[ADwD Spoilers] Daenerys: Neglectful Mother!

[Sega AM2]

Are you sure that Drogon killed that girl? I'm not. I suspect that it was just a trick.

Or the guy was no father and no peasant, just a good mummer. Anyway, it was clearly worth an investigation.

Dany and others think that it is possible that The Harpy or someone else burned a body of a girl and pretended that Drogon was responsible. You would think that a giant Dragon with a 20 foot wingspan would yield some witnesses but no. I thought it was pretty clear in that scene that Dany was getting played. That due to her emotional response to seeing a heap of charred bones that she wouldn't be able to see through the deception.

Don't forget that in this very same book the Dornish are sent the skull of Gregor who is still alive. A deception that they do not see through because they are overwhelmed by emotion. They so want it to be Gregor, they so want revenge for Elia and the children, that they assume that Cersei has done them right. Even though in the next few paragraphs Doran reveals how Cersei has done them wrong in just about every other way. Their emotions cloud their judgement and they see what they want to see.

I thought that parallel was pretty direct. The bones in both cases are false. Meant to manipulate the leaders of Meereen in one case and Dorne in the other. Dany sees bones of children and thinks that it is Drogon. Doran and company see a giant skull and all agree that it belongs to Gregor.

[Blaine]

I thought that parallel was pretty direct. The bones in both cases are false. Meant to manipulate the leaders of Meereen in one case and Dorne in the other. Dany sees bones of children and thinks that it is Drogon. Doran and company see a giant skull and all agree that it belongs to Gregor.

Except for the fact that it could very well be Gregor's skull. No telling what's under the hood on Robert Strong.

[Kadence]

The dragons are wild animals who can never be tamed.

Aegon the Conqueror and all those Valyrian dragonlords will surely be disappointed to learn this :) Dragons can be controlled and Valyrians did it for centuries - largely with spells, it seems. Finding out how to control dragons might not be easy, in fact it will probably he quite hard, but it needs to be the top priority. And it is definitely possible. Especially for Dany who will still have her special bond - even though she tried her best to make the dragons forget her.

Dany makes some bad decisions, though probably not as much as people give her a hard time for. Like Ned, Catelyn and occasionally Jon, Dany's decisions seem obviously bad in hindsight after we've seen the disastrous consequences.

It's not hindsight though. It's a Cersei in Feast-like situation where as soon as the reader reads her decision, he facepalms and goes "Oh god no".

The problem with this is that since her choices turn out badly it leads us to assume that any other alternative would've worked out better. Maybe some would've, but there's a good chance many of them would've gone worse or simply lead to a similar result.

Actually most of Dany's choices throughout the entire series turn out far better than they should, due to her having more plot armor than any character.

Even here when she makes disastrous decisions throughout Dance, look at the result: inside of getting poisoned, she ends up re-bonding with Drogon and will probably end up with a Dothraki horde again. Meanwhile Barristan and Shavepate and the Unsullied and the Second Sons are going to slaughter the Yunkai'i. Possibly with Victarion's help, and maybe with Dany's new horde to clean up the leftovers. And Hizdahr probably isn't going to last long as her husband, regardless of how it happens; even if he is found not guilty of the poisoning his days are numbered, he might conviently die in the battle. So Dany does blunder after blunder in Dance, and what's the result? The Slaver's Bay region is basically going to be hers, with Meereen and Yunkai and probably Astapor being helpless to resist her. And she's likely to be single again soon. And she'll end up with a magical dragon-controlling horn!

If you were taking a results-only based approach to analyzing Dany you'd think she was mega-uber-super genius next stage in human evolution type stuff.

I still think she's not nearly as bad as Cersei. Dany listens and considers all counsel.

Dany doesn't listen well at all actually, and when she does it's usually to the worst advice (e.g. "marry Hizdahr", which all her smart advisors told her was dumb).

But at least she's learning.

Ah but that's the thing, most readers feel like she was regressing badly. The only thing she learned was at the end when she heard voices in her head talking about "the dragon" and "fire and blood". I don't think that's much of a lesson - but thank god she's learning it because from a reader POV, it means we can finally be rid of Meereen.

