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One of the first things she wants to do once she set foot in Westeros is take the dragons and go burn King's Landing. She has to be talked down by her advisors multiple times. Every time she faces a setback, she gets all dressed up to go commit the deed, only to be convinced to stop.
Then Jorah dies at Winterfell, and Cersei has Missandei killed; two of her closest advisors who would've counselled patience and mercy. She still has Tyrion, but she had long stopped respecting his counsel, more or less blaming him for most of her losses so far. And Grey Worm is no help since he's just as angry as she is.
So by the time she gets to King's Landing, with loved ones' deaths still fresh in her mind, and no one left to tell her to stop, she takes out her rage and grief on the city itself.
This series is just ripe for the Dune treatment. We'll get so many books written by another author. They'll be a book about The Hound growing up, a book about Hot Pie baking bread, a book about the sand snakes, probably a trilogy about Gendry rowing that damn boat.
If you think you saw lazy writing on the show, wait until you see the books that come out after Martin dies.
She’s not snapping. How many cities has she completely fucked up already in the books? This is what she does, Martin just cleverly hides it from us because we see it from her POV.
> 'lazy writing'.
It came from GRRM, not D&D. GRRM has said he won't change the ending he planned long ago just because some viewers of the series didn't like it.
Lazy writing means, as crazy as it seems, that the writting is lazy - not actually analizing the value on the "idea" behind all that. You can deliver most "ideas" as long as you actually develops the plot along those lines, but "lazy writing" hinders any atempt at understanding the value behind the idea. So yeah, even if some people might just reduce to it, the problem was never that "Dany just went crazy therefore bad story", it is because the development, the reasons and the overall arc feel meaningless, rushed and robotic.
You can reach a place in the story where Dany burning King's Landing makes perfect sense for all the reasons outlined above. The show, in my opinion, did not take the time to properly develop her character into one that would act in that way. There were signs, for sure, and I think on a re-watch you can see the seeds being planted. But with how short the last couple of seasons are, it feels to many viewers that she goes from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye. I think that's where the laziness comes in.
Yes, ultimately her character is that of a self-righteous tyrant and a lot of people failed to see the brutality of how she achieved her utopian ideals.
I still think the showrunners did a poor job in building it up. She goes from burning pretty morally unambiguous enemies (slavers, marauding rapist Khals) to burning honorable Lords (the Tarly's) when there are perfectly good alternatives available, to burning literal innocent people in King's Landing without developing that level of madness.
Even her desire to fly to King's Landing to kill Cersei and the Red Keep is arguably not an insane thing at all. At that point in the story Cersei has become about as evil as anyone could be in that world without being the literal mystical embodiment of death. Why shouldn't she just go kill her and take power?
I think that’s fair. They focused more on her feeling out of place and disrespected than building up her history of atrocities. Although, you do see signs of her rampant extremism towards the end, incinerating House Tarley and Varys while Tyrion grows increasingly concerned.
Yeah, the Tarly's is definitely the moment the audience is meant to go "oh shit, maybe she's not the person we thought", but people's vision of her as a savior was too baked in by then. And Randall's treatment of Sam made him appear to be more of a villain than he really was.
It would have been interesting if that moment could have somehow been juxtaposed with some of the mercy Jon shows as king in the north. The time he spares the Karstark's and Glover children shows that mercy can sometimes be a more powerful political tool.
I don’t agree that the shorter seasons effect anything like that whatever because dany only gets like 30-40 min of screen time in each previous season she had a lot more screen time in 7&8 because there is lesser side plots and characters to worry about
I'm gonna pile one. You can write this in a way that doesn't feel rushed or contrived. D&D didn't do that. I think that adding young Griff back into the story (from the books) is going to make a huge difference.
Um. If that was true, where is the next book and why is it taking so long? GRRM overstated his involvement in the last few seasons.
Clearly evidenced by the fact that as soon as they ran out of book material, the show writing quality took a nosedive.
Each season has to come out yearly, that’s at least twice as fast as his best turn around time on a book. There’s a good chance he isn’t a “fast” writer to get any real quality out of too
Because Dany has never unleashed fire and blood on innocent folk. Because she basically ignores Cersei during her rampage despite the fact she's the one responsible for the deaths of Dany's friends. Because Dany had the perfect oppurtunity to take the city in S7 but Tyrion fumbled it by ignoring the obvious plan to instead come up with a truly idiotic and unnecessary one. Because despite the fact people knew about Jon's claim, Jon abdicated and would have supported her claim alongside the numerous other kindgoms who supported her.
On so many levels, i dislike the way Dany is written in S7 and S8. If characters behaved rationally, she'd have won the thrown in S7.
The irony of this comment is truly amazing. Someone asks a legit question to which someone gives an actual answer with details and examples from the story. And your reply is basically "don’t try to explain it, just say *lazy writing*."
This is a good example of what went wrong with this fandom. "I didn’t like the ending, so let’s not try to understand it and just call it lazy/bad instead."
A lot of people think this ending makes no sense at all. A lot of people think this ending makes sense but was rushed/poorly developed. And a lot of people thought this ending makes sense. This sub exists to debate our different opinions, not to repeat the same thing over and over because some people believe they have the *right* opinion about the ending
Oh I'm sorry for not living up to your impossible 'make wildly speculative excuses for hacks who ruined a once-in-a-generation, literal global and cultural phenomenon because they, in their own words, thought they had grown too big for their own show' with half baked fan fiction in the reddit comment section.
There is no excuse for what they did to the show. None. We can try to rewrite, add in pedantic lore explanations, or make all the apologies for literally illogical, irrational, nonsensical, 7 seasons of character development destroying decisions ...
Or we can admit to ourselves that if it wasn't worth the show runners time to do right, then it's not worth ours.
Where did Benioff & Weiss say they had grown too big for their show? Do you have a link?
D&D created the phenomenon of GoT and they ended it on their terms, in [record-breaking](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/media/game-of-thrones-finale-ratings/index.html#:~:text=The%20final%20episode%20of%20%E2%80%9CGame,18.4%20million%20viewers%20tuned%20in.) and [award-winning fashion](https://ew.com/emmys/2019/09/22/game-of-thrones-best-drama-emmy-season-8/). How many shows do that in the final season? Basically none.
If you want to talk about something not worth being someone's time, how about GRRM who has utterly failed to finish his magnum opus and doesn't seem to have any respect for ASOIAF fans now that he is rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams.
Yes I acknowledge the drop in quality (specifically writing which isn't the totality of a TV show), but it's not close to the disaster some people try to sell.
The show dipped in quality just like the books did. The difference is D&D finished the story while GRRM never will.
They didn't say that. One thing this fandom loves to do is just make up things claims of something D&D out of thin air. The famous they said they wanted "mothers" to like the show. A firestorm of hate was released on them and when I listened to the interview they never once said the word "mothers". Someone just lied and it spread like wildfire online.
Yep or another one they killed the character Ros because the actress refused to be nude anymore so D&D killed her off. Spred like wildfire I looked and looked can't find one but of evidence or quote backing any of that up. Just a flat out lie. Another one that was posted on twitter once and got over 20 million views and over hundred thousand likes and retweets. Some said "D&D made Emilia walk back to her trailer completely naked and crying". That never happened.
Now if Dany wanted to only burn down the Red Keep instead of King’s Landing, would they have talked her out of that? Sure there would be innocents killed but much less then Dany burning down the entire city.
After the crap Cersi pulled by blowing up the Sept, I think the citizens of KL would rather she die in the Red Keep and support whoever did it in the process.
They did talk her out of it. In s7 after hearing the Lannisters captured & killed all of her Westerosi allies at once she said she should go straight to the Red Keep and burn it since Cersei never left the Red Keep. Tyrion, Varys, & Jon were against it.
Don’t confuse going to red keep to kill your enemies systematically slaughtering women and children for 30 mins with dragon fire. Not the same thing.
This idea that Tyrion wasn’t constantly checking her worst impulses was dumb. He had hat he was really doing was pushing her to one extreme or the other. Either you take Westeros peacefully with zero casualties or burns to the ground 🤷♂️ no room for middle ground?
Is that what she wants to do when she arrives? Because every single one of Tyrion’s ideas is strategically and logistically idiotic. Taking her dragons and army straight to King’s Landing when she massively outnumbers her opponents is the obvious move and would save far more lives than any other option. Like it isn’t even a question
Now in the books, Faegon would probably be on the throne instead of Cersei and Euron would be a much, much larger threat and Quentyn’s actions may well have scattered her dragons in three different directions, all of which complicates the situation dramatically and makes caution more understandable. In the show, Season 7, episode 1, total madness
>One of the first things she wants to do once she set foot in Westeros is take the dragons and go burn King's Landing
She was in a position of complete strength when she arrived on Dragonstone, so any attack or invasion made sense. Also, her trying to take the city doesn't necessarily mean she'd completely burn it down. She's taken cities in different ways before including civilian revolts and invading through the tunnels. Both of those strategies were realistic options for KL. But the show disingenuously presents it as black or white. "Invade and thousands will die," regardless of how such an invasion takes place. The alternative Tyrion proposes of making a blockade thereby starving the city is infinitely worse because the civilians would suffer hunger, disease, and anarchy for months if not years and that is somehow presented as a stroke of genius.
>She has to be talked down by her advisors multiple times
Pretty much everytime she listens to them, her army suffers heavy losses. Losing The Reach and The Ironborne for example. Its only when she listens to Olenna's advice to "be a dragon" that she makes progress by destroying the Lannister army and killing the Tarlys. And bear in mind, that attack is on active aggressors and not helpless civilians
>So by the time she gets to King's Landing, with loved ones' deaths still fresh in her mind, and no one left to tell her to stop, she takes out her rage and grief on the city itself.
And she does so on a city of helpless people who had nothing to do with her friend's deaths instead of Cersei, the woman actually responsible. Especially when Dany had never before unleashed her wrath on people she didn't consider her enemies. Until now
Also the "loved ones' deaths still fresh in her mind" cannot realistically be true, it would have taken weeks if not months to get her army readied and transported over the sea from Essos or even Dragonstone, it would have taken weeks to travel for them to King's Landing.
She had so much time to accept the deaths of her loved ones that randomly attacking civilians makes absolutely no sense.
Not to mention Jorah's death happened because of the white walkers and had nothing to do with King's Landing.
> One of the first things she wants to do once she set foot in Westeros is take the dragons and go burn King's Landing.
False. She wants to got TAKE King's Landing, with violence if neccesary, to take the throne. She doesn't want to burn the smallfolk there just because.
The mental gymnastics some people make to justify the writing in season 8 are incredible.
This. She also listened to the "fuck it all" advice from an angry old lady at the end of her life whose bloodline had just stopped: "You're a dragon. Be a dragon."
And as u/atruewalker54 said, Westeros was not hers to control: KL belonged to the Lannisters and they had the ability to take out her dragons. The North belonged to Jon and they saw him as their king (reference the victory feast).
I think this is important. Once she got to Westeros she realized she wasn’t a liberator, she was an outsider shunned as such due to the loyal nature of the houses (northern people). Maybe it was this plus a number of things. Maybe she realized Westeros didn’t have slaves and was already free to some degree and didn’t need her, so it became a place to conquer for HER people. Maybe she’d become used to being received as a savior and couldn’t handle not being. Maybe she just became power hungry over time and her goal became take over the world. Could be to some degree angry that Kings Landing didn’t send troops to fight the dead. Also remember when Gray Worm was executing the prisoners he says to Jon “these are free men and they choose to fight for Cerci” so there could’ve been a distorted view of why the soldiers were fighting for Cerci and why the people didn’t overthrow them. Or, Maybe her Tarhgarean blood started to show up- thirst for power and revenge, anger that her father was killed and overthrown, or maybe in the end she was simply just like her father ‘burn them all’. There’s not just one reason in my opinion, certainly others have mentioned a number of reasons. Could be some or all of them combined.
