SeanF

Ruling the Seven Kingdoms would probably not be a happy ending for either. In order to win the game of thrones, you seem to require the morals of a sociopath. I think if one likes a character, one wants them to do better than just win the game.

Take their slaves, and you make implacable enemies of them. Her mistake was failing to understand that. In their eyes, she has robbed them of their property, and violated their human rights. That’s why they have to go.

A more experienced leader would have dealt far more brutally with the Great Masters - he would not have left wounded tigers alive. We look back at great rulers, and judge them as they were in their prime, rather than as they were when very young. Mature Bismarck, Napoleon, Octavian, Frederick the Great would doubtless fare much better than Jon or Dany, but they all screwed up as teenagers and young men.

Maegor had done much of the hard work for him. People knew if they defied him, they would become ash. Neither Jon nor Dany have had the benefit of a Maegor clearing a path for them.

The free folk don’t kneel. The Northerners do. When Robb goes to war, his tenants have no choice but to follow. The Greatjon got his fingers bitten off for insubordination.

Extreme noble factionalism, lack of central direction, and finally dissolution and absorption by other powers.

I don't know what they were trying to achieve in the show. If the king is an omniscient being who can spy on his subjects 24/7 and lives for hundreds of years, there will never be another election.

Jaehaerys pulled peoples' guts out, when he needed to. People knew that the cost of defying him would be terrible.

Authoritarianism is necessary in a medieval/early modern society. So is skill at waging war. The idea that military success is undesirable in a ruler would be viewed very strangely in this world. No one would want to see Westeros go the way of the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth,

Jon is …..dead, which places him behind Daenerys.

One of the (many) things the two D's got wrong was portraying Jon as a person who runs away from responsibility, which is not at all how the books portray him.

If you were to take someone like Aragorn (and Martin is deliberately using Jon and Dany as foils to Aragorn) even he is not driven by pure altruism. Obviously, defeating Sauron is a good and heroic thing, but he also wants the throne so he can marry the woman he loves and found a dynasty. I think a good leader has to both desire the job for its own sake, and be public spirited. It's both/and rather than either/or.

It seems to have been confirmed that Bran will, in some sense, be king at the end. I don't know if that is good news or not. I don't think that in the end, either Jon or Daenerys would enjoy the role of Queen or King of Westeros very much. Either would probably make a good Dux Bellorum. I don't buy into the show's stupidity that the only person worthy to exercise power is the person who does not want it. That's not a serious political statement. Any good political leader is driven by a mix of ambition and altruism.

Perhaps it was like the last months of the Third Reich, where the Nazi leadership were actually out of their minds on drink and drugs.

Tywin Lannister was a mass murderer and rapist by proxy, yet he and Joanna were in love. Marriages for love are unusual in this world, but it's not unusual for a woman to fall in love with a brutal warlord. In real life, plenty of brutal warlords have had loved ones. Martin certainly intended the love between Drogo and Daenerys to be real and genuine, even if some readers dispute this.. By Dothraki standards, he was enlightened in his treatment of her, and a big improvement on Viserys.