Welcome to war

[Deminelle]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Because it’s cool to kill hundreds of thousands of non-combatants after the armed forces opposing you have literally laid down their arms?

You think slaughter is a good thing?

In a sense this could be viewed as Dany "taxing" from Cersei the people she didn't send to help them against NK. Instead Cersei cowardly waited for the fight against the dead weaken the Northern troops and then conquer them.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Deminelle said:

In a sense this could be viewed as Dany "taxing" from Cersei the people she didn't send to help them against NK. Instead Cersei cowardly waited for the fight against the dead weaken the Northern troops and then conquer them.

No.  Not at all.  None of the non-combatants would ever have been sent North.  There is no reasonable justification for Daenerys’ actions.

People are not fungable.

[OldGimletEye]

2 minutes ago, Deminelle said:

In a sense this could be viewed as Dany "taxing" from Cersei the people she didn't send to help them against NK. 

Only if you're willing to randomly pull stuff out of your ass.

[Deminelle]

Just now, OldGimletEye said:

Only if your were willing to randomly pull stuff out of your ass.

You like being rude.

From Dany's point of view, I said already in the previous post. She had all this power of dragons, something special. Then she lets North interfere with her business. She's lost a lot and been betrayed. Why should Cersei get away with not caring about the people? Why does NK get too be a bad guy? Why don't you say NK shouldn't have slaughtered the people...

[SeanF]

24 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Bullshit, Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys went straight after the kings and lords they intended to defeat. Every single king and prince(ss) of Westeros received their letters to bend the knee and refused, and fought them instead, but Aegon and his sisters knew when to accept a bent knee.

Aegon didn't have a straight shot at Harren, but decide instead to murder hundreds of thousands of smallfolk instead. He warned Harren and his family, and when they refused, he made an example of them. He targeted them, not the smallfolk of the Riverlands.

Even after the Targaryens lost a large portion of their fleet against the Arryns, and after Visenya burnt their fleet in return, Visenya didn't just unleash hell on the smallfolk of the Vale. She used her dragon creatively to fly directly to the Eyrie and land in the courtyard, and secured the Arryn surrender.

Aegon and his sisters were willing to use their dragons to kill, but for the most part, they used them to get the realm to bend the knee and accept them as their rulerss.

The smallfolk of KL are essentially hostage to Cersei. But rather than liberate them from Cersei, as she has done to other innocents previously, she murders them, even after she had secured the surrender of the remaining Lannister forces.

There is no explaining or justifying what Daenerys did. The show creators turned her into a shitty character antithetical to the character that has been built up over the years. They could have given her reason to turn against her noble allies. They could have even gradually given her believable reason to cease to care about the smallfolk of KL.

But they rushed a nonsensical snap into not caring about murdering smallfolk. All the known lords of Westeros were already either supporting her or would have been disposed to supporting her over Cersei, who has zero support. Now she has almost certainly ensured that nobody will support her, and she will likely be assassinated before she can plant her punk ass on the throne. Shittiest season by far.

Were the Smallfolk of Harrenhall to blame, because their master refused to bend the knee? Or the Smallfolk of Dorne, because the Yellow Toad defied Rhaenys?  They were still treated as guilty by Aegon and his sisters, and reduced to ashes.

[OldGimletEye]

3 minutes ago, Deminelle said:

You like being rude..

When people try to justify mass murder, I have no qualms about being rude and not mincing words.

4 minutes ago, Deminelle said:

From Dany's point of view, I said already in the previous post. She had all this power of dragons, something special. Then she lets North interfere with her business. She's lost a lot and been betrayed. Why should Cersei get away with not caring about the people? Why does NK get too be a bad guy? Why don't you say NK shouldn't have slaughtered the people...

I don't care what her reasons were, in so far as we talking about justifications for her actions. Nor should any right thinking person.

[OldGimletEye]

17 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Were the Smallfolk of Harrenhall to blame,

Assuming there is a Cassus Belli, I have much less of a problem with Aegon taking out Harrenhal, even if noncombatant casualties result, than what was shown in episode 5. For one, it was a legitimate military target. Once it fell, the conflict was over.

