Why Daenerys will never win the Game of Thrones

[Rose of Red Lake]

2 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Do you realize that Dany would have died if she had left Drogon to the mobs and stayed put in Meereen? It was obviously a death trap. Her food was poisoned. If Strong Belwas is three times her size and nearly died, what would have happened to her?

What did she learn from that situation though? Not that dragons are weapons of chaos (which they are). She is not learning the lessons from Valyria, from the Dance, or from Dorne. She's merely learning that dragons are kEWL.

Even more disturbing, she knows that people were trampled and running around on fire, but she doesn't even reflect on that. Instead she thinks, "If I die and fall, it was all worth it"?????? I can only conclude that burning innocent people doesn't matter to her; riding Drogon is more important. What hits this point home is that she forgot the name of the child who was killed. If she doesn't care about those people in the crowd, and doesn't care about a child's death; what's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros. Just *blip* people to delete and move on.

2 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Don't you see the similarities? You should seeing as Dany had a vision of the Red Wedding in Qarth. But I'll spell it out for you.

Dany is Robb. Drogon is Grey Wind. The Meereenese are the Freys and the Boltons. The Yunkish are the Lannisters.

Dany survived because she held true to her familiar. Robb died because he cast aside his familiar.

Interesting interpretation...but I don't buy it. Dany as Robb? Where is this in the Meereenese Blot? I'm going on what interpretations the author has gone on record as saying is the accurate one.

Dany embracing her dragons may be be good in the short-term for her survival, but what about Westeros' survival? "If they're monsters, so am I" is some dark shit.

2 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Dany had no absolutely chance of being Jaehaerys the Conciliator in Meereen because no one seemed to want to conciliate with her. Conciliation requires two or more parties. 

They did want to conciliate. I believe Hizdahr when he said Meereen cannot endure another war. I believe the Green Grace when she says Dany can reconcile the city to her rule by marriage. They knew that she could use dragons on them. That's why the killings stopped after she agreed to the marriage. And I agree with the theory that Skahaz wanted to set up Hizdahr with the locusts, because the peace was too successful in fact.

We learn that two of the most important Yunkish leaders, Yezzan and Yurkhaz, wanted to honor peace:

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"Tyrion had soon learned that Yezzan stood foremost amongst those Yunkish lords who favored honoring the peace with Meereen. Most of the others were only biding their time, waiting for the armies of Volantis to arrive. A few wanted to assault the city immediately, lest the Volantenes rob them of their glory and the best part of the plunder. Yezzan would have no part of that. Nor would he consent to returning Meereen’s hostages by way of trebuchet, as the sellsword Bloodbeard had proposed." 

So once Yezzan and Yurkhaz die, of course, we see the worst of the discontents rising up. But that shouldn't be confused with the fact that Dany did successfully conciliate and there were people to conciliate with, during this crucial time. It's also important to remember that Volantis has been constantly assaulted by dragonlords and they wouldn't want their fleet set to flame like Aegon I did in the past.

So again, Dany + Hizdahr could have conciliated with the Volantis fleet through the mere threat of use of force, not actually using force. But she's probably not interested in doing that because she's more interested in dragons and how kewl and powerful they are.

2 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

The peace of Meereen was fake.

Again, I disagree with you and agree with this guy https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/untangling-the-meereenese-knot-part-ii-the-peace-was-real/

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

I fiercely doubt that it will be that simple.

Plus, the Others come off as very territorial. Sure, whether the Others are territorial or not remains to be confirmed but they had been killing wildlings and allowing them to become wights for quite some time. And they killed Waymar after they had accosted him.

Where do you get that? The Others hang out in the lands of the wildlings, i.e. humans, and they were there and constantly watching Waymar and his gang. That's why it is so cold the entire time. They do not stay in the Lands of Always Winter.

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

The Others are not human but they are mortal and sentient. Do you really think that mortal, sentient beings will leave their home territory unguarded while they are away at war (if war is what you want to call it)?

It would depend how many there are. I imagine most of them will be down in the south once the Wall is fallen ... but if the Heart of Winter is not taken care of, they will never be truly defeated.

But this is just some sort of general outline. Of course it doesn't have to be that simply. But a big dragon certainly could work a lot of havoc there and kill whoever besides the big entity is there.

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

You do make great points though. Jon is going to become a dragonrider. I'm willing to put actual money on the fact that he will be the only person besides Daenerys who is going to be able to get a dragon and keep it. Meaning that I think one of the dragons will end up dead early on and/or will change owners like the Iron Throne changes occupants.

I would like to see Melisandre come face-to-face with the Great Other or a similar being. It'd be a perfect ending for her and it'd be great if we could get an magical battle between a fire elemental and an ice elemental in the series.

This thing won't be a 'Great Other' kind of being - just a sad, angry, greenseer Child frozen in ice. With the power to destroy the world and all life in it, of course, but not a divine being doing divine or demonic stuff.

I don't see one of the three dragons dying before the finale climax. The dragon has three heads, meaning those heads need their dragons. The show scrapped all that, so they also scrapped their dragons.

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Getting there on dragonback would require the complete destruction of the Wall and its magics. But it'd certainly be more feasible than getting there on foot.

Well, not really. Dragons should be able to fly around the Wall if they really do not want to cross it (Silverwing is known to have been a pretty docile and nice dragon - who knows whether Balerion or Drogon or Vhagar would have behaved in a similar manner).

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

My thought was that a Faceless Man (Arya), a fusion between the Brotherhood without Banners, the Poor Fellows and the Night's Watch and a red priest (Moqorro/Benerro/Melisandre) would all form a group and head north and deal with whatever is up there. They'd all die and Arya would be the last one standing.

I low-key want to see a storyline where Arya is on the run from the Faceless Men like Jason Bourne. I'd love to have that and an Westeros version of Arya volunteering for a James Bond type of mission. If Roose or Ramsay survive the Battle of Winterfell and lock themselves up in the Dreadfort, I'd really love to see Arya infiltrate the Dreadfort and formally introduce herself to the Boltons. But alas...

That sounds like something from the show.

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

You and I had the same ideas in regards to Catelyn and Littlefinger. Catelyn and Jon is going to fulfill her mission but she will not have a happy ending. Bittersweet is more than possible for Catelyn because reuniting with her still-living children whom she thought dead and lost while she herself is undead and doomed to return to the grave is almost the definition of bittersweet.

