What were Daenerys's plans for Jon in the long term?

[CrypticWeirwood]

20 minutes ago, Techmaester said:

Nobody cares....in the show everyone cares, in real life it was the same in the past. 

Having your father killed and being kidnapped and lied to about your heritage doesn't make the people you grew up with your "real family", it's a ridiculous argument and is Stockholm Syndrome like. The question is if anyone would realistically make Jons choice and I have a hard time seeing it. I wouldn't nor would most honest people - particularly ones with any degree of ambition in their lives or who feel loyalty to their ancestors efforts. To be blunt watching the butchering of Lannisters probably would have made me incredibly happy considering what happened. Obviously we're not Jon but he hanged a 12 year old so we know it's in him. 

It's ridiculous to pretend that Jon was "kidnapped and lied to". He wasn't. Ned kept his promise to Lyanna to protect her son by never telling anyone he was her son not Ned's and having Robert murder her son when he found out.

So Ned kept his promise and raised Jon as his own blood, which he was. He never told anyone so Robert could never find out and kill him.

Jon his a Stark through and through:

“Jon's eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see.”

Jon has the same eyes as Ned and Lyanna and Benjen, the same eyes as Arya.

Pretending that Dany was Jon's "family" puts the lie to everything it means to be a family, and everything it means to be a family for Jon is pure Stark. His mother wanted him to grow up as she had, in a real family full of love. She wanted him to live.

It's insulting to bad-mouth Ned for keeping his word and keeping Jon alive, for having brought Jon up according to the boy's own mother's wishes. That's what made Jon a good person capable of mercy and cool judgement. He's a Stark.

Even now that Robert's dead, Jon has no reason to reveal that he has gotten any blood bad from his father. Down that path lies madness and despair.

[HoodedCrow]

I find the notion that Dany would kill Jon, or Sansa unbelievable as the character depicted in the show. However, they made her torch KL at the very end, so whatever.

[NymeriaWarriorQueen]

20 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

I find the notion that Dany would kill Jon, or Sansa unbelievable as the character depicted in the show. However, they made her torch KL at the very end, so whatever.

The show has depicted Daenerys as being obsessed with claiming the Iron Throne since Season One.  It has been the one constant about her so it doesn’t seem unbelievable to me that she would try to prevent or kill anyone who is seen as a threat to that goal.  It is either see it my way or poof...you’re a goner.

[HoodedCrow]

Dany does want to reclaim Westeros. I don’t think she demonstrates my way or the highway.

She got married to Diogo and went along with all the requirements.

she refused to kill the child hostages in Meereen and treated them well.

in spite of personal objections she married Hizdhar for a chance at peace.

Despite her disgust she allows the fighting pits to open.

She negotiates with Cersei after bad advice from Tyrion. 

She turns away from KL in order to fight the WW, as Jon begs her to do.

Sansa is downright rude to her when she brings an army to help save winterfell. I don’t recall Dany complaining, but Sansa does try to undermine her, fatally as it happens. Jon shivs her. Who actually betrayed and killed who? One could say Sansa was after Winterfell, and had episodes of cruelty herself unless you think Ramsey’s death is benign.

Arya kills a room full of Frey’s, and she is the one who serves the Stranger.

I have always thought that Dany could break bad, but this was most bizarre in its abruptness. It is clear that she is infatuated with Jon. I hope we can see Martin do it properly.

i think we are meant also to see the limitations of fire and blood, for sure.

 

[Kaapstad]

She would end up killing him. It’s quite clear. Firstly she mentions 2 locations explicitly in her speech. Lannisport and Winterfell. Then quarth.  I think she wanted to imply Sansa and Tyrion there. Her plan was to burn down both locations and kill Sansa for not obeying her and execute Tyrion and teach Lannisport a lesson for what they did to her. It also indirectly sends a message to Jon to shut up or burn.  Eventually Jon would be horrified and rebel and she would kill him. She only wanted him as a royal fuckboy and used him for sex. She didn’t show any hint of affection that she was glad to have a Targaryen for company. On learning about his identity her first thought is her throne.  Heck, his sisters showed more familial attachment to him than Dany ever did. 

