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A season of Jons betrayal


Techmaester

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Am I the only one who considered this season to essentially consist of Jon progressively betraying Daenerys more and more finalizing in him stabbing her to death? He rejected her post finding out about his parentage. He gave that information to his cousins which she asked him not to. He baited her into to going on a manic rant about conquest which he then used to justify stabbing her. He accomplished that stabbing via exploiting her love for him ending in her death. He didn't even have the decency to commit suicide in the process(joint murder/suicide is the ONLY way it would have been a remotely acceptable outcome).  

Considering the fact she risked her life and sacrificed her forces to save him and the north I think it was fundamentally out of character for him to have killed her, particularly in this way. Even if she was becoming evil or out of control her contribution was so great to him personally that nothing justified his actions.

My critique of this season(and episode) is not that Daenerys dies but she dies under circumstances that only lead to two conclusions, either Jon never fundamentally cared about her to begin with or the writers retconned his character.  

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I found it amusing that Jon kind of ended up where Jaime began. Jaime's story begins with him becoming the "Kingslayer" by killing the Mad King, Jon's story ends with him becoming the Queenslayer and under somewhat comparable circumstances.

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The mind boggles at the mental gymnastics some people go through to make Jon the bad guy. And Jon was loyal to Dany, loyal to the point of idiocy, right up until he stabbed her. Dany raving about betrayals left and right doesn't make it so (though Varys did of course betray her).

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8 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

The mind boggles at the mental gymnastics some people go through to make Jon the bad guy. And Jon was loyal to Dany, loyal to the point of idiocy, right up until he stabbed her. Dany raving about betrayals left and right doesn't make it so (though Varys did of course betray her).

He did betray her when he told Arya and (in particular) Sansa of who he really was.

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7 minutes ago, JagLover said:

He did betray her when he told Arya and (in particular) Sansa of who he really was.

No, he didn't. She may asked him not to tell anyone, but it was not her decision to make. It was his decision alone. And I found her reaction to his parentage reveal very selfish. And he never promised her to not talk to anyone. So, no betrayal there.

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Just now, Wylla Manderly said:

No, he didn't. She may asked him not to tell anyone, but it was not her decision to make. It was his decision alone. And I found her reaction to his parentage reveal very selfish. And he never promised her to not talk to anyone. So, no betrayal there.

She was his queen, she commands and her obeys, that is how feudalism works. Ned kept the secret for decades and Jon couldn't keep it for a few days.

So yes as he had sworn fealty to her he betrayed her as much as Vary's did.

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45 minutes ago, JagLover said:

He did betray her when he told Arya and (in particular) Sansa of who he really was.

No he didn't, he didn't promise to keep it a secret towards his family, in fact he told her flat-out that he was going to tell them.

33 minutes ago, JagLover said:

She was his queen, she commands and her obeys, that is how feudalism works.

It wasn't couched as a command, Dany tried to manipulate him instead, fearing that an outright command might spark rebellion. Which I found rather pathetic on her part incidentally. But it was driven by that potent mixture of Messiah Complex and ruthless ambition that she had developed.

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While Daenerys' paranoia is shown as being the result of madness, it seems to me that it was rationally justified.  She really has been given appalling advice since she came to Westeros, by people who are either incompetent or treacherous;.she really does have a traitor in her own ranks. The Starks really do want to bring her down.

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32 minutes ago, Charles Stuart said:

It would have been morally wrong not to betray her. Standing by and letting her torch the world would have made Jon just as guilty.

It would have been more interesting if Jon used this setup to force himself to face his own inner reluctance and proclaimed himself king. Then he could have had Dany arrested. There could have been a big show off where Dany ordered Drogon to kill him, but the dragon either refused to, or failed to torch him because he is a Targaryen. More than that, had the other dragon Rhaegal been alive at this point, perhaps that could have turned out to be "Jon's" dragon, and we could have gotten a dragon vs dragon battle as the latter decides all by himself to defend Jon.

There could even have been a public execution of Dany in the end, mirroring Ned's execution and adding some ambiguity into this story line.

Then the show could end with Jon as a miserable emo king sitting on a throne he didn't want.

Edit: As an alternative to having him trick Dany into thinking he loved her in order to kill her.

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no. What is this fan fiction?

In fact Jon did all he could to help Dany and support her until the very end. Even after he found out about J=R+L, he refused to claim the throne and kept on insisting that Dany is the true queen. He supported her against Sansa and Arya and he went south with her although his army was exhausted. Even after she burned the freaking city, he was still defending her to an extent because he didn't want to betray her. I think that when he came to her to the throne room, he didn't plan to kill her. It seemed to me that he decided that it is the only way when Dany said that she always knows what's right and that the other people don't get to choose.

The other things he did wasn't betrayal, it was more "Jon is the honourable guy" and this is something that has been true to him since the very first episode. He told Sansa and Arya the truth about his parentage because he didn't want to have secrets in his family. He refused to get intimate with Dany although he loved her because honourable guys don't fuck their aunts.

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8 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

It would have been more interesting if Jon used this setup to force himself to face his own inner reluctance and proclaimed himself king. Then he could have had Dany arrested. There could have been a big show off where Dany ordered Drogon to kill him, but the dragon either refused to, or failed to torch him because he is a Targaryen. More than that, had the other dragon Rhaegal been alive at this point, perhaps that could have turned out to be "Jon's" dragon, and we could have gotten a dragon vs dragon battle as the latter decides all by himself to defend Jon.

There could even have been a public execution of Dany in the end, mirroring Ned's execution and adding some ambiguity into this story line.

