Daenerys as the Medieval (Mythological) Alexander

[WhatAnArtist!]

1 minute ago, Turandokht said:

From the perspective of the Westerosi aristocracy, that's exactly what I'm suggesting happens, and is exactly what happens in the show as well. And if you're a member of that class, you would find that to be a good ending. But, most people are not reactionary aristocrats, which is why the ending of GOT was so unpopular, and why I am assuming that the equivalent in ASOIAF will be handed with much more historically grounded subtlety when I propose this line of thought.

Except, as has been pointed out several times, and you've totally failed to address any of these rebuttals, Jon is the complete opposite of what you seem to portray him as. He is NOT a reactionary, he is NOT a conservative and traditionalist, he is NOT xenophobic. He is arguably more progressive and liberal than Daenerys is. He gained power through a purely democratic institution, not through birthright and brutal conquest like Daenerys. His ultimate goal isn't the invasion of a foreign land with slave armies, but the defense of his homeland from an undead evil. 

Your strawman vision of Jon is so utterly absurd and based on nothing in the text whatsoever that it makes me question whether you've actually even read Jon's chapters. And also Daenerys's, for that matter. I think you've become so caught up in this theory/fan-fiction of yours that you make it the overriding point of the entire series, ignoring everything that goes against it.

[Turandokht]

2 minutes ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

Except, as has been pointed out several times, and you've totally failed to address any of these rebuttals, Jon is the complete opposite of what you seem to portray him as. He is NOT a reactionary, he is NOT a conservative and traditionalist, he is NOT xenophobic. He is arguably more progressive and liberal than Daenerys is. He gained power through a purely democratic institution, not through birthright and brutal conquest like Daenerys. His ultimate goal isn't the invasion of a foreign land with slave armies, but the defense of his homeland from an undead evil. 

Your strawman vision of Jon is so utterly absurd and based on nothing in the text whatsoever that it makes me question whether you've actually even read Jon's chapters. And also Daenerys's, for that matter. I think you've become so caught up in this theory/fan-fiction of yours that you make it the overriding point of the entire series, ignoring everything that goes against it.

 

I think you are regarding Jon's character as having anything to do with it at all. GRRM set out to subvert tropes and expectations and one of them is very much the personality-based theory of history, which is fairly deep into how most fantasy is constructed. Ultimately, Jon's upbringing was within the norms of his society. Duped into playing a part by Sansa and browbeat by appeals to honour by his peers -- he goes against his own instincts and decency. I did not mean to imply that in the end he would be anything other than horrified by what he's done, even if men praise him for saving their liberties. That is actually the makings of a really truly great tragic hero's narrative of a final fall into tragedy and self-destruction, someone whose love of their own family and social pressures of honour and duty causes them to act against their own instincts and desires.

[WhatAnArtist!]

1 minute ago, Turandokht said:

 

I think you are regarding Jon's character as having anything to do with it at all. GRRM set out to subvert tropes and expectations and one of them is very much the personality-based theory of history, which is fairly deep into how most fantasy is constructed. Ultimately, Jon's upbringing was within the norms of his society. Duped into playing a part by Sansa and browbeat by appeals to honour by his peers -- he goes against his own instincts and decency. I did not mean to imply that in the end he would be anything other than horrified by what he's done, even if men praise him for saving their liberties. That is actually the makings of a really truly great tragic hero's narrative of a final fall into tragedy and self-destruction, someone whose love of their own family and social pressures of honour and duty causes them to act against their own instincts and desires.

You have again failed to rebut any of my counter-arguments. Every single thing that has happened to Jon since the start of aGoT has shaped his personality into a distinctly forward-thinking and progressive young man, who cares about foreign people and the less fortunate, and wants to help them despite the risk to his own position, and while defying every single accepted norm in the world (i.e. letting the wildlings south of the Wall). For Jon to suddenly make an about face and go "Actually, you know what, I'm now going to be a stout defender of ancient aristocratic privilege and conservatism despite the past few years of my life teaching me everything opposite to this" is just so ridiculous and nonsensical that it boggles the mind. The amount of hoops you're jumping through, and the amount of strawmen you're creating, to make this fanfiction narrative/"theory" of yours work is astounding. Rather than even consider the possibility that Daenerys might end up being a less than the godlike hero and saviour and 21st century progressive icon you imagine, you'd rather distort every other character and storyline in the series.