[Br16]

If would be excellent black humor if we ended up seeing Dany and Jon on Drogon re-enacting the "flying scene" from the Titanic (probably with Dragon saddle so they don't fall off) while Drogon wrecks havoc across Westeros and Essos on her planned anti "tyranny" campaign. 

[It_spelt_Magalhaes]

11 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

We sure don't want any more shadowbabies. Those guys are the worst! The last one slew the shadowbaby's own uncle, you know, and that shadowbaby was Jon's cousin to boot

Your mind goes scary places.

 

Thank you!

[It_spelt_Magalhaes]

11 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Pretending that Dany was Jon's "family" puts the lie to everything it means to be a family, and everything it means to be a family for Jon is pure Stark

If we're going down the nature vs nurture road we'll be here a looooong time.

But it's meaningless. The premise of 'this is Lotr' disqualifies Jon from any ending but a departure from the known world.

He was born to a magical line, giving him magic per blood, Targaryen blood, fire blood. Then he died and was raised by fire magic. He is magic.

The time of magic is over, so off he goes beyond the Wall, beyond the affairs of Men as presented via Westeros.

[Ice Queen]

19 hours ago, Techmaester said:

We don't know that. We don't have any idea what she would do long term on account of her being murdered by him. They could have at least done a time skip into the future to "prove" how evil she would rule but they didn't. 

Jon is a threat to her for as long as he lives. He's male and he has the best claim to the throne. If he's alive, there is always the chance that the lords will rally around him and not her. It's exactly the same reason Robert wanted to kill Viserys and then, after Viserys' death, kill her. 

She made it very clear she intended to sack Winterfell, too. She would never share power with him--that's like Voldemort or Sauron giving up power. Not gonna happen. 

[HoodedCrow]

So...we have your assertion that Dany, who helped save Westeros is Voldemort and should be put down like Lady. Whereas Jon and Sansa were actually the ones who conspired or killed Dany. Maybe Jon did a little Targ flip.  He knows all about assassination.

[Techmaester]

5 hours ago, Ice Queen said:

Jon is a threat to her for as long as he lives. He's male and he has the best claim to the throne. If he's alive, there is always the chance that the lords will rally around him and not her. It's exactly the same reason Robert wanted to kill Viserys and then, after Viserys' death, kill her. 

She made it very clear she intended to sack Winterfell, too. She would never share power with him--that's like Voldemort or Sauron giving up power. Not gonna happen. 

There could be some discussion I am sure. Her entire dialog as posted in the OP was about both of them acting together. Lannisport had it coming and I don't think Winterfell was guaranteed to burn if Sansa actually submitted instead of becoming a littlefinger. Sansa had already attempted what amounted to treason against the queen. 

[CrypticWeirwood]

1 hour ago, Techmaester said:

There could be some discussion I am sure. Her entire dialog as posted in the OP was about both of them acting together. Lannisport had it coming and I don't think Winterfell was guaranteed to burn if Sansa actually submitted instead of becoming a littlefinger. Sansa had already attempted what amounted to treason against the queen. 

It is pure insanity of the highest order, O Daenerys Queen of Ashes, to pretend you can justify mass murder of an entire city full of innocents by saying that they "had it coming". That's always a lie to cover up your crimes against humanity. That's why you had to be put down like a dog.

And "kiss my fiery-and-bloody butt or I shall murder not just you and yours but all memory of your family forever" is Tywin Lannister speaking from the grave and using your mouth to do it with.

This is why anybody dangerously insane like this gets a surprise knife through the heart or a crossbow bolt to the bowels, both delivered from their own loving family, who thus prove themselves the true heroes of our story. Because they've earned it.

[CrypticWeirwood]

2 hours ago, Techmaester said:

From what I have read tons of people are siding with Dany so what ever message the show was portraying isn't working out too good.

When the majority of your viewership consists of adolescent boys aged 15–23, who can see only a pretty girl that they're fantasizing about being with and so they look the other way when that terrible girl does terrible things first to bad people, then to a few innocent people, and finally to entire castles and even entire cities, then what do you expect?

They've bought into the lie of "my mother drunk or sober" and of dangerous extremists everywhere, excusing all manner of terror and evil committed by their chosen favorite. Everything that person does is by definition ok with them.  This is how personality cults arise, how dictators arise, how genocidal monsters arise, and how everyone just pretends that their atrocities against humanity are anything but what they really are.