Now if Aegon were to continue to kill noncombatants once the enemies military power was clearly broken, that would make him one big piss ant.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

 

36 minutes ago, Deminelle said:

You like being rude.

From Dany's point of view, I said already in the previous post. She had all this power of dragons, something special. Then she lets North interfere with her business. She's lost a lot and been betrayed. Why should Cersei get away with not caring about the people? Why does NK get too be a bad guy? Why don't you say NK shouldn't have slaughtered the people...

Huh?

Of course the Night King shouldn’t have slaughtered people?  

Killing people... is wrong.  People are not commodities.

[SeanF]

4 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Assuming there is a Cassus Belli, I have much less of a problem with Aegon taking out Harrenhal, even if noncombatant casualties result, than what was shown in episode 5. For one, it was a legitimate military target. Once it fell, the conflict is over.

Now if Aegon were to continue to kill noncombatants once the enemies military power was clearly broken, that would make him one big piss ant.

I think Aegon and his sisters are examples of bad people who made good rulers (outside Dorne)  They waged aggressive wars for purely selfish reasons, and killed innocent people in doing so, but they ruled efficiently over their subjects when they had won.  In general, they seem to have governed better than the people they replaced.

The problem is they didn't conquer Dorne.  Rather than simply live with it, they chose to  torch every settlement they could.  Rhaenys burned Plankytown to the waterline, a place of no military importance that I can see.  After Rhaenys' death, Aegon and Visenya went berserk, reducing the country to a wasteland.  Even then, they failed to break Dornish resistance.  They must have killed tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Dornish, out of spite, a desire for revenge, and frustration.

So, I stand by my view that Dany was not very different to them.

 

4 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

 

 

[OldGimletEye]

8 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think Aegon and his sisters are examples of bad people who made good rulers (outside Dorne)  They waged aggressive wars for purely selfish reasons, and killed innocent people in doing so, but they ruled efficiently over their subjects when they had won.  In general, they seem to have governed better than the people they replaced

I won't go through all of Aegon's wars and estimate the strength of their justifications. But, at least in the case of Harrenhall, Harren The Black seemed to be one bad dude. So, in that one particular instance, Aegon's aggression is less of a problem.

 

[OldGimletEye]

19 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The problem is they didn't conquer Dorne.  Rather than simply live with it, they chose to  torch every settlement they could.  Rhaenys burned Plankytown to the waterline, a place of no military importance that I can see.  After Rhaenys' death, Aegon and Visenya went berserk, reducing the country to a wasteland.  Even then, they failed to break Dornish resistance.  They must have killed tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Dornish, out of spite, a desire for revenge, and frustration.

A point I have tried to make on other threads and this one is that the question of noncombatant casualties and whether they were out of bounds, as far as military ethics is concerned, is always going to be a very fact intensive question and one just can't make general assertions that "civilians die in war". Everyone knows that. And it's not very helpful in parsing these issues.

Unlike the case of Harrenhall, there is no evidence that Meria Martell was a cruel ruler in general (though she did do some nasty stuff to her Targ enemies). So Aegon and his sisters really didn't have much of a Casus Belli in that case. Also unlike the case of Harrenhall, as stated in your summary of facts, Rhaenys burned a target that had no military value. 

So after examining the facts, I think one can distinguish between the two cases.

[SeanF]

36 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

A point I have tried to make on other threads and this one is that the question of noncombatant casualties and whether they were out of bounds, as far as military ethics is concerned, is always going to be a very fact intensive question and one just can't make general assertions that "civilians die in war". Everyone knows that. And it's not very helpful in parsing these issues.

Unlike the case of Harrenhall, there is no evidence that Meria Martell was a cruel ruler in general (though she did do some nasty stuff to her Targ enemies). So Aegon and his sisters really didn't have much of a Casus Belli in that case. Also unlike the case of Harrenhall, as stated in your summary of facts, Rhaenys burned a target that had no military value. 

