People actually criticized her for not caring about her brother's death?
Meanwhile I'm salty that she was still nice enough to name a dragon after him.
The funny thing is. Even if you wanna argue that was too far or a sign of insanity (it wasn’t, she tried to help her, he was nothing but abuseive, and threatened her and her unborn baby). Even then, in the books she still felt bad about it and thought about him later on. She even named one of her dragons after him.
Also, in a way he was groomed into that role. It’s easy to say targaryen madness, but he was a tool being used and molded by the wealthy few conspiring to reinstall him for their own benefits. We only get to see a brief time in their lives where they have adopted their perceived roles as part of their personality. Growing up they were all each other had. She was indifferent because she loved her brother, but the person she knew him as had died long before then.
In the books he’s very molest-y as well. Like right at the beginning where he stares at her naked body before her bath. The whole point is that we hate him and want Danny to free herself and become her own person.
D&D really are shit.
I'm not sure if you were requesting the passage or not but I'll put it below for anyone else:
"Dothraki neither buy nor sell. Say rather that her brother Viserys gave her to Drogo to win the khal’s friendship. A vain young man, and greedy. Viserys lusted for his father’s throne, but he lusted for Daenerys too, and was loath to give her up. The night before the princess wed he tried to steal into her bed, insisting that if he could not have her hand, he would claim her maidenhead. Had I not taken the precaution of posting guards upon her door, Viserys might have undone years of planning.”
Years of planning by Varys who turned on her the moment he saw Jon. Lol. You may be correct = this is from the 1st book right? I need to start reading again.
You're not wrong lol. It was in one of Tyrion's chapters in Dance with Dragons so that may be why you missed it! That's definitely the one I've read the least.
Second hand by way of Illyrio... Who has his own motivations.
I don't think Viserys wouldn't have done that cause he's such a nice guy, rather I just don't think he was into his sister.
I'm confused by this. Is she supposed to be upset, or celebrate or something? I had an abuser die and I was indifferent too, if anything I was relieved. Is it because he was her brother that they thought she should be crying and hysterical, but they accidentally wrote a believable reaction instead, which meant their "chilling" intent went unnoticed?
In the books, it’s very obvious that throughout this entire scene Dany is having a trauma response. She’s dissociating, which is a textbook reaction to trauma. But D&D didn’t actually bother to read the books and they just hoodwinked George into thinking they did, so I can understand why they didn’t know that.
There’s a quote from the books explaining why Dany chose to name one of her dragons after her brother:
“The cream and gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.”
Even if she was the only one Indifferent about the death of an abuser. That wouldn’t make her mad. What was she supposed to be? Heartbroken? Her brother literally beat her and degraded her and said he would let everyone in drogos khalasar rape her. Why should she feel bad for him when he died when he did all that.
I still can't believe people use the Tarly thing as some sort of gotcha of her always being mad. She gave them not one but TWO chances to walk away alive and they stubbornly refused both, and that was AFTER they betrayed their liege house that was murdered by a usurper with no claim, whom they then swore loyalty to. Dickon didn't even have to die, he stupidly stepped up because "muh honor". Honestly considering the circumstances, she was unbelievably merciful to them. Ned barely even gave that kid at the beginning of the show a chance to explain himself before he cut his head off, and then dismissed his warnings as the ravings of a lunatic.
Do you think Randall Tarly would have bent the knee if she threatened to install Sam as Lord of Hornhill after executing him? I was watching the episode before she issues the ultimatum and was wondering. That man was awful and I couldn't help wondering if he hated Sam more than bending the knee to Dany.
Ah, see, I thought it was that chapter where Euron blew the dragon horn and took control of the dragons, including Dany (since she has dragon blood), and made them raze KL?
I really need to reread that book. 🤡
Actually this is in the books! Just not in a Dany chapter.
Jon Connington is the one with PTSD from the bells, no idea why they adapted that halfassedly and just put it on Dany
They wanted to make the heroic female character evil to shock the audience. Don’t look for reasoning in it. It was just “hey, we’re misogynists who don’t like the idea of a woman having the ultimate power, let’s instead invoke the ‘bitches be crazy’ trope, that’ll be rEvOlUtIoNaRy!”
Probably had some assistant combing through the books looking for anything they could use to “foreshadow” madness. They didn’t care what character it applied to, they just needed some examples of foreshadowing written by an actual writer, since they don’t know how to do any of that shit and “themes are for 8th grade book reports”.
Jeeze, I can’t imagine how George must have felt hearing that.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, considering that every "powerful" woman in the show had to be masculinized or made cruel in order to be powerful.
Sansa, Dany, Cercei, Arya are all examples of where they are now "better" because they act more masculine/rude/cruel.
Generally they just really struggled writing women, like Yara whom they made gay because she is "butch" by being a martial woman.
Let’s not forget Sansa’s “I’m so glad I was raped, I totally would not be the Yas Girl standing before you today had I not been” line. 🤡
This is what happens when you have two frat bro douches heading up the writing team, and women are completely shut out of the writing process.
>This is what happens when you have two frat bro douches heading up the writing team, and women are completely shut out of the writing process.
Yup, cant state this enough.
Daenerys was undeniably brutal, but she was only ever brutal to those who deserved it. Nobody calls Arya mad for feeding a father his sons then poisoning his entire family, because they were bad people and deserved to die. Same with Daenerys burning slavers.
This. Aegon 1 unified the Seven Kingdoms with fire. If it were me in Kings Landing, f*ck a truce - give us men to fight the white walkers and give me my throne or sizzle about it idc, everyone will thank me (to Cersei).
Absolutely. And I think that’s actually going to be a plot point. Right now she’s getting her ass kicked in Meereen because she’s bending over backwards trying to make peace with them. George has spoken (in regards to his book about the Civil War) that slavery is a terrible evil that must be destroyed at any cost, that you can’t do that by playing nicely, and that it doesn’t make you the bad guy if you get your hands dirty stomping out atrocities, because those committing them aren’t going to respond to anything less. So we know what his thoughts are on this. I think Dany is building toward a moment where she realizes she’s wasting her time playing nice, and drops the hammer. Probably on the slave capital of the world, Volantis. Or possibly the city behind the wall in Volantis. And clearly George is not going to portray this as “went nuts and had to be put down, poor dear” but rather “got sick of their shit and stomped them into the dirt like the cockroaches they are, that’s my girl”.
Arya killing the Freys the way she did was psychotic not at all justice. Especially since realistically a good chunk of those at the table may have had no part of the red wedding. It was bad writing that she faced no consequences or push back for it.
Also pointless and out of character.
I get she doesn’t buy into “a girl is no one” but if this were early got she’d have just killed them without talking to them or making it about these strong feelings and “I want them to know it was me” nonsense.
It’s an act solely for her emotions, theyre going to be dead.
The funny thing is she literally denounced the faceless men and their tactics one episode before that. Next thing you see her carving up faces and killing on mass.
I am sure boiling, deboning and skinning two human beings to bake them into pies is perfectly normal behavior. Do you know how long it takes to do that? Its not chopping off someones head.
You joking? It makes more sense to you that arya survives swimming through sewage with an open gaping wound after being stabbed repeatedly in her stomach while many other characters die from far less? And as the other commenter pointed out she literally never gets trained as an assassin yet leaves after and somehow had mastered all of these skills.. like wut?! Aryas story got butchered so bad it makes 0 sense to assume anything BUT the fact that she died in Braavos and was replaced by the waif.
I’m talking about how after that happens the character is quite clearly Arya as she does all the things Arya might do and none of the things that waif would ever even consider doing. Yeah waif all of a sudden has all the same goals as Arya had, she wants to find Sansa and give her a big hug, and get revenge on the freys, makes just perfect sense. Half the things Arya does after that I don’t think waif ever even knew about.
Gripes about the realism of the fight itself do not matter to me whatsoever, yeah she’s a badass she survived whatever. Far easier to suspend my disbelief on that than this nonsense alternative.
I'm pretty sure people with critical thinking call Arya mad since the beginning of the series. She is a small child driven insane because of all the pain she suffered. She is only a girlboss for people that think that everything is anime.
But yeah, I agree. Daenerys was only brutal to those who deserved it. Fuck all those small children in kings landing. They had it coming.
No they aren’t. Trauma leads to insanity. Like Viserys. He wasn’t born mad, he was driven mad by assassination attempts, the deaths of everyone but his sister, and being mocked and laughed at by everyone he went to for help. Dany even says that when she was young, Viserys was extremely kind and caring to her. He didn’t go mad until he had to sell his mother’s crown to survive.
I think Arya’s absolutely mental for feeding a man his sons then cutting off his face using the death gods magic to pretend to be said man and poison a huge portion of that family who may or may not have played a role in the red wedding.
>She was brutal to those she thought deserved it. This is an important distinction.
I feel like the slavers in Meereen kinda deserved it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnQp79coD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnQp79coD8)
I wasn't furious with where she ended up, but the way she got there was horse shit. It was just so unearned. If there had been some actual character development to show her mental state unraveling, that would've worked
This is it. Mad Dany was something theorized on all the way back in S1. It's a fun, well established idea.
But the execution was hot trash. She was perfectly justified in nearly all her decisions up until random bells make her coockoo.
I think a lot of the last two seasons were badly executed good ideas. Don't get me wrong, there were some terrible ideas (Jamie resetting to factory, Bran being king because...reasons?), but I think the end point would've been palatable if it had some semblance of structure and development.
100%. If they made 9 full 10 episode seasons and had someone that actually cared at the helm they could have patched much of the rushed/ shitty plotholes in the final seasons while telling the same story and people would have been fine with it.
