Heh. Fair. I mean, there might be some authorities who are trying to ring the bells, but as soon as someone heard, “Ring the bells,” everyone would be like, “FUCK THAT’S BASICALLY THE SAME THING AS HEARING THE BELLS”
Continuity error, barring some extreme explanation.
Just rewatched the scene where Tyrion frees Jaime and tells the former Lord Commander of the King’s Guard that opening the gates and ringing the bells signals surrender. I hate to say it but I’m leaning towards sloppy writing now.
Yeah, the bells are really still bugging me. Who are the ones all over KL shouting “Ring the bell!” what are they assuming it means and are they the same ones running madly when the burnination of the peasants starts?
Even more wild-ass speculation:
In a finale worthy of classic dramas with crowns and English accents, everyone dies. Emerging victorious from a tournament is The Fat Knight who in a majestic but again woefully underlit coronation scene, and befittingly still in full flameproof armor, sits on the Iron Throne, slowly lifts of his helmet, and is revealed to be George R.R. Martin himself. Martin breaks the fourth wall adressing the audience: “Sorry for any inconsistencies, but if you’re still living under a crown or a priest or even a ruler artificially extending term limits by putting cronies and family members into power, you’ve already bent the knee to worse.”
Fade to black.
Waitaminute…what if it’s soldiers of the North shouting it?
So it goes like this:
And I think the opposite - that people who can’t see the clues simply refused to look. For example, many have mocked her ‘disheveled hair’ to suggest this was a cheap atteempt to look villainous. But it wasn’t just her hair - at the beginning of the episode they went out of their way to show just how haggard she was - dark circles under her eyes, etc. Remember, it’s been a fortnight since the last confrontation where Missandei was killed. They were showing that Daenerys has not been faring well in that time. Paranoid (justifiably so), isolated, and without any of her support network around her.
Far from being a huge, strange, twist, the story of Daeneris is a classic tragedy - someone who starts out seeking to do the right thing, but in the end winds up so compromised, so damaged that they become the very thing they thought they were trying to stop. Greek tragedy is full of this kind of thing. Hubris leading to Nemesis.
There’s another telling scene early on that I watched last night. In Qarth, someone asked her why she thought she should sit on the Iron Throne. At that point, there was no ‘breaker of chains’ thinking going on. She simply said (angrily). “I want it because it is MINE! And I will take back what was stolen from my family.” Or words to that effect. Nothing about breaking the wheel or helping the common folk. Up until at least this point in the story, Daenerys’ motivation for retaking the Iron Throne was just naked power. The throne was hers by birthright, and by god she was going to take it, even if she had to burn every city down that opposed her on the way. That was her attitude in the beginning.
It wasn’t until she actually freed the slaves and saw them cheering for her that she suddenly became the ‘breaker of chains’. It’s easy to tell yourself you are a good person when doing the things you wanted to do anyway lead to good outcomes for people. But what happens when what you want conflicts with your vision of being ‘good’? Well, if you’re really good you give up your vision. But if the vision is all that matters, you stop being good.
For example, all through the series Daenerys keeps making the claim that she is the ‘rightful’ ruler, and that is why she must persist. But when she came across the REAL ‘rightful ruler’, she did not abandon her quest for power. Instead, she asked the rightful ruler to step aside for her and hide his right to the throne. When he didn’t, she went ballistic and decided that she’d have to rule by fear. Note the idea that she should rule because she has the best claim to the throne went right out the window as soon as she found out that Jon Snow had a better one.
Daenerys’ overarching character trait was never her kindness or good nature, but her naked ambition and determination to take back Westeros no matter the cost. Yes, she was kind many times, when being kind was easy and aligned with her interests. I think she wanted to be kind, and generally had empathy. But she also wanted to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and in the hierarchy of values of Daenerys Stormborn, taking the throne was higher than anything else. So when the inevitable logic of her situation required her to choose between mercy and giving up her dream of ruling, she made the evil choice. And you could see that coming for at least the last season.
If Daenerys had wanted to “Break the wheel” she’d have supported Jon for the throne the instant she found out he was Aegon VI Targaryen. There is no reason not to; he is the rightful heir, enjoys broad support, and clearly is not a tyrant. The fact she didn’t tells you everything you need to know about that nonsense. At no point since her brother died has she been interested in anything other than power.
And everyone feared crossing him for it (not just his bannermen). It was taken as a sign that you don’t screw over Tywin Lannister. So - highly effective tactic.
It occurs to me that the most tragic death on Game of Thrones may not have been Robb Stark, or Ned Stark, or Theon, or any of those people. The most tragic death was Jorah Mormont, because he was her connection to Westeros and he was the voice at her side constantly cautioning her against bad decisions.
I don’t think she would have burned down King’s Landing if Ser Jorah was still around.
She quite literally chained her firepower in order to protect innocent people from being consumed by flames. That’s a pretty clear-cut counterexample. She reined in her primary source of unquestioning hot violent support for the sake of the non-cripsy townsfolk.
That’s one point right there. But honestly, I can’t think of a second example. Which is, I can finally see now, quite telling…
This is a good argument.
But to be fair, people hadn’t had a lot of time to digest this season. It’s been moving at breakneck speed. I’ve come to agree that all y’all were right about Dany all along, but still, things have been moving at seriously accelerated pace the last two seasons. This has been extremely weird, as other people in the thread have noted. Just one or two scenes in Season 7, where her dragons sometimes eat people again and she’s all like “Whatevs, I need them for battle” would have gone a long way to contrast with her previous stance and demonstrate the choice of power over morality. Or something along those lines.
