Daenerys the Terrible?

[RYShh]

46 minutes ago, Rikard said:

One of several arguments Tyrion made in his increasingly desperate attempt to turn Jon. This one failed (You were far from the battle, how could you judge?), as did the one about unending, universal war (meh), and the penultimate one, the threat to Jon himself (“Who is more dangerous than the rightful heir to the Iron Throne?” at about minute 24, 8/6). Loyal Jon replied that he would accept the Queen’s judgement. Tyrion says that he also loves Daenerys, though not as “successfully” as Jon, said with a bit of a leer. But duty must kill love. This doesn’t work either. Only when Tyrion plays his last card, the improbable threat to his cousins, Arya and Sansa, is Jon finally swayed.  

It should be remembered that this discussion occurs while Tyrion is awaiting his death sentence for treason. He wanted to live above all else. This colors everything he said. Killing Daenerys was essential to his survival plan. He could have done so preemptively (no stranger to murder), but he had publicly and insolently resigned as Hand. The army noticed; Daenerys had to act. Bronn might have done it but he was too busy appraising Highgarden. Jon was Tyrion’s last, best hope. Too bad if Jon were killed in the aftermath, but it was necessary to keep Tyrion alive. He had previously denounced Varys back at Dragonstone, in a successful bid to save himself.

About that business with Jaime, if Tyrion was really so concerned about burnt babies why did he not try to convince his brother to kill Cersei, the one act that would have saved King’s Landing? The idea of saving Cersei from the wrath of Daenerys was absurd. And he knew his sister; she’d never give up the Iron Throne willingly. In either case fast action was essential. Yet instead of taking the unguarded sea cave entrance to the Red Keep that very night, Jaime inexplicably waits until the next morning to enter through the guarded city gate with a stream of refugees. Only when that gate is shut does it occur to him to use the alternate route. Of course he’s too late to achieve anything, other than killing Euron. But perhaps that was what Tyrion planned all along (less the Euron part, who'd have thought?)  In the end it all it worked to Tyrion's advantage, risky but with a big payoff. Too bad about that pile of bodies. 
 
By the way, I highly recommend Think Story’s clever and satisfying “How Game of Thrones Should Have Ended” on YouTube.
 

Well, Tyrion wants to live no doubt, but he still resigned openly and he knew Daenerys was going to execute him for that, he did that by knowing the consequences, it means he already gave up on his life when he done that. Then he says ; 

Tyrion: ''I betrayed my queen. ''

Jon: ''- You didn't. -'' 

Tyrion: ''I did. And I'd do it again, now that I've seen what I've seen. I chose my fate. The people of King's Landing did not.'' 

Tyrion wasn't regretful about it. He would do the same thing again. Tyrion's main goal was not living, his main goal was saving the kingdoms and innocent people from a Tyrant who can casually burn thousands of people without remorse. Tyrion wouldn't ask that from Jaime because he knew Jaime is a damn fool, and he knew he couldn't kill or even convince Cersei to do anything. Tyrion also knew Jaime would've gone far enough to kill a 10 years old boy for Cersei. He would do the same thing with Edmure's kid again. So Jaime was a lost cause, which is why he asked him to save Cersei from KL which he could do that. 

Tyrion asked to kill Daenerys from Jon, because he knew that Jon is different than Jaime, and he knew that Jon is capable of giving up on everything to do the right thing, and he knew Jon wouldn't go far enough to kill innocent people for love. The only  mistake he has that he told him that Daenerys is going to kill him which is possible but Jon didn't care about his own life, and then Tyrion changed his tactic, and said how about your sisters, she will kill them too if they don't bend the knee, then Jon decides to kill Daenerys, but even then Jon still try to convince her for the last time when he asked to spare Tyrion's life, then he sees that Daenerys is a lost cause too, he kills her.

[Rikard]

13 minutes ago, RYShh said:

Well, Tyrion wants to live no doubt, but he still resigned openly and he knew Daenerys was going to execute him for that, he did that by knowing the consequences, it means he already gave up on his life when he done that. . . .

 

Perhaps, but I prefer to consider the consequences of his machinations. He survives while all of his enemies and rivals are dead or neutralized. Not only survives but the show ends with him as de facto king.  Selfless idealism or self interest?  Tyrion is too much a player to leave it to chance, he worked hard to win the game.   