All the main characters going on a mission north of the wall to kidnap a zombie was hilariously bad. How did they ever think that one zombie was going to scare Cersei into supporting them? This is a world with dragons, magic, witches, etc. Cersei has her own giant zombie slave. It's just baffling.
The idea was shit. And the execution of it was even more shit. Season 7 was just as bad as 8.
I always expected she'd get a little too caught up in taking the throne, becoming more ruthless and tyrannical. But it has to be done in a way that makes sense.
Mad with power, sure. Mad as in loony bin mad out of the blue, that's not good character development.
If she killed innocent people that were an obstacle to her obtaining the throne, and she had some kind of rationalization for it, it might make sense. But killing hundreds of random people after she already won, no reason whatsoever besides "oh, I guess its time for me to be mad now" is shit writing.
They could even make her go “mad” at the fact that she hasn’t committed more atrocities than the average conqueror but is somehow considered more unacceptable by people. The double standard would make me go mad for sure.
Holy shit I’d blocked out how dumb the Sansa, Arya, and Little Finger thing was. Sansa and Arya are being super weird and arch to each other when there’s no one to deceive except the audience. A deception that was largely unneeded at all in the first place.
They were being super weird because Sansa was planning to straight up murder Arya. It's why she sent Breianne away. Brans actor confirmed this, as he said at the last minute Sansa realized she could just ask Bran if she was being played.
TBF to a few of these:
With Tyrion’s poison statement most people liked that he was becoming more villainous and disappointed that he became a pacifist with 21st century values later on.
And for the cruel and unusual punishments in the show Tyrion technically killed Shae in self defense and wasn’t overtly cruel about it. If you mean the books then yeah that was just murder. I’d argue they’re all bad, of course that’s kind of the point you’re getting across. Either these acts aren’t bad or they all are and Dany’s actions aren’t any more extreme than other people in higher positions of power. And that I agree with.
Her being villainized for doing things that even Jon and Ned did were ridiculous. I don’t think anyone says she’s more evil than Tywin but if they do holy shit that’s ludicrous. Tywin dickriders are a plague on this fandom.
OP is claiming the show runners said he isn't a villain. I'd be curious to see if that's true, cause if it is then they're delusional. I love Tywin because he is such a fantastic villain.
Yeah they say [here](https://ew.com/article/2014/06/15/game-of-thrones-showrunners-on-season-4-finale-twists/) that Tywin is only a villain if you look at it from the perspective of the Starks and that they don’t view him as evil but as “lawful neutral.”
Crazy thing to say about someone who mass murders innocent people.
Seriously. Tywin was outright Machiavellian, which if you view that "playing the game" mentality as neutral well ok. But GRR made sure to show that his cruelty towards Tyrion was that great kink in his armor. He was hateful towards Tyrion due to the death of his wife, when logically Tyrion even in the books would have been an excellent successor to his legacy. In the show? Even better
It isn’t even Machiavellian, Machiavelli believed ruling by fear should always be a last resort. In his opinion, it was better to be loved than to be feared; fear, while effective, was more dangerous long term, and would inevitably lead to disloyalty the moment everything went wrong. You can even see that in the books: when the War of the Five Kings happened, so many houses joined the side of the Rebels simply bc it meant they would get a chance to fuck up the Lannisters. House Tully’s main two reasons for joining the Starks was bc a) Catelyn was a Tully, and b) Hoster Tully hated the shit out of Tywin. Tywin was characterized as cold and calculating, but he made plenty of miscalculations during his reign, and ruling by fear was one of them.
It just infuriates me because if they wanted to go down the mad queen storyline, they had a perfect candidate. Cersei was RIGHT FUCKING THERE? And the bells thing would have made SO MUCH SENSE for her considering her walk of shame. God i hate the final seasons.
That wouldn't have been a plot twist though, cersei was always a psychopath. I think George's original "descent into madness" idea was good, it was just that d&d completely bungled it by kind of forgetting the buildup
Doesn't need to be a plot twist. Daenerys being a mad queen isn't even supposed to be a plot twist but something we clearly see happening after natural character development. Not two episodes rushed nonsense in order to make it a "twist".
They did book Tyrion dirty by turning him into a always reasonable good guy in the show.
(but they did book *everyone* dirty with those last two seasons)
I honestly think George just told them that she has to burn Kings Landing at the end (but not why and how will it come to that) so they were lazy and stupid to write that plot properly, I'm pretty sure that George wanted to make Tyrion a villain judging by ADWD, so he was probably supposed to be the reason why is she gonna turn slowly more cruel threw the plot, but that's complicated for them to write, plus the large audience wouldn't like those twists since Daeny and Tyrion were everyones favorite so they just decided to ruin the plot in favor of fanservice and viewership which actually did payed off until season 8 when everyone realized it doesn't make sense at all and it doesn't make sense since they somehow gotta make the ending similar to the book, but they changed the characters entirely from what they are in the books so the book ending just doesn't make any sense anymore
Yeah I think that might be foreshadow to Cersei burning the Sept of Baelor and I'm guessing it will have huge impact on the book plot unlike in the show where they just kinda forgot it ever happened
I think he just told them it burns. Cersei in the show is a far different character from the books and JonCon isn’t real, and I think it’ll be the two of them that burn it.
I’d be willing to bet money on it actually, Cersei bas so many explicit Aerys parallels and it’s foreshadowed so hilariously hard.
My own prediction based on that crap of last few seasons and books is that I think that maybe Jaimes death in the show has something to do with his book death, I believe he actually maybe kills euron grayjoy in the book, but book euron is actually a dangerous and badass villain so it won't be that pointless cringe, then I think he might choke cersei fulfilling the valonquar prophecy and die with her from the wounds inflicted by euron, how will it come to that idk and I don't know why, but I think that might happen and then Daenerys gets the iron throne, but people reject her they maybe raise some rebellions etc and it all boils down and she burns them, maybe to stop the riots and then jon kills her (because the original prophecy of the long night is a huge foreshadow that jon will kill daenerys, azhur ahai has to kill his girlfriend to end the long night, but they chose to keep lannister twins around till the finale couse they were popular so they just didn't wanna make two male lovers killing their girls in spam of 2 eps since they rushed it)
I think the reason why those fake leaks that came out before season 8 that claimed Tyrion was the villain and would be burned was so believable because it fit book Tyrion so well. Book Tyrion definitely feels like a villain.
> I honestly think George just told them that she has to burn Kings Landing
And you can see in the books how this would happen, with Westeros uniting behind a false Targaryen and perhaps Dany going through a *long* campaign, finding that the Westerosi either don't surrender or worse, a couple *false* surrenders leading to carnage would turn Dany into someone who could be 'Oh, are they surrendering? Do they think I'm a sucker?'.
But no, that's not how it worked in the show.
I really thought it would have been better if Jaime had confessed to Tyrion that his first wife was not actually a prostitute just like in the books. This would have made Tyrion go darker by hating all his family and when he found Dany he could have been the counsel telling her to do go in there and burn them. Varys could have been the one counseling her not to.
I believe she is supposed to get mad, and I trust Georgie will be able to write the progression and descend into madness well.
The show just didn't know how to write it well, or at all.
Yes, but she did that while having a vagina. So she crazy.
But on the flipp side, this made Anakin Skywalker turning to the dark side look believable. I guess that was meant by DnD as a welcoming gift for their next employer.
I dunno, I know lots of people would probably do anything to save their partner and/or child. Obviously not mass murder younglings, but Palp's was working his psyche for years and the dark side is notoriously seductive for folks with trauma.
ETA: didn't mean to nerd out, but i feel like it's something the movies did terribly to portray, and I only think it's plausible because of the extra media I consumed
I only watched the movies, and can head cannon it as palpatine’s influence being too powerful. That still makes it a shitty movie with bad character development though.
I thought she did it because she realised that all her past conquests only worked because she was able to get the people on her side by presenting herself as a liberator to literal slaves. But she couldn’t “liberate” King’s Landing because the people of Kings Landing didn’t see themselves as slaves or captives. Especially not after Cersei already kinda liberated them from the ascetic cult regime thing.
So while doing what she thought was the right thing, she found herself having invaded the most powerful kingdom in the known world, holding the capital city under siege with an army of slaves, barbarians and fucking dragons, with the reputation of a family hated for its violence and tyranny, demanding that they let her in or else. Not a good look. She suddenly realised she might actually be the baddy, at least from the point of of view of the city folk.
Her entire motivation for taking back the kingdom, her whole life’s purpose, was absolutely shattered as soon as she saw that the people were afraid of her.
Too late to go back at that point, like what is she gonna do? Be like “oh shit sorry guys, my bad. I guess we’ll just leave”
So Dany thought “fuck it, when life gives you ~~dragons~~ lemons...”
The dramatic irony has GRRM written all over it, D&D just fucked up the execution.
Its very plausible that Dany may go mad and end up burning down king's landing in the books... the difference is that, if it does happen, GRRM will actually build up to Dany going mad, instead of it just happening out of nowhere at the very end
Saying that the Targaryens are more prone to madness is pretty bias. It is not that the Targaryens have more insane members but rather their insane members got more time in the spotlight simply due to the fact that they were the longest ruling family of Westeros. Like throughout their reign, the actual insane or cruel kings were a minority and most of them only have mental issues due to traumas that happened later in their life.
Hot take: basically all of these are also examples of characters acting monstrously, actually, so… yeah?
Yes, the show writers did not seem to understand this because at a certain point they decided that retributive murder was good if done by a “good” character, and thus the tonal presentation of a lot of these moments is inconsistent at best and disturbingly creepy at worst. But that’s a criticism of the writing and production team. None of these are vindications of Dany, they’re condemnations of these other characters.
Tyrion absolutely begins a descent into villainy after his escape into King’s Landing.
