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Should Dany Have Married Quentyn?


Lord Puff Fish

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Marrying Hizdahr helped her in the short term - she got peace in Meereen. But it actually ruined her long term goals. Not only does she reject the only possible friends she might have in westeros, she is also now tied permanently to a Ghiscari in marriage and unless she is willing to kill Hizdahr she will never get westeros - No westerosi lord is ever going to want a Ghiscari as King.

The Ironmen will take care of that.

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I honestly think she should have. With the backing of Dorne, she would stand a much better chance at winning back the Iron Throne. Instead, she led with her pants instead of her head and refused Quentyn. Was this a bad move?

Absolutely she should have. If taking back the Iron Throne was truly her priority then the opportunity to gain Dorne should have outweighed anything happening in Mereen. Unfortunately Dany decided Mereen was more important.

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Dany didnt have to marry Quentyn, but at least broker something in the way of an alliance. Instead of attempting to scare the piss out of Quent with her dragons, why not sit down and discuss what was at hand? Its the whole "I want to show him my 'children'." thing i find horribly dumb. It also led Quentyn to do something incredibly stupid. :bang:


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The real question should probably be, should Daenerys have continued to harbor aspirations of conquering Westeros, or carved out a new Kingdom under her in Slaver's Bay?



I believe that latter, at which point marrying Quentyn wasn't a move. Of course, the fact that Daenerys kept thinking she could have both was probably the most unrealistic approach.


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In many ways, yes, it probably would have been smart to marry him. Personally, if I could choose and magicaly change everything, I would have defintely rooted for her to marry Quentyn over Hizzie. However, can't really blame her for refusing. Dorne has been M.I.A for her entire life, she on her own worked from the ground up to station her own empire, then suddenly a boy shows up and offers marriage and alliance? She had no idea something like this was going to happen. Of course she was going to carry on with her own plans if she had absolutely no clue about the secret plans of others, plans that were decided for her without her knowledge.




She was also unfortunetly in a tight situation when he showed up. It would require great effort and assistance to make the transition smooth, for the two of them . She had a lot of people under her belt to think of, as did Quentyn.



That was a mistake on part of the people involved in the whole secret shindig - it was mayhaps a bit too secret, with a lack of proper whatnots.



But anyway, BOTH should have handled their meeting better after the fact. They both should have made the effort to talk more, instead of one doing the showing and then the other trying to do the showing off. More facts should have been exhanged with one another. More ideas. More genuine offers on what could help. Egos on both sides should have taken a backseat.




But I guess that is what happens :dunno: Dany is a teen, and Quentyn, being younger than Arianne who is 23, wouldn't have been much older. Not to generalize of course, but two very young people, with great expected responsibilities placed on them in a foreign land and all alone...guess forward thinking wouldn't come up right away if you are still maturing.

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If she wants to return to Westeros at some point, yes.



But that's kind of the problem with Daenerys decision making in ASoS and ADWD, she doesn't have a clearly defined endgame in place, and doesn't shape her actions around a specific goal, so you get a strategy that plays against itself more often than not.



Her POV is never really clear about what she ultimately wants, which is why her administration of Slaver's Bay turns into such a shitshow.


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But anyway, BOTH should have handled their meeting better after the fact. They both should have made the effort to talk more, instead of one doing the showing and then the other trying to do the showing off. More facts should have been exhanged with one another. More ideas. More genuine offers on what could help. Egos on both sides should have taken a backseat.

:thumbsup: Both sides were dumb. The one with the most leverage was too flippant. The one doing the pleading, too bold. D:

Her POV is never really clear about what she ultimately wants, which is why her administration of Slaver's Bay turns into such a shitshow.

Shes too busy waffling between options and caving in, but really hating it. The result is the shitshow and Meereen is now covered in dragon shit.

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The real question should probably be, should Daenerys have continued to harbor aspirations of conquering Westeros, or carved out a new Kingdom under her in Slaver's Bay?

I believe that latter, at which point marrying Quentyn wasn't a move. Of course, the fact that Daenerys kept thinking she could have both was probably the most unrealistic approach.

Too right! It was unrealistic.