I just.... yeah, I don't even have any more words for that. 

You like history. That's fine. So do I. And Martin does too, that's clear. But Martin didn't just make this series to create some type of anti-aristocracy utopian manifesto that you seem to think he's done - and by the way, Dany is far more hardcore aristocrat than Jon ever has been or ever will be, so..... yeah. Oooops.

[Turandokht]

5 minutes ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

You have again failed to rebut any of my counter-arguments. Every single thing that has happened to Jon since the start of aGoT has shaped his personality into a distinctly forward-thinking and progressive young man, who cares about foreign people and the less fortunate, and wants to help them despite the risk to his own position, and while defying every single accepted norm in the world (i.e. letting the wildlings south of the Wall). For Jon to suddenly make an about face and go "Actually, you know what, I'm now going to be a stout defender of ancient aristocratic privilege and conservatism despite the past few years of my life teaching me everything opposite to this" is just so ridiculous and nonsensical that it boggles the mind. The amount of hoops you're jumping through, and the amount of strawmen you're creating, to make this fanfiction narrative/"theory" of yours work is astounding. Rather than even consider the possibility that Daenerys might end up being a less than the godlike hero and saviour and 21st century progressive icon you imagine, you'd rather distort every other character and storyline in the series.

I just.... yeah, I don't even have any more words for that. 

You like history. That's fine. So do I. And Martin does too, that's clear. But Martin didn't just make this series to create some type of anti-aristocracy utopian manifesto that you seem to think he's done - and by the way, Dany is far more hardcore aristocrat than Jon ever has been or ever will be, so..... yeah. Oooops.

 

I feel like you are just ignoring what I am saying to push your own agenda about Jon. You say that I am pushing Daenerys as a godlike hero and saviour and 21st century progressive icon, but I have so far in this thread I compared her to: Alexander the Great, Frederick II HRE, Alexander II, Reza Pahlavi Shah, Louis XVI, and Indira Gandhi. Surely you don't think those people are 21st century progressive icons, do you? And, indeed, Simon Schama's view of the French Revolution as initially being a reaction to social change forced from the top down by the enlightenment era royal bureaucracy of Louis XVI is a revisionist and strongly anti-progressive view of the French Revolution which compares it, in social terms, much more closely to the Islamic Revolution that brought an end to the Shah. So the idea that I am trying to deny Daenerys' commitment to her royal privilege and rights is, surely, absurd. The most liberal and progressive person on that list is Indira Gandhi, who suspended Parliament during The Emergency in India to Rule by Decree and was ultimately assassinated as a result of a religious sectarian dispute.

I've also spent a long while trying to figure out the ending of the books in light of the ending of the show, and I've considered it from more than one angle. I do feel very much this is the only one that fits. Most of the Daenerys-stans who look at this from a 21st century lens basically accuse the writers of the show of butchering her character with the burning of King's Landing. I have a simpler hypothesis, which does not engage in retrospective application of 21st century moral values: She did everything right, and nothing wrong, in the approach to King's Landing. The only application of 21st century moral values was in how everyone else reacted. Bolivar or Napoleon would have approved of her conduct around the siege; it was nothing worse than anything that was done in the French Wars of Revolution or the Latin American Wars of Independence, the "Decree of War to the Death" by Bolivar being a far more savage programme than any mere burning of a single city, and so I respect the fact that what Dany did there was perfectly sensible with her cultural context, and it's very hypocritical of people to get upset by it, because plenty of liberal reformers in history in pretty much any time period before the past 75 years have in fact done far worse.

The only rational conclusion from the simplistic worldview of GOT is that "the Bad Guys Won", because however flawed and brutal and bloody they are, liberalising autocrats tend to yield measurable improvements in the lives of their people at this stage of human social development that we see in Westeros, and the entrenchment of a reactionary nobles' democracy very much does not.