[RYShh]

1 minute ago, Rikard said:

Perhaps, but I prefer to consider the consequences of his machinations. He survives while all of his enemies and rivals are dead or neutralized. Not only survives but the show ends with him as de facto king.  Selfless idealism or self interest?  Tyrion is too much a player to leave it to chance, he worked hard to win the game.   

If Tyrion's main plan was making Jon to kill Daenerys when he resigned openly, then I would say that's some dumb plan. Because he needed to be %100 sure to convince Jon to do that, and Daenerys might have not even let him to talk with Jon, or Jon might have not wanted to talk with Tyrion during his captivity.

[Alex200]

On 5/27/2019 at 9:14 PM, Rikard said:

So, Daenerys was a maniacal killer, unfit to rule. Why, exactly? 

Varys tried to assassinate Daenerys before she burned King’s Landing. It was the revelation of Jon’s superior Targaryen claim to the throne that turned him against her, and the convenient fact that Jon was a man Varys could manipulate. Varys was always a Targaryen loyalist, urging King Aerys II to resist the Lannister army at the gates, an army which promptly sacked the city when it entered. Notably he did nothing to thwart the Mad King’s plan to incinerate his own people, and routinely risked the lives of his “little birds”. Hardly a compassionate, champion of the people.

 But Daenerys did kill all those civilians, wasn’t that insane or evil? 

As far as I can tell there is no record of a monarch, dictator or military leader who was deposed for treating the enemy with gratuitous violence. The histories of the Roman Republic and Empire are replete with every form of violent succession. Leaders were routinely assassinated but never for killing too many Gauls, Germans, Celts, Carthaginians, Parthians, Sassanids, Jews or assorted rebels. Just the opposite, the greater the body count the greater the triumph; e.g., Scipio at Carthage, 146 BC; Titus at Jerusalem, 70 AD; and, Aurelian at Palmyra, 273 AD.  As Caesar wrote, "murum aries attigit" (the ram has touched the wall; meaning after the assault had begun there was no more negotiation, only destruction). Romans did prefer victories at little cost to themselves. Terror was good policy, cities were less likely to resist. Later examples of city carnage include Attila; the Crusaders at Jerusalem, 1099 AD and at Constantinople, 1204 AD; Genghis Kahn; Timur; and Ivan the Terrible at Novgorod, 1570 AD. The last example is instructive as Ivan was considered by many to be deranged. Yet, he died a natural death. 

 And that hyperbolic victory speech to her soldiers? Daenerys well understood that their continued loyalty rested on the prospect of future conquests; Martin only knows what her true intent was. Bending the knee is what she expected of the seven kingdoms, what every monarch had demanded since Aegon I. How else could she keep the peace? Nothing surprising here.    

 Which gets us back to GOT Season 8. If someone were to murder Daenerys, a dynastic challenge was reason enough. That was the motivation of all the players since Episode 1. It was the Game. The justification for killing the King or Queen was to make someone else King or Queen. A simple concept.

 Killing the residents of an enemy capital whose ruler had rejected generous terms is war as usual. To claim otherwise is hypocrisy. Shock and awe anyone?   
 

I agree... take a look at Alexander the great. A man we still label with the epithet "the great". He destroyed cities even after their surrender in order to give an example to those who would rebel against him. Examples of the cities of Tyre and Thebes. He burned Thebes to the ground after capturing it. From wiki: "Although Alexander did not desire to destroy Tehebes, after sending several embassies requesting their submission on what he considered merciful terms, he eventually decided to destroy the city as an example to others." The city itself was burned to the ground and he had 30 000 of their men sent into slavery. In Tyre he had people crucified on the beach. 

That's not to say we necessarily need to compare to real life scenarios. But the characters themselves developed a morality that was out of keeping in what was previously depicted. Like you said Varys himself had supported Aeyrs. He was the one that told Aeyrs of Rhaegar's plans to consolidate power and depose of him in the tourney of Harrenhall. 

[CrypticWeirwood]

2 hours ago, Rikard said:

 Only when Tyrion plays his last card, the improbable threat to his cousins, Arya and Sansa, is Jon finally swayed.  

