Remorseful Jaime, Unrepentant Dany

[Pandean]

1 minute ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

Less nancy boy hair gel though!.

He wears lifts, you know!
 

Also come on, if Jon was in a time where hair gel existed he'd go to TOWN on it, no doubt.

[Zorral]

34 minutes ago, Forlong the Fat said:

The underlying premise here is flawed as to why the two characters would have cause to be remorseful. Jaime is remorseful for, among other things, pushing a child out of a window to prevent discovery of his incestuous relationship with his sister. There is no indication that Jaime is remorseful for the types of thing Dany has done--brutally punishing wrongdoers or killing enemies. And why would he, considering that those sorts of things are almost universally accepted within the culture in which they both operate?

No indication he's in the least remorseful for poisoning Lady Olenna Tyrell -- or that Our Lady of Thornes had any remorse for killing Joffrey -- and leaving Tyrion to take the fall -- and probably, if things had gone a little differently, Sansa too.

Within the context of all the characters in this show, thinking Queen Daenerys should be more excoriated than Jaime or any of the others seems, well, not even relevant.

[Krishtotter]

Everything is still open and the scriptwriters have licence to either redeem or damn Dany's character, depending upon what side of the Targaryen 'coin flip' she ultimately falls down on (and she has exhibited both sides throughout the show). 

I don't think its by coincidence that the last episode gave us a scene in front of a waterfall between Jon and Dany awfully reminiscent of the 'cave' scene between Jon and Ygritte. And just like Ygritte, who told Jon "we should have stayed in that cave", Dany tells Jon, "we could stay here for a thousand years" and basically forget about the Throne and the Night King. I don't think that is a good omen or portent for their romance and certainly not for Dany's survival as a character. They seem fated to love each other but come to mortal blows, with Dany as Ygritte 2.0.

Dany is essentially, like most of her ancestors, 'schizophrenic' with two contradictory inclinations and personas at war within her. 

On the one side, we have the well-meaning, idealistic and vulnerable (yet ambitious) young girl at the beginning of the books, at the mercy of her abusive elder brother who longs for nothing more than the "house with the red door", her childhood home, somewhere to belong and someone to belong with, which she thought she had found with Drogo and her unborn child, and now has found anew with Jon. "I want to go home", was her key phrase. Not take the Iron Throne like Viserys wanted, just to go back to her childhood place of safety and stability. 

On the other hand, we have the cruel, arrogant and cold-hearted Dragon Queen who first came to the fore in the scene where Dany watches her asshole brother having his face melted off with boiling hot gold, and looks on without emotion or pity, save for a twinkle of sadistic delight in her eyes. This is the 'mad' and tyrannical side of the Targaryen equation, and as she has become more and more feared as a conqueror, Dany has more and more oriented this way in her lust for the Iron Throne she is convinced is hers by right, and her heartless deeds - justified with noble ends - have steadily piled up. And her phrase is, "bend the knee and join me, or resist and die (by fire)" or "live in my new world, or die in your old one". 

My suspicion, which may turn out to be entirely wrong (we will soon find out), has long been that Jon Snow is the "ice and fire" of the song as his real father Rhaegar foresaw in prophetically eloping with Lyanna - the son of the Starks and the Targaryens - who can restore 'balance' to a world where the seasons have become unbalanced, and which is threatened by the advent of two great supernatural evils that we have watched gradually rise in power since season 1 - the Night King in his icy north behind the Wall, and the Dragon Queen in her fiery East beyond the Sea, both converging on the poor people of Westeros whose fate is to be either turned into a heap of freezing undead wights or a heap of ash from dragon-fire. 

Jon, as the 'balance' between the heat and cold, must like Azor Azhai forge light-bringer by sacrificing the person he loves, "Nissa Nissa" redux Dany - including, with her, that vulnerable girl longing for the 'house with the red door' that he has fallen for  - to save Westeros from both the Ice and the Fire.  A bittersweet ending.

Now, that could be a load of codswallop but we'll see. 

[Jen'ari]

20 minutes ago, Pandean said:

He wears lifts, you know!
 

Also come on, if Jon was in a time where hair gel existed he'd go to TOWN on it, no doubt.

I think you're right about Jon and the hair gel!, also I'm calling it, Spike is a Targaryen .

