It seems to me that some people were just too invested in the whole Khaleesi/Savior thing, and they just can’t let that go, even though this trajectory has been hinted at the whole time.
I really don’t understand the argument that it would be better had they shown her being evil by murdering innocents and not caring previously. The argument seems to be that they’d be more willing to accept the turn if the turn happened already, but wouldn’t that spoil the turn?
Dany is justified in the extrajudicial murder of people she is annoyed with because, well, don’t they seem like the kind of people that deserve to be murdered without proof of any wrongdoing?
I see.
I know Dany said they weren’t innocent bystanders. My point is, she made that pronouncement roughly 24 hours (in show time) before she incinerated most of the men, women and children of King’s Landing. You and others are arguing we’ve seen multiple examples of this descent into madness on her part. I (and others) are saying we haven’t, not on this scale, and not to this degree.
And just having her say something like that right before she does it is a poor attempt at justification for her actions on the part of the writers and showrunners. As someone else said upthread, it would have made much more sense if we’d seen her being blasé about her ability to use the dragons – or her own power – to kill indiscriminately.
It’s not a plot twist if the twist already happened.
Mirri Maz Duur calmly admitted to murder.
I know Season 1 was a long time ago, but this has already been pointed out repeatedly in this thread. Her ritual also destroyed Dany’s ability to have any future children, which she, again, outright and calmly admitted.
You don’t get to stab a mother in the stomach, not magically or otherwise, just because the father is a mass-murdering dick. These were appallingly brutal crimes against Dany, and against the child. Duur was guilty as sin. Her crimes might have been justified, and in her place, I might’ve done the same thing. But I can say the same thing about Dany’s position. If someone killed my kid, you’d better believe I would light their ass up given the lack of any other functional justice system. Especially if I knew I’d get three dragons out of the execution of a child murderer.
The masters of Meereen were slavers, including Hizdahr’s father.
He was “innocent” of having advocated the crucifixion of the slaves, at least according to his son. He was still guilty of slavery, and of participating in the resistance to the emancipation of those slaves. The North would’ve been justified in hanging quite a lot of Confederate leaders. Maybe it would have been bad policy, but it was a sentence more than commensurate with the crime. Dany was justified in executing the Grand Masters when she took the city. In her case, it might’ve even been good policy, given what the bastards cooked up later.
But after the pardons went out…
This actually seems to be a genuine example.
I will think about this one.
“Extrajudicial”? Bloody hell. She’s the queen. She IS the judicial system.
For the umpteenth time – I have no issue with Dany going full-blown mad like this. I’m sure that was GRRM’s intent and plan all along. I’m not some disappointed Dany fan-boy. I don’t have a “Dany for President!” tattoo.
My issue is with the problems within the show itself, and this is an excellent example. If you’re going to tell (or show) a story and make it believable, you have to be consistent with the framework you’ve created. You can have (or ignore) all sorts of rules about the world, but once you’ve established how things work, you can’t then just trample all over those rules. For example:
And for those who are claiming it’s a “plot twist”: There are ways to handle a plot twist without wrecking the underpinnings of your story. I thought the twist in The Sixth Sense was fantastic, and I re-watched the movie as soon as I could to appreciate the nuances that led up to it. That type of subtlety and foreshadowing seems beyond the reach of the Game of Thrones writers and showrunners.
It was symbolism! She was mad!
No, I have never said anything about madness in this entire thread.
I’m objecting to you saying there has been no previous examples of her killing innocents without concern when that’s clearly wrong. Yes she has. We have cited them for you.
Say something like what? That the commoners could overthrow Cersei if they wanted to? It’s true, they could. Hell, they practically did it once before with the Faith Militant. The fact that they don’t is at least equal justification to consider them enemy combatants as the beaurocrats in Mereen from Dany’s perspective.
You seem to be picking and choosing when to judge Dany from her perspective (previous examples she didn’t consider them innocent so she wasn’t killing innocents) vs judging her objectively (she didn’t consider them innocents but WE do so she was killing innocents). That’s not really a good faith debate.
We did, last episode.
If they had shown it earlier, I expect you would have been in that episode thread spamming this same argument.
