If the redo season 8, I think they should start at ep 3. Mostly the same, but at the end, the white walkers and the dead win the day, and kill everyone at Winterfell.
The last 3 episodes then are the White Walkers and their growing army of undead at King’s landing, then dorne, then across the sea to Bravos and slaver’s bay, each time, focusing on all the characters that are left in those areas, and how they, too, fail to stop the inevitable ending of mankind on this world. Episode 6 ends with the Night King surrounded by his army, stretching from horizon to horizon, as he looks up into the camera as if to say, “You’re next.”
That’s why I (we?) were confused by what you wrote:
She could rule after that because she had thousands of Unsullied and Dothraki (plus a dragon!) to enforce her will. She wouldn’t need to “buy” guards because she has thousands of Unsullied for that. She could have endless moments away from a wakeful dragon and be perfectly safe because again, she has the Unsullied and Dothraki. She doesn’t need the lords of the land to trust her; their fear of reprisal is sufficient to keep them in line. She would absolutely be able to rule because as history has shown us time and again, “might makes right.”
I’m not sure mocking Sherrerd for saying Dany’s actions made her more like to be assassinated by her own allies is as much of a winning argument as you guys seem to think it is.
How about providing some examples of tyrants assassinated because of their brutality towards civilian populations, rather than because the assassins feared for their own skins?
For the longest time I assumed she was talking about a general truth, which is why I kept bringing up real life history to disprove that general truth. Once she clarified that she’s not talking about a general truth, but rather specifically about Dany razing King’s Landing and how Westerosi would be expected to respond to it, her replies make a ton more sense.
But given that new context, her premise makes even less sense to me. She can’t “buy” trustworthy bodyguards? She has thousands of of ride-or-die Unsullied and Dothraki worshippers who would defend her to the last man, no questions asked. Nobody in Westeros would go against that force to try and assassinate her. (Except Jon Snow, because he knows nothing.)
I honestly don’t understand the logic of the original argument.
He didn’t kill her because of what she did to King’s Landing. It was the promise of her continued campaign that did her in.
If instead she went Machiavellian – raze the city to start with and then follow that up with mercy – Jon would have been on board. (He literally begged her to show mercy right before he killed her, but she refused.) The only way Tyrion could get through to him was to convince him that this was only the beginning. If it were the end he wouldn’t have turned.
…and now that I’ve typed that out, I realize I’m only quibbling with Sherrerd about minor details. If instead Sherrerd said her intention to continue sacking cities from Winterfell to Dorne was the part that ensured her allies assassinating her, I couldn’t argue against it.
The sack of King’s Landing was fine, no worries. The followup of “And now everyone else!” was stupid and did (mostly) what Sherrerd said. (Finding bodyguards and worrying about how the nobles reacted was always moot; only Jon could have killed her.)
It wasn’t just Westeros. She told Jon she intended to go on until she had conquered the entire known world, as far as the Jade Sea in eastern Essos. She was proposing never-ending war (since of course she would always be having to put down rebellions.
Some good points. Despite all the talk of “breaking the wheel,” the new system didn’t break it, it just made it more liable to become even more dysfunctional.
However, Daenarys’s empire will be entirely dependent on her and her single dragon. It’s been suggested that she’s incapable of having children, but even if she is, if either she or Drogon is killed before her offspring becomes able to control Drogon her empire will fall apart just like Alexander the Great’s. She’s lost more than half the Unsullied, and no more are being made. Without Drogon she might be able to maintain her rule of terror by importing more Dothraki, but they would be difficult to control.
The entire argument over this plot development (and judgment of the series as a whole, by extension) seems a bit feverish. The show runners made the decisions they made. To many of us, the decisions were not well-supported by anything previously established in the show, much less by common-sense observations of the way people behave. To others, the writing was superb. Any suggestions to the contrary will be greeted with elaborate but irrelevant defenses, demands for citations, and the odd personal insult.
But the controversy will continue (elsewhere, at least, even if an end comes to it here).
An interesting long article about the finale makes some sound points:
(My emphasis.)
The sections about the bad advice Dany received, about Missendei becoming merely a plot device, and how Dany’s fight with Sansa is one of the plot developments that never really went anywhere, are worth a read, as is this point that I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere:
Germans made multiple attempts to kill Hitler but none of them worked. One of the closest was the July 20 1944 plot that was the shown in the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie. The bomb went off but it was not close enough to kill Hitler , 4 others were killed.
