[ADWD Dany last chapter spoilers] Daenerys

[gautsid]

As Werthead's said, there are some uncomfortable foreign policy parallels here.

Going in with the best of intentions, granting 'freedom' to a region that's not quite sure what to do with it, facing a powerful insurgency, the collaborators who helped you will be killed the moment you leave but you can't take them with you...it almost makes you feel sorry for GWB/Daenerys until you realize it's all self-inflicted.

A leader's judged by the results, not their intentions. Like her dragons, Dany's brought nothing but death and despair to everywhere she's gone.

[Eaglewood]

What if you were a slave, would you rather Dany came to Meereen or Cersei came to Meereen. I'm pretty sure Cersei wouldn't give a $#%$# about you and you'd still be a slave the rest of your life.

I have no idea how to respond to this. The slaves Dany freed in Meeren WANTED TO GO BACK TO SLAVERY.

And slavery is illegal in Kings Landing.

And who said I was a slave? Even if I was a freedman I would def want to be in KL under Cersei's rule, mostly confined to being nutty around her noble allies, then Dany, who rains down famine, disease, death, and war every frigging place she goes.

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

I have no idea how to respond to this. The slaves Dany freed in Meeren WANTED TO GO BACK TO SLAVERY.

Completely false, in fact most of them did not.

[Tyrion Dragonrider]

I'm not saying she has had wonderful results. I'm saying she's on a learning curve and she is actually learning. Intentions do matter. Dany is not yet a competent leader, but she knows that and is trying to figure out how to be one. Cersei assumes no one is capable of teaching her anything that all her decisions are the right ones even when they have horrendous outcomes. Dany is 17. She's young and inexperienced. Cersei is in her 30's (?). She's been at court since was far younger than Dany and she's learned nothing about how to rule. She only knows plots and schemes.

By the way, King's Landing didn't fare very well during the War of Five Kings under Cersei either. I'm not sure I would have wanted to be there then. Nor would I have wanted to be brought before her during court. I'd be likely to leave a head shorter.

[corbaekin]

I believe that Cersei should be like the Godwin's Law of the forums. Any time a character is compared to her, the argument is already lost.

Perspicacious makes a really good point. For most, how moral a leader is doesn't matter so much-they care about their lives, and how it affects them. I can't remember the exact quote, but it's something about the smallfolk not sewing dragon banners and praying for the Targs, but praying for rain and crops. It is spot-on accurate with regards to the morality of kings as well. Few care how moral Dany is. They just want to be protected.

[Gongsun Zan]

What learning has Dany done throughout all of ADWD? In her final chapter, she still thinks Hazzoo is a good man, and she's still thinking her council will swoop in and rescue her. If it wasn't for the Dothraki, she would be dead.

Even in Meereen, it's up to the Shavepate and Barristan to clean up her mess. All Dany ever did was ignore her council and get half the world to declare war on her.

I'm sorry, but I don't see the character development that you guys are talking about.

As for all those talking about how young she is, Jon Snow was hardly that much older either, and his reign as Lord Commander was hardly the most mistake-free as well. But the difference is that Jon took charge of things, whereas Dany just sat around doing diddly-squat while the whole world fell apart around her.

[Marina]

Actually, I liked that Dany stayed in Meereen. Things should have moved a lot quicker while she was there, but still - she'd freed the slaves and then left Astapor and what happened?

After seeing all her good work completely undone, I can't fault her for staying in Meereen and at least trying to do damage control. Yes, things fell apart, but they would have been worse if she'd left. These were her *children* - I would have found it very, very difficult to like her if she'd abandoned them.

Obviously it's very difficult to change attitudes and cultures, and it would have been ridiculous if she was completely or even largely successful (definitely not if she continued with the same tactics). Realistically creating a peaceful Meereen would have taken years, even decades, and significant compromise - and she would most likely have to give up dreaming about the Iron Throne. And while it's Westeros that interests me, I would finally really like Dany if she'd given up Westeros and proven that she was committed to her freedmen and stayed in Meereen.

Of course if she did that, the narrative would have suffered. Still, I find it hard to want Dany on the Iron Throne if she is willing to create chaos on Slavers Bay and then disappear across the ocean.

[Herr Fick]

Show some well written progression in Dany's narrative?

How does she do to learn how to rule? She bangs Daario. Outsources her 'peace' and crowd control to a Slaver-King and promises to marry him if he keeps the peace for a certain time. Wow what a great way to learn how to lead "hey if you keep the peace and I don't have to lift a finger you can marry me". Amazing. She visits the sick people once and then shuts them out out of the city. And she fails to listen to the best advice which is that she's not wanted in Essos and she's wanted in Westeros where she could be a great ruler with a great council of people who would want a Dragon Queen. Barristan might as well be speaking to a brick wall when he counsels Dany.

