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Here's what I would do if I wanted to write a plot where Daenerys destroys King's Landing and comes close to becoming like her father, without making her irredeemably evil


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From the early 7th season, things happen similarly. But more emphasis is placed on the fact that Daenerys comes to her homeland, expects a warm welcome, the common people to rise in support for their "true queen" etc., but all she feels is alienation and mistrust. Show that more, and from earlier on. Show how Westeros feels like a strange foreign land to her, how she's beginning to question what the point of her whole dream of coming here was, whether it was all worth it in the end. This adds to the pressure that eventually makes her snap. Make the audience see how that makes her crueller and more fanatical, despotic and self-righteous in her desire to rule these people and prove to them she deserves to be queen. There's still a moral slippery-slope arc for her.

Another change would be how the losses she suffers are portrayed: Missandei dies similarly to the show, but somehow right before the Battle of King's Landing, or during it. Grey Worm dies in the same battle, and Dany sees that. Then, have Rhaegal die not by some random idiocy because "she kind of forgot about Euron's fleet", but during the battle (also by a scorpion bolt, maybe in the first phase of the battle, when she burns the Iron Fleet). Basically make sure the audience sees the losses for Dany piling up, and in a small amount of time. It needs to be all at once to push her off the edge. She loses Rhaegal, Grey Worm and Missandei within minutes/hours.

Dany, enraged and mad with grief and loss, charges to the Red Keep with Drogon, and starts burning it to the ground to kill Cersei and everyone in it (she has destroyed all the scorpions at this point). Keep in mind she's not trying to burn KL, just the Red Keep.

And then, suddenly, explosions everywhere. Green flames pour out of every corner of KL. Buildings everywhere crumble and turn to ashes. Thousands of innocents die screaming. To her horror, she suddenly remembers what Barristan told her about her father putting wildfire caches everywhere on KL. She realizes that, blinded by her rage and need for vengeance, she finished what her father started. KL is utterly destroyed. Hell, maybe even worse than the show.

All the resentment, rage, desire for the Iron Throne made her almost become her father, something she's been consciously trying to avoid since the 5th season. This is the turning point, the wake-up call where she realizes that she went too far, that she has been taking a dark turn for a while. What happens from this point on would be up to the writers. It could begin a redemption arc for Daenerys, or she suddenly realizes that she should never be queen and has an ending similar to Jon, doesn't matter for my post.

TL,DR: Basically things happen similarly, but rather than Dany going crazy for no reason and killing civilians, she accidentally burns KL by trying to destroy only the Red Keep in a fit of rage, which ends up setting off the wildfire planted by her father, which serves as a wake-up call to her that she has lost sight of her original purpose and is becoming a tyrant.

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It's pretty good. I agree with this. The two biggest problems with what happened in the show were that there wasn't enough buildup for it and also that it just made no sense. Her attacking the red keep made sense however her going after civilians like she did made no sense. I thing your version would have made more sense to show her going too far or bordering madness even if the wildfire didn't catch. Since she would have killed thousands for no real reason except revenge which she would have gotten anyways since cersei lost and could have been caught.

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35 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

From the early 7th season, things happen similarly. But more emphasis is placed on the fact that Daenerys comes to her homeland, expects a warm welcome, the common people to rise in support for their "true queen" etc., but all she feels is alienation and mistrust. Show that more, and from earlier on. Show how Westeros feels like a strange foreign land to her, how she's beginnign to question what the point of her whole dream of coming here was, whether it was all worth it in the end. Make the audience see how that makes her crueller and more fanatical, despotic and self-righteous in her desire to rule these people and prove to them she deserves to be queen. There's still a moral slippery-slope arc for her.

Another change would be how the losses she suffers are portrayed: Missandei dies similarly to the show, but somehow right before the Battle of King's Landing, or during it. Grey Worm dies in the same battle, and Dany sees that. Then, have Rhaegal die not by some random idiocy because "she kind of forgot about Euron's fleet", but during the battle (also by a scorpion bolt, maybe in the first phase of the battle, when she burns the Iron Fleet). Basically make sure the audience sees the losses for Dany piling up, and in a small amount of time. It needs to be all at once to push her off the edge. She loses Rhaegal, Grey Worm and Missandei within minutes/hours.

