Is Dany a White Savior?

[SeanF]

No, for the following reasons;-

1.  There is no racial basis to slavery in Essos.  Both slaves and slavers come from all ethnic groups.  Even the wealthiest slaver can become a slave, if he goes bankrupt, or is captured by pirates.

2. She is not exploiting the natives, either on her own behalf, or on behalf of a Mother Country.  A white saviour is someone like Leopold II, who claims to be benefitting the natives while actually using them for his own purposes.

Martin considers her breaking up the throne and sitting on a level with her subjects, to be sufficiently important to her character development, to change an illustration that placed her on a throne, towering above them.

3. Most of those who are fighting slavery, are local people, not foreigners.  The Unsullied, the Brazen Beasts, and the companies of freedmen come from the area.

4.  She respects the locals’ customs and religions.  What she does not respect is chattel slavery, an institution that merits only contempt.

5.  Her council is made up of representatives of local people.

[SeanF]

54 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

I mean I think you have a point but this is a very difficult area generally.

The trope isn't really about skin colour; it's about cultural imperialism. Character A (from civilised, "correct" background, usually the same as the author's) goes to Foreign Place B and is horrified to discover that B does all sorts of things differently to A. They teach B the error of their ways, and this is good and necessary. This may involve A adopting some of the culture of B in the process but never any of the questionable parts.

The problems A has with B might be moral (human sacrifice, cannibalism, slavery) or practical (they are doomed unless they listen to what A has to tell them). But the principle is the same: A is right and B is at best a noble savage awaiting enlightenment, at worst a degenerate who needs to be exterminated.

This trope is common not just because of the desire of a given writer to espouse the supremacy of their own culture, but because if you're having characters of different cultures interacting, in order for there to be a plot there needs to be some sort of clash of values and one of those value-sets is going to win. Otherwise all you have is a guidebook entry. And usually authors instinctively side with the character whose values most closely resemble their own (and their readers') so A tends to prevail over B. Now, it's common for this to be muddied somehow, so that, say, B is shown to be superior in some ways to A, and you might find that A ends up deciding to remain with B rather than return to their own people, but fundamentally the crisis of the story will be resolved by A in a way which wouldn't have happened if they weren't there. They are, for the purposes of the story, the "Saviour".

(The only real alternative, I think, is for A to accept that actually B is superior in every way and just bow to their inherent betterness. Note that when this type of story is written, it tends to be someone from culture-group B writing it, and really just represents an inversion of the standard trope template. See for instance the (bad) movie The Great Wall).

Now, the actual culture of A and B doesn't really matter and it's a pretty standard trope wherever you have one people who consider themselves the pinnacle of civilisation encountering other people who they think are more backward. A doesn't have to be white. I am not sufficiently familiar with world literature to be able to call up numerous examples, but I am certain that examples exist where A is Chinese, Persian, Indian, Arabic... and probably Mayan or Inca in various lost stories from those cultures, and so on. The reason we talk about "white saviours" though because (a) "white" is considered the dominant group in the US, and US cultural influence is pervasive, and (b) because the overwhelming majority of published stories in any format have been produced in the last 200 years when domination of world affairs and associated colonialism has been by Europeans or European successor states.

But this is fantasy, you cry! Well, yes. But that doesn't necessarily exempt it from the trope. Fantasy is often used intentionally as allegory: you don't really need any training in criticism to spot the message in a film like Avatar even though that takes place on a magic planet with blue people billions of miles away or whatever. And fantasy often takes a lot of its inspiration from the real world. Slaver's Bay specifically, and Essos in general, have been criticised for using generally orientalist tropes to depict the people living there. We get a sense of exoticism from them: they are not of our culture, but there's also a kind of specific exoticism about it. In the way that Westeros is obviously European in inspiration (and principally British at that) Slaver's Bay feels Middle Eastern and the Dothraki feel like steppe nomads. (And of course, Yi Ti feels Chinese, not that we ever go there).

This kind of thing can be present even if not intended. I don't believe, for instance, that George Lucas intended for The Phantom Menace to be racist, but it just so happened that the tropes he was drawing on to depict Watto corresponded so neatly with offensive stereotypes that what he basically gave us was a flying Shylock caricature. In the same way, I don't believe GRRM meant for Slaver's Bay (or Essos in general) to be orientalist, but it is, because what he's done is borrow a whole load of inspiration from a bunch of different middle eastern cultures (and pop-culture versions of said cultures) and mixed it up in a big pot until what comes out is not always obviously any one specific thing from those cultures but is still very obviously of those cultures.