I'm trying to unpack how it's possible for the ending of the books to be more nuanced than that very bleak vision, and something more approaching bittersweet, and fortunately, history gives us that opportunity.

However, I do understand and respect that neither of us are going to change the other's mind in the slightest bit, so I suggest you just rebut this post however you want, and I won't answer or reply to it, and we can let these respective statements stand for what they are and be judged by people reading the thread as they please.

 

 

[The Commentator]

23 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

Agree. I happen to think Jon is bland and boring at times from an entertainment standpoint, but... it amazes me the extent some fans go to spin him as this evil tyrant. At the risk of baiting the Janos Slynt, oppressed peasant crowd the most evil thing Jon's done is behead a man who refused to obey orders. Dany's definitely done a lot more morally questionable things than that.

I disagree. Jon was the lord commander of an outfit who was tasked with the protection of all living things. He gave in to his darkness and murdered Janos Slynt. He betrayed the NW. Jon is the worst commander in NW history. The institution that has lasted for thousands of years is now falling apart because of an evil young man who was obsessing over his sister. He started a fight with the people that he serves.  Millions will be facing the worst kind of slavery because of Jon. The kind of slavery that even death will not release. Jon basically opened the wall to the Others.  

Millions in Slaver’s Bay have a chance to earn freedom, thanks to Daenerys. She rescued 10000 eunuch soldiers and trainees.  If ever anybody deserved to rule, it is Daenerys.  
 

 

[WhatAnArtist!]

2 minutes ago, Turandokht said:

so I suggest you just rebut this post however you want, and I won't answer or reply to it, and we can let these respective statements stand for what they are and be judged by people reading the thread as they please

I've already done that. I've lost patience waiting for you to rebut my points about Jon, which you've failed to do three times now. The fact is, your vision of Jon is totally wrong in every single regard, and you have consistently failed to defend your claims about him. That's about the size of it. You can reference as many historical figures as you want, it doesn't make you right, and it doesn't make you less wrong in your judgements about Jon Snow.

[Turandokht]

27 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I disagree. Jon was the lord commander of an outfit who was tasked with the protection of all living things. He gave in to his darkness and murdered Janos Slynt. He betrayed the NW. Jon is the worst commander in NW history. The institution that has lasted for thousands of years is now falling apart because of an evil young man who was obsessing over his sister. He started a fight with the people that he serves.  Millions will be facing the worst kind of slavery because of Jon. The kind of slavery that even death will not release. Jon basically opened the wall to the Others.  

Millions in Slaver’s Bay have a chance to earn freedom, thanks to Daenerys. She rescued 10000 eunuch soldiers and trainees.  If ever anybody deserved to rule, it is Daenerys.  
 

 

 

Thank you very much for the corrective. I took this analysis as so self-obvious that I didn't put much effort into covering it in my original post, and that was an error on my part, and I very much appreciate your input.

[Lord Lannister]

48 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I disagree. Jon was the lord commander of an outfit who was tasked with the protection of all living things. He gave in to his darkness and murdered Janos Slynt. He betrayed the NW. Jon is the worst commander in NW history. The institution that has lasted for thousands of years is now falling apart because of an evil young man who was obsessing over his sister. He started a fight with the people that he serves.  Millions will be facing the worst kind of slavery because of Jon. The kind of slavery that even death will not release. Jon basically opened the wall to the Others.  

Millions in Slaver’s Bay have a chance to earn freedom, thanks to Daenerys. She rescued 10000 eunuch soldiers and trainees.  If ever anybody deserved to rule, it is Daenerys.  
 

 

It's amazing the lengths some people will go to to villainize the fictional people that are in competition with their favorites. 

I could point out the lapses Daenerys has made, but I'll not derail the thread and there's plenty of other discussions on that. Jon and Dany both have the same core flaw. However well intentioned they are, they are children put into positions of authority without the wisdom to actually rule.