[MinscS2]

1 hour ago, Krishtotter said:

I am in no sense defending slavery, anymore than I would defend the Russian Tsars, and their serfdom and absolutist rule that the Bolsheviks overthrew in the name of the universal liberty of the peasants from exploitation by the remnants of feudal lords and capitalist oppressors.

No, but you think you're being clever when comparing Daenerys to some of the most evil mass-murderers that have walked the real earth.
You think you're bringing her down to their level, but the fact is that these evil men would be thrilled to being compared to her, because the truth is that you're glorifying them and their actions.

Unless of course, I missed the historylessons when Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot/Hitler all:
- Abolished all forms of slavery in the areas they controlled.
- Freed thousands of slave soldiers.
- Freed hundred of thousands of slaves.
- Struck a deal which prevented a nation of reavers and pillagers from ever reaving and pillaging again.
- Peacefully (relatively speaking) conquered a second nation of rapists, slavers, pillagers and looters, preventing them from ever doing it again.

Yeah I just can't see how they are similar. For all Daenerys flaws, her intentions are good, and while they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I really wouldn't ever claim that Stalin ruled with good intentions.

[Pandean]

53 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I think you're right about Jon and the hair gel!, also I'm calling it, Spike is a Targaryen .

No wonder Spike is always pissed at Angel. He called slaying the dragon during the battle of LA.

Like wtf that's his people.

 

I've so missed talking Buffy to someone holy shit why does no one I know like Buffy

 

I'm just imagining Modern!Jon with unable to decide between 24 different types of hair product.

[Krishtotter]

20 minutes ago, MinscS2 said:

No, but you think you're being clever when comparing Daenerys to some of the most evil mass-murderers that have walked the real earth.
You think you're bringing her down to their level, but the fact is that these evil men would be thrilled to being compared to her, because the truth is that you're glorifying them and their actions.

Unless of course, I missed the historylessons when Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot/Hitler all:
- Abolished all forms of slavery in the areas they controlled.
- Freed thousands of slave soldiers.
- Freed hundred of thousands of slaves.
- Struck a deal which prevented a nation of reavers and pillagers from ever reaving and pillaging again.
- Peacefully (relatively speaking) conquered a second nation of rapists, slavers, pillagers and looters, preventing them from ever doing it again.

Yeah I just can't see how they are similar. For all Daenerys flaws, her intentions are good, and while they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I really wouldn't ever claim that Stalin ruled with good intentions.

 

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 5 February 1794

 

I don't think I'm being clever. I think I'm seeing the signs of a sociopathic personality and feel obliged to call it out, whether in fiction or real life, because such individuals cause so much harm and misery. I liked Dany but I can't defend her actions because they are morally indefensible actions. 

Let's look at one of the idealistic dictators I mentioned - Robespierre, the man who invented state terror during the French Revolution - and compare him to the salient parts of your list of criteria. 

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- Abolished all forms of slavery in the areas they controlled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre#Abolition_of_slavery

 

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Throughout the course of the Revolution, Robespierre opposed slavery on French soil or in French territories and he played an important role in abolishing it.^[178][179]

In May 1791 Robespierre argued passionately in the National Assembly against the Colonial Committee, dominated by slaveholders in the Caribbean. The colonial lobby declared that political rights for blacks would cause France to lose her colonies. Robespierre responded, "We should not compromise the interests humanity holds most dear, the sacred rights of a significant number of our fellow citizens," later shouting, "Death to the colonies!"^[180] Robespierre was furious that the assembly gave "constitutional sanction to slavery in the colonies," and argued for equal political rights regardless of skin colour.^[181]

 

 

 

 

Check. 

 

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- Freed thousands of slave soldiers.

 

Check:

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Only months later, hundreds of thousands of slaves in St Domingue led a revolution against slavery and colonial rule.^[182]

In the following years, the slaves of St. Domingue effectively liberated themselves and formed an army to oppose re-enslavement. Robespierre denounced the slave trade in a speech before the Convention in April 1793.^[183] The radical 1793 constitution supported by Robespierre and the Montagnards, which was ratified by a national referendum, granted universal suffrage to French men and explicitly condemned slavery. 