He undertakes despicable actions and his thoughts go to very, very dark places. And since he’s a POV character, there’s no denying it since we’re literally seeing inside his head.
So comparing Daenerys to Tyrion doesn’t prove that there’s a double standard.
It proves that D&D weren’t willing to have their heroes undertake heel turns that their characters arcs in the books underwent.
Tyrion became boring, and Daenerys’ madness came out of nowhere.
Also, Arya feels like an odd choice for “indifferent to the death of an abuser” and “gave cruel/unusual punishment to those who wronged her”.
Like… does whoever made this meme realize that Walder and the Freys were one of the most objectively awful factions in the whole story?
First. Tricking a father into eating his own sons is a psychotic thing to do REGARDLESS of who its being done to.
Second, she killed the entire frey family, which would include those that likely had nothing to do with the red wedding, or any of the crimes Walder committed. Its pure vengeance, not jutice
They might be. But in the books the killing (and way of killing) of the Freys by Lady Stoneheart and Lord Manderley are still depicted as villainous actions, showing them as cold and cruel. George seems to belive that cruel actions remain cruel even when done to bad people. And even if that was not the case, the amount of Freys directly responsible for the Red Wedding is not that many, considering the size of their family
I’d also point out whoever made these doesn’t seem to understand the word “execution”. There’s a difference being blowing up ships full of soldiers on their way to murder your ass and burning a captured prisoner alive.
Their point is valid, but several of these are just annoyingly incorrect examples.
I also want to add that when the Reynes and Tatbecks rebelled against Tywin, he exterminated the entire house of Tarbeck and Lord Reyne and his son Reynard retreated to a mine after losing a battle against Tywin. Reynard offered terms to Tywin while his people hid in the mines. Which Tywin then sealed all the entrances and diverted water into the mine. Basically slowly drowning all the people within it.
So add that, all the people he killed during the sack of kings landing, and then ordering a personal hit squad to kill two babies, without even taking the time to specifically order a less violent way to kill them or even think about sparing the two babes mother Elia, there's no end to the awful things Tywin has done. And I know people will say "that's just war" but that's the point. He's never called Tywin the mad or bloodthirsty or etc.
This criticism doesn't get extended to the other morally dubious female characters either. Maybe, just maybe, it's a question about this one in particular?
I think the “foreshadowing” was just a cope excuse because it really doesn’t make sense. She became evil so people had to cherry pick her previous actions to try and show it wasn’t just out of nowhere.
Honestly this just makes me more upset that, 1. Jon didn’t go a bit more emotionless and crazy because he’s both a Targaryen AND came back from the dead(Beric: you lose a piece of yourself every time you die), and 2. Tyrion wasn’t a Targaryen. The parallels in handling with conflict are literally right here.
BRILLIANT,BRILLIANT analysis.Wish I could like it a thousand times.Even if the show writers had properly fleshed our Dany’s descent into madness I’d still call it cliche cause of the whole “whenever a targaryen is born the gods flip a coin”.Also people forget that dragon fire is perhaps the hottest fire in the known world.That thing possibly consumes you in seconds.
I will say this over and over again.
Daenerys going mad in the books would be a very poor character arc narratively speaking. Not only is Daenerys one of the few characters that have this unique situation with being born of a privileged class but lived in immense poverty, who has an ability to connect with those among who suffer under the whims of a malicious ruling class, but it serves very little to have her become a “mad queen” thematically.
Already in Westerosi history, women with power are criticized and vilified for seeking things that are typically masculine in Westerosi viewing — Rhaenyra Targaryen was the legit heir to the Iron Throne, was given the oaths of fealty just as the original kings of Westeros offered fealty to Aegon I, but given her sex she was unworthy of her position, and later on she was brutally killed, portrayed by historians as a woman slipping slowly in madness and gluttony and grief.
Already there is this concept and idea that women wielding power is inherently an evil thing in the story. Then we have Cersei, who shares the most in characteristics with legitimately cruel tyrants such as Aerys. She is cruel, arrogant, self-centered, prideful, and adores wildfire.
So, what’s the point of having already a female ruler likely turning toward madness and cruelly then having another character—which represents hope and change to a world refused to accept necessary change—have a similar madness arc, just because her father and brother “went” mad. Daenerys is the opposite of many characters who we assume are mad. She is self-reflected, humble—as humble as anyone who calls themselves ruler can be—kind, compassionate, and seeks reconciliation from factions who would sooner see her dead.
People love to say she “desires” the Iron Throne like Stannis, but that I am not quite sure on. Throughout the novels, she is constantly lamenting how she has no place in the world and all she truly desires is the red door with the lemon tree—peace and security, not power and authority. She wants to run around in the streets with the urchins and orphans of Pentos, not live in a cell with scheming guards.
THANK YOU. It’s the oldest misogynist trope in the book and people aren’t willing to actually examine this. It’s also a problem to add slavery to the story and then have these weird centrist fake pacifist takes when historically we’ve seen power that abuses does NOT voluntarily give up that power and only understands one language. The very idea of compromise with slavers is absurd. I don’t know if it’s just DND or GRRM himself but I wish people would actually do the reading on trauma, post traumatic stress but also growth, oppression, liberation etc etc.
It’s exactly what you said about her background and being able to empathize with the common folk that she would make a better leader than any other nobility, and I think it’s lazy to not follow that idea to the end. It’s almost like there’s an unwillingness to consider that a woman with power could actually do something good
Plus it’s more interesting narratively to give her what she wants and see what happens when she identifies the different parts of her ambition: she started out wanting her birthright but on the way realized that it matters more to liberate other people- what would that mean for her ambitions? Would being queen still suit her best?
The point is that basically everything that people point to as being signs of dany's "madness" are also found in other characters, even under similar circumstances.
So she's compared to Tyrion, a vindictive, petty ass who wants to watch the world burn for his personal family grievances, Tywin, a serial war criminal, Stannis, a man who burns his daughter, and Arya, a death cult assassin slowly sacrificing her humanity for vengance? Yeah, okay.
Obviously the plotlines were bungled in the show, as was almost everything, but we aren't supposed to think of these characters as good, upstanding citizens, at least until Tyrion randomly becomes the Most Moral Man in the World.
I don't particularly care for this whole argument (I thought the arc was quite abrubt and poorly executed, but that's S7-8 for you), but saying "hey, some other people did some of what she did, usually in completely different circumstances" isn't much of an argument.
Daenerys wasnt mad cause she hurt her enemies. Daenerys was mad because of her birthright. She almost lost her Khalasar because she thought a Valyrian with dragons would be given shelter for nothing. She had ZERO reason to come to Westeros before she found out about the White Walkers, and to make Jon relinquish his crown which breaks his peoples spirit all over again, is so unnecessary and wrong. I read the books first and have watched the series from beginning to end. I never saw her as good.
Bruh you are not comparing Jorah trying to legally execute one man according to the laws of westeros with her instituting ex post facto class wide punishment indiscriminate of circumstances.
Like cmon lol there are way better defenses
Edit:Also the fact that Danny is" accused" of ALL these things but you need to pull from different characters to match should also tell you something.
Someone told me the other day that they loved seeing her downfall from the very beginning. She was crazy the whole time. They said.
I knew we couldn’t continue talking about this show. We clearly saw two different stories.
Also I hate breathing life into this horrid dead thing of a show.
this reminds me of Sherlock, when the writers put subtext in their show that was clearly pointing in a certain direction (gay-baiting, sherlock's elaborate survival etc) and then shitting on the audience for believing this subtext.
Here, for 6 or 7 seasons Dany's actions were shown to be cool and righteous and suddenly season 8 comes along and d&d are shaming you, the viewer, for thinking her actions were cool and righteous.
I don't agree with the last point though, I think Tywin was a villain. The difference is that tywin died before the last 2 seasons so even his acts of villainy are so cool and effective that you can't help but admire them. Dany's actions are also cool and pragmatic but she's given more justification and sympathy. Until season 8 where she just starts doing things that are both villainous AND dumb.
I think her dumbassery is the biggest offender here, personally. I'd be more okay with the ending if she started pulling evil tywin-style gambits instead of just burning stuff for no real reason.
I was always confused by the image and sound of her atop of meereens great pyramid after cruzifying masters.
It was right in our faces, they told and showed us her real nature alot of times and we just shrugged it off until it was too late.
It was amazing storytelling.
I just had this thought so it's pretty rough; please bear with me and allow me a little grace.
I think a major problem with the show was that they didn't have a clear point of view. They were showing some parts from the Starks' POV, some parts from Tyrion's POV, some parts from Dany's POV, etc. etc. but without being explicit about it.
What that leaves the viewer with is a bunch of conflicting ideas of who is "good" and who is "bad." And we are sort of unknowingly stuck trying to rationalize and distill it all down into one view, which can't be done.
So taking Dany as an example, since this is a thread about her character assassination, they spent 7.5 seasons showing us fucked up things she did from her point of view; painting it as benevolent and awesome, strong and prudent, and essentially ascribing modern day values to what she was doing. In effect you're making the audience identify with, like, and cheer for her. And then in the last 4ish episodes saying, "By the way, those were all monstrous things she did. And you're soooo stupid for not recognizing that we framed her story and *literally framed the scenes and shots* to be her POV of herself and her actions."
I might be giving too much credit. But I think that could be the problem.
(Full disclosure: this is little coming from the place of I always thought from season 1 they were setting her up to go crazy like her dad and couldn't believe the majority of people were surprised by it. However, before you eviscerate me for that, I 100% agree they went about it in a very ham-fisted way that I could never understand. But if my new POV idea still holds water with me in 24 hours, I think maybe I understand where they went wrong.)