[SeanF]

39 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I disagree. Jon was the lord commander of an outfit who was tasked with the protection of all living things. He gave in to his darkness and murdered Janos Slynt. He betrayed the NW. Jon is the worst commander in NW history. The institution that has lasted for thousands of years is now falling apart because of an evil young man who was obsessing over his sister. He started a fight with the people that he serves.  Millions will be facing the worst kind of slavery because of Jon. The kind of slavery that even death will not release. Jon basically opened the wall to the Others.  

Millions in Slaver’s Bay have a chance to earn freedom, thanks to Daenerys. She rescued 10000 eunuch soldiers and trainees.  If ever anybody deserved to rule, it is Daenerys.  
 

 

I take issue with almost all the first paragraph.  Slynt was a vile man, who was openly insubordinate, and paid the penalty that any mutineer would pay.  The danger to the Wall comes not from Jon, who is manning and restoring disused castles for the first time in centuries, but from the mutineers.  They simply favour the Lannisters and Boltons.

Jon has faults but to call him “evil” is absurd.

Jon, Dany, and Arya are enlightened by the standards of their world (not of course, the standards of Western Europe in 2021.). If Jon is pushed into killing Dany (a big if) I suspect it will be at the behest of people with base motives, even if they are presented to Jon as fair motives.

[Turandokht]

43 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I take issue with almost all the first paragraph.  Slynt was a vile man, who was openly insubordinate, and paid the penalty that any mutineer would pay.  The danger to the Wall comes not from Jon, who is manning and restoring disused castles for the first time in centuries, but from the mutineers.  They simply favour the Lannisters and Boltons.

Jon has faults but to call him “evil” is absurd.

Jon, Dany, and Arya are enlightened by the standards of their world (not of course, the standards of Western Europe in 2021.). If Jon is pushed into killing Dany (a big if) I suspect it will be at the behest of people with base motives, even if they are presented to Jon as fair motives.

Well, it was a rather banal decision, was it not? Most evil consequences do come from that kind of banality.

[BlackLightning]

1 hour ago, Turandokht said:

Well, it was a rather banal decision, was it not? Most evil consequences do come from that kind of banality.

Agreed.

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I take issue with almost all the first paragraph.  Slynt was a vile man, who was openly insubordinate, and paid the penalty that any mutineer would pay.  The danger to the Wall comes not from Jon, who is manning and restoring disused castles for the first time in centuries, but from the mutineers.  They simply favour the Lannisters and Boltons.

Jon has faults but to call him “evil” is absurd.

Jon, Dany, and Arya are enlightened by the standards of their world (not of course, the standards of Western Europe in 2021.). If Jon is pushed into killing Dany (a big if) I suspect it will be at the behest of people with base motives, even if they are presented to Jon as fair motives.

Also agreed. Well mostly. Jon had delegitimized and endangered the Watch...not so much with the Arya thing or the wildlings thing but with the Mance Rayder thing.

If Slynt had been so openly insubordinate with Tywin/Cersei/Joffrey or Ned or Robb or any other man/woman in a position of power, he would've suffered the same fate.

Mind you, Slynt was not only insubordinate once but twice. I doubt Tywin or Cersei (or even Tyrion for that matter) would've given him a second and third chance.

2 hours ago, Turandokht said:

I've also spent a long while trying to figure out the ending of the books in light of the ending of the show, and I've considered it from more than one angle. I do feel very much this is the only one that fits. Most of the Daenerys-stans who look at this from a 21st century lens basically accuse the writers of the show of butchering her character with the burning of King's Landing. I have a simpler hypothesis, which does not engage in retrospective application of 21st century moral values: She did everything right, and nothing wrong, in the approach to King's Landing. The only application of 21st century moral values was in how everyone else reacted. Bolivar or Napoleon would have approved of her conduct around the siege; it was nothing worse than anything that was done in the French Wars of Revolution or the Latin American Wars of Independence, the "Decree of War to the Death" by Bolivar being a far more savage programme than any mere burning of a single city, and so I respect the fact that what Dany did there was perfectly sensible with her cultural context, and it's very hypocritical of people to get upset by it, because plenty of liberal reformers in history in pretty much any time period before the past 75 years have in fact done far worse.