Dany, enraged and mad with grief and loss, charges to the Red Keep with Drogon, and starts burning it to the ground to kill Cersei and everyone in it (she has destroyed all the scorpions at this point).

And then, suddenly, explosions everywhere. Green flames pour out of every corner of KL. Buildings everywhere crumble and turn to ashes. Thousands of innocents die screaming. To her horror, she suddenly remembers what Barristan told her about her father putting wildfire caches everywhere on KL. She realizes that, blinded by her rage and need for vengeance, she finished what her father started. KL is utterly destroyed. Hell, maybe even worse than the show.

All the resentment, rage, desire for the Iron Throne made her almost become her father, something she's been consciously trying to avoid since the 5th season. This is the turning point, the wake-up call where she realizes that she went too far, that she has been taking a dark turn for a while. What happens from this point on would be up to the writers. It could begin a redemption arc for Daenerys, or she suddenly realizes that she should never be queen and has an ending similar to Jon, doesn't matter for my post.

TL,DR: Basically things happen similarly, but Dany accidentally burns KL by trying to destroy the Red Keep in a fit of rage, and setting off the wildfire planted by the mad king, which serves as a wake-up call to her that she has lost sight of her original purpose and is becoming a tyrant.

There are many ways to have the burning of Kings Landing made far more credible than that (a) she did it because she was mad or (b) she did it for the evulz. 

But, that would have made it much harder to find an excuse for Jon to kill her in the final episode.

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32 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

but all she feels is alienation and mistrust.

They show that, albeit a bit rushed and superficial. That is the main issue: They rushed season 8 and should have taken 10 episodes.

But I follow you here. They could have hammered it in more thoroughly. But I understood it anyway! And many others, too.

We have this "coming to Winterfell" scene, we have the reserved reaction in Winterfell's hall, we have Sansa vs. Daenerys. They show us the very important wake feast scene with Daenerys being lonesome and frustrated. It was possible to understand what you want to hammer in. 

33 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

Show how Westeros feels like a strange foreign land to her, how she's beginnign to question what the point of her whole dream of coming here was, whether it was all worth it in the end.

Well, I somehow like that idea and it would have made it more easy for us to understand her -- BUT questioning her destiny is just not her! Daenerys is brainwashed into believing this and that is what GRRM wanted to tell us: This childhood nonsense messed her up pretty bad and her nature has that violent, destructive streak, too. So yes, nice idea, but Daenerys is different.

37 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

hen, have Rhaegal die not by some random idiocy because "she kind of forgot about Euron's fleet", but during the battle (also by a scorpion bolt

I agree with this. The death of Rhaegal was really sub-standard. Rhaegal could have died by a scorpion hit after the bells rang, so her ignoring the bells and snap would have made more sense. 

39 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

And then, suddenly, explosions everywhere. Green flames pour out of every corner of KL. Buildings everywhere crumble and turn to ashes. Thousands of innocents die screaming. To her horror, she suddenly remembers what Barristan told her about her father putting wildfire caches everywhere on KL. She realizes that, blinded by her rage and need for vengeance, she finished what her father started. KL is utterly destroyed. Hell, maybe even worse than the show.

This idea is awesome. That would have been a clever solution.

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18 minutes ago, Sir Hedge of Hog said:

its good and would have made a lot more sense, she would have been pregnant and her and jon buggered off to the waterfall....

 

Making her pregnant with Jon's child and then still having him reject her like he did in the actual show would have further added to the pressure that eventually makes her snap, so yeah something like that would have made her arc more logical too.

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I like the idea of the her setting of wildfire caches, and being horrified by that. Jon mistakenly kills her as he thinks she did it (wildfire is green tho lol)

OR

my preferred theory,....bran played them all...sent voices into her head, driving her mad, like blood raven did with aerys, he knew the reveal would tear them apart...

jon kills her and then bran due to him being the great other - jon fulfils the prophecy - he is azor ahai, etc

dany is rezzed later - she mirrors his life (death/res)

They leave, nuke throne and raise kids

I know it needs more work - we have now real explanation for bran' actions - he knew dany would nuke KL and was ok for this to happen...