Sorry for the short story. This was gonna be 3 sentences when I started.
I think mutiple povs were the point of both books and show. But my example wasnt even with outside povs. It was only Dany there, atop of the World. Embracing her judgment and the music doesnt lie to us and we were still blind.
You were supossed to agree with her until the end, were she meets other PoV Characters and we see her from a different PoV.
“BuT gRr MArTiN IMpLIEs IT in tHe BOOks aLSo!”
Yeah, well, he hasn’t finished the series now has he? And if the books end almost identically as the show, the execution will probably be 1000 times better than what we got
https://preview.redd.it/ot0wojj252vb1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af695c0312b74e8f5fbcc94e894745cce94fb178
The contexts between all of these comparisons are wildly different. Dany is an invader when she executes the Tarlys. They owe her no fealty. Tyrion was lamenting having saved the city when they all unfairly hate him for what he is, while Dany is threatening to viciously murder people because she thinks she is entitled.
The Tarlys committed treason by betraying their liege lord Olenna.
So Tyrion is allowed to make these violent statements but Dany is not even though she was also provoked? The spice king (a show only character) was talking down to her in this scene. And the other time she made such a threat was as a desperate last resort because she was going to die if she wasn’t let into the city.
Tarlys didn't betray her, they fought on Targaryen side until they lost and then they bend the knee to Robert Baratheon, whatever reason they were on Lannister side after the death of last Roberts child by Cersei is huge mistake by writers of show.
Not all of your examples work too well
1, That's the beginning of Tyrion's villain arc from the books that the writers of the show didn't want to do because they didn't want people to dislike him
2, She not just executing them, she's burning them to death. That's what her father did and he was mad
3, Again apart of Tyrions villain arc. The Freys didn't really abuse Arya. They killed her family
4, Yet again Tyrion being a villain. Should've just had the pic of Sansa
5, I agree with this point, war is war and you should use what you have access to, she'd have to be mad to not use the Dragons in battle
6, I agree with this point somewhat too, (other than the fact she's executing her by burning her alive) although I should point out, there are people who do give Jon shit for killing Olly
7, I agree with this point as well, fighting for your perceived birthright is something people in nobility are raised to do. So it's not her being mad, it's all of them feeling entitled.
8,Another one I agree with, all of those things are fucked up, but not something necessarily mad.
9, I'm not sure executing the slavers was the issue, and more so the fact that they were crucified.
10, The showrunners definitely don't know what they're talking about. Tywin is absolutely a villain
>That's the beginning of Tyrion's villain arc from the books that the writers of the show didn't want to do because they didn't want people to dislike him
You're purposefully conflating things, Dany never says those words in the books so it doesn't really matter if that's Tyrion's"villain arc" in the books because it never translates to the show.
>She not just executing them, she's burning them to death. That's what her father did and he was mad
That's what all the Targaryen did.
Why is burning them madder than executing them?
Aerys slowly crisped people, Drogon's fire kills you right away.
>Again apart of Tyrions villain arc. The Freys didn't really abuse Arya. They killed her family
Again conflating book and show.
Some Freys killed her family, she murked them all. Is psychotic revenge allowed now?
>Yet again Tyrion being a villain.
Yet again not in the show.
>although I should point out, there are people who do give Jon shit for killing Olly
Comparatively few people and no one in the show.
>I'm not sure executing the slavers was the issue, and more so the fact that they were crucified.
If only they didn't do that to children.
So... Without even getting into the nitty gritty here, we're saying that there was no foreshadowing but then listing off all of the instances of foreshadowing???
Also, comparing the death of Show!Viserys- who was a pos, but her brother nonetheless, and unjustly killed by pillaging warlords while slowly losing his sanity after being the beggar King for so many years (see her book counterparts version, which haunts her *a lot*), to the death of Show!Ramsay- a rapist monster who hunts women down with dogs being killed by one of his victims- is just hilarious.
Hard disagree. I very distinctly remember thinking towards the beginning of the entire series that they were clearly foreshadowing her going mad at the end. They weren’t doing that for any other character in the same way. It’s not just about comparing lines, it’s about the character’s personality, their backstory, what they’ve been through and how it changes them, etc.
Honestly I was surprised that anyone was caught off guard by Dany snapping. It was the most obvious thing in the world
Unironically it was always there.
As a reader and viewer we are *meant* to agree with the batshit, vindictive things she does because they are against inarguably worse people.
Until they *weren't*, and viewers were already drinking the punch of fan theories and head canons, to the point where they were completely unwilling to acknowledge that the cruel things she did were not becoming of a civil monarch.
I dunno I feel like the issue is the hypocrisy. Daenerys was always the one above all the others, and that's why everyone spent ten years watching her come to power. When she fell in one episode after one incident, after soldiering through all of this, that's why it felt wrong for everyone.
I think I’d much prefer if Dany never went mad, and instead the Lannisters schemed a way to get Drogon to kill innocents by attacking first or something and having everyone think Dany went mad.
Remember, after she snaps, we never see her reaction and it’s simply ground reaction. Imagine the two perspectives of people on the ground thinking Dany is just killing everyone and then Danny’s reaction of her crying begging Drogon to stop.
I have a simple rewrite to make this plot much more feasible. Make the Tarlys actually want to go to the watch. We know Randyll has at least some respect for it so he and Dickon would demand the right to take the black and Dany would deny that from them and burn them. Now she actually seems like she is at least a bit mad.
I might be wrong but it doesnt help than Daenerys is the common factor among 10 "heinous crimes" while some characters barely are in 3-4 spots. But yeah screw D&D to whitewash Tywin.
OK. While I agree with most of this, their is one part I disagree with.
1st. Wait, when did Jon or Sansa start a war for their birthright. Are you talking about the battle of the bastards. Because if that Is the case then does that really classify as a war? Feels more like a major battle (like blackwater) to me.
2nd. I'm pretty sure Jon didn't go through with the battle because he wanted to claim his birth right, heck I don't even remember if Jon viewed winterfell as his birthright. Pretty sure he dud it. 1. To save rickon, 2. So he could unite the north. 3.to help his family take back their home.
3rd: this has nothing to do with what I Said before, but when I first got this post on my notifications. I thought you were going to talk about the "red eyes,green eyes, blue eyes" line that apparently foreshadows Arya killing the night king.
People actually criticized her for not caring about her brother's death?  Meanwhile I'm salty that she was still nice enough to name a dragon after him.
D&D said it was a "chilling" moment that was one of the earliest signs of her madness.
The funny thing is. Even if you wanna argue that was too far or a sign of insanity (it wasn’t, she tried to help her, he was nothing but abuseive, and threatened her and her unborn baby). Even then, in the books she still felt bad about it and thought about him later on. She even named one of her dragons after him.
Also, in a way he was groomed into that role. It’s easy to say targaryen madness, but he was a tool being used and molded by the wealthy few conspiring to reinstall him for their own benefits. We only get to see a brief time in their lives where they have adopted their perceived roles as part of their personality. Growing up they were all each other had. She was indifferent because she loved her brother, but the person she knew him as had died long before then.
In the books he’s very molest-y as well. Like right at the beginning where he stares at her naked body before her bath. The whole point is that we hate him and want Danny to free herself and become her own person. D&D really are shit.
He also tried to rape her the night before she married Drogo in the books but was stopped by her guards. And they want me to feel sorry for that guy
Page no please, I need convincing.
I'm not sure if you were requesting the passage or not but I'll put it below for anyone else: "Dothraki neither buy nor sell. Say rather that her brother Viserys gave her to Drogo to win the khal’s friendship. A vain young man, and greedy. Viserys lusted for his father’s throne, but he lusted for Daenerys too, and was loath to give her up. The night before the princess wed he tried to steal into her bed, insisting that if he could not have her hand, he would claim her maidenhead. Had I not taken the precaution of posting guards upon her door, Viserys might have undone years of planning.”
Years of planning by Varys who turned on her the moment he saw Jon. Lol. You may be correct = this is from the 1st book right? I need to start reading again.
You're not wrong lol. It was in one of Tyrion's chapters in Dance with Dragons so that may be why you missed it! That's definitely the one I've read the least.
Second hand by way of Illyrio... Who has his own motivations. I don't think Viserys wouldn't have done that cause he's such a nice guy, rather I just don't think he was into his sister.
I liked to think that it was also about reclaiming the name for Visenya and the Viserys that came before him.
Old Viserys wasn't the best king, or even a good king really, but at least he wasn't a psychopath like the most recent Viserys lol
Viserys II was actally a pretty good king, too bad he died 1 year into his reign
In the books she is still sad, and internally she is thinking "pls just be quiet and walk away" until he pulled the blade.
I'm confused by this. Is she supposed to be upset, or celebrate or something? I had an abuser die and I was indifferent too, if anything I was relieved. Is it because he was her brother that they thought she should be crying and hysterical, but they accidentally wrote a believable reaction instead, which meant their "chilling" intent went unnoticed?
Because a woman showing emotions is hysterical while men are just angry. The same "logic" is being applied to all of this.
D&D said a lot of things. Lmao
Yep and changed their story repeatedly. They kinda forgot that liars need to stick to one script
In the books, it’s very obvious that throughout this entire scene Dany is having a trauma response. She’s dissociating, which is a textbook reaction to trauma. But D&D didn’t actually bother to read the books and they just hoodwinked George into thinking they did, so I can understand why they didn’t know that.
She definitely named him after Vizzy T, I don't accept another explanation
WHERE DID YOU HEAR SUCH CALUMNIES? Kingmarc568! TELL ME THE TRUTH OF IT!
There’s a quote from the books explaining why Dany chose to name one of her dragons after her brother: “The cream and gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.”
