Dany's code of ethics is inconsistent with her actions in many cases

[SkaggCannibal]

Another Dany-bashing topic? Well she could of course go sit in a corner and do nothing, that way she would be morally perfect. And of course she should have let Viserys insult her new people, of course she shouldn't want to have seks with Khal Drogo or Daario Naharis. She is so hypcritical.

You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

[LordStoneheart]

That settles it. Dany has the blood of thousands in her hands. So much her peaceful, grateful "children". She could have used the sellswords and dragons to enter the city, and allow the Unsullied to free Meereen's slaves as peacefully as possible. It would massively decrease the death toll.

Her dragons were not nearly big enough to accomplish this, and it would be a waste of her resources to do that. She didn't plan on staying at first. Mereen was meant to be a stop where she would free slaves and keep moving. The blood isn't on her hands, its on the slaves hands. If someone releases a caged dog and it in turn attacks its abusive owner, how much blame can really be placed on the one who freed the dog? the slaves wouldn't have made the distinction of smallfolk and wealthy in their newly freed rage. That's why I don't think Mereen is quite as morally ambiguous on Dany's part.

[SeanF]

That settles it. Dany has the blood of thousands in her hands. So much her peaceful, grateful "children". She could have used the sellswords and dragons to enter the city, and allow the Unsullied to free Meereen's slaves as peacefully as possible. It would massively decrease the death toll.

If Mereen had surrendered on terms, then yes, this could have been achieved. But once it was taken by storm, Dany's sellswords and freedmen, plus those slaves who rebelled, would have considered rape and pillage to be their just reward, and murdered any who resisted them.

[Panos Targaryen]

Another Dany-bashing topic? Well she could of course go sit in a corner and do nothing, that way she would be morally perfect. And of course she should have let Viserys insult her new people, of course she shouldn't want to have seks with Khal Drogo or Daario Naharis. She is so hypcritical.

You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

I'm not bashing her, I'm questioning some of her decisions. And I'm a fan of House Targaryen, it's just that Dany sometimes weird decisions. And how exactly does her having sex with two murderers and probable rapists after swearing to protect innocents against these kinds of people make any sense? I'm not asking for perfection, just an explanation to this decision. And it's not just sex, she adored Drogo, and Daario has reduced her to a babbling fool.

[MotherAnduin]

Dany says Robert murdered children, she murdered children over the age of twelve en masse in Astapor.

Dany says Robert did no justice. Dany gave a blanket pardon to all the murderers, rapists and thieves who were not caught red handed. In a direct parallel to Jaime and Gregor , two slaves killed the parents of a boy after raping their mother. One of the slave still lived in the house of the boy and the other was employed in Dany's Mother's men.

Dany decreed that the woman who abandoned her house had lost the rights to her house.

Dany did no justice in Meereen or Astapor.

[SeanF]

Once the Unsullied occupied the city, order was restored. Murderers were hanged, and rapists gelded.

Really, an amnesty was the only option. It ensured that people who had owned slaves pre-conquest were also exempt from punishment. Allowing people to retain the ownership of houses they'd seized made no sense, though.

The Sack of Mereen was standard. The real issues were whether Daenerys had any right to go to war with people who were not aggressive towards her, and whether crucifying 163 random Mereenese was a legitimate punishment (which seems to fly in the face of the amnesty).

[MotherAnduin]

Robert gets all the shit for doing the same thing that Dany did. Even though Dany did it on a much larger scale.

[Panos Targaryen]

Dany says Robert murdered children, she murdered children over the age of twelve en masse in Astapor.

Dany says Robert did no justice. Dany gave a blanket pardon to all the murderers, rapists and thieves who were not caught red handed. In a direct parallel to Jaime and Gregor , two slaves killed the parents of a boy after raping their mother. One of the slave still lived in the house of the boy and the other was employed in Dany's Mother's men.

Dany decreed that the woman who abandoned her house had lost the rights to her house.

Dany did no justice in Meereen or Astapor.

I may criticize her, but if you look at it in a less harsh way she's just a 14 year old girl who's trying to be a superheroine over an entire continent of slaver scum. She's doing her best, but she's messing up badly, as most people would in her place.

[mankytoes]

The opening post is weird, as it seems to see,falling in love as a rational and ethical decision. Surely you know it isn't something that can be helped?

[IRON BANK]

The order of events listed in the beginning of your op, are listed out of order, so it misses the arc of the characters intellectual and moral evolvment.