Congratulations, these people have been had by Martin, proving his point. All of this horror that men do unto each other is exactly what George Martin has been writing about, has been thinking about, for all his whole life long. Why do you think he was a registered conscientious objector during the Vietnam War? That was really hard to get, and it couldn't be for political reasons; you had to oppose all war from all sides for non-political reasons. Period. No exceptions. See the Supreme Court rulings in Welsh v. United States from 1970 and then in Gillette v. United States from the year following that. And Martin did that. He's always been that person.

That's Martin's moral position: war is unspeakably evil, no matter what. What he's done in A Song of Ice and Fire is write about the only thing he believes worth writing about: the human heart in conflict with itself. He creates a young, beautiful heroine who overcomes incredible levels of personal adversity and so becomes a sympathetic figure to most of his readers. No matter that she is single-mindedly bent on using fire and blood to fuel her conquistatorial jihad — she’s already won so many readers over that most of them refuse to see that evil acts are evil acts even if they're done to "the bad guys". 

Then as she gets more and more obsessed with fire and blood for its own sake and more convinced that right is whatever she says it is as she goes accruing ever more outrageous titles, Martin strips from her all those quiet voices of reason that have over the years counselled her back from the brink by reining in her most destructive instincts. Ser Barristan, the Lord Commander of the whitest knights of al the land. Ser Jorah the exiled night whose Northern instincts for years cooled her fury. Missandei, her sweet and gentle pacifist translator from the isle of deadly butterflies. Then finally Varys and Tyrion — and, in the end, last and most important of them all, even Jon.

And then there were none.

No one remained to talk Dany down from high dudgeon now. Being reared so savagely in an abusive childhood, she never learned to value human life as all the figures who had been stripped from her had learned.  With no one to hold back her burning rage any longer, no one to hold back her unbridled fury, she rained down fire and blood from skies, killing not just a city but all hope for her own would-be reign to end in anything but immolation and despair. She killed her own future when she killed theirs. Once that was done, it was inevitable. The Queen of Ashes had to go, and she could only go one way.

People pretend they didn't see this coming only because Martin had craftily conditioned them to discount her dishonorable ways by initially only having her commit brutal crimes against people "who deserved it", to "bad" and "evil" people, as though that justified it and made it right.

It never did.  That's not how morality works.  When you torch your evil drug dealer with your personal flamethrower during a huge drug deal so that you don't have to pay and can steal what you promised you'd buy from him at a good price, you have left the path of wisdom. That is not excusable. No matter what.

The people who couldn't see that were suckered in exactly as Martin the conscientious objector had long planned for them to be. If you were one of them who was suckered by a sucker punch they refused to see coming, then bingo Martin wins!  He gotcha! How's it feel?  He's made his point, in spades, and with a knife to the heart.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,
GEORGE,
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

[HoodedCrow]

Gosh, a reread with all the instances of Danny acting compassionately or empathetically would be quite long. Tom Riddle, not so much.  Instances of Tywin doing so would be short.

There is never just one option, that is false.

i think we are meant to feel conflicted in this case. Did she commit a war atrocity, yes. Is that abnormal for the time and culture, no. Should someone take arms up against her, possibly. If Dany should be put down like a dog, why is her torching Tarly bad? Tarly was a horrible man in the books and yet he is given options.

Yes, I think Martin is making a point that fire and blood can go very wrong and people should stand up to it. What is strange is that people don’t want to think of collateral damage, which is pretty much guaranteed.

[CrypticWeirwood]

17 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

Gosh, a reread with all the instances of Danny acting compassionately or empathetically would be quite long. Tom Riddle, not so much.  Instances of Tywin doing so would be short.

There is never just one option, that is false.

i think we are meant to feel conflicted in this case. Did she commit a war atrocity, yes. Is that abnormal for the time and culture, no. Should someone take arms up against her, possibly. If Dany should be put down like a dog, why is her torching Tarly bad? Tarly was a horrible man in the books and yet he is given options.