I'm not sure Cat is going to make it until the end, but sure - a reunion of sorts should happen there, with some of her still living children and, of course, with Petyr Baelish.

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

If Jon does bow out of the story by taking a trip to the Heart of Winter and then dying alone there, then it'd have to be immediately after the endgame coronation of the King of Westeros is settled or immediately before. 

Why should it? Jon is not very likely to ever be a serious contender for the Iron Throne, anyway. There is no indication that the fate of the promised savior is going to be to rule some mundane kingdom, nor is he the guy who would ever involve himself in such petty politics.

Overall, one would expect such a quest to start perhaps in the manner it is with Tolkien there. The good guys build up a united front and draw the fire (or rather: ice) of all the Others, while Jon and some other people sneak away to get to and attack the Heart of Winter itself. They must eventually learn who and what the Others are, what they want, what their origins are, and how they can be stopped. Once they finally get to the bottom of this they can make some kind of plan to defeat them.

That is not going to happen by killing a lot of wights or Others. That will be the side show. They would have to get to the heart of the matter - and that's the Heart of Winter, always has been since AGoT.

The question who rules what will be decided after the Others are defeated. Prior to that the good guys (i.e. those who work together to stop the Others which should be the majority of the people still standing in Westeros but not all of them) would postpone that question until after the world is saved.

And afterwards, well, in any sane scenario whoever is left will pick the leadership of the movement to save mankind as their ruler - could be a couple of people, could be whoever of them who survives the war. There has to be a clear command structure to win those final battles. And nobody would suddenly start bickering after people barely survived annihilation at the hands of ice demons. That just doesn't make any sense.

[SeanF]

7 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

What did she learn from that situation though? Not that dragons are weapons of chaos (which they are). She is not learning the lessons from Valyria, from the Dance, or from Dorne. She's merely learning that dragons are kEWL.

Even more disturbing, she knows that people were trampled and running around on fire, but she doesn't even reflect on that. Instead she thinks, "If I die and fall, it was all worth it"?????? I can only conclude that burning innocent people doesn't matter to her; riding Drogon is more important. What hits this point home is that she forgot the name of the child who was killed. If she doesn't care about those people in the crowd, and doesn't care about a child's death; what's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros. Just *blip* people to delete and move on.

Interesting interpretation...but I don't buy it. Dany as Robb? Where is this in the Meereenese Blot? I'm going on what interpretations the author has gone on record as saying is the accurate one.

Dany embracing her dragons may be be good in the short-term for her survival, but what about Westeros' survival? "If they're monsters, so am I" is some dark shit.

They did want to conciliate. I believe Hizdahr when he said Meereen cannot endure another war. I believe the Green Grace when she says Dany can reconcile the city to her rule by marriage. They knew that she could use dragons on them. That's why the killings stopped after she agreed to the marriage. And I agree with the theory that Skahaz wanted to set up Hizdahr with the locusts, because the peace was too successful in fact.

We learn that two of the most important Yunkish leaders, Yezzan and Yurkhaz, wanted to honor peace:

So once Yezzan and Yurkhaz die, of course, we see the worst of the discontents rising up. But that shouldn't be confused with the fact that Dany did successfully conciliate and there were people to conciliate with, during this crucial time. It's also important to remember that Volantis has been constantly assaulted by dragonlords and they wouldn't want their fleet set to flame like Aegon I did in the past.

So again, Dany + Hizdahr could have conciliated with the Volantis fleet through the mere threat of use of force, not actually using force. But she's probably not interested in doing that because she's more interested in dragons and how kewl and powerful they are.

Again, I disagree with you and agree with this guy https://meereeneseblot.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/untangling-the-meereenese-knot-part-ii-the-peace-was-real/

Martin has stated that Adam Feldman is correct in seeing that Daenerys' heart is in conflict between between war and peace.  He has never said that Feldman got the plot points correct.  The Meereenese Blot is not Holy Writ.  Plenty of good critics disagree with its conclusions.

At best, the Great Masters of Meereen were prepared to tolerate a queen who ruled in the interests of slavers;  not a queen who ruled in the interests of the freedmen, the large majority of the population. A peace which allowed slaves to be brought freely in and out of Meereen, even if slavery was not formally legal in the city, and which allowed the slave trade to be reinstated throughout Slavers Bay was neither just nor workable.  Even then, the slavers did not stick to the peace terms.  Hizdahr tried to murder Penny and Tyrion, and the Yunkish held a slave market outside the city.  The Slave dealers aren't  a group of honest brokers. Their aim is to reinstate slavery.

The mere threat of force is useless unless you are willing to use it.  At no point did either the Yunkish lords or the Volantenes act as though they were deterred by any of the forces (dragons or otherwise) at Daenerys' disposal.  They destroyed Astapor, and launched a huge invasion of Meereenese territory.  They brought plague to Meereen by driving the survivors of Astapor before them (ironically, the plague is now killing the slavers as well).  They are afraid that a free Meereen will inspire their slaves to rise against them, which is why they are so keen to end free Meereen.  The passage you cite shows that most Yunkish lords are just waiting for the Volantenes to appear, before resuming the fight with overwhelming force.  The idea that Hizdahr and the Green Grace would in such a case, stand up for the ex-slaves against members of their own class, their own relatives, is extremely far-fetched. 

As to Daznak's Pit, I can't see any textual evidence that Daenerys planned for Drogon to come swooping down, after she had lured thousands of people into the arena, and for a pair of idiots to attack him, starting off a fight and a stampede. She did after all, reject Daario's proposal to massacre the Great Masters.   At most, Drogon probably sensed her unhappiness at having to watch people being slaughtered.  Flying him out was the only way of getting him out of the pit, in that situation.  It was extremely brave for her to risk her life in that way, and by far the most humane course of action.

  

[BlackLightning]

7 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

What did she learn from that situation though? Not that dragons are weapons of chaos (which they are). She is not learning the lessons from Valyria, from the Dance, or from Dorne. She's merely learning that dragons are kEWL.Even more disturbing, she knows that people were trampled and running around on fire, but she doesn't even reflect on that. Instead she thinks, "If I die and fall, it was all worth it"?????? I can only conclude that burning innocent people doesn't matter to her; riding Drogon is more important.