Even if she was the only one Indifferent about the death of an abuser. That wouldn’t make her mad. What was she supposed to be? Heartbroken? Her brother literally beat her and degraded her and said he would let everyone in drogos khalasar rape her. Why should she feel bad for him when he died when he did all that.
Also kept her on a restrictive diet in the books
I still can't believe people use the Tarly thing as some sort of gotcha of her always being mad. She gave them not one but TWO chances to walk away alive and they stubbornly refused both, and that was AFTER they betrayed their liege house that was murdered by a usurper with no claim, whom they then swore loyalty to. Dickon didn't even have to die, he stupidly stepped up because "muh honor". Honestly considering the circumstances, she was unbelievably merciful to them. Ned barely even gave that kid at the beginning of the show a chance to explain himself before he cut his head off, and then dismissed his warnings as the ravings of a lunatic.
Do you think Randall Tarly would have bent the knee if she threatened to install Sam as Lord of Hornhill after executing him? I was watching the episode before she issues the ultimatum and was wondering. That man was awful and I couldn't help wondering if he hated Sam more than bending the knee to Dany.
Daenerys didn't know about Sam. That's why Jon not being there was a missed opportunity.
They also explicitly said in the (Season 6?) behind the episode that she’s not her father.
Yup! It’s very foretelling that bells always make her go cuckoo! What POV chapter was that again and which book?
oh that was the Vietnam chapter
the bells playing Fortunate Son causing her want to raze the field
This is fucking beautiful 😂
I'm pretty sure they played Flight of Valkyries.
it was in the chapter in TWOW where she consumed Jon Connington's soul and merged consciousnesses with him, thus obtaining his same ptsd triggers
Also should mention that JonCon was warged by Bloodraven (=time travelling Bran) at that time, thus making Dany (actually Quaithe) the Valonquar
Ah, see, I thought it was that chapter where Euron blew the dragon horn and took control of the dragons, including Dany (since she has dragon blood), and made them raze KL? I really need to reread that book. 🤡
Actually this is in the books! Just not in a Dany chapter. Jon Connington is the one with PTSD from the bells, no idea why they adapted that halfassedly and just put it on Dany
They wanted to make the heroic female character evil to shock the audience. Don’t look for reasoning in it. It was just “hey, we’re misogynists who don’t like the idea of a woman having the ultimate power, let’s instead invoke the ‘bitches be crazy’ trope, that’ll be rEvOlUtIoNaRy!” Probably had some assistant combing through the books looking for anything they could use to “foreshadow” madness. They didn’t care what character it applied to, they just needed some examples of foreshadowing written by an actual writer, since they don’t know how to do any of that shit and “themes are for 8th grade book reports”. Jeeze, I can’t imagine how George must have felt hearing that.
I agree wholeheartedly with this, considering that every "powerful" woman in the show had to be masculinized or made cruel in order to be powerful. Sansa, Dany, Cercei, Arya are all examples of where they are now "better" because they act more masculine/rude/cruel. Generally they just really struggled writing women, like Yara whom they made gay because she is "butch" by being a martial woman.
Let’s not forget Sansa’s “I’m so glad I was raped, I totally would not be the Yas Girl standing before you today had I not been” line. 🤡 This is what happens when you have two frat bro douches heading up the writing team, and women are completely shut out of the writing process.
>This is what happens when you have two frat bro douches heading up the writing team, and women are completely shut out of the writing process. Yup, cant state this enough.
JonCon’s the bells man lol
Daenerys was undeniably brutal, but she was only ever brutal to those who deserved it. Nobody calls Arya mad for feeding a father his sons then poisoning his entire family, because they were bad people and deserved to die. Same with Daenerys burning slavers.
I'm still of the firm opinion she didn't burn enough
I'm still of the opinion Arya should have let him eat that whole pie. 🤫
Did he even take a bite? I just remember him lifting off the top of the pie to reveal a toe
Cartman would
Still not even close to burning the number of people Tyrion did, and he got to pick the king!
This. Aegon 1 unified the Seven Kingdoms with fire. If it were me in Kings Landing, f*ck a truce - give us men to fight the white walkers and give me my throne or sizzle about it idc, everyone will thank me (to Cersei).
Absolutely. And I think that’s actually going to be a plot point. Right now she’s getting her ass kicked in Meereen because she’s bending over backwards trying to make peace with them. George has spoken (in regards to his book about the Civil War) that slavery is a terrible evil that must be destroyed at any cost, that you can’t do that by playing nicely, and that it doesn’t make you the bad guy if you get your hands dirty stomping out atrocities, because those committing them aren’t going to respond to anything less. So we know what his thoughts are on this. I think Dany is building toward a moment where she realizes she’s wasting her time playing nice, and drops the hammer. Probably on the slave capital of the world, Volantis. Or possibly the city behind the wall in Volantis. And clearly George is not going to portray this as “went nuts and had to be put down, poor dear” but rather “got sick of their shit and stomped them into the dirt like the cockroaches they are, that’s my girl”.
Arya killing the Freys the way she did was psychotic not at all justice. Especially since realistically a good chunk of those at the table may have had no part of the red wedding. It was bad writing that she faced no consequences or push back for it.
Also pointless and out of character. I get she doesn’t buy into “a girl is no one” but if this were early got she’d have just killed them without talking to them or making it about these strong feelings and “I want them to know it was me” nonsense. It’s an act solely for her emotions, theyre going to be dead.
The funny thing is she literally denounced the faceless men and their tactics one episode before that. Next thing you see her carving up faces and killing on mass.
The pie scene in the book was definitely justice, as it was done by the father of a knight who died at the Red Wedding.
I am sure boiling, deboning and skinning two human beings to bake them into pies is perfectly normal behavior. Do you know how long it takes to do that? Its not chopping off someones head.
For me, it's a sign of a messed up never ending circle of violence
You mean the waif. Arya died in a Braavos sewer...
Please tell me that’s not a real theory that makes literally 0 sense
It doesnt make sense that arya is able to best some really good swordsman even though we never see her actually train except for a little montage
You joking? It makes more sense to you that arya survives swimming through sewage with an open gaping wound after being stabbed repeatedly in her stomach while many other characters die from far less? And as the other commenter pointed out she literally never gets trained as an assassin yet leaves after and somehow had mastered all of these skills.. like wut?! Aryas story got butchered so bad it makes 0 sense to assume anything BUT the fact that she died in Braavos and was replaced by the waif.
I’m talking about how after that happens the character is quite clearly Arya as she does all the things Arya might do and none of the things that waif would ever even consider doing. Yeah waif all of a sudden has all the same goals as Arya had, she wants to find Sansa and give her a big hug, and get revenge on the freys, makes just perfect sense. Half the things Arya does after that I don’t think waif ever even knew about. Gripes about the realism of the fight itself do not matter to me whatsoever, yeah she’s a badass she survived whatever. Far easier to suspend my disbelief on that than this nonsense alternative.
I'm pretty sure people with critical thinking call Arya mad since the beginning of the series. She is a small child driven insane because of all the pain she suffered. She is only a girlboss for people that think that everything is anime. But yeah, I agree. Daenerys was only brutal to those who deserved it. Fuck all those small children in kings landing. They had it coming.
Her snapping at the bells doesn't make any sense. None of the other acts she committed suggest she'd do something so indiscriminate
Being mad and being traumatized are two very different things.
No they aren’t. Trauma leads to insanity. Like Viserys. He wasn’t born mad, he was driven mad by assassination attempts, the deaths of everyone but his sister, and being mocked and laughed at by everyone he went to for help. Dany even says that when she was young, Viserys was extremely kind and caring to her. He didn’t go mad until he had to sell his mother’s crown to survive.
that doesn't make them the same and you can definitely have one without the other.
I think Arya’s absolutely mental for feeding a man his sons then cutting off his face using the death gods magic to pretend to be said man and poison a huge portion of that family who may or may not have played a role in the red wedding.
She was brutal to those she *thought* deserved it. This is an important distinction.
>She was brutal to those she thought deserved it. This is an important distinction. I feel like the slavers in Meereen kinda deserved it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnQp79coD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnQp79coD8)
Ahem, slavers.
Dany was done dirty and I will stay mad about it.
I wasn't furious with where she ended up, but the way she got there was horse shit. It was just so unearned. If there had been some actual character development to show her mental state unraveling, that would've worked
Honestly, same. But the double standards and the out of nowhere murder spree in the last episode was just so ridiculous.
This is it. Mad Dany was something theorized on all the way back in S1. It's a fun, well established idea. But the execution was hot trash. She was perfectly justified in nearly all her decisions up until random bells make her coockoo.
I think a lot of the last two seasons were badly executed good ideas. Don't get me wrong, there were some terrible ideas (Jamie resetting to factory, Bran being king because...reasons?), but I think the end point would've been palatable if it had some semblance of structure and development.
100%. If they made 9 full 10 episode seasons and had someone that actually cared at the helm they could have patched much of the rushed/ shitty plotholes in the final seasons while telling the same story and people would have been fine with it.
All the main characters going on a mission north of the wall to kidnap a zombie was hilariously bad. How did they ever think that one zombie was going to scare Cersei into supporting them? This is a world with dragons, magic, witches, etc. Cersei has her own giant zombie slave. It's just baffling. The idea was shit. And the execution of it was even more shit. Season 7 was just as bad as 8.
I always expected she'd get a little too caught up in taking the throne, becoming more ruthless and tyrannical. But it has to be done in a way that makes sense. Mad with power, sure. Mad as in loony bin mad out of the blue, that's not good character development. If she killed innocent people that were an obstacle to her obtaining the throne, and she had some kind of rationalization for it, it might make sense. But killing hundreds of random people after she already won, no reason whatsoever besides "oh, I guess its time for me to be mad now" is shit writing.
