Why Daenerys will never win the Game of Thrones

[Rose of Red Lake]

On 5/19/2020 at 12:45 AM, BlackLightning said:

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.

Dany's resources were strapped, she couldn't rule three cities all at once, she couldn't end slavery all of the world, she couldn't enforce protection of all slaves everywhere - these were structural constraints that she had to contend with. She couldn't feed people, she had to wall off the city because of plague. And I think she did well, considering the reality of the situation. With those kinds of constraints, she has to scale back her goals a bit, and she did. She wanted a free Meereen without daily killings in the streets and that's what she got.

The biggest mistake was not realizing what she had achieved, riding Drogon, burning innocents, and leaving Barristan to fuck everything up. He's really the idiot who has no idea what he's doing.

[Rose of Red Lake]

On 5/18/2020 at 1:43 PM, BlackLightning said:

Rose, you seem to be so deeply anti-war that you are being irrational. Nothing is free and everything has a price. The whole point of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons was to showcase just how expensive war is, how expensive peace is and how fragile a peace with no justice is. Without justice, there is no peace. And lasting peace is purchased with blood.

Only Dany has dragons which makes her the most powerful person in the world...“But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.”

Dany can't achieve her goals of peace, by using dragons. He directly says that. 

 

[frenin]

2 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

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. 

No, Aegon never submitted to slavery, he gave that up. They want to see if Dany doesn't kill them and then backstab her. Aegon never suffered the Sons of the Harpy and rule in complete peace for 24 years... Perhaps the fact that he was not afraid of roast people had something to do with it.

 

 

2 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

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.

It means that the mereenese are the ones who are going to end losing wih Dany conciliating with the harpies.

What threat of dragonfire?? The ones she had locked?? Aren't you the one saying that relying on them is going to lead her to a very bad path??

 

 

3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

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. 

No, it wasn't him. 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

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. 

No, I'd prefer Dany to cut the slavers wings. The slaves do not need to be a new elite, just not to be threaten by the Klan.

 

 

3 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

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. 

Sure and she needs to BURN THEM ALL and stay and organize. But without the slavers elite being a pain in the ass.

When has Martin said that it will be like Iraq again??

[frenin]

2 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Only Dany has dragons which makes her the most powerful person in the world...“But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.”

Dany can't achieve her goals of peace, by using dragons. He directly says that. 

 

I don't know how Aegon and Jaeharys did it, they sure as hell used their dragons.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, frenin said:

No, Aegon never submitted to slavery, he gave that up. They want to see if Dany doesn't kill them and then backstab her. Aegon never suffered the Sons of the Harpy and rule in complete peace for 24 years... Perhaps the fact that he was not afraid of roast people had something to do with it.

 

 

It means that the mereenese are the ones who are going to end losing wih Dany conciliating with the harpies.

What threat of dragonfire?? The ones she had locked?? Aren't you the one saying that relying on them is going to lead her to a very bad path??

 

 

No, it wasn't him. 

 

 

 

No, I'd prefer Dany to cut the slavers wings. The slaves do not need to be a new elite, just not to be threaten by the Klan.

 

 

Sure and she needs to BURN THEM ALL and stay and organize. But without the slavers elite being a pain in the ass.

When has Martin said that it will be like Iraq again??

Martin has frequently denied that he is writing an allegory about Iraq, or US foreign policy in the Middle East.

The way to deal with the Slavers is the same way Tywin dealt with the Reynes and Tarbecks.  Or, in real life, the way that Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Dessalines dealt with the Plantation owners.

[Hodor the Articulate]

8 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Dany can't achieve her goals of peace, by using dragons.

9 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

force the slavers to make more concessions under threat of dragonfire.

9 hours ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

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. 

Schrodinger's dragon.

[R2D]

Obviously she's not going to rule.

Bran will be king.

[BlackLightning]

On 5/20/2020 at 1:00 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

Dany's resources were strapped, she couldn't rule three cities all at once, she couldn't end slavery all of the world, she couldn't enforce protection of all slaves everywhere - these were structural constraints that she had to contend with. She couldn't feed people, she had to wall off the city because of plague. And I think she did well, considering the reality of the situation. With those kinds of constraints, she has to scale back her goals a bit, and she did.

True. All true.

But part of the reason why she had to scale back her goals was because she had basically sued for peace but her enemies failed to respect that. Hence the reason why the Yunkish are unofficially laying siege to the city.

On 5/20/2020 at 1:00 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

She wanted a free Meereen without daily killings in the streets and that's what she got.

This is where I start disagreeing with you.

She traded daily killings in the streets with daily killings in the pits (and behind-the-scenes as slaves "train" for the pits)

What an improvement?