Um okay. Dragons are weapons of chaos. What about them? As we learned from the Red Wedding, a letter is also a weapon of chaos.

There are plenty weapons of chaos in this world. One of them being the diseased corpses that are being catapulted into a (mostly) healthy city.

Keep that in mind.

Dany is not learning that dragons are "kEWL" she is learning that they are useful. Burning innocent people does matter to her, If it didn't, she would've tried to have done it already. Daenerys has had how many hostages? Yet, not a single one of them is harmed even though her followers are literally being butchered in their homes, thoroughfares and marketplaces. Dany's cabinet has to beg her to do something with the hostages so that her enemies can know that she means business and she refuses. Repeatedly.

But according to you, Dany doesn't care about hurting innocent people.

All she is literally saying is that if she dies in that moment, EVERYTHING she has done from the moment of her birth to the moment of her deciding to challenge Drogon and mount him for the purpose of saving lives, it will be all be worth it. She is not talking just about riding Drogon.

Stop deliberately misreading the page.

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What hits this point home is that she forgot the name of the child who was killed. If she doesn't care about those people in the crowd, and doesn't care about a child's death; what's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros. Just *blip* people to delete and move on.

Okay you need to stop. She clearly cares about that girl's death (if she didn't the dragons wouldn't have been locked away) because she is obviously upset by the fact that she can't remember her name. Dany does care about the people in the crowd, that's why she leaps into action to begin with. Either Drogon was going to kill them all, they were going to kill Drogon or both.

Imagine if Dany would not have done it. What would have happened?

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Interesting interpretation...but I don't buy it. Dany as Robb? Where is this in the Meereenese Blot? I'm going on what interpretations the author has gone on record as saying is the accurate one.

Why don't you buy it?

It's an analogy. Catelyn literally was begging Robb to keep Grey Wind close to him but Robb brushed her off. He was more concerned about what the Freys and Westerlings thought of him than the bad vibes that Grey Wind was sensing.

The direwolves are to the Starks, what the dragons are to Daenerys. Sansa would be in a much different situation if Lady was still alive. Sansa is lost to her family at the moment and this is explained (in the text!!) by how Jon, Arya and Bran can sense the continued survival of each other but not of Sansa even though she is alive and somewhat well.

What's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros? Ummm...the fact that all of Westeros will be under attack.

What hits this point home is that she forgot the name of the child who was killed. If she doesn't care about those people in the crowd, and doesn't care about a child's death; what's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros. Just *blip* people to delete and move on.

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Dany embracing her dragons may be be good in the short-term for

her survival, but what about Westeros' survival? "If they're monsters, so am I" is some dark shit.

Again.

Direwolves --> Starks. Lions --> Lannisters. Bears --> Mormonts. Krakens/squids --> Greyjoys. Dragons --> Targaryens.

It is dark but it doesn't mean she's going to be a cackling, bloodthirsty madwoman who wants to see the whole world burn.

Dany embracing her dragons will be good for the world, not just Westeros? There's not enough weapons made out of Valyrian steel and dragonglass in the world to defend themselves against the Others? As we saw, humanity is at a severe disadvantage when it comes to facing the Others. The Others can't fly (**knock on wood**) so raining dragonfire down from above can give humanity a fighting chance.

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They did want to conciliate. I believe Hizdahr when he said Meereen cannot endure another war. I believe the Green Grace when she says Dany can

reconcile the city to her rule by marriage. They knew that she could use dragons on them. That's why the killings stopped after she agreed to the marriage. And I agree with the theory that Skahaz wanted to set up Hizdahr with the locusts, because the peace was too successful in fact.

What peace? There is no peace in Meereen.

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We learn that two of the most important Yunkish leaders, Yezzan and Yurkhaz, wanted to honor peace: 

So once Yezzan and Yurkhaz die, of course, we see the worst of the discontents rising up. But that shouldn't be confused with the fact that Dany

did successfully conciliate and there were people to conciliate with, during this crucial time. It's also important to remember that Volantis has been constantly assaulted by dragonlords and they wouldn't want their fleet set to flame like Aegon I did in the past.

So again, Dany + Hizdahr could have conciliated with the Volantis fleet through the mere threat of use of force, not actually using force. But she's probably not interested in doing that because she's more interested in dragons and how kewl and powerful they are.

Again, I disagree with you and agree with this guy

Two out of how many? If they wanted to honor this thing that you and the slavers call peace, why are they not in Yunkai? Why are they taking part in the siege of Meereen?

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Are you a troll? LOL because I cannot believe that you honestly do believe that Dany and Hizdahr could have conciliated with the Volantene fleet. Together. As a unit.

Are you reading the text? The Volantenes are clearly after blood and they have sent an entire armada against Meereen. Why would they send out an armada if hostilities have cooled and things are on the up-and-up.

If someone as foolish as Victarion can see that, why can't you?

And about Hizdahr. Hizdahr is clearly doing things without Dany's knowledge and consent. She literally is flabbergasted and driven to tears by the things he is doing and she has right to be because apparently he has very different goals than she does and a very different definition. The whole point of peace is to prevent more bloodshed; why is he okay with reopening the fighting pits and allowing former-slaves-who-are-now-pretty-much-slaves all over again to fight each other to the death?

Like in what world does peace look like an enemy army outside the city buying and selling slaves and pitting those slaves against each other within your city. WTF is that?

Would Stannis Baratheon put up with such a thing? Would Ned Stark stand for this? How would anybody in Westeros react to Dany's actions?

Besides...why is Dany giving people away to be held hostage by the Yunkish? That is the action of a loser not a winner. Who on Planetos would freely give enemy hostages when the law of war dictates that your enemy takes people hostages. Even Ser Barristan is taken aback at how desperate Dany is to keep "peace."

Speaking of peace, what kind of peace do you have when you have enemy armies converging on your city. Okay, so the killings with the Sons of the Harpy has stopped.

Great. Who is backing and leading the Sons of the Harpy?

[BlackLightning]

@Rose of Red Lake are you pro-slavery?

Be honest. I just have to know.

