Jon & Daenerys’ Flaws as Leaders

[Corvo the Crow]

6 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

I just reread Dany meeting The Unsullied and I'm dumbfounded that anyone would misconstrue them as having any choice in anything they are "raised" to do.  Keep in mind that only 1 in 3 children even survives their training.  This baby killing is literally their final exam, crowning glory--it is how they win their pointed caps and become worthy of being called Unsullied.  I won't resort to name calling or engaging in argument but I will implore you to go back and read just that backstory on these poor mutilated children.  This is the entirety of their rearing from a very early age.  It's heartbreaking.  It's hard to believe anyone could read this and not understand who these boys are or what they've been tortured with in order to become Unsullied.  

Sorry, but this is a very wrong reasoning if you want to defend the slaves(and I think wrong in itself also but let's not get into that part) and do you know why? Because it also absolves the slavers.

I ask you what response would you have given me that if I absolved the slavers of their actions saying "Oh they have been raised as seeing themselves as superior to other human beings and that they are allowed to do with them as they please" I think, or at least I want to believe at the very least that you would've disagreed me, one would hope politely unlike some folk here who've shown themselves as lacking good manners.

Now tell me please, why can slavers can't be absolved of their mindset which they have been subjected to for thousands of years for generation upon generation while slaves who have at most been subjected to theirs for a couple of decades at best can be absolved of theirs? Are slavers a victim of their upbringing? Or are they guilty of not getting past it and tearing apart? 

 

 

[SeanF]

2 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Sorry, but this is a very wrong reasoning if you want to defend the slaves(and I think wrong in itself also but let's not get into that part) and do you know why? Because it also absolves the slavers.

I ask you what response would you have given me that if I absolved the slavers of their actions saying "Oh they have been raised as seeing themselves as superior to other human beings and that they are allowed to do with them as they please" I think, or at least I want to believe at the very least that you would've disagreed me, one would hope politely unlike some folk here who've shown themselves as lacking good manners.

Now tell me please, why can slavers can't be absolved of their mindset which they have been subjected to for thousands of years for generation upon generation while slaves who have at most been subjected to theirs for a couple of decades at best can be absolved of theirs? Are slavers a victim of their upbringing? Or are they guilty of not getting past it and tearing apart? 

 

 

I cannot understand how such an argument is being seriously advanced.

The slavers *choose* to brutalise their victims.  The Unsullied have a sword put to their throats.

That is the difference.

[kissdbyfire]

3 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Sorry, but this is a very wrong reasoning if you want to defend the slaves(and I think wrong in itself also but let's not get into that part) and do you know why? Because it also absolves the slavers.

How does it absolve the slavers? If anything, it condemns them twice: for being slavers and for their “methods” in creating the Unsullied. 

3 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

I ask you what response would you have given me that if I absolved the slavers of their actions saying "Oh they have been raised as seeing themselves as superior to other human beings and that they are allowed to do with them as they please" I think, or at least I want to believe at the very least that you would've disagreed me, one would hope politely unlike some folk here who've shown themselves as lacking good manners.

Sorry, but no. This is a very poor argument, bordering on disingenuous. The slavers weren’t put through unimaginable torture since they were children to become slavers. 

3 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Now tell me please, why can slavers can't be absolved of their mindset which they have been subjected to for thousands of years for generation upon generation while slaves who have at most been subjected to theirs for a couple of decades at best can be absolved of theirs? Are slavers a victim of their upbringing? Or are they guilty of not getting past it and tearing apart? 

Because it is a mindset, as you said yourself. It’s not something that was beaten into them from a very young age. Just think what the Unsullied formative years were like. Actually, I don’t think we can fully understand the horror, and comparing that to being raised a slaver is really not a good argument. 

[Craving Peaches]

6 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The slavers *choose* to brutalise their victims.  The Unsullied have a sword put to their throats.

Whatever conditioning the Slavers have gone through to become Slavers will not have been the same as what the Unsullied went through to become Unsullied.

[Curled Finger]

Just now, Corvo the Crow said:

Sorry, but this is a very wrong reasoning if you want to defend the slaves(and I think wrong in itself also but let's not get into that part) and do you know why? Because it also absolves the slavers.

I ask you what response would you have given me that if I absolved the slavers of their actions saying "Oh they have been raised as seeing themselves as superior to other human beings and that they are allowed to do with them as they please" I think, or at least I want to believe at the very least that you would've disagreed me, one would hope politely unlike some folk here who've shown themselves as lacking good manners.