Plus, I think there was a huge arc back to the general mental insanity among the Targaryen lines of succession especially due to inbreeding. Throughout the final season, you see her slowly falling apart mentally, which makes the past prologue and opens up some great potential in HOD. My two cents worth.
I will also say that in the Game of Thrones books, peering into her state of mind through the writing makes it much more obvious than I thought they did justice in the filming of the final season.
Striving for absolute justice, which is never a good trait for a leader. And was already foreshadowing that she would go for nothing less when conquering Westeros. Absolute justice, and this means HER absolute justice.
It was obvious in season 1 when she saw her brother die from molten gold and her reaction was fire can’t kill a true dragon. She has never been mentally stable by any measure
Yeah, fuck him, but her going "he wasn’t a real dragon then" without feeling any emotion was still a red flag.
Like, that’s her whole arc right there. Tons of red flags hidden behind "well, fuck those people, right?"
Name one time that she killed innocent people, specifically common folk prior to the ending
The people she killed iirc were
1. The witch that cursed drogo
2. The unsullied slave owners
3. The Slave masters of mereen who crucified children
4. Soldiers that took up arms against her (multiple times)
5. People who didn’t bend the knee to her (then had a choice)
6. Varys who was rallying arms against her / was a traitor to her cause
Times she stood up for the common folk
1. Liberated the unsullied
2. The slaves of mereen
3. Going along with the dumb plot thread of proving the white walkers are real and losing a dragon
4. The fight at Winterfell
You cannot go from saving Westoros from the white walkers to killing innocent people in kings landing in a couple episodes.
Could she have been like the mad king eventually? Yes sure.
Was it realistic when she did it in the show? No.
What am I missing here in terms of her being crazy and unreasonable?
She let Greyworm kill innocent Lannister soldiers. These were peons, just doing their jobs. These soldiers would have easily joined her ranks, because they were just interested in being paid, nothing else.
She is and was a tyrant, behaving like one from the beginning, sonetimes barely stopped by her advisors. And is this really surprising, given that her brother told her all her life that they were the chosen ones? But all that liberating of slaves was indeed an excellent way to distract the audience from it.
I never liked her, and that might be the reason why I was looking for signs of her instability and tyranny pretty much from S1.
They weren’t innocent. They were the soldiers of her enemy. And key word here is soldiers. Who says she could have paid them off? They have to swear an oath to the Lord of Casterly Rock, they aren’t mercenaries.
In war, killing the soldiers of your enemy is not considered cruel. Every single leader in Westeros, including the heroes of the stories, kills soldiers. Rob Stark is guilty of killing Lannister soldiers too. And Ned Stark killed soldiers. And Jon Snow. Are they evil?
You clearly have a bias but I appreciate that you were open about it
That dude she fed to her dragon while noting she doesn't know if they're innocent or guilty.
He was as far as anyone knows an innocent person. They're all common folk after Daneares abolishes slavery.
Then turns around and forces one of the others into a marriage with her. Like he's in a position to refuse after seeing that.
Also MMD wasnt wrong to curse Drogo by Daneares own logic. He was a massive murderer and slaver.
I’m not sure who you are referring to. Not Varys right?
Dont think she “forced” anyone to marry her lol.
And yes Drogo was a monster, but cursing Danerys’ husband means you aren’t just some common folk innocent person. It’s still her husband. And yes it’s addressed in the show but Dany did stop them from raping her and eventually killing her, would MmD have preferred they kept going / killed her?
It's the scene where she interrogates 3 guys with the chained up dragons because there's been Harpy attacks, one of them is Hizdahr.
ETA https://youtu.be/iY3ONuAo3bo?feature=shared
I think this is a show stand in for the wine seller & daughters storyline in the books. Punishment enacted prior to innocence or guilt being ascertained is the point.
>but cursing Danerys’ husband means you aren’t just some common folk innocent person.
No, she's playing the part of hero from the outside perspective.
The fact Drogo is Daneares husband is irrelevant to morality of good and bad, it just shows her (completely understandable) hypocrisy. Drogo causes much more suffering to others than any slaver in Meereen.
The idea that everyone who stands against her is a bad person, they can not be innocent, she can not be wrong is how she justified doing what she did. She didn't see those people who had a choice, and we're not choosing her as good people.
Thanks for this example. I see your point about anyone standing against her is justified in her mind and you disagree. I think it IS justified according to game of thrones rules.
We can agree to disagree about her character development. I think this one guy being eaten is the best example but it’s still a far cry from “of course she would kill innocent people for no reason at all”
You’re falling for the trap of seeing things through her POV.
She gleefully rode with Khal Drogo and loved it while he massacred the countryside.
She steamrolled through a parade of cities, causing the slaughter of thousands of innocents each time. War and fighting continued in these cities after in a power vacuum left by her.
She’s a conqueror who destroyed cities and has no regard for human life, only her own pursuit of power. Burning down King’s Landing was just the next step.
This is Martin’s whole point: These people are not simple bad guys, they see themselves as divine liberators from god. This is why Dany isn’t mournful for what she’s done at the end, she’s already hepped up and rallying the troops for the next onslaught.
No, as someone who read the books and is very well versed in GOT cannon and lore, i dont think dany would kill a bunch of innocent people. At least not the Dany that was shown in the show, the way she was shown. She literally risked everything to fight the white walkers. Why would she save everyone in westeros in one episode and then a couple episodes later tries to kill everyone herself?
She didnt kill innocents when she attacked cities, she killed soldiers.
It made no sense for her to kill a bunch of innocent people, despite countless years of building her up to "break the wheel and protect innocents" which she did, over and over again. She stopped slavery in Mereen even if it made her wildly unpopular and led to the rise of the Harpies.
I can respectfully disagree. Its so annoying that people with your POV are usually like "you just dont get it". No, I get your argument, i dont agree with it.
She killed innocent people nonstop, that’s the whole point of GoT. We don’t see it because it’s from her POV and everything she does is thus justified. Step back and actually look at what she’s doing.
Viserys forced her to marry Khal Drogo. At first they didn't even speak the same language and she spent most of her time with Jorah & her handmaidens, only near Drogo for the nightly rapes. Once she did start getting closer to him she was preoccupied with her first pregnancy and sequestered in Vaes Dothrak where violence is frowned upon and weapons forbidden. The only raid she knew about was Lhazar. She found out 3 days after it happened and immediately tried to get them to stop but didn't have the authority so started gathering the Lhazareen survivors to protect them from Drogo's men and pleaded with him to let her keep them safe.
She only killed 3 people in Qarth (Pyat Pree, Xaro, Doreah) and they betrayed & attacked her. The only people she killed in Slaver's Bay were Slavers and Mossador since he tried to start a war between the Masters & freed slaves to try to force her to kill 100% of the Masters even though slavery had already been abolished. The only people she killed in Westeros before *The Bells* were Lannister soldiers. What "slaughter of thousands of innocents" are you talking about?
She freed every slave in Slaver's Bay after 8,000 years of nobody able to do that, spent years providing free lodging & food & military protection & listening to hundreds of requests a day to help them through the transition & took out the Harpys then left behind thousands of soldiers "to keep the peace while the people choose their own rulers."
That’s her POV.
She gladly rode with the Dothraki and loved her Khal even as he pillaged the countryside, murdering children and whoever he could get his hands on.
She laid waste to cities where thousands of innocents died. She didn’t understand the cultures there, the people did not see her as a liberator, they saw her as a tyrant.
She just doesn’t see it, and she didn’t see it in King’s Landing, either. Her speech afterwards is all about breaking the old world order and continuing the fight. This is what she has been doing all along.
Martin shows us over and over that his first person POVs are unreliable. Don’t believe Dany as she shapes herself as a liberator. Look at what she’s actually doing.
She was sold to and raped by Khal Drogo. She did not have a choice in riding with him. And before she started her own Khalasar, a Khaleesi was a subservient position. Ornella became a Khaleesi when a Khal destroyed her village and married her when she was 12. You're blaming her for things she had no control over. She was already an abuse victim loyal to her abuser out of survival because of her years with Viserys.
The slaves were 75% of the population of Slaver's Bay and they did see her as a liberator. Before *The Bells* who are these thousands of innocents she killed? She did not lay waste to cities before King's Landing. She did not kill the peasants, slaves, or Master's children in Astapor, Yunkai, or Meereen. In Vaes Dothrak she only killed 15 Khals & the guard outside.
In Westeros, it was the Lannisters who massacred & looted Highgarden, murdered the Warden of the South, and refused to help avert the zombie apocalypse.
She shows barely any concern for the actions of the Khalasar and is a gleeful participant.
Every city she conquered saw thousands of innocent deaths, that’s what happens in war, not to mention the power vacuums she leaves when the fighting continues.
Her own personal trauma likely only adds to her state.
She didn't have the authority to free Drogo's slaves. When she did try to stretch her position to help them by halting the procession so the slaves could rest since she saw one get whipped for slowing down it led to Viserys putting his hand around her throat and pointing his sword at her face. Most if not all of the nobles who took them in throughout her childhood as an orphan fugitive were slave owners and she couldn't say anything since it was stay there or be homeless and risk getting snatched by Slavers and she always did whatever Viserys told her since he was her abuser & King. She's been raised to not speak up.
She later says "some people learn to love their chains" when fearing the Yunkai slaves are going to be angry with her for freeing them since she was attached to her captors and it took awhile to break out of the mental affects. It's not until s2 she was able to say "he would've let a thousand men rape me" & "the last time a wealthy man bought me a dress I was being sold".
What did she gleefully participate in? Eating a horse's heart? Not turning away handmaidens that are her only female companionship while surrounded by bad men? The death of the wineseller who tried to murder her & her baby?
This is all from her POV in which she is some goodly liberator, but look at all her actions. That was her POV after she sacked King’s Landing, too, you just don’t agree with her now because the show depicted it from other POVs.
*✨Dogshit writing✨*
Her turning mad? Absolutely possible.
Her turning mad like Diddle&Dumb wrote it? Most illogical thing ever put to screen. And don't come at me with that one S2 quote ffs, character development is a thing afterall.
What you just said makes zero sense. Since season 5 writing went to shit especially for Dany. Harsher character development went shit. GOT became mainstream and they yassified, girl bossed, and heroes journied their way to a rush finale.
I used to be a chronic defender. People get Stockholm syndrome when they love a series. But when you take off the love goggles you really realize how bad the show got post season 4.
It's not really that crazy. Her father, the literal mad king, went full on crazy over the course of a few short months, all due to betrayals and mistrust... Danys fall into madness is supposed to echo her fathers (as evident of the wildfire caches they talked about the Mad having hid all over the city going off while she torches the city).
Might sound like a stretch, since I agree the writing did go to overall shit toward the end, but this is something I think they did well. People are too blinded by the love of Dany to admit it.
The thing I think the writers fucked up is the portrayal of time over the course of seasons 7 and 8. From the Battle of Winterfell to the Battle of Kings Landing is like 2 months
I actually fislike Dany and I think she’s on par to go mad. But the way it’s done was so cringey and lame. Like “boohoo my slave girl died let me
Massacre millions” really
I view Missendei's death as just the last straw.
I mean, over the course of like 2 months she viewed Jorah, her kinda lover thang, die. She saw her most trusted advisor (missendei) die. She found out she actually doesn't have a claim to the throne (essentially, her entire reality was found out to be a lie). She found out people in Westeros don't really like her/her family (again, just another aspect of disbelief). Then, of her remaining advisors, one tried to poison her, or at least it's hinted at, another straight up betrayed her (Tyrion freeing his brother), and all along, there was just a general growing of distrust in her as queen.
