Possible explanation to "Dany gate"

[Runaway Penguin]

5 minutes ago, Pauld123 said:

Was Hitler mad? as in clinically insane? I think that just because he carried out brutal murder doesn't allow you to make such a leap as to consider him insane.

But that is it. Do we take clinical or colloquial definition of "mad", "insane" etc.? A ton of historical atrocities were made by people probably not clinically insane, this did not prevent them from acts that both us and their contemporaries considered the actions insane.

5 minutes ago, Pauld123 said:

Also the holocaust is a bad example because that was hatred of a race, nothing to do with subjugation and power. It wasn't a means to an end, it was just an end in itself. Similarly Las Vegas shooter didn't have an after-plan, killing for killing sake.  

Holocaust had everything to do with subjugation and power. It was a means to an end, the end being great empire without any "subhumans" threatening it. Yes, it was a mad idea, carried out by some extremely logical minds, but one of the earlier variants counted "just" with forced deportation. Industrialized murder came only when this proved impractical.

Same with the Las Vegas shooter. He had an exit plan as far as I know, but cannot enact it because police came earlier than he expected. We don't know his reason (and even not having after-plan for himself does not necessarily mean he didn't have after-plan - plenty of these murderers tend to hope to inspire revolution etc. as their after-plan).

5 minutes ago, Pauld123 said:

Dany's decision was taken with an objective, subjugate through terror and then rule. Hitler didn't gas Jews so they would take them as their leader, he gassed them just to get rid of them. That's very different. 

Not really, at least not from my point of view. All these actions had an objective that made sense to their author and look insane to everyone else (do you really take nuking a surrendered city to make a point as a 100% sane, rational action?).

[RobertOfTheHouseBaratheon]

40 minutes ago, Nightwish said:

This cancels all her season 8 arc. She should go for the Red Keep then and all love would come her way.  

If she goes for the Red Keep as you say, Cersei & her minions burn, Kings Landing falls easily then tomorow she has to fight Sansa with Jon, Tyrion, Gendry & who knows who else possible defectors. 

In her [wrong] opinion she keeps giving mercy and being taken advantage of. For example agreeing with Cersei, going North to "save" them from the AOTD, giving Tyrion chances after chance. She feels all this should make her loved but doesn't. 

Aegon burned Harrenhall & it was enough to set his reputation, Tywin did for the Reynes to make his name. Both murders of innocent women & children. 

 

[RobertOfTheHouseBaratheon]

2 hours ago, Madinxor said:

They don’t seem to go this route though…. They go for the Mad Queen routine and this I find a bit out of character. It’s the coin flip madness that I have a problem with. We have seen ruthlessness and even some cruelty from Dany, but no madness, none whatsoever.

Agree with everything you have said but I am not 100% they are going down the madness route. We have just seen her looking crazy angry. They like to stylize the show & dont put it past D&D to have her all cold & calculating next ep. 

[Pauld123]

Nah, the holocaust is defo not subjugation. It is erradication. That's not same thing. Hitler didn't want to make subjects of the jews (subjugation), he wanted them gone full stop.

Also they are bad examples because they are from our universe not GOT universe. But more importantly they are bad examples cos they  are 20th/21st centuary examples so morally not slightly comparable to GOT. 

Consider how the Vikings raped and pilaged and were considered heros for it. Consider the slaughter at Drogheda in 1690 ("Kill them all, God will sort out his own"). These are better examples because they get closer to the morals in the universe of the show. Also carried out by ruthless leaders that only did it for a power objective. They didn't jyst do it for the love of killing. That's not madness it is politics of the time.

[Pauld123]

10 minutes ago, RobertOfTheHouseBaratheon said:

If she goes for the Red Keep as you say, Cersei & her minions burn, Kings Landing falls easily then tomorow she has to fight Sansa with Jon, Tyrion, Gendry & who knows who else possible defectors. 

In her [wrong] opinion she keeps giving mercy and being taken advantage of. For example agreeing with Cersei, going North to "save" them from the AOTD, giving Tyrion chances after chance. She feels all this should make her loved but doesn't. 

Aegon burned Harrenhall & it was enough to set his reputation, Tywin did for the Reynes to make his name. Both murders of innocent women & children. 

 

Exactly, victory alone was not enough. She needed a statement to prevent the need for another victory in the future.

