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Daenerys: Analysis of psychology and foreshadowing


Kajjo

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On 5/19/2019 at 12:23 AM, Johan Wehtje said:

In Dany's case we had 8 seasons of character development showing someone exposed repeatedly to great trauma, loss and stress displaying enormous resilience. And that character was suddenly replaced with someone who can't cope and has had a breakdown that has made her genocidal.

That simply not true and repeating it does not make it better.

Have a look into #1 of this thread:

It's only her reason that counts. She is willing to burn down cities and kill most of their inhabitants.

Her talk to Hizdahr mirrors quite well the finale Daenerys/Jon exchange,

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28 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

That simply not true and repeating it does not make it better.

Have a look into #1 of this thread:

It's only her reason that counts. She is willing to burn down cities and kill most of their inhabitants.

Her talk to Hizdahr mirrors quite well the finale Daenerys/Jon exchange,

Actions speak louder  than words. 

Daeny has never targeted innocent civilians before, we have seven and half seasons of proof she wasn’t a mad targ. She chains her dragons for killing one civilian on accident. She literally just saved the north an episode ago. You don’t get to flip that switch after all that. It’s poor story telling after establishing the morality of the character.

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17 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

That simply not true and repeating it does not make it better.

Have a look into #1 of this thread:

It's only her reason that counts. She is willing to burn down cities and kill most of their inhabitants.

Her talk to Hizdahr mirrors quite well the finale Daenerys/Jon exchange,

 

I and quite a few others have already posted the link to this:

To which I don't have much to add other than to simply repeat what is there - we have Dany repeatedly in situations where she could be indiscriminate and she instead discriminates. 

And she simply has not been shown as crazy or psychologically fragile over the last 8 seasons until this episode. 

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30 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

That simply not true and repeating it does not make it better.

Have a look into #1 of this thread:

It's only her reason that counts. She is willing to burn down cities and kill most of their inhabitants.

Her talk to Hizdahr mirrors quite well the finale Daenerys/Jon exchange,

Why this is an ass-pull is because the world that the show runners created is a very cruel one.  Honour gets you killed.  The way to defeat cruel enemies is to be even more cruel than they are.  Dany fits into this world - right up to the point that it suits the show runners to have people be sufficiently outraged by her behaviour to plot to kill her.  And worse than that, Bran who can see all the past and the present,  set her up to be killed, once she'd fought the Night's King, so that he could ascend the Throne.

What a cynical and depressing outcome.

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2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

And worse than that, Bran who can see all the past and the present,  set her up to be killed, once she'd fought the Night's King, so that he could ascend the Throne.

How so?! That's your phantasy. Bran sees the past, not the future.

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7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

He had his vision of Drogon flying over Kings Landing.

Yes, he has greensight for the past, warging for the present and some few flashes of visions of future events.

I tend to believe these flashes are not important and should not be interpreted as Bran being able to see the future as he can see the past.

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4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Why this is an ass-pull is because the world that the show runners created is a very cruel one.  Honour gets you killed.  The way to defeat cruel enemies is to be even more cruel than they are.  Dany fits into this world - right up to the point that it suits the show runners to have people be sufficiently outraged by her behaviour to plot to kill her.  And worse than that, Bran who can see all the past and the present,  set her up to be killed, once she'd fought the Night's King, so that he could ascend the Throne.

What a cynical and depressing outcome.

This.

Saying that her bloodcurdling speeches prefigure madness is also to create a special condition for Dany that does not apply to anyone else. The world we have been watching is one where there is not much of a line between vengeance and justice - if you want justice seek your own vengeance. Arya has been on a killing spree for 3 seasons and isn't seen as some monster. Varys himself gives Olenna and the sand snakes the blood and fire speech. Talking rampage talk to Dothraki is just knowing your audience. What does make Dany unique is that she is the only character at all that displays any real concern for the people, Tyrion might be decent, Jon also - but Tyrion regards commoners as a bit of an abstraction and with a certain distaste, and lets face it Jon mostly wants the wild lings help in the fight against the NK. Dany is unique that from the freeing of the lamb people slaves onwards she actually is prepared to make sacrifices in her crusade  for the oppressed, her story is a 4 season detour in which liberates millions.

