Daenerys Stormborn - A Re-Read Project Part II: ACoK & ASoS

[HexMachina]

First from Dany's page; (after Viserys dies)

"Afterward Daenerys continues to urge Drogo to win back the Iron Throne for their son, but with Viserys dead, he sees no further reason for it--until the day when Daenerys visits the western market with her handmaids, her khas, and Ser Jorah....the merchant tries to escape...Jorah reveals that King Robert has offered a lordship to any man who kills Viserys and Dany. The would-be assassin is tied to a horse and made to run behind the khalasar until he dies, and this is enough for Drogo. He announces that he will lead his khalasar across the poison water to take the iron chair of Dany's father fro their son. First however, Drogo chooses to ride east towards the lands of the Lhazreen and the khalasar of Khal Ogo, in order to take slaves which would buy him passage across the sea."

--So we know from this that it was in fact, not Dany who convinced Drogo to take the Iron throne. Yes she pushed and asked for it but Drogo definitively said NO. Then Robert tries to poison her, that is what changes Drogo's mind, nothing Dany has said, so the blame for Drogo turning towards Westeros is on Robert's feet. So then Drogo decides he needs money to cross, so it is Drogo's decision to attack the Lharzeen, not Dany's, Dany has no say, these are all Drogo's decisions.

I've been reading all of the posts in this thread, although I haven't commented so far. You are all great and very insightful btw, and I enjoyed Annara Snow's write up of Astapor a lot.

I am only posting now because I am surprised this particular point was ever in debate. :dunno: the novels are pretty clear that the poisoner is the catalyst which drives Drogo to make good on his promise to help take the Iron Throne. Earlier that very day in fact, Drogo had refused Daenerys' pleas.

[MoIaF]

I've been reading all of the posts in this thread, although I haven't commented so far. You are all great and very insightful btw, and I enjoyed Annara Snow's write up of Astapor a lot.

I am only posting now because I am surprised this particular point was ever in debate. :dunno: the novels are pretty clear that the poisoner is the catalyst which drives Drogo to make good on his promise to help take the Iron Throne. Earlier that very day in fact, Drogo had refused Daenerys' pleas.

You would think it's obvious, wouldn't you?

Yet, this very point is a source of heated debate within the forum with a group of people insisting that Dany was the one who got Drogo to pursue the Iron Throne for their son. When in fact as you mentioned he refused her earlier request. In fact, as I think more about it I wonder if Drogo's decision to pursued the IT had as much to do with the attempt on Dany's life as the attempt on his son's life by virtue of proxy.

If you do reply please do so in the new thread. Thanks! Also, WELCOME aboard! :D

NEW THREAD!

We've reached our limit so it's time for a new thread.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/111113-daenerys-stormborn-a-re-read-project-part-iii-asos-adwd/

[Parwan]

However, Daenerys did not confine her order to kill to just the Good Masters. She included a much wider element of the population in that order.

...

And if that is an element of the entire population, then this makes a difference. Killing guys who maybe owned one or two slaves is one thing if such killing is limited to such guys who happened to be in the plaza, where the battle occurred. If it includes all such guys in the city, then the matter is more serious. A big question is one that you and others have raised: Were Dany's enemies given a chance to surrender? This is very different from asking whether or not only bad guys were killed. It's also very different from asking how many slavers had to die in order to free the slaves.

...

Sure people died. The slavers weren't going to stop engaging in slavery if Dany threatened to make them work out their emotional issues with the family therapy foam bats. Dany very clearly gave orders designed to prevent innocents from being hurt or killed. It seems to me that the point here at the beginning of Dany's foray into Dany the Conqueror/Liberator <pick your title> isn't about the deaths in the plaza or even the deaths in Astapor beyond these two foundational points-- slavers needed to die to stop slavery in Astapor and Dany tried to limit the collateral damage.

I could try and speculate about the critical mass of slaves that need to be liberated in order to eliminate slavery and try and figure out the number of slavers and soldiers in Astapor that would need to die to accomplish that liberation, but it really doesn't seem to be the real issue in Dany's story. I think it misses the important elements we've already been shown elsewhere.

...

But this doesn't get to one of the points I'm talking about. Collateral damage and the killing of innocents are important. How Dany's story develops from here is important. But the particular event itself is also important. Killing people who are no longer trying to fight you is a bad thing, even if the people you kill are bad people. Once the active hostilities are over, why isn't the additional number of soldiers that would need to die zero? The soldiers have given up. You can disarm them. Why do you need to kill them?

1. I agree with Ragnorak.

I think it doesn't really matter how many masters or slavers were killed by Dany, whether it was 1 or 1000.