[Rose of Red Lake]

16 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Martin has stated that Adam Feldman is correct in seeing that Daenerys' heart is in conflict between between war and peace.  He has never said that Feldman got the plot points correct.  The Meereenese Blot is not Holy Writ.  Plenty of good critics disagree with its conclusions.

And what did he conclude, about war and peace and Dany's arc? "That she achieved peace. And war felt better." And did GRRM really need to pull his hair out because people were missing the fact that Dany was conflicted over Daario and Hizdahr--something any idiot could see? More likely, he was upset that people missed these important details about how peace was sincerely on the table yet Dany didn't want it.

However, I disagree with Feldman on one point. It's not about peace vs. war, it's about building vs. destroying. She can either sit down and make a free city prosper (and do the hard work of building something worthwhile), or she can do what feels better and destroy shit (and do the easy thing). Using dragons isn't productive; in fact, dragons have never saved anyone in F&B and didn't benefit anyone long term.  

26 minutes ago, SeanF said:

A peace which allowed slaves to be brought freely in and out of Meereen, even if slavery was not formally legal in the city, and which allowed the slave trade to be reinstated throughout Slavers Bay was neither just nor workable.  

It's also not workable to end slavery all over the world just by killing all the Great Masters in *looks at timeline of the books* ....a few chapters. Folks are living in a fantasy land if they think she can wrap slavery, burn all the people in tokars, and move on to Westeros, no problems.

The realistic option was to keep Meereen free, take a defensive position against any attackers (always the moral highground), and undercut the slave trade piece by piece over many years. But we know Dany isnt going to do that. She doesn't really care about those people. She tried to convince herself that she did...but nah. I think the entire Essos excursion was about covering up her guilt for wanting to buy slaves to conquer Westeros in the first place. Kind of like criminals who try to do some charitable works so they can feel better about themselves. 

 

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Even then, the slavers did not stick to the peace terms.  Hizdahr tried to murder Penny and Tyrion, and the Yunkish held a slave market outside the city.

Haha but the terms were removing the blockade so people wouldn't starve, not kill any Unsullied in the streets, and not running slave markets inside the city. They stuck to that. Hizdahr wanting to "murder" Penny and Tyrion is laughable. He's a showman trying to please a crowd. I find Hizdahr pretty complex (in true GRRM fashion). 

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The Slave dealers aren't  a group of honest brokers. Their aim is to reinstate slavery.

They also want to not get burned to a crisp, which is why Dany got as far as she did and got her terms met. They also have a reason not to trust Dany as well - she burned an envoy. 

But you know what. It's not even about the fact that now Dany has to really play whack-a-mole with slavers--it's about the fact that she didn't even realize what she achieved. She wanted peace in Meereen. That's what she won. But at the end of that arc, she has convinced herself that this is a waste of time and people need to BURN - well, guess what? With that mentality, she's now on the road to tyrantville. Burn first/think later is probably what she'll do to Westeros. Wishing for this to happen will bite Dany fans in the ass.

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At best, the Great Masters of Meereen were prepared to tolerate a queen who ruled in the interests of slavers;  not a queen who ruled in the interests of the freedmen, the large majority of the population.

Welcome to politics, where you have to work with people you despise. Possibly good training Westeros if Dany wanted to learn. She didn't (not really).

A peace that creates one free city is a foundation she could have built on to turn the others free, eventually. But that's obviously not her path. GRRM will have consequences for Dany choosing fire and blood. My guess is, burning bad guys alive will destroy her humanity and empathy in the process. 

52 minutes ago, SeanF said:

As to Daznak's Pit, I can't see any textual evidence that Daenerys planned for Drogon to come swooping down, after she had lured thousands of people into the arena, and for a pair of idiots to attack him, starting off a fight and a stampede. She did after all, reject Daario's proposal to massacre the Great Masters.   Flying him out was the only sensible course of action, in that situation.  It was extremely brave for her to risk her life in that way, and by far the most humane course of action.

I don't see any textual evidence to support the idea that she was saving people out of concern for them, either. She screams when her poor "son" Drogon is hurt, she tries to tame him so he doesn't burn Mommy, she delusionally thinks that she can't get burned, she hops on his back, they burn people together, Dany remembers people on fire and trampled, and doesn't care. A humane act actually has to have empathy. She doesn't have that for the people she killed. 

[SeanF]

14 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Um okay. Dragons are weapons of chaos. What about them? As we learned from the Red Wedding, a letter is also a weapon of chaos.

There are plenty weapons of chaos in this world. One of them being the diseased corpses that are being catapulted into a (mostly) healthy city.

Keep that in mind.

Dany is not learning that dragons are "kEWL" she is learning that they are useful. Burning innocent people does matter to her, If it didn't, she would've tried to have done it already. Daenerys has had how many hostages? Yet, not a single one of them is harmed even though her followers are literally being butchered in their homes, thoroughfares and marketplaces. Dany's cabinet has to beg her to do something with the hostages so that her enemies can know that she means business and she refuses. Repeatedly.

But according to you, Dany doesn't care about hurting innocent people.

All she is literally saying is that if she dies in that moment, EVERYTHING she has done from the moment of her birth to the moment of her deciding to challenge Drogon and mount him for the purpose of saving lives, it will be all be worth it. She is not talking just about riding Drogon.

Stop deliberately misreading the page.

Okay you need to stop. She clearly cares about that girl's death (if she didn't the dragons wouldn't have been locked away) because she is obviously upset by the fact that she can't remember her name. Dany does care about the people in the crowd, that's why she leaps into action to begin with. Either Drogon was going to kill them all, they were going to kill Drogon or both.

Imagine if Dany would not have done it. What would have happened?

Why don't you buy it?

It's an analogy. Catelyn literally was begging Robb to keep Grey Wind close to him but Robb brushed her off. He was more concerned about what the Freys and Westerlings thought of him than the bad vibes that Grey Wind was sensing.

The direwolves are to the Starks, what the dragons are to Daenerys. Sansa would be in a much different situation if Lady was still alive. Sansa is lost to her family at the moment and this is explained (in the text!!) by how Jon, Arya and Bran can sense the continued survival of each other but not of Sansa even though she is alive and somewhat well.

What's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros? Ummm...the fact that all of Westeros will be under attack.