Your points are well reasoned and well expressed. 

But there’s just one problem. That’s not what Tyrion said! Tyrion said to Jon as Jon was walking out:

“And your sisters?”

Why did Tyrion say it that way? After all, both Jon and Tyrion know about the actual blood relationship of Jon to the two girls. But he didn’t say "cousin". Why? Because it was only this exact wording that swayed Jon: "sisters" not this silly "cousins" business.  This is important.

Sansa and Arya and Jon grew up as brother and sister, not as cousins. It’s that relationship that counts, not the legalistic genetic one. People obsessed with 21st century “Twenty-Three-and-Me” style of genetic analysis are missing the crucial, all-important point here. I don't know why they're doing it. Maybe they didn't grow up with siblings who didn't all share the same parents. Ned raised them all as his kinds, his family. You don't EVER say "adoptive sister" or "foster sister" or "half sister" or "foster sister who was only a half sister who was actually only a cousin". That is just going to hurt people.

In order for Tyrion to prevail upon Jon, he had to use the language that would strike at Jon’s heart.  He had to say "sisters", for sisters of Jon's heart they well and truly were.  If Tyrion had actually them "cousins", this would have carried no more weight than the fate of Jon's sole remaining Targaryen-side cousin concerned him: none at all. And Tyrion would have died.

You are right about Tyrion trying every possible argument he possibly could to escape his certain execution. A man on death row can be expected to make every argument he can think of to save his own life.

I also think you are right that Tyrion probably wasn't so terribly distressed by the burnt babies as to make him turn against Daenerys. Sure the city's destruction probably affected Tyrion in a way that it didn't affect Jon. That's because King's Landing had been Tyrion's home for many years, and it had never been Jon's. It had to be the tragic loss of Jaime and Cersei when he found them dead in each other's arms that broke Tyrion once and for all. His brother mattered too much to him, and at some level even his sister did, too.

That's where Tyrion's heart was: his family. So that's the language he used with Jon at the very end, calling the girls Jon's sisters. It was the only way to make the argument work.

Consider it this way. Imagine if Tyrion had learned from Bran that he wasn't Tywin's son after all, that he was secretly Aerys’s bastard. Would that have changed Tyrion's relationship with Jaime and Cersei? 

No, of course it wouldn't, not one tiny bit! The three of them grew up together as brother and sister since birth, which is the only thing that matters for the ties that bind us each on to the other. This is the lesson that Martin is trying to show us: that family bonds are forged by how a child his raised, not from who that child’s genetic parents secretly were.

 In the books Jaime’s Aunt Gemma told him that Tyrion not Jaime was most like Tywin in mind if not in body. She wasn't commenting on genetics. She was talking about how Tyrion's mind worked more like Tywin's than Jaime's did. 

It doesn't matter for the show very much, but the symmetries between Jon and Tyrion are tremendously enhanced if Tyrion is actually Aerys's son. Now both Jon and Tyrion were raised by a man who was related to them in a secret way while being publicly presented to the world as that man's son not nephew or whatnot. Plus Aerys was also Dany’s uncle because he was her mother’s brother, although that was known rather than secret like in the other two cases. The three main characters —Jon, Dany, and Tyrion — have all kinds of echoes, their mothers’ deaths in childbirth being just one of many.

This way Jon was raised as a bastard but was secretly trueborn, while Tyrion was raised as a trueborn but was secretly a bastard. And both were the proper heirs of their respective de-facto father's mind and spirit and personality, even when that father was really "only" their "uncle" (or first cousin once removed for Tyrion). Jon was most like Ned in mind, and Tyrion was most like Tywin. Jon didn't show either personality trait you would have expected from genetics; he didn't display the wildness of Lyanna’s “blood of the wolf” nor the notorious “blood of the dragon” you would have expected from Rhaegar. Jon was truly Ned’s son in the ways that counted, just as Tyrion was likewise Tywin’s in those same ways that counted.

Were it otherwise, probably neither would have survived. They lived only because each had the inner character and mental machinery of the man who raised them, actual genetics notwithstanding.

That's why having Tyrion say "sisters" not "cousins" was so important here. It's what was real to Jon. And it saved his life.