Also her violence has been very discrete and generally been preceded by negotiation. Add to that the fact that we have most of the in worlds most honourable and smartest characters all coming to the same conclusion about her for 7 seasons and it really is a rug pull with a couple of weak allusions to ambiguous foreshadowing to try and justify it. Nothing in the characters actual behaviour and choices over the preceding seasons justify it. 

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I agree that the progression was butchered, but I have a somewhat different take on the matter. Perhaps this has been covered elsewhere (in this thread or others). If so, I apologize for missing the relevant post(s). I try to read things carefully, but there is a hell of a lot of Dany material to read.

I can't disentangle show Dany from so much of what I see as the nonsense that has infested the whole show for the last few seasons. In truth, I don't think she should be so disentangled. My problems with her are similar to problems with many other characters. The writers didn't give us character development; they gave us character assassination. Dany went mad? Okay, but exactly how did Dany become a moron? Was it similar to the brain damage somehow suffered by her advisers? Was it because so many of the events she was witnessing were not just distressing, but also totally bogus? I have posted this elsewhere. I thought it worthwhile to repeat it here. Daenerys Targaryen's final speech: 

Unsullied! It is amazing to see so many of you! You were mostly wiped out up at Winterfell. Your bodies were burned on immense pyres, using wood that the North could not afford to waste. Now, rank upon rank, you stand before me in the capital. In Esos, I told you that you were free men, able to choose your own path. You have just seen me slaughter countless people needlessly. I set fire to an entire city while you were in it, so I know you still love me. Now, we will set forth on great conquests, marching through winter lands without food, smashing other lands, some of which have already pledged fealty to me. Also, I and my advisers will totally forget that we will be sailing blind into seas totally controlled by our enemies. We will forget that twice a dragon has been knocked out of the skies by a weapon designed by a creep whose engineering credentials consisted mostly in a love of human vivisection. I have forgotten this despite the fact that on one occasion I was riding the dragon in question. It's clear that we are invincible. 

Was there ever, could there ever be, such a ridiculously stupid wack job as I have become? Obviously, the guys who write this stuff for me believe this. They also think all the viewers of this miserable television series will believe it. I assure you that, at least in regard to that last part, they are quite wrong.

 

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10 hours ago, Parwan Nays said:

I agree that the progression was butchered, but I have a somewhat different take on the matter. Perhaps this has been covered elsewhere (in this thread or others). If so, I apologize for missing the relevant post(s). I try to read things carefully, but there is a hell of a lot of Dany material to read.

I can't disentangle show Dany from so much of what I see as the nonsense that has infested the whole show for the last few seasons. In truth, I don't think she should be so disentangled. My problems with her are similar to problems with many other characters. The writers didn't give us character development; they gave us character assassination. Dany went mad? Okay, but exactly how did Dany become a moron? Was it similar to the brain damage somehow suffered by her advisers? Was it because so many of the events she was witnessing were not just distressing, but also totally bogus? I have posted this elsewhere. I thought it worthwhile to repeat it here. Daenerys Targaryen's final speech: 

Unsullied! It is amazing to see so many of you! You were mostly wiped out up at Winterfell. Your bodies were burned on immense pyres, using wood that the North could not afford to waste. Now, rank upon rank, you stand before me in the capital. In Esos, I told you that you were free men, able to choose your own path. You have just seen me slaughter countless people needlessly. I set fire to an entire city while you were in it, so I know you still love me. Now, we will set forth on great conquests, marching through winter lands without food, smashing other lands, some of which have already pledged fealty to me. Also, I and my advisers will totally forget that we will be sailing blind into seas totally controlled by our enemies. We will forget that twice a dragon has been knocked out of the skies by a weapon designed by a creep whose engineering credentials consisted mostly in a love of human vivisection. I have forgotten this despite the fact that on one occasion I was riding the dragon in question. It's clear that we are invincible. 

Was there ever, could there ever be, such a ridiculously stupid wack job as I have become? Obviously, the guys who write this stuff for me believe this. They also think all the viewers of this miserable television series will believe it. I assure you that, at least in regard to that last part, they are quite wrong.

