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Possible explanation to "Dany gate"


Madinxor

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14 hours ago, Krishtotter said:

 

 

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:

 

I would resist using Robespierre as a measure, especially those sources. The charged language used in your quotes I think render these unreliable & bias. Robespierre was a tyrant trying to use scientific methods to create a perfect politically republic populace. This in entirely seperate mindset to medieval/fantasy environment Dany is in. 

As people have mentioned Dany has gone through a life of trauma, there is little to suggest the loss of Missandei would push her over the edge bearing in mind she has been through worse. 

As stated I think she's not insane but believes what she's done is a necessary evil. 

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10 minutes ago, RobertOfTheHouseBaratheon said:

 

As people have mentioned Dany has gone through a life of trauma, there is little to suggest the loss of Missandei would push her over the edge bearing in mind she has been through worse. 

As stated I think she's not insane but believes what she's done is a necessary evil. 

She loved Missandei, not in the sense of desiring her, but seeing her like an adoptive sister,  Note, when she was attacked by the Sons of the Harpy, in Meereen, and thought she was about to die, she shut her eyes and reached out to hold hands with Missandei. So, I think it entirely plausible that she would be absolutely boiling with fury and grief, after seeing Missandei beheaded and determined to carry out her friend's last wish.

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31 minutes ago, SeanF said:

She loved Missandei, not in the sense of desiring her, but seeing her like an adoptive sister,  Note, when she was attacked by the Sons of the Harpy, in Meereen, and thought she was about to die, she shut her eyes and reached out to hold hands with Missandei. So, I think it entirely plausible that she would be absolutely boiling with fury and grief, after seeing Missandei beheaded and determined to carry out her friend's last wish.

I can buy that even though the show didn't sell it very well.  If they had given Missy something more to do than stand around, if we saw her as Dany's ONLY confidant and friend in the North, if we got a convo where Dany confides her disappointment in not being given proper credit for saving Jon and fighting for the North...and then, Missy is killed, a better told story.  Also better told if Missy is killed right before the battle, where Cersei does it as a final fuck you come at me bitch move instead of at the stupid 'parlay' where Cersei should and could have simply had everyone w/Dany killed then and there including Drogon.

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7 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I can buy that even though the show didn't sell it very well.  If they had given Missy something more to do than stand around, if we saw her as Dany's ONLY confidant and friend in the North, if we got a convo where Dany confides her disappointment in not being given proper credit for saving Jon and fighting for the North...and then, Missy is killed, a better told story.  Also better told if Missy is killed right before the battle, where Cersei does it as a final fuck you come at me bitch move instead of at the stupid 'parlay' where Cersei should and could have simply had everyone w/Dany killed then and there including Drogon.

I agree about the first, but not the second.  She should certainly have had that conversation.  But, I think that it would be too much of a cheap shock for Dany to go apeshit straight after Missandei's execution.  I think it's better that she makes her decision after having had time to brood on it.

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26 minutes ago, GilletteMace said:

Too farfetched. 

Yeah, I'm not sure why people aren't just taking D&D at their word that their intent was her 'choosing to take it personally' and going on a character-assassinating massacre.

Like, they say it outright, the writers of the fucking show. Dumb as they might be, they rarely lie about their intent . That's how we know they're dumb; they will explain their latest 'genius' twist with such gormless lack of self-awareness that it simply cannot be misdirection, meaning that the plot they've just explained is as dumb as they make it out to be. As such, it's never something more layered, as the countless wrong honeypots of the past show.

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2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I agree about the first, but not the second.  She should certainly have had that conversation.  But, I think that it would be too much of a cheap shock for Dany to go apeshit straight after Missandei's execution.  I think it's better that she makes her decision after having had time to brood on it.

That's what I like about it too...they could have had Missandei or Rhaegal die leading directly to Dany snapping, but that wasn't the story they were trying to tell.  I get that people are angry over this, which comes down primarily to the rushed nature of these past couple years IMO, but I don't think it was out of character or anything.  Again, they just needed a couple more episodes with a couple more scenes to show Dany's continuing and worsening isolation, paranoia, and rage to really pull this off as well as they could have.  

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I've made similar post comparing events in KL to the taking of Jerusalem.

It disappeared I guess didn't get approved for whatever reason.

The idea is that Crusaders possibly slaughtered the inhabitants of Jerusalem to recreate it as strictly western-Christian City in a region where Christianity is not dominant religion.

Dany was raised in culture of Essos and is an alien in Westeros thus she is not popular among commoners nor nobles. Even worse, she is a woman pretender in a kingdom that is very sexist and has strong prejudice against female rulers in particular. Even so, people would rather flock to Cersei - woman and hated usurper but still Westerosi. When KL relented they did not surrender to Dany and her dragon. They have surrendered to Jon Snow, in hopes that he could contain her wrath. He could not.

I know killing babies is ugly but she already decided it will benefit those who survive, didn't she? She's established herself as queen by this genocide - remember Bronn's foreshadowing this? And as a queen she can save both herself and anyone she likes like Jon for example. I believe that her reasoning could be that if she doesn't to that then he will be made king and she will have to fight him over the crown he has no chance to keep, even if he wins.

It might be she did all of this  out of love for Jon Snow.