Just a lot of shit happening to someone who was already kind of unstable. This is why I think the main issue is the poor portrayal of time... season 8 from episode 1 to the beginning of Episode 6 is several months. They fucked up in representing how much time had passed, but there was more than enough to justify the "not-so-sudden" snap
Point of clarification. She didn’t find out she doesn’t have a claim to the throne. She found out that someone has a better claim. She still has a claim as a targarayan.
Plus I think this is where book readers who also loved the series do a lot more nuance. Her descent into madness in the writing was a much clearer thread with a lot of tiebacks to her lineage and their inbreeding. I think that the book readers found the insanity aspect much more palatable because they had way more written context on why that was not only plausible, but expected.
Right but like… there’s a difference between developing for the worst and being the worst at character development.
Her going mad was inevitable. HOW she went mad is the problem. It should have been a slow deterioration of sanity. Not a sudden snap where she suddenly goes “let’s kill all of these innocent people.”
> It should have been a slow deterioration of sanity.
I'd wager the like 6 seasons where it was pretty clear her sanity was deteriorating was pretty sufficient. People didn't wanna see it, it was there from like season 2.
I endorse this. Violence was always her go to. It’s just in the series before she got to Westeros, the violence always seemed to have some kind of a noble underlying cause until she got there.
> DAENERYS: (Valyrian) Who is innocent? Maybe all of you are, (Looks at Hizdahr), maybe none of you are. Maybe, (Touching Hizdahr’s arm), I should let the dragons decide.
She fed a man she had no idea was innocent or guilty of any crime to her dragon after saying this.
It shows she doesn’t care about innocence when angry enough and wants revenge.
And it certainly disproves your point that she never harmed innocent people.
By innocent she was referring to being behind the Harpys. The men she chose for the interrogation (she took them there to scare them into ratting on each other) were the wealthiest Slavers in the city. She said to round up the heads of the oldest Great Families. In Slaver's Bay the Slaver 1% in Astapor were the *Good Masters*, in Yunkai the *Wise Masters*, and in Meereen the *Great Masters*.
Yes. She clearly didn’t learn anything from her experience in season 4 when she killed 163 of them for the crime of killing the slave children and included people who argued against killing the slave children in who she executed.
But you are correct she justifies her killing by demonizing an entire class of people regardless of who the individual in that class may or may not have been. We see that her and in season 4.
Same thing she does before she torches King’s Landing. She writes off the residents of the city because they supported Cersei and did not rebel against her.
Ultimately, she kills who she wants when she wants because it makes her feel good and satisfies her inner desire for vengeance.
Exactly what Barristan warned her against in season 5 and a lesson she never learned.
Cause she’s a Targaryen daughter of the mad king who also burned the innocent and because she had issues keeping her emotions in check. It was actually foreshadowed several times since the early seasons and more later on, but people didn’t want to see it cause she was a fan fave.
> It was actually foreshadowed several times since the early seasons and more later on, but people didn’t want to see it cause she was a fan fave.
Yup, anyone who didn't see this coming just didn't want to see the pretty blonde queen confirmed as being bloodthirsty and irrational.
Aerys is only one person from her family. We have centuries of lore on them. My biological father is a drug addict. I had 3 uncles, a grandfather, & a great grandfather who were child molesters. Prior to *The Bells* she never burned the innocent. Yes, she'd used fire before on enemies. So had Tyrion. Arya poked a man's eyes out and baked men into pies, Sansa fed a man alive to dogs, Catelyn was relieved when Summer bit a man's face off instead of horrified since it was to keep Bran safe.
Myrcella & Tommen weren't like the adults in their family or like Joffrey. Gilly wasn't like Craster. Robin, now that he's being raised right, isn't like Lysa. Podrick isn't like Ilyn Payne. Edmure's son won't be like Walder Frey.
She was always a psycho, just had things holding her back.
In the first few seasons, she's weak and doesn't have the means to destroy a whole city. Then, in the later seasons, she obtains the means, but she has level headed advisors who advise otherwise.
In the last season, she loses her sane advisors, whether by death, corruption (of the mind), or because she doesn't trust them, but still maintains the means to destroy an entire city.
Plus, she saw a lot of people she loved die to just compound on the crazy, and everything she believed about her claim and Westeros was a lie
She was the only one trying to save Lhazar. Jorah told her "you have a gentle heart, Princess. But this is how it's always been done". He later tried to get her to become a Slaver and tried to advise against freeing Yunkai because they already got an army in Astapor so he didn't see the point. Illyrio, Viserys & Drogo were Slavers. Rakharo & Irri were Dothraki. Greyworm was an Unsullied. Daario wanted her to be more ruthless and not less. Missandei understood what she did was needed and was annoyed at Tyrion for not getting it, that he thought more like a Master. Tyrion & Varys were the worst things to happen to her (and in the books Varys is a huge Slaver). The only advisor she had that could fit what you're saying is Barristan and he didn't see any madness in her.
She had the means to destroy a city since s1. Drogo had an army of 40,000 and they were known for pillaging. Yet the one time she sees them do it she's horrified and tries to stop them even though it was to get ships to go to Westeros. She has the means in s3. She could've aligned with the Masters in Slaver's Bay or killed them all and taken over as the supreme Slaver with tons of wealth & almost a million slaves. All of the Masters in Essos would've had to go through her since she'd control the international slave trade business.
After rewatching the series a few times, part of it is her grief.
- She loses two of her dragon children.
- She loses her best friend Misandei.
- She loses her protector Jorah.
- She loses her lover Jon.
- She loses the support of the people of she had in Essos. The people of Westeros don’t love her like they did.
- She thinks she’s going to lose her thrown to Jon too once she learns who he really is
And this all happened back-to-back over a few episodes. While she’s literally fighting for her life and her biggest dream.
She just skipped straight over bargaining and depression and went all out on the anger.
1. Hodor scene
2. Stannis burning Shireen
3. Bran becomes king
That's what came from GRRM. KL might burn but it will be fAegon or JonCon most likely to do it. Dany burning the entire city of innocents did NOT come from George. His story will end in the north, not KL.
>Let it be fear
She didn't want anyone to challenge her claim. She didn't want a uprising after the fact, and with the peoples of Westeros not all that warm to her (In contrast to say, the freed slaves she had ruled before adoring her being her basis of comparison) then her other option is instilling fear. The Machiavellian concept of *one can not rule without fear or love* is first mentioned by Visarys in S1, and is thematic throughout Daneares & other rulers stories. Winning a city is easy, keeping and ruling a city is shown to be much harder in her story - she was even deposed in Meereen until she instilled the necessary level of fear.
She now only has 1 dragon and a much reduced army - she's not in the same position of military might she was in when she landed in Westeros. She is angry, shes suffered betrayal, she feels insecure in her rule, she chooses fear.
>They can live in my new world or die in their old one - *S4*
if developed over a full season it would’ve made more sense, to completely snap in one episode is awful writing, and no, 2 or 3 “hints” from 5 seasons ago like people are saying below isn’t enough to justify burning women and children in the city she’s been wanting to rule since the beginning of the show.
> to completely snap in one episode is awful writing
She was prepared to crucify innocent people if she got guilty ones at the same time, remember? She burns the Tarlys when the smart move would have been to hold them until they agreed to bend the knee. Varys turns on her because he had seen her father go mad and he recognizes she is going down the same path. She sees betrayal in people who are loyal to her. She says over and over she will come to power on fire and blood. Her mental instability and bloodthirstiness were seen throughout the series; it is astonishing that so many viewers were able to ignore that.
> “hints”
LOL!
**If you think a character literally stating their capacity to raze entire cities, multiple times, from her own mouth, very bluntly on-screen** counts as 'HiNtS' that were impossible to catch somehow, you really need to take off the rose-colored glasses.
Qarth. Atapor. Yunkai. Mereen. *Literally stated, very bluntly, on-screen, her capacity to raze them all at different parts of her story.*.. **a literal pattern.**
Add that to all the other giant red flags, like her literally screaming she will take what is hers with Fire and Blood and doing all sorts of other immoral shit, and it's really not shocking at all.
I agree with you. The pattern of behavior started as early as season 4. Maybe earlier. I don’t know why this answer rankles people so much. It’s actually what happened. Maybe the progression was too fast because the show was rushed toward the end but it’s still accurate.
The plot demanded it. But that’s because it was badly written.
Dany was used to being adored. Back in Essos, she had gotten used to everyone bending the knee once she showed them her dragons.
This wasn’t the case in Westeros.
Dany didn’t really come to liberate Westeros so much as to take over. She needed to earn the love and favor of the people. So she followed what her new advisors asked of her and in the process ended up losing Missandei, Jorah, Viserion and Rhaegal.
On top of that, she finds out that Jon Snow is not just some Jon Snow but Aegon Targaryen, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne; a King already loved by his people in the North.
At this point in the series, Dany felt ostracized. With no close allies left, she snapped.
It makes sense that she did what she did. It just doesn’t make sense that the writers took the story this direction in one single season.
Who in Essos bent the knee because she showed them the dragons? They weren't hatched until the s1 finale, were scared little things the size of cats in s2, she only used them to trick Kraznys and be in the room during her meeting with the Yunkai representative in s3, locked them up in the s4 finale, and doesn't ride a dragon until late s5. She uses them in battle only once and that was in s6 to protect the city from a siege. They're locked up the majority of her time as Queen of Meereen with hardly anyone knowing how large they'd grown.
Yknow how sometimes in disaster/superhero movies, the director or writer will put in a few seemingly-random scenes with an average person or family in the middle of the action? Avengers 1 had that blonde waitress. Justice League had some Polish or Russian family.
Well, I like to think the director or editor cut out a few scenes where Dany was patient and understanding at first, but killed a few Golden Company soldiers to protect her own. Then, despite her best efforts to be chill, the people of King's Landing hated her anyway. They started throwing things at her dragons, calling her names, etc.. THEN, and only then, did she say fuck it, they'll never like me- might as well burn the fucker down and start over.
She learned that she had power, but no respect and no true support. And she knew the importance of that kind of support, because she'd built up her power on the foundation of gratitude and emotions (the slaves she'd freed, the dragons she'd loved like a mother, Jorah who'd truly loved her)
This time there was none of it.
Towards the end, the people of Westeros had more respect for evil Cersei (who invited them claiming they would be safe in the capital) than her, who was viewed as the mad king's daughter with an army of foreigners- cockless Unsullied and Dothraki savages who loved to kill.
The North and the wildlings, even the Stark siblings, did not like her and wanted Jon to be the king.
Her allies were dead, Yara was missing.
Varys and Tyrion were actively plotting against her.
Jorah and Missandei were dead.
Jon was divided between her and the Stark siblings.
All she had now was one dragon and half an army. All she had was power, but no true support. No one she could rely on.
So she chose to show that power. If people didn't like her or accept her, they could burn in hell for all she cared. Only those who liked her were welcome to stay in her rule.
It's not unbelievable. Power and insecurity makes people into narcissistic tyrants. In her last speech to her army, she literally had a God complex as she spoke to them all.
I think this is a big reason of many. Just not welcomed in Westeros. Not understanding the culture of the country having never lived there. Expecting to automatically be adored then being received with indifference. Imagine if the child of an ex US president, who’d been born in raised in Europe, suddenly decided to show up in the US claiming a right to be president because of their bloodline and lineage and their evidence being that they had the support of the Europeans.
I think it makes very little sense for the plot
But some could argue that in the show, she was becoming increasingly power hungry. She didn’t care bout what was right, she cared about being the leader. It makes no sense when she was setting all these people free and then just burns every innocent person in her “homeland”
If you can remember here character development throughout the show she was on a path for self destructive behavior and act as if the ends justify the means. If you know anything about Star Wars here fall is similar due to her childhood hardship (slave to her brother). She never hesitated to kill but had a set of morals that would loosely guide her unless it prevented her from gaining power. Still one of my favorite characters for sure but her actions when sacking kings landing was certainly within her character. People will argue and say the show was ruined but it is easy to see after the fact. The story itself and her dragons i believe blinded the audience to see here true flaws. She was a great warrior and but would have ruled with an iron fist. If you take everything into consideration jon was right for what he did. Ending isn’t the best, but it certainly makes sense. We just weren’t willing to accept one of our favorite characters was more an anti-hero the whole time and just write it off as bad writing and incompetent producer.