[ladytalon]

This was one of the more frustrating aspects of Dany's chapters for me as well. The only thing that annoyed me more was her whole 'I'm a twitterpated, dragon queen in heat' shtick for Daario. I became more and more perplexed every time she kept repeating she was the blood of the dragon, mother of dragons, and even came to the conclusion that if her dragons were monsters than so was she, yet still they remained locked up in a deep dark pit for doing what dragons do. Did she really think her dragons would be able to tell the difference between a two-legged meat sack and four-legged one? Meat is meat, a dragon does not discriminate.

Why didn't she make it a priority to train them, to discover how best to control their behavior. She gave some rudimentary training to Drogon, but then proceeded to neglect them as they grew larger and instead found thousands of more poor unfortunates to mother over. You are the mother of DRAGONS Dany, not the mother of slaves. The flashy guy with the gold tooth is only sleeping with you because of those badass fire breathers you gave "birth" to, not because of the dirty squatters you keep at the bottom of your pyramid.

Your writing is fabulously evocative - "two-legged meat sack" particularly! One thing people are forgetting is that Dany is all of -what? 15 years old? She might have gotten trained in the arts of pleasing Khal Drogo, but all this politics, on top of the dragons, on top of her needy masses, is a BIT overwhelming. Not to mention the sleazy gold-toothed skank she's lusting after!

[variance]

What's worse than a lousy ruler? A lousy ruler with a dragon.

[Jon Snow's Body]

And if I recall correctly, the grieving father waited until the hall was nearly empty before he opened the sack. If he were trying to elicit a negative response from the Meeranese court he would have dumped the body in front of a room full of witnesses.

[Kadence]

Don't forget that in this very same book the Dornish are sent the skull of Gregor who is still alive.

Gregor is dead. And the skull might be his, or it might be the skull of one of the dwarfs they killed for Cersei. But it's probably his due to the vision of Jaime, Sandor and the headless giant. Either way he's dead.

A deception that they do not see through because they are overwhelmed by emotion. They so want it to be Gregor, they so want revenge for Elia and the children, that they assume that Cersei has done them right. Even though in the next few paragraphs Doran reveals how Cersei has done them wrong in just about every other way. Their emotions cloud their judgement and they see what they want to see.

This is the complete opposite of what was going on there. Emotionally they are actually extremely suspicious of it being Gregor. But as Tyene explains logically, there is not only no way Gregor could have lived, but Cersei would have to be a madwoman to try to fake his death since you cannot hide an 8 foot tall knight, and if the lie is found out she essentially just declared war on Dorne. Of course, Cersei actually *is* a madwoman, but Gregor is dead. You can't expect the Dornish to account for necromancy though :laugh:

The bones in both cases are false.

Dany was not getting "played", Drogon is a man-eater period. (or woman-eater, in this case and with that gladiator chick)

[Enguerrand]

Contrary to many people I have always liked reading Dany's chapter, until now. even she managed to bore me.

I imagined Dany's big thing in ADWD would be mastering her invincible killing machines.(I might have been been misled by the title) The chapter when they were eating people made me think it was kinda urgent. I thought she would try different things, and that Tyrion would reach her and give her the final piece of the puzzle and that would solve most of her domestic problems when she let them work the Yunkai over.

In the end she didn't need to learn any valyrian spells, learn to warg into them or something exciting. She gets to ride Drogon my looking at him sternly and cracking a whip..

I mean I think even the Danyhaters would have prefered that story over the politics of Mereen.

Which make me wonder why write the dragons unruly in the first place, when it's so easy to tame them. I guess the book would have been to short.

[Gazz22]

In DwD Dany actually came across as a bit of a hypocrite. She wants to be the loving ruler who her subjects will look upon as "mother" but also has three man-eaters who are always going to be a danger. There were a couple of times throughout the book when this was fairly obvious. One is when the boy told her about how some of her freedmen killed his father and raped his mother. She just stares blankly at him and excuses her freedmen. The boy is naturally furious. She treated Quentyn in a similar way. Don't get me wrong, she is usually stuck between a rock and a hard place with these decisions but she shouldn't pretend to be super-caring before shooting people down.