Receiving the delegation on their release, the National Convention passed a decree banning slavery on 4 February.^[183] Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, at the same time, heard a petition from the slaveholders, which they did not act upon. On the day after the emancipation decree, Robespierre delivered a speech to the National Convention in which he praised the French as the first to "summon all men to equality and liberty, and their full rights as citizens," using the word slavery twice but without specifically mentioning the French colonies.^[183] Despite petitions from the slaveholding delegation, Robespierre and the Committee decided to endorse the decree in full.^[183]

Several weeks later, in a speech before the committee of public safety, Robespierre linked the cruelty of slavery with serfdom:

Ask a merchant of human flesh what is property; he will answer by showing you that long coffin he calls a ship... Ask a gentleman [the same] who has lands and vassals... and he will give you almost the identical ideas.

— Robespierre, "The Principles of Property", 24 April 1794.^[184][185]

He attended a meeting of the Jacobin club in June 1794 to support a decree ending slavery, and later signed orders to ratify it.^[184] The decree led to a surge in popularity for the Republic among blacks in St-Domingue, most of whom had already freed themselves and were seeking military alliances to guarantee their freedom.^[181]

 

 

Now, here's where Robespierre ended up instituting history's first reign of state terror: 

 

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Multiple sources state that Robespierre came down the mountain in a way that resembled Moses as the leader of the people, and one of his colleagues, Jacques-Alexis Thuriot, was heard saying, "Look at the bugger; it's not enough for him to be master, he has to be God".^[192] According to Thuriot: "Robespierre proclaimed to believe in the Supreme Being, and who only believed in the power of crime." Robespierre was also criticized by Courtois and Fouché. Five days later Robespierre demanded the heads of nine people, who opposed his republic of virtue.^[193] Fouché seems to have hidden himself for a while.

In January Robespierre came into conflict with his oldest friend, who had taken up for the cause of 200,000 defenceless civilians and had been detained in prisons as a suspect. According to Desmoulins, a Committee of Grace had to be established. (Illicit trade and dearth prevailed during the unfortunate winter of 1793–1794. The prisons were full of shopkeepers.) In Report on the Principles of Political Moralityof 5 February 1794, Robespierre praised the revolutionary government and argued that terror and virtue were necessary:

If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country ... The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.^[160]

Aulard sums up the Jacobin train of thought, “All politics, according to Robespierre, must tend to establish the reign of virtue and confound vice. He reasoned thus: those who are virtuous are right; error is a corruption of the heart; error cannot be sincere; error is always deliberate.^[161][162] There are only two parties: good and bad citizens. Robespierre gave the Terror a philosophical (and perhaps moral) justification.^[163] According to the German journalist K.E. Oelsner, Robespierre behaved "more like a leader of a religious sect than of a political party. He can be eloquent but most of the time he is boring, especially when he goes on too long, which is often the case."^[164]

On 10 June the Law of 22 Prairial was introduced without consultation from the Committee of General Security, which deepened the conflict between the two committees, and doubled the number of executions.^[195] Moderate judges were dismissed; Robespierre only allowed his creatures.^[196] Almost all the deputies agreed it had become dangerous. Some were uneasy, and asked for the debate to be adjourned so the clauses could be examined. Robespierre refused and demanded immediate discussion. Fouché, Collot d'Herbois, Carrier and Tallien feared for their lives, due to the excesses carried out by them (with the assistance of the revolutionary army) in various regions of France in October 1793 to stamp out opposition to the revolutionary government.^[197] Robespierre had them recalled to Paris to account for their actions. (The victory at Fleurus on 26 June ended the threat of Austrian troops on French soil.) At the end of the month Saint-Just arrived in Paris and discovered that Robespierre's political position had degraded significantly. Carnot and Cambon proposed to end the terror.

 

After the execution of the king, and his wife Marie-Antoinette, Robespierre was swept to power and immediately set about protecting the revolution from the "enemies of the people ". He declared: “ There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man. . . . [W]e must exterminate all our enemies .”

This list of enemies started with the aristocrats. Robespierre encouraged the mobs of dispossessed people outside in the streets to take down the nobility through acts of extra-judicial justice. He incited them to action whenever political expediency called for it.

