Daenerys the Cheater

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

so she's damned for killing all those nobles, damned for not killing enough nobles, damned for not being perfectly consisistent and logical in her killing tactics, or not being a brilliant war tactitian. She can't win!

I don't think consistency is too much to ask, one way or the other.

It's more the merit of the story itself, than the merit of every little decision Dany makes. Are you not entertained?

Am I entertained that a bunch of people were crucified to prove that crucifying people is wrong? Uh, no. Horrified was more like it.

[brashcandy]

Welcome to the Dany Can't Win society, eyeheartsansa :) It takes a while to realise the inherent inconsistencies and double standards that litter the arguments of her most ardent haters, but eventually the realisation dawns.

[BabyMeraxes]

Here's the thing. You're own personal sense of morality makes you distrust Dany's actions. You don't like her because you think the shit she's done is pretty fucked up. That's cool. Hate Dany for burning MMD, hate her for using her dragons as a tool for warcraft, hate her for crucifying those slavers. Given our posts on these forums, I understand why you don't like her. I accept it, and I don't think you're a bad person or an idiot. I'm not even going to try and defend her actions to you, because it doesn't matter.

However, in the context of this series, I, personally, don't really give a shit. Those acts just aren't dealbreakers for me. I think Daenerys is the perfect alchemy of compassion and magic and cunning and fury and power and feminity (***SEXISM***) that I look for in my protagonists. That trechery at Astapor was genius. Fleeing Meereen on the back of Drogon was the motherfucking highlight of the entire series for me. I love her dragons, and I see them more as companions and children rather than weapons. I don't think she's evil or cruel, and I think that it's cool that her gift and her curse is that she always moves with her heart.

I just fucking like her, and I really love reading about her. I hope she wins the Iron Throne, although i don't think that'll happen. I just a matter of taste. Save illiteracy, you can't make a mistake when it comes to literature.

[PatrickStormborn]

Didn't you know? That's how we're determining merit these days. Based on badassness. How pathetic.

Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't you say that one character (a King of Winter, I think, although I can't remember exactly) was "badass" for killing a slaver?

[Winter's Knight]

Well if you never try of course you can't do it. She didn't even think that some guilty ones won'T be killed and some innocent ones will be. She even said that what she did was justice.

As I said again Karstark did the same Dany did. He was executed for it, since it is again not justice!

And it happened in the very same book by the way, I think it was deliberate to make us think that just how much is Dany in the right (since in Essos she is the only POV and she is obviously biased about her own decisions).

Oh an eye for an eye is not justice especially not if you take someone else's eyes and not the one's who took yours.

And I didn't see it as badass. I saw it Dany becomming similar to the Great Maesters.

The Lannister boys were under Karstark's King's protection-he was not only slaughtering two innocent boys, he was also defying his king and endangering Robb's word. Noble POWs are generally kept safe and ransomed out.

Dany owed the slavers nothing.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't you say that one character (a King of Winter, I think, although I can't remember exactly) was "badass" for killing a slaver?

I told myself I was going to stop replying to you, but ... it was slavers whose guilt was not in question. He also gave the slavers to the slaves to deal with.

I just fucking like her, and I really love reading about her. I hope she wins the Iron Throne, although i don't think that'll happen. I just a matter of taste. Save illiteracy, you can't make a mistake when it comes to literature.

And that's your prerogative, as it's mine and others' to dislike her and hope she fails. I don't understand why disliking a character is somehow less acceptable than liking one. People vehemently dislike some of the characters that I love, and somehow, I get over it.

[brashcandy]

Here's the thing. You're own personal sense of morality makes you distrust Dany's actions. You don't like her because you think the shit she's done is pretty fucked up. That's cool. Hate Dany for burning MMD, hate her for using her dragons as a tool for warcraft, hate her fro crucifying those slavers. Given our posts on these forums, I understand why you don't like her. I accept it, and I don't think you're a bad person or an idiot. I'm not even going to try and defend her actions to you, because it doesn't matter.

However, in the context of this series, I, personally, don't really give a shit. Those acts just aren't dealbreakers for me. I think Daenerys is the perfect alchemy of compassion and magic and cunning and fury and power and feminity (***SEXISM***) that I look for in my protagonists. That trechery at Astapor was genius. Fleeing Meereen on the back of Drogon was the motherfucking highlight of the entire series for me. I love her dragons, and I see them more as companions and children rather than weapons. I don't think she's evil or cruel, and I think that it's cool that her gift and her curse is that she always moves with her heart.

I just fucking like her, and I really love reading about her. I hope she wins the Iron Throne, although i don't think that'll happen. I just a matter of taste. Save illiteracy, you can't make a mistake when it comes to literature.

:commie: I'll raise my flag to this!

[tze]

They crucified innocent slave children to send a message; in her eyes they were all equally guilty.

Who? You say "they"---but the whole point is that Dany never had any idea who crucified innocent slave children. Jorah Mormont committed a crime by selling slaves; does that mean that the Manderlys, the Umbers, or even the rest of the Mormont family, can be considered guilty of selling slaves, because Jorah was? Of course not. Gregor Clegane raped and murdered Elia of Dorne. So does that mean Gawen Westerling, Addam Marbrand, and every other Lannister bannerman is equally guilty of raping and murdering Elia of Dorne? Of course not. One person's particular crime isn't magically extended to every member of that person's social class. Dany tells herself it's "just" to crucify these people in retribution for those children. But then she completely fails to make sure she's punishing the actual person/people that committed this crime.

And before someone claims that Dany's act was justified because she was simply punishing these people for the crime of being slavers . . . no. Dany marries a slaver and gives another slaver the authority to torture a group of her subjects. Notice how she refuses to punish a slave master for raping a slave woman because "there was no rape" at the time, since slavery was legal and that woman was the slave owner's property at the time of the rape. If being a Great Master was inherently a crime in Dany's eyes, she'd have actually punished all of the Great Masters in some way simply for the act of having owned slaves. She never did. And it never occurred to her to do so.

She was trying to make a symbolic gesture, but she did it at the expense of dispensing actual justice.

How would she have gone about determining individual guilt, exactly? Whom would she summon for jury duty? Who are the