Now tell me please, why can slavers can't be absolved of their mindset which they have been subjected to for thousands of years for generation upon generation while slaves who have at most been subjected to theirs for a couple of decades at best can be absolved of theirs? Are slavers a victim of their upbringing? Or are they guilty of not getting past it and tearing apart? 

 

 

If we are being serious Corvo and you are asking about the slavers in aspect to their time and place I wouldn't be able to pass a judgement.  I wasn't there.  I've never lived through it.  I can have a discussion about Hoster Tully's fathering with you if you like, because I think I do understand what a good father was supposed to do in his setting without brining my contemporary thinking into it and you won't like it.  In rereading The Unsullied's education and training it does sound as though the culture they exist in accepts their training as completely normal and exacts no punishment other than the payment to the owner of the slave baby.  Slaving simply sounds like the way the culture moves.   I don't get any more than that from the text.  If you want to talk about a specific slaver, maybe Kraznys himself, it would depend on the topic and questions.   My opinions don't matter so much as what happens contemporaneous to the story--does that make sense?   For all it's worth, Kraznys sounds like an asshole, but appears to have been exceedingly good at producing a fine military unit.  Still an asshole.  

None of our arguments for or against the Unsullied matter, well ours seem to matter to Dany where they are concerned as she is horrified at what they've endured and sets them free the moment she takes possession of them.  They choose to throw in with her.  I think we had words about this earlier somewhere.  She didn't deem them killers or an immediate army.  She had pity for them and showed them mercy. 

 

[Craving Peaches]

I do not want to get into a big argument but the Unsullied do still have a choice in the most basic and minimalist sense of the word, unless they are literal automatons/robots, a state I do not believe it would be possible to achieve without drugging them no matter what conditioning they go through. It is not a very nice choice either way, being forced to either kill an innocent newborn or to be tortured to death, but it exists in the way that they should at least be aware of the possibility of either option, unless they are being drugged or are psychotic. Perhaps it would be best to frame the choice for them as 'choosing not to die' rather than 'choosing to kill' (though that is a part of it), I can only imagine what the masters must have put them through in order to reach a stage where they are able to kill a newborn baby in front of the mother.

[Corvo the Crow]

7 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Sorry, but no. This is a very poor argument, bordering on disingenuous. The slavers weren’t put through unimaginable torture since they were children to become slavers. 

16 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Sorry but no, this is bordering on being hypocritical. Unlike the slaves who have become a part of this way later on, they grew up in an environment where this is considered business as usual, by people who were also raised in the same for generation upon generation. 

 

11 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Because it is a mindset, as you said yourself. It’s not something that was beaten into them from a very young age. Just think what the Unsullied formative years were like. Actually, I don’t think we can fully understand the horror, and comparing that to being raised a slaver is really not a good argument. 

I'm talking about exactly this. Some are born slaves, so they aren't that different from the masters in this regard but many of them have known an other life, they know there are different ways.

 

10 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

None of our arguments for or against the Unsullied matter, well ours seem to matter to Dany where they are concerned as she is horrified at what they've endured and sets them free the moment she takes possession of them.  They choose to throw in with her.  I think we had words about this earlier somewhere.  She didn't deem them killers or an immediate army.  She had pity for them and showed them mercy. 

 

By not punisihing them, she treats them as (former) property same way as the slave girl who was NOT raped according to Dany. 

Actually it is also quite hypocritical considering there was such a ruckus about Tyrion and the half-dead sex slave but no one bats an eye when it is Daenerys who turns a blind eye to another sex slave's suffering.

[Corvo the Crow]

4 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I do not want to get into a big argument but the Unsullied do still have a choice in the most basic and minimalist sense of the word, unless they are literal automatons/robots, a state I do not believe it would be possible to achieve without drugging them no matter what conditioning they go through. It is not a very nice choice either way, being forced to either kill an innocent newborn or to be tortured to death, but it exists in the way that they should at least be aware of the possibility of either option, unless they are being drugged or are psychotic. Perhaps it would be best to frame the choice for them as 'choosing not to die' rather than 'choosing to kill' (though that is a part of it), I can only imagine what the masters must have put them through in order to reach a stage where they are able to kill a newborn baby in front of the mother.