What hits this point home is that she forgot the name of the child who was killed. If she doesn't care about those people in the crowd, and doesn't care about a child's death; what's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros. Just *blip* people to delete and move on.

Again.

Direwolves --> Starks. Lions --> Lannisters. Bears --> Mormonts. Krakens/squids --> Greyjoys. Dragons --> Targaryens.

It is dark but it doesn't mean she's going to be a cackling, bloodthirsty madwoman who wants to see the whole world burn.

Dany embracing her dragons will be good for the world, not just Westeros? There's not enough weapons made out of Valyrian steel and dragonglass in the world to defend themselves against the Others? As we saw, humanity is at a severe disadvantage when it comes to facing the Others. The Others can't fly (**knock on wood**) so raining dragonfire down from above can give humanity a fighting chance.

What peace? There is no peace in Meereen.

Two out of how many? If they wanted to honor this thing that you and the slavers call peace, why are they not in Yunkai? Why are they taking part in the siege of Meereen?

I think Daenerys did have some cards to play.  Taking Meereen by storm would be a very dicey undertaking for the Slavers.  Sitting down and besieging it is causing a big death toll among the attackers, due to the plague.  I can see them favouring a truce for those reasons, but the truce would end when the Volantenese turned up.

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

And what did he conclude, about war and peace and Dany's arc? "That she achieved peace. And war felt better." And did GRRM really need to pull his hair out because people were missing the fact that Dany was conflicted over Daario and Hizdahr--something any idiot could see? More likely, he was upset that people missed these important details about how peace was sincerely on the table yet Dany didn't want it.

However, I disagree with Feldman on one point. It's not about peace vs. war, it's about building vs. destroying. She can either sit down and make a free city prosper (and do the hard work of building something worthwhile), or she can do what feels better and destroy shit (and do the easy thing). Using dragons isn't productive; in fact, dragons have never saved anyone in F&B and didn't benefit anyone long term.  

It's also not workable to end slavery all over the world just by killing all the Great Masters in *looks at timeline of the books* ....a few chapters. Folks are living in a fantasy land if they think she can wrap slavery, burn all the people in tokars, and move on to Westeros, no problems.

The realistic option was to keep Meereen free, take a defensive position against any attackers (always the moral highground), and undercut the slave trade piece by piece over many years. But we know Dany isnt going to do that. She doesn't really care about those people. She tried to convince herself that she did...but nah. I think the entire Essos excursion was about covering up her guilt for wanting to buy slaves to conquer Westeros in the first place. Kind of like criminals who try to do some charitable works so they can feel better about themselves. 

 

Haha but the terms were removing the blockade so people wouldn't starve, not kill any Unsullied in the streets, and not running slave markets inside the city. They stuck to that. Hizdahr wanting to "murder" Penny and Tyrion is laughable. He's a showman trying to please a crowd. I find Hizdahr pretty complex (in true GRRM fashion). 

They also want to not get burned to a crisp, which is why Dany got as far as she did and got her terms met. They also have a reason not to trust Dany as well - she burned an envoy. 

But you know what. It's not even about the fact that now Dany has to really play whack-a-mole with slavers--it's about the fact that she didn't even realize what she achieved. She wanted peace in Meereen. That's what she won. But at the end of that arc, she has convinced herself that this is a waste of time and people need to BURN - well, guess what? With that mentality, she's now on the road to tyrantville. Burn first/think later is probably what she'll do to Westeros. Wishing for this to happen will bite Dany fans in the ass.

Welcome to politics, where you have to work with people you despise. Possibly good training Westeros if Dany wanted to learn. She didn't (not really).

A peace that creates one free city is a foundation she could have built on to turn the others free, eventually. But that's obviously not her path. GRRM will have consequences for Dany choosing fire and blood. My guess is, burning bad guys alive will destroy her humanity and empathy in the process. 

I don't see any textual evidence to support the idea that she was saving people out of concern for them, either. She screams when her poor "son" Drogon is hurt, she tries to tame him so he doesn't burn Mommy, she delusionally thinks that she can't get burned, she hops on his back, they burn people together, Dany remembers people on fire and trampled, and doesn't care. A humane act actually has to have empathy. She doesn't have that for the people she killed. 

It's not the slave trade that is being undercut.  It's free Meereen that is being undercut.  A slaver is king of the city.  Slaves can be brought in and out of the city.  A slave market is held outside the city, but on Meereenese territory;  that is a breach of the peace terms, whatever Hizdahr may claim.  Nor has the blockade been ended.  The besieging armies did not march away.  The slavers' fleet is still blockading the harbour.  And, that's what you call "peace?" Okay.

I would certainly call throwing dwarves to lions "murder".  You see it as a form of light entertainment.  Okay.

To say that Daenerys doesn't care about the slaves requires the reader to ignore virtually the entire text of her story in ASOS and ADWD.  Someone who didn't care would just have plundered Slavers Bay and sailed for Westeros, as Ser Jorah advised. 

Most people in Dany's position in the pit would have joined the stampede out of the place.  The stampede in which people were being killed.  Far more people would have died. No doubt if Dany had done so, you'd be blaming her for not trying to fly the dragon out of the pit.

 

[SeanF]

35 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

@Rose of Red Lake are you pro-slavery?

Be honest. I just have to know.

Well, as her reply to me showed, she saw nothing wrong with throwing Penny and Tyrion to lions.

It's probably a case of "my enemy's enemy is my friend".  Anyone who opposes Daenerys must be good.

[BlackLightning]

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Well, as her reply to me showed, she saw nothing wrong with throwing Penny and Tyrion to lions.

Like I'm at my wits end.

If you think it's okay for people to own other people and treat them like possessions that can be bought, sold and readily disposed, fine. Come out of the closet and live your truth.

No need to hide it underneath your anti-Daenerys stance.

Like I still don't get why Daenerys should work on abolishing slavery slowly? Should Jon slowly go about trying to protect the realm from the Others? Would it have been better if Tyrion slowly went about defending King's Landing from Stannis Baratheon with wildfire? If Robb slowly marched his army south, would Riverrun be saved from Jaime Lannister and his siege? Should we slowly enforce murder as a capital crime in the real world?

Pfft.