 

Her speech was lacking in brain cells. It reminded me of Joffrey in Season 1 when he tells Cersei he would take winterfell in a heartbeat. Cersei then counters his arguments with the solid pragmatics of warfare, much as you've done with Danny's bombastic speech here...the scene was not included in the books, so it's clear the writers were at least capable of writing thought out original content in the earlier seasons. What the bleeping hell happened in the recent seasons? 

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9 hours ago, Uilliam said:

Her speech was lacking in brain cells. It reminded me of Joffrey in Season 1 when he tells Cersei he would take winterfell in a heartbeat. Cersei then counters his arguments with the solid pragmatics of warfare, much as you've done with Danny's bombastic speech here...the scene was not included in the books, so it's clear the writers were at least capable of writing thought out original content in the earlier seasons. What the bleeping hell happened in the recent seasons? 

I don't know. The main takeaway from the Dany scenes is similar to that for a lot of other characters. Things started out well with HBO's GoT. They went down hill badly. 

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  • 7 months later...
On 5/13/2019 at 1:42 PM, Widowmaker 811 said:

The show has always gone out of its way to elevate the Starks.  The people on the show are not at all like George R. R. Martin's characters in his books.  Those on the show are the inventions of David Benioff and Daniel Weiss.  That's why the show characters sucked so bad.  Take away the expensive CGI and the show is really nothing to praise.  

George Martin's Daenerys Targaryen is nothing like the ones on the show.  David Benioff and Daniel Weiss ruined that character in an attempt to make the Starks more likable.  Their never ending pandering to the Stark fans is nauseating.  

Can't wait til ADOS comes out and George still kills Dany in a more brutal way, probably by Jon stabbing her in the heart after she goes bonkers. The "iT'S diFFeReNt iN tHe bOoKs! daNy wiLL be ThE hEro!!!!" fans will lose their minds LMAO

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9 hours ago, Wholala17 said:

Can't wait til ADOS comes out and George still kills Dany in a more brutal way, probably by Jon stabbing her in the heart after she goes bonkers. The "iT'S diFFeReNt iN tHe bOoKs! daNy wiLL be ThE hEro!!!!" fans will lose their minds LMAO

 

9 hours ago, Wholala17 said:

Can't wait til ADOS comes out and George still kills Dany in a more brutal way, probably by Jon stabbing her in the heart after she goes bonkers. The "iT'S diFFeReNt iN tHe bOoKs! daNy wiLL be ThE hEro!!!!" fans will lose their minds LMAO

What most readers want is a strong, plausible ending.  If Martin botches the ending in the same way as D &  D, the series will be a failure.  Whether the stories of Dany, Tyrion, Arya, Bran, and Jaime end in light or end in darkness, this needs to be make sense, rather than being sprung  on the readers.

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5 hours ago, SeanF said:

 

What most readers want is a strong, plausible ending.  If Martin botches the ending in the same way as D &  D, the series will be a failure.  Whether the stories of Dany, Tyrion, Arya, Bran, and Jaime end in light or end in darkness, this needs to be make sense, rather than being sprung  on the readers.

Oh I have faith George will earn his way there. Just saying Daenerys is still going to die in Jon's hands or via his actions. How and why? Wait for ADOS.

my comment is making fun of Daenerys fanatics on this board who somehow (I can't fathom why) think Daenerys is the main hero of this story who can do no wrong because she is some abolitionist angel. Or that she has to win and be a hero for this to be a good story (this is ASOIAF not Frozen). Or that her possibly becoming a villain or force of darkness is some cheap thing that CaN'T hAppeN" because it's sexist (she's a human who happens to be a woman, what happens to her can happen to any human regardless of their gender. No one complains when a man goes rogue when almost all tyrants in history and literature are men).