And into that somewhat dubious setting marches Dany, our viewpoint character and protagonist, who is the whitiest whitey who ever whited, with a skin colour that matches GRRM's, and espousing values which we can unhesitatingly agree with because they're our own but which are anathema to the setting's inhabitants. And she tears down the institutions of which she disapproves of (and we cheer her on, because we disapprove of them too!) and becomes a figure of adoration and near-worship.

If this were the other way round, and a (still white, American) GRRM had written a brown-skinned Daznarys zo Tarkarzyn coming to Westeros and busting up their evil slaving cartels, there would be much less criticism on this subject - although some might feel that the intentional aversion/subversion was rather too heavy-handed. But what he's actually written, at least in the first three books of the series, is pretty textbook white-saviour stuff and in the race-hyperconscious era of the 2020s, that engenders comment.

The practical question of what can be done about it, though, is not easy to answer. There are increasing calls for writers to "stay in their lane", i.e. not write about anything outside their immediate cultures or experiences at all, because of concerns about appropriation (or straightforward offence). At the same time, lack of diversity, especially visual diversity on screen, is bemoaned even where such diversity is setting-inappropriate (see for instance, Bridgerton, and really HotD too). I don't know how one can square that circle, and I find the "stay in your lane" advice to be culturally damaging in any event (surely art is meant to be exploratory and challenging rather than confining?) It is probably impossible for an author like GRRM to win. But he could do better. I do think ADwD was a step in the right direction there from where we were in ASoS (notwithstanding that I found the Meereen plot interminable) and I would hope that when we finally leave Essos (hopefully soon in TWoW!) the problem will recede along with that setting. We'll see.

“White Saviorism”, paradoxically, is close to the line of argument adopted by the Confederacy.  (Martin has certainly based the modus operandi of the Sons of the Harpy off the original KKK).

The argument went that these ignorant yankees simply couldn’t understand that the South’s Peculiar Institution benefitted master and slave alike, and they just made life worse for everyone through their ignorance.

Allegations of white saviorism can be used (and are used) to justify any enormity.  Acts are not made right or wrong, depending upon the ethnic origin of the person who carries them out.  The argument that (in this case) chattel slavery is “just their culture” seems to me to be a deeply reactionary one, dressed up in progressive-sounding language.

Dany is not the bearer of some “higher” form of civilisation.  She’s someone who reacts against gross injustice when she encounters it.

[Alester Florent]

Just to clarify to avoid any confusion (as at point (2) of SeanF's earlier post) we don't want to mix up  real-life white saviourism (as seen with criticism of the Kony campaign, or Band Aid, or various gap year programmes, etc.) with a fictional white-saviour narrative, and at least what I'm talking about (and I think what Corvo intended with this thread) is very much the latter. That means we can dispense with some of the cynicism and profit and other complications that tend to be present in the RL editions and look at Dany's arc as a fairly straightforward narrative which has been conceived of and executed by a single human brain in its entirety. When I talk about Dany as a white saviour I'm therefore looking at whether she and the setting in which she operates fits the literary archetype, rather than the RL one.

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Allegations of white saviorism can be used (and are used) to justify any enormity.  Acts are not made right or wrong, depending upon the ethnic origin of the person who carries them out.  The argument that (in this case) chattel slavery is “just their culture” seems to me to be a deeply reactionary one, dressed up in progressive-sounding language.

Dany is not the bearer of some “higher” form of civilisation.  She’s someone who reacts against gross injustice when she encounters it.

But this in itself is culturally-loaded. We believe, we "know" that slavery is wrong. We have reached the conclusion that slavery is wrong because that was the way our culture developed, establishing and extending principles of liberty, equality, and so on, over a period of centuries. It's our culture. And that most of the world now at least pretends not to do slavery any more is because the cultures which reached those conclusions travelled all around the world beating up the ones who were still doing it*.

But in the scheme of human history, this is a recent development. Two thousand years ago, people believed, they knew, just as firmly, that it was A-OK. That was their culture. If they found a society with no slavery, they'd impose it, because that was obviously a better way for society to be run.

The Ghiscari don't believe, I don't think, that "slavery is fundamentally evil, but we're going to do it anyway because it's profitable/traditional/whatever". I think they genuinely don't see what's wrong with it, because it's entirely normative. (Indeed, the former interpretation, that they believe it's wrong and do it anyway, makes them far more more monstrous than the latter). This applies to the slaves too! The pit fighters actively campaign for Daenerys's reforms carried out for their own good and protection to be repealed, and serve as bodyguards for Hizdahr, the figurehead of the traditional Meereen slaving interest, in opposition to Daenerys' liberation movement.