They have the choice of slaying the slave owner of the baby they murdered instead of giving the scum a silver. We can't know if they have access to real weapons during training but they literally have the means to do this when they are sent to do this. They also have the same means earlier, when they are ordered to kill their puppies.

[Curled Finger]

2 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

By not punisihing them, she treats them as (former) property same way as the slave girl who was NOT raped according to Dany. 

Actually it is also quite hypocritical considering there was such a ruckus about Tyrion and the half-dead sex slave but no one bats an eye when it is Daenerys who turns a blind eye to another sex slave's suffering.

I'm sorry Corvo, I'm not following you at all here. 

[Corvo the Crow]

Just now, Curled Finger said:

I'm sorry Corvo, I'm not following you at all here. 

I am saying Daenerys acknowledges that the unsullied were slaves and as slaves, they had no agency of their own, they were practically property by not punishing the former master of the pregnant slave, she also acknowledges that she was nothing but property. She even outright says as much. 

Quote

A former slave came, to accuse a certain noble of the Zhak. The man had recently taken to wife a freedwoman who had been the noble’s bedwarmer before the city fell. The noble had taken her maidenhood, used her for his pleasure, and gotten her with child. Her new husband wanted the noble gelded for the crime of rape, and he wanted a purse of gold as well, to pay him for raising the noble’s bastard as his own. Dany granted him the gold, but not the gelding. “When he lay with her, your wife was his property, to do with as he would. By law, there was no rape.” Her decision did not please him, she could see, but if she gelded every man who ever forced a bedslave, she would soon rule a city of eunuchs.

Although  she does what she does out of convenience, it is important in the sense this is one of the few things that she was consistent about.

[SeanF]

6 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Sorry but no, this is bordering on being hypocritical. Unlike the slaves who have become a part of this way later on, they grew up in an environment where this is considered business as usual, by people who were also raised in the same for generation upon generation. 

 

I'm talking about exactly this. Some are born slaves, so they aren't that different from the masters in this regard but many of them have known an other life, they know there are different ways.

 

By not punisihing them, she treats them as (former) property same way as the slave girl who was NOT raped according to Dany. 

Actually it is also quite hypocritical considering there was such a ruckus about Tyrion and the half-dead sex slave but no one bats an eye when it is Daenerys who turns a blind eye to another sex slave's suffering.

The Unsullied are people who have been kidnapped, tortured, and castrated.  They are then told they must kill a baby each, or be killed in turn.

Nobody is kidnapped, tortured, and castrated, in order to be raised as a slaver.  Nor is any of them told they will be put to death, unless they practice slavery.

That is the glaringly obvious moral distinction between the two groups.

[Curled Finger]

9 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

I am saying Daenerys acknowledges that the unsullied were slaves and as slaves, they had no agency of their own, they were practically property by not punishing the former master of the pregnant slave, she also acknowledges that she was nothing but property. She even outright says as much. 

Although  she does what she does out of convenience, it is important in the sense this is one of the few things that she was consistent about.

Thanks for supplying your example.  Although I do understand your point I think it's invalid here.  Dany's decree is actually right.  A bed slave is a slave bound for a specific purpose.  That purpose would preclude any claim of rape under any circumstance during the ownership of a bed slave.  I wonder what would happen to the child of the pregnancy had it been born in captivity?  Nonetheless I think the child is what the gold was awarded for.  I don't think it was convenience, i think it was for peace, Corvo.  The OP underlines the struggle Dany has keeping peace after abolishing slavery and this is all part of her struggle.  She's got to be dying inside when she passes this judgement.  It takes a very broad mind to overcome that visceral instinct.  It is the only compromise she sees for eventual peace.  If only she had one experienced advisor at her right hand.  

[Curled Finger]

32 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I do not want to get into a big argument but the Unsullied do still have a choice in the most basic and minimalist sense of the word, unless they are literal automatons/robots, a state I do not believe it would be possible to achieve without drugging them no matter what conditioning they go through. It is not a very nice choice either way, being forced to either kill an innocent newborn or to be tortured to death, but it exists in the way that they should at least be aware of the possibility of either option, unless they are being drugged or are psychotic. Perhaps it would be best to frame the choice for them as 'choosing not to die' rather than 'choosing to kill' (though that is a part of it), I can only imagine what the masters must have put them through in order to reach a stage where they are able to kill a newborn baby in front of the mother.

They are drugged, Peaches...