 

THANK YOU!

I've been saying this for ages.

It wouldn't have even been just Bolivar or Napoleon who would've approved. Everyone from Julius Caesar to Barack Obama and his war council would've approved. Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives would've approved. Jaehaerys the Conciliator and his sister-wife would've approved. Both Rhaenyra and Aegon II would've approved. Both Daeron's would've approved. Hell, even Aegon V might've been inclined to approve. 

Hell, most of these great kings and leaders would've been more irritated and angry that she didn't do it sooner and that she let herself get carried away and destroyed the entire city rather than focusing on the Red Keep.

[Turandokht]

17 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Agreed.

Also agreed. Well mostly. Jon had delegitimized and endangered the Watch...not so much with the Arya thing or the wildlings thing but with the Mance Rayder thing.

If Slynt had been so openly insubordinate with Tywin/Cersei/Joffrey or Ned or Robb or any other man/woman in a position of power, he would've suffered the same fate.

Mind you, Slynt was not only insubordinate once but twice. I doubt Tywin or Cersei (or even Tyrion for that matter) would've given him a second and third chance.

THANK YOU!

I've been saying this for ages.

It wouldn't have even been just Bolivar or Napoleon who would've approved. Everyone from Julius Caesar to Barack Obama and his war council would've approved. Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-wives would've approved. Jaehaerys the Conciliator and his sister-wife would've approved. Both Rhaenyra and Aegon II would've approved. Both Daeron's would've approved. Hell, even Aegon V might've been inclined to approve. 

Hell, most of these great kings and leaders would've been more irritated and angry that she didn't do it sooner and that she let herself get carried away and destroyed the entire city rather than focusing on the Red Keep.

I'd go further, though. I don't think it was an excess to visit fire on the entire city. It was contextually appropriate for a pre-modern military leader.

As a friend of mine said, once: "Imagine if say, it was Alexander, offering quarter, and the defending commander responded by beheading Hephaeston; or Edward III and the Earl of Salisbury; or Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley".

The utter extirpation of a city which responded to an offer of surrender with defiance, was inevitable in the pre-modern era. In fact, ironically, the only person who might have conceived of it as wrong, and felt any regret, was Daenerys herself, based on her observed conduct. The real and great failure of narrative storytelling which absolutely finished the ruin GOT had become comes from everyone in Daenerys' court seeing something that was normative to the medieval world, as proof of her insanity.

[SeanF]

We aren’t even talking about pre-modern times.

Imagine if it were Sir Arthur Harris, at Kings Landing.

”The Lannisters and their supporters entered this war under the childish delusion that they could massacre people and not be massacred in turn.  At Harrenhall, The Twins, Riverrun, and half a hundred other places,  they proceeded to put this rather naive theory into operation.  They sowed the wind, and now they will reap the whirlwind.”

Or Curtis Le May, or Harry Truman.

If the stakes were sufficiently high, we today would rain fire in cities from the air.

 

 

 

[chrisdaw]

21 hours ago, Turandokht said:

Except, I don't feel these are mutually contradictory. GRRM doesn't use any direct historical parallels, he wraps several into themselves to creat

Nah the point of Dany ruling Meereen to Dany's arc is done and on page, it's very clear. She was tired, she forgot who she was, and now she remembers, fire and blood, dragons plant no trees.

There will be no societal progression in Westeros. There is no ground work laid, no appetite for it. Dany conquering Essos is primarily about being a saviour in training, in Essos it's the slaves from slavery, in Westeros it's everyone from the Others.

Dany will divide a realm in war when it needs to be bracing for an external threat to its existence. She will kill a popular and probably better king than she'll be queen. She will be thought mad, betrayed for good reason by those closest to her, and ousted by popular revolt. And she will lose her dragon. Almost alone, fleeing and with near nothing she will eventually reflect, and come to understand she brought it all upon herself, and learn the threat of the Others. Then she will set about the work of making amends, of gaining back a dragon so that she can be the saviour she was always meant to be, to a realm that is no home to her (we'll still be reading about her having found no red door until her second last chapter) and a people that rejected her rule.