Yes, I think Martin is making a point that fire and blood can go very wrong and people should stand up to it. What is strange is that people don’t want to think of collateral damage, which is pretty much guaranteed.

You're right. It wasn't just the torching of the city alone, the bonfire of the innocents, the burnt little children Jon mentioned.

It was that when Jon tried to reason with her, she wouldn't back down. He wanted to save her from herself, but she was going full throttle. She blamed the children she'd butchered on Cersei for "using them against her".  She was certain that whatever she thought was right was right, and that others didn't get to choose. 

And she intended to "liberate" Winterfell.  Jon knew what liberation meant for her: fire and blood. On his home, on his family's home, on his family. The death of innocents. But these weren't Lannister prisoners. These were his people, his very family.

As with Ned, it was out of consideration of Sansa and Arya that Jon did something he really, really didn't want to do — but felt that was the only way to save them.

Sure, maybe he was wrong. He'll wonder it over and over again. It's how he is. That question will torture him for the rest of his unnatural life. 

But Dany? She never would have thought about it again. "If I look back I am lost".

And that difference matters.

[Tywin Tytosson]

6 hours ago, Techmaester said:

There could be some discussion I am sure. Her entire dialog as posted in the OP was about both of them acting together. Lannisport had it coming and I don't think Winterfell was guaranteed to burn if Sansa actually submitted instead of becoming a littlefinger. Sansa had already attempted what amounted to treason against the queen. 

Sansa did not view Dany as her queen, so to Sansa it was not treason.  Sansa was defending the North and it's hard-won independence.  Sansa is not Littlefinger, even if she has learned things from him.

[CrypticWeirwood]

12 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Sansa did not view Dany as her queen, so to Sansa it was not treason.  Sansa was defending the North and it's hard-won independence.  Sansa is not Littlefinger, even if she has learned things from him.

Pretending that anyone who disagrees with you has committed treason is very much the sport in today's politics, but it is nothing new. It so disgusted the founding fathers of the United States that treason is the only crime in that country's constitution: levying war against that country or aiding those who did so. 

Sansa did no such thing. Sansa merely told her old husband that the person he'd thought had the legitimately best royal birthright claim was not the rightful heir after all. Jon has always been that person, not Dany.

As Sam said, that isn't treason: it's the truth.

[Tywin Tytosson]

5 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Pretending that anyone who disagrees with you has committed treason is very much the sport in today's politics, but it is nothing new. It so disgusted the founding fathers of the United States that treason is the only crime in that country's constitution: levying war against that country or aiding those who did so. 

Sansa did no such thing. Sansa merely told her old husband that the person he'd thought had the legitimately best royal birthright claim was not the rightful heir after all. Jon has always been that person, not Dany.

As Sam said, that isn't treason: it's the truth.

Bingo. 

And Sansa's sparring with Dany wasn't treason.  It was just politics.  Politics between 2 people with conflicting agendas.

[It_spelt_Magalhaes]

9 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

"If I look back I am lost

Another point to her characterisation as fire, not just using fire but being fire. It was never going to end well for her.

You tend the fire to control it. It never doubles back. If you want to, you can guide it to good use, but always warily. The easiest way to extinguish a fire is to lead it to an area, by starving it out of all other directions, and then cut out the fuel.

She was always going, sputtering, reigniting, until she was out of control and had to be violently extinguished. Fight fire with fire. Violent action to end a violent person.

It was necessary. She was no longer useful or manageable, she was a risk to all around her.

So yeah, maybe Jon's actions will haunt him, but like Bran told him, he was exactly where he needed to be.

But hells, as a moron who started her Tolkien journey with the Silmarillion and once I finally read Hobbit and Lotr was very sad (though logic demands, right?) that like Beleriand had to end out of Morgoth's corruption, out of the ambition and defiance of the Feanorians and all who followed, the age of the elves would end with all of them, at least the High Elves, leaving Middle Earth.

The finale shanked me because I fell into it again. More than the pacifist message, how conflict can only end in suffering, and armed conflict all the worse? I wanted magic to endure.

But magic is power, and we're back to the same. The only way to win is to deny it challenge. Don't use the Ring, don't even consider it. To consider is to want, and desire is just passion by another name.

