Game of Thrones 8.05 "The Bells" 5/12/19 [Show discussion]

Cafe Society
381

She hadn’t achieved complete victory, she wasn’t killing random people for fun and she was very much solving a problem.

What did Dany think would have happened if she had accepted the people’s surrender?

She didn’t know about Tyrion’s plot with Jamie at that point. So she she would have expected something like:

  1. Lannister armies are disarmed, marched out of the city and put under guard.
  2. Townspeople are generally allowed to get on with their lives subject to them getting out of the way of
  3. A brief siege/negotiation with the Keep/Holdfast to ensure Cersei’s surrender. If unsuccessful, there would be a bit more highly targeted dragon work. If successful, then presumably some sort of execution, with or without trial.

Fine. But then what? In theory, she mounts the Iron Throne to the acclaim of her new people. But she knows that’s not actually going to happen because she is neither loved nor trusted. Instead, there would be conversations. A Small Council. A Great Council. Negotiations. And would that end with her on the Iron Throne, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms? Her own advisors are ambivalent; her closest supporter has a better claim to the throne than she does; this is widely enough known to be a problem; Sansa Stark and other nobles don’t trust her; all would prefer Jon; she has lost Jonah, her loyal Westerosi follower of ages and Missandei, her diplomatic spokesperson and friend. She has no “soft power” - no diplomatic moves, no network of relationships, no bribes to offer, no personal status beyond being the person on the dragon. She does, however, have a dragon.

If she follows the path of peaceful negotiation, allows herself to be guided by advisors, attempts to build consensus, or tries to negotiate her way to the throne she will fail. She sees that very clearly. She is so close, and could lose all. If she is to rule, as she said earlier, it will be through fear rather than love. If she wants Westeros, she must take it now, with fire, before it is snatched from her. Should she rely on Tyrion to open her path to the throne? Will Jon lead her armies North to bring Sansa to her senses, or will he once again betray her for his family? There is no one she can depend on and no-one she need depend on. Let them see here and now who Daenarys Targaryen really is. Let them know who is their true Queen. Time and again she has listened to her advisors tell her she cannot simply take power; time and again she has suffered for it. Time now to show how a Targaryen rules, how they have always ruled. Fire. And blood.

382

Does that matter anymore? There’s no need for a Night’s Watch now. Whoever ends up in charge could cancel the oaths of whoever is left. Now their watch is over.

383

Interesting comment. I never paid attention to that, but indeed the only problem I can think of that she didn’t solve by fire was the locking in the vault thing.

384

Plowed the aunt farm, as it were?

385

Very insightful analysis. I agree.

386

Dany won the war against Cersei, took a five minute break, and immediately began her war against Jon Snow. Which starts by denying him any King’s Landing to be king of, instilling a continent-wide fear of pissing her off, and making his followers lose faith in Jon’s leadership abilities, considering he not only gave the North away to a foreign queen without asking them, but it turns out she’s literally Hitler. Nuclear Hitler.

So I don’t think her destruction of KL was out of nowhere at all. Her personality has been shown for 8 years to be “Burn them all and let God sort them out”, and now she has no advisers left to guide her down a different path, and little reason to do so. She knows the merciful, hearts and minds path won’t accomplish her goals at this point.

Also, I should mention, in the actual Middle Ages, as well as ancient times, too, the (near universal) rule of the day was “surrender the city, open the gates to us, and survive, but if we have to fight our way in there we’ll steal whatever isn’t tied down, burn the rest, rape the women, enslave the children and kill the men”. Many, many cities were wiped off the map entirely in our own history, often along with the whole culture of the victims. It’s not something rare or unbelievable at all.

387

She could always do it herself too. Drink wildfire or some such.

388

Stanislaus gets it. Fire and Blood for sure.

389

You mean, as opposed to now, where everybody hates her guts, has no advisers or allies, and her only protection is being always very close to her dragon?

390

Drogon dispatched of the Iron Fleet with surprising ease. So, the difference in Scorpion vs Dragon in Episode 4 vs Episode 5 is…Rhaegon forgot to duck. And apparently the city’s defenses, like the guns at Aqaba, are pointed in one direction and can’t be turned so they’re vulnerable to a sneak attack from the rear.

It seems like the showrunners wanted lots of collapsing buildings in this episode, so they gave dragonfire the power to explode buildings. OK, fine …(we hadn’t seen dragons used against buildings before, so I’ll give it a pass). I think the episode could have used some editing. Maybe 20 fewer minutes of strafing runs and falling masonry.

The behind the scenes / Revealed video has some amazing content, so I highly recommend it. They re-created Dubrovnik in a parking lot in Belfast.

