I just finished the GOT books!

[Areisius]

3 hours ago, Kajjo said:

That's true. The Arya/Jeyne Pool story line and several of Sansa plots are changed. From my view, she show did this in a great way and condensed the important plots into less characters. The show has very many characters anyway, compared to other shows.

The Lady Stoneheart plot is omitted altogether. This is more questionable, but it worked out, I believe.

What about Daenerys being violent and threatens to burn down cities and crush stone houses, kill men in iron?

I believe too many focus on terms like "mad, crazy" instead of analysing how prone to violence and brutality Daenerys was. The books give enough clues to Daenerys resorting to "burning, destroying" as favorite means of action. Only that advisors can talk her oout of it, same as in the series.

 

You just described warfare. Cities will burn and people will die in warfare in that time and this time. She never went out of her way to kill innocent men, women and children. It just is not in her character.

[JagLover]

In the books the lessons that Dany were being taught seemed to be that she was a conqueror not a peaceful ruler. To plant no trees, to rule by "fire and blood".

This is not the same thing as her going mad in the same way that we do not refer to Alexander the Mad or Genghis the Mad. History was not made by the weak. 

I like Dany because she is a grey character and I expect her to be even more so by the time she lands in Westeros. The show went a bit Disney at the end there and I expect the books to have a far more satisfying journey for her.  

[It_spelt_Magalhaes]

I think this discussion will be never ending. Many people are ready to embrace, or already agree, with Martin's anti-war beliefs. Violent conflict is anathema and, through his story, he teaches a lesson on the means through which even 'for good reason' will never come to a good end.

However, this will never gell with people whose fundamental make-up includes a notion of 'the necessity of war'. It is ugly, evil but eventually circumstance will force your hand. Some people live this, are taught this culturally and socially. And no, notions of pacifism and non violent intervention cannot be forced upon others, even through discussion, that would be a betrayal to the notion of personal freedom as non interference with the freedom of the other.

Martin's use of a feudal setting, with all it's inherent violence, lulls the reader into the grey area of 'necessity', only to pull the rug out from beneath us by turning everything into a parabole on the uses and dangers of power.

If only reality had such clean exits. I know many men who refused to be sent overseas to fight due to, not cathegorically refusing war as a means to resolve conflict, but simply not agreeing with the particular war they'd be sent to. They had to flee the country or be sent to fight a hopeless war. On the other hand, their refusal cost lives and livelihoods as citizens had to abandon places they'd spent their whole lives, the lives of their parents and grandparents in.

The emotional charge of those decisions, like the journey of Martin's characters, will always be more valid than a discussion on 'who is right', 'who won', notions that can only force conflict instead of understanding.

[Kajjo]

On 6/2/2019 at 12:18 AM, elanmorin said:

thanks to 3 episodes of the TV series now there's people who convinced themselves Dany always was a mad tyrant.

It not so mcuh about "mad" but about being prone to violence, ruthlessness and overkill.

And not, the last three episodes are not decisive. Whoever paid attention to the show recognised early on that Daenerys is prone to "burning and destroying". See the facts. Very many people understood that years ago.

[King Jon Snow Stark]

Just now, Kajjo said:

It not so mcuh about "mad" but about being prone to violence, ruthlessness and overkill.

And not, the last three episodes are not decisive. Whoever paid attention to the show recognised early on that Daenerys is prone to "burning and destroying". See the facts. Very many people understood that years ago.

I think people believed that Dany was always bluffing people with the fire and blood speeches. 

[Kajjo]

On 6/2/2019 at 12:47 PM, JagLover said:

In the books the lessons that Dany were being taught seemed to be that she was a conqueror not a peaceful ruler. To plant no trees, to rule by "fire and blood".

Right. The same in the show. Daario says exactly that to her.

On 6/2/2019 at 12:47 PM, JagLover said:

This is not the same thing as her going mad

No, it's not. You are right. The terminology "Mad Queen" is not the best choice. She appears to have done so with intention "it was necessary". So what? 

I repeated it over and over in this forum, that this is about Daenerys's personality of violence and of "fire and blood" thinking. She always threatens other with burning and destruction. And she would have done exactly this without her advisers pretty early on.

[Kajjo]

18 minutes ago, King Jon Snow Stark said:

I think people believed that Dany was always bluffing people with the fire and blood speeches. 

I don't think so. 

People were blinded by (a) beauty and charisma of Emilia Clarke, and (b) by victims being evil themselves. As soon as they weren't anymore, people began to have doubts.

 

[Apoplexy]

7 minutes ago, Kajjo said:

I don't think so. 

People were blinded by (a) beauty and charisma of Emilia Clarke, and (b) by victims being evil themselves. As soon as they weren't anymore, people began to have doubts.

