[BOOK SPOILERS] Hizdahr

[Pod The Impaler]

The point here to me was that in the future Dany might be wise to get all facts before passing judgment and implicating punishment, which somewhat correlates to what we would see later with Tyrion. She makes the right decision for Hizdahr, but her arrogance at times during the conversation was a huge turn-off.

After all, she does come from a line of family that included the Mad King and her own brother, Viserys.

Well, yeah. I would say I am generally in Dany's side when she resorts to wrathful justice, but she has a dragon's temper, and also was raised by Viserys in a tradition of arrogance and entitlement with a very distorted view of the world and herself. In S1, Jorah has to wake her up to the reality that the common people in Westeros don't care much for who has the right to what seat of power. In S2, she finds the Qartheen perfectly willing to turn her away to starve, save for 2 of the 13 who seek to use her and steal her dragons. In S3, she wants to buy slaves to further her cause, but her disgust at how the Unsullied are made and her annoyance at the Kraznys' insults to her that convince her to crush Astapor.

So while I think Dany has some good ideals and good instincts, she is not Saint Daenerys. Kings and queens are not in the habit of being told they are wrong, least of all by anyone sympathetic to their foes. Would Stannis have done similarly ? Yes. If he is willing to burn people alive, I think so - and he would not be moved as easily by Hizdahr's seeming anguish. One he made his decision, he would have stuck by it regardless. Would Robb Stark ? Compare the mercy he showed his mother with the lack of it which he showed Karstark and his men; he may have been right in moral terms but it undermined his rule.

Was Dany right to crucify those slavers? Many long debates have been kicked back on this forum on just that issue. She may have been just as wrong to feel bad for having done it, and reverse her order to leave them nailed up as an example. Power is a curious thing. I guess the right or wrong of it on whether the slavers appreciate her turn towards mercy and will obey her, or whether they view it as weakness and see an opportunity to undermine her.

Book readers know the answer to this, even if the exact situation same situation did not occur in the books.

[Thelastactionhero]

Just curious, what scene in S2? I don't really remember liking much of her storyline in S2, in fact a lot of it was dreadful.

I like a lot of what goes on in the desert, but her final scene where she faces the House of the Undying is also really cool. Even though I'm not exactly excited to hear her screaming about HER dragons, at the very least, she shows her fallibility as a human being, something that was completely absent from season 3. I wish they had played up her conversation with Jorah about the ghosts people carry with them, because I thought that conversation in the books was easily one of the best pieces of dialogue George ever wrote. Even still, what's missing from her arc isn't stuff that makes Dany look like an evil tyrant, but rather scenes that show the consequences of her actions and her frailty as a young girl trying to control a great army.