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1 minute ago, Sir Hedge of Hog said:

I like the idea of the her setting of wildfire caches, and being horrified by that. Jon mistakenly kills her as he thinks she did it (wildfire is green tho lol)

OR

my preferred theory,....bran played them all...sent voices into her head, driving her mad, like blood raven did with aerys, he knew the reveal would tear them apart...

jon kills her and then bran due to him being the great other - jon fulfils the prophecy - he is azor ahai, etc

dany is rezzed later - she mirrors his life (death/res)

They leave, nuke throne and raise kids

I know it needs more work - we have now real explanation for bran' actions - he knew dany would nuke KL and was ok for this to happen...

I like that. Basically, any one of us can come up with a much better ending than what we got, and it wouldn't require too much thinking either :lol:

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yes I agree lol, I mean Bran FFS - his actions caused all of this chaos and no one really understands his motives,  Jon always carried the can/blame and dany did not deserve to go mad..it could have been bittersweet with them heading off together....jon getting over the incest thing as he will become a father - like all the foreshadowing in S7...the two of them focusing on what is really important and passing the throne on...it would have been happier...

majority feel flat with the ending although it has encouraged me to read the books again and some of the others

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10 minutes ago, Panos Targaryen said:

I like that. Basically, any one of us can come up with a much better ending than what we got, and it wouldn't require too much thinking either :lol:

Thats very debatable. All these proposed endings I've read are trash and just what that one person wants. The ending we got was good it just needed a few more episodes.

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3 minutes ago, KingMudd said:

Thats very debatable. All these proposed endings I've read are trash and just what that one person wants. The ending we got was good it just needed a few more episodes.

yes we all have our own pov and it would have been better with more time for sure. one of the success of GoT is that the fans have become so invested in it, that they care so much to provide alternative endings.  I disagree with Bran being king tho, his motives are unclear and resulted in death/chaos.

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43 minutes ago, KingMudd said:

Thats very debatable. All these proposed endings I've read are trash and just what that one person wants. The ending we got was good it just needed a few more episodes.

That's the crucial point.

No one who has followed this story can say that Daenerys becoming a tyrant is something that comes completely out of the left field.  But, it needed to be developed and explored rather than just "she went mad at the end" or "she was always evil because she let Drogo kill Viserys."  It just became an excuse to kill her off, so that Bran and Sansa could inherit and Tyrion could become Hand.

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If Cersei had done 2 things:

Be nice to the people (give em food) to get them on her side, then orchestrated some false flag attacks against the people of KL and blamed dragons.

She could've had the people riot against Dany and her troops. Then throw in some scenes where Dany is talking about how the people will welcome her when she arrives. (Her brother told her back in season 1 or 2 that the small folk sew banners of dragons in secret, awaiting Targaryen return)

 

Now you have the seeds sewn so that when the citizens of KL see Dany, they attack the unsullied, Boo Dany and she loses it. Burns them all.

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1 hour ago, Sir Hedge of Hog said:

yes we all have our own pov and it would have been better with more time for sure. one of the success of GoT is that the fans have become so invested in it, that they care so much to provide alternative endings.  I disagree with Bran being king tho, his motives are unclear and resulted in death/chaos.

The more I think about it then the more I am convinced that Bran is just plain creepy.  Tyrion calls him Bran the Broken.  He is not BRAN.....he is now the Three Eyed Raven by his own admission. Don’t they realize he is something other than human?  Why do they trust him?  He may prove just as dangerous as Daenerys.  His ability to warg and manipulate people or events to his desired ends could prove disastrous long term.   Many may have been blind not to see the signs of Daenerys oncoming madness but so are Tyrion and the Great Council’s confident trust regarding Bran IMO.

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30 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That's the crucial point.

