[Book Spoilers] Daenerys evil moment rushed. Runners look uncomfortable with it.

[Stormland's Fury]

They were slavers though, not just random people. And if they weren't they were Ghiscari. The world is better place with them gone.

We don't even know what kind of people they were. That's like liberating some parts of Germany including concentration camps and randomly executing drafted Wehrmacht soldiers for every Jew while some SS-officers just getting off easy because it happened they got not chosen.

For all we know Dany might even have crucified Meereen's version of Oscar Schindler.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were slavers, too. Holding slaves in a slave holding society is a very low threshold for being randomly killed if you ask me.

For all we know Dany might even have crucified Oscar Schindler.

Yes, but this isn't Schindler, or Jefferson or G. Washington's story, nor a tale about the morals and tales of slavery: it's a subplot in Dany's story. We can see their acts of "justice" as injustice or even tyranny, but we're not meant to cry for the slavers more than we cry for the Lannister soldier who died while fighting in the Riverlands.

[RoamingRonin]

We don't even know what kind of people they were. That's like liberating some parts of Germany including concentration camps and randomly executing drafted Wehrmacht soldiers for every Jew while some SS-officers just getting off easy because it happened they got not chosen.

For all we know Dany might even have crucified Meereen's version of Oscar Schindler.

I think "Oscar Schindler" would have friggin' left Meereen and joined Dany before the city got sacked.

:rolleyes:

[Anarchosaurus Rex]

When slavery was abolished in Australia, no one died. I'd much prefer the '0'.

Hear, hear.

Abolition of chattel slavery was accomplished peacefully throughout most of the world. In America, however, emancipation was a bloody nightmare, the incidental outcome of an invasion launched for the enrichment of the conquerors at the expense of the conquered. A century after emancipation, racism still afflicted the country, and in many ways had actually gotten worse. By overthrowing the consent of the governed (the shield of liberty) with force of arms (the sword of tyranny), the Union was preserved in name but destroyed in spirit, and the emancipation of the chattel slaves came at the cost of the political enslavement of all free men. The ends don't justify the means, two wrongs don't make a right, etc. Of course, ceteris paribus, emancipation was a positive outcome of the so-called "Civil War," but the point is that it could have been achieved without any devastating loss of life and liberty. Of all the emancipations in the world, American emancipation came at the greatest cost and with the worst results.

Ironically, secession by the North or South would have hastened slavery's demise. Because the Constitution provided for the rendition of fugitive slaves, and arguably permitted the expansion of slavery into American territory, slavery was safer in the Union than an independent Confederacy. By depriving the South of these constitutional protections, the stability of slavery - particularly concerning runaway slaves - would have been seriously undermined. Abolitionists such as William Garrison supported Northern secession in order to destabilize slavery, as well as disassociate themselves from the institution. Others, such as George Bassett and Lysander Spooner, supported Southern secession on principle: if governments truly are consensual rather than coercive, then the people have the sovereign right to dissolve their union with a government to which they no longer consent, regardless of their reasons.

As an example of slavery's constitutionally protected status in the Union, throughout his presidential campaign and in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln strenuously disavowed any "authority or intention" of his to abolish slavery, affirming that he would "fully and fairly" enforce fugitive-slave laws, and even endorsing a constitutional amendment to protect slavery permanently in states where it was already legal. During the war he started, Lincoln actually offered to exchange Southern submission to the North for Northern recognition of slavery on three separate occasions.

Also, Caesar was far from a "benevolent" conqueror. The Romans ruled their empire by glorified extortion - Cosa Nostra on a grand scale. So long as conquered provinces surrendered tribute (money, produce, slaves, etc.), Rome would spare them. If a province ever defied Rome by not rendering tribute, however, then it would be brutally punished by fire and sword. The Romans were not above indiscriminate extermination in order to make a point and crush the survivors' spirits into submission. Caesar, in his conquests of Gaul and incursions into Britain, established the precedent for this imperial system, and set events in motion which would ultimately lead to the downfall of the Republic and rise of the Empire.

[Stormland's Fury]

I think "Oscar Schindler" would have friggin' left Meereen and joined Dany before the city got sacked.