2. The freed men still ended up slaving the slavers.

I think the main take home message is for Dany to learn from her mistake of the political government of freedmen she left in charge of Astapor, and she actually does hence her reason to stay in Meereen.

...

1. This is a continuation of my responses to the above posts. The matter is not just one of sheer numbers. I think it incredibly unlikely that thousands were killed in Astapor because of pitched battles in the streets of the city. If large numbers were killed outside of the plaza, then this was slaughter, not battle. I go back to my comments from post # 369.

A military leader has to be able to control troops… If your enemies throw down their weapons and raise their arms above their heads, you should not tell your troops to continue firing.

...

If Dany's slay-the-tokar-wearers order applied to the whole city, she was, in effect, doing [this]...

When the other guys come out with a white flag, then you shouldn't yell, "Open fire!" I'm not sure what the Essossi equivalent of a white flag is. Maybe people fall on their knees and beg for mercy. Whatever it is, the upper and middle classes would surely have done it. If thousands were killed, then I'd say that thousands were butchered. I don't think that there were any zealots in Astapor intent on fighting to the death.

2. This is an important point. As I said upthread, we'll soon get to it.

[cade]

Cade

Regarding the Tokar, I don't doubt that most Tokar-wearers are slave-owners. I envisage Astapor as being like a great city in the Ancient World. At the top would be the elite (the Good Masters) who own hundreds of slaves, and the vast majority of the wealth. Below their level would be a lot of free citizens who owned a slave or two. We know, from descriptions of Volantis and Meereen, that in those slave-owning cities, such an element of the population exists. I see no reason to believe that Astapor is different.

I would consider an order to kill any man wearing a tokar to be an order to kill not just the elite, but that humbler (but still slave-owning) element of the population.

But, I fully accept that other interpretations are possible.

I agree with you entirely, except I'd need evidence to believe that Dany's slay orders were carried out beyond the Plaza even for slavers and soldiers who surrendered.

OMG you guys. I have some news. Several of these issues we have been arguing about are answered in the App. I have been wrong about a few things and right about a few things. I can't remember what side of which argument everyone was on, but I'm gonig to post a few passages that will straighten up some of the things we have been arguing about intensely :)

First from Dany's page; (after Viserys dies)

"Afterward Daenerys continues to urge Drogo to win back the Iron Throne for their son, but with Viserys dead, he sees no further reason for it--until the day when Daenerys visits the western market with her handmaids, her khas, and Ser Jorah....the merchant tries to escape...Jorah reveals that King Robert has offered a lordship to any man who kills Viserys and Dany. The would-be assassin is tied to a horse and made to run behind the khalasar until he dies, and this is enough for Drogo. He announces that he will lead his khalasar across the poison water to take the iron chair of Dany's father fro their son. First however, Drogo chooses to ride east towards the lands of the Lhazreen and the khalasar of Khal Ogo, in order to take slaves which would buy him passage across the sea."

--So we know from this that it was in fact, not Dany who convinced Drogo to take the Iron throne. Yes she pushed and asked for it but Drogo definitively said NO. Then Robert tries to poison her, that is what changes Drogo's mind, nothing Dany has said, so the blame for Drogo turning towards Westeros is on Robert's feet. So then Drogo decides he needs money to cross, so it is Drogo's decision to attack the Lharzeen, not Dany's, Dany has no say, these are all Drogo's decisions.

Second from MMD's Page; ( I was wrong about this and I admit it)

"She attempts to treat the wound that Khal Drogo received in the battle, but he refuses to follow her instructions and the wound becomes infected."

--MMD was trying to help Drogo at first, she was not poisoning him with her poultice, he did not wear it long enough so it is his fault the wound got infected and he fell from his horse. I always thought she had poisoned him from the beginning, but she did not.

Third from MMD's Page:

--"Mirri then offers to save Drogo through magical arts, but the cost includes the life of Rhaego--Drogo and Dany's unborn son--and leaves Drogo witless. Mirri admits this all was done in revenge for herself and her people."

So it is confirmed that MMD intended to take Rhaego's life the whole time as revenge, It was not Jorah's fault for bringing Dany into the tent. MMD always knew that Rhaego would die that night to save Drogo.

Fourth from Dany's page on Astapor: (I was right about this :) :) :))

--".....Then she commands Drogon to burn Kraznyz alive. The slavers call on the Unsullied to defend them, but the Unsullied remain still and unmoving until Daenerys gives the command to kill anyone over the age of twelve who wears a tokar that marks the slavers of the city. Then she frees all the slaves--who thank her and call her mother--and installs three wise men to rule Astapor before departing with her newfound army of Unsullied and freedmen, including the young scribe Missandei, determined to wipe out slavery throughout the region."

