Daenerys

[Lady Rhodes]

Is Daenerys a character study in how someone becomes a villain?  I have been contemplating lately a quote that I read: no one who is a villain believes they are a villain. 

For instance, Cersei does not see herself as a villain; she sees herself as someone who was repeatedly ignored due to her gender and then used as a pawn in the game of thrones.  Highborn girls were used for marriage alliances.  It was essentially a glorified type of prostitution.  Now, we see Cersei as a villain, but presumably, at one time she was not.  She was a child, albeit spoiled and with a cruel streak (we have heard from stories that she had a serving girl whipped for stealing a necklace and she was very mean to Tyrion) but also, she lost her mother at a young age and had a very distant father.  This is to say that villains are not born, but created by their circumstances. 

I love Daenerys, but the more I study her arc, I am thinking that she may turn into a villain.  She is in a very dark place at the end of Dance.

Thoughts?

[Euron III Greyjoy]

I could see it. Westeros is a very different place to Essos in regards to politics. Plus we are presumably going to have "Aegon Targaryen" riding in like a white knight to save everyone from Mad Queen Cersei, so I imagine most people will want him on the throne rather than Daenerys. 

What I'm really looking forward to is Jon and Daenerys eventually meeting. GRRM said that certain characters are going to get alot darker in the next two books, and as you said, at the end of ADwD it looks like Daenerys is going to fully embrace her Targaryen heritage, and Jon is probably going to be darker in some way after getting resurrected/recovering from the mutiny. 

[Amris]

I have said this before and I repeat it here because your thread is about this very subject:

In my opinion GRRM when he set up the story took the Dark Overlord fantasy trope (think Sauron as an extreme example) and thought about how he could turn it on it's head:

- What if the Dark Overlord was a caring human being instead of just an evil force of nature?

- What if the Dark Overlord was a lovely girl instead of a brutish guy?

- What if the villain(ess) was white and blond instead of the tropish black?

- What if the Dark Overlord had some real historical claim to the throne instead of just being evil for evil's sake?

Now due to the above Dany at first glance doesn't look like the Dark Overlord trope. However if you strip her role down to it's bare bones the thing becomes obvious IMO:

- she is an outside invader who wants to conquere the whole continent

- she has a horde of foreigen barbarian troups under her command with a reputation for bloodlust and rape

- she has three fire-breathing dragons which can lay waste to entire castles and even cities

- she does burn people alive on occasion. Even so far back as book 1 btw: think of Mirri Maz Duur.

So to answer your OP question - is Daenerys a character study in how someone becomes a villain?

I think the answer is yes and no both. Daenerys has always had those two sides - the Mhysa side and the Dragon side. Even so far as book 1 she dabbled in necromancy to try to bring her dying husband back to life and she sacrificed her unborn child for that purpose and burned someone alive even back then.

Yeah there were reasons and yeah she didn't know - or didn't want to know as may rather be the case, closed her eyes to it - but sacrifice and burn people she did.

In that way its not so much of how to 'become' a villain. Her dragon side was always there.

She also has the Mhysa side though and the two are often at odds. Sometimes she goes more the one way, sometimes the other. Which is great IMO. And it is my feeling that the Mhysa side will always be a part of her and never be completely eradicated.

So my feeling is Daenerys is not slated to become an all-out villainess. She is also not slated to be a 100% heroine. Instead she is a case study on how heroism and villainy are related and sometimes two sides of the same coin. How they are part of her - and really part of all of us. Necessary parts even.

I think she is a case study on us.

Give us readers not the cardboard-cutout of a Sauron villain. Rather give us a real person with a real heart an understandable motivation and a wish to do good. In a certain way Danerys is a heroine after all. And what happens: Suddenly we can root for the 'villainess'. I know I do. 

But flip the coin around and you find she does villainy things now and then. Terrible things. Leading wars. Invasions. Burning people, Curcifying people, sacrificing people. But she also does those wonderful things and we know she cares. So we close our eyes and root for her.

And what does that say about us - us readers?

And are we even wrong rooting for her? Maybe we have a point. But can and should we overlook the bad things she does too?