[Damitol]

I'm betting you are correct that Dresden was at least in part Martin's inspiration for the scene (remember that all of these main character final beats were revealed to D&D  by Martin years ago), and while what she did was horrible, it also makes total sense from her perspective.  

Her goal has always been to "break the wheel" and she made clear to Tyrion last week that she was there to save future generations from tyranny - not necessarily those alive today.  As many have pointed out, Dani has never had any issue with using violence - and more often than not, fire - to further her reaching that goal.  We all know one word in Valerian because of that.

Yes, it was pure madness to anyone watching on the ground, but like the WWII references in this thread, this was creating an event that would never be forgotten and passed down from generation to generation.   Get with the program or suffer the same fate.  I'm guessing we see a Dani next week that hated the fact innocents had to die, but justifying it because she fully believes it was necessary to bring a lasting peace for those future generations.  Of course that will also conflict us like Cersei's last few minutes did me and a lot of others last episode.  (Damn you D&D and Lena for making me feel a little sorry for Cersei!)

That may be our "bittersweet" ending.  Like Dresden and Hiroshima, a horrible thing was done and meant to be the last horrible thing ever - and it only delayed the next horrible thing for a while.  Varys' final ravens reached and inspired their intended recipients, the remainder of Westros rises up and kills "the Mad Queen" and her dragon, and maybe the Starks even take the throne in the end.   Then while the crowds cheer, someone (the mysterious new Prince in Dorne?) thinks "I should be on that throne", putting the wheel in motion again.

 

[Nightwish]

50 minutes ago, RobertOfTheHouseBaratheon said:

If she goes for the Red Keep as you say, Cersei & her minions burn, Kings Landing falls easily then tomorow she has to fight Sansa with Jon, Tyrion, Gendry & who knows who else possible defectors. 

In her [wrong] opinion she keeps giving mercy and being taken advantage of. For example agreeing with Cersei, going North to "save" them from the AOTD, giving Tyrion chances after chance. She feels all this should make her loved but doesn't. 

Aegon burned Harrenhall & it was enough to set his reputation, Tywin did for the Reynes to make his name. Both murders of innocent women & children. 

 

I agree it was a comment for the person I quoted who said that she didn't try to earn love. In fact she did. That's what she has been trying since season 7. 

[Tagganaro]

1 hour ago, Nightwish said:

I agree it was a comment for the person I quoted who said that she didn't try to earn love. In fact she did. That's what she has been trying since season 7. 

This is spelled out explicitly in her conversation with Jon too after burning Varys and before the battle.  She laments the fact that more people love Jon than her, and says she only has the fear of the people.  Then she asks Jon whether he loves her and tries kissing him only for him to pull away from her and she remarks "let it be fear."

Between this moment and the moment when the bells started ringing, Dany stopped trying to get the peoples love and instead went for fear.  

[Nightwish]

2 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

This is spelled out explicitly in her conversation with Jon too after burning Varys and before the battle.  She laments the fact that more people love Jon than her, and says she only has the fear of the people.  Then she asks Jon whether he loves her and tries kissing him only for him to pull away from her and she remarks "let it be fear."

Between this moment and the moment when the bells started ringing, Dany stopped trying to get the peoples love and instead went for fear.  

If you referred to that moment I agree, there she quit trying. 

[Krishtotter]

On 5/15/2019 at 4:58 PM, Ranger Kragin said:

NPD affected are quite charming people, loving too as long as they feel the admiration they crave more than anything. They literally flip when this is missing.

 

 

"That deep horror of tyranny, that compassionate zeal for the oppressed, that even more sublime and holy love for humanity, without which a great revolution is just a noisy crime that destroys another crime; it does exist, that generous ambition to establish here on earth the world's first Republic." 

 

- Maximillian Robespierre, 8 Thermidor 1794

 

"What shocks most in the portrait of Robespierre is that a quasi-invisible, highly isolated individual could worm his way into a position of total power at a crisis point in history, resulting in dictatorship and mass murder. 

Everyone has witnessed such figures, whether in the military, in religion, or in management: they impose rule through terror; they claim moral superiority; they engage a coterie of trusted lackeys; they refuse both constructive debate and answerability.

Blood lettings brought about by this 'sincere' man surely warn us that belief in your own righteousness to the exclusion of all else can be as dangerous as the more cynical motivation of a deliberate tyrant." 