[pow]

If you want to compare them to real children; if my kids killed people I'd lock them up and force them to watch Dora the explorer too.

[Kadence]

In the end she didn't need to learn any valyrian spells, learn to warg into them or something exciting. She gets to ride Drogon my looking at him sternly and cracking a whip..

The whole thing with her whipping Drogon left me pretty incredulous. Drogon can fly, why is he just standing there letting this girl whip him? He had just tried to kill her with fire breath so it's not like he was trying to take it easy on her. He just seemed to totally forget he could move, let alone fly! What a convenient moment for him to lost all his instincts.

I mean I think even the Danyhaters would have prefered that story over the politics of Mereen.

I don't think most people are Dany "haters", they just dislike the way her story and character are evolving. I think most readers quite liked Dany in the first couple of books.

I think like most others who are vocal about Dany's storyline, we *want* Dany to impress us! We want her to be smart and cunning and make good decisions. What we don't want, is for her to make misguided choice after misguided choice and constantly bumble her way blindly into undeserved success and victory.

I don't want Dany to succeed because she has Magical Dragon Powers and Ninja Plot Armor. I want her to be shown as earning it via merit.

[Jon Snow's Body]

The whole thing with her whipping Drogon left me pretty incredulous. Drogon can fly, why is he just standing there letting this girl whip him? He had just tried to kill her with fire breath so it's not like he was trying to take it easy on her. He just seemed to totally forget he could move, let alone fly! What a convenient moment for him to lost all his instincts.

I'm pretty sure that Drogon couldn't even feel the whip. So far his hide appears neigh on impregnable, so he was probably more perplexed by the strange women standing at his feet yamering at him and waving her arms around like a crazy person. Good thing she doesn't have an annoying voice, otherwise he might have flamed her just to shut her up.

[Ser Pistus]

I'm pretty sure that Drogon couldn't even feel the whip. So far his hide appears neigh on impregnable, so he was probably more perplexed by the strange women standing at his feet yamering at him and waving her arms around like a crazy person. Good thing she doesn't have an annoying voice, otherwise he might have flamed her just to shut her up.

It is more reasonable to assume that Drogon recognized his mother. And of course did not want to kill her.

[Leuf]

However, I disagree that much of what was happening in Meereen was unavoidable nor do I suggest she should have just stopped caring about the people in favor of the dragons. Any good leader must learn BALANCE and that's what Daenerys seems to be lacking.

Yes, and her arc is about getting her to the point where she's willing to start accepting good advice that she doesn't necessarily want to hear. She also has Quaithe's 3 betrayal prophecy messing with her head which makes it difficult for her to trust anyone. I think Tyrion's arc is also about getting him to a place where he can understand where Dany is coming from, so that when they finally do meet they can actually respect each other and work together.

She's far from a Robert, drinking himself into oblivion because he knows he can't rule. Dany hasn't really come to grips with her immaturity. Like Jon Snow, she's got to leave behind the boy and become a man now (woman!).

What I like about Robert is that he's one of the few characters in the book that actually recognizes that he's flawed. We only see him 15 years after the fact, I imagine he at least tried to be a good king at the start of his rule. While they have very different upbringings, they are both thrust into positions of power at a young age with some serious tragedy happening along the way.

The other thing to keep in mind is that taking the Iron Throne was Viserys' obsession, not Dany's. She just wanted to go back home to the house with the red door. She never knew Westeros. She found her first real home with the Dothraki, and she was just continuing on with what her brother wanted for lack of any other direction. I don't think she's ever really expressed any interest of her own in the Iron Throne. Deciding to stay in Meereen was the first real decision about the course of her life she made. In her eyes Essos is her home and her people so it's asking a lot of her to give that up.

[Cricket]

Aegon the Conqueror and all those Valyrian dragonlords will surely be disappointed to learn this :) Dragons can be controlled and Valyrians did it for centuries - largely with spells, it seems. Finding out how to control dragons might not be easy, in fact it will probably he quite hard, but it needs to be the top priority. And it is definitely possible. Especially for Dany who will still have her special bond - even though she tried her best to make the dragons forget her.