Dany is absolutely coming in from what she (and the readers, I think) perceive as a "better" cultural background, a better civilizational one if you will, and enlightening the locals with her superior morals.

As to which...

Quote

Acts are not made right or wrong, depending upon the ethnic origin of the person who carries them out.

No, they're not, but it's an area where one needs to tread carefully because "right" and "wrong" are dependent on a consistent moral-ethical system, and as you probably know this is a highly debatable area with no consensus even on how any such system can be determined let alone what it is. What we consider to be "right" and "wrong" is rarely if ever derived from first principles (and even if they were, those first principles can't be agreed) but informed by what we are taught, the examples we set, and varied according to our own experiences and thinking. Nor do they remain static over time: there are things which are commonplace today which would have struck our ancestors as irredeemably evil; equally there are things they did (like slavery) which we equally consider fundamentally wrong. And both groups would be absolutely convinced that they are right, because of course they would be. Your own moral framework always seems like the right one.

So while from an objective perspective, the ethnic origin of the person who carries an action out is irrelevant to the morality of that action, from the subjective perspective of the actor in question, and those affected by their actions, it's highly relevant, because their cultural background will determine what they consider to be right and wrong and therefore whether the actions in question are right or wrong.

So when it comes to Dany, she is written in a way that corresponds with our values as readers (on the slavery point, at least) and we are expected to agree with her. Indeed you will probably find few if any readers in the Anglosphere at least who will openly admit that they think the Ghiscari are in the right here. For us, Dany is doing the right thing, and it doesn't matter if she's white or black or purple. We just take it as read that she's in the right.

But what is actually happening is a white woman written by a white author for a probably predominantly white audience going to a land with a radically different culture and saying "hey all you dumb brown people! The way you're doing this is all wrong! Here, let me fix it!" And then she uplifts the oppressed and casts down the oppressors because the brown people were apparently morally or physically incapable of doing this themselves.

Dany's actions are not evil - or at least, they're made no more or less evil by her whiteness. But the fact that it's her doing them plays into a literary trope in which Whitey spreads civilising influence by exposing the way the brown/black/etc. people are doing things wrong. And this literary trope is generally regarded as a bad thing because it's effectively a mandate for cultural imperialism.

 

Now, when it comes to this point specifically:

Quote

The argument that (in this case) chattel slavery is “just their culture” seems to me to be a deeply reactionary one, dressed up in progressive-sounding language.

I do agree. I think there is an inherent conflict between acceptance of cultural diversity in all its forms and the concept of fundamental rights, and since the people espousing both often tend to be on the same side of the argument (i.e. the liberal one) I think there is a large and unpleasant knot of hypocrisy that has formed in the heart of western liberalism. The idea that certain peoples should be allowed to just do their horrible things because those are their customs and who are we to say differently is entirely at odds with the idea that all people have a right not to have these horrible things done to them. And I think I know when the chips are down which side I'm on... but then the fundamental rights I believe in are inherent to my culture which happens to be the dominant one etc.

If it's any consolation, I do think that actually some of "just their culture" we see IRL is actually borne from pragmatism rather than moral reasoning. The countries that "the west" have decided to leave to their business are valued commercial partners (e.g. KSA), or they're too powerful and dangerous to antagonise (e.g. PRC), or they're such basket-cases that intervention is practically infeasible (Somalia). Especially after what happened last time a war was stirred up on the partial justification of "the enemy is a bad man" and it turned into a total shitshow, I think for entirely practical reasons it's just accepted that nothing is going to be done, and the "just their culture" is in part the moral fig-leaf that's grown out of that.

But not entirely: there is still a crisis of confidence to be reckoned with in our culture(s) over what rights really are fundamental and who has the right to enforce them - something that wasn't seriously questioned culturally in the first world at least for fifty years after WW2 but is now an almost insuperable obstacle to gathering support for any kind of proactive diplomacy on the subject.

Which I guess boils down to saying that you might consider the premise of this thread (that the white saviour literary trope is bad) to be a load of crap and if that's the position you take from a reasoned and informed perspective then I can respect it. But insofar as the trope exists (which I think it does) I think it's pretty plain that Dany conforms to it.

