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Daenerys: Analysis of psychology and foreshadowing


Kajjo

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12 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

While I agree that the people are indeed scared shitless, it does have a lot to do with her deciding to burn them all. She waits for quite a while, once the soldiers surrendered, as if she waits for something else to happen.

Tyrion made the argument that the people in KL are hostages and that she can't expect them to be heroes fighting Cersei's soldiers, after she tells him that the people in Mereen fought upon her arrival. To her mind, when the bills ring and they don't come out to cheer her, their non-reaction proves they aren't hostages and were never going to rebel against Cersei, sitting in the Red Keep.  That is what the red keep then signifies when she sees it: not just that Cersei is there, but that the citizens of KL prefer Cersei over her.

 

No she doesn't wait for quite a while. This isn't a sequence of scenes that you can justify a lot of time passed. You can literally count the seconds from when the first bell starts ringing to when she makes her decision, and it's less that 1 minute. And not once does she look at the streets to see if people are coming out, she looks straight ahead at the Red Keep. She didn't give anyone any goddamn time, whatsoever.

She gave Yunkai until dawn to free the slaves. When the slaves of Meereen took down the masters, she waited until it was all over, and entered to their cheers. But here, the two forces were still facing each other, with Lannister soldiers just dropping their swords, fires were still burning around the city, and Drogon was sitting perched on the walls like a demon out of horror stories. The people of KL grew up with legends of dragons, but even those still alive to remember Aerys still had no idea about dragons. 

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9 minutes ago, tallTale said:

after despite clearly winning the battle.

She won the battle but she did not win "the final war" when the bell rang.  They did not get it.  They thought it was business as usual.

The final war against bullsht, against fight for thrones, no more usurpers, no more traiters, against King's Landing.

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1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

No she doesn't wait for quite a while. This isn't a sequence of scenes that you can justify a lot of time passed. You can literally count the seconds from when the first bell starts ringing to when she makes her decision, and it's less that 1 minute. And not once does she look at the streets to see if people are coming out, she looks straight ahead at the Red Keep. She didn't give anyone any goddamn time, whatsoever.

She gave Yunkai until dawn to free the slaves. When the slaves of Meereen took down the masters, she waited until it was all over, and entered to their cheers. But here, the two forces were still facing each other, with Lannister soldiers just dropping their swords, fires were still burning around the city, and Drogon was sitting perched on the walls like a demon out of horror stories. The people of KL grew up with legends of dragons, but even those still alive to remember Aerys still had no idea about dragons. 

You can't make sense of dany's actions in this because they make no sense. Even the "she wants to make them fear her" is just trying to find a reason to figure out what she did. The show runners screwed over her character and did it in a way that made no sense. That's it full stop.

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10 hours ago, Kajjo said:

Please let this thread NOT be another rave thread, but let us try to rationally, pragmatically analyse all foreshadowing to the recent events of E5 and discuss motives and psyche of Daenerys. We need a thread that does this soberly and clean.

Daenerys was portrayed as being on the verge throughout the whole show. No surprise here if you watched carefully. She was always emotional, sometimes warmhearted and supportive to the common people, sometimes exhibiting anger, fury and rage. Daenerys turning in to Mad Queen is not that unexpected after all the foreshadowing. I would like member here to collect references to foreshadowing in all seasons. Let us create a fine list of all quotes with season/episode/scene that showed us the "possible mad side" of Daenerys.

Secondly, what led Daenerys to snap? Let's discuss what made her freak out and decide to destroy King's Landing? In my opinion firstly she realised that the people do not love her and never will. Secondly, Jon cannot kiss her back, probably because of the aunt-nephew-issue and she realised that she will have no future with him. Jon loves her and she loves Jon, but they are unable to enjoy intimacy. She is utterly lonesome. She has no goal in life anymore. The people won't love and respect her, Jon will not be intimate with her, her advisers are worthless, she is not only on hew own, she is alone and lonely. There is nothing to gain anymore, not even by conquering King's Landing. She realises she won't be the Queen that free the people and is loved by her people. She understands no one will love her no matter how it turns out. She has no allies and Sansa is against her, all the Northerners are prone to hail Sansa. 