[Morienthar]

Most of the High Lords with the possible exception of Stannis and Ned have a skewed perception on Justice and sometimes their own decisions it comes with the territory.

Dany has a bit of an extra skewed perception,what with all the damn entitlement she feels.

[Panos Targaryen]

The opening post is weird, as it seems to see,falling in love as a rational and ethical decision. Surely you know it isn't something that can be helped?

Love can be irrational, but Dany's choices seem very over the top. Drogo and Daario aren't mere bad boys, we're talking about cold blooded killers here. Just like Sansa loved Joffrey until she learned he was a monster, I see Dany's situation as something similar.

[mankytoes]

Love can be irrational, but Dany's choices seem very over the top. Drogo and Daario aren't mere bad boys, we're talking about cold blooded killers here. Just like Sansa loved Joffrey until she learned he was a monster, I see Dany's situation as something similar.

Don't forget she was forced to be with Drogo, as a vulnerable 14 year old girl. After he was good to her, I think it's easy to see why she fell for him, being so isolated. And I think that's affected her taste in men, leading to Daario. But neither man is a Joffrey, that's for sure.

You say cold blooded killer, but in context most of the men she knows are. She's hardly had a model upbringing, I think it's very believable she'd like that sort of man.

[SeanF]

For a Dothraki Khal, Drogo is quite kind towards his wife. It's not hard to see her falling for him in those circumstances.

Another type of Khal might have let his blood-riders rape her, and beaten and abused her.

[Greymoon]

I agree that the smallfolk bore the brunt of the sack...and Dany destroyed the economy of Meereen. I don’t mean slavery, though it seems this was a big part of the economy in the region, but olive trees for example... I can't remember if her dragons burned them, or if the Meereenese did it themselves, to prevent her getting hold of their harvest...the result is the same, in any case...besides that, she’s been using the sheep of farmers, to feed her dragons, and I don’t think she’s offering them a proper alternative to increase their production. She’s giving them coin, but if the economy is destroyed and merchants refuse to trade with Meereen, what are they going to buy with it? And if we are talking only in terms of subsistence agriculture, how does she expect this to go well? One sheep a day for each dragon, that’s three sheep a day as a whole. And the dragons have not finished growing....

IMO, Dany did little else but sow death and destruction on her way, and worsened the living conditions of thousands of people – by way of destroying their economy, undermining the whole structure of a society, creating power vacuums that lead to civil conflicts - Astapor, where slavery started up right away again, only it seems that it became kind of worse...

Another thing that strikes me as strange re-reading Dany's chapters, is her friendship with Jorah Mormont, a former slaver. She's hell bent on freeing slaves in ADWD, and generally condemns all slavers she meets...All but Jorah. The thing though is, that she had a deep affection for Jorah. So if she knows that Jorah had some redeeming qualities, why not look for these redeeming qualities in other slavers? Why kill them all, before giving them a chance to speak for themselves?

I don't want to make an apology of slavery, I'm just of the opinion, that some of the Meereenese guys were not in fact all so evil as she believed them to be and that, had she tried to find a compromise with the not so evil slavers, her rule in Meereen would have gone much smoother, and prevented the death of many innocents. She should have called HRW or created her own NGO in collaboration with local people, to start gentle persuasion work. ;)

Dany is too hasty in her judgment, and paints a whole people with the same brush, when she should know better: 1) Because she has ridden with Dothrakis and come to love some of them, 2) because her own cuddly bear was himself a slaver. Her acquaintance with Jorah, and Drogo should have made her see that some of the slavers do have a human side to them and that it is not impossible for people to change. And yes, who can tell really, if the people that died by her hand, were really all, evil nasty slavers?

[Biglose]

I agree that the smallfolk bore the brunt of the sack...and Dany destroyed the economy of Meereen. I don’t mean slavery, though it seems this was a big part of the economy in the region, but olive trees for example... I can't remember if her dragons burned them, or if the Meereenese did it themselves, to prevent her getting hold of their harvest...the result is the same, in any case...besides that, she’s been using the sheep of farmers, to feed her dragons, and I don’t think she’s offering them a proper alternative to increase their production. She’s giving them coin, but if the economy is destroyed and merchants refuse to trade with Meereen, what are they going to buy with it? And if we are talking only in terms of subsistence agriculture, how does she expect this to go well? One sheep a day for each dragon, that’s three sheep a day as a whole. And the dragons have not finished growing....

Sorry, but the sheap would not be the problem. What do you thing humans eat. One sheap does not feed a hundred of her soldiers.

