero warning. That’s why the general public is so comfortable with the show – and the nerds with limited life experience will endlessly dissect it as if it’s impossible.
3-As for the historical battles that this guy just wrote about – yes that’s very interesting about no historical surrender of bombing cities after surrender – in 14th century europe – however I am fairly certain that in the early 20th century America the US president made drones rain down on a Yemeni wedding with absolutely no warning or remorse or well defined political strategy. Game of Thrones isn’t an ACTUAL historical piece, it’s a fantasy piece that is sold in medieval gear because there is still a market for the nerdiest of nerds at renaissance fairs. But let’s be clear – the dragon is a drone or a bomber pilot, it’s not a reflection of anything that would have happened in 14th century europe when people had audible means of surrender.
4-Finally, for the final crunch of how sad it is that reality is sinking into the depths of the game of thrones fantasy bubble – it is ultimately enraging for fans – but also really interesting that the producers are choosing this route. Because the stuff of heroines falling off their pedestals is the stuff of horror movies, not fantasy fiction, and that’s kind of cool that they’re going into that territory.
Okay, we all agree here that the problem isn’t Dany reaching step 98 in the List of 100 Steps To Become The Ultimate Villain. It’s that, in the show, we saw step 42 and then went immediately to step 98.
And what does annoy me is that it should have been D&D’s work to show us steps 43 to 97. Instead I’m reading unending comments from fans filling the gaps with their own headcanons, then declaring that the gaps are now filled (in their minds) so obviously the showrunners did nothing wrong.
There’s a huge difference between spoonfeeding an audience, and asking the audience to consider themselves fed despite failing to actually serve the food.
I think it’s pretty clear from this thread that “we” very much do NOT “all agree”.
@117 Instead I’m reading unending comments from fans filling the gaps with their own headcanons, then declaring that the gaps are now filled (in their minds) so obviously the showrunners did nothing wrong.
I’ve kind of held back from inputting too much into this debate, mostly because it’s hard for me to describe my own feelings about this episode and Dany’s sudden turn. I agree that it was rushed. I agree the showrunners did not put in the work to justify her actions. Yet the episode worked for me. I think in another thread, someone referenced the “I’m shocked! But of course it had to happen this way” reaction that you want fans to have to a twist like this. I had that reaction watching it – even though I agree the showrunners did not entirely earn this. So why did I feel that way? I don’t know. I think it might be because I’m not really watching Game of Thrones from a very critical viewpoint anymore. The show dipped in quality several seasons ago (at least in my opinion). There was a point where I either stopped watching the show or adjusted my expectations for what the show would be like going forward. So maybe my reaction was more from believing this is a place Dany’s arc could go (in the books) and that was good enough for me.
I am not saying that others can’t or shouldn’t analyze the show from a more critical viewpoint.
I also want to repeat something I said in another thread, which is that I do think this is a very subjective thing. Whether, in that moment, you bought Dany’s actions and enjoyed the episode, or whether her actions completely took you out of the show because it seemed too out-of-character – I think both of those points are valid. I’m really not down with the people who liked the episode calling the other side naive or blind to what Dany’s really like, and I’m also really not down with the side who didn’t like the episode saying that those of us who did are deluding ourselves. I am one of those special people who actually loved the LOST finale, but I absolutely understand why a lot of people didn’t. The plot was kind of a mess, by that point, and they left a lot unresolved. For me, the ending was emotional and cathartic and hit the characters beats I wanted, so I loved it. People will have different interpretations of fiction, look for different things in fiction, and will react in different ways to the same stories. Which is kind of awesome. We don’t need to knock the other side down to justify our own feelings.
@116
I might suggest hanging out with better quality nerds, since very few if any of the criticisms noted here are rooted in misogyny, a desire for great boobs, delusion over how wonderful the character is, etc. Maybe instead, one reason “fandom” is turning on the show is because fans being fans have seen a large number of times when genre (or this show specifically)has been executed well and executed poorly and thus have the experience to notice the difference. And of course, being fans, they’ll feel more intensely about it and be more vocal about it. But Given the sheer quantity and variety of criticism, no matter what one may think of any individual gripe, it’s kind of hard to argue there’s no there there at all.
I think much of the problems people are upset about are because of timing. Things are forced to a head sooner than they should have been… there’s just not enough time to wrap things up. There’s been an expectation of story pace and character development for this show that the die-hard viewers are used to. Ideally season 8 should have ended with the white walker battle, and last weekend should have been the second from last episode of season 9. Instead, time has run out.
I have enjoyed this season. Some plot points feel rushed, but are otherwise believable.
Also, how often does everyone love the last season any long running show where they promise to wrap up all the stories? A lot of times it’s better when a show doesn’t get to finish before it’s canceled.
I didn’t read all the comments–way too many this time, sorry everyone!–but one thing that struck me was from comment #3. The Night’s Watch was almost totally annihilated. The dead army and leaders destroyed. So with the existing Watch all but destroyed and the reason for their existence wiped out, what is left to object to?
What truly saddens me most of all is the story arc of Bran. After tidbits revealed in book 5, it was somehow deemed vital that he become the 3 eyed raven. I thought, wow, he will be able to use animals to provide vital intelligence to the armies of men and relate stories of the past to Sam or other scribe types to give a true history of the 7 Kingdoms. All the secrecy in the books about his survival made it seem he and his powers would be protected and hidden from friend and foes alike.
Instead, his whole arc has been cheapened to the point that he is no more than the messenger who tells Jon his true identity. Oh, and of course the barely protected bait for the Night King (a Targaryen, as I predicted and proved so by his Dany-esque immunity to fire). For this he was tossed out a window and crippled for life?!?
Weak.
@122 – The Night King isn’t a Targaryen. It was never stated he was, when he was human, and there’s already been an excellent analysis of why it’s impossible to begin with:
https://www.elitedaily.com/p/is-the-night-king-a-targaryen-heres-what-we-know-about-a-possible-connection-10226983
He can be a Targaryen in your head canon if you like, but the immunity to fire is just a power that this supernatural being has, and his ability to ride a dragon is explained by the fact that he raised that dragon from the dead and therefore has control over it – just like any other dead being that he raises.
Even mediocre episodes of Game of Thrones are still better than pretty much everything else on TV.
@116,
“Arya looks like a lesbian”
So your superpower is to tell lesbians from straight women by how they look? Sweet.
Standing ovation for Aeryl. I didn’t want to comment at all, but your eloquence and your patience are remarkable. I enjoyed reading your comments. Thank you.
Yay, go team helmets. My personal problem with the battles is not necessarily the lack of reality in general. It’s the lack of the in-world reality. I can believe in a flying, fire breathing dragon. I have trouble with a dragon who goes from invincible to extremely vulnerable at the whim of the writers. I suppose we can say that losing Rhagel made Dany come up with a strategy to fight the scorpion weapons but she knew about these long before Rhagel’s death. It was like the once killer weapons were just toys in the final battle.
Having said all that: I loved the scene where she blows through the wall into the backs of the Golden Company. It was spectacular.
What I don’t understand is that Dany didn’t fly the relatively short distance and toast the top of the Red Keep before she roasted the city. *Priorities*, woman! (sighs, “first you pillage and *then* you burn…’).
@116aa: You make several very good points, but the main argument against Crazy Dany iis not fandom, but a bad, incomplete or altogether missing character arc. I can perfectly see the story going to that tragic, beautiful scene between Jon, Dany and a dagger, and have no problem with it, but the path leading to it is basically nonexistent.