- Antonia Fraser CH, DBE, FRSL

 

I agree with you that Dany - like most other authoritarian populists - suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, or "ethical egoism" as it may be more aptly named. She can appear rather vulnerable and excessively 'needy' for affection (as when she tells Jon after Viserion dies, "I hope I'm worth it" with tears in her eyes), which is endearing up to a point but is equally suggestive of psychological imbalance, stemming in part from her abuse and neglect as a child hiding in exile from her father's killers.

Because she never received it from her dead parents and psychotic older brother, she craves the adoration of huge, faceless crowds and lovesick obsessives like Jorah. And as long as she keeps receiving this and being told how great she is, Dany is capable of genuine magnanimity and kindness on her terms.  But it is an entirely unequal partnership, without any semblance of equality of status. 

For a long time, my primary baseline for comparing her with a real world person has been the French Revolutionary dictator Maximilian Robespierre, and for good reason, because she is essentially his female, dragon-riding medieval doppelganger. Much like Dany, Robespierre lost his mother at six and was abandoned by his father. 

Maxim (his personal nickname) was on the surface - and by his own self-perceived narrative - a fundamentally charming, humane, progressive and self-effacing individual. He had, "many disconcertingly endearing features" (Ruth Scar, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution), such that on paper it was hard for his adoring sans-culottes (peasant Parisians) not to hero-worship him as the ideal 'man of the people'. Equal voting rights for all; abolition of slavery; dissolution of the aristocratic classes, these were his broad 'ideals'. 

He was dedicated to the liberation of the 'oppressed' and the destruction of their nebulously and ever more widely-defined 'enemies' (who oddly enough became increasingly indistinguishable from Maxim's own personal political rivals that he wanted to eliminate - what a coincidence!), beginning with monarchs, aristocrats and gentry. To quote one historian, "a gauche little green-eyed man obsessed with a Utopian vision of justice for the people" Robespierre, at the same time, exhibited "pure insanity and vile inhumanity", "an orator bent on manipulating the uneducated, illiterate masses with rabble-rousing Rousseau-inspired rhetoric" but was such a complicated architect of state terror that none could then, or now, doubt "his total and utter sincerity, however deluded...his own absolute moral rectitude allowed him to brook no weakness in others; his complete identification with revolutionary ideals lead him to instigate the highly dangerous notion of trial by character; his inherent paranoia impelled him to rule by dictatorial faction". 

Like Dany, he was disturbingly manichean in how he viewed the world and other 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.” 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.”

In one massacre, recounts Schama, “Every atrocity the time could imagine was meted out to the defenseless population. Women were routinely raped, children killed, both mutilated. . . . At Gonnord . . . two hundred old people, along with mothers and children, [were forced] to kneel in front of a large pit they had dug; they were then shot so as to tumble into their own grave. . . . Thirty children and two women were buried alive when earth was shoveled onto the pit."

You were either with Robespierre's perfect future order or you were against it, and therefore a traitor and enemy of the people. 

We haven't yet heard Dany's justification for her inexcusable holocaust by fire of the innocents of Kings Landing but I doubt her logic is very much different from Robespierre's. In their own eyes, they are both morally pure and incorruptible, as George RR Martin himself once noted:

Quote

 

"Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories."

George R. R. Martin Interview GAME OF THRONES" by Christina Radish, Collider (17 April 2011)

 

 

[darmody]

If the Western allies were trying to deprive Russia of German territory, they were doing a crap job of it. I might guess they were doing the exact opposite. Dresden wouldn't have made any difference. The Red Juggernaut was coming anyway. 

As for the terror part, Britain and the U.S. were doing that to German and Japanese cities all along. They didn't even keep it secret. 

[HEllohellohello]

I wrote in another thread similar things.

"Like I have always felt that this freeing people at first was a nice act of her but after that she became obsessed and somewhat delusional that she was this Messiah / Mother character, easily understandable with what happened. Remember her being carried and cheered like Jesus and the ending with her in the middle of an ocean of people.  It's her fate to free the world - by any means possible.