No one who has followed this story can say that Daenerys becoming a tyrant is something that comes completely out of the left field.  But, it needed to be developed and explored rather than just "she went mad at the end" or "she was always evil because she let Drogo kill Viserys."  It just became an excuse to kill her off, so that Bran and Sansa could inherit and Tyrion could become Hand.

It's been developed and explored for 8 seasons and has been hammered into us for the last 2 seasons.  I'm really amazed that anyone could have been surprised by what she did.

So everyone knows about the Targaryen coin flip, everyone has heard Dany talk about executing the masters, killing their soldiers, and burning their cities to the ground.  Everyone has seen Dany crucify, execute, and burn people alive.  All these were just the basic groundwork for the possibility of what she could become.

The real clues were the conversations that Tyrion had with multiple people the last 2 seasons.  In his private conversation with Cercei at the dragon pit summit, Cercei asks what makes Dany so different from Aerys because she threatened to burn down KL.  Tyrion's answer, and what he mentioned to several people, is that Dany was smart enough to surround herself with people that would temper her violent temper and basest urges.

Fast forward to season 8 where all those people have suddenly left her... Jorah dies, Missandei dies, Varys betrays her, She no longer trusts Tyrion, and she feels she lost Jon because he wont return her love.  She has literally lost every person around her that ever gave her council and advice that she could trust.

Add all this to the feelings of her being an outsider after her trip North and she does the only thing she can.... rule and conquer with fear instead of love.

To be fair, Dany wasn't really evil.  Her long term plan actually had Merit even though it was repulsive to everyone around her.  She mirrored Thanos in that way.

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36 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That's the crucial point.

No one who has followed this story can say that Daenerys becoming a tyrant is something that comes completely out of the left field.  But, it needed to be developed and explored rather than just "she went mad at the end" or "she was always evil because she let Drogo kill Viserys."  It just became an excuse to kill her off, so that Bran and Sansa could inherit and Tyrion could become Hand.

I wouldn't go quite that far- I do believe they had a story to tell and quite a good one at that, they just didn't have the necessary amount of time to do so.  I think looking back the showrunners may regret their decision to limit Seasons 7 and 8 to so few episodes- I think with one or two more episodes and a couple more scenes this could have been established a lot better.

 

3 hours ago, Panos Targaryen said:

From the early 7th season, things happen similarly. But more emphasis is placed on the fact that Daenerys comes to her homeland, expects a warm welcome, the common people to rise in support for their "true queen" etc., but all she feels is alienation and mistrust. Show that more, and from earlier on. Show how Westeros feels like a strange foreign land to her, how she's beginning to question what the point of her whole dream of coming here was, whether it was all worth it in the end. This adds to the pressure that eventually makes her snap. Make the audience see how that makes her crueller and more fanatical, despotic and self-righteous in her desire to rule these people and prove to them she deserves to be queen. There's still a moral slippery-slope arc for her.

Another change would be how the losses she suffers are portrayed: Missandei dies similarly to the show, but somehow right before the Battle of King's Landing, or during it. Grey Worm dies in the same battle, and Dany sees that. Then, have Rhaegal die not by some random idiocy because "she kind of forgot about Euron's fleet", but during the battle (also by a scorpion bolt, maybe in the first phase of the battle, when she burns the Iron Fleet). Basically make sure the audience sees the losses for Dany piling up, and in a small amount of time. It needs to be all at once to push her off the edge. She loses Rhaegal, Grey Worm and Missandei within minutes/hours.

Dany, enraged and mad with grief and loss, charges to the Red Keep with Drogon, and starts burning it to the ground to kill Cersei and everyone in it (she has destroyed all the scorpions at this point). Keep in mind she's not trying to burn KL, just the Red Keep.

And then, suddenly, explosions everywhere. Green flames pour out of every corner of KL. Buildings everywhere crumble and turn to ashes. Thousands of innocents die screaming. To her horror, she suddenly remembers what Barristan told her about her father putting wildfire caches everywhere on KL. She realizes that, blinded by her rage and need for vengeance, she finished what her father started. KL is utterly destroyed. Hell, maybe even worse than the show.