On 5/20/2020 at 1:06 PM, Rose of Red Lake said:

Only Dany has dragons which makes her the most powerful person in the world...“But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.”

Dany can't achieve her goals of peace, by using dragons. He directly says that. 

Very true.

Can she achieve her goals of peace by using dragons? Yes, but she'll have to be creative. Threatening to firebomb castles/cities/villages and actually firebombing castles/cities/villages are effective and worthwhile tools (i.e. Aegon, Jaehaerys) but only when used sparingly. If you overindulge, you'll start to look like Rhaenyra...at best.

But you have a point. It would be very hard. That's where the bittersweetness of everything comes in. That's why Dany will likely end up becoming a tragic hero like Robb or Ned rather than say a megalomaniac like Aerys II or a tyrant like Tywin.

 

[BlackLightning]

On 5/20/2020 at 3:07 AM, SeanF said:

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.

Yeah but he still reminds me of Euron. Or at least, pre-Forsaken Euron...

I can't wait to see how Euron plays out in the rest of the series by the way. I'm most interested in seeing how he will play off of Bran and Daenerys.

 

Honestly, this whole slavery thing in A Song of Ice and Fire (I can't speak to Liveships off the top of my mind but I think I'd be right in saying this...) is no different from modern-day sex trafficking and the coyote/mule dynamic of the drug trade. I hate it. People aren't meant to own people.

Naturally, Daenerys is going to clash with the Ironborn (thralls and salt-wives are slaves) and she is really going to step on some toes when she meets the lords of Westeros as the smallfolk, in many cases, are not just peasants, they are serfs. And serfs are only marginally better...

[SeanF]

49 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Honestly, this whole slavery thing in A Song of Ice and Fire (I can't speak to Liveships off the top of my mind but I think I'd be right in saying this...) is no different from modern-day sex trafficking and the coyote/mule dynamic of the drug trade. I hate it. People aren't meant to own people.

Naturally, Daenerys is going to clash with the Ironborn (thralls and salt-wives are slaves) and she is really going to step on some toes when she meets the lords of Westeros as the smallfolk, in many cases, are not just peasants, they are serfs. And serfs are only marginally better...

Once you start reading in detail about chattel slavery, the sheer brutality of even the "good" slave owners is jaw dropping.  The violence of the system is a feature, not a bug, especially in a setting where slaves hugely outnumber free people, as in most societies in Essos.  The people in charge have to keep the slaves in a state of abject terror, lest they be overwhelmed.

There are versions of slavery which are less cruel, for example, people having to labour to pay off debts, or other forms of indentured labour.  Slavery in the last century of the Roman Republic was vile, but the emperors passed a series of laws to improve the conditions of slaves (eg forbidding masters from killing them, selling them into prostitution etc.) As the empire ceased to conquer new territory, so the supply of new slaves dwindled, and masters had much more of an interest in treating them with some humanity. In societies like the West Indian colonies of the 18th century, or Slavers Bay, where there is a constant supply of new slaves, there's no economic downside for masters just to work them to death in a few years and then replace them.  

[BlackLightning]

33 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Once you start reading in detail about chattel slavery, the sheer brutality of even the "good" slave owners is jaw dropping.  The violence of the system is a feature, not a bug, especially in a setting where slaves hugely outnumber free people, as in most societies in Essos.  The people in charge have to keep the slaves in a state of abject terror, lest they be overwhelmed.

There are versions of slavery which are less cruel, for example, people having to labour to pay off debts, or other forms of indentured labour.  Slavery in the last century of the Roman Republic was vile, but the emperors passed a series of laws to improve the conditions of slaves (eg forbidding masters from killing them, selling them into prostitution etc.) As the empire ceased to conquer new territory, so the supply of new slaves dwindled, and masters had much more of an interest in treating them with some humanity. In societies like the West Indian colonies of the 18th century, or Slavers Bay, where there is a constant supply of new slaves, there's no economic downside for masters just to work them to death in a few years and then replace them.  

Very true.

Prisoners are also slaves in a sense. But I'm cool with that.

I just think Dany made a very huge mistake in not immediately addressing the Astapor crisis when it happened. The pro-slavery establishment saw weakness and pounced. And it's not just the Dothraki, Qarth and the cities of Slaver's Bay. The big part of the problem are the Free Cities, they are the ones keeping the demand sky-high.

Volantis, Lys, Myr and Tyrosh all need to be dealt with conclusively before Dany can seriously consider leaving for Westeros. They all (especially Lys and Tyrosh) control a big part of the southern Narrow Sea.

Unfortunately, when it comes to those cities, the actions of Dany or her allies is going to be very bad PR in Braavos and Westeros.

[SeanF]

32 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Very true.

Prisoners are also slaves in a sense. But I'm cool with that.

