Mad Dany Could Have Been Great
Listen. GRRM is a hippie. His whole point with the war of the five kings is that war and vying for the throne will NEVER make the players happy, and it will destroy the realm and cause lots of pain and trauma. Reading Fire and Blood it’s even more clear to me he’s. Never once had the Iron Throne make anyone happy. Even Jahaerys the Wise with his long reign, earnest desire for reform, and happy marriage still got a lot of pain just from sitting on that chair. He’s also not about the whole divine right of kings shit. If we thought he was gonna give us some, “Aragorn is the True and Right King of Gondor” ending with Danaerys, I don’t think we were paying attention.
To me it feels Very GRRM to have Dany be so completely ruined by the quest for the throne that she is transformed from an earnest and powerful young girl determined to be a breaker of chains to a woman who has lost so much she is embittered, sees enemies wherever she looks, and has become too jaded to care about the innocent lives she once had empathy for. It actually also feels… smart. I like that ending. It’s tragic, but well done. GRRM doesn’t let conqueror’s tales end in contentment. He never has.
And to the show’s credit, I think the plot has put Dany through a whole fucking lot. I found her plea to Jon Snow rather moving. You can just feel how hard she’s worked for everything in her life up to his point, and how terrified she is of having it taken away from her at the 11th hour. It would make me paranoid and distrustful of those closest to me as well. Add in the murder of two of her dragons and the death of her friends, the sheer cruelty of Cersei, and I mean of course she decides to burn Kings Landing to the ground. You can feel how it’s all slipping away from her hands she’s Danaerys fucking Targaryen, does Cersei THINK she’s gonna lay down like a dog! She’s a conqueror she WILL burn them all.
I find that transformation believable. And also. Kinda inevitable, for anyone. You cannot win a game of chess without sacrificing some pawns. Now me personally, I would never start the game to begin with. But if you’re going to play. You are going to be directly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocents. If you’re scared of that and your enemies aren’t you will lose.
So the more I think about it, Dany becoming bloody and jaded and bitter is extremely fitting. My problem is the show. Did. Not. Execute this even REMOTELY well.
First of the pacing of last episode felt like I ingested speed before viewing I mean holy crap, slow down Boys. All of these things that should have been shown to gradually push her over the edge with a grand culmination were kinda just. thrown at us in 10 minutes of concentrated screen time and it’s like “woaahhhkay I guess this is how they’re framing Dany now? Maybe?”
Again to their credit Dany has always been portrayed as compassionate with a hard edge. If you cross her. She will destroy you. Mercilessly. However I think they’ve spent most of the show having her destroy people who are fundamentally unsympathetic. We’re meant to cheer when she burns people. They needed to spend more time showing how her actions have become increasingly more chaotic, show the process more. I suspect this may be one of the secret plot points GRRM told D&D about that they’re hitting, just with terrible writing, direction, timing, and overall execution.
So much this. I freaking love well-written "villain" figures probably more than I ever do about hero figures. Catharsis is a reason tragedies are so long standing in history and literature. I didn't want a happy ending, I wanted a GOOD ending. This wasn't it.