I don’t understand the problem here. Different kinds of stone react differently to dragon fire. Harrenhal stone melts, Kings Landing stone explodes. They don’t look the same, why would they react the same?
I’m “spamming an argument”? Nice.
Really? Where?
You obviously have no issues with the show and how it’s being handled. On the other hand, I’ve enjoyed this show for years, and am sad to see something that could have been so good fall so short of the mark.
It might be more a quality of the type(s) of stone involved–Harrenhall could have been more metallic or crystalline perhaps, King’s Landing more porous, allowing rapid vaporization of water with explosive effect. For that matter, they were different dragons, too.
Ok, let’s go through all the alleged atrocities that Daenerys committed and see if, together, they fit the profile of someone who would burn tens of thousands of innocent children alive for absolutely no reason at all
Actually, scratch that. Let’s look at this idea that she had to burn tens of thousands of innocent children alive to shore up her position and prevent Jon Snow from taking her place. It’s ridiculous. Yes, Jon is the rightful heir, but he doesn’t want the throne. Like, not at all. Heir or not, nobody has the power to just force him to be king. It’s not like the Night’s Watch where he was fairly elected by his sworn brothers. He has no affinity for the South, no ties to anyone outside of Winterfell, and, oh yeah, he supports Daenerys unconditionally.
He’s not like Stannis either. Stannis didn’t particularly want to be King, but he knew it was his duty and, for Stannis, duty always came first, no exceptions. Jon has made tons of exceptions. He had a duty to keep his vows, yet he broke them with Ygritte. He had a duty to obey Stannis, yet he mercy-killed Mance Rayder. One could argue he had a duty to rebuke Stannis and deny him the use of Castle Black, even after Stannis saved him from the Wildlings because “The Night’s Watch takes no part in the troubles of the realm”, but he forsook that one too. And isn’t it weird that he executed Alliser Thorne, Bowen Marsh, and Olly and then immediately quit as soon as they were dead because “His watch has ended”? Which is it, Jon? Either you’re the Lord Commander or you’re not. If you are, great. Hang away, but you have a duty to stick around and stay Lord Commander, not sneak out through a loophole as soon as you’ve got your vengeance. If you’re not, great. Then you have a duty to let your successor do the hanging. However you slice it, Jon is no slave to duty. He wouldn’t take the mantle of King just because it was his birthright if he didn’t want to or if there was someone else better available. And he didn’t want to, and there was someone better available. At least, there was until she burned tens of thousands of innocent children alive
So no. I don’t for a moment believe that Jon was in any way a serious contender for the throne. Therefore, there was no reason for Daenerys to think she had to barbecue King’s Landing in order to terrify those who might support Jon over her. Especially since Jon yet again swore fealty to her literally the night before the battle.
So that leaves one other explanation: That she was a sociopath all along, but we just didn’t notice it because all the people she hurt before were bad too. For the sake of balance, let’s have a look at some of the good things she did first.
That’s just the stuff I can recall off the top of my head. And that’s not even touching all the times she was visibly upset at the death of innocents.
I say all this, by the way, as someone who’s emphatically not a Dany fan. I’ve always thought she was a boring character. I just don’t think the writers did anything to earn our credulity when she decided to set King’s Landing on fire even after the battle was won.
But maybe I’m taking too rosy a view. Let’s look at some of the bad stuff she did and see if it in any way foreshadows her decision to burn tens of thousands of innocent children alive
1). Killed Mirri Maz Duur - Mirri Maz Duur promised to bring Khal Drogo back from the dead. Instead, she brought him back as a vegetable and sacrificed Daenerys’s unborn child to do it, knowing it would leave her barren. All this after Daenerys has done her best to protect her. Don’t tell me that bitch didn’t have it coming.
2). She wasn’t visibly upset when Drogo killed Viserys - Well, given that Viserys had sexually and emotionally abused her since childhood and forced her to marry Khal Drogo, saying ”I’d let his whole tribe fuck you, all forty thousand men and their horses too if that what it takes”, I don’t think I’m being overly charitable if I forgive her for not crying salty tears into her wine cup when Drogo got rid of him, especially since he’d threatened to cut her baby out of her literally two minutes earlier.