Finally she opens the fighting pits...for five minutes...then flies away on her Dragon when she's never tried to ride one before if I remember correctly. She flees from her people and her problems. And only because of Strong Belwas's appetite is she not poisoned. A few chapters later she perfectly navigates her way to the Dothraki and starts hunting them down. It feels so rushed and ridiculous. She wastes so much time in Mereen doing absolutely nothing but outsourcing her work to sellswords and slavers. She isn't learning to rule at all. And her magical ability to ride Drogon seems like a plot device and not natural progression for her character. Bran's learning to ride a horse as a cripple was given more attention that Dan'y learning to ride a Dragon, something far more important to the overall narrative. Hodor Hodor.

I'm sure she'll swoop into Mereen with Drogon and a Dothraki horde and magically rescue the day. An almost overnight transformation of the uneducated and stubborn child into some fierce leader-warrior who rides a giant Dragon into battle.

Wrong. I would have had Jorah and Tyrion find Dany much earlier. Jorah would have brought him straight to Dany. They become her Master of Coin and Master of Laws or whatever. You don't need a five year gap for Dany when Jorah (a former Lord in Westeros) and Tyrion (former Hand of the King, Master of Coin) can advise her and teach her.

And Tyrion can teach Dany of Westeros, ruling, and Dragons. That would have been better than keeping them separate and having Dany ride off and abandon an entire plotline we've just invested an entire book into. Sadly this will probably happen in TWOW and take tons of time.

All GRRM is doing is avoiding something major. Dany meets no one from Westeros who is major. Jorah and Tyrion? No. Victario and his Horn of Hell? No. New Aegon coming over? Not a chance. The new GRRM way is for nothing to happen. Quentyn....waste of time.

But she's also dumb, naive, and uneducated which far outweighs her compassion. A compassionate yet uneducated and unwise rule is not fit to rule.

Unless she's marrying a slaver and opening the fighting pits. And she loves vengeance and fire and blood a lot as well.

Her own people tried to kill her Dragons. Essos hates her. She will never rule Essos. Her bringing down slavery in Essos would be absolutely ridiculous. Aegon had it right....conquer Westeros with your Dragons....not Essos. Let the Others have Essos.

Ah, your points are mostly moot since you misrepresent my own. I tried to explain what Martin did write, not what he didn't write (which, of course, could have been almost anything).

My point was that (in Martin's view as I understand it) Dany could not ease into her role of ruler during A Dance with Dragons. But the decisions and events you list (and criticise for their lack of progress) are not what is supposed to bring her about, of course. I wrote that Martin provided her with "something major to set her straight", a huge chatch 22 from where almost everything goes to hell (obviously, you didn't quote that part... :rolleyes:). Before that Daenerys is compassionte, cherishes freedom and equality far more than most people around her, and yes, she also is naive and unwise as you said (I would't call her "stupid" based on all the novels, and being "uneducated" is rather irrelevant for a ruler - her problem in this respect is a lack of educated advisors normally at hand for someone like her). Now, everything she does up until the last quarter of the novel helps to build up the catch 22, which - given the social and military conditions around her - is established as inevitable at the end. Clearly, she doesn't 'learn' much but instead gets ever more entangled in her conflict of morals and politics. In a nutshell: Daenerys makes a mess out of it all. (By the way, I think that Martin did a good job with believably writing her and her dilemma.)

Then shit blows up. She flees from Meereen and leaves everything else (except for her dragon) behind. Afterwards she goes through a very personal and powerful experience, probably looses a child again, and finally confirms her resolve to rule over her people as well as her dragon(s).

I din't say that Martin could not have done this any other way. But I tried to explain why he might have thought this to be the best way. And honestly, reading your criticism, I fail to see what bucketloads of Daenerys chapters with Tyrion, Jorah and some of the other characters could have accomplished in this respect. There was supposed to be a gap of five years! To condense that into considerably less than one year of politicking, bickering and advising ("Let me tell you something, little princess...", said the stunted, noseless dwarf who had killed his father...) would have been either unbelievable (if nothing game-changing had happened at all) or less dramatic (if something had happened, it probably wouldn't have been as big as the clusterfuck at the end of A Dance with Dragons). It looks like Martin wanted a big transformative experience for Daenerys. She was supposed to fail as a ruler, to be bullied by her enemies, to give up far too much for her moral sentiments, and to drastically change in a final catharsis. This is the point where she learns and changes - everything before that is just the set-up (whereas you seem to believe that I interpret the events at Meereen to provide her learning curve, which I do not).

It's not like I'm happy with Martin's decision to scrap the original plan after A Storm of Swords. Maybe he could have made it, maybe the narrative would have worked out. But there is no five-year-gap, so we will have to live with a continuous narration through all seven (?) novels. And given the obvious difficulties*, I think that Martin has done a great job.