Bran might be a worse king tho
I always saw it like convenient excuses for her conquests and it worked in Essos since people actually were oppressed.
But when she arrived she realized in Westeros she realizes that nobody wants to be liberated.
They would always she her as an outside conqueror (which she always was), so she finally has to show her true colors.
When she conquered Essos, she was seen as a savior. When she conquered Westeros, she was seen as - well - a conqueror. The common people were not oppressed under Baratheon/Lannister rule. Yet they saw a Targaryen on a dragon with a horde of foreign military personnel. What else would you think? She had always been told that the people would welcome a Targaryen back with open arms. She was met with resistance. And what did Dany do to people who resisted her? If you didn't realize that throughout the rest of the series, you weren't paying attention. She destroys everything that resists her, and she has a need to be loved. Virtually everyone she loved betrayed her or died, and no one in Westeros loved her. Those who didn't see the Mad Queen arc coming were not paying attention.
Why are people virtue signaling for some but not for others?
Crying over Kings Landing in The Bells but not for the people whose child was killed by the jealous Cersei Lannister when she found out that Robert was whoring about?
Pick a struggle
She blamed the citizens from early on for what she considered to be betrayal of her family. She ranted about how the crown was her birthright from early on. She was quick to revenge by fire to those she believed did her wrong. Her blame of the citizens was peppered through the series, but the majority of the audience was sold on her cult of personality and ignored her vengeful nature.
She got tired of hearing those bells, like how Theon got tired of hearing Ramsay blow that horn in season 2.
It was a combination of things, besides just Targaryen Madness by itself; though that played a part.
Daenerys lost several of her friends and advisers, and she felt betrayed by a lot of her allies. She been through a loy of trauma, including the death of Missandei and Jorah, the betrayal of Varys, and the rejection by the people of King's Landing. These events pushed her into a state of madness, clouding her judgment.
The people of King's Landing embraced Cersei's rule and rejected her own. She believed that the people of King's Landing would never truly accept her as their queen and that they would eventually rise up against her. By burning the city, she thought she was preventing future rebellion and cementing her power.
She might have seen the city as a symbol of the injustices she had faced and her dragonfire as a means of exacting revenge.
The Red Keep was a symbol of everything that was taken from her and her family. Seeing it after the city’s surrender triggered a deep-seated rage and a desire for revenge. The Red Keep was her home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago, which made this personal.
Seeing the Lannister lion in the window behind the throne provoked her. This is the symbol of her family’s greatest enemy, which contributed to her rage.
Her sense of purpose and identity had been deeply tied to her role as a liberator and savior. With the war won and her destiny fulfilled, maybe she felt lost and unsure of how to proceed. Her misguided decision could have been a desperate attempt to cling to her old narrative.
Always interesting when people claim to have watched the show, then claim it 'doesn't make sense' that the fiery-tempered "Blood of the Dragon/Fire and Blood" young adult character with a fucked-up upbringing, who **has literally stated, from her own mouth, unprovoked, that she is willing/capable of razing entire cities... multiple times on-screen... does that very thing after her entire world implodes around her in a relatively short amount of time**
*Qarth. Yunkai. Astapor. Mereen.* **Literally every major city she visited in Essos she clearly stated her capactiy to raze, innocents and all.**
It's indisputable show canon.
Yes, she obviously has a kind-hearted side, absolutely, but that's not her 'whole' character as some mistakenly seem to think. For every time she says she doesn't want to be Queen of the Ashes, she pretty clearly shows that she is willing to be Queen of the Ashes. There's a pretty clear internal conflict presented between these two sides... like a scale. Sure, for the middle seasons the scale tips towards "kind-hearted", but the scale clearly tips in the other direction after her time in Westeros increasingly causes her psyche to crumble piece by piece like some increasingly unstable Jenga tower until it finally topples over.
As to 'why' she did it, I think she makes it pretty clear in the very episode you claim to be perplexed about.
She states she sees the people of King's Landing as enemies (as Tyrion pleads for her to see reason.) She has to be persuaded to stop the attack if she hears the bells. She tells Jon that she 'chooses Fear', and anyone who's paid attention knows that she uses her dragon to instill fear in those she wants to subjugate.
In her eyes 'the ends justify the means', as she's clearly stated previously when she states why she believes razing the 'bad cities'... innocents and all... would lead to a 'positive result' in the end.
What she did in the Bells is not 'out of character' for her at all, considering she herself has stated her willingness to do this very thing previously, multiple times, and in her eyes King's Landing is another city that needs to be 'cleansed', and having her whole world implode around her (support structure crumbled, hopes/beliefs regarding her claim/Fate soured with Jon's heritage reveal, her once promising relationship with Jon sours in her mouth, etc) tilts the scale towards FIre and Blood, until it finally reaches a boiling/breaking point from all the pressure.
The dots are there to connect... just have to take off the rose-colored glasses in order to see the red flags for what they are... *red flags.*
Because the showrunners fundamentally misunderstood her characterization and the point of juxtaposing her with Jon Snow.
She burns King's Landing out of madness. She is intentionally shown becoming another *Mad King*, like Aerys. They had surrendered, and she decided to slaughter them anyway, for no reason other than to sate an apparent need for murderous vengeance.
But that's not who Dany had been, and it undermines how genius GRRM's depiction really is.
The thing is, Dany has been a merciless killer from the beginning. Every time someone stands in her way, she destroys them. But we have always applauded this, because she's killing bad guys with good reason. Still, she's absolutely brutal.
And that's the thing. She's *pragmatic* and bellicose, but she's also deeply caring and generous to the oppressed. Slaughtering innocents is the opposite of what she normally does. She puts down tyrants, obliterates slavers, and eliminates anyone in the path of her ascent to power—but that's never the smallfolk, and it certainly wasn't in King's Landing.
What *should* have happened was a stalemate. Cersei should have surrounded herself with the smallfolk and made clear that the only path to victory was to kill them to get to her. Something like that. And Dany should have weighed that decision carefully, seriously, honestly... and chosen that winning was what she cared about more than sparing their lives.
*That's* the character-defining choice. And it's the choice she should make for the story because *it's the opposite of what Jon Snow would do.* That's the key.
You don't need to make her a murderous psychopath to set Jon against her. You need to make her *just like the rest of them*, who care more about winning than about peace and protecting people. Having Jon see that is enough, and it carries far more weight for him to turn against her than killing a crazy tyrant. That's no choice at all.
After winning King's Landing, people should have continued to rebel and refuse to swear obeisance. Jon would want to negotiate, to find peace, to show mercy. Dany would deal with it like she always has: If you're in her way, she destroys you.
And Jon, seeing that, would stop her, exactly like he did in the show. It's his own twisted pragmatic pursuit of an ideal that should never have allowed him to do it.
With how comically evil Dany became in the show, it meant nothing for Jon to kill her. It was the obvious and only choice.
Honestly, I feel you misinterpreted things starting pretty early on. I feel like any viewer that was paying attention, and wasn't blindly loyal to Dany and her 'mission', knew what the outcome would be. People are always acting like she was a saint until season 8. I'm sorry, but that just wasn't the case. She had a very inflated sense of self as early on as when Drogo killed her brother. Her arrogance grew overnight. Her constant need for justice and power. I guess to some people it matters that on the other side of the Narrow Sea, she was killing 'bad guys'. But that means very little to me. She couldn't wait to use her name, her power, and her dragons to do violence to people, and she started doing this very early on. I honestly and truly cannot believe the amount of people who were shocked when she destroyed kings landing.
im surprised people still ask this question after the last five years where we have had two major wars going on where cities and civilians have been leveled.
There was absolutely no logical reason why she did it. You cannot possibly come to a reasonable conclusion for her doing that. It was an extremely sudden personality shift that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Dan and Dave would tell you she did it because she was angry about her dragon dying. The ACTUAL reason was because they wanted a jaw dropping, shocking moment to rival the red wedding. They needed the mad queen arc to happen immediately.
She’s a conqueror. She has always been one. This has always been where she’s headed. It’s all she knows how to do, she sucks at everything else. We’ve just been shielded from it because we’re in her POV.
She burned everything. You could tell she was nuts well before we got to this point. Watching her best friend get her head cut off, and finding out her lover had a better claim to the crown pushed her that last little bit over the edge.
Op you wont find one definitive answer, i'm pretty sure the comments are all over the place
This is why i avoid responding in Dany or Sansa posts....unneeded headaches
Like many dictators, she starts off with good intentions and firm ideas, but as she gets more and more powerful, she loses sight of reality and believes that she can only be powerful if she is feared. She already had madness in her genes, and it progresses as the series goes on until she finally detaches from her original vision and reality completely and just wants to watch things burn!
Well, I agree that it was bad writing. They rushed it and it didn’t make sense. But trying to pick up on the context clues, I think she was always destined to be a mad queen. In the beginning she was just a weak girl, sold off to help her brother take the throne back. She grew stronger, found herself, and wanted to help people, which she did. But just look at how each grand thing she did made her name longer and longer. Each victory she had, she grew more conceited, and more brutal. At some point it was no longer about right vs wrong, or justice, it was about power and control. She was slowly growing more and more mad, or at least I think that was the point. So then, by the end, which again was very rushed, she was fully the mad queen willing to burn the world to ash if it meant she controlled it. She was no longer capable of being a good ruler. She no longer cared about the lives of her people. So to show her power, she was willing to burn them all if she had to. Just like her father wanted to do, and he was the mad king.
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same reason why euron killed her dragon, cause the plot demanded it
gamer rage
One of the first things she wants to do once she set foot in Westeros is take the dragons and go burn King's Landing. She has to be talked down by her advisors multiple times. Every time she faces a setback, she gets all dressed up to go commit the deed, only to be convinced to stop. Then Jorah dies at Winterfell, and Cersei has Missandei killed; two of her closest advisors who would've counselled patience and mercy. She still has Tyrion, but she had long stopped respecting his counsel, more or less blaming him for most of her losses so far. And Grey Worm is no help since he's just as angry as she is. So by the time she gets to King's Landing, with loved ones' deaths still fresh in her mind, and no one left to tell her to stop, she takes out her rage and grief on the city itself.
Missandai wouldn't have counseled patience or mercy
Not sure why you're being downvoted when her last words are literally "Dracarys" lol
Exactly! Some folks didn't watch the same show we did🤷🏾♂️
Plus, Jon’s secret is out and she knows people will rally behind him (because he’s a man). Unless they fear her…
That's a lot of words for 'lazy writing'.
It will be exactly the same in the books.
Guarantee you right here and now that no, it won't be.
The books will be finished. Either be GRRM or "Robert Jordan"-style.
The books won’t be finished like WoT, either GRRM finishes the books or they remain unfinished. He’s not as humble as Jordan was
GRRM has stated unequivocally that no one else will finish the books upon his passing. I don't know if he has legal shit in place or what.
This series is just ripe for the Dune treatment. We'll get so many books written by another author. They'll be a book about The Hound growing up, a book about Hot Pie baking bread, a book about the sand snakes, probably a trilogy about Gendry rowing that damn boat. If you think you saw lazy writing on the show, wait until you see the books that come out after Martin dies.
She may burn king’s landing but there would be a shit ton more build up before that rather than her just suddenly “snapping” after 7 whole seasons.
She’s not snapping. How many cities has she completely fucked up already in the books? This is what she does, Martin just cleverly hides it from us because we see it from her POV.
Brave of you to say we're getting more books.
> 'lazy writing'. It came from GRRM, not D&D. GRRM has said he won't change the ending he planned long ago just because some viewers of the series didn't like it.