The showrunners put a lot of weight on the Tarly executions in Season 7, and I have no idea why. I was completely unmoved by that. The dipshits voluntarily chose death rather than get the front of their trousers dirty. They made their choice. It doesn’t violate any of her previous moral precepts, and it makes decent military sense to eliminate enemy generals who have already raised arms against you once and could possibly use their native sources of support to do so again, if they’re going to conspicuously and publicly reject a pledge of loyalty.
Again, this is a case where her interests and the good of the people aligned. If she let her dragons go around eating random civilians, she would lose the support of the people which was necessary at this time.
Also, she was surrounded by advisors who kept talking her back from extreme actions, which always seemed to be her first instinct.
The showrunners played the same trick with the Tarleys that they played with the other people Daeneris killed. They went out of their way to make father Tarley as brutal and obnoxious as they could, so that when he died we’d think “Good Riddance” rather than, “Hey! She burned an innocent person!”. They did it with the Khals, with the slaver she fried with her dragon, with the emissarries who were murdered by Greyworm, etc. First show them to be almost cartoonishly evil so that we won’t notice that Daeneris isn’t exactly a nice person when she burned them. She knew nothing of the Tarleys other than that they were prisoners who wouldn’t bend the knee.
It’s a strange form of ‘breaking the wheel’ when you burn people alive for the crime of not accepting your ultimate rule over them.
They even had a chance in 8.1 (or was it 8.2?) when Sansa asked what dragons eat and she replied whatever they want. They could have instead had the dragons eat a few northerners to inspire that exchange.
I’m not asserting this would have been better or worse; just spitballing.
EDIT: Also, there was something interesting I missed the first time around but noticed when I binged all 67 (or whatever) episodes in the month leading up to this season. When Tyrion unchained her dragons, they were free to leave whenever they chose despite the gate/door/vault thing being closed, and in fact they do just that. When the dragons started burning those boats in Mereen, at the start of that scene we see the two locked up dragons break through the wall (not even the door!) to fly up and join the fight. So they were free to leave the moment the neck shackles came off.
Everything you’ve described would make perfect sense if the bells were never rung. She won, Cersei’s defenses were destroyed and her soldiers surrendered. She chose to start burning the outskirts of the city instead of going for the Red Keep. What does that have to do with obtaining power? Isn’t that just Mad-king crazy? Cersei & crew could have easily escaped during that time. If Dany was just power-obsessed, why wouldn’t she cut the head off of the enemy at that point? Why start destroying the edges of the city?
She had already won against Cersei at that point. There was no reason to hurry to the Red Keep. Her war from that point on was against Jon, and destroying King’s Landing makes perfect sense from that perspective. Deny him a King’s Landing to be king of, make the only choice he made in his previous tenure as king look extremely foolish, and terrify any potential enemies and would-be supporters of Jon.
It’s not moral. It isn’t kind or merciful. But it makes sense if maintaining power is your only goal, in the same way the Red Wedding did.
Huh. That makes me think about a scene prior to the Battle at Winterfell. Sansa asked what dragons ate, and Dany said, “Whatever they want.” At the time, I rolled my eyes a little, thought it was a corny joke that was out of place.
But look at it from Sansa’s perspective, and it looks totally different.
Sansa: Winterfell has food stashed against the winter, but only enough for locals, not nearly enough for all the armies that are coming, let alone for refugees. This is important, y’all, because what good is it to survive the undead hordes only to die of slow starvation? And Dany, when I’m trying to shore up food supplies, I haven’t even calculated in the dragons. What do they eat, and how do I prepare for that?
Dany: Bitch, those dragons will eat whatever they want. If some of your northerners starve because dragons eat a lot, look at my face, do you see me giving a shit? Stop bothering me with your trivialities, I have a nation to save.
In retrospect, the “whatever they want” line was fucking cold, and a clear lack of compassion for the common people. She clearly prioritized them over the northerners, to the extent that she blatantly dismissed any consideration of whether the dragons’ diet should be monitored.
I didn’t watch all of the early seasons, but when Drogon and the Dothraki overran the Lannister army just outside King’s Landing, I don’t see any trees. If I remember correctly, they were less than a day’s march away?
Nice, I’d forgotten how explode-y the dragonbreath was in that scene.
Nice, I’d forgotten how many white horses the Dothraki hordes have, about as common as a yellow cab in Times Square.
To those of you who think that what Daenerys did was out of character and unjustified, take a guess at how many times she says “I will burn cities to the ground” (or a slightly different variation of that) throughout the show. I don’t have an answer, but I think the number is more than 10. She says it quite a lot.
How do you explain that? Just that she’s all talk? Because when someone who thinks its their destiny to be queen, who has living weapons of mass destruction which have been used in the past to conquer continents through burning things - I don’t know, it seems a bit silly to think “aww, that’s just our cute little Daenerys, making her big threats again”
Looking ahead to the finale, I think I want Dany to win the Game of Thrones. With a dearth of suitable matches now that most eligible nobility is dead, she marries the freshly-minted Gendry.
Jon and Tyrion are executed for treason, and Dragonstone is made the new capital. (Assuming KL is leveled.)
The only problem is Arya. Dany has no reason to kill her or even think about her, but if Arya is left alive in this situation, we’d be left assuming Arya would kill Dany “next episode.” So that wouldn’t be great. Maybe a faceless man comes to kill or reclaim her.
Sansa as the Warden of the North would be fine; she could work with Dany.
To me this would be a GoT-style ending. A Red Wedding-esque finale, as it were, where the “good guys” get owned and the “bad guys” get off scot-free.
I’m not sure, but maybe you can remind me… It seems like she’s said that several times, but I can’t recall the exact context, but if I had to guess it would be “I will burn cities to the ground [to get what I want]”. Not “I will burn cities to the ground [after they have surrendered and are no threat…]”.