3). She burned the Warlocks in the House of the Undying - Well, they had stolen her dragons and were actively trying to kill her.
4). She shut Xaro Xoan Daxos and Doreah in the vault and left them to die - They’d murdered Irri and Jhiqui and stolen her dragons. Again, they got theirs.
5). She burned the slavers at Astapor - Big deal. They were slavers who made their soldiers kill babies as part of their “training”.
6). She crucified the Wise Masters of Meereen - Again. Big deal. They’d crucified like a hundred and fifty innocent children just to try and scare her off. And yeah, not all of them “voted for it”, but who gives a shit? Even the best of them were still slavers.
7). She burned Vaes Dothrak - The Khals were planning to keep her locked up in Vaes Dothrak for the rest of her life just because she used to be married to Khal Drogo. Was she supposed to just sit there and take it. I imagine if Jon Snow was being held captive somewhere and could only escape by killing a few people he’d probably do that too. Besides, they’re Dothraki. They only respect strength. The children of King’s Landing? Not so much.
8). She burned the ships in Slaver’s Bay - Yeah, the ships which were throwing fire balls Meereen at the time.
9). She burned tens of thousands of innocent children alive. Even after the battle was won. Even though she had absolutely nothing to gain by doing so. And let’s not forget that this wasn’t just one errant attack on one group of civilians. No. She went all over the city, burning street after street after crowded street for a good half an hour!
One of these things is not like the others.
For me to believe that this massacre was within the scope of Daenerys’ character, I would’ve needed to see evidence of real cruelty beforehand. None of her past actions remotely qualify. They were all either responses to cruelty or they were directed solely at people who seriously deserved it, or both. Yeah, she talked a lot of shit about burning cities, but she was also pretty easily talked out of it as well, which suggested to me as a viewer that it was just that; talk.
I’m genuinely pissed off at the writers for handling her “Mad Queen” turn so sloppily. It’s like if Walter White had gone straight from killing Tuco to arranging the prison massacre with nothing in between. If Daenerys was always destined to ‘Break Bad’ they should’ve been a lot more nuanced with her character work before having her go apeshit with one week to go.
:mad:
I have quite a few issues with this season and last season, and have even detailed some of them in this very thread. (Though much moreso in previous threads.) Dany’s turn is not one of those issues. It’s one of the few things they’ve done mostly right.
Some minor tweaks would have made the sack of King’s Landing better, I’ll happily concede that. But it wasn’t the monumental fuckup it’s being painted as in this thread.
[quote=“Ellis_Dee, post:573, topic:833869”]
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[QUOTE]
Huh. I could’ve sworn your post included a statement saying the “innocent children of King’s Landing” were “innocent to us, maybe, but not to Dany.” When I submitted this post, though, that part was gone.
Which is for the best … I mean, if you’re going to say Dany ISN’T mad, and that she DIDN’T consider those children innocent because … wait, why, again? Because they didn’t rise up in some sort of Children’s Crusade and demand Cersei’s ouster?
Yeah … THAT would be crazy, right?
I didn’t say “children.” Please don’t attribute words to me that I didn’t say.
No; I thought you were responding to Unreconstructed Man’s use of the term “innocent children.” As I said, I could have sworn that was part of your post.
My apologies. I’m not trying to misquote you, or misattribute. If I’ve inadvertently broken a board rule, please feel welcome to report this.
Nope, all good. Using quotation marks (as opposed to quote boxes) only requires conveying the gist of it, and that was the gist of it. I felt it wasn’t the strongest response so I edited it out and changed it to the final sentence that’s there now.
This is something that has been building for eight years. Yes, this is beyond what she has done previously, but the antecedents have been very clearly set out, and all through this season as people have shown everyone and everything that was preventing her from following her worst instincts has systematically been removed. That’s what I mean by it not being a “sudden turn.” There might have been some doubt if the show would finally go down that road, but all the warning signs were there and have been since the first season.
Has anyone heard the idea that Arya is already dead?
That seems like it would be a pointless reveal. Any surprises need to be in service to the story.