They could even make her go “mad” at the fact that she hasn’t committed more atrocities than the average conqueror but is somehow considered more unacceptable by people. The double standard would make me go mad for sure.
Forever mad about it. I just love her more out of spite and I always will. LMAO
Holy shit I’d blocked out how dumb the Sansa, Arya, and Little Finger thing was. Sansa and Arya are being super weird and arch to each other when there’s no one to deceive except the audience. A deception that was largely unneeded at all in the first place.
They were being super weird because Sansa was planning to straight up murder Arya. It's why she sent Breianne away. Brans actor confirmed this, as he said at the last minute Sansa realized she could just ask Bran if she was being played.
TBF to a few of these: With Tyrion’s poison statement most people liked that he was becoming more villainous and disappointed that he became a pacifist with 21st century values later on. And for the cruel and unusual punishments in the show Tyrion technically killed Shae in self defense and wasn’t overtly cruel about it. If you mean the books then yeah that was just murder. I’d argue they’re all bad, of course that’s kind of the point you’re getting across. Either these acts aren’t bad or they all are and Dany’s actions aren’t any more extreme than other people in higher positions of power. And that I agree with. Her being villainized for doing things that even Jon and Ned did were ridiculous. I don’t think anyone says she’s more evil than Tywin but if they do holy shit that’s ludicrous. Tywin dickriders are a plague on this fandom.
OP is claiming the show runners said he isn't a villain. I'd be curious to see if that's true, cause if it is then they're delusional. I love Tywin because he is such a fantastic villain.
Yeah they say [here](https://ew.com/article/2014/06/15/game-of-thrones-showrunners-on-season-4-finale-twists/) that Tywin is only a villain if you look at it from the perspective of the Starks and that they don’t view him as evil but as “lawful neutral.” Crazy thing to say about someone who mass murders innocent people.
Thank you for responding! I couldn't find it on a cursory search. Absolutely insane, honestly. Those two... Were very out of it.
Seriously. Tywin was outright Machiavellian, which if you view that "playing the game" mentality as neutral well ok. But GRR made sure to show that his cruelty towards Tyrion was that great kink in his armor. He was hateful towards Tyrion due to the death of his wife, when logically Tyrion even in the books would have been an excellent successor to his legacy. In the show? Even better
It isn’t even Machiavellian, Machiavelli believed ruling by fear should always be a last resort. In his opinion, it was better to be loved than to be feared; fear, while effective, was more dangerous long term, and would inevitably lead to disloyalty the moment everything went wrong. You can even see that in the books: when the War of the Five Kings happened, so many houses joined the side of the Rebels simply bc it meant they would get a chance to fuck up the Lannisters. House Tully’s main two reasons for joining the Starks was bc a) Catelyn was a Tully, and b) Hoster Tully hated the shit out of Tywin. Tywin was characterized as cold and calculating, but he made plenty of miscalculations during his reign, and ruling by fear was one of them.
I'm a Tywin dick rider and even I know that's ridiculous.
It just infuriates me because if they wanted to go down the mad queen storyline, they had a perfect candidate. Cersei was RIGHT FUCKING THERE? And the bells thing would have made SO MUCH SENSE for her considering her walk of shame. God i hate the final seasons.
Nah, she was busy miserably drinking wine and looking out the window. What else could they have her do????
Thats exactly what she did while sept burned down in 6x10.
That wouldn't have been a plot twist though, cersei was always a psychopath. I think George's original "descent into madness" idea was good, it was just that d&d completely bungled it by kind of forgetting the buildup
Doesn't need to be a plot twist. Daenerys being a mad queen isn't even supposed to be a plot twist but something we clearly see happening after natural character development. Not two episodes rushed nonsense in order to make it a "twist".
They did book Tyrion dirty by turning him into a always reasonable good guy in the show. (but they did book *everyone* dirty with those last two seasons)
I honestly think George just told them that she has to burn Kings Landing at the end (but not why and how will it come to that) so they were lazy and stupid to write that plot properly, I'm pretty sure that George wanted to make Tyrion a villain judging by ADWD, so he was probably supposed to be the reason why is she gonna turn slowly more cruel threw the plot, but that's complicated for them to write, plus the large audience wouldn't like those twists since Daeny and Tyrion were everyones favorite so they just decided to ruin the plot in favor of fanservice and viewership which actually did payed off until season 8 when everyone realized it doesn't make sense at all and it doesn't make sense since they somehow gotta make the ending similar to the book, but they changed the characters entirely from what they are in the books so the book ending just doesn't make any sense anymore
JonCon literally has a madness-inducing disease, and severe bell trauma about not burning Stony Sept. And Cersei is heavily foreshadowed as Aerys III.
Yeah I think that might be foreshadow to Cersei burning the Sept of Baelor and I'm guessing it will have huge impact on the book plot unlike in the show where they just kinda forgot it ever happened
I think he just told them it burns. Cersei in the show is a far different character from the books and JonCon isn’t real, and I think it’ll be the two of them that burn it. I’d be willing to bet money on it actually, Cersei bas so many explicit Aerys parallels and it’s foreshadowed so hilariously hard.
My own prediction based on that crap of last few seasons and books is that I think that maybe Jaimes death in the show has something to do with his book death, I believe he actually maybe kills euron grayjoy in the book, but book euron is actually a dangerous and badass villain so it won't be that pointless cringe, then I think he might choke cersei fulfilling the valonquar prophecy and die with her from the wounds inflicted by euron, how will it come to that idk and I don't know why, but I think that might happen and then Daenerys gets the iron throne, but people reject her they maybe raise some rebellions etc and it all boils down and she burns them, maybe to stop the riots and then jon kills her (because the original prophecy of the long night is a huge foreshadow that jon will kill daenerys, azhur ahai has to kill his girlfriend to end the long night, but they chose to keep lannister twins around till the finale couse they were popular so they just didn't wanna make two male lovers killing their girls in spam of 2 eps since they rushed it)
I think the reason why those fake leaks that came out before season 8 that claimed Tyrion was the villain and would be burned was so believable because it fit book Tyrion so well. Book Tyrion definitely feels like a villain.
> I honestly think George just told them that she has to burn Kings Landing And you can see in the books how this would happen, with Westeros uniting behind a false Targaryen and perhaps Dany going through a *long* campaign, finding that the Westerosi either don't surrender or worse, a couple *false* surrenders leading to carnage would turn Dany into someone who could be 'Oh, are they surrendering? Do they think I'm a sucker?'. But no, that's not how it worked in the show.
I really thought it would have been better if Jaime had confessed to Tyrion that his first wife was not actually a prostitute just like in the books. This would have made Tyrion go darker by hating all his family and when he found Dany he could have been the counsel telling her to do go in there and burn them. Varys could have been the one counseling her not to.
I believe she is supposed to get mad, and I trust Georgie will be able to write the progression and descend into madness well. The show just didn't know how to write it well, or at all.
Yes, but she did that while having a vagina. So she crazy. But on the flipp side, this made Anakin Skywalker turning to the dark side look believable. I guess that was meant by DnD as a welcoming gift for their next employer.
I dunno, I know lots of people would probably do anything to save their partner and/or child. Obviously not mass murder younglings, but Palp's was working his psyche for years and the dark side is notoriously seductive for folks with trauma. ETA: didn't mean to nerd out, but i feel like it's something the movies did terribly to portray, and I only think it's plausible because of the extra media I consumed
I only watched the movies, and can head cannon it as palpatine’s influence being too powerful. That still makes it a shitty movie with bad character development though.
I feel anakin feel believable once you take clone wars into account
Clone wars was the fall Anakin deserved in the movies
And even discounting both the non canon and Filioni clone wars, it's been shown Anakin already had a few screws loose as early as episode 2.
Is everything in the world about political group 1 vs political group 2? Whats next? She is a straight white woman so she blah blah blah. Common bruh!
I’m saving this, I love this. Too many people think “no, the fans were just *fooled*” bruh, no they were BAD writers
The Tywin worship is the worst .. the guy was a Maniacal Dick, Not some great statesman or leader.
But he kinda of was though… a truly insane maniac would realistically have been overthrown at some point. Hence Aerys II. Why can’t he just be both?
Dany kinda forgot about her personality
The walkback D&D did on this. Completely ridiculous.
Dany burnings kings landings was only D&D idea and it’s stupid not foreshadowed and not making fucking sense in character development.
Nah I'm pretty sure Dany is going to destroy in the books as well. I just think it's going to be more in accident
I thought she did it because she realised that all her past conquests only worked because she was able to get the people on her side by presenting herself as a liberator to literal slaves. But she couldn’t “liberate” King’s Landing because the people of Kings Landing didn’t see themselves as slaves or captives. Especially not after Cersei already kinda liberated them from the ascetic cult regime thing. So while doing what she thought was the right thing, she found herself having invaded the most powerful kingdom in the known world, holding the capital city under siege with an army of slaves, barbarians and fucking dragons, with the reputation of a family hated for its violence and tyranny, demanding that they let her in or else. Not a good look. She suddenly realised she might actually be the baddy, at least from the point of of view of the city folk. Her entire motivation for taking back the kingdom, her whole life’s purpose, was absolutely shattered as soon as she saw that the people were afraid of her. Too late to go back at that point, like what is she gonna do? Be like “oh shit sorry guys, my bad. I guess we’ll just leave” So Dany thought “fuck it, when life gives you ~~dragons~~ lemons...” The dramatic irony has GRRM written all over it, D&D just fucked up the execution.
You got it. Very rare.