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6 minutes ago, TwiceBorn said:

I've made similar post comparing events in KL to the taking of Jerusalem.

It disappeared I guess didn't get approved for whatever reason.

The idea is that Crusaders possibly slaughtered the inhabitants of Jerusalem to recreate it as strictly western-Christian City in a region where Christianity is not dominant religion.

Dany was raised in culture of Essos and is an alien in Westeros thus she is not popular among commoners nor nobles. Even worse, she is a woman pretender in a kingdom that is very sexist and has strong prejudice against female rulers in particular. Even so, people would rather flock to Cersei - woman and hated usurper but still Westerosi. When KL relented they did not surrender to Dany and her dragon. They have surrendered to Jon Snow, in hopes that he could contain her wrath. He could not.

I know killing babies is ugly but she already decided it will benefit those who survive, didn't she? She's established herself as queen by this genocide - remember Bronn's foreshadowing this? And as a queen she can save both herself and anyone she likes like Jon for example. I believe that her reasoning could be that if she doesn't to that then he will be made king and she will have to fight him over the crown he has no chance to keep, even if he wins.

It might be she did all of this  out of love for Jon Snow.

 

Dany: (sifts through a pile of baby ash) I DID THIS ALL FOR YOU, JON.

Jon: I don't want it.

Dany: But Jon... it's a gift...

Jon: You are my queen.

Dany: (throws wine at Jon) JUST GIVE ME THE NEPHEW D!

Jon: (starts to malfunction due to the wine shortcircuiting)

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23 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Yeah, I'm not sure why people aren't just taking D&D at their word that their intent was her 'choosing to take it personally' and going on a character-assassinating massacre.

Like, they say it outright, the writers of the fucking show. Dumb as they might be, they rarely lie about their intent . That's how we know they're dumb; they will explain their latest 'genius' twist with such gormless lack of self-awareness that it simply cannot be misdirection, meaning that the plot they've just explained is as dumb as they make it out to be. As such, it's never something more layered, as the countless wrong honeypots of the past show.

They frequently contradict themselves (eg over the fate of the Dothraki. ) IMHO, they are following GRRM's character arc, even if the specifics are different.

 

13 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

That's what I like about it too...they could have had Missandei or Rhaegal die leading directly to Dany snapping, but that wasn't the story they were trying to tell.  I get that people are angry over this, which comes down primarily to the rushed nature of these past couple years IMO, but I don't think it was out of character or anything.  Again, they just needed a couple more episodes with a couple more scenes to show Dany's continuing and worsening isolation, paranoia, and rage to really pull this off as well as they could have.  

Agreed about the episodes.

Dany did something that was unquestionably evil.  That doesn't make her an unquestionably evil person.  That makes her a flawed heroine.

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28 minutes ago, SeanF said:

They frequently contradict themselves (eg over the fate of the Dothraki. ) IMHO, they are following GRRM's character arc, even if the specifics are different.

I agree, but it's precisely this sort of dumbassery which makes me think they're incapable of misdirection when they're filming 'Inside the Episode'. They mean what they say, even if it is a self contradictory mess, because they're too dumb for subterfuge. So in other words, no, Dany wasn't possessed, no, it wasn't a dream, D&D intended it to be a personal snap (then will claim it's something else later, not out of a lie, but because keeping track of shit is not their forte)

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55 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

I agree, but it's precisely this sort of dumbassery which makes me think they're incapable of misdirection when they're filming 'Inside the Episode'. They mean what they say, even if it is a self contradictory mess, because they're too dumb for subterfuge. So in other words, no, Dany wasn't possessed, no, it wasn't a dream, D&D intended it to be a personal snap (then will claim it's something else later, not out of a lie, but because keeping track of shit is not their forte)

Yes, yes, yes. Season 8 has taught me not to even attempt to analyse anything in the show anymore. Dumb & Dumber don't care, they like the shock factor, they want X to happen but X's journey from A to B is irrelevant. What you see is what you get. No prophecies, no read-between-the-lines, no historical references, no complexity. DANY WANT SMASH. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Having rewatched this episode I believe I’ve spotted the trigger that made Dany unleash the dragon fire on King’s Landing. The bells ring and we see Dany peering down at the crowds of terrified civilians. She is looking for something. I believe she is looking for the Targaryen banners her brother told her their admirers  were making in secret for their triumphant return . There were no banners. Not one. 

The reason I spotted this was the comment she made at Jaime’s trial about her brother and what he told her.  A lot of this season has been composed of tiny bits that we have to reconfigure into a cohesive whole which suggests not a failure due to bad writing, but a deliberate attempt on the part of the writers not to overstep themselves, but to leave a good part of “the reveal” to George Martin himself. I don’t know if this was a contractual agreement or a gentleman’s agreement. I will say that letting some time pass and then rewatching this season was quite interesting. 

I think a lot of people who were so quick to label this season a failure will find their judgment premature.

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I don't know if we need yet another video on how character arcs were burnt to the ground this season; but:

The advantage of this is that it shows several scenes with Dany in previous seasons that flatly contradict the notion that she was always going to turn mad and evil and we just didn't see it. As far as "foreshadowing" goes, there's much more foreshadowing of her becoming a model ruler and ushering in a Golden Age with unicorns and whatnot (not that I expected that to happen!) than of her going genocidal.

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