One historian notes that, "The justification of the massacres was that those killed were enemies of the republic, counterrevolutionaries who had conspired against that equality, justice, and reason whose realization would “establish the felicity of perhaps the entire human race.” ".

Stanley Loomis writes that, in these September massacres, “the bloody work went on for five . . . days and nights…Cannibalism, disembowelment and acts of indescribable ferocity took place here. . . . . It has been loosely assumed . . . that most of the victims were aristocrats—an assumption that for some curious reason is often supposed to mitigate these crimes. Very few victims were, in fact, of the former nobility—less than thirty out of the fifteen hundred who were killed .”

Having secured the capital, Robespierre appointed commissioners to enforce the Revolution outside the capital and deal with the ever growing list of enemies. Norman Hampson notes in his biography of Robespierre that “the revolutionary tribunal . . . had become an undiscriminating murder machine. . . . Imaginary . . . plots and absurd charges were everyday events .”

I'm sorry that I regard Dany as a female Robespierre, I really am. But she has all the hallmarks of his 'fatal purity' and megalomania as one biographer put it. 

[SeanF]

Robespierre is almost the archetype of the idealist who does terrible things, while believing he is doing good things.  Indeed, he started out by doing good, and remained personally austere and uncorrupt to the end.  Moreover, he was genuinely disgusted by the perverts and gangsters - such as Hebert - who joined the Jacobins.

i think Stalin was always far more cynical and self-serving.

[Krishtotter]

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Robespierre is almost the archetype of the idealist who does terrible things, while believing he is doing good things.  Indeed, he started out by doing good, and remained personally austere and uncorrupt to the end.  Moreover, he was genuinely disgusted by the perverts and gangsters - such as Hebert - who joined the Jacobins.

Precisely. 

He was called "the Incorruptible".

He is Dany to a tea.

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"Robespierre 's failure can be viewed as that of a man so narrow-minded in his views that eventually he cannot conceive of anything outside of them , a man so firmly convinced of his own absolute rightness that he cannot see the glaring errors he makes. It had grown inconceivable to him that anyone should oppose him successfully, and when someone did, the blow numbed him into inaction for a while. Although he started out with the best of motives, it came to the point where protection of the ideals for which he stood was everything to him, whereas protection of the people whom the ideals were originally to protect meant nothing."

 

In so doing, Robespierre laid the groundwork for all subsequent 'idealist' dictators who relied on state terror in the name of the people and for their greater good - Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. 

Here is a fantastic BBC documentary on him from the 2000s, that I encourage everyone to watch as the real life archetype of Dany, in my opinion. Its chilling: 

 

[Jen'ari]

34 minutes ago, Pandean said:

No wonder Spike is always pissed at Angel. He called slaying the dragon during the battle of LA.

Like wtf that's his people.

 

I've so missed talking Buffy to someone holy shit why does no one I know like Buffy

 

I'm just imagining Modern!Jon with unable to decide between 24 different types of hair product.

I never actually read the comics that came after the series end but I read a synopsis of them, Angel actually ended up taming and riding that dragon and called it Cordelia , maybe hes a Targ too!.

I could see modern Jon going even further and wearing eyeliner .

[Krishtotter]

19 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think Stalin was always far more cynical and self-serving.

Arguable but he used the same rhetoric and state terror in the name of equality is my point. 

Lenin definetly was another Robespierre and even built a monument to him, citing him as one of his greatest influences.

[Forlong the Fat]

2 hours ago, Krishtotter said:

If they are universally accepted, then Barristan Selmy and Tyrion wouldn't have pleaded with her to desist and show mercy.

Cyrus the Great in ancient Persia was capable of conquering Babylon yet saw the wisdom in retaining it's aristocracy and winning it round so as to solidify his empire, with the loyalty of it's local elites having been allowed some self-rule and to retain their holdings unmolested.

What Daenerys did was both evil and rash by the standards of her contemporaries.

Cyrus wan't quite so nice to Croesus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus Like most people who institute rule by conquest, brutality was sometimes required.

 

[SeanF]

20 minutes ago, Krishtotter said:

Precisely. 

He was called "the Incorruptible".

He is Dany to a tea.

 

In so doing, Robespierre laid the groundwork for all subsequent 'idealist' dictators who relied on state terror in the name of the people and for their greater good - Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. 