[Rikard]

31 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

 

“And your sisters?”

Why did Tyrion say it that way? After all, both Jon and Tyrion know about the actual blood relationship of Jon to the two girls. But he didn’t say "cousin". Why? Because it was only this exact wording that swayed Jon: "sisters" not this silly "cousins" business.  This is important. 

. . .

Were it otherwise, probably neither would have survived. They lived only because each had the inner character and mental machinery of the man who raised them, actual genetics notwithstanding.

That's why having Tyrion say "sisters" not "cousins" was so important here. It's what was real to Jon. And it saved his life.

Actually, I did think some about the sisters/cousins choice. True, Tyrion did say "sisters", but I felt he meant "cousins", as that emphasized the dynastic situation. You're right that Jon considered Arya and Sansa to be his sisters, and that made all the difference. But Tyrion would have said anything to save his skin.

I also like your comparison of the early traumas in the lives of Dany, Tyrion and Jon. Clearly Martin wanted his readers to feel some sympathy for all three. Benioff and Weiss contrived to destroy any feeling for Dany.

[Apoplexy]

4 hours ago, Sigella said:

So what about the rest? 

Rest who? If you'd elaborate and answer my original question of how exactly is it that Dany doesn't shoulder responsibility for the people of KL dying, we can go from there.

4 hours ago, Sigella said:

Or is victim-blame-smearing all you've got?

Answer my question and then I'll condescend to hurling more 'smears'

[Rikard]

1 hour ago, RYShh said:

If Tyrion's main plan was making Jon to kill Daenerys when he resigned openly, then I would say that's some dumb plan. Because he needed to be %100 sure to convince Jon to do that, and Daenerys might have not even let him to talk with Jon, or Jon might have not wanted to talk with Tyrion during his captivity.

A bet that pays off, however poor the odds, is a good bet. Needless to say, this sequence of unlikely events is the invention of the show runners, whose motives are suspect.  I expect Martin will eventually produce a more reasonable plot twist. 

[NymeriaWarriorQueen]

3 hours ago, Rikard said:

One of several arguments Tyrion made in his increasingly desperate attempt to turn Jon. This one failed (You were far from the battle, how could you judge?), as did the one about unending, universal war (meh), and the penultimate one, the threat to Jon himself (“Who is more dangerous than the rightful heir to the Iron Throne?” at about minute 24, 8/6). Loyal Jon replied that he would accept the Queen’s judgement. Tyrion says that he also loves Daenerys, though not as “successfully” as Jon, said with a bit of a leer. But duty must kill love. This doesn’t work either. Only when Tyrion plays his last card, the improbable threat to his cousins, Arya and Sansa, is Jon finally swayed.  

[NymeriaWarriorQueen]

I have never thought Tyrion was the one who convinced Jon to kill Dany anyway......it was Daenerys and all that she was saying when he mentioned the burned children, the executing of soldiers by Grey Worm, and that grandiose plan of hers conquering the world and giving folks no choice in the matter cause she knew best. No remorse over the loss of innocents or forgiveness/mercy for anyone.  That was the deciding factor for Jon to kill her.  He knew then she was incapable of changing and so he ended her madness.

[SeanF]

13 hours ago, Rikard said:

Actually, I did think some about the sisters/cousins choice. True, Tyrion did say "sisters", but I felt he meant "cousins", as that emphasized the dynastic situation. You're right that Jon considered Arya and Sansa to be his sisters, and that made all the difference. But Tyrion would have said anything to save his skin.

I also like your comparison of the early traumas in the lives of Dany, Tyrion and Jon. Clearly Martin wanted his readers to feel some sympathy for all three. Benioff and Weiss contrived to destroy any feeling for Dany.

Yes, Tyrion found the argument that struck home.   Daenerys had not actually threatened to kill Sansa or Arya,  But, she was extremely pissed off with Sansa, as Jon was well aware.  And Sansa was very eager to stir shit between Jon and Daenerys.

[Rikard]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

Yes, Tyrion found the argument that struck home.   Daenerys had not actually threatened to kill Sansa or Arya,  But, she was extremely pissed off with Sansa, as Jon was well aware.  And Sansa was very eager to stir shit between Jon and Daenerys.