 

24 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think Daenerys did have some cards to play.  Taking Meereen by storm would be a very dicey undertaking for the Slavers.  Sitting down and besieging it is causing a big death toll among the attackers, due to the plague.  I can see them favouring a truce for those reasons, but the truce would end when the Volantenese turned up.

I agree. Daenerys did have cards to play. She just didn't play them because she didn't want to be "mean" and she didn't want any more people to die. She wanted to rule in peace and make the lives of the freedmen better. She was so desperate to have peace that she ended up making herself look like a idiot. It'd be one thing if she were a happy idiot but no; Dany was very unhappy and knew it was wrong which made the whole thing that much worst.

Truce? What truce?

If there is a truce, then why are military encampments still right outside the city gates? A real truce would require them to leave, maybe after taking hostages. Especially with there being a bloody flux epidemic.

The fact that there is a freaking plague afoot and that they are still outside of Meereen suffering from said plague tells you all you need to know about such truce. Oh and let's not forget that they are bringing people who have been exposed to the plague into the city where they then interact with relatively healthy people. Come to think of it, there's not much difference between flinging diseased corpses into the city and walking potentially diseased people in and out of said city.

Unless, of course, that the Yunkish genuinely feel like that they won the war (or part 1) and thus got to decide the terms? But that wouldn't be the end of hostilities via truce, that would be the end of hostilities via victory and occupation.

And if there is a truce, why have Qarth, New Ghis, Mantarys and the other cities failed to rescind their declaration of war.

From the moment she married Hizdahr, Daenerys repeatedly expresses the thought that she should be celebrating when instead she is very upset. She acknowledges that everything that has happened since the two got hitched feels like a defeat to her. She hasn't given up but she is clearly losing this war.

And yes, she is losing. Not conciliating, not negotiating....losing. Last time I checked, the losers are the ones who suffer and the winners celebrate. The losers are the ones who have to adapt and submit to the winners, not the other way around.

Speaking of which, the Sons of the Harpy disappeared practically overnight when they were daily terrorizing the city just because Hizdahr came to power....and precious few people find that uniquely suspicious?

[SeanF]

5 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Like I'm at my wits end.

If you think it's okay for people to own other people and treat them like possessions that can be bought, sold and readily disposed, fine. Come out of the closet and live your truth.

No need to hide it underneath your anti-Daenerys stance.

Like I still don't get why Daenerys should work on abolishing slavery slowly? Should Jon slowly go about trying to protect the realm from the Others? Would it have been better if Tyrion slowly went about defending King's Landing from Stannis Baratheon with wildfire? If Robb slowly marched his army south, would Riverrun be saved from Jaime Lannister and his siege? Should we slowly enforce murder as a capital crime in the real world?

Pfft.

 

I agree. Daenerys did have cards to play. She just didn't play them because she didn't want to be "mean" and she didn't want any more people to die. She wanted to rule in peace and make the lives of the freedmen better. She was so desperate to have peace that she ended up making herself look like a idiot. It'd be one thing if she were a happy idiot but no; Dany was very unhappy and knew it was wrong which made the whole thing that much worst.

Truce? What truce?

If there is a truce, then why are military encampments still right outside the city gates? A real truce would require them to leave, maybe after taking hostages. Especially with there being a bloody flux epidemic.

The fact that there is a freaking plague afoot and that they are still outside of Meereen suffering from said plague tells you all you need to know about such truce. Oh and let's not forget that they are bringing people who have been exposed to the plague into the city where they then interact with relatively healthy people. Come to think of it, there's not much difference between flinging diseased corpses into the city and walking potentially diseased people in and out of said city.

Unless, of course, that the Yunkish genuinely feel like that they won the war (or part 1) and thus got to decide the terms? But that wouldn't be the end of hostilities via truce, that would be the end of hostilities via victory and occupation.

And if there is a truce, why have Qarth, New Ghis, Mantarys and the other cities failed to rescind their declaration of war.

From the moment she married Hizdahr, Daenerys repeatedly expresses the thought that she should be celebrating when instead she is very upset. She acknowledges that everything that has happened since the two got hitched feels like a defeat to her. She hasn't given up but she is clearly losing this war.

And yes, she is losing. Not conciliating, not negotiating....losing. Last time I checked, the losers are the ones who suffer and the winners celebrate. The losers are the ones who have to adapt and submit to the winners, not the other way around.

Speaking of which, the Sons of the Harpy disappeared practically overnight when they were daily terrorizing the city just because Hizdahr came to power....and precious few people find that uniquely suspicious?

There's good reason to believe the Slavers have overreached themselves.  The Ironborn are about to fall on them, the Tattered Prince and Brown Ben have switched sides with 3,500 cavalry between them. And in all likelihood, the Volantene tiger soldiers will revolt.  But, the survival of free Meereen will have been a near-run thing.

[Rose of Red Lake]

8 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Um okay. Dragons are weapons of chaos. What about them? As we learned from the Red Wedding, a letter is also a weapon of chaos.

There are plenty weapons of chaos in this world. One of them being the diseased corpses that are being catapulted into a (mostly) healthy city.

Dragons are more like 1000x Red Weddings. They're not your average catapult either. I mean...

Quote

“Tumbleton went up in flame: shops, homes, septs, people, all. Men fell burning from gatehouse and battlements, or stumbled shrieking through the streets like so many living torches. Outside the walls, Prince Daeron swooped down upon Tessarion. Pate of Longleaf was unhorsed and trampled, Ser Garibald Grey pierced by a crossbow bolt, then engulfed by dragonflame. The Two Betrayers scourged the town with whips of flame from one end to the other. The sack that followed was as savage as any in the history of Westeros. Tumbleton, that prosperous market town, was reduced to ash and embers. Thousands burned, and as many died by drowning as they tried to swim the river. Some would later say they were the fortunate ones, for no mercy was shown the survivors. Lord Footly’s men threw down their swords and yielded, only to be bound and beheaded. Such townswomen as survived the fires were raped repeatedly, even girls as young as eight and ten. Old men and boys were put to the sword, whilst the dragons fed upon the twisted, smoking carcasses of their victims. Tumbleton was never to recover; though later Footlys would attempt to rebuild atop the ruins, their “new town” would never be a tenth the size of the old, for the smallfolk said the very ground was haunted.”