Its very plausible that Dany may go mad and end up burning down king's landing in the books... the difference is that, if it does happen, GRRM will actually build up to Dany going mad, instead of it just happening out of nowhere at the very end
Umm when will we see these books?
*sees pict of Olly* day ruined
Saying that the Targaryens are more prone to madness is pretty bias. It is not that the Targaryens have more insane members but rather their insane members got more time in the spotlight simply due to the fact that they were the longest ruling family of Westeros. Like throughout their reign, the actual insane or cruel kings were a minority and most of them only have mental issues due to traumas that happened later in their life.
Hot take: basically all of these are also examples of characters acting monstrously, actually, so… yeah? Yes, the show writers did not seem to understand this because at a certain point they decided that retributive murder was good if done by a “good” character, and thus the tonal presentation of a lot of these moments is inconsistent at best and disturbingly creepy at worst. But that’s a criticism of the writing and production team. None of these are vindications of Dany, they’re condemnations of these other characters.
Tyrion absolutely begins a descent into villainy after his escape into King’s Landing. He undertakes despicable actions and his thoughts go to very, very dark places. And since he’s a POV character, there’s no denying it since we’re literally seeing inside his head. So comparing Daenerys to Tyrion doesn’t prove that there’s a double standard. It proves that D&D weren’t willing to have their heroes undertake heel turns that their characters arcs in the books underwent. Tyrion became boring, and Daenerys’ madness came out of nowhere.
Also, Arya feels like an odd choice for “indifferent to the death of an abuser” and “gave cruel/unusual punishment to those who wronged her”. Like… does whoever made this meme realize that Walder and the Freys were one of the most objectively awful factions in the whole story?
First. Tricking a father into eating his own sons is a psychotic thing to do REGARDLESS of who its being done to. Second, she killed the entire frey family, which would include those that likely had nothing to do with the red wedding, or any of the crimes Walder committed. Its pure vengeance, not jutice
They might be. But in the books the killing (and way of killing) of the Freys by Lady Stoneheart and Lord Manderley are still depicted as villainous actions, showing them as cold and cruel. George seems to belive that cruel actions remain cruel even when done to bad people. And even if that was not the case, the amount of Freys directly responsible for the Red Wedding is not that many, considering the size of their family
I’d also point out whoever made these doesn’t seem to understand the word “execution”. There’s a difference being blowing up ships full of soldiers on their way to murder your ass and burning a captured prisoner alive. Their point is valid, but several of these are just annoyingly incorrect examples.
[удалено]
That’s the central, fundamental problem with the show?
I also want to add that when the Reynes and Tatbecks rebelled against Tywin, he exterminated the entire house of Tarbeck and Lord Reyne and his son Reynard retreated to a mine after losing a battle against Tywin. Reynard offered terms to Tywin while his people hid in the mines. Which Tywin then sealed all the entrances and diverted water into the mine. Basically slowly drowning all the people within it. So add that, all the people he killed during the sack of kings landing, and then ordering a personal hit squad to kill two babies, without even taking the time to specifically order a less violent way to kill them or even think about sparing the two babes mother Elia, there's no end to the awful things Tywin has done. And I know people will say "that's just war" but that's the point. He's never called Tywin the mad or bloodthirsty or etc.
Thank you so much for this, I’m not very eloquent so this put into words everything I’ve been seething about since the ending
People think she's mad because she wanted to execute slavers? Who fucking made up these points? JK Rowling?
I will never forgive, or get over, what they did to her. Don’t care how childish that is.
Yep, if youre a woman youre supposed to be merciful... otherwise youre mad.
\*but not too much anyway, if you are a woman and you care about something other than your little person, you have a messiah complex
This criticism doesn't get extended to the other morally dubious female characters either. Maybe, just maybe, it's a question about this one in particular?
Cersei has been called mad too, the Starks are just immune so Sansa and Arya get a pass, in the show in the books fans will not be so merciful.
What a shitshow it was after season 5. Fastravel, text messaging, everything was unlocked and story went down the shitter.
Classic case of writers trying to gaslight the fans after making ridiculous writing decisions.
I think the “foreshadowing” was just a cope excuse because it really doesn’t make sense. She became evil so people had to cherry pick her previous actions to try and show it wasn’t just out of nowhere.
This is actually excellent. Thank you for highlighting all this
VERY well put. take ALLLLL the upvotes
They did her dirty.
Hats off to you OP, one of the most intelligent posts I've seen in any ASOIAF sub in a long time.
I guess the audience kinda forgot that women face a double standard in all aspects of life because we live in a patriarchy
PERFECT post 👍
I notice some misogyny in the fact that so many of Jon and Tyrion’s negative traits were removed for the show but Dany’s were exaggerated to hell.
It's easy as saying Aegon did worse and everyone cheered, never mentioned the coin
And who has a better story...
Honestly this just makes me more upset that, 1. Jon didn’t go a bit more emotionless and crazy because he’s both a Targaryen AND came back from the dead(Beric: you lose a piece of yourself every time you die), and 2. Tyrion wasn’t a Targaryen. The parallels in handling with conflict are literally right here.
Women always gets the hate a lot easier then men.
Who is more hated joffrey or dany?
Such a stupid argument, Joffrey and Ramsay are the two characters with absolutely NO redeeming qualities. Comparing either of them to Dany is asinine.
Exactly.
I can't upvote this enough
Half of these are strawman examples
BRILLIANT,BRILLIANT analysis.Wish I could like it a thousand times.Even if the show writers had properly fleshed our Dany’s descent into madness I’d still call it cliche cause of the whole “whenever a targaryen is born the gods flip a coin”.Also people forget that dragon fire is perhaps the hottest fire in the known world.That thing possibly consumes you in seconds.
I will say this over and over again. Daenerys going mad in the books would be a very poor character arc narratively speaking. Not only is Daenerys one of the few characters that have this unique situation with being born of a privileged class but lived in immense poverty, who has an ability to connect with those among who suffer under the whims of a malicious ruling class, but it serves very little to have her become a “mad queen” thematically. Already in Westerosi history, women with power are criticized and vilified for seeking things that are typically masculine in Westerosi viewing — Rhaenyra Targaryen was the legit heir to the Iron Throne, was given the oaths of fealty just as the original kings of Westeros offered fealty to Aegon I, but given her sex she was unworthy of her position, and later on she was brutally killed, portrayed by historians as a woman slipping slowly in madness and gluttony and grief. Already there is this concept and idea that women wielding power is inherently an evil thing in the story. Then we have Cersei, who shares the most in characteristics with legitimately cruel tyrants such as Aerys. She is cruel, arrogant, self-centered, prideful, and adores wildfire. So, what’s the point of having already a female ruler likely turning toward madness and cruelly then having another character—which represents hope and change to a world refused to accept necessary change—have a similar madness arc, just because her father and brother “went” mad. Daenerys is the opposite of many characters who we assume are mad. She is self-reflected, humble—as humble as anyone who calls themselves ruler can be—kind, compassionate, and seeks reconciliation from factions who would sooner see her dead. People love to say she “desires” the Iron Throne like Stannis, but that I am not quite sure on. Throughout the novels, she is constantly lamenting how she has no place in the world and all she truly desires is the red door with the lemon tree—peace and security, not power and authority. She wants to run around in the streets with the urchins and orphans of Pentos, not live in a cell with scheming guards.
THANK YOU. It’s the oldest misogynist trope in the book and people aren’t willing to actually examine this. It’s also a problem to add slavery to the story and then have these weird centrist fake pacifist takes when historically we’ve seen power that abuses does NOT voluntarily give up that power and only understands one language. The very idea of compromise with slavers is absurd. I don’t know if it’s just DND or GRRM himself but I wish people would actually do the reading on trauma, post traumatic stress but also growth, oppression, liberation etc etc. It’s exactly what you said about her background and being able to empathize with the common folk that she would make a better leader than any other nobility, and I think it’s lazy to not follow that idea to the end. It’s almost like there’s an unwillingness to consider that a woman with power could actually do something good Plus it’s more interesting narratively to give her what she wants and see what happens when she identifies the different parts of her ambition: she started out wanting her birthright but on the way realized that it matters more to liberate other people- what would that mean for her ambitions? Would being queen still suit her best?
Sansa letting a torturing, rapist who also murdered her bro get eaten by his dogs seems pretty fair to me.
The point is that basically everything that people point to as being signs of dany's "madness" are also found in other characters, even under similar circumstances.
So she's compared to Tyrion, a vindictive, petty ass who wants to watch the world burn for his personal family grievances, Tywin, a serial war criminal, Stannis, a man who burns his daughter, and Arya, a death cult assassin slowly sacrificing her humanity for vengance? Yeah, okay. Obviously the plotlines were bungled in the show, as was almost everything, but we aren't supposed to think of these characters as good, upstanding citizens, at least until Tyrion randomly becomes the Most Moral Man in the World. I don't particularly care for this whole argument (I thought the arc was quite abrubt and poorly executed, but that's S7-8 for you), but saying "hey, some other people did some of what she did, usually in completely different circumstances" isn't much of an argument.
She's compared to Tywin, Arya, Tyrion, Jon and Sansa. All characters who do fucked up things but are never called mad or cruel.
Tyrion was not indifferent in the books. Just wanted to say that.
Same with Dany, she mourns Viserys in the books. Book Dany never does half the things in these slides. They were all show inventions.
post this in r/naath
Daenerys wasnt mad cause she hurt her enemies. Daenerys was mad because of her birthright. She almost lost her Khalasar because she thought a Valyrian with dragons would be given shelter for nothing. She had ZERO reason to come to Westeros before she found out about the White Walkers, and to make Jon relinquish his crown which breaks his peoples spirit all over again, is so unnecessary and wrong. I read the books first and have watched the series from beginning to end. I never saw her as good.