True, Sansa was an irritant, and in Tyrion's camp. But so long as Jon was beloved of Daenerys, Sansa had nothing to fear, barring her open rebellion. And Sansa was too smart a player to make that mistake, as any rebellion would have been against Jon, Warden of the North. A man of honor and duty , Jon would have little choice in dealing harshly with her. Perhaps Daenerys would be merciful and merely banish Sansa, but it would be unwise to count on her being so. Sansa's best option would be to bide her time, waiting for an opening. And it would come, as Deanerys would likely fall in some distant field on her world liberation tour. Yet even then, were Jon to succeed Daenerys, would he be so uncaring as to permit the independence of the North? Ned had never asked that of Robert, and Jon was Ned's son in all but blood.

[Rose of Red Lake]

3 hours ago, Rikard said:

Yet even then, were Jon to succeed Daenerys, would he be so uncaring as to permit the independence of the North?

Jon yelled at Tyrion like a whiny pre-teen, that Sansa didnt have a choice in who would be queen...that is pretty uncaring! They made him out to be a total dickbag about it. I dont even know who that person is anymore as a character. What Jon did to Sansa and the North was irrational - to take a conqueror from a family who almost eradicated the Stark line and make them their new queen? The North Remembers? Apparently only Jon forgot. Dany also acted irrationally in the North, expecting everyone to worship her. 

“To rule Meereen I must win the Meereenese, however much I may despise them” - she will probably despise the Northerners in the books too. Her efforts to "win the Meereenese" also failed, because she wanted to fly off on her dragon. 

Her burning KL to the ground and doing it unjustifiably was a completely believable decision. However, I maintain that it was the reactions by the characters that confused the whole thing. It was such a mistake for the narrative to be "is Dany a monster?" rather than "do you become a monster when you kill a monster?" For them to not have the characters roundly and unanimously consider Dany a monster in-universe was so terrible. There should have been multiple scenes of characters talking about "what do we do about Dany? is there anything we can do?" Just acknowledge she's powerful and evil and they're stuck between a rock and a hard place about what they can do about it. And then it would come back to Jon wondering to himself, what has he become if he has to murder someone in cold blood like that... not wondering if it was the RIGHT thing but wondering about his own DARKNESS. This would be much better IMO. 

ETA: if Jon blames himself for not loving Daenerys and telling Tyrion as much in the prison scene in E6 and thinks maybe if I had sacrificed my honor and just had sex with her, people might still be alive, it would be a more INTERESTING choice.

[Sigella]

On 6/9/2019 at 10:43 PM, Apoplexy said:

Rest who? If you'd elaborate and answer my original question of how exactly is it that Dany doesn't shoulder responsibility for the people of KL dying, we can go from there.

Answer my question and then I'll condescend to hurling more 'smears'

I already have. Read again if you didnt catch them.

[Apoplexy]

1 hour ago, Sigella said:

I already have. Read again if you didnt catch them.

Maybe I'm just that stupid and don't get it. So for the lowest common denominator like me, explain again, how is it that Dany isn't responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of people, but the dead people themselves are..

[Sigella]

10 hours ago, Apoplexy said:

Maybe I'm just that stupid and don't get it. So for the lowest common denominator like me, explain again, how is it that Dany isn't responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of people, but the dead people themselves are..

Because she is in acute grief and mass-murder-scenario was set up by Cersei (who by playing foul consistently before, made the surrender look like a trap).

Some of it should be placed on the Sons of the Harpy too, because they made soft conquest impossible right up until Dany smashed them = Dany might have felt that she had to smash KL too if she didn't want her allies to be trapped and murdered.

 

If you don't believe me about acute grief you really should look it up. It very much trumps "fear".

[Rikard]

20 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Jon yelled at Tyrion like a whiny pre-teen, that Sansa didnt have a choice in who would be queen...that is pretty uncaring! They made him out to be a total dickbag about it. I dont even know who that person is anymore as a character. What Jon did to Sansa and the North was irrational - to take a conqueror from a family who almost eradicated the Stark line and make them their new queen? The North Remembers? Apparently only Jon forgot. Dany also acted irrationally in the North, expecting everyone to worship her. 

