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Rose of Red Lake

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  1. I dont know but in the show she was corrupted by power and didn't care about those people. Sapochnik said something that made sense to explain it - "She feels empty, it wasn't what she thought it was, it's not enough." And yes, Dany is never satisfied in the books, "That should be enough for any woman . . . but not for the dragon." She also decided to go to war simply because she didn't like Meerenese food, clothing, or housing, which is nothing really (she doesn't mention slavery at all as a reason to choose "fire and blood"). So in the show it's probably that she didn't want a bloodless victory, she wanted to inflict pain and make people pay, just like she did on the Plaza of Punishment and with the wineseller's daughters in the books. Because teaching people the dragon's power feels good to her. And if "it wasn't what she thought it was," then she had decided Westeros wasn't home. They weren't "her" people or even innocents, it was just another place to smash, just like the Dothraki did in Essos. I dont know, it just lines up for me more so than accidents or blood magic.
  2. Interested in Nymeria because I like her refugee story and I hope we get to see water magic vs. fire magic. Action scenes of Nymeria herself or her water witches drowning a few Valyrians to protect Ny Sar would be cool. Too bad they left that book scene out with Tyrion in the show, it could have connected. We'll also see Valyrians being absolute shit heads. Flea Bottom also sounds interesting. They could humanize the people of city Dany destroyed.
  3. I will cackle if Cersei/Jaime are the only ship that gets romantic overtures at the very end. Rooting for them just because it's fun and their relationship is iconic to the series. I even recognize some fanfic overtones. Right now Jaime is in the part of the fic where he's seething with jealousy that his girl is with someone else. Refuses to rush to her aid out of angst. But no biggie, she ends up saving herself. ...only to rush to her aid when she really needs it and she thinks he'll never come for her. Here for it!
  4. The promised hero was a dragon burning everyone. That was Tolkien's twist.
  5. Maybe it's useful to imagine the ways it could happen more logically then? I can see it going lots of ways. - Maybe Dany thinks the surrender is an act of perfidy and a plan to lure her into a trap. This happened with Daeron in Dorne. And maybe perfidy is somewhere in the Aegon plot? Like He, Varys, or JonCon could trick Dany with surrender, which angers her and makes her paranoid about it happening again. - Maybe Dany decides on a whim to use No Quarter. Dany already has the most power in the world and can decide to kill 5000,000 people if she wants, and no one can stop her. Also a similar no quarter situation happened at Tumbleton. Soldiers surrendered and the city was destroyed anyway. Of course there is historical precedent for this too. - Maybe Dany decides that she doesn't want the daily tedium of ruling, and prefers to "show people whose boss." Maybe she decides Westeros needs to be punished for opposing her. I think there are numerous examples in the books that she goes out of her way to exact punishment on a population level, and then moves on. - Maybe she gets progressively more self-righteous and this is her version of "liberation" in her twisted mind. People corrupted by power or deluded by their own bullshit don't have to do things that are logical and make sense. - Maybe Dany doesn't see Westeros as her home at that point. Maybe she realizes it was all a fantasy and she lashes out. Maybe she doesn't want to rule over people who don't worship her. Maybe she doesn't see it as "her city" anymore. - Maybe she is more like the Dothraki who don't follow rules of war. They force a city into submission and THEN enslave it and rape women. Conquerors in history have done similar things - maybe Dany is on that trajectory. -Prophecy-wise, the "Stallion Who Fucks the World!!!!" doesn't really fit someone who "just attacks a tower" and "tries to minimize damage." "We all know the saying power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And there's a great deal of truth in that. But also I find that the desire for power can corrupt us, the lust for power makes people do things maybe they shouldn't do." (x) "What drives Dany? With Dany I'm particularly looking at the... what effect great power has upon a person. She's the mother of dragons, and she controls what is in effect the only three nuclear weapons in the entire world that I've created. What does it do to you when you control the only three nuclear weapons in the world and you can destroy entire cities or cultures if you choose to? Should you choose to, should you not choose to?" (x) - I read GRRM's statements about power corrupting here, and how he's exploring the effect great power has on Dany, and wonder okay then, WHY is there is a "corrupt, rotting heart" in Dany's fortune telling visions? Why isn't that discussed more? What are the implications of that? - Dany has so many unique qualities that comparisons don't fit. Cersei and Ramsay never had dragons. Aegon the Conqueror had a desire to build and restore cities and stick it out for the long haul. Aegon V had Dany's drive to correcting the "wrongs" in the world, but he didn't have the corrupting influence of absolute power through nukes. The High Sparrow, the Brotherhood