[Greymoon]

Sorry, but the sheap would not be the problem. What do you thing humans eat. One sheap does not feed a hundred of her soldiers.

It becomes a problem if we are talking in terms of subsistence agriculture, which would probably be the case in Meereen. Subsistence agriculture would suffice for the needs of the people in Meereen, but not for the needs of three more dragons that eat one sheep a day each. Especially if you consider meat as a luxury item, something that is not eaten every day by the common folk, but only once a week as would be, IMO, the norm in a medieval society...but even once a week, might be exceptional - an indication that the farmers would not have hundreds and thousands of sheep, but just enough to accommodate the demand.

Further, two whole sheep can feed a hundred people. I've gone to a celebration with a hundred people, where there was two whole sheep to eat, and it was enough. So, that's a 150 people not eating every time the dragons feed. And sheep don't birth a litter, so in the long term, Meereen would have run out of sheep. And if you count crop and olive trees being burned, trade halted because no merchant wants to risk traveling to a region where there is war, that would eventually lead to a long term starvation.

[SeanF]

Damn, my bad, thanks for correcting me. Still, she sacked one city in a cruel way. Yes, it was more civilized than what the Lannisters did in both cases, but evil is evil.

At Astapor, there's no question that she ordered a mass execution. The argument is how big it was, depending whether the order "slay every man wearing a tokar" means a small elite of slave traders, or a wider group of free citizens, some of whom may have owned slaves.

There's no reason to believe that she ordered murder, rape, or robbery at Mereen, and she prevented these things once she gained control of the city. But, she would know that these things would follow if the city was taken by storm.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

I knew what this post would say before I read it. Give me an award.

[juanml82]

She's a massive hypocrite there's no denying that. She's flawed just like the rest of us. That said, she isn't evil.

She ordered to torture two innocent girls in front of her father so the father would confess things he possibly didn't even know.

Yes. She is evil.

And that's in the 'domestic' and less abstract plane. She's also planning a conquest war against Westeros, which would cause ten of thousands, if not more, of deaths.

I agree that the smallfolk bore the brunt of the sack...and Dany destroyed the economy of Meereen. I don’t mean slavery, though it seems this was a big part of the economy in the region, but olive trees for example... I can't remember if her dragons burned them, or if the Meereenese did it themselves, to prevent her getting hold of their harvest...the result is the same, in any case...besides that, she’s been using the sheep of farmers, to feed her dragons, and I don’t think she’s offering them a proper alternative to increase their production. She’s giving them coin, but if the economy is destroyed and merchants refuse to trade with Meereen, what are they going to buy with it? And if we are talking only in terms of subsistence agriculture, how does she expect this to go well? One sheep a day for each dragon, that’s three sheep a day as a whole. And the dragons have not finished growing....

IMO, Dany did little else but sow death and destruction on her way, and worsened the living conditions of thousands of people – by way of destroying their economy, undermining the whole structure of a society, creating power vacuums that lead to civil conflicts - Astapor, where slavery started up right away again, only it seems that it became kind of worse...

Another thing that strikes me as strange re-reading Dany's chapters, is her friendship with Jorah Mormont, a former slaver. She's hell bent on freeing slaves in ADWD, and generally condemns all slavers she meets...All but Jorah. The thing though is, that she had a deep affection for Jorah. So if she knows that Jorah had some redeeming qualities, why not look for these redeeming qualities in other slavers? Why kill them all, before giving them a chance to speak for themselves?

I don't want to make an apology of slavery, I'm just of the opinion, that some of the Meereenese guys were not in fact all so evil as she believed them to be and that, had she tried to find a compromise with the not so evil slavers, her rule in Meereen would have gone much smoother, and prevented the death of many innocents. She should have called HRW or created her own NGO in collaboration with local people, to start gentle persuasion work. ;)

Dany is too hasty in her judgment, and paints a whole people with the same brush, when she should know better: 1) Because she has ridden with Dothrakis and come to love some of them, 2) because her own cuddly bear was himself a slaver. Her acquaintance with Jorah, and Drogo should have made her see that some of the slavers do have a human side to them and that it is not impossible for people to change. And yes, who can tell really, if the people that died by her hand, were really all, evil nasty slavers?

Gentle persuasion work wouldn't work at all. The issue is separating the 'not so evil slavers' from the 'lets crucify slaves slavers'. She had no spy network and no real way to know what's happening in the pyramids, which also hindered her chances of stopping the slavers insurgence inside the walls of Mereen.