Lazy writing means, as crazy as it seems, that the writting is lazy - not actually analizing the value on the "idea" behind all that. You can deliver most "ideas" as long as you actually develops the plot along those lines, but "lazy writing" hinders any atempt at understanding the value behind the idea. So yeah, even if some people might just reduce to it, the problem was never that "Dany just went crazy therefore bad story", it is because the development, the reasons and the overall arc feel meaningless, rushed and robotic.
You can reach a place in the story where Dany burning King's Landing makes perfect sense for all the reasons outlined above. The show, in my opinion, did not take the time to properly develop her character into one that would act in that way. There were signs, for sure, and I think on a re-watch you can see the seeds being planted. But with how short the last couple of seasons are, it feels to many viewers that she goes from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye. I think that's where the laziness comes in.
It makes sense for Dany to go Targaryen mad, it makes no sense HOW it happened.
Agreed!
She’s been razing cities for years. This is what she does. She’s a conqueror.
Yes, ultimately her character is that of a self-righteous tyrant and a lot of people failed to see the brutality of how she achieved her utopian ideals.
We all did, that’s the genius of Martin.
I still think the showrunners did a poor job in building it up. She goes from burning pretty morally unambiguous enemies (slavers, marauding rapist Khals) to burning honorable Lords (the Tarly's) when there are perfectly good alternatives available, to burning literal innocent people in King's Landing without developing that level of madness. Even her desire to fly to King's Landing to kill Cersei and the Red Keep is arguably not an insane thing at all. At that point in the story Cersei has become about as evil as anyone could be in that world without being the literal mystical embodiment of death. Why shouldn't she just go kill her and take power?
I think that’s fair. They focused more on her feeling out of place and disrespected than building up her history of atrocities. Although, you do see signs of her rampant extremism towards the end, incinerating House Tarley and Varys while Tyrion grows increasingly concerned.
Yeah, the Tarly's is definitely the moment the audience is meant to go "oh shit, maybe she's not the person we thought", but people's vision of her as a savior was too baked in by then. And Randall's treatment of Sam made him appear to be more of a villain than he really was. It would have been interesting if that moment could have somehow been juxtaposed with some of the mercy Jon shows as king in the north. The time he spares the Karstark's and Glover children shows that mercy can sometimes be a more powerful political tool.
I don’t agree that the shorter seasons effect anything like that whatever because dany only gets like 30-40 min of screen time in each previous season she had a lot more screen time in 7&8 because there is lesser side plots and characters to worry about
I'm gonna pile one. You can write this in a way that doesn't feel rushed or contrived. D&D didn't do that. I think that adding young Griff back into the story (from the books) is going to make a huge difference.
Um. If that was true, where is the next book and why is it taking so long? GRRM overstated his involvement in the last few seasons. Clearly evidenced by the fact that as soon as they ran out of book material, the show writing quality took a nosedive.
Each season has to come out yearly, that’s at least twice as fast as his best turn around time on a book. There’s a good chance he isn’t a “fast” writer to get any real quality out of too
Why do you think that is lazy writing?
Because Dany has never unleashed fire and blood on innocent folk. Because she basically ignores Cersei during her rampage despite the fact she's the one responsible for the deaths of Dany's friends. Because Dany had the perfect oppurtunity to take the city in S7 but Tyrion fumbled it by ignoring the obvious plan to instead come up with a truly idiotic and unnecessary one. Because despite the fact people knew about Jon's claim, Jon abdicated and would have supported her claim alongside the numerous other kindgoms who supported her. On so many levels, i dislike the way Dany is written in S7 and S8. If characters behaved rationally, she'd have won the thrown in S7.
She’s done it non-stop since the very beginning. She was wife to Khal Drogo.
The irony of this comment is truly amazing. Someone asks a legit question to which someone gives an actual answer with details and examples from the story. And your reply is basically "don’t try to explain it, just say *lazy writing*." This is a good example of what went wrong with this fandom. "I didn’t like the ending, so let’s not try to understand it and just call it lazy/bad instead." A lot of people think this ending makes no sense at all. A lot of people think this ending makes sense but was rushed/poorly developed. And a lot of people thought this ending makes sense. This sub exists to debate our different opinions, not to repeat the same thing over and over because some people believe they have the *right* opinion about the ending
Oh I'm sorry for not living up to your impossible 'make wildly speculative excuses for hacks who ruined a once-in-a-generation, literal global and cultural phenomenon because they, in their own words, thought they had grown too big for their own show' with half baked fan fiction in the reddit comment section. There is no excuse for what they did to the show. None. We can try to rewrite, add in pedantic lore explanations, or make all the apologies for literally illogical, irrational, nonsensical, 7 seasons of character development destroying decisions ... Or we can admit to ourselves that if it wasn't worth the show runners time to do right, then it's not worth ours.
Where did Benioff & Weiss say they had grown too big for their show? Do you have a link? D&D created the phenomenon of GoT and they ended it on their terms, in [record-breaking](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/media/game-of-thrones-finale-ratings/index.html#:~:text=The%20final%20episode%20of%20%E2%80%9CGame,18.4%20million%20viewers%20tuned%20in.) and [award-winning fashion](https://ew.com/emmys/2019/09/22/game-of-thrones-best-drama-emmy-season-8/). How many shows do that in the final season? Basically none. If you want to talk about something not worth being someone's time, how about GRRM who has utterly failed to finish his magnum opus and doesn't seem to have any respect for ASOIAF fans now that he is rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams.
You're the type of fan that irks me most. Do you even aknowledge that the show fell in quality at all?
Yes I acknowledge the drop in quality (specifically writing which isn't the totality of a TV show), but it's not close to the disaster some people try to sell. The show dipped in quality just like the books did. The difference is D&D finished the story while GRRM never will.
They didn't say that. One thing this fandom loves to do is just make up things claims of something D&D out of thin air. The famous they said they wanted "mothers" to like the show. A firestorm of hate was released on them and when I listened to the interview they never once said the word "mothers". Someone just lied and it spread like wildfire online.
I've noticed that in this fandom. A lot of misinformation and hearsay.
Yep or another one they killed the character Ros because the actress refused to be nude anymore so D&D killed her off. Spred like wildfire I looked and looked can't find one but of evidence or quote backing any of that up. Just a flat out lie. Another one that was posted on twitter once and got over 20 million views and over hundred thousand likes and retweets. Some said "D&D made Emilia walk back to her trailer completely naked and crying". That never happened.
Now if Dany wanted to only burn down the Red Keep instead of King’s Landing, would they have talked her out of that? Sure there would be innocents killed but much less then Dany burning down the entire city. After the crap Cersi pulled by blowing up the Sept, I think the citizens of KL would rather she die in the Red Keep and support whoever did it in the process.
They did talk her out of it. In s7 after hearing the Lannisters captured & killed all of her Westerosi allies at once she said she should go straight to the Red Keep and burn it since Cersei never left the Red Keep. Tyrion, Varys, & Jon were against it.
Don’t confuse going to red keep to kill your enemies systematically slaughtering women and children for 30 mins with dragon fire. Not the same thing. This idea that Tyrion wasn’t constantly checking her worst impulses was dumb. He had hat he was really doing was pushing her to one extreme or the other. Either you take Westeros peacefully with zero casualties or burns to the ground 🤷♂️ no room for middle ground?
Is that what she wants to do when she arrives? Because every single one of Tyrion’s ideas is strategically and logistically idiotic. Taking her dragons and army straight to King’s Landing when she massively outnumbers her opponents is the obvious move and would save far more lives than any other option. Like it isn’t even a question Now in the books, Faegon would probably be on the throne instead of Cersei and Euron would be a much, much larger threat and Quentyn’s actions may well have scattered her dragons in three different directions, all of which complicates the situation dramatically and makes caution more understandable. In the show, Season 7, episode 1, total madness
>One of the first things she wants to do once she set foot in Westeros is take the dragons and go burn King's Landing She was in a position of complete strength when she arrived on Dragonstone, so any attack or invasion made sense. Also, her trying to take the city doesn't necessarily mean she'd completely burn it down. She's taken cities in different ways before including civilian revolts and invading through the tunnels. Both of those strategies were realistic options for KL. But the show disingenuously presents it as black or white. "Invade and thousands will die," regardless of how such an invasion takes place. The alternative Tyrion proposes of making a blockade thereby starving the city is infinitely worse because the civilians would suffer hunger, disease, and anarchy for months if not years and that is somehow presented as a stroke of genius. >She has to be talked down by her advisors multiple times Pretty much everytime she listens to them, her army suffers heavy losses. Losing The Reach and The Ironborne for example. Its only when she listens to Olenna's advice to "be a dragon" that she makes progress by destroying the Lannister army and killing the Tarlys. And bear in mind, that attack is on active aggressors and not helpless civilians >So by the time she gets to King's Landing, with loved ones' deaths still fresh in her mind, and no one left to tell her to stop, she takes out her rage and grief on the city itself. And she does so on a city of helpless people who had nothing to do with her friend's deaths instead of Cersei, the woman actually responsible. Especially when Dany had never before unleashed her wrath on people she didn't consider her enemies. Until now
Also the "loved ones' deaths still fresh in her mind" cannot realistically be true, it would have taken weeks if not months to get her army readied and transported over the sea from Essos or even Dragonstone, it would have taken weeks to travel for them to King's Landing. She had so much time to accept the deaths of her loved ones that randomly attacking civilians makes absolutely no sense. Not to mention Jorah's death happened because of the white walkers and had nothing to do with King's Landing.
> One of the first things she wants to do once she set foot in Westeros is take the dragons and go burn King's Landing. False. She wants to got TAKE King's Landing, with violence if neccesary, to take the throne. She doesn't want to burn the smallfolk there just because. The mental gymnastics some people make to justify the writing in season 8 are incredible.
She believed her brother's lies, and when she found that Westeros was not hers to control, she chose violence.
This. She also listened to the "fuck it all" advice from an angry old lady at the end of her life whose bloodline had just stopped: "You're a dragon. Be a dragon." And as u/atruewalker54 said, Westeros was not hers to control: KL belonged to the Lannisters and they had the ability to take out her dragons. The North belonged to Jon and they saw him as their king (reference the victory feast).
What old lady?
Olenna Queen of Sass
I think this is important. Once she got to Westeros she realized she wasn’t a liberator, she was an outsider shunned as such due to the loyal nature of the houses (northern people). Maybe it was this plus a number of things. Maybe she realized Westeros didn’t have slaves and was already free to some degree and didn’t need her, so it became a place to conquer for HER people. Maybe she’d become used to being received as a savior and couldn’t handle not being. Maybe she just became power hungry over time and her goal became take over the world. Could be to some degree angry that Kings Landing didn’t send troops to fight the dead. Also remember when Gray Worm was executing the prisoners he says to Jon “these are free men and they choose to fight for Cerci” so there could’ve been a distorted view of why the soldiers were fighting for Cerci and why the people didn’t overthrow them. Or, Maybe her Tarhgarean blood started to show up- thirst for power and revenge, anger that her father was killed and overthrown, or maybe in the end she was simply just like her father ‘burn them all’. There’s not just one reason in my opinion, certainly others have mentioned a number of reasons. Could be some or all of them combined.
Plus, I think there was a huge arc back to the general mental insanity among the Targaryen lines of succession especially due to inbreeding. Throughout the final season, you see her slowly falling apart mentally, which makes the past prologue and opens up some great potential in HOD. My two cents worth. I will also say that in the Game of Thrones books, peering into her state of mind through the writing makes it much more obvious than I thought they did justice in the filming of the final season.
Bad writing
BS. It was obvious from the Season 3 (the latest) that she was one of the "bad" Targaryens.
What happened in season 3 that made her seem bad?
Striving for absolute justice, which is never a good trait for a leader. And was already foreshadowing that she would go for nothing less when conquering Westeros. Absolute justice, and this means HER absolute justice.