So after examining the facts, I think one can distinguish between the two cases.

I suppose one can always find a justification.  Destroying Plankytown and wiping out Dornish peasants would reduce Dornish manpower and revenues, thus reducing their ability to fight, but it's a very weak justification.

[SeanF]

Thinking of real life, IMHO, the closest parallel is Boudicca putting London to the torch, a city which had surrendered, and was made up of her own people  - but who she viewed as traitors.

Yet, Boudicca is now seen as a national heroine, and has a huge statue of her I the city she razed.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Again, it's a matter of characterisation. If Daenerys had Cersei's personality - or even Arya's - I'd actually be fine with this (well, not the atrocity, but rather fine with this as a bit of storytelling). The problem is, Daenerys doen't act like this.

[SeanF]

6 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Again, it's a matter of characterisation. If Daenerys had Cersei's personality - or even Arya's - I'd actually be fine with this (well, not the atrocity, but rather fine with this as a bit of storytelling). The problem is, Daenerys doen't act like this.

I think it is consistent with her personality.  It's just that most of her victims in the past have been portrayed as arseholes, or else people who we haven't got to see die up close, or people that we don't care about very much. 

But, from quite an early stage, Daenerys has enjoyed violence and is good at it.  

[Deminelle]

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

When people try to justify mass murder, I have no qualms about being rude and not mincing words.

I don't care what her reasons were, in so far as we talking about justifications for her actions. Nor should any right thinking person.

I'm as right thinking as any other person. This is a story about love and war, even though a bit crappy one. However I don't think there are no rules why Dany couldn't turn "evil" after what's happened. You can't really compare this to normal life, no one gets pushed that much. Within the rules of that world I think this spices up her character. 

Besides: how could you justify Jon killing her unless she turned bad? Although we don't know if this is yet to come but it looks like it.

[darmody]

10 hours ago, Deminelle said:

 

From Dany's point of view, I said already in the previous post. She had all this power of dragons, something special. Then she lets North interfere with her business. She's lost a lot and been betrayed. Why should Cersei get away with not caring about the people? Why does NK get too be a bad guy? Why don't you say NK shouldn't have slaughtered the people...

The North? What do they have to do with it besides happening to be first in the zombie army's way? She let concern for an undead horde led by Ice Demons walking across the entire continent get in her way. 

[OldGimletEye]

7 hours ago, Deminelle said:

I'm as right thinking as any other person. This is a story about love and war, even though a bit crappy one. However I don't think there are no rules why Dany couldn't turn "evil" after what's happened. You can't really compare this to normal life, no one gets pushed that much. Within the rules of that world I think this spices up her character. 

Besides: how could you justify Jon killing her unless she turned bad? Although we don't know if this is yet to come but it looks like it.

I'm not sure what the point here really is.

But, again, I'll say, that I'm pretty shocked that Dany did what she did. I had no doubt that she would turn darker and become more ruthless in her pursuit of the IT.

But to continue to cause death and destruction, after she achieved her aims? Directly targeting noncombatants, after she had won? I didn't expect  that. And I think criticisms that her actions were not built up by the show sufficiently are likely to be on the mark.

Her actions at King's Landing do not "spice up her character". They make her a hideous and an atrocious person.

Not everything is a shade of grey. Some things are pretty black and white.

[OldGimletEye]

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

was made up of her own people  - but who she viewed as traitors.

Yet, Boudicca is now seen as a national heroine, and has a huge statue of her I the city she razed.

I wonder if she changed her opinion after meeting the legions of Suetonious Paulinus. One doesn't just casually mess around with a couple of Roman Legions.

[Gala]

On 5/14/2019 at 1:59 AM, olibar said:

On top of that, by leaving virtually no survivors she now has the opportunity to spin what happened as Cirse's fault.  The official narrative should be that the bells were never run, that Cirse fought to the end, and Dany's only choice was to raze the city.  To the victor goes the history.

For that to be true she has to kill Tyrion and Jon (Davos and all their people), too. Ah, yes, all the survivals like Arya, for example.