 

 

*Yes, obviously, the British (who were probably the class leaders in eliminating global slave trading during the C19) were also among the class leaders in doing the slave trading before that - and the enthusiasm with which they went about exterminating it was almost certainly commercially driven in part. I'm not seeking to whitewash anyone. But it's also off the point.

[SeanF]

In response:-

1.  Both in real life, and in this tale, the slaves resent their condition.  The Haitians did not need to have it “explained” to them by white people that slavery was wrong, before they revolted.  Nor did Spartacus’ followers, nor rebels against the Abbasids, nor any number of slaves who have mutinied or fled from their masters.

In this tale, the ancestors of the Braavosi revolted against their condition.  The Rhoynar fought to the death, rather than let the Valyrians enslave them.  The Faceless Men were started as a form of slave resistance.  Slavers Bay is a powder keg, when Dany arrives.  The Unsullied revolt almost immediately, as do the Meereenese.  Thousands join the army to keep Meereen free.  Volantis is at the point of revolution.

Eastern slaves are not passive creatures waiting for Mighty Whitey to rescue them.

2.  Following on from that, it is not just Western/white people who think that slavery is wrong.  Nor is opposition to slavery just a product of Western liberalism.  To think that, one has to dismiss a mass of evidence of non-Europeans putting up fierce resistance to enslavement.

You will find precious few Black or Asian readers who think that Ghiscari (or Volantene, or Qartheen) slavers are justified, I imagine.

3.  Saying that “everyone” thinks slavery is justified makes the error of looking at this purely from the POV of the slave owner, rather than from the POV of the slave.

Among the slavers, Kraznys, at least, knows that what he is doing is wrong, but he revels in it anyway.  Xaro admits to Dany that the system is cruel, but for some men to prosper, others must grovel in the dust.  The Green Grace actually makes no attempt to justify it, simply claiming the Valrians forced them into it.

But, even if we accept that the masters do think it’s justified (and that begs the question, why is extreme coercion against slaves necessary if the system is so benign?) they are a very small minority of the population.  Most slaves don’t want to be slaves.

Among the slaves, there is a pampered minority of courtesans, tiger soldiers, bureaucrats etc. who may be fairly happy with their condition. But, the vast majority are not.

The Pit fighters are not demanding that people be *compelled* to fight, which was the previous position.  Dwarves and children don’t volunteer to be thrown to wild animals.

4.  In Westeros, we have guys like Ser Gregor Clegane, Tywin Lannister, the Boltons and their followers.  I don’t think the text leaves us in any doubt they are vile men.

Go East, and among the Ghiscari elite, the behaviour of such men has become *institutionalised*.  That does not make such behaviour more ethically acceptable than it would be in the West.  These men are not just slavers.  They are sadists, torturers, rapists, castrators etc.  They are like Vedius Pollio, who fed errant slaves to Moray eels, or Delphine Lalaurie, who carried out awful medical experiments on them.

So, really, I don’t think the white saviour trope fits Dany at all.   She’s not someone who treats her people as “half-devil and half-child”, as per Kipling’s poem.

PS As to the "white saviour trope", there are occasions where it is appropriate, but far too often it is used to condemn anyone who cares about injustice or suffering outside of their own immediate circle.  The argument that the slave trader, arms supplier, or peddlar of watered-down medicines, to poor countries is somehow "better" than the missionary, aid worker, or civil servant, because the former is at least honest in his wickedness, is badly misconcieved.  It's an argument that the only sin is self-righteousness.

[frenin]

Yes but at this point, you take what you can get.

And if the only person who has taken an issue with slavery is Dany, then it is what it is.

[SeanF]

14 minutes ago, frenin said:

Yes but at this point, you take what you can get.

And if the only person who has taken an issue with slavery is Dany, then it is what it is.

I see her as the spark that lit the bonfire.

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

To be fair I think Tyrion was being a bit naïve there. He was in a privileged position for a slave. He's says they're better off than peasants but what does he know, he's never had to live as a peasant. Also I think Tyrion would change his mind if he found out he was going to be fed to the lions during the pit games, a fate he only avoided by luck because Drogon showed up.

I see Tyrion’s internal comment as revealing how badly his family treated the smallfolk, rather than how well Ghiscari slavers treat their chattels.

The Yunkish camp is in fact a hell-hole for the slaves.  We see one of them being smashed apart by sling shots, and Tyrion and Penny are to be fed to lions.  Sweets is used for sex by his obese, diseased, master, and fears they’ll all be sacrificed to serve him in the next world.