I said they could not be tamed. I never they said couldn't be controlled. But you cut off the rest of my post where I made that clear. ^_^ Jon befriended Ghost and Ghost will usually obey if Jon says "stay", but Jon has not tamed Ghost. Ghost comes and goes as he pleases. That's pretty much the extent to which one can hope to make a wild animal listen. Now there's likely some mystical way to completely control the dragons (the dragon horn) but that's not really taming them and we don't know the extent of that control.

Actually most of Dany's choices throughout the entire series turn out far better than they should, due to her having more plot armor than any character.

Ok. But why is it that when Dany's decision turn out bad it's her poor reasoning, but when Dany's decisions work out, it's plot armor? No one aside from Varys and Littlefinger is able to accurately anticipate every single event that happens. Tyrion, Jon, Arya often find themselves fumbling along blindly too, but somehow always find themselves bailed out through pure luck. I'm sure there's reasons why you'd say their cases are different from Dany's, but still it seems to me everyone is mostly at the mercy of fate (i.e. whatever Martin has in store for them).

Dany doesn't listen well at all actually, and when she does it's usually to the worst advice (e.g. "marry Hizdahr", which all her smart advisors told her was dumb).

She heard out all her advisers ideas. Once again, "listening well" doesn't mean "let others make your decisions"

And if she hadn't married Hizdahr what would've happened? We can't know that. Her advisers didn't trust Hizdahr but no one was giving her other advice aside from "torture people" and "march to war". Now not taking into account how events unfolded, what seems the most reasonable decision "war", "torture" or "marriage"? If Dany had agreed to torture people on the forum would say she was cruel, if she marched her troops to war and Meereen got sacked while no one was protecting the city people would call her stupid.

Deciding to stay in Meereen was the first real decision about the course of her life she made. In her eyes Essos is her home and her people so it's asking a lot of her to give that up.

I think her goals for the Iron Throne are equal parts real desire to rule, duty and guilt over Viserys. She wants Meereen to thrive but she never really considers it her home.

[Drowned Priest]

I hate that she is more preoccupied with helping these fucking slave masters than she is with training her dragons and taking the Seven Kingdoms. She said she wanted to learn how to rule, but those three cities are dying relics. The only thing that they offered the world were whores and Unsullied. They could not adapt and evolve other means of acquiring wealth, there is no farmland so they must buy food, without slaves they have no money. The cities are full of people who brag about their great Ghiscari heritage even though Ghis was fucking destroyed by Valyria after a short war.

The cities are shitholes that she should ignore. She should be conquering the Eastern cities, taking everything of value and leaving, then she should take westeros. That is what the Dragon should do. Instead she has been sitting in Mereen for months trying to appease the men who openly rebel. and it is fucking obvious that Hizdahr and Grizlar and Niggahr and Suckahr My Dickahr and all of the Great masters hate her. She should fucking kill one noble from each family every time the Sons of The Harpy strike. They dont fear her anymore. She always says "I am just a little girl, and I know not the ways of war" in a sarcastic manner, but at this point it is true. SHE KNOWS NOTHING. She is too weak, she can't expect to rule the proud people of the seven kingdoms if she cow-tows to the will of the mongrel Ghiscari of Slaver's Bay.

One thing I hate is that she is more vindictive and cruel to her own soldiers and captains than she is to these fucking rebels. She insults Groleo constantly, she berates Daario, she exiles Jorah, But when the child of a Great Master tries to kill her, and when a man spits on her, she lets them go. She will flame anyone who says something that she doesn't want to hear

EG

Aerys was mad

Robert was a great warrior who beat Rhaegar fair and square

Robert, Stark, and Tywin were honorable men to be respected

These slavers are useless, we should be going to Westeros

Unchain your dragons

Stop being so compassionate, you have to be a killer.

You are too kind to these people

These things are all true, yet she denies it and then becomes wrathful towards those who mention it. She is a petulant child who cries when people don't obey her and things dont go her way, but she never does anything to make them go her way. She spent the entire book trying to appease people who hated her, and were fucking useless. It's the Lhazareen all over again, she will try to save all of them and end up losing everything. She probably could have kept Drogo's Khalasar, but his Ko's hated her for shitting on their customs and taking what was theirs because she thought it was wrong. The same will happen to Mereen.