I'll laugh hard at your meltdowns if George also skewers her in the books LMAO

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19 hours ago, Wholala17 said:

Oh I have faith George will earn his way there. Just saying Daenerys is still going to die in Jon's hands or via his actions. How and why? Wait for ADOS.

my comment is making fun of Daenerys fanatics on this board who somehow (I can't fathom why) think Daenerys is the main hero of this story who can do no wrong because she is some abolitionist angel. Or that she has to win and be a hero for this to be a good story (this is ASOIAF not Frozen). Or that her possibly becoming a villain or force of darkness is some cheap thing that CaN'T hAppeN" because it's sexist (she's a human who happens to be a woman, what happens to her can happen to any human regardless of their gender. No one complains when a man goes rogue when almost all tyrants in history and literature are men).

I'll laugh hard at your meltdowns if George also skewers her in the books LMAO

I think the point of the story is that none of the main protagonists is either a saint or a monster, not Daenerys, Jon, Tyrion, Arya nor anyone else.  Heroes and heroines have flaws, both in literature and in real life, especially those who are fighters.

But if you wish Jon to kill Daenerys, then you are wishing a bad end for Jon as well as Daenerys.  The curse of the kinslayer is real in this world.

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  • 4 months later...
On 5/20/2019 at 1:47 PM, tallTale said:

Actions speak louder  than words. 

Daeny has never targeted innocent civilians before, we have seven and half seasons of proof she wasn’t a mad targ. She chains her dragons for killing one civilian on accident. She literally just saved the north an episode ago. You don’t get to flip that switch after all that. It’s poor story telling after establishing the morality of the character.

I am in re-watch spree, so I went back to the forum...A year after I am able to see from different perspective. And I just couldn't go past this one. Actually, literally, she didn't save the North...she literally HELPED to save the 7Kingdoms, fighting alongside with almost whole North and the wildlings. Her dragon fire was all but useless against the NK, she wanted to be triumphant and she had the look on her face when she tried to burn him, but then her jaw literally dropped when it didn't harm him at all and the NK even smirked at that. Her dothraki were all, but useless, her Unsullied were useless...their entire purpose was to buy time for someone who could be able to kill the NK. The truth is that she wouldn't have 7 Kingdoms to conquer if she didn't come, which is more (in the show, not in the books) her dead dragon is actually the reason the Wall fell, not mentioning the fact that he died because she had to be convinced (yeah, along with Cersei, but still). So basically she actually is the reason why the North had to be defended right away and the enemy had a powerful weapon. 

As to the topic: I think that the showrunner were bad at portraying her character from the very beginning. They made her a saint, well, sort of, and then, when the time came, were unable to portray her "blood and fire" nature. And yes, in the books it has been shown clearly. 
P.S: Emilia did a great job, by the way. I blame showrunners.

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6 minutes ago, Gala said:

I am in re-watch spree, so I went back to the forum...A year after I am able to see from different perspective. And I just couldn't go past this one. Actually, literally, she didn't save the North...she literally HELPED to save the 7Kingdoms, fighting alongside with almost whole North and the wildlings. Her dragon fire was all but useless against the NK, she wanted to be triumphant and she had the look on her face when she tried to burn him, but then her jaw literally dropped when it didn't harm him at all and the NK even smirked at that. Her dothraki were all, but useless, her Unsullied were useless...their entire purpose was to buy time for someone who could be able to kill the NK. The truth is that she wouldn't have 7 Kingdoms to conquer if she didn't come, which is more (in the show, not in the books) her dead dragon is actually the reason the Wall fell, not mentioning the fact that he died because she had to be convinced (yeah, along with Cersei, but still). So basically she actually is the reason why the North had to be defended right away and the enemy had a powerful weapon. 

As to the topic: I think that the showrunner were bad at portraying her character from the very beginning. They made her a saint, well, sort of, and then, when the time came, were unable to portray her "blood and fire" nature. And yes, in the books it has been shown clearly. 
P.S: Emilia did a great job, by the way. I blame showrunners.

If that's the case, Jon was a blithering idiot to ask her to come North.  The Dead were contained safely North of the Wall, yet for some reason, he felt the need to ask her to put her war against Cersei on hold, so that he could capture a wight, for ......reasons.  And, that resulted in the fall of the Wall. 