A case study on us if you ask me. And it shows us how complicated the world is. And that there is never a 100% good and a 100% bad side when human beings are involved.

[rotting sea cow]

23 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

Is Daenerys a character study in how someone becomes a villain?  I have been contemplating lately a quote that I read: no one who is a villain believes they are a villain. 
...

I love Daenerys, but the more I study her arc, I am thinking that she may turn into a villain.  She is in a very dark place at the end of Dance.

Thoughts?

No, she will not become a villian but certainly she will not stand shit from anybody from now on and will be willing to use disproportionate force to achieve her goals, regardless whether they are overall good goals, like ending slavery once for all. That attitude will massively backfire when she comes to Westeros.

but, btw, I think a lot of our heroes will be in very dark and cold places during TWOW, including Tyrion, Jon, Bran, Sansa, Arya and maybe others, toying with their own dark sides and easy solutions.

 

 

[Lady Rhodes]

5 hours ago, Amris said:

I have said this before and I repeat it here because your thread is about this very subject:

In my opinion GRRM when he set up the story took the Dark Overlord fantasy trope (think Sauron as an extreme example) and thought about how he could turn it on it's head:

- What if the Dark Overlord was a caring human being instead of just an evil force of nature?

- What if the Dark Overlord was a lovely girl instead of a brutish guy?

- What if the villain(ess) was white and blond instead of the tropish black?

- What if the Dark Overlord had some real historical claim to the throne instead of just being evil for evil's sake?

Now due to the above Dany at first glance doesn't look like the Dark Overlord trope. However if you strip her role down to it's bare bones the thing becomes obvious IMO:

- she is an outside invader who wants to conquere the whole continent

- she has a horde of foreigen barbarian troups under her command with a reputation for bloodlust and rape

- she has three fire-breathing dragons which can lay waste to entire castles and even cities

- she does burn people alive on occasion. Even so far back as book 1 btw: think of Mirri Maz Duur.

So to answer your OP question - is Daenerys a character study in how someone becomes a villain?

I think the answer is yes and no both. Daenerys has always had those two sides - the Mhysa side and the Dragon side. Even so far as book 1 she dabbled in necromancy to try to bring her dying husband back to life and she sacrificed her unborn child for that purpose and burned someone alive even back then.

Yeah there were reasons and yeah she didn't know - or didn't want to know as may rather be the case, closed her eyes to it - but sacrifice and burn people she did.

In that way its not so much of how to 'become' a villain. Her dragon side was always there.

She also has the Mhysa side though and the two are often at odds. Sometimes she goes more the one way, sometimes the other. Which is great IMO. And it is my feeling that the Mhysa side will always be a part of her and never be completely eradicated.

So my feeling is Daenerys is not slated to become an all-out villainess. She is also not slated to be a 100% heroine. Instead she is a case study on how heroism and villainy are related and sometimes two sides of the same coin. How they are part of her - and really part of all of us. Necessary parts even.

I think she is a case study on us.

Give us readers not the cardboard-cutout of a Sauron villain. Rather give us a real person with a real heart an understandable motivation and a wish to do good. In a certain way Danerys is a heroine after all. And what happens: Suddenly we can root for the 'villainess'. I know I do. 

But flip the coin around and you find she does villainy things now and then. Terrible things. Leading wars. Invasions. Burning people, Curcifying people, sacrificing people. But she also does those wonderful things and we know she cares. So we close our eyes and root for her.

And what does that say about us - us readers?

And are we even wrong rooting for her? Maybe we have a point. But can and should we overlook the bad things she does too?

A case study on us if you ask me. And it shows us how complicated the world is. And that there is never a 100% good and a 100% bad side when human beings are involved.

Very nice and well put.  I read an interesting essay about Daenerys becoming a Shakespearean tragic hero, and this would fit that as well.

[Lady Rhodes]

5 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

but, btw, I think a lot of our heroes will be in very dark and cold places during TWOW, including Tyrion, Jon, Bran, Sansa, Arya and maybe others, toying with their own dark sides and easy solutions.

Oh this is certainly true, but I am more concerned with Dany.