GRRM spent a lot of time and care trying to show how dragons are destructive forces. This is just one example among many. And he's said it explicitly in interviews. So I'm disappointed that, once again we're back to not believing the author, and just going with wish-fulfillment and strawman arguments. 

The dragonseeds who destroyed Tumbleton were known as Betrayers; cowards who lusted for power; discontent with the titles they already had; angry at their ally for not treating them with the "respect" they felt they deserved. This could easily be Dany in the future. 

I also appreciate how the author shows how people surrendered and yet, they still got put to death. This is a war crime.

I wouldnt be surprised if this is all setting up a scenario when the Yunkish surrender under threat of dragonfire, and Dany destroys the city anyway, perhaps also setting up a scenario when King's Landing surrenders and Dany destroys it anyway. 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

The direwolves are to the Starks, what the dragons are to Daenerys. Sansa would be in a much different situation if Lady was still alive. Sansa is lost to her family at the moment and this is explained (in the text!!) by how Jon, Arya and Bran can sense the continued survival of each other but not of Sansa even though she is alive and somewhat well.

I'm just not following your analogy here because Dany embracing dragons, which are WMD and can destroy cities in a day's work, is not the same as the Starks embracing their direwolves. They're fundamentally different creatures. Dragons are shown repeatedly to destroy towns, villages, buildings; wolves don't do this. Dragons burn anything living; wolves are creatures of the forest and preserve nature in a symbiotic relationship. Dragons were bred to be beasts of war for centuries to build an empire; maybe someone once every few centuries could warg a wolf but we're not talking about an empire of Varamyrs here. I get that both are "fierce" and protect their owners, but after that the analogy kind of falls apart. 

I think more direwolves will die anyway, so Lady's death isn't symbolic of Sansa being "lost" to the Starks. If Summer dies does that mean Bran suddenly stops becoming a Stark? Is Dany 1/3 less of a Targaryen because one of her dragons die? And anyway this analogy has nothing to do with the fact that Dany wedding herself to a superweapon and burning all the baddies, changes her psychologically, and she will face consequences for embracing her House words unquestionably. 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

What's stopping her from thinking the same thing about all of Westeros? Ummm...the fact that all of Westeros will be under attack.

But if she's losing her humanity with each person she deletes with Drogon, she's not going to care that much. If she does end up wanting to kill everyone in Westeros, we know where this seed of inhumanity was planted for her. Dany is changing, she's not the same person we met in Chapter 1 Book 1. 

Unless you think she's Daenerys Princess of Power, who champions the resistance movement against the Evil Horde Prime through the help of her magical flying companion, Swift Wind. 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

It is dark but it doesn't mean she's going to be a cackling, bloodthirsty madwoman who wants to see the whole world burn.

Like I said Dany would just be another Khal. Casually thinking "mass murder is the norm of war." Or, a supremacist Valyrian who smugly thinks that what they're doing is right. No matter what, embracing fire and blood = embracing mass murder however you want to slice it.

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

What peace? There is no peace in Meereen.

 

Did you not notice that Dany succeeded after her wedding by stopping killings in the streets, that former slaves were now paid a wage, and the blockade was lifted so Meereen wouldn't starve. I know it was hard to miss because it was only 24 hours old, but these are the details. Dany achieved peace but war felt better. In fact riding Drogon felt better--as we can see from her orgasm riding him as they burned people together. 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Two out of how many? If they wanted to honor this thing that you and the slavers call peace, why are they not in Yunkai? Why are they taking part in the siege of Meereen?

 

As Skahaz states and Tyrion confirms, the two held sway over the other five (there are seven). And because Hizdahr helped broker the peace, they trust that he will honor it. That's why they agree to join together at the fighting pits, because they trust that Dany won't try to burn them all (but ooops...she did). 

The achievement of peace is a foundation, it's not perfect. But Meereen was stabilized. That there was an achievement that Dany made, which she threw in the trash. Keep in mind that she realized that just smashing her enemies and moving from one town to the next was what turned Astapor into a hellscape. She tried to sit down and rule and make something grow, but she reverts back to her original position as a destructive Valyrian conquistador. I can only see her turning Merreen into another Astapor, just SMASH and RUN. 

9 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

are you pro-slavery?

Be honest. I just have to know.

If you're not up Dany's ass - you get called a slavery apologist in this fandom. It's really funny. People can't fathom that it's possible for two assholes to be interacting. Or that characters can make terrible choices even when dealing with bad people. Or that learning how to kill baddies en masse is actually training for mass murder. Or that "becoming the person you despise" never happened in literature, ever. People want simple stories with simple heroines who are simple liberators.

[SeanF]

27 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

 

 

If you're not up Dany's ass - you get called a slavery apologist in this fandom. It's really funny. People can't fathom that it's possible for two assholes to be interacting. Or that characters can make terrible choices even when dealing with bad people. Or that learning how to kill baddies en masse is actually training for mass murder. Or that "becoming the person you despise" never happened in literature, ever. People want simple stories with simple heroines who are simple liberators.

Well, if the cap fits, wear it.  You go out of your way to find evidence of good faith and decency among slave-drivers, and evidence of evil and depravity among the people who fight them.

You even think there's nothing wrong in feeding dwarves to lions. 

[frenin]

17 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

They did want to conciliate. I believe Hizdahr when he said Meereen cannot endure another war. I believe the Green Grace when she says Dany can reconcile the city to her rule by marriage. They knew that she could use dragons on them. That's why the killings stopped after she agreed to the marriage. And I agree with the theory that Skahaz wanted to set up Hizdahr with the locusts, because the peace was too successful in fact.

We learn that two of the most important Yunkish leaders, Yezzan and Yurkhaz, wanted to honor peace:

I don't, they didn't want to conciliate, they wanted to be sure Dany would not kill them all, they wanted to be sure Dany, the conciliation you're proposing would only and inevitably lead with the freed being trampled, Mereen situation is almost the same as the Reconstruction Era after the USA civil war,  there are a lot of thingsto learn from that, one of them is not bedding slavers. The be the king o rabbits is simply the stupid course to take. And Dany had indeed started to give in more and more.

They were ready to poison her.

17 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Dany embracing her dragons may be be good in the short-term for her survival, but what about Westeros' survival? "If they're monsters, so am I" is some dark shit.