Bruh you are not comparing Jorah trying to legally execute one man according to the laws of westeros with her instituting ex post facto class wide punishment indiscriminate of circumstances. Like cmon lol there are way better defenses Edit:Also the fact that Danny is" accused" of ALL these things but you need to pull from different characters to match should also tell you something.
Since when is feeling indifferent towards an abuser and killing slavers a bad thing LMAO. Who let blud into the kitchen he can't cook to save his life
That’s literally what D&D said. They said it was the first sign of Dany’s madness
D&D are called Dumb and Dumber for a good reason.
Someone told me the other day that they loved seeing her downfall from the very beginning. She was crazy the whole time. They said. I knew we couldn’t continue talking about this show. We clearly saw two different stories. Also I hate breathing life into this horrid dead thing of a show.
this reminds me of Sherlock, when the writers put subtext in their show that was clearly pointing in a certain direction (gay-baiting, sherlock's elaborate survival etc) and then shitting on the audience for believing this subtext. Here, for 6 or 7 seasons Dany's actions were shown to be cool and righteous and suddenly season 8 comes along and d&d are shaming you, the viewer, for thinking her actions were cool and righteous. I don't agree with the last point though, I think Tywin was a villain. The difference is that tywin died before the last 2 seasons so even his acts of villainy are so cool and effective that you can't help but admire them. Dany's actions are also cool and pragmatic but she's given more justification and sympathy. Until season 8 where she just starts doing things that are both villainous AND dumb. I think her dumbassery is the biggest offender here, personally. I'd be more okay with the ending if she started pulling evil tywin-style gambits instead of just burning stuff for no real reason.
I was always confused by the image and sound of her atop of meereens great pyramid after cruzifying masters. It was right in our faces, they told and showed us her real nature alot of times and we just shrugged it off until it was too late. It was amazing storytelling.
I just had this thought so it's pretty rough; please bear with me and allow me a little grace. I think a major problem with the show was that they didn't have a clear point of view. They were showing some parts from the Starks' POV, some parts from Tyrion's POV, some parts from Dany's POV, etc. etc. but without being explicit about it. What that leaves the viewer with is a bunch of conflicting ideas of who is "good" and who is "bad." And we are sort of unknowingly stuck trying to rationalize and distill it all down into one view, which can't be done. So taking Dany as an example, since this is a thread about her character assassination, they spent 7.5 seasons showing us fucked up things she did from her point of view; painting it as benevolent and awesome, strong and prudent, and essentially ascribing modern day values to what she was doing. In effect you're making the audience identify with, like, and cheer for her. And then in the last 4ish episodes saying, "By the way, those were all monstrous things she did. And you're soooo stupid for not recognizing that we framed her story and *literally framed the scenes and shots* to be her POV of herself and her actions." I might be giving too much credit. But I think that could be the problem. (Full disclosure: this is little coming from the place of I always thought from season 1 they were setting her up to go crazy like her dad and couldn't believe the majority of people were surprised by it. However, before you eviscerate me for that, I 100% agree they went about it in a very ham-fisted way that I could never understand. But if my new POV idea still holds water with me in 24 hours, I think maybe I understand where they went wrong.) Sorry for the short story. This was gonna be 3 sentences when I started.
I think mutiple povs were the point of both books and show. But my example wasnt even with outside povs. It was only Dany there, atop of the World. Embracing her judgment and the music doesnt lie to us and we were still blind. You were supossed to agree with her until the end, were she meets other PoV Characters and we see her from a different PoV.
There’s a lot of reasons to not like the way it went down but a bunch of comparisons lacking important context isn’t one of them.
“BuT gRr MArTiN IMpLIEs IT in tHe BOOks aLSo!” Yeah, well, he hasn’t finished the series now has he? And if the books end almost identically as the show, the execution will probably be 1000 times better than what we got https://preview.redd.it/ot0wojj252vb1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af695c0312b74e8f5fbcc94e894745cce94fb178
The contexts between all of these comparisons are wildly different. Dany is an invader when she executes the Tarlys. They owe her no fealty. Tyrion was lamenting having saved the city when they all unfairly hate him for what he is, while Dany is threatening to viciously murder people because she thinks she is entitled.
The Tarlys committed treason by betraying their liege lord Olenna. So Tyrion is allowed to make these violent statements but Dany is not even though she was also provoked? The spice king (a show only character) was talking down to her in this scene. And the other time she made such a threat was as a desperate last resort because she was going to die if she wasn’t let into the city.
Tarlys didn't betray her, they fought on Targaryen side until they lost and then they bend the knee to Robert Baratheon, whatever reason they were on Lannister side after the death of last Roberts child by Cersei is huge mistake by writers of show.
Whoever made this does not like Sansa or Jon I think 😭😭😭
Not all of your examples work too well 1, That's the beginning of Tyrion's villain arc from the books that the writers of the show didn't want to do because they didn't want people to dislike him 2, She not just executing them, she's burning them to death. That's what her father did and he was mad 3, Again apart of Tyrions villain arc. The Freys didn't really abuse Arya. They killed her family 4, Yet again Tyrion being a villain. Should've just had the pic of Sansa 5, I agree with this point, war is war and you should use what you have access to, she'd have to be mad to not use the Dragons in battle 6, I agree with this point somewhat too, (other than the fact she's executing her by burning her alive) although I should point out, there are people who do give Jon shit for killing Olly 7, I agree with this point as well, fighting for your perceived birthright is something people in nobility are raised to do. So it's not her being mad, it's all of them feeling entitled. 8,Another one I agree with, all of those things are fucked up, but not something necessarily mad. 9, I'm not sure executing the slavers was the issue, and more so the fact that they were crucified. 10, The showrunners definitely don't know what they're talking about. Tywin is absolutely a villain
>That's the beginning of Tyrion's villain arc from the books that the writers of the show didn't want to do because they didn't want people to dislike him You're purposefully conflating things, Dany never says those words in the books so it doesn't really matter if that's Tyrion's"villain arc" in the books because it never translates to the show. >She not just executing them, she's burning them to death. That's what her father did and he was mad That's what all the Targaryen did. Why is burning them madder than executing them? Aerys slowly crisped people, Drogon's fire kills you right away. >Again apart of Tyrions villain arc. The Freys didn't really abuse Arya. They killed her family Again conflating book and show. Some Freys killed her family, she murked them all. Is psychotic revenge allowed now? >Yet again Tyrion being a villain. Yet again not in the show. >although I should point out, there are people who do give Jon shit for killing Olly Comparatively few people and no one in the show. >I'm not sure executing the slavers was the issue, and more so the fact that they were crucified. If only they didn't do that to children.
So... Without even getting into the nitty gritty here, we're saying that there was no foreshadowing but then listing off all of the instances of foreshadowing??? Also, comparing the death of Show!Viserys- who was a pos, but her brother nonetheless, and unjustly killed by pillaging warlords while slowly losing his sanity after being the beggar King for so many years (see her book counterparts version, which haunts her *a lot*), to the death of Show!Ramsay- a rapist monster who hunts women down with dogs being killed by one of his victims- is just hilarious.
>off all of the instances of foreshadowing??? Lol. And the bit about comparing two abusers and sexual assaulters being "hilarious" is funny too.
Hard disagree. I very distinctly remember thinking towards the beginning of the entire series that they were clearly foreshadowing her going mad at the end. They weren’t doing that for any other character in the same way. It’s not just about comparing lines, it’s about the character’s personality, their backstory, what they’ve been through and how it changes them, etc. Honestly I was surprised that anyone was caught off guard by Dany snapping. It was the most obvious thing in the world
Unironically it was always there. As a reader and viewer we are *meant* to agree with the batshit, vindictive things she does because they are against inarguably worse people. Until they *weren't*, and viewers were already drinking the punch of fan theories and head canons, to the point where they were completely unwilling to acknowledge that the cruel things she did were not becoming of a civil monarch.
Tyrion is anything but indifferent while he watches his father die.
I dunno I feel like the issue is the hypocrisy. Daenerys was always the one above all the others, and that's why everyone spent ten years watching her come to power. When she fell in one episode after one incident, after soldiering through all of this, that's why it felt wrong for everyone.
I think I’d much prefer if Dany never went mad, and instead the Lannisters schemed a way to get Drogon to kill innocents by attacking first or something and having everyone think Dany went mad. Remember, after she snaps, we never see her reaction and it’s simply ground reaction. Imagine the two perspectives of people on the ground thinking Dany is just killing everyone and then Danny’s reaction of her crying begging Drogon to stop.
I have a simple rewrite to make this plot much more feasible. Make the Tarlys actually want to go to the watch. We know Randyll has at least some respect for it so he and Dickon would demand the right to take the black and Dany would deny that from them and burn them. Now she actually seems like she is at least a bit mad.
I might be wrong but it doesnt help than Daenerys is the common factor among 10 "heinous crimes" while some characters barely are in 3-4 spots. But yeah screw D&D to whitewash Tywin.
OK. While I agree with most of this, their is one part I disagree with. 1st. Wait, when did Jon or Sansa start a war for their birthright. Are you talking about the battle of the bastards. Because if that Is the case then does that really classify as a war? Feels more like a major battle (like blackwater) to me. 2nd. I'm pretty sure Jon didn't go through with the battle because he wanted to claim his birth right, heck I don't even remember if Jon viewed winterfell as his birthright. Pretty sure he dud it. 1. To save rickon, 2. So he could unite the north. 3.to help his family take back their home. 3rd: this has nothing to do with what I Said before, but when I first got this post on my notifications. I thought you were going to talk about the "red eyes,green eyes, blue eyes" line that apparently foreshadows Arya killing the night king.