For this argument, it is clearly written here that Dany only commanded the Unsullied to kill the Slavers who are older than 12 who wear the tokar's marking them as slavers. Which means everyone who was doubting can at least scratch one mark against Dany off the list. She officially only killed the Slavers, around 100 people, not 1000, not the whole city. So that makes me feel better about her, knowing that most of the forum is mistaken about who exactly died at Astapor, it was only the vile, evil slavers who had killed hundreds of thousands of babies and puppies. Good riddance :)

Sorry I didnt think of this earlier and we got heated :grouphug:

Thanks for compiling and sharing this info. Just want to note that there's been debate over the degree to which that app is canon. Martin gave it his blessing and answered a lot of questions for it, but he didn't write it, and to my knowledge he didn't thoroughly fact-check it. That could be why, for example, the app says Dany "gives the command to kill anyone over the age of twelve who wears a tokar that marks the slavers of the city" when in fact the text explicitly states that Dany commanded men wearing tokars to be slain, and gave immunity to children under 12, not 13.

Martin has always refused to answer questions about Mirri's true intentions, preferring to preserve some ambiguity, so I find it hard to believe he'd throw that away in an app. Though I don't think Mirri's intentions were ever that ambiguous, as it seems clear to me she was duplicitous from the start:

“Saved me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved.”

“Your life.”

Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”

Powerful, heartfelt words. Yet earlier:

They passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly in the Common Tongue, but from the others she got only flat black stares. They were suspicious of her, she realized with sadness; afraid that she had saved them for some worse fate.

Mirri was the woman blessing Dany. The only rape victim who showed any gratitude to Dany. Why is that? And why did Mirri volunteer herself to help Drogo?

“Silver Lady,” a woman’s voice said behind her, “I can help the Great Rider with his hurts.” Dany turned her head. The speaker was one of the slaves she had claimed, the heavy, flat-nosed woman who had blessed her.

These are not the actions of a woman who later spits at the notion that she was saved. Not unless she was plotting revenge from the start. (Which I don't at all fault her for.)

To sell the deception that she only wants to help the leader of forces that destroyed her village, carrying out mass slaughter and rape, she says “The Great Shepherd sent me to earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find them.”

Later the truth comes out, when Mirri justifies her murder of an unborn child by saying “It was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great Shepherd.”

[Ragnorak]

Although this is not the right thread, could you elaborate more on Sansa correcting Ned's mistakes? When I think about it, the mistake Ned did and Sansa can correct is that Ned removed himself from the KL and the "Game" completely. He choosed to hide in the North but the shadow of the KL falls on him all the same. Therefore, I can expect Sansa to spend most of her story in this "pit of snakes" to do what Ned did/could not.

Spoilers for Off Topic

It mostly centers on Littlefinger. LF's scene with Ned with the talk of getting the Goldcloaks is a bit of a mockery on First Men justice on LF's part. He looks Ned in the eyes and passes judgment but does so with a dagger (which comes from behind next chapter) and not a sword. He quips to Ned that he forgot he was dealing with a Stark but with Sansa seems to very much be forgetting that he's dealing with a Stark. Sansa follows in Ned's footseps down the ladder in her escape from KL. LF is a Lord Protector without an army like Ned was in KL and LF is placing his trust in Sansa as his leverage Milday has a series of posts that elaborate a good deal more. They start at 171 and go through to 176. Long but quite good and worth the read.

Very interesting parallel between Dany and Arya. I think they both learned an important life lesson; life isn't as simple as you think it might be. The oppressed sometimes can become the oppressors and how do you break that cycle?

Glad you liked it. :) It does make for an interesting contrast with Arya embracing a willingness to kill in response while Dany reacts by shying away from a desire for more death. Probably a good essay on Mercy buried in there.

But this doesn't get to one of the points I'm talking about. Collateral damage and the killing of innocents are important. How Dany's story develops from here is important. But the particular event itself is also important. Killing people who are no longer trying to fight you is a bad thing, even if the people you kill are bad people. Once the active hostilities are over, why isn't the additional number of soldiers that would need to die zero? The soldiers have given up. You can disarm them. Why do you need to kill them?

1. This is a continuation of my responses to the above posts. The matter is not just one of sheer numbers. I think it incredibly unlikely that thousands were killed in Astapor because of pitched battles in the streets of the city. If large numbers were killed outside of the plaza, then this was slaughter, not battle. I go back to my comments from post # 369.

