I didn’t think I’d have the energy for this, but here I am.
The sack of Astapor. The most fetishized episode by Dany antis and their indubitable proof that Dany only does good deeds when those deed profit her. She got an army for her trouble, for free! How convenient is that?
I’ll start by pointing out the obvious here: from the moment Dany set foot in Astapor, she was going to do “wrong”, one way or another; either by doing what she did, by doing something else, or by doing nothing at all. There was no way for her to come out of this unsullied. No. Way.
Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in such heat. She did not close the curtains as they got under way. With the sun beating down so fiercely on this city of red brick, every stray breeze was to be cherished, even if it did come with a swirl of fine red dust. Besides, I need to see.
Astapor was a queer city, even to the eyes of one who had walked within the House of Dust and bathed in the Womb of the World beneath the Mother of Mountains. All the streets were made of the same red brick that had paved the plaza. So too were the stepped pyramids, the deep-dug fighting pits with their rings of descending seats, the sulfurous fountains and gloomy wine caves, and the ancient walls that encircled them. So many bricks, she thought, and so old and crumbling. Their fine red dust was everywhere, dancing down the gutters at each gust of wind. Small wonder so many Astapori women veiled their faces; the brick dust stung the eyes worse than sand. – Daenerys, ASOS
Dany refuses to veil herself to the horrors of the city. She makes herself watch, really watch. And she especially doesn’t “make” herself feel indignant over what she sees just to give herself a justification for tricking Kraznys mo Nakloz. The heat, the dust, the smells, the tap, tap, tap of Arstan’s cane, it all means nagging. Persistent. Intolerable. Dany doesn’t need to seek outrage. What she sees literally gnaws at her. What are her options, here? In broad strokes, she’s got three: leaving with empty hands, pulling the trick she pulled, or honoring the deal made with Kraznys (assuming that Drogon doesn’t go berserk on his own). Each of them is morally problematic: if she leaves without doing anything, she leaves intact a problem that we know would’ve been in her power to fix. I’m not talking about the aftermath, here: sure, that could’ve been dealt with more sensibly, but regardless of what Dany did with Astapor after, regardless of what she should’ve done after, what she did at first, what started it all, was arguably – dare I say – necessary. Any procedure foreseeing results in the longer term (what Tyrion tried to pull off with the slavers in season six, for instance) wasn’t going to save the thousand of infants, unsullieds in training and little boys thrown into bear pits who needed saving right now. Children rolled in honey, blood or rotten fish and given to bears don’t care about what the policies will look like in seven years. If Dany decides to “save” them by buying them, mo Nakloz and his clique will simply replace them with others.
And that’s also the problem, should Dany have bought her unsullieds “honestly” (not to mention, the implications of handing a dragon to slavers.) So she gets an army for free, say antis, how convenient is that? Well, let’s look at Dany’s feelings on the matter of… convenience:
Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. She swept past the huge eunuch and up the plank onto the deck of Balerion.
Ser Jorah Mormont stood waiting for her. “Your Grace,” he said, bowing his head. “The slavers have come and gone. Three of them, with a dozen scribes and as many slaves to lift and fetch. They crawled over every foot of our holds and made note of all we had.” He walked her aft. “How many men do they have for sale?”
“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”
“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”
“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.
Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”
“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.” If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed me, or looked at my breasts the way you did, or …
“As Your Grace commands. I shall tell Captain Groleo to make ready to sail on the evening tide, for some sty less vile.”
“No,” said Dany. Groleo watched them from the forecastle, and his crew was watching too. Whitebeard, her bloodriders, Jhiqui, every one had stopped what they were doing at the sound of the slap. “I want to sail now, not on the tide, I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t, can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” And with that she left him, and went below. – Daenerys, ASOS
I can’t press enough on what her last sentence means. I want but I can’t. Is Dany thinking of Westeros here? Is she thinking of all the lands an army of unsullieds could win back for her? Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? She doesn’t want them. She’s disgusted by them. She’s angry at ser Jorah for putting her in a situation where she has no choice but to act.
And so, she acts. And gain something out of it, as antis never fail to remind us. Yet they brush over the fact that so far, in the books, the unsullieds aren’t in Westeros, winning lands for Dany. They brush over the fact that Dany, despite needing ships as much as soldiers to retake Westeros, dismantled her ships to build a ram, take Meereen and feed people who wouldn’t be of any use to her in Westeros. They brush over the fact that she had another opportunity to plunder a city in ADWD, but refused to do so, even if it effectively cornered her. They brush over so many, many, many facts just so they can pretend that Dany’s good deeds always profit herself.