391

It’s setting up the sequel: Arya becomes the new leader of the Golden Company, but now they fight only for good and the downtrodden. Also starring Gendry “B.A.” Barathecus, Bran “Howling Mad” Stark, and Jaqen “Face(less)” H’ghar. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… the GC-Team.

392

Dany depends on her dragon, a dragon that is known to be killable, given enough concentrated ballista-fire.

If Westeros has the equivalent of a 2nd Amendment, it won’t for much longer.

393

Well, that was a terrible episode.

Yep, this is pretty much my take.

Daenerys has always been clear about her commitment to being Queen, and perfectly willing to kill to get her way, but there has always been a logic to it, a sense that these particular deaths are necessary to advance her claims, or are reasonable payback for betrayal. That’s why some of the apparent hostility and ruthlessness she demonstrated last episode around Jon’s claim to the Iron Throne was perfectly in character. That’s why executions like the Tarleys were rather brutal and possibly unnecessary, but also in character. She’s always been ruthless.

But they have never set her up as the female equivalent of her Mad King father, until this episode. She and her dragon and her forces had won, the bells were ringing (could that have* taken* any longer?), and there was basically nothing to stop her from taking Cersei and killing her with dragon fire in front of everyone in King’s Landing. Or she could have left the rest of the city alone and just brought the Red Keep down around Cersei’s ears, for pretty much the same result.

The victory, and her execution of Cersei, would have established her power and authority just fine. Hell, if she played it right, she might even have earned some of the loyalty that she claimed to desire, because it’s been pretty clear for seasons now that many of the people of King’s Landing, and Westeros more generally, didn’t exactly love Cersei; they mainly feared her. Kill Cersei, and rule in a benevolent fashion, and loyalty might come more quickly than you expect, especially if Jon Snow was wiling to say in public exactly what he had been saying to Daenerys and everyone else: “I don’t want to be king.” And if it looks like it might not be working, THEN you’ve still got the dragon and can start frying some of the malcontents.

Throughout the series, most of the loyalty Daenerys got came NOT as a result of her birthright claim to a throne, but as a result of deeds that either demonstrated her unique powers, or actions that helped people in particular ways. Missandei made that point last season, at Dragonstone, when she said to Jon Snow that she and the Daenerys’ other followers were loyal because of things that Daenerys had done, not because of who her father was.

And all of this is besides the terrible writing that, depending on the exigencies of the plot, has the dragons as either victims in a turkey shoot or invincible death machines. When Daenerys and the three (3!!!) dragons attack the slavers’ fleet in Mereen (S6E9), it takes them multiple blasts of fire to wipe out each ship. Now, apparently dragon fire can take out multiple ships in a single quick sweep, and bring down massive stone buildings at a mere glance.

394

I really hope that if Danny is killed that it isnt by Arya. It would be a big cop out by the writers and it goes against all that Arya arc was about.
The only acceptable outcome of it is if Dany kills Jon, but it doesnt seem that the writers are going down that route.
Are we supposed to forget what happened in winterfell, that without Danny and her dragons it would have been a death fest and Arya only arc was about her kill list.
She gets to the red keep and just like because of a few words from the Hound suddenly its not Arya anymore and doesnt care about killing Cersei anymore when shes just around the corner from her… WTF?
Also I am getting tired of her plot armor to be honest. She should have been killed by now.
Ugh…

395

In the books, <deleted>

396

Are you new around here? And don’t like reading the first post in threads?

397

My apologies if this has already been linked–if it has, I’ve missed it. How to talk to your daughter Khaleesi about that ‘Game of Thrones’ episode.

398

Isn’t Drogon much older and more massive than he was two seasons ago?

399

Oh yeah, what was that about? Didn’t the Red Keep fall during Robert’s Rebellion? (I don’t actually know, and if the show doesn’t tell us explicitly, I guess it’s off-topic.)

We saw the force aspect of dragonbreath when applied to the wall, though I still maintain that was a combination of force pounding it and heat melting it. (Ie: Undead dragons still breathe fire, not ice.)

They were smaller and younger then. I think I heard somewhere that the show is essentially “real-time” with each season representing a year, mostly because the young cast aging has to be explained somehow. If so, the dragons were 5 years old in that scene in Mereen and Drogon was 7 years old in King’s Landing.

But yeah, that’s a fair complaint. They burned those boats in Mereen. There was no force component in that scene at all, only fire.

EDIT: Speaking of, why didn’t Varys’ body get launched into the stratosphere, I wonder?

400

Aren’t we all.
I gather if Dany accidentally-on-purpose killed Jon during the battle, she’d be cool with it, hence Jon getting the heck outta Dodge when he realized what she was doing.

I suppose she just could’ve ordered Grey Worm to take him out at any number of opportune moments, too.