[sifth]

So a person who fights to outlaw slavery is a "white savior", simply because of their skin color? I sort of hate this trope, if that's true. It's like criticizing someone for being good or decent.

[Craving Peaches]

37 minutes ago, sifth said:

So a person who fights to outlaw slavery is a "white savior", simply because of their skin color? I sort of hate this trope, if that's true. It's like criticizing someone for being good or decent.

Sometimes it is quite silly. I have heard people have been told not to give to charities that help those less fortunate in developing countries because it is 'white saviourism' and makes them too dependant on outside help...

Should we just not help anyone then? Or are you only allowed to help people with the same skin colour as yourself?

[Corvo the Crow]

54 minutes ago, sifth said:

So a person who fights to outlaw slavery is a "white savior", simply because of their skin color? I sort of hate this trope, if that's true. It's like criticizing someone for being good or decent.

It is about those melanine advantaged people being stupid and incompetent to the degree that some random melanine disadvantaged person is so above them s/he becomes “white saviour”. Ask yourself this why the hell do these people are not able to do anything without this “white savior”

[Oana_Mika]

6 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

It is about those melanine advantaged people being stupid and incompetent to the degree that some random melanine disadvantaged person is so above them s/he becomes “white saviour”. Ask yourself this why the hell do these people are not able to do anything without this “white savior”

So it's the character's fault that there were not many revolts? (although as @SeanF said, the Rhoinar fought the Valyrians, Braavos is made by slaves who fleed Valyria and may be involved in it's doom, we see slaves eagerly fighting to defeat the masters in Dany's chapters, they wish her to bring fire and blood upon the slavers plan a revolt in Volantis)

[Corvo the Crow]

21 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Sometimes it is quite silly. I have heard people have been told not to give to charities that help those less fortunate in developing countries because it is 'white saviourism' and makes them too dependant on outside help...

Should we just not help anyone then? Or are you only allowed to help people with the same skin colour as yourself?

Many charities are useless beyond making people feel good about themselves. A few months ago I was reading something about someone’s experience in such an organization, being sent to a foreign country, I think it was Afghanistan. He was telling  he had his own driver - something he didn’t have back home-, his translator, living in a guarded area with much better housing than locals, food that would be considered luxurious and many other things I can’t remember. In the end he was saying less than 20 percent of the Money spent actually benefited the locals, so a huge waste and essentislly a huge circle giving eachother pats in the back 

[Oana_Mika]

16 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

To be fair I think Tyrion was being a bit naïve there. He was in a privileged position for a slave. He's says they're better off than peasants but what does he know, he's never had to live as a peasant. Also I think Tyrion would change his mind if he found out he was going to be fed to the lions during the pit games, a fate he only avoided by luck because Drogon showed up.

Is Daenerys who saves Tyrion and Penny from the lions, not Drogon's arrival : 

 

The battle was followed by the day's first folly, a tilt between a pair of jousting dwarfs, presented by one of the Yunkish lords that Hizdahr had invited to the games. One rode a hound, the other a sow. Their wooden armor had been freshly painted, so one bore the stag of the usurper Robert Baratheon, the other the golden lion of House Lannister. That was for her sake, plainly. Their antics soon had Belwas snorting laughter, though Dany's smile was faint and forced. When the dwarf in red tumbled from the saddle and began to chase his sow across the sands, whilst the dwarf on the dog galloped after him, whapping at his buttocks with a wooden sword, she said, "This is sweet and silly, but …"

"Be patient, my sweet," said Hizdahr. "They are about to loose the lions."

Daenerys gave him a quizzical look. "Lions?"

"Three of them. The dwarfs will not expect them."

She frowned. "The dwarfs have wooden swords. Wooden armor. How do you expect them to fight lions?"

"Badly," said Hizdahr, "though perhaps they will surprise us. More like they will shriek and run about and try to climb out of the pit. That is what makes this a folly."

Dany was not pleased. "I forbid it."

"Gentle queen. You do not want to disappoint your people."

"You swore to me that the fighters would be grown men who had freely consented to risk their lives for gold and honor. These dwarfs did not consent to battle lions with wooden swords. You will stop it. Now."

The king's mouth tightened. For a heartbeat Dany thought she saw a flash of anger in those placid eyes. "As you command." Hizdahr beckoned to his pitmaster. "No lions," he said when the man trotted over, whip in hand.

"Not one, Magnificence? Where is the fun in that?"

"My queen has spoken. The dwarfs will not be harmed."

"The crowd will not like it."

"Then bring on Barsena. That should appease them."