All the resentment, rage, desire for the Iron Throne made her almost become her father, something she's been consciously trying to avoid since the 5th season. This is the turning point, the wake-up call where she realizes that she went too far, that she has been taking a dark turn for a while. What happens from this point on would be up to the writers. It could begin a redemption arc for Daenerys, or she suddenly realizes that she should never be queen and has an ending similar to Jon, doesn't matter for my post.

TL,DR: Basically things happen similarly, but rather than Dany going crazy for no reason and killing civilians, she accidentally burns KL by trying to destroy only the Red Keep in a fit of rage, which ends up setting off the wildfire planted by her father, which serves as a wake-up call to her that she has lost sight of her original purpose and is becoming a tyrant.

This is fine, and we can argue whether it is better or not, but this is simply not the story they were trying to tell.  They didn't want this to be redeemable (and perhaps that was GRRM's directive as well) and they didn't want there to be excuses to be made.  They didn't want this to be anything Dany could come back from, so there were no "loopholes" like she went mad with grief  from watching Missandei die during the battle or she just meant to burn the red keep but it spiraled out of control. 

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8 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

This is fine, and we can argue whether it is better or not, but this is simply not the story they were trying to tell.  They didn't want this to be redeemable (and perhaps that was GRRM's directive as well) and they didn't want there to be excuses to be made.  They didn't want this to be anything Dany could come back from, so there were no "loopholes" like she went mad with grief  from watching Missandei die during the battle or she just meant to burn the red keep but it spiraled out of control. 

THIS!  I have been a Daenerys fan but I am convinced this is what GRRM intended.  The TV series just should have devoted more time to develop her descent into madness.  I truly believe now that this is the endgame.  Her dragons were the equivalent of WMD and the closer she got to taking power then the more she seemed justified that she alone was right in her decisions.  Power is corruptive and even the best of people can succumb to its corrosive  influence given the right circumstances.  Daenerys had that with the lost of her children, her closest advisors, and finally the man she loved shunning her.  Sad and tragic but the intended result.

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23 minutes ago, Tagganaro said:

I wouldn't go quite that far- I do believe they had a story to tell and quite a good one at that, they just didn't have the necessary amount of time to do so.  I think looking back the showrunners may regret their decision to limit Seasons 7 and 8 to so few episodes- I think with one or two more episodes and a couple more scenes this could have been established a lot better.

 

This is fine, and we can argue whether it is better or not, but this is simply not the story they were trying to tell.  They didn't want this to be redeemable (and perhaps that was GRRM's directive as well) and they didn't want there to be excuses to be made.  They didn't want this to be anything Dany could come back from, so there were no "loopholes" like she went mad with grief  from watching Missandei die during the battle or she just meant to burn the red keep but it spiraled out of control. 

Fair enough man.

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Yes, it is better. They are awful original writers.

Make Missandei die from poison, which makes the leader of the army GW vindictive and cruel, doing things that reflect on her rule. Dothrakhi also make savage things of course. Make her suspicious but with reason, paranoid. Losing her friends and lovers one by one. Things escalate.

Wildfire blows up all over town after she burns the red keep, where Lena had human shields. The second dragon dies at that battle but from treason after the bells (Tyrion bad advice, against her and in favor of the awful lannisters). Frankly the golden hand should have been executed by her (killer of her father and traitor that lied to get in and pillage KL), which makes Tyrion conflicted and suspicious. Etc.

 

 

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4 hours ago, TheFirstofHerName said:

The more I think about it then the more I am convinced that Bran is just plain creepy.  Tyrion calls him Bran the Broken.  He is not BRAN.....he is now the Three Eyed Raven by his own admission. Don’t they realize he is something other than human?  Why do they trust him?  He may prove just as dangerous as Daenerys.  His ability to warg and manipulate people or events to his desired ends could prove disastrous long term.   Many may have been blind not to see the signs of Daenerys oncoming madness but so are Tyrion and the Great Council’s confident trust regarding Bran IMO.

completely agree - he was happy for all those people to die in KL - he foresaw this - surely things would have been settled with jon/dany ruling together not knowing Jons parentage?

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