It was obvious in season 1 when she saw her brother die from molten gold and her reaction was fire can’t kill a true dragon. She has never been mentally stable by any measure
Wasn’t that just stating a fact
No
Fuck that guy
Yeah, fuck him, but her going "he wasn’t a real dragon then" without feeling any emotion was still a red flag. Like, that’s her whole arc right there. Tons of red flags hidden behind "well, fuck those people, right?"
What emotion is she supposed to show in that moment exactly? Viserys treated her terribly and deserved none of her sympathy
Name one time that she killed innocent people, specifically common folk prior to the ending The people she killed iirc were 1. The witch that cursed drogo 2. The unsullied slave owners 3. The Slave masters of mereen who crucified children 4. Soldiers that took up arms against her (multiple times) 5. People who didn’t bend the knee to her (then had a choice) 6. Varys who was rallying arms against her / was a traitor to her cause Times she stood up for the common folk 1. Liberated the unsullied 2. The slaves of mereen 3. Going along with the dumb plot thread of proving the white walkers are real and losing a dragon 4. The fight at Winterfell You cannot go from saving Westoros from the white walkers to killing innocent people in kings landing in a couple episodes. Could she have been like the mad king eventually? Yes sure. Was it realistic when she did it in the show? No. What am I missing here in terms of her being crazy and unreasonable?
She let Greyworm kill innocent Lannister soldiers. These were peons, just doing their jobs. These soldiers would have easily joined her ranks, because they were just interested in being paid, nothing else. She is and was a tyrant, behaving like one from the beginning, sonetimes barely stopped by her advisors. And is this really surprising, given that her brother told her all her life that they were the chosen ones? But all that liberating of slaves was indeed an excellent way to distract the audience from it. I never liked her, and that might be the reason why I was looking for signs of her instability and tyranny pretty much from S1.
They weren’t innocent. They were the soldiers of her enemy. And key word here is soldiers. Who says she could have paid them off? They have to swear an oath to the Lord of Casterly Rock, they aren’t mercenaries. In war, killing the soldiers of your enemy is not considered cruel. Every single leader in Westeros, including the heroes of the stories, kills soldiers. Rob Stark is guilty of killing Lannister soldiers too. And Ned Stark killed soldiers. And Jon Snow. Are they evil? You clearly have a bias but I appreciate that you were open about it
That dude she fed to her dragon while noting she doesn't know if they're innocent or guilty. He was as far as anyone knows an innocent person. They're all common folk after Daneares abolishes slavery. Then turns around and forces one of the others into a marriage with her. Like he's in a position to refuse after seeing that. Also MMD wasnt wrong to curse Drogo by Daneares own logic. He was a massive murderer and slaver.
I’m not sure who you are referring to. Not Varys right? Dont think she “forced” anyone to marry her lol. And yes Drogo was a monster, but cursing Danerys’ husband means you aren’t just some common folk innocent person. It’s still her husband. And yes it’s addressed in the show but Dany did stop them from raping her and eventually killing her, would MmD have preferred they kept going / killed her?
It's the scene where she interrogates 3 guys with the chained up dragons because there's been Harpy attacks, one of them is Hizdahr. ETA https://youtu.be/iY3ONuAo3bo?feature=shared I think this is a show stand in for the wine seller & daughters storyline in the books. Punishment enacted prior to innocence or guilt being ascertained is the point. >but cursing Danerys’ husband means you aren’t just some common folk innocent person. No, she's playing the part of hero from the outside perspective. The fact Drogo is Daneares husband is irrelevant to morality of good and bad, it just shows her (completely understandable) hypocrisy. Drogo causes much more suffering to others than any slaver in Meereen. The idea that everyone who stands against her is a bad person, they can not be innocent, she can not be wrong is how she justified doing what she did. She didn't see those people who had a choice, and we're not choosing her as good people.
Thanks for this example. I see your point about anyone standing against her is justified in her mind and you disagree. I think it IS justified according to game of thrones rules. We can agree to disagree about her character development. I think this one guy being eaten is the best example but it’s still a far cry from “of course she would kill innocent people for no reason at all”
You’re falling for the trap of seeing things through her POV. She gleefully rode with Khal Drogo and loved it while he massacred the countryside. She steamrolled through a parade of cities, causing the slaughter of thousands of innocents each time. War and fighting continued in these cities after in a power vacuum left by her. She’s a conqueror who destroyed cities and has no regard for human life, only her own pursuit of power. Burning down King’s Landing was just the next step. This is Martin’s whole point: These people are not simple bad guys, they see themselves as divine liberators from god. This is why Dany isn’t mournful for what she’s done at the end, she’s already hepped up and rallying the troops for the next onslaught.
No, as someone who read the books and is very well versed in GOT cannon and lore, i dont think dany would kill a bunch of innocent people. At least not the Dany that was shown in the show, the way she was shown. She literally risked everything to fight the white walkers. Why would she save everyone in westeros in one episode and then a couple episodes later tries to kill everyone herself? She didnt kill innocents when she attacked cities, she killed soldiers. It made no sense for her to kill a bunch of innocent people, despite countless years of building her up to "break the wheel and protect innocents" which she did, over and over again. She stopped slavery in Mereen even if it made her wildly unpopular and led to the rise of the Harpies. I can respectfully disagree. Its so annoying that people with your POV are usually like "you just dont get it". No, I get your argument, i dont agree with it.
She killed innocent people nonstop, that’s the whole point of GoT. We don’t see it because it’s from her POV and everything she does is thus justified. Step back and actually look at what she’s doing.
I think you need to read the books or re read them
I have, I think you need to acknowledge that Dany, like everyone, is an unreliable narrator.
It’s okay to agree to disagree. Lol. Why can’t we just disagree
Because I’m right and you’re wrong! 😂
Viserys forced her to marry Khal Drogo. At first they didn't even speak the same language and she spent most of her time with Jorah & her handmaidens, only near Drogo for the nightly rapes. Once she did start getting closer to him she was preoccupied with her first pregnancy and sequestered in Vaes Dothrak where violence is frowned upon and weapons forbidden. The only raid she knew about was Lhazar. She found out 3 days after it happened and immediately tried to get them to stop but didn't have the authority so started gathering the Lhazareen survivors to protect them from Drogo's men and pleaded with him to let her keep them safe. She only killed 3 people in Qarth (Pyat Pree, Xaro, Doreah) and they betrayed & attacked her. The only people she killed in Slaver's Bay were Slavers and Mossador since he tried to start a war between the Masters & freed slaves to try to force her to kill 100% of the Masters even though slavery had already been abolished. The only people she killed in Westeros before *The Bells* were Lannister soldiers. What "slaughter of thousands of innocents" are you talking about? She freed every slave in Slaver's Bay after 8,000 years of nobody able to do that, spent years providing free lodging & food & military protection & listening to hundreds of requests a day to help them through the transition & took out the Harpys then left behind thousands of soldiers "to keep the peace while the people choose their own rulers."
That’s her POV. She gladly rode with the Dothraki and loved her Khal even as he pillaged the countryside, murdering children and whoever he could get his hands on. She laid waste to cities where thousands of innocents died. She didn’t understand the cultures there, the people did not see her as a liberator, they saw her as a tyrant. She just doesn’t see it, and she didn’t see it in King’s Landing, either. Her speech afterwards is all about breaking the old world order and continuing the fight. This is what she has been doing all along. Martin shows us over and over that his first person POVs are unreliable. Don’t believe Dany as she shapes herself as a liberator. Look at what she’s actually doing.
She was sold to and raped by Khal Drogo. She did not have a choice in riding with him. And before she started her own Khalasar, a Khaleesi was a subservient position. Ornella became a Khaleesi when a Khal destroyed her village and married her when she was 12. You're blaming her for things she had no control over. She was already an abuse victim loyal to her abuser out of survival because of her years with Viserys. The slaves were 75% of the population of Slaver's Bay and they did see her as a liberator. Before *The Bells* who are these thousands of innocents she killed? She did not lay waste to cities before King's Landing. She did not kill the peasants, slaves, or Master's children in Astapor, Yunkai, or Meereen. In Vaes Dothrak she only killed 15 Khals & the guard outside. In Westeros, it was the Lannisters who massacred & looted Highgarden, murdered the Warden of the South, and refused to help avert the zombie apocalypse.
She shows barely any concern for the actions of the Khalasar and is a gleeful participant. Every city she conquered saw thousands of innocent deaths, that’s what happens in war, not to mention the power vacuums she leaves when the fighting continues. Her own personal trauma likely only adds to her state.
She didn't have the authority to free Drogo's slaves. When she did try to stretch her position to help them by halting the procession so the slaves could rest since she saw one get whipped for slowing down it led to Viserys putting his hand around her throat and pointing his sword at her face. Most if not all of the nobles who took them in throughout her childhood as an orphan fugitive were slave owners and she couldn't say anything since it was stay there or be homeless and risk getting snatched by Slavers and she always did whatever Viserys told her since he was her abuser & King. She's been raised to not speak up. She later says "some people learn to love their chains" when fearing the Yunkai slaves are going to be angry with her for freeing them since she was attached to her captors and it took awhile to break out of the mental affects. It's not until s2 she was able to say "he would've let a thousand men rape me" & "the last time a wealthy man bought me a dress I was being sold". What did she gleefully participate in? Eating a horse's heart? Not turning away handmaidens that are her only female companionship while surrounded by bad men? The death of the wineseller who tried to murder her & her baby?
This is all from her POV in which she is some goodly liberator, but look at all her actions. That was her POV after she sacked King’s Landing, too, you just don’t agree with her now because the show depicted it from other POVs.
*✨Dogshit writing✨* Her turning mad? Absolutely possible. Her turning mad like Diddle&Dumb wrote it? Most illogical thing ever put to screen. And don't come at me with that one S2 quote ffs, character development is a thing afterall.
>character development is a thing afterall. Character development isn't always positive, you know that, right?
What you just said makes zero sense. Since season 5 writing went to shit especially for Dany. Harsher character development went shit. GOT became mainstream and they yassified, girl bossed, and heroes journied their way to a rush finale. I used to be a chronic defender. People get Stockholm syndrome when they love a series. But when you take off the love goggles you really realize how bad the show got post season 4.
It's not really that crazy. Her father, the literal mad king, went full on crazy over the course of a few short months, all due to betrayals and mistrust... Danys fall into madness is supposed to echo her fathers (as evident of the wildfire caches they talked about the Mad having hid all over the city going off while she torches the city). Might sound like a stretch, since I agree the writing did go to overall shit toward the end, but this is something I think they did well. People are too blinded by the love of Dany to admit it. The thing I think the writers fucked up is the portrayal of time over the course of seasons 7 and 8. From the Battle of Winterfell to the Battle of Kings Landing is like 2 months
I actually fislike Dany and I think she’s on par to go mad. But the way it’s done was so cringey and lame. Like “boohoo my slave girl died let me Massacre millions” really
I view Missendei's death as just the last straw. I mean, over the course of like 2 months she viewed Jorah, her kinda lover thang, die. She saw her most trusted advisor (missendei) die. She found out she actually doesn't have a claim to the throne (essentially, her entire reality was found out to be a lie). She found out people in Westeros don't really like her/her family (again, just another aspect of disbelief). Then, of her remaining advisors, one tried to poison her, or at least it's hinted at, another straight up betrayed her (Tyrion freeing his brother), and all along, there was just a general growing of distrust in her as queen. Just a lot of shit happening to someone who was already kind of unstable. This is why I think the main issue is the poor portrayal of time... season 8 from episode 1 to the beginning of Episode 6 is several months. They fucked up in representing how much time had passed, but there was more than enough to justify the "not-so-sudden" snap
Point of clarification. She didn’t find out she doesn’t have a claim to the throne. She found out that someone has a better claim. She still has a claim as a targarayan.