:rolleyes:

That's true haha

[Stormland's Fury]

Yes, but this isn't Schindler, or Jefferson or G. Washington's story, nor a tale about the morals and tales of slavery: it's a subplot in Dany's story. We can see their acts of "justice" as injustice or even tyranny, but we're not meant to cry for the slavers more than we cry for the Lannister soldier who died while fighting in the Riverlands.

I think that's were GRRM (maybe D&D) failed to do their job.

And yeah, remember the Lannister soldier in season 3 who lost his leg? He was not there for decoration.

[salmonsnake]

Argh, it's not about sympathy, for whom you're meant to cry. Nor is it about applying post-renaissance historical lenses, whether it's France during the terror or America during the civil war or WW2 Germany or anything of the sort. Well-informed relativism is required, and to view the scenario in its historical context, immanent to the world of GOT/ASOIAF. Ancient and Medieval parallels may be found, but they are not that important either. It's fascinating on its own. What I am troubled by is how readily people take these concepts of justice so far removed from contemporary reality and find them not so much a part of a specific fantasy world, determined by its own set of historical conditions but bring them to an abstract, transhistorical level, as if it was even a matter of debate whether the various measures and practices of justice in the world of GoT/ASOIAF are just. The logic is derailed, it flies away from Daenerys and Meereen and finds its home in eternity and the humankind that is not fantasy.

[Stormland's Fury]

Argh, it's not about sympathy, for whom you're meant to cry. Nor is it about applying post-renaissance historical lenses, whether it's France during the terror or America during the civil war or WW2 Germany or anything of the sort. Well-informed relativism is required, and to view the scenario in its historical context, immanent to the world of GoT/ASOIAF. Ancient and Medieval parallels may be found, but they are not that important either. It's fascinating on its own. What I am troubled by is how readily people take these concepts of justice so far removed from contemporary reality and find them not so much a part of a specific fantasy world, determined by its own set of historical conditions but bring it to an abstract, transhistorical level, as if it was even a matter of debate that the measures and practices of justice in the world of GoT/ASOIAF are just. The logic is derailed, it flies away from Daenerys and Meereen and finds its home in eternity and the humankind that is not fantasy.

Well there is the fact that Selmy still has moral objections which we as a modern audience can relate to. Making real life comparisons is not to put this in the same context as in a fantasy world but to show modern day people what they are actually advocating.

[Ankou]

As Barristan pointed out in the books, Jorah sold slaves. Dany should have him executed. Drogo was going to sell slaves to make money to fund Dany's invasion of Westeros!

[salmonsnake]

Well there is the fact that Selmy still has moral objections which we as a modern audience can relate to. Making real life comparisons is not to put this in the same context as in a fantasy world but to show modern day people what they are actually advocating.

It is not wise to relate to any character's moral objections, or to whatever ethics they have or politics they enact. You are on your own, transcending them, you don't need a champion in that grey, bleak, horrible world. Barristan or any one character has the capacity to temporarily speak things that you agree with, a detached sentence here, a good observation there. But his world is separate from yours, and their thoughts, though comprehensible to you, are not the wisdom of the ages, their actions not the struggles of planet earth.

[teemo]

Hey, at least Barristan (who viewers know is really moral and noble) made a comment about it, making her decision a little more ambiguous. Now we'll see if they make her have that brief moment of sort-of regret for what she did.

[Stormland's Fury]

It is not wise to relate to any character's moral objections, or to whatever ethics they have or politics they enact. You are on your own, transcending them, you don't need a champion in that grey, bleak, horrible world. Barristan or any one character has the capacity to temporarily speak things that you agree with, a detached sentence here, a good observation there. But his world is separate from yours, and their thoughts, though comprehensible to you, are not the wisdom of the ages, their actions not the struggles of planet earth.

That's my point. If someone justifies her actions by real life morals than you have to take real life examples as counterargument. This is not about the character itself but about the people justifying it for real.

[Cas Stark]

That's my point. If someone justifies her actions by real life morals than you have to take real life examples as counterargument. This is not about the character itself but about the people justifying it for real.