If Jon had ascended the Iron Throne, his duty and responsibility would be to the realm, not to any particular house, especially one where he has personal interests. If he granted Sansa’s wish to be Queen in the North, by what recognized principle could he deny independence to every other lord? The Iron Islands and Dorne would quickly demand the same consideration, followed by the remaining regions. There would soon be no Iron Throne, physical or otherwise. This is exactly the course which will follow Bran’s coronation. Bran is truly uncaring, existing mostly in the past, with no regrets for the thousands who died serving his still hidden purposes. Jon is the opposite; he would nurture and strengthen the realm for the benefit of all its inhabitants, as Ned would have done. And Jon adhered to Ned’s brand of justice, harsh and brutal. (As an aside, just how will Queen Sansa deal with rebellion and treason? Probably just like her father or maybe Ramsay.)

The only justification for the Seven Kingdoms is the prosperity and security it provides for all in a very dangerous world. Fragmented, Westeros will return to a time of continually warring mini-states, under constant threat from foreign raiders and invaders. Facilitating such a future would be truly uncaring and out of character for Jon. The irony is that Jon’s “necessary” betrayal of Daenerys leads directly to disunion and war. At least under Daenerys no one would dare challenge her rule. To those who bend the knee, peace and security, to all others, fire and blood. Rome and other empires have operated under this principle. Harsh and brutal, but effective.

Jon swore allegiance to Daenerys for the very rational reason that his fealty was her price for coming to the defense of the North. Jon understood that the Night King was an existential threat. Daenerys understood that she was putting herself, her dragons and her army in mortal peril. If successful the North might help replace her losses for the last battle with Cersei. The deal heavily favored the North. It was only Daenerys’s love for Jon that proved persuasive. She fought fearlessly beside him and twice saved his life, only to be repaid with a blade.

[Apoplexy]

5 hours ago, Sigella said:

Because she is in acute grief and mass-murder-scenario was set up by Cersei (who by playing foul consistently before, made the surrender look like a trap).

Some of it should be placed on the Sons of the Harpy too, because they made soft conquest impossible right up until Dany smashed them = Dany might have felt that she had to smash KL too if she didn't want her allies to be trapped and murdered.

 

If you don't believe me about acute grief you really should look it up. It very much trumps "fear".

1) Cersei did not set anything up. She literally stood in the tower and did nothing. The city had surrendered without the need for any civilians as hostages. All Dany needed to do to defeat Cersei was to burn her to crisp. 

2) if dany was experiencing acute grief, she is still responsible for what she did. But there were extenuating circumstances. How do the people of KL shoulder any blame for their own death?

[RYShh]

Daenerys came to North to ''save them'', but if the army of the dead had won, just like Jaime says; ''If the dead win, they march south and kill us all.'' Or remember what Davos and Jon said when they first came to Dragonstone; ''You'll be ruling over a graveyard if we don't defeat the night king.'' 

There is no way Daenerys could defeat the Night King on her own in the Southern kingdoms, without the knowledge of Jon and Sam, her army would easily lose to army of the dead without the dragonglass, and even Dothraki with fire arakhs couldn't match with the army of the dead on the field, the Night King would smile down at her dragon fire and she would get killed or forced to leave Westeros in the end, either she would escape to Dragonstone or Essos, otherwise she would die.

Even then she didn't understand this obvious fact and still try to compete with Cersei, she really doesn't care about the people of Westeros, she only care about ruling, just like Cersei. That's the reason why she didn't care about Sansa's offer to give enough time to their army to rest, she hurried up and she paid the price because of her carelessness. We don't know how much  Jon's true parentage effected her but still Jon said he doesn't want it and that should've been enough for Daenerys, but she still get delusional and she began to think that people would choose Jon instead of her in Westeros, she couldn't deal with the facts. 

[Sigella]

3 hours ago, Apoplexy said:

1) Cersei did not set anything up. She literally stood in the tower and did nothing. The city had surrendered without the need for any civilians as hostages. All Dany needed to do to defeat Cersei was to burn her to crisp. 

2) if dany was experiencing acute grief, she is still responsible for what she did. But there were extenuating circumstances. How do the people of KL shoulder any blame for their own death?

1 Then who arranged the defence and the human shields? 

2 Because they didn't help their own situation by playing into Cersei's hands.