[Techmaester]

16 hours ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

When the majority of your viewership consists of adolescent boys aged 15–23, who can see only a pretty girl that they're fantasizing about being with and so they look the other way when that terrible girl does terrible things first to bad people, then to a few innocent people, and finally to entire castles and even entire cities, then what do you expect?

They've bought into the lie of "my mother drunk or sober" and of dangerous extremists everywhere, excusing all manner of terror and evil committed by their chosen favorite. Everything that person does is by definition ok with them.  This is how personality cults arise, how dictators arise, how genocidal monsters arise, and how everyone just pretends that their atrocities against humanity are anything but what they really are.

Congratulations, these people have been had by Martin, proving his point. All of this horror that men do unto each other is exactly what George Martin has been writing about, has been thinking about, for all his whole life long. Why do you think he was a registered conscientious objector during the Vietnam War? That was really hard to get, and it couldn't be for political reasons; you had to oppose all war from all sides for non-political reasons. Period. No exceptions. See the Supreme Court rulings in Welsh v. United States from 1970 and then in Gillette v. United States from the year following that. And Martin did that. He's always been that person.

That's Martin's moral position: war is unspeakably evil, no matter what. What he's done in A Song of Ice and Fire is write about the only thing he believes worth writing about: the human heart in conflict with itself. He creates a young, beautiful heroine who overcomes incredible levels of personal adversity and so becomes a sympathetic figure to most of his readers. No matter that she is single-mindedly bent on using fire and blood to fuel her conquistatorial jihad — she’s already won so many readers over that most of them refuse to see that evil acts are evil acts even if they're done to "the bad guys". 

Then as she gets more and more obsessed with fire and blood for its own sake and more convinced that right is whatever she says it is as she goes accruing ever more outrageous titles, Martin strips from her all those quiet voices of reason that have over the years counselled her back from the brink by reining in her most destructive instincts. Ser Barristan, the Lord Commander of the whitest knights of al the land. Ser Jorah the exiled night whose Northern instincts for years cooled her fury. Missandei, her sweet and gentle pacifist translator from the isle of deadly butterflies. Then finally Varys and Tyrion — and, in the end, last and most important of them all, even Jon.

And then there were none.

No one remained to talk Dany down from high dudgeon now. Being reared so savagely in an abusive childhood, she never learned to value human life as all the figures who had been stripped from her had learned.  With no one to hold back her burning rage any longer, no one to hold back her unbridled fury, she rained down fire and blood from skies, killing not just a city but all hope for her own would-be reign to end in anything but immolation and despair. She killed her own future when she killed theirs. Once that was done, it was inevitable. The Queen of Ashes had to go, and she could only go one way.

People pretend they didn't see this coming only because Martin had craftily conditioned them to discount her dishonorable ways by initially only having her commit brutal crimes against people "who deserved it", to "bad" and "evil" people, as though that justified it and made it right.

It never did.  That's not how morality works.  When you torch your evil drug dealer with your personal flamethrower during a huge drug deal so that you don't have to pay and can steal what you promised you'd buy from him at a good price, you have left the path of wisdom. That is not excusable. No matter what.

The people who couldn't see that were suckered in exactly as Martin the conscientious objector had long planned for them to be. If you were one of them who was suckered by a sucker punch they refused to see coming, then bingo Martin wins!  He gotcha! How's it feel?  He's made his point, in spades, and with a knife to the heart.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,
GEORGE,
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

We have fundamental disagreements on morality, cost/reward of actions on the part of leaders and duty to genetic family. Martin didn't accomplish his goal in so far as he didn't change my opinion. I never viewed Dany as bad either before or after these last two episodes. She's shown to be impulsive when faced with great loss(though I would argue torching Kings Landing has some political benefits) but she has shown to be overall good through consistently good acts and I believe her rule would have on average been better than the continuing warring states that occurred before(there have been many unifiers in history and almost always the society benefits). What ever lesson Martin was portraying he failed to give a convincing argument to many of us. 

Preservation of the status-quo because people will die? That vengeance is wrong and your duty isn't ultimately to your family? That doing bad things is always bad regardless of the end outcome? 

I'm not convinced. I'm also in my late 20s and work in an industry that makes the closest thing to dragons in real life so maybe we just view life differently.