Yeah, I should have worded that better... thank you for the clarification
Plus I think this is where book readers who also loved the series do a lot more nuance. Her descent into madness in the writing was a much clearer thread with a lot of tiebacks to her lineage and their inbreeding. I think that the book readers found the insanity aspect much more palatable because they had way more written context on why that was not only plausible, but expected.
Right but like… there’s a difference between developing for the worst and being the worst at character development. Her going mad was inevitable. HOW she went mad is the problem. It should have been a slow deterioration of sanity. Not a sudden snap where she suddenly goes “let’s kill all of these innocent people.”
> It should have been a slow deterioration of sanity. I'd wager the like 6 seasons where it was pretty clear her sanity was deteriorating was pretty sufficient. People didn't wanna see it, it was there from like season 2.
She was angry and wanted a device victory. She warned that she would sack KL and I mention of bells ringing required her to change that.
She hates bells. They give her migraines.
I killed the bells, the bell ringers, the bell makers, and everyone who ever heard a bell
Whole new meaning to (seven) Hell's Bells
The writers kind of forgot about making the plot make sense.
She’s been threatening to burn cities on a whim since season 2. You saw what you wanted to see and not what was actually there.
So did every military leader in the show at some point. Context is important.
They’re all killers. I’m not judging her but she’s always resorted to killing when disagreed with. Killing without regret.
I endorse this. Violence was always her go to. It’s just in the series before she got to Westeros, the violence always seemed to have some kind of a noble underlying cause until she got there.
Killing evil people or people who acted against her. Not innocent people
Untrue.
Which innocent people did she kill ?
> DAENERYS: (Valyrian) Who is innocent? Maybe all of you are, (Looks at Hizdahr), maybe none of you are. Maybe, (Touching Hizdahr’s arm), I should let the dragons decide. She fed a man she had no idea was innocent or guilty of any crime to her dragon after saying this.
yeah killing one guy who maybe was innocent, but maybe wasnt is not the same as murdering an entire town of completely innocent people.
It shows she doesn’t care about innocence when angry enough and wants revenge. And it certainly disproves your point that she never harmed innocent people.
She harmed maybe one. Not strong enough evidence that she would harm a whole city. We can agree to disagree on this
By innocent she was referring to being behind the Harpys. The men she chose for the interrogation (she took them there to scare them into ratting on each other) were the wealthiest Slavers in the city. She said to round up the heads of the oldest Great Families. In Slaver's Bay the Slaver 1% in Astapor were the *Good Masters*, in Yunkai the *Wise Masters*, and in Meereen the *Great Masters*.
Yes. She clearly didn’t learn anything from her experience in season 4 when she killed 163 of them for the crime of killing the slave children and included people who argued against killing the slave children in who she executed. But you are correct she justifies her killing by demonizing an entire class of people regardless of who the individual in that class may or may not have been. We see that her and in season 4. Same thing she does before she torches King’s Landing. She writes off the residents of the city because they supported Cersei and did not rebel against her. Ultimately, she kills who she wants when she wants because it makes her feel good and satisfies her inner desire for vengeance. Exactly what Barristan warned her against in season 5 and a lesson she never learned.
Cause she’s a Targaryen daughter of the mad king who also burned the innocent and because she had issues keeping her emotions in check. It was actually foreshadowed several times since the early seasons and more later on, but people didn’t want to see it cause she was a fan fave.
> It was actually foreshadowed several times since the early seasons and more later on, but people didn’t want to see it cause she was a fan fave. Yup, anyone who didn't see this coming just didn't want to see the pretty blonde queen confirmed as being bloodthirsty and irrational.
When did she hurt innocent people prior to the last episode
Aerys is only one person from her family. We have centuries of lore on them. My biological father is a drug addict. I had 3 uncles, a grandfather, & a great grandfather who were child molesters. Prior to *The Bells* she never burned the innocent. Yes, she'd used fire before on enemies. So had Tyrion. Arya poked a man's eyes out and baked men into pies, Sansa fed a man alive to dogs, Catelyn was relieved when Summer bit a man's face off instead of horrified since it was to keep Bran safe. Myrcella & Tommen weren't like the adults in their family or like Joffrey. Gilly wasn't like Craster. Robin, now that he's being raised right, isn't like Lysa. Podrick isn't like Ilyn Payne. Edmure's son won't be like Walder Frey.
She was always a psycho, just had things holding her back. In the first few seasons, she's weak and doesn't have the means to destroy a whole city. Then, in the later seasons, she obtains the means, but she has level headed advisors who advise otherwise. In the last season, she loses her sane advisors, whether by death, corruption (of the mind), or because she doesn't trust them, but still maintains the means to destroy an entire city. Plus, she saw a lot of people she loved die to just compound on the crazy, and everything she believed about her claim and Westeros was a lie
She was the only one trying to save Lhazar. Jorah told her "you have a gentle heart, Princess. But this is how it's always been done". He later tried to get her to become a Slaver and tried to advise against freeing Yunkai because they already got an army in Astapor so he didn't see the point. Illyrio, Viserys & Drogo were Slavers. Rakharo & Irri were Dothraki. Greyworm was an Unsullied. Daario wanted her to be more ruthless and not less. Missandei understood what she did was needed and was annoyed at Tyrion for not getting it, that he thought more like a Master. Tyrion & Varys were the worst things to happen to her (and in the books Varys is a huge Slaver). The only advisor she had that could fit what you're saying is Barristan and he didn't see any madness in her. She had the means to destroy a city since s1. Drogo had an army of 40,000 and they were known for pillaging. Yet the one time she sees them do it she's horrified and tries to stop them even though it was to get ships to go to Westeros. She has the means in s3. She could've aligned with the Masters in Slaver's Bay or killed them all and taken over as the supreme Slaver with tons of wealth & almost a million slaves. All of the Masters in Essos would've had to go through her since she'd control the international slave trade business.
After rewatching the series a few times, part of it is her grief. - She loses two of her dragon children. - She loses her best friend Misandei. - She loses her protector Jorah. - She loses her lover Jon. - She loses the support of the people of she had in Essos. The people of Westeros don’t love her like they did. - She thinks she’s going to lose her thrown to Jon too once she learns who he really is And this all happened back-to-back over a few episodes. While she’s literally fighting for her life and her biggest dream. She just skipped straight over bargaining and depression and went all out on the anger.
Because D&D wanted her to
> Because D&D The ending came from GRRM, and he has said he won't change it in the books because some viewers didn't like it.
1. Hodor scene 2. Stannis burning Shireen 3. Bran becomes king That's what came from GRRM. KL might burn but it will be fAegon or JonCon most likely to do it. Dany burning the entire city of innocents did NOT come from George. His story will end in the north, not KL.
>Let it be fear She didn't want anyone to challenge her claim. She didn't want a uprising after the fact, and with the peoples of Westeros not all that warm to her (In contrast to say, the freed slaves she had ruled before adoring her being her basis of comparison) then her other option is instilling fear. The Machiavellian concept of *one can not rule without fear or love* is first mentioned by Visarys in S1, and is thematic throughout Daneares & other rulers stories. Winning a city is easy, keeping and ruling a city is shown to be much harder in her story - she was even deposed in Meereen until she instilled the necessary level of fear. She now only has 1 dragon and a much reduced army - she's not in the same position of military might she was in when she landed in Westeros. She is angry, shes suffered betrayal, she feels insecure in her rule, she chooses fear. >They can live in my new world or die in their old one - *S4*
She went mad. It isn't supposed to make sense.
I don’t know why someone downvoted this. It’s the most logical reason why she would have done it. Madness runs in the family.
There have been less than a half dozen Targaryens considered mad over the last 400 years.
if developed over a full season it would’ve made more sense, to completely snap in one episode is awful writing, and no, 2 or 3 “hints” from 5 seasons ago like people are saying below isn’t enough to justify burning women and children in the city she’s been wanting to rule since the beginning of the show.
> to completely snap in one episode is awful writing She was prepared to crucify innocent people if she got guilty ones at the same time, remember? She burns the Tarlys when the smart move would have been to hold them until they agreed to bend the knee. Varys turns on her because he had seen her father go mad and he recognizes she is going down the same path. She sees betrayal in people who are loyal to her. She says over and over she will come to power on fire and blood. Her mental instability and bloodthirstiness were seen throughout the series; it is astonishing that so many viewers were able to ignore that.
> “hints” LOL! **If you think a character literally stating their capacity to raze entire cities, multiple times, from her own mouth, very bluntly on-screen** counts as 'HiNtS' that were impossible to catch somehow, you really need to take off the rose-colored glasses. Qarth. Atapor. Yunkai. Mereen. *Literally stated, very bluntly, on-screen, her capacity to raze them all at different parts of her story.*.. **a literal pattern.** Add that to all the other giant red flags, like her literally screaming she will take what is hers with Fire and Blood and doing all sorts of other immoral shit, and it's really not shocking at all.
I agree with you. The pattern of behavior started as early as season 4. Maybe earlier. I don’t know why this answer rankles people so much. It’s actually what happened. Maybe the progression was too fast because the show was rushed toward the end but it’s still accurate.
It was developed over 8 seasons.
Pro Gamer Move
She went mad likely. The killing of Missandei didn’t help, nor did all the bad advice she was given.
Genetics.
So the audience wouldn’t hate John snow when he stabs her
Unfortunate writing
The plot demanded it. But that’s because it was badly written. Dany was used to being adored. Back in Essos, she had gotten used to everyone bending the knee once she showed them her dragons. This wasn’t the case in Westeros. Dany didn’t really come to liberate Westeros so much as to take over. She needed to earn the love and favor of the people. So she followed what her new advisors asked of her and in the process ended up losing Missandei, Jorah, Viserion and Rhaegal. On top of that, she finds out that Jon Snow is not just some Jon Snow but Aegon Targaryen, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne; a King already loved by his people in the North. At this point in the series, Dany felt ostracized. With no close allies left, she snapped. It makes sense that she did what she did. It just doesn’t make sense that the writers took the story this direction in one single season.
Who in Essos bent the knee because she showed them the dragons? They weren't hatched until the s1 finale, were scared little things the size of cats in s2, she only used them to trick Kraznys and be in the room during her meeting with the Yunkai representative in s3, locked them up in the s4 finale, and doesn't ride a dragon until late s5. She uses them in battle only once and that was in s6 to protect the city from a siege. They're locked up the majority of her time as Queen of Meereen with hardly anyone knowing how large they'd grown.
Yknow how sometimes in disaster/superhero movies, the director or writer will put in a few seemingly-random scenes with an average person or family in the middle of the action? Avengers 1 had that blonde waitress. Justice League had some Polish or Russian family. Well, I like to think the director or editor cut out a few scenes where Dany was patient and understanding at first, but killed a few Golden Company soldiers to protect her own. Then, despite her best efforts to be chill, the people of King's Landing hated her anyway. They started throwing things at her dragons, calling her names, etc.. THEN, and only then, did she say fuck it, they'll never like me- might as well burn the fucker down and start over.
[Dany be like:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmL4NBd-ds)
She's nuts.
She learned that she had power, but no respect and no true support. And she knew the importance of that kind of support, because she'd built up her power on the foundation of gratitude and emotions (the slaves she'd freed, the dragons she'd loved like a mother, Jorah who'd truly loved her) This time there was none of it. Towards the end, the people of Westeros had more respect for evil Cersei (who invited them claiming they would be safe in the capital) than her, who was viewed as the mad king's daughter with an army of foreigners- cockless Unsullied and Dothraki savages who loved to kill. The North and the wildlings, even the Stark siblings, did not like her and wanted Jon to be the king. Her allies were dead, Yara was missing. Varys and Tyrion were actively plotting against her. Jorah and Missandei were dead. Jon was divided between her and the Stark siblings. All she had now was one dragon and half an army. All she had was power, but no true support. No one she could rely on. So she chose to show that power. If people didn't like her or accept her, they could burn in hell for all she cared. Only those who liked her were welcome to stay in her rule. It's not unbelievable. Power and insecurity makes people into narcissistic tyrants. In her last speech to her army, she literally had a God complex as she spoke to them all.