Then the show could end with Jon as a miserable emo king sitting on a throne he didn't want.

Edit: As an alternative to having him trick Dany into thinking he loved her in order to kill her.

That wouldn't work, from what it seemed to me his army in the KL was very inferior to Dany's. If he tried it with this "I'm the king", Dany would have gone all dracarys and her army would kill Jon and his men.

Imo the way they did it was almost perfect. It would have been better if Drogon killed Jon, though.

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3 minutes ago, Nerevanin said:

no. What is this fan fiction?

In fact Jon did all he could to help Dany and support her until the very end. Even after he found out about J=R+L, he refused to claim the throne and kept on insisting that Dany is the true queen. He supported her against Sansa and Arya and he went south with her although his army was exhausted. Even after she burned the freaking city, he was still defending her to an extent because he didn't want to betray her. I think that when he came to her to the throne room, he didn't plan to kill her. It seemed to me that he decided that it is the only way when Dany said that she always knows what's right and that the other people don't get to choose.

The other things he did wasn't betrayal, it was more "Jon is the honourable guy" and this is something that has been true to him since the very first episode. He told Sansa and Arya the truth about his parentage because he didn't want to have secrets in his family. He refused to get intimate with Dany although he loved her because honourable guys don't fuck their aunts.

This was never really pointed out. What came between them was Dany's orders which he didn't approve. 

We never really saw him reject her because she's too close family.

 

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1 hour ago, Wylla Manderly said:

No, he didn't. She may asked him not to tell anyone, but it was not her decision to make. It was his decision alone. And I found her reaction to his parentage reveal very selfish. And he never promised her to not talk to anyone. So, no betrayal there.

As Jon was fond of saying, "She is muh queen!". He was supposed to obey her orders. 

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2 minutes ago, David Selig said:

As Jon was fond of saying, "She is muh queen!". He was supposed to obey her orders. 

Indeed. If your queen says "Do this and don't do that, otherwise it will endanger my rule," you don't say "But..."
If you're loyal to her, you say "Okay."

- And, they should just have married and revealed the secret anyway. The whole storyline was contrived.

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7 minutes ago, Deminelle said:

This was never really pointed out. What came between them was Dany's orders which he didn't approve. 

We never really saw him reject her because she's too close family.

 

Yeah, he never said it in an explicit way but we saw that he had no problem hooking with her until he found out that they are relatives. Then he still loved her but pulled himself from her anytime she kissed him.

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23 minutes ago, Nerevanin said:

That wouldn't work, from what it seemed to me his army in the KL was very inferior to Dany's. If he tried it with this "I'm the king", Dany would have gone all dracarys and her army would kill Jon and his men.

Imo the way they did it was almost perfect. It would have been better if Drogon killed Jon, though.

Very strange then that all her men didn't kill Jon in the ending we got if they were that powerful (even though I agree, Drogon should have done it. I suppose the dragon's mercy is meant to be a sign that Dany isn't really dead after all.)

But, if someone thinks his way of murdering Dany makes Jon less honorable, I have no problem seeing where they're coming from. It's well established in "overall fiction" that killing someone who is unaware what you're up to is less honorable than stating your intentions first.

I suspect the trope "killing your lover who turned out to be evil while holding her in your arms" was just more important to portray than going down a more nontraditional route.

Perhaps in the end I would be willing to claim that the big subverting of expectations we got in Season 8 was that the show went from subverting our expectations to becoming just another standard fantasy story.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

While Daenerys' paranoia is shown as being the result of madness, it seems to me that it was rationally justified.  She really has been given appalling advice since she came to Westeros, by people who are either incompetent or treacherous;.she really does have a traitor in her own ranks. The Starks really do want to bring her down.

Exactly. It's not paranoia if the bastards really are out to get you. Tyrion was downright detrimental from the start, she should have taken KL easily with the dragons. That Dragonpit scene should have been an automatic game-over

Gloriously badass though they are, I actually think GRRM made the dragons a bit too powerful... D&D had to perform some truly wince-inducing narrative contortions in seasons 7 & 8 to keep Dany off the throne while she had dragon-power, it was ridiculous by the story's internal logic

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9 minutes ago, Vanadis said:

I suppose the dragon's mercy is meant to be a sign that Dany isn't really dead after all.)

LOL as I said in my episode review "shittily written fan-fiction authors everywhere are having orgasms over Drogon flying off with her body". Dumbest thing in the entire episode, and yes I would have preferred Drogon incinerate Jon, then fly off leaving Dany's body and a pile of ashes over that.

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Jon should have killed Dany a LOOOOOOOONG time ago. Instead, he acted like a weak ass b***** all along.

Just because she is the queen (she wasn't even chosen and Jon outranks her anyway so....) doesn't give her the right to demand someone not to tell their family who they really are. Especially if that someone is the heir to the iron throne. If anything, he is her king. That's between him and his family. He never betrayed her because he never went behind her back. That's what betrayal is. He was straight with Dany, told her what he was going to do and did it. If Dany had a problem with that, he would've ordered to execute Jon. But she didn't. So she can moan alll the wants, at the end of the day she knows she's wrong. Varys got killed because he went behind her back. That's betrayal. Dany just acted like an entitled little brat who wasn't even deserving of it anyway. Jon was. 

And Jons final line before he killed her ''You are my queen...now and always''. Almost made me throw up. Ugh. What a b****.

Of course they F'd both of these characters up so badly. But based on what we got, it's sickening seeing the amount of Dany defenders. She is a mass murdering dictator, yet people still cheer her on. Disgusting really.

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