Happily, Dany is not a present-day reader who lives in a century in a hurry with pragmatic people who pursue their goals in a logical, straightforward manner. IMO, she's all the more interesting for her indecision, missteps, zigzags, etc. As much as I yearn for her to open WoW with "The hell with this place; let's go to Westeros!", it would be wrong for Dany. She's metaphorically still going east to go west. She's got to sort out the prophecies, omens, dragons, etc. She, her army, her dragons have to grow up and untie the Meereenese Knot. In other words, abandoning Slavers' Bay abruptly would be capitulation and prove she is not worthy to rule a horse, much less a kingdom.

None of that precludes some diplomatic accommodation of Quentyn. Despite Barristan's opinion she'd have married Quent if he'd had Gerris's looks, another reason she wouldn't want to marry him is that marriage to a prince of Dorne would be marriage for life in Westeros. In other words, she would have been selling herself to a 'frog' to secure Dorne. It's one thing to dally with Daario or to use Hizdahr, but Dany knew neither relationship was likely to be permanent. Moreover, Quaithe had warned against trusting the son of the sun, and instinctively she must not have trusted Quentyn. In the event, he did prove himself untrustworthy and unworthy, more frog than prince.

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Dany didnt have to marry Quentyn, but at least broker something in the way of an alliance. Instead of attempting to scare the piss out of Quent with her dragons, why not sit down and discuss what was at hand? Its the whole "I want to show him my 'children'." thing i find horribly dumb. It also led Quentyn to do something incredibly stupid. :bang:

To be fair, it's not Dany's fault Quentyn thought stealing a dragon would be a good idea.

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The difference between Dany and all other would-be rulers of Westeros is empathy. I think she stayed in Meereen partly because she was "practicing" being queen, but mainly because she hates to see innocents suffering.



Her empathy affected her decisions... Quentyn may have been the smart move, but her motivations led her elsewhere


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I don't fault Dany for turning Quentyn down and sticking to her word to marry Hizdahr. She had already made a commitment to someone else and she kept it, so at face value she did the "right thing" and Quentyn showed up too late. Whether she should have agreed to marry Hizdahr at all, when she still tells herself she's going to conquer Westeros, is another matter entirely.


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No, he had too little to offer overall and almost nothing to offer at the time. If she had married Quentyn she would waste her future chance to marry someone like Willas Tyrell or Harry the Heir who both are Westerosi heirs with much bigger armies to offer. Besides Quentyn wasn't even Doran's heir as far as Dany knew he was sort of "second son." Though I agree with AM that marrying Hizdahr was a stupid move if she ever wanted to rule Westeros.

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Why?

Well, wasn't her whole goal to reclaim the IT from the usurpers who took it from her family? Didn't she want "to go home"? Wasn't she in Meereen only as a result of her journey to Westeros? Shall I continue?

This :agree: .

IMO, she should be going back to westeros. I dislike most of the current contenders for the throne. If she stays in Mereen, and then moves through the rest of slavers bay, by the time she's finished, the war in westeros will be over, and the throne will be stable, thus much harder to defeat.

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Dany didnt have to marry Quentyn, but at least broker something in the way of an alliance. Instead of attempting to scare the piss out of Quent with her dragons, why not sit down and discuss what was at hand? Its the whole "I want to show him my 'children'." thing i find horribly dumb. It also led Quentyn to do something incredibly stupid. :bang:

First: taking him to see the dragons was a GOOD idea. She was showing Quentyn that she can still give him fire and blood - and he can still be her ally - regardless of whom she marries. How is this not a good decision? Because Quentyn's afraid of them? Well, in that case it was still a good decision: it showed Dany that Quentyn was not suited for the task.

Most importantly - this is the third time I've said it on this thread so far - Dany and Quentyn are only together in Meereen for a VERY short time(*), during which Dany has a LOT of more important tasks, and during which Quentyn's life is in serious danger. Do you think Hizdahr and/or the Sons of the Harpy would hesistate to kill Quentyn if they thought he was a threat to their interests?

But yeah, let's not pretend that stealing the dragons was Dany's fault. She showed him the dragons and also showed him that he was not a suitable rider (something he realised). It was his own stupidity and ego that led to him trying to steal the dragons, not Daenerys.

(*) Seriously, why does everyone forget about this? He arrived the day before her wedding, and Dany rode away on Drogon very shortly after her wedding.

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