"The wine of courage," was the answer he gave her. "It is no true wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things. They drink it with every meal from the day they are cut, and with each passing year feel less and less. It makes them fearless in battle. Nor can they be tortured. Tell the savage her secrets are safe with the Unsullied. She may set them to guard her councils and even her bedchamber, and never a worry as to what they might overhear.  ASOS Daenaerys II

[Corvo the Crow]

1 minute ago, Curled Finger said:

Dany's decree is actually right.  A bed slave is a slave bound for a specific purpose.  That purpose would preclude any claim of rape under any circumstance during the ownership of a bed slave.

Yes, slave, under ownership, meaning property.

 

2 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

I wonder what would happen to the child of the pregnancy had it been born in captivity? 

I don't think it would be freeborn like the Ironborn and salt wives. I think they would've terminated the prenancy. A pregnant bed slave is really not a good bed slave unless the owner has a thing for it.

3 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

don't think it was convenience, i think it was for peace, Corvo. 

Yes, it was convenience,  for keeping a peace of sorts.

 

4 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

The OP underlines the struggle Dany has keeping peace after abolishing slavery and this is all part of her struggle. 

I remind you "her struggle" also involves allowing people to sell themselves, allowing slavery at Yunkai and even Astapor whose people she abandoned.

 

6 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

It is the only compromise she sees for eventual peace.  If only she had one experienced advisor at her right hand.  

Allowing slavery in Astapor and Yunkai also?

[Corvo the Crow]

5 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

They are drugged, Peaches...

"The wine of courage," was the answer he gave her. "It is no true wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things. They drink it with every meal from the day they are cut, and with each passing year feel less and less. It makes them fearless in battle. Nor can they be tortured. Tell the savage her secrets are safe with the Unsullied. She may set them to guard her councils and even her bedchamber, and never a worry as to what they might overhear.  ASOS Daenaerys II

"Feel less" Is not their feelings, it is the pain. They demonstrate they are quite capable of feelings, visiting whores, enjoying food and drinks or household guards getting sold in tens fraternizing with other household slaves etc.

[Craving Peaches]

2 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

They are drugged, Peaches...

"The wine of courage," was the answer he gave her. "It is no true wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things. They drink it with every meal from the day they are cut, and with each passing year feel less and less. It makes them fearless in battle. Nor can they be tortured. Tell the savage her secrets are safe with the Unsullied. She may set them to guard her councils and even her bedchamber, and never a worry as to what they might overhear.  ASOS Daenaerys II

Oh that's horrible. It's draining their ability to feel. Good god. I must have somehow overlooked this while reading. However, and I know I'm being nitpicky but it's important for me to know: is this meaning they don't realise the effect their actions will have, or they do realise but don't feel anything?

[Corvo the Crow]

Just now, Craving Peaches said:

Oh that's horrible. It's draining their ability to feel. Good god. I must have somehow overlooked this while reading. However, and I know I'm being nitpicky but it's important for me to know: is this meaning they don't realise the effect their actions will have, or they do realise but don't feel anything?

No, they have feelings, just look above 

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Corvo the Crow said:

"Feel less" Is not their feelings, it is the pain. They demonstrate they are quite capable of feelings, visiting whores, enjoying food and drinks or household guards getting sold in tens fraternizing with other household slaves etc.

I think it could have an emotional component as well because if it was just feel no pain it would be like leprosy and they wouldn't actually be that effective because they wouldn't recognise when they were injured so could bleed to death more easily etc. Unless the drug is mind control though I think they still would have a choice in the most basic sense.

[SeanF]

9 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Yes, slave, under ownership, meaning property.

 

I don't think it would be freeborn like the Ironborn and salt wives. I think they would've terminated the prenancy. A pregnant bed slave is really not a good bed slave unless the owner has a thing for it.

Yes, it was convenience,  for keeping a peace of sorts.

 

I remind you "her struggle" also involves allowing people to sell themselves, allowing slavery at Yunkai and even Astapor whose people she abandoned.

 

Allowing slavery in Astapor and Yunkai also?

What makes you think Astapor and Yunkai are under her government?

It is the governments of those cities who reinstate slavery.  She does not do so.

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Corvo the Crow said:

No, they have feelings, just look above 

Sorry didn't see your comment before posting. I imagine there would perhaps be an emotional component but I'm not sure it is to the extent that they unequivocally have no choice because they can't control themselves or don't know what they are doing.