<snip>

I get the sense that there's something fairly specific that's important about this to you that I'm just not picking up on. I get the collateral damage angle. I think there's a case that can be made that every single leadership failure on Dany's part throughout DwD is entirely rooted in a fear of collateral damage. The collateral damage for this particular act is tied to and weighed against the decision to free the slaves. I don't think Dany ever questions that choice or doubts its righteous nature. So I see collateral damage as a huge theme just not relative to this act-- at least not for Dany. Perhaps if it were clearer to me how you think this impacts Dany's future story that would help. If you think this is an important moral issue, period, indifferent to the tale of Dany that would explain the disconnect. I'm generally not overly concerned with issues that Dany isn't unless there's another POV she seems deliberately contrasted with or Dany's fate is concerned with the issue despite her own indifference (but the latter is far more a Cersei thing than a Dany one.)

[Parwan]

...

1. I get the sense that there's something fairly specific that's important about this to you that I'm just not picking up on.

2. I get the collateral damage angle. I think there's a case that can be made that every single leadership failure on Dany's part throughout DwD is entirely rooted in a fear of collateral damage. The collateral damage for this particular act is tied to and weighed against the decision to free the slaves.

I don't think Dany ever questions that choice or doubts its righteous nature. So I see collateral damage as a huge theme just not relative to this act-- at least not for Dany.

3. Perhaps if it were clearer to me how you think this impacts Dany's future story that would help. If you think this is an important moral issue, period, indifferent to the tale of Dany that would explain the disconnect. I'm generally not overly concerned with issues that Dany isn't unless there's another POV she seems deliberately contrasted with or Dany's fate is concerned with the issue despite her own indifference (but the latter is far more a Cersei thing than a Dany one.)

1. There are specific matters, not a single matter. One example is, "A military leader has to be able to control troops." Did Daenerys Targaryen display this ability in Astapor? The answer is not clearly "yes" or "no." We don't know what happened beyond the Plaza of Punishment. We don't know exactly how the Unsullied carried out Dany's commands (once again, commands that I find emotional and lacking in precision). Furthermore, we have a situation where death and destruction is taking place because of elements that can't be called "troops." So, control isn't only a matter of telling guys with swords and spears what to do. We have dragons in the air, and we have fires set by these dragons. The leader has unleashed these elements of force. She cannot escape responsibility for them. How did she deal with this responsibility? I don't know; the text provides very little information.

We can say that the dragon queen doesn't do too badly in her first exercise of military command. This assertion can be supported in at least two ways:

A. The killing and destruction is limited to the plaza.

B. The killing and destruction takes place city-wide, but this is not important.

I have always maintained that A is correct. However, sensible readers (SeanF in this thread, others in other threads) say that A is false. You, I take it, aren't overly worried about the truth of A. B is the operative principle. I do not agree. If Joe is a surgeon who cuts too often and too much, then Joe is not a good surgeon. A commander who causes a lot more death and destruction than is necessary for the accomplishment of mission goals is not a good commander. Perhaps Dany is responsible for a lot of unnecessary burning and killing. If she never questions her decision in said burning and killing and never doubts its righteous nature, then this does not argue well for her leadership abilities.

This leads to--

2. I am not making this argument. Others do so, or at least make arguments of this type. They say that she needs to be tougher; she should "embrace the dragon." It's similar to Lenin's "To make an omelet..." aphorism.

I don't center most things on collateral damage. I don't think this is a good approach. It isn't just collateral damage that is "tied to and weighed against the decision to free the slaves." Let's assume that Dany's forces killed thousands of people in Astapor. However, this was intentional. All of those killed were considered bad guys by Daenerys and her supporters. Thus, there was no collateral damage at all. For me, these assumptions don't come close to allowing us to judge her overall performance as "good."

There are more reasons for this than I care to go into at present. Here are some of the reasons--

3. I say that it is a moral issue, but not "an important moral issue, period." I am concerned with issues that Dany may not be concerned with. I don't think another POV is necessary in this case. I would count it as a very serious mark against her if she were indifferent to this moral issue (even if she's less callous than Cersei).

Then there is the question of how all of this effects the city. I suppose we can talk about the matter now. If we put the discussion off until after the next POV analysis, it may get lost in debates about the sellswords, the Yunkai'i, etc.

If you kill only the top leaders of a place, and these top leaders are bad guys, then you have, in all probability, done more good than harm. The more killing you do and the wider the scope of this killing, the more likely that things will turn around. The harm may be greater than the good. It is near certain that you will kill individuals with skills that are useful, maybe even necessary, to the governance and economy of the place. There are also many unanticipated consequences. For example, you may kill a very important merchant who has a large cache of weapons. As a result, a butcher, formerly working as a slave of this merchant, gains control of the weapons. Dany could not have anticipated this particular result. However, any leader has to be able to see that there are unanticipated consequences of violent action. This in itself is an adequate reason for limiting violence.