Here is a fantastic BBC documentary on him from the 2000s, that I encourage everyone to watch as the real life archetype of Dany, in my opinion. Its chilling: 

 

The worst error that any idealist can make is to reject the possibility that people who profoundly disagree with them may still be decent people who are acting in good faith.

[Krishtotter]

2 minutes ago, Forlong the Fat said:

Cyrus wan't quite so nice to Croesus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus Like most people who institute rule by conquest, brutality was sometimes required.

 

Perhaps that is because GRRM, who has been an antiwar activist since his youth, is making a point about people who institute rule by conquest rather than diplomacy or other political means.

[Krishtotter]

3 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The worst error that any idealist can make is to reject the possibility that people who profoundly disagree with them may still be decent people who are acting in good faith.

Indeed, liberal democracy is built upon this recognition.

[Forlong the Fat]

6 minutes ago, Krishtotter said:

Perhaps that is because GRRM, who has been an antiwar activist since his youth, is making a point about people who institute rule by conquest rather than diplomacy or other political means.

It's beyond trite to suggest from our vantage that the methods of rule used in the Song of Ice and Fire are not just ones.  As a thesis for a middle school essay, that would be worthy perhaps of a C+. 

[L’Age d’or]

Dany has been on a serious moral decline since the blood sacrifice she made gifted her dragons. 

[Pandean]

10 minutes ago, Bittersweet Distractor said:

I never actually read the comics that came after the series end but I read a synopsis of them, Angel actually ended up taming and riding that dragon and called it Cordelia , maybe hes a Targ too!.

I could see modern Jon going even further and wearing eyeliner .

But which one is the true Targ and which is the Blackfyre? 

Also I love that the male dragon thought it's name was Cordelia (because Angel kept saying it in his unconscious state)

Dude Jon would definitely wear eyeliner. I can see him getting a few piercings. In his early Winterfell days, his hair is that emo style and everything. He just broods and listens to Papa Roach's Last Resort and glares at everyone.

[Krishtotter]

18 minutes ago, Forlong the Fat said:

It's beyond trite to suggest from out vantage that the methods of rule used in the Song of Ice and Fire are not just ones.  As a thesis for a middle school essay, that would be worthy perhaps of a C+. 

Um, such a thing as allegory? 

I'm talking about the effect of the conquering impulse on the psychology of the conqueror which is anything but trite.

Even Roman philosophers wrote treatises about the corrisive impact of absolute power and indeed the New Testament is a collection of books from antiquity that dwell on the subversion of power in the person of Christ, king of kings dying on a cross as a powerless victim of the Roman imperium.

I think you may underestimate ancient and medieval people.

Also, why the snark? Let's keep this civil rather than ad hominem.

 

[Raksha 2014]

3 hours ago, Krishtotter said:

I am in no sense defending slavery, anymore than I would defend the Russian Tsars, and their serfdom and absolutist rule that the Bolsheviks overthrew in the name of the universal liberty of the peasants from exploitation by the remnants of feudal lords and capitalist oppressors.

A noble ideal against a monstrous system like slavery, does not make criminal acts of corporate, extra-judicial violence against a whole class of people justifiable.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

 

 

Actually, serfdom had been outlawed in Russia for some time (?100 years or 50 years) before Nicholas II's reign.  But most of the Tsars were hardly model rulers.  The Bolsheviks' slaughter of Nicholas' entire family, his wife and all the children and servants, was unwarranted and unjust.  It can be said, in the TV series, that Dany crucified at least one good man among the slave masters - the one whose son (was it Hizdahr?) explained to Dany that his father had advocated for better treatment of slaves and possibly ending slavery.  In any case, I think Dany should have found out who ordered the crucifixion of the Mereenese slave children, and crucified those responsible, and fined or otherwise punished (though not necessarily by killing them) the other slave masters.  

Dany also bears responsibility for some deaths that almost certainly resulted from her actions in Astapor.  When she purchased the Unsullied, she told them to kill all the masters but "Harm no child".  If the Unsullied were running around murdering any male or female "master" who looked to be an adult (I wonder how many twelve-year-olds were spared), who survived to care for the slave masters' infant and young children?  At least some of them would probably have soon died without care.