You can have all the members on the forum thralling through every script but you will find more evidence to the contrary than for your argument. Daenerys was pro liberation of the oppressed, she liberated slaversbay, emacipated the dosh kaleen and avoided the slaughter of the innocent on numerous occassions through her actions based on what She believed in, even when it wasn't the easiest option, to have her first unjust killing being the mass murder of the population of kings landing isn't supported by any character development. There was no foundation for her inexplicably turning her dragon on the innocent masses pre season 8. George built that world and developed and plotted the course for all of these characters. He is on record as saying he would never write a story in a way that a suspect is unmasked to just subvert expectations ie the butler did it, without having clear evidence that the character was going to do it and how. D&D just spat in everyones face with this development. I would've been on board with this storyline had they given us more of it at an earlier point. They've thrown in so many cliched tv tropes that George would never be on board with, why didn't they have Dany hearing voices or more paranoid room scanning glances like the one in the winterfell feast hall.  "character development, nah, story story"- Joe Dempsie

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2 minutes ago, Hoo said:

She won the battle but she did not win "the final war" when the bell rang.  They did not get it.  They thought it was business as usual.

The final war against bullsht, against fight for thrones, no more usurpers, no more traiters, against King's Landing.

What are you talking about? She wanted the iron throne and with cersei dead she had it. This was just evil and it made no sense for her character to do this. It was so out of character for her.

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I was thinking, aside from missing the adulation she got back east and the loneliness of not having any friends and the trauma of recently losing Jorah, Miss Sandy, and two "children," she had pent-up wrath she expected to expend on her enemies. When denied that chance, she said "eff it" and burned everything anyway. 

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13 minutes ago, SeanF said:

<snip> Daenerys is a hypocrite when she talks about breaking the wheel.  Her vision of society is one in which she gives the orders, and the rest obey.  And, if you disobey, you die. <snip>

Obviously she was not talking about democracy, she was talking about rulers who had in mind the best for their people, instead of crushing them ruthlessly. Like Plato's "philosopher king."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_king

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5 minutes ago, Hoo said:

She won the battle but she did not win "the final war" when the bell rang.  They did not get it.  They thought it was business as usual.

The final war against bullsht, against fight for thrones, no more usurpers, no more traiters, against King's Landing.

Say what now?'How did Danny stop any throne-fighting? She just guaranteed there'd be more traitors. Coming to kill her. 

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3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

No she doesn't wait for quite a while. This isn't a sequence of scenes that you can justify a lot of time passed. You can literally count the seconds from when the first bell starts ringing to when she makes her decision, and it's less that 1 minute. And not once does she look at the streets to see if people are coming out, she looks straight ahead at the Red Keep. She didn't give anyone any goddamn time, whatsoever.

The soldiers threw down their arms long before the bells were rung. She's already waiting at the city wall then. Then she shouts come to ring the bells. She waits and watches. Then the bells ring. She should expect by this time people coming out crying her name by Tyrion's reasoning. She doesn't. It's just the bells and silence otherwise. You see her face falter before we get her focus on the red keep and her face sets with anger again. It's in that faltering moment she realises that the people aren't Cersei's hostages as Tyrion reasoned. Then she becomes angry, as she focuses on the red keep. She sets off on Drogon, and then we get a shot of people running, fleeing before her, just verifying what she already knows in her heart ('they don't want her'), just like they didn't want her in the North. And she starts to burn the people fleeing.

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Just now, Hodor's Dragon said:

Obviously she was not talking about democracy, she was talking about rulers who had in mind the best for their people, instead of crushing them ruthlessly. Like Plato's "philosopher king."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher_king

It can't be that, the way the analogy is told. She was talking about breaking the mechanism through which different powerful people grind the people. Which means some kind of change in the form of government. 

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2 minutes ago, darmody said:

I was thinking, aside from missing the adulation she got back east and the loneliness of not having any friends and the trauma of recently losing Jorah, Miss Sandy, and two "children," she had pent-up wrath she expected to expend on her enemies. When denied that chance, she said "eff it" and burned everything anyway. 

That she got out by destroying the golden company,the scorpions,the iron fleet,and lannister soldiers. If she really wanted to vent rage or if they ha this make any sense then she would have gone to the red keep and burned it down. When the bell rung cersei had lost. SHe had no soldiers left all her allies were gone. Going after her in the keep would have been pure revenge at the cost of innocent life and could have shown the mad queen route and made sense. Instead she hits the red keep after killing every civilian she can find? This was the show runners and writers going for shock value. They destroyed dany's character completly and in a way that made no sense.

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Just now, darmody said:

It can't be that, the way the analogy is told. She was talking about breaking the mechanism through which different powerful people grind the people. Which means some kind of change in the form of government. 