 

I agree with the bolded. Dany was portrayed as a 'savior' who wouldn't harm innocents. She was portrayed as someone who would unleash 'fire and blood' upon her enemies in battle, not defenseless civilians. That is where the dissonance lies, imo.

[dannyk65]

On 6/1/2019 at 8:37 AM, Lollygag said:

Those aren't armchair psychologists. It's a Westeros.org video and their names are on The World of Ice and Fire along with GRRM's.

I didn't mean Linda and Elio...

[Jen'ari]

On 6/1/2019 at 9:02 PM, CrypticWeirwood said:

You're exactly right. The road to Maegor the Cruel is paved with fire and blood, and it was this very path that Dany has increasingly trodden.

Maegor Targaryen was a great king, the way he dealt with the faith militant was inspired.

[Lollygag]

10 hours ago, dannyk65 said:

I didn't mean Linda and Elio...

Apologies then. 

All the same, we all become armchair psychologists when we do character analysis whether it's declaring Dany mad, sane, angry, or whatnot. 

[JagLover]

20 hours ago, Kajjo said:

Right. The same in the show. Daario says exactly that to her.

No, it's not. You are right. The terminology "Mad Queen" is not the best choice. She appears to have done so with intention "it was necessary". So what? 

I repeated it over and over in this forum, that this is about Daenerys's personality of violence and of "fire and blood" thinking. She always threatens other with burning and destruction. And she would have done exactly this without her advisers pretty early on.

So what?

Her being a ruthless character, but introduced to us sympathetically, makes her a far more interesting character than one who is "mad".

[Kajjo]

1 hour ago, JagLover said:

Her being a ruthless character, but introduced to us sympathetically, makes her a far more interesting character than one who is "mad".

Yes. So what?

Daenerys is one of my favorite characters of the show. Very interesting, entertaining scenes, the actress charismatic and beautiful. But she is not the girl next door you would want as friend. She is violent, ruthless, quite callous, drawn towards brutality, burning and destroying.

But I very early was sure she would at some point do exactly that: Burn down and destroy a city. So no surprise there. No drastic character change, no 180 degree turn, no "our sweet queen changed drastically". She didn't. 

[Lollygag]

Upthread, I noted that we find out that Dany has repressed feelings about Viserys for years.

There's also another area of repression that's deeply concerning and that's with slavery. In the passage I responded to earlier, Dany makes the conscious association between how she herself was treated and slavery in that she was sold. Her fixation on slavery makes sense to our modern selves, but it's unusual for Dany who was raised in Essos and when Viserys didn't have the Westerosi aversion to it. She's triggered by it badly, and for her in that world, it points to Dany having a very deep-seated and unconscious anger over how she was treated that she's been bottling up for a long time. 

It makes sense how Dany developed this need to repress feelings and shove them down deep. In AGOT and season 1, we see that Viserys, on whom Dany was solely dependent for most of her time growing up, was an abusive time-bomb.

In this first clip, we see Viserys say he'll let the whole khalasar and their horses have her. She has no choice and shuts down. But when she actually faces being given to the whole khalasar and their horses in season 6 in mirror to Viserys' threat and she is free to react as she will, she explodes like a volcano. Literally.

Mirroring the threat Viserys made to her raises the question if her reaction wasn't just to her immediate situation, but also about deep-seated and unconscious bottled up rage about being sold that she couldn't acknowledge at the time and hasn't fully acknowledged since. Defending herself is completely expected. But her attitude is disturbing and it's underscored by the ominous and discordant horror movie music and Jorah's and Daario's looks of apprehension. 

 

 

 

[Beardy the Wildling]

On 6/1/2019 at 11:18 PM, elanmorin said:

 

It's funnny how defending yourself and those who can't defend themselves gets framed into simply "being violent" when it comes to Daenerys. In the books Dany did exactly what she had to do, no more no less. She does things she doesn't want to (like marriage in Mereen...) trying to preserve peace, at every turn people betray her and kill those dear to her or the people she's sworn to protect. THEN she reacts.

She often tries to do things without shedding blood but her enemies simply can't leave her alone and she is forced to use violence. Try to imagine how someone like Tywin would have acted in Dany's place... he would have been proactive instead than reactive, which would have meant a lot more death in the end. But no, thanks to 3 episodes of the TV series now there's people who convinced themselves Dany always was a mad tyrant.

Dany's a dragon, she can defend herself and she will defend herself, but for some people even that seems to be too much which is baffling to me.

'No, Dany, don't go straight to the Red Keep to kill Cersei! Siege the city and starve the people to death like a moral person!' - St Tyrion the Idiot.