Maybe, but some harsh actions have to be taken against the slavers.

 

 

12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, not really. Dragons should be able to fly around the Wall if they really do not want to cross it (Silverwing is known to have been a pretty docile and nice dragon - who knows whether Balerion or Drogon or Vhagar would have behaved in a similar manner).

If the most docile and nicest of dragons refuse to cross the wall, it's unlikely the rest of the dragons would be proner.

 

 

10 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

They did want to conciliate. I believe Hizdahr when he said Meereen cannot endure another war. I believe the Green Grace when she says Dany can reconcile the city to her rule by marriage. They knew that she could use dragons on them. That's why the killings stopped after she agreed to the marriage. And I agree with the theory that Skahaz wanted to set up Hizdahr with the locusts, because the peace was too successful in fact.

We learn that two of the most important Yunkish leaders, Yezzan and Yurkhaz, wanted to honor peace:

Dragons did save the Targ dynasty in their wars against the faith and dragons were the reasons more progressive laws were passed without complain, good luck trying to forbid the First Night otherwise. I do agree that dragons are nukes but used as deterrents have  proved to successful, there is no use in trying to denying. From the King's Peace to the Abolition of first night..

 

 

 

 

[BlackLightning]

3 minutes ago, SeanF said:

There's good reason to believe the Slavers have overreached themselves.  The Ironborn are about to fall on them, the Tattered Prince and Brown Ben have switched sides with 3,500 cavalry between them. And in all likelihood, the Volantene tiger soldiers will revolt.  But, the survival of free Meereen will have been a near-run thing.

Yes. Fortunate for Dany. While her peace was shameful, her revolution was real. Good thing that the Ironborn are serious business, that Brown Ben is much more loyal than anyone had previously imagined (methinks that he planned pretty much everything) and that the Tattered Prince has very important business to discuss with her.

[The Lord of the Crossing]

On 5/10/2020 at 6:29 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

She opened the red door in her dream and saw Rhaegar and the face within was her own. I think that suggests that the only home she will find is one that she makes herself, not one that she expects is waiting for her. Westeros for Dany is like King's Landing was for Sansa. 

And:

“all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses”

Everywhere she goes she brings destruction, turning fields from green to brown and tearing down houses (the Dothraki do this too).

Dany destroying her "home" because she can't have it - or it doesn't fit the charmed image she had - would fit with her immature, impulsive characterization. 

 

 

 

No, that is not true.  Daenerys is the more mature of the future possible leaders.  She is more mature than Robb, Jon, Aegon, and Bran.  The person you are describing fits the behavior of both Robb and Jon.  Robb destroyed the north soon after he became its leader.  Jon destroyed the Night's Watch soon after he became its leader.  Impulsive is what that blockhead Robb Stark did.  He swore to marry Walder's daughter, accepted the Frey's help, they gave him good service, became his most important contributor, and he screws them over for love.  That is both impulsive and immature.  And yet another sign of the Starks being selfish.  Robb, Jon, and Joffrey brought about their own deaths.

[kissdbyfire]

26 minutes ago, The Lord of the Crossing said:

No, that is not true.  Daenerys is the more mature of the future possible leaders.  She is more mature than Robb, Jon, Aegon, and Bran.  The person you are describing fits the behavior of both Robb and Jon.  Robb destroyed the north soon after he became its leader.  Jon destroyed the Night's Watch soon after he became its leader.  Impulsive is what that blockhead Robb Stark did.  He swore to marry Walder's daughter, accepted the Frey's help, they gave him good service, became his most important contributor, and he screws them over for love.  That is both impulsive and immature.  And yet another sign of the Starks being selfish.  Robb, Jon, and Joffrey brought about their own deaths.

Why not argue Dany’s positive traits and deeds instead of turning everything into Stark hate? *Yawn*.

[Hodor the Articulate]

18 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

Should we slowly enforce murder as a capital crime in the real world?

Yes. We start with applauding murderers for good showmanship.

[SeanF]

On 5/18/2020 at 6:40 PM, BlackLightning said:

 

I can appreciate the analogy between Captain Kennit and Daenerys but, as I hinted at, there are several huge differences between them. One of the bigger ones being that Daenerys wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She knows what it's like to be a slave--and if she didn't before, she will very soon.

Captain Kennit sounds an awful lot like Euron too. Holy cow, it just hit me.

Kennit is a very ambitious man, with an interest in the supernatural, but not a sinister warlock like Euron.

It occurs to me that there can be very few readers of Liveships who would be thinking that Kennit and his followers are wrong to be destroying the economy/way of life of the slavers, or condemning the use of violence against them.

[Rose of Red Lake]

23 hours ago, frenin said:

I don't, they didn't want to conciliate, they wanted to be sure Dany would not kill them all

That's conciliation. Who cares if its done because they're afraid. That's how Aegon got most of the people to submit to his rule as well. 

Quote

the conciliation you're proposing would only and inevitably lead with the freed being trampled

The Meerenese were free. What do you mean by "Trampled"?

Like sure, there isn't true equality yet...because this whole thing has only lasted a few months. The peace was a foundation to make even more progress, and force the slavers to make more concessions under threat of dragonfire.

 

 

Quote

They were ready to poison her.

That was Skahaz, who has his own personal beef and is angry Dany chose Loraq. So he set up Hizdahr. And throwing up a lot, is hardly a deadly poison. 

Quote

Mereen situation is almost the same as the Reconstruction Era after the USA civil war,  there are a lot of things to learn from that, one of them is not bedding slavers.

 would you prefer Dany invert the hierarchy like Cleon, and make the slaves the elite? Cleon is kind of there to make a point that Dany could go in that direction...which isn't changing anything about a hierarchy, its just replacing one group with another. 

Quote

The be the king o rabbits is simply the stupid course to take. And Dany had indeed started to give in more and more.

This was the thematic choice: she, the outsider imperialist, can make concessions to integrate herself into their culture to gain their trust, while using deterrence to force incremental progress to achieve victories over the long haul while keeping her people fed and trees growing, or BURN THEM ALL AND RUN. 

Because Dany isn't sitting there forever as an abolitionist to make this her life's work, Astapor 2.0 is incoming. And GRRM has said he thinks Dany's slavers bay campaign will end like Iraq. So.

Those are her choices.