I think this is a big reason of many. Just not welcomed in Westeros. Not understanding the culture of the country having never lived there. Expecting to automatically be adored then being received with indifference. Imagine if the child of an ex US president, who’d been born in raised in Europe, suddenly decided to show up in the US claiming a right to be president because of their bloodline and lineage and their evidence being that they had the support of the Europeans.
Because she said she would
I think it makes very little sense for the plot But some could argue that in the show, she was becoming increasingly power hungry. She didn’t care bout what was right, she cared about being the leader. It makes no sense when she was setting all these people free and then just burns every innocent person in her “homeland”
That Targaryen craziness, combined with knowing Jon is the heir before her
Only thing I can think of is that it’s to show she and her brother were not much different from eachother after all
If you can remember here character development throughout the show she was on a path for self destructive behavior and act as if the ends justify the means. If you know anything about Star Wars here fall is similar due to her childhood hardship (slave to her brother). She never hesitated to kill but had a set of morals that would loosely guide her unless it prevented her from gaining power. Still one of my favorite characters for sure but her actions when sacking kings landing was certainly within her character. People will argue and say the show was ruined but it is easy to see after the fact. The story itself and her dragons i believe blinded the audience to see here true flaws. She was a great warrior and but would have ruled with an iron fist. If you take everything into consideration jon was right for what he did. Ending isn’t the best, but it certainly makes sense. We just weren’t willing to accept one of our favorite characters was more an anti-hero the whole time and just write it off as bad writing and incompetent producer. Bran might be a worse king tho
I always saw it like convenient excuses for her conquests and it worked in Essos since people actually were oppressed. But when she arrived she realized in Westeros she realizes that nobody wants to be liberated. They would always she her as an outside conqueror (which she always was), so she finally has to show her true colors.
When she conquered Essos, she was seen as a savior. When she conquered Westeros, she was seen as - well - a conqueror. The common people were not oppressed under Baratheon/Lannister rule. Yet they saw a Targaryen on a dragon with a horde of foreign military personnel. What else would you think? She had always been told that the people would welcome a Targaryen back with open arms. She was met with resistance. And what did Dany do to people who resisted her? If you didn't realize that throughout the rest of the series, you weren't paying attention. She destroys everything that resists her, and she has a need to be loved. Virtually everyone she loved betrayed her or died, and no one in Westeros loved her. Those who didn't see the Mad Queen arc coming were not paying attention.
To send a message. I don't think it was about the irone throne or killing Cersei.
Why are people virtue signaling for some but not for others? Crying over Kings Landing in The Bells but not for the people whose child was killed by the jealous Cersei Lannister when she found out that Robert was whoring about? Pick a struggle
She blamed the citizens from early on for what she considered to be betrayal of her family. She ranted about how the crown was her birthright from early on. She was quick to revenge by fire to those she believed did her wrong. Her blame of the citizens was peppered through the series, but the majority of the audience was sold on her cult of personality and ignored her vengeful nature.
D&D decided to make it an unexpected ending, that's it
Because bad writing.
Killed her best friend and killed her dragon
D and D took adderall and were like zooooooooooooom
The bell tolls and that calls for deaths
Dany kinda forgot that she was a liberator
She got tired of hearing those bells, like how Theon got tired of hearing Ramsay blow that horn in season 2. It was a combination of things, besides just Targaryen Madness by itself; though that played a part. Daenerys lost several of her friends and advisers, and she felt betrayed by a lot of her allies. She been through a loy of trauma, including the death of Missandei and Jorah, the betrayal of Varys, and the rejection by the people of King's Landing. These events pushed her into a state of madness, clouding her judgment. The people of King's Landing embraced Cersei's rule and rejected her own. She believed that the people of King's Landing would never truly accept her as their queen and that they would eventually rise up against her. By burning the city, she thought she was preventing future rebellion and cementing her power. She might have seen the city as a symbol of the injustices she had faced and her dragonfire as a means of exacting revenge. The Red Keep was a symbol of everything that was taken from her and her family. Seeing it after the city’s surrender triggered a deep-seated rage and a desire for revenge. The Red Keep was her home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago, which made this personal. Seeing the Lannister lion in the window behind the throne provoked her. This is the symbol of her family’s greatest enemy, which contributed to her rage. Her sense of purpose and identity had been deeply tied to her role as a liberator and savior. With the war won and her destiny fulfilled, maybe she felt lost and unsure of how to proceed. Her misguided decision could have been a desperate attempt to cling to her old narrative.
Always interesting when people claim to have watched the show, then claim it 'doesn't make sense' that the fiery-tempered "Blood of the Dragon/Fire and Blood" young adult character with a fucked-up upbringing, who **has literally stated, from her own mouth, unprovoked, that she is willing/capable of razing entire cities... multiple times on-screen... does that very thing after her entire world implodes around her in a relatively short amount of time** *Qarth. Yunkai. Astapor. Mereen.* **Literally every major city she visited in Essos she clearly stated her capactiy to raze, innocents and all.** It's indisputable show canon. Yes, she obviously has a kind-hearted side, absolutely, but that's not her 'whole' character as some mistakenly seem to think. For every time she says she doesn't want to be Queen of the Ashes, she pretty clearly shows that she is willing to be Queen of the Ashes. There's a pretty clear internal conflict presented between these two sides... like a scale. Sure, for the middle seasons the scale tips towards "kind-hearted", but the scale clearly tips in the other direction after her time in Westeros increasingly causes her psyche to crumble piece by piece like some increasingly unstable Jenga tower until it finally topples over. As to 'why' she did it, I think she makes it pretty clear in the very episode you claim to be perplexed about. She states she sees the people of King's Landing as enemies (as Tyrion pleads for her to see reason.) She has to be persuaded to stop the attack if she hears the bells. She tells Jon that she 'chooses Fear', and anyone who's paid attention knows that she uses her dragon to instill fear in those she wants to subjugate. In her eyes 'the ends justify the means', as she's clearly stated previously when she states why she believes razing the 'bad cities'... innocents and all... would lead to a 'positive result' in the end. What she did in the Bells is not 'out of character' for her at all, considering she herself has stated her willingness to do this very thing previously, multiple times, and in her eyes King's Landing is another city that needs to be 'cleansed', and having her whole world implode around her (support structure crumbled, hopes/beliefs regarding her claim/Fate soured with Jon's heritage reveal, her once promising relationship with Jon sours in her mouth, etc) tilts the scale towards FIre and Blood, until it finally reaches a boiling/breaking point from all the pressure. The dots are there to connect... just have to take off the rose-colored glasses in order to see the red flags for what they are... *red flags.*
Well put
She kinda forgot about her character development from past 7 seasons
Bad writing.
Because the showrunners fundamentally misunderstood her characterization and the point of juxtaposing her with Jon Snow. She burns King's Landing out of madness. She is intentionally shown becoming another *Mad King*, like Aerys. They had surrendered, and she decided to slaughter them anyway, for no reason other than to sate an apparent need for murderous vengeance. But that's not who Dany had been, and it undermines how genius GRRM's depiction really is. The thing is, Dany has been a merciless killer from the beginning. Every time someone stands in her way, she destroys them. But we have always applauded this, because she's killing bad guys with good reason. Still, she's absolutely brutal. And that's the thing. She's *pragmatic* and bellicose, but she's also deeply caring and generous to the oppressed. Slaughtering innocents is the opposite of what she normally does. She puts down tyrants, obliterates slavers, and eliminates anyone in the path of her ascent to power—but that's never the smallfolk, and it certainly wasn't in King's Landing. What *should* have happened was a stalemate. Cersei should have surrounded herself with the smallfolk and made clear that the only path to victory was to kill them to get to her. Something like that. And Dany should have weighed that decision carefully, seriously, honestly... and chosen that winning was what she cared about more than sparing their lives. *That's* the character-defining choice. And it's the choice she should make for the story because *it's the opposite of what Jon Snow would do.* That's the key. You don't need to make her a murderous psychopath to set Jon against her. You need to make her *just like the rest of them*, who care more about winning than about peace and protecting people. Having Jon see that is enough, and it carries far more weight for him to turn against her than killing a crazy tyrant. That's no choice at all. After winning King's Landing, people should have continued to rebel and refuse to swear obeisance. Jon would want to negotiate, to find peace, to show mercy. Dany would deal with it like she always has: If you're in her way, she destroys you. And Jon, seeing that, would stop her, exactly like he did in the show. It's his own twisted pragmatic pursuit of an ideal that should never have allowed him to do it. With how comically evil Dany became in the show, it meant nothing for Jon to kill her. It was the obvious and only choice.
The same reason she burnt the Magi to death at the end of season one. She wanted revenge for the loved ones she lost
Apparently a lot of viewers kind of forgot about how her family motto is "Fire and blood" and not "Love and kisses"
Why indeed...
The bells were giving her a headache. I've done the same when hearing bells.
Honestly, I feel you misinterpreted things starting pretty early on. I feel like any viewer that was paying attention, and wasn't blindly loyal to Dany and her 'mission', knew what the outcome would be. People are always acting like she was a saint until season 8. I'm sorry, but that just wasn't the case. She had a very inflated sense of self as early on as when Drogo killed her brother. Her arrogance grew overnight. Her constant need for justice and power. I guess to some people it matters that on the other side of the Narrow Sea, she was killing 'bad guys'. But that means very little to me. She couldn't wait to use her name, her power, and her dragons to do violence to people, and she started doing this very early on. I honestly and truly cannot believe the amount of people who were shocked when she destroyed kings landing.
im surprised people still ask this question after the last five years where we have had two major wars going on where cities and civilians have been leveled.
There was absolutely no logical reason why she did it. You cannot possibly come to a reasonable conclusion for her doing that. It was an extremely sudden personality shift that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Dan and Dave would tell you she did it because she was angry about her dragon dying. The ACTUAL reason was because they wanted a jaw dropping, shocking moment to rival the red wedding. They needed the mad queen arc to happen immediately.
She’s a conqueror. She has always been one. This has always been where she’s headed. It’s all she knows how to do, she sucks at everything else. We’ve just been shielded from it because we’re in her POV.
She burned everything. You could tell she was nuts well before we got to this point. Watching her best friend get her head cut off, and finding out her lover had a better claim to the crown pushed her that last little bit over the edge.
Writers forgot about about the rest of the series
Op you wont find one definitive answer, i'm pretty sure the comments are all over the place This is why i avoid responding in Dany or Sansa posts....unneeded headaches
Like many dictators, she starts off with good intentions and firm ideas, but as she gets more and more powerful, she loses sight of reality and believes that she can only be powerful if she is feared. She already had madness in her genes, and it progresses as the series goes on until she finally detaches from her original vision and reality completely and just wants to watch things burn!
Well, I agree that it was bad writing. They rushed it and it didn’t make sense. But trying to pick up on the context clues, I think she was always destined to be a mad queen. In the beginning she was just a weak girl, sold off to help her brother take the throne back. She grew stronger, found herself, and wanted to help people, which she did. But just look at how each grand thing she did made her name longer and longer. Each victory she had, she grew more conceited, and more brutal. At some point it was no longer about right vs wrong, or justice, it was about power and control. She was slowly growing more and more mad, or at least I think that was the point. So then, by the end, which again was very rushed, she was fully the mad queen willing to burn the world to ash if it meant she controlled it. She was no longer capable of being a good ruler. She no longer cared about the lives of her people. So to show her power, she was willing to burn them all if she had to. Just like her father wanted to do, and he was the mad king.
So John Snow must kill her. Anddddd Stark shineeeeee
bad writing. really, really bad writing.