But the one thing that angers me the most is: THEY AREN'T EVEN HER OWN PEOPLE.

She is Westerosi and her people need her, but she would rather sit on her ass and appease the people of slavers bay. She was more mature at the end of AGoT than she is now. All of this bullshit just built up to her fucking period. Now that she is bleeding again, she wont suck anymore.

I was fucking disappointed with Dany

[variance]

She heard out all her advisers ideas. Once again, "listening well" doesn't mean "let others make your decisions"

And if she hadn't married Hizdahr what would've happened? We can't know that. Her advisers didn't trust Hizdahr but no one was giving her other advice aside from "torture people" and "march to war". Now not taking into account how events unfolded, what seems the most reasonable decision "war", "torture" or "marriage"? If Dany had agreed to torture people on the forum would say she was cruel, if she marched her troops to war and Meereen got sacked while no one was protecting the city people would call her stupid.

Barristan gave very sound advice.

[Drowned Priest]

On the topic of dragons and training the dragons. They are like the direwolves. Specifically they are like Nymeria and ShaggyDog. Nymeria took care of herself essentially and is now leading an ultra-pack of wolves to kill and destroy fucking everything along the Trident. Rickon is a tempermental little boy who was abandoned by all of the adults in his life (another amazing move by Catelyn Tully, Using logic to realize that Robb, a 16 year old who is a warrior and battle commander needed her more than Rickon and Bran, a four year old who just lost his father and an 8 year old who was just crippled and got out of a coma, respectively). But I digress, Rickon was wild because he went unchecked and nobody could stop him. so Shaggydog became wild. We see this by the fact that he is fucking huge compared to the others and that he is black furred. Drogon=Shaggy while Rhaegal and Viserion= a mix of Nymeria, Ghost, and Grey Wind (Nymeria because they raise themselves, and the other two because their owner fails to heed them)

Just like how neglect of the direwolves lead to shitty situations for Ned Stark's kids (Robb ignores GW and is killed by Freys, and Jon ignores Ghost and is stabbed by Marsh and them) neglect of the dragons led to Dany's downfall. and honestly, she deserved it

[Envie]

But the one thing that angers me the most is: THEY AREN'T EVEN HER OWN PEOPLE.

She is Westerosi and her people need her, but she would rather sit on her ass and appease the people of slavers bay. She was more mature at the end of AGoT than she is now. All of this bullshit just built up to her fucking period. Now that she is bleeding again, she wont suck anymore.

I was fucking disappointed with Dany

Has Daenerys really ever had her own people? Though she comes from a long line of Targaryen rulers in Westeros - she wasn't even born there and only knows it via everything her brother Viserys told her from his own skewed point of view and historical knowledge. Though Dany seems to want to complete her brother's dream of returning to rule the Seven Kingdoms, its also easy to forget that she doesn't really have any reference of 'home' (other than a vague memory of a place with a red door) at all and has spent her entire life on the run or moving from place to place. It seems as if getting caught up in ruling these slaver cities has dampened her desire to return, and her memories via Viserys are growing more dim.

But don't forget, she's been told she will have to go backwards to go forwards - and so she has.

The one thing that kept her focused on her true destiny was the dragons and the miraculous way they were born. But now even that's starting to look less significant under the weight of all this Meereen drama, slaver wars, invasion, massive disease outbreaks, etc. etc.

Also, its frustrating that Dany gets very little reliable news from Westeros (no more reliable than the 'gossip' of dragons they get from trade ships I suppose). I think if she had a more direct source of current information, she might stop paying so much attention to where she's at and look forward a little more. I too had hoped Tyrion would shortly be joining her (since he was a slave right outside her walls) and fill her in on the real deal going on across the narrow sea - which I think he would do better than Barristan, Quentyn or anyone else. He's masterful at convincing people. Daenerys needs him, and she needs him soon.

[Sega AM2]

Barristan gave very sound advice.

Barristan's been giving Dany sound advice, and illuminating historical information about Westeros, since he was Arstan Whitebeard.