"Your Worship knows best." The pitmaster snapped his whip and shouted out commands. The dwarfs were herded off, pig and dog and all, as the spectators hissed their disapproval and pelted them with stones and rotten fruit. (ADWD, Daenerys IX)

 

[Oana_Mika]

Many people forget that Dany is one of them, one of the slaves. She has been in their position and knows how it is. She empathizes with them, that's why she fights for them, not because of a sense of self-righteousness :

"Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I . . . my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?" (ASOS, Daenerys II)

 

He was too eloquent for her. Dany had no answer for him, only the raw feeling in her belly. "Slavery is not the same as rain," she insisted. "I have been rained on and I have been sold. It is not the same. No man wants to be owned." (ADWD, Daenerys III)

 

 

[Craving Peaches]

9 minutes ago, Oana_Mika said:

Is Daenerys who saves Tyrion and Penny from the lions, not Drogon's arrival : 

Good call. I forgot that. The point still stands though that Tyrion was going to be fed to the lions and was only saved by external influence, so so much for slaves being 'well off'...

[Craving Peaches]

13 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Many charities are useless beyond making people feel good about themselves. A few months ago I was reading something about someone’s experience in such an organization, being sent to a foreign country, I think it was Afghanistan. He was telling  he had his own driver - something he didn’t have back home-, his translator, living in a guarded area with much better housing than locals, food that would be considered luxurious and many other things I can’t remember. In the end he was saying less than 20 percent of the Money spent actually benefited the locals, so a huge waste and essentislly a huge circle giving eachother pats in the back 

That's true but I still don't think people should be discouraged from trying to help others. They should be informed which organisations are not helpful but saying they shouldn't try to help at all is stupid.

[Corvo the Crow]

Just now, Craving Peaches said:

Good call. I forgot that. The point still stands though that Tyrion was going to be fed to the lions and was only saved by external influence, so so much for slaves being 'well off'...

Tyrion was going to be fed to the lions

not because of being a slave but a dwarf slave. We are told in Westeros many smallfolk throw dwarves down the well.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

46 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Sometimes it is quite silly. I have heard people have been told not to give to charities that help those less fortunate in developing countries because it is 'white saviourism' and makes them too dependant on outside help...

Should we just not help anyone then? Or are you only allowed to help people with the same skin colour as yourself?

Like so many things in our life, there is a nuanced argument to be made. 

...But that's not what usually happens, especially via social media. The nuanced argument is used as a hammer to bludgeon other people into submission. Everyone ends up with more bruises, headaches, and head trauma than before. And we're all a good deal dumber.

[Corvo the Crow]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

That's true but I still don't think people should be discouraged from trying to help others. They should be informed which organisations are not helpful but saying they shouldn't try to help at all is stupid.

I agree, though beyond being wasteful the nature of the help is also important. It should be to eradicate the problem, not help sustain it.

[Oana_Mika]

1 minute ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Tyrion was going to be fed to the lions

not because of being a slave but a dwarf slave. We are told in Westeros many smallfolk throw dwarves down the well.

 

"Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits," Kraznys added. "Douquor's Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first." (ASOS, Daenerys II)

 

Pale Qartheen, black Summer Islanders, copper-skinned Dothraki, Tyroshi with blue beards, Lamb Men, Jogos Nhai, sullen Braavosi, brindle-skinned half-men from the jungles of Sothoros—from the ends of the world they came to die in Daznak's Pit. "This one shows much promise, my sweet," Hizdahr said of a Lysene youth with long blond hair that fluttered in the wind … but his foe grabbed a handful of that hair, pulled the boy off-balance, and gutted him. In death he looked even younger than he had with blade in hand. "A boy," said Dany. "He was only a boy."

"Six-and-ten," Hizdahr insisted. "A man grown, who freely chose to risk his life for gold and glory. No children die today in Daznak's, as my gentle queen in her wisdom has decreed (ADWD, Daenerys IX)

 

 

The queen had also wished to forbid the follies, comic combats where cripples, dwarfs, and crones had at one another with cleavers, torches, and hammers (the more inept the fighters, the funnier the folly, it was thought), but Hizdahr said his people would love her more if she laughed with them, and argued that without such frolics, the cripples, dwarfs, and crones would starve. So Dany had relented. (ADWD, Daenerys IX)

 

Hizdahr looked confused. "There is more to come. A folly, six old women, and three more matches. Belaquo and Goghor!" (ADWD, Daenerys IX)

 

So this is ok to you??