*: There were some people in another thread who wrote that they don't see what all the "Meereenese knot" fuss was about - are you kidding me?!

[Ran]

Funnily enough, George has indicated that the degree to which people wouldn't get "the fuss" would be directly proportionate to how successful he was in dealing with it.

[Herr Fick]

Funnily enough, George has indicated that the degree to which people wouldn't get "the fuss" would be directly proportionate to how successful he was in dealing with it.

:D

But nevertheless, it's clear that synchronising that many plotlines while maintaining the correct order of events must have been "three bitches and a bastard" indeed.

[Ser Pistus]

Funnily enough, George has indicated that the degree to which people wouldn't get "the fuss" would be directly proportionate to how successful he was in dealing with it.

In my view, people are not saying that they don't get "the fuss". Instead, they are saying that the Meereen situation remains almost completely unsolved.

[Herr Fick]

In my view, people are not saying that they don't get "the fuss". Instead, they are saying that the Meereen situation remains almost completely unsolved.

That may be. But I was referring to people who expressly claimed that the plotlines converging on Meereen should not have been difficult to write.

If one doesn't like the latter third of the novel with its unresolved events, fine. But to deny the technical difficulty of A Dance with Dragons which is far more complex than even A Storm of Swords, is just bullshit.

[Ser Pistus]

But to deny the technical difficulty of A Dance with Dragons which is far more complex than even A Storm of Swords, is just bullshit.

Actually, I do not see why is it more complex, let alone far more. Explain, please.

[Ran]

"The Meereenese situation" and "the Meereenese Knot" are two different things. George appears to have resolved the latter to his satisfaction.

[Ser Pistus]

"The Meereenese situation" and "the Meereenese Knot" are two different things. George appears to have resolved the latter to his satisfaction.

Oh.

And do you have a notion what the Knot might be? Previously I had the impression that it is the arrival of all Dany's suitors and guests, but now obviously it is not.

[garth]

That may be. But I was referring to people who expressly claimed that the plotlines converging on Meereen should not have been difficult to write.

If one doesn't like the latter third of the novel with its unresolved events, fine. But to deny the technical difficulty of A Dance with Dragons which is far more complex than even A Storm of Swords, is just bullshit.

I don't see it at all because we are basically where we started (other than people who were starting on their journey's now getting close to getting there).

If there had been some resolution or growth of the character (or maybe if he was working out how to square tyrion's rumored dragon training skills with victarions horn, or how she would fend off a khal while redirecting them into the yunkaii or if Quart actually did anything other than threaten her again and then leave...)

But, all of the major plot sticky points from before the book are STILL there.

She had her cliche "epiphany chapter" at the end, but, even as forced as that was, i fail to see how it was a "knot" that was fixed.

[Ran]

The Meereneese Knot was sorting out the order of arrivals in relation to events and figuring out how to show the key events following Dany's departure. Not everyone may have arrived, and the Battle for Meereen is just on the verge of arrival, but now George knows how to do it after settling on when to place Dany's marriage in relation to Quentyn's arrival and how to fit in a POV to witness the events following Daenerys's flight.

[trio]

Another thing I didn't like about Dany's chapters was how broadly Hizdhar was sketched. Compare him to Daario, about whom we got hell of a lot of description. Daario really jumps off the page, like him or loathe him.

Dany's actual husband gets pretty short shrift by comparison. He gets a couple of conversations, that's it. I don't feel like I know him at all, so I have no idea whether he was the poisoner or not, and what's more I don't care.

He was just written so vaguely. I don't think GRRM had much interest in him, really. And I think we should have gotten to know him better. He is her husband, after all.

Sure, he'll probably be killed off pretty soon...but he mightn't be. And he's a total mystery to me. That irritated me even as I was reading.

[garth]

The Meereneese Knot was sorting out the order of arrivals in relation to events and figuring out how to show the key events following Dany's departure. Not everyone may have arrived, and the Battle for Meereen is just on the verge of arrival, but now George knows how to do it after settling on when to place Dany's marriage in relation to Quentyn's arrival and how to fit in a POV to witness the events following Daenerys's flight.

So, the knot was putting together an outline of who comes in first, second, third? (despite the fact that none of them have actually shown up yet)

I can't wait for the Mereneese tangle or the Mereneese other excuse when he has to actually have them come on stage and do something. Then, the Mereneese contortion where he has to figure out how to make everyone leave mereen. To me, it looks like the Mereneese knot was code for "i want to watch the jets game"

[Ser Pistus]

To me, it looks like the Mereneese knot was code for "i want to watch the jets game"

Oh, but this is wicked.

:D