Agree. When people post, IMO, nonsense like all slaveholders deserve to be killed the only way to reasonably counter it is to use real life examples to hopefully jolt them out of their misplaced ideas about "justice".

[salmonsnake]

That's my point. If someone justifies her actions by real life morals than you have to take real life examples as counterargument. This is not about the character itself but about the people justifying it for real.

Then I see what you mean but the applicability of the logic is the first mistake, it is then repeated in another instance of application, and suddenly you lose track of what the original discussion was about. You see what I mean, teemo has the appropriate manner to look at the scene. You apply your own, contemporary judgment, while understanding context of the fictional world, and make comparisons between characters. To take a judgment that one of the character's makes, and then pondering whether it's just or not, in general, that is when the nightmare swamp of folly wraps around you and you don't know you're living in 2014 anymore.

[Señor de la Tormenta]

I wonder when she is hanging her bloodriders and Jorah for their past slaver crimes.

Oh wait. The girl is an hyopocrite.

Lets see how D&D whitewash how she profits when many of this slaves want to sell themselves back....how she lets them, but TAX them putting half of the slave traffic money into her poket.

I bet my house they wont show that.

[Indigocell]

at this point in the books she hadn't either. all that happens in a feast for crows, when she tries to rule mereen and it all goes to shit.

Dany doesn't appear in Feast for Crows (although the timelines match), and I seem to recall her facing some difficulty even before Mereen. Such as a food shortage for all the extra mouths she decided to take care of along the way. Maybe I am mistaken though.

What we've been getting of Dany so far has been a glorified, idealized version of the "white man's burden/white saviour complex" where literally every other character has been used to show how much war makes people suffer. Think of Arya, Davos, Theon, Cateyn, Sansa, or any other POV character (and most non pov characters as well).

I can only hope they are downplaying Dany's mistakes and exaggerating the mistakes of others in order to make their subsequent rise/fall seem more dramatic.

[El Guapo]

I wonder when she is hanging her bloodriders and Jorah for their past slaver crimes.

Oh wait. The girl is an hyopocrite.

Lets see how D&D whitewash how she profits when many of this slaves want to sell themselves back....how she lets them, but TAX them putting half of the slave traffic money into her poket.

I bet my house they wont show that.

Why did Jorah or her bloodriders crucify children on the way to Mereen?

She wasn't executing the grand masters for being slavers, she was executing them for crucifying children.

[Señor de la Tormenta]

Why did Jorah or her bloodriders crucify children on the way to Mereen?

She wasn't executing the grand masters for being slavers, she was executing them for crucifying children.

jorah probably not. But her bloodriders had done worst or equal things in the past...it is known...

And she did kill all the freaking slavers over 12 in Astapor so the point stays the same.

[Thelastactionhero]

Dany doesn't appear in Feast for Crows (although the timelines match), and I seem to recall her facing some difficulty even before Mereen. Such as a food shortage for all the extra mouths she decided to take care of along the way. Maybe I am mistaken though.

What we've been getting of Dany so far has been a glorified, idealized version of the "white man's burden/white saviour complex" where literally every other character has been used to show how much war makes people suffer. Think of Arya, Davos, Theon, Cateyn, Sansa, or any other POV character (and most non pov characters as well).

I can only hope they are downplaying Dany's mistakes and exaggerating the mistakes of others in order to make their subsequent rise/fall seem more dramatic.

This. Seriously. And yes, she does face difficulties prior to Mereen. She also commits a considerable atrocities in Astapor that are just as brutal, if not more so, than the crucifying of the 163 wise masters. But yeah, my biggest objection to the arc is the white messiah complex they've been feeding us in this liberation arc. Dany's story serves a partial critique of liberalism and colonialism in my eyes, and we don't get any of that here because being portrayed with such little nuance. Like seriously, how can the audience really connect to this struggle when everything is going off without a hitch? We only ever see slavers dying, never the innocents that are massacred and raped as a result of sacking these cities.

[El Guapo]

jorah probably not. But her bloodriders had done worst or equal things in the past...it is known...

And she did kill all the freaking slavers over 12 in Astapor so the point stays the same.

There is no point. She doesn't execute everyone for being an "ex-slaver".