without Banners both had a righteousness that seemed promising at first, then went horribly wrong and became quite scary (beware the righteous avengers!). It can happen to Dany. "The Dragons can win wars for you, that's established in the histories. But they can't necessarily produce peace or prosperity or help you rule the nation. You know Daenerys Targaryen is finding it out in Meereen when she defeats the cities of Slavers Bay with her three dragons. But then in trying to rule as Queen, she can destroy Meereen any time she wants by just unleashing the dragons, she could kill a lot of people, wipe out that most of the population of the city, reduce the entire city to a fiery inferno, but that doesn't help her come up with good laws or to establish peace between the original inhabitants and the the freedmen and people that she's brought in. So ruling is more than just the power to destroy, and that's a lesson that she's definitely learning." (x) "Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only [Daenerys Targaryen] has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world. But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.” - Maybe it's thematic. Reading these interviews with GRRM, I think he wants to show dragons as destroyers (of cities, of dynasties, of dreams, of whatever). For the theme to work, the message has to be that you can't get very far with them. A dynasty will only last 300 years compared to the Starks' 10k. Dany's failures also show that the methods used by Aegon to start his dynasty, was bound to fail long-term. Also, if Dany just attacks the Red Keep and goes on to be a successful ruler, it sends a message to crazy political leaders that nukes are helpful and can be useful to their political goals. I don't think GRRM wants his work to bolster the viewpoints of dictators who want to intimidate the populace with WMD. - Maybe some people like villain Dany. Like me!! It's a brilliant experiment in how dictators gain power and how it happens through an illusion. People follow dictators all over the world, and have been convinced their political leaders are heroes. I think it's genius to make her sympathetic at the start. I really was rooting for her but she did things that made me increasingly uncomfortable that I tried to justify. And then I just hit that wall where I realized, no, I'm not looking at a hero with flaws, I'm watching a villain in the making. And I love it! Dany as a hero is boring, told a million times...But Dany as a villain who still thinks she's one of the good guys? It's meaty and interesting and good and I can't wait to see it in the books because it will be so much better. I mean... it happened. It just looked slightly different. Dictators do horrible shit to their own people. Either through outright mass murder, prisons, or willful neglect. Dictator A gasses their own citizens in a concentration camp far away from the city center. Dictator B decides not to go to all that trouble and just kills everyone quickly inside the city. Does it matter??? Don't ask genocide to make sense. It's supposed to be senseless.
  6. Oh right, got them mixed up. But either way, swooping in and "saving" a place she knows nothing about and has never been to before is doubtful. I dont even think it's happening in Slaver's Bay tbh.
  7. I dont think you will want Dany to be Azor Ahai if the "warrior of fire" is really just a glorified arsonist.
  8. I was thinking of whatever one it was, where her minions did all the sewer work and she just sat in a tent.
  9. She's gonna swoop in at the last moment (tension: will she arrive? won't she?), yell dracarys, and save everyone without lifting a finger like she did Yunkai.
  10. I just didnt like how in his moment of agony, she's like "oh he wasn't a real dragon." That was insufferable.
  11. The Targaryens should really have all the physical, intellectual, sexual, and mental problems. I think a lot of them are there, just masked. Daenerys infertile like Charles II. Stillborn children like King Tut. Bone disorders like King Tut's sisters. Biopolar and personality disorders like the Spanish Bourbons. Ect.
  12. wolf's blood isn't "madness." They just act rashly and put themselves in an early grave, and so far its only been applied to 3 people in the story. meanwhile asearchoficeand fire records 40 instances of "madness" and "dragon" in the same passage
  13. I dont know any of those guys who killed 500,000 people, in a city, in one day. That's like a Rwandan genocide in 24 hours. Do you have stats on the other casualties from each of those guys? I thought you meant being a kinslayer as a public perception to prevent him from being promoted, so that's why I brought up Bloodraven. But reading this post, I think you mean narrative justice? Really I think the only injustice in that regard is what he did to Shae. Not what he did to his father. In the show her killing them even though they surrendered sounds like the "gut punch" GRRM goes for. I just assume the story is here to deliver a message, loud and clear, about the type of power only Dany has.
  14. Yeah, that was pretty disturbing. I dont know how much blowback Tyrion will get in the end, if Dany kills 500,000 people. It seems like small potatoes next to that. And its odd, there were so many Targaryens killing each other but they were still in power. People called Bloodraven a kinslayer but he was still the Hand for a while after that without much objection.
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