I just think Dany made a very huge mistake in not immediately addressing the Astapor crisis when it happened. The pro-slavery establishment saw weakness and pounced. And it's not just the Dothraki, Qarth and the cities of Slaver's Bay. The big part of the problem are the Free Cities, they are the ones keeping the demand sky-high.

Volantis, Lys, Myr and Tyrosh all need to be dealt with conclusively before Dany can seriously consider leaving for Westeros. They all (especially Lys and Tyrosh) control a big part of the southern Narrow Sea.

Unfortunately, when it comes to those cities, the actions of Dany or her allies is going to be very bad PR in Braavos and Westeros.

I think the Slavers saw weakness when she spared the Wise Masters of Yunkai.  With hindsight, that was a terrible error.  I expect the Volantene problem will largely sort itself, as the tiger soldiers switch sides, and the slaves rise in revolt.  That said, there is likely to be a lot of fellow-feeling between noble refugees from Volantis, and perhaps other free cities, and nobles in Westeros.  The latter might well worry that their own serfs and tenants will be infected with revolutionary feeling.

[RainwoodOwl]

On 5/16/2020 at 12:27 AM, SeanF said:

I think that her character arc has to become darker, because if ADWD proved anything, it is that peace between slave and free is not possible.  Either the free states have to accept injustices occurring on their doorstep (eg allowing masters to bring slaves in and out with them, returning fugitive slaves to their masters etc, allowing them to operate slave markets) or they have to fight them.  Notably, the main free state in Essos, Braavos, chooses to fight.  They went to war with Pentos to end slavery, and they seize slave ships on the high seas.  I don't think that we're meant to view the Braavosi as being morally wrong to do this.  Very much the reverse.  

That very much reflects what happened in the real world.  European nations ceased to tolerate the Barbary corsairs;  free and slave states could not ultimately co-exist in the USA.  

I find the argument that gets advanced against Dany that peace = good, war = bad, a false one.  There are times when peace is the worse option. The peace that Daenerys was offered (even assuming it was sincere, which I doubt) was the kind of peace that the UK was offered in July 1940.

Yes, her arc had to get darker and we will see it darken further to the point that she will conflate the justice of her cause with an "ends justify the means" attitude which will lead to Dany committing further atrocity. I hope not, but that's my reading of the tea leaves. There's a difference between defeating your enemies and subjugating them and impaling scores of them on stakes. To use your Civil War analogy, the US did not hang the confederate leadership, repugnant traitors that they were who sacrificed all to preserve a barbaric "way of life". Breaking them is necessary but once you give in to the same dehumanization the slavers practice, you allow their hatred to live on and continue the cycle of conflict. That hatred stews in Dany as well as her justifiable resentment against all those who stand in the way of her mission. GRRM is setting us up for another switch: the Messianic hero of destiny slowly turns to the Mad Queen. 

I'm not arguing that Dany is wrong for fighting the slavers or a simplistic peace = good, war = bad paradigm. Let us avoid straw men. I'm arguing that her war against the slavers detracts from her likelihood (among other things, such as her lack of control over her dragons) of sitting the Iron Throne at the end of the series, which was the topic of the thread. Since her aim is to end slavery, there is no way she can make it back to Westeros to rule even in 2 books. Even necessary revolutions can create massive instability and this will prevent Dany from abandoning the people she just liberated in order to reclaim her family's power in Westeros.

[Rose of Red Lake]

Reasonable take. Can't argue with that ^ 

Dany has quite a bit of megalomania. Mixed with a cause that is righteous, little grounding of historical knowledge, and a super weapon - its all a toxic stew. I realize that she is very similar to Varys and Melisandre, in that she is one of GRRM's characters that have a good reason for their actions but takes things too far. And just because folks agree with a megalomaniac under one scenario doesn't change the fact that they're a megalomaniac, and it will become a problem down the line. I think Dany embracing her Targaryen heritage is the worst thing she could do. 

Dany rejected the alliance with Dorne to form an alliance in Meereen, to show that she's serious about ruling there. Now, if she's not serious - it's a total waste on both fronts. Dany has to face consequences for being so wishy washy here, and Dorne shouldn't fall so easily into her lap. 

These lines are important:

"All my victories turn to dross in my hands" 

"Her hats all fell to pieces in her hands"

And the reason why is because she consistently chooses the wrong path--ruling through nukes. #theme

[Bowen Marsh]

On 5/20/2020 at 4:59 PM, SeanF said:

Martin has frequently denied that he is writing an allegory about Iraq, or US foreign policy in the Middle East.

The way to deal with the Slavers is the same way Tywin dealt with the Reynes and Tarbecks.  Or, in real life, the way that Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Dessalines dealt with the Plantation owners.

And the way Sherman dealt with the South.  It was brutal but it broke the will of the confederates.