With this as a backback she went back on her main quest - freeing Westeros and reclaim the Throne from the tyrants who stole it. This is 50% a pure revenge mission. Only thing is, she is not being welcomed as the saviour she had expected (her brother always said how the people long for the Targaryens to come back ), even after being the reason they won the war against the WW - she is still being viewed as an imperialistic invader coming with known rapers and super weapons. Slowly, one by one her advisers either dies or betrays her, her only real friend gets executed and her love rejects her. After the scene with Jon she decided that Westeros is - will not be like she had imagined and since KL is such a symbol of Westeros, in a mental state of rage and vengeance she burns it down. For me it is, fully understandable considering her personality. She dehumanize KL to a 100%,

For me this whole story about Dany is that even the purest intention can bring the greatest destruction."

I really cant understand how people are surprised by her actions. This is for me a perfectly plausible reaction to her delusional messiah self image. The imperialistic outsider who doesn't get welcomed. Burns everything and everything in KL just because it's the symbol of everything she hates, can't get etc.

People are in denial and blame bad writing, I fucking love it! 

[Ranger Kragin]

@HEllohellohello The elements were there becasue GRRM laid them down already  for them. But wrapping up was crap. I cannot say, as I wrote before, that I didn't see it coming, but the oversimplification, the contradictions and the executuon left me speechless. 

Just look at D&D's comments at the end of the show. You yourself have pointed out that she destroys the symbol of Westeros, its capital. I totally agree with you. Her retaliation against a country that simply doesn't give her the love she craves and she believe is owed to her. But D&D claimed that she sees the Red Keep, built by her House many centuries before, and thinks of all the things that have been taken away from her and flipped.

THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED! She doesn't destroy the RK alone, she goes for the entire city. This shows to me that they didn't know what they were doing! They didn't know that Dany was a ruler affected not by the Targaryan curse, but a childhood spent in loneliness and plagued by a psychotic brother, as @Krishtotter said above. If they had portrayed her this way consistently, as it shows in the books, we would not have this discussions now. Viewers are not stupid.

Emilia Clarke herselft said, if I remember correctly, that she didn't know she was playing a villain... well, if the writers of the show do not know what kind of character they are writing, is it a wonder?

[HEllohellohello]

@Ranger Kragin Yes, I don't see the issue, it's the trigger. It fits perfectly in to what I wrote. For her RK and King's Landing becomes the same thing. Dehumanization 100%. A personal vendetta. Burn them all, those f*****s. 

For me, they did show it if you really think about it, she loved being in the spot light, being loved like a Mother or "Jesus". It's crazy person like the head of a sect if you think about it. Everything she did more or less was for her own personal gain.

Also, GoT has no real villains, it's people, with selfish interest acting like every human in history. A freedom fighter is another persons terrorist. It's not like she is the Devil reincarnated.

 

[HEllohellohello]

With that said, I also wish there was more time but I mean they did show this for 2 seasons now. How much do you need? 5? Come on. 

[Pauld123]

I am convinced she is going to be portrayed as going insane and bloodthirsty. That is the biggest betrayal for me. he character has always been consistent. Mass killing now is perfectly acceptable if it provides the means to a long lasting future peace and fairness. So the slaughter in King's Landing rests easy with me because it is character appropriate. (I say rests easy, I don't mean morally, I just mean within context of her morals and character personality)

What is not character appropriate is if she now just goes on a general killing spree with no purpose other than blood lust. Unless she now sets about trying to create that paradise she talked of, then it will be a sudden change in her personality, and sneaky trick by writers to bring things to a conclusion just because they only have an hour of TV left. 

Her actions are fine, her reasons for the actions could potentially be really annoying if D&D claim - "...well she just went insane" (like instantly). That would be the laziest writing imaginable and an insult to people who have followed her character development for many years.

[HEllohellohello]

16 minutes ago, Pauld123 said:

I am convinced she is going to be portrayed as going insane and bloodthirsty. That is the biggest betrayal for me. he character has always been consistent. Mass killing now is perfectly acceptable if it provides the means to a long lasting future peace and fairness. So the slaughter in King's Landing rests easy with me because it is character appropriate. (I say rests easy, I don't mean morally, I just mean within context of her morals and character personality)

What is not character appropriate is if she now just goes on a general killing spree with no purpose other than blood lust. Unless she now sets about trying to create that paradise she talked of, then it will be a sudden change in her personality, and sneaky trick by writers to bring things to a conclusion just because they only have an hour of TV left. 