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19 hours ago, SeanF said:

If that's the case, Jon was a blithering idiot to ask her to come North.  The Dead were contained safely North of the Wall, yet for some reason, he felt the need to ask her to put her war against Cersei on hold, so that he could capture a wight, for ......reasons.  And, that resulted in the fall of the Wall. 

Well, he didn't know that the wights are not able to go through the Wall because of the magic and all. The first wight he encountered was brought safely to the Wall and tried to kill Lord Commander. Nobody knew how this stuff works, Bran wasn't around to say... by the time he arrived in Winterfell, Jon was gone trying to mine dragonglass (and that is the reason why he actually went to meet Daeny in the first place). You seem to forget that without dragonglass there is no point in fighting wights at all. 

And yeah, if the North falls, there is no point in any other squabbling about the iron chair they all want so much.
Because all of them, including the maesters in Old Town, don't believe in the threat to begin with. 
Just imagine if Jon didn't go to meet Daeny and didn't make all that stuff he did...I presume the NK had a plan how to deal with the Wall since he has been actively gathering the army for the last few years when he had been sitting quietly for thousands of years before that. If they somehow go through, the North falls in minutes. The NK and his army goes south...They all would be slaughtered easily, because no one has a clue how to fight the wights, the WW and the NK. As we can see, even Daeny's army has proven to be useless, even her dragons (well, I admit, they could swipe few thousands of wights with fire, but I presume they would become the undead dragons quite easily and soon, considering how the NK killed Viserion)

What they supposed to do, then? Wait until the army of the dead go through? Not trying to find allies? Do not mine the dragonglass when they had an opportunity? Suggest what you would do in that situation (I mean not a book reader who knows stuff, but the character in this circumstances)?
Do you really think that Cersei and Daeny's pathetic fight for the Throne is more important than this? By the way, it wasn't his idea to capture the wight (blame idiot Jorah for that if you want).  

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20 hours ago, SeanF said:

If that's the case, Jon was a blithering idiot to ask her to come North.  The Dead were contained safely North of the Wall, yet for some reason, he felt the need to ask her to put her war against Cersei on hold, so that he could capture a wight, for ......reasons.  And, that resulted in the fall of the Wall.

Discussed this before in another thread and yes, Jon was an idiot. The Wall had been up for thousands of years and the NK and his army never went past it during that time as far as we know. So clearly there is no obvious way over, around or through it. The wight from S1 that @Gala mentioned hadn't turned yet (he was dead for hours after they brought him through the gate) but that was back when the rules for Wight Walkers/Wights were different and we didn't have instant resurrection yet.

The Wall would have been a much better defensive position to fight the NK's army if they even bothered to show up there. Clearly there had to be a motivation for why the NK wanted to cross it now. And really the only thing that changed was his arch-nemesis crossing south of the Wall. In which case Bran, sorry 3 Eyed Raven, shares as much blame for the Wall coming down as Jon and Tyrion.

I've never understood why that wasn't how the writers brought the Wall down. I guess it wouldn't have been cinematic enough for 'Bran' to negate the magic in the Wall (like he did in the cave) and that to open up a way for the NK and his army to make it over/around/through it. That's something invisible happening and not the spectacle of a dragon getting wighted and then the NK to ride it, blue fire everywhere and the Wall taken down by it. So of course the writers needed the nonsensical Suicide Squad road trip into Dumbassland.

But just imagine what difference it would have made in the story. We would have never gotten the 7x06 nonsense of an episode. The characters would have retained some credibility. Dany wouldn't have been dragged into the dumbassery of the men around her and then instead of having to clean up her own mess (and making a cease fire with Cersei), she would have actually come to defend the realm from this threat. The story D&D ended up writing presented Bran, sorry 3ER, as LittleFinger with magical powers anyway. Since 3ER ended up using everyone and sacrificing thousands (if not millions-see KL) to get a throne, it's not hard to imagine he would use all the people as fodder to protect him from his arch-nemesis. That he brought the wall down deliberately when he crossed it in 7x01. Even if they didn't plan to make 'Bran' evil (IMO it was purely accidental on D&D's part), that's what actually should have happened if they remembered at all what happened in S6 in the cave. And all the other characters would have been better for it.

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