Whatever she may've meant, she quite clearly did not intend to end rule by monarchy. That's the flat opposite of her character arc, so I think you rule that interpretation out from the start unless she explicitly so stated, which she did not.

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1 minute ago, sweetsunray said:

The soldiers threw down their arms long before the bells were rung. She's already waiting at the city wall then. Then she shouts come to ring the bells. She waits and watches. Then the bells ring. She should expect by this time people coming out crying her name by Tyrion's reasoning. She doesn't. It's just the bells and silence otherwise. You see her face falter before we get her focus on the red keep and her face sets with anger again. It's in that faltering moment she realises that the people aren't Cersei's hostages as Tyrion reasoned. Then she becomes angry, as she focuses on the red keep. She sets off on Drogon, and then we get a shot of people running, fleeing before her, just verifying what she already knows in her heart ('they don't want her'), just like they didn't want her in the North. And she starts to burn the people fleeing.

Why? Do you understand how frightened are those people? Why would they?

Tyrion's reasoning was that they're afraid of Cersei. Ok, but why would they come out to cheer for Dany? To them, this is just another ruler coming to take over, who rides a monster into battle. She did nothing to earn their love. Not like in Slaver's Bay, or with the Dothraki. Her PR campaign was quite terrible for Westeros.

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3 minutes ago, snow is the man said:

What are you talking about? She wanted the iron throne 

No. Iron throne was not the only goal.  The goal was not to take the iron throne while Westeros continues with the bullsht.

The goal was to bend the knee to Dany, stay loyal. and no more bull.  It's not business as usual.  Everything changes

They rang the bell late.  They did not do it.  And that needed to be brought to screen, the game changer.  It's over with the Westeros bullsht.

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3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Why? Do you understand how frightened are those people? Why would they?

I myself understand it. But Dany expects this. She has the emotional maturity of a child, rather black and white, and all the messianic Meesha stuff in Essos didn't help her one bit. Her reasoning with Tyrion before the attack shows how limited her views are on Westerosi smallfolk. Everybody of Westeros sighs with relief when the bells ring. For them "surrender" is enough. They get that smallfolk won't come out to cheer. Dany doesn't. She expects flags, hailing of her name, etc.

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3 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

The soldiers threw down their arms long before the bells were rung. She's already waiting at the city wall then. Then she shouts come to ring the bells. She waits and watches. Then the bells ring. She should expect by this time people coming out crying her name by Tyrion's reasoning. She doesn't. It's just the bells and silence otherwise. You see her face falter before we get her focus on the red keep and her face sets with anger again. It's in that faltering moment she realises that the people aren't Cersei's hostages as Tyrion reasoned. Then she becomes angry, as she focuses on the red keep. She sets off on Drogon, and then we get a shot of people running, fleeing before her, just verifying what she already knows in her heart ('they don't want her'), just like they didn't want her in the North. And she starts to burn the people fleeing.

No dude the whole thing made no sense. I like dany alot and this was completly out of character for her and killed her character. The showrunners wanted to have the "good" person become pure evil and in the most shocking way possible. There was no other reason for it. Usually I try to find reasons and excuses for the writers in alot of show but this is just them breaking the show and dany's character.

I am gonna head cannon that after the bell rang a stray arrow hit dany in the fore head and she died and the rest of this never happened. And while I wanted a happy ending for her I would have understood her going mad. But this is just over the top. pretending that it was dany's evil twin makes as much sense as what happened.

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3 minutes ago, Hoo said:

No. Iron throne was not the only goal.  The goal was not to take the iron throne while Westeros continues with the bullsht.

The goal was to bend the knee to Dany, stay loyal. and no more bull.  It's not business as usual.  Everything changes

They rang the bell late.  They did not do it.  And that needed to be brought to screen, the game changer.  It's over with the Westeros bullsht.

bull This is not what she meant. I will say again this was just them destroying her character and doing it in the most shocking way possible even if it made no sense for her character or anything.

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When it all went wrong: 

If only Barry was still alive, she wouldn't have been "setting towns and castles aflame, murdering son fathers in front of their fathers sons, burning men alive with wildfire dragonfire" or "giving her enemies the justice she thinks they deserved, each time making her feel powerful and right until the very end."

Barry died two episodes later which lead to this: 

Feeding the leaders of the nobles to her dragons not knowing if they are innocent or not. 

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