Her actions are fine, her reasons for the actions could potentially be really annoying if D&D claim - "...well she just went insane" (like instantly). That would be the laziest writing imaginable and an insult to people who have followed her character development for many years.

I agree, a killing spree would not be good at all. What I want is her trying to justify her actions by some illogical thought in her head (you've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette). People don't buy it and the final conflict between "balance" = Jon and "Destruction" = Dany begins.  She dies, a council elects a new rule and George idea of "democracy" i.e breaking the wheel in Westeros sets in. Peace!

[SeanF]

Daenerys’s ruthlessness has been hidden in full view since Season 1.

1.            She burned Mirri Maaz Duur alive to hatch her dragons.  Mirri betrayed her, but Dany’s husband murdered hundreds of her people, burned her town, and raped her repeatedly.  And, this was done at Dany’s behest to raise money to invade Westeros;

2.            She crucified hundreds of people when she took Meereen, Many of them deserved it, but at least one was innocent (Hizdahr’s father);

3.            Faced by an insurgency, she rounded up a group of random noblemen, and fed one to Drogon, pour encourager les autres, telling a bad joke at the same time;

4.            She went into a meeting with the Dothraki Khals planning to burn them alive (Jorah and Daario sealed the door behind her) before doing just that;

5.            She then gave a motivational speech to the Dothraki about carrying out a mass slaughter in Westeros;

6.            After the field of fire, she burned Randyll Tarly and his son alive, and gave the remaining soldiers the choice to turn or burn;

She has repeatedly spoken of razing cities to the ground, at Qarth, and in discussions with Tyrion and other advisers. She was not able to make good her threat at Qarth, She was talked out of razing Astapor and Yunkai to the ground, by Tyrion, and was persuaded by Tyrion to attack Casterly Rock instead of flying to Kings Landing and setting it ablaze. That turned out very badly, when Casterly Rock turned out to be worthless, and the Lannisters were able to kill off her major ally, Olenna Tyrell. 

She has threatened both Tyrion and Varys with execution if they betrayed her.  Varys did so, and paid the price. Whenever she has resorted to fire and blood, it has worked for her.  She could have finished the war against Cersei in half an hour in Season 7, if she’d followed her own instincts, and burned Kings Landing from the sky.  Instead, she was persuaded to exercise restraint, and subsequently, to march North to fight the dead.  The upshot was that her allies in Highgarden and Dorne were killed, half her army was slaughtered in the North, and two dragons were killed.  And, now she knows that there are a load of people who would rather that Jon Snow was installed as King, whereas the response from most Northern lords to her exploits was “Thank you and goodbye.”   And, when, once again, she was persuaded to attempt a final parley, her best friend was beheaded in front of her.  Judging by her reaction, you knew she would do something awful in revenge.  Just imagine what would have happened if Henry V had called on Harfleur to surrender, and the town's commander had responded by beheading Henry's best friend on the battlements.  The English army would have left none of the inhabitants alive.

Because most of her victims have been bad people, or people we don't care about much, one tends to just handwave what is actually quite a consistent pattern of behaviour.  In fact, the likelihood that someone will turn out well who has suffered years of physical and sexual abuse, and been on the run from assassins, before then gaining three immensely powerful weapons, thousands of adoring followers, and immense political power, is pretty well non-existent.

 She is not “the Mad Queen” .  This was a deliberate atrocity, carried out by someone who wanted revenge on her enemies. She intended this, after Missandei’s execution.  Rather than seeing it as her snapping, when the bells were rung, I see it as her thinking over whether she’d abandon her revenge and spare her enemies, and then just thinking “to hell with them.” Like many conquerors, she treats the inhabitants of a captured city as being just as guilty as the soldiers and rulers.  She is a brave and charismatic leader, who is devoted to her followers, but quite capable of self-righteous cruelty.

 

 

[Pauld123]

I agree with everything in the post above

[SeanF]

9 minutes ago, Pauld123 said:

I agree with everything in the post above

Thanks.

And, the behaviour of her soldiers is perfectly explicable too.  They've been in Westeros for at least a year.  Their enemies could have surrendered at any stage previously, and had their lives spared, and joined them to fight the dead. They've suffered immense casualties during the campaign, been frightened out of their wits in the North, and marched thousands of miles across a country that's the size of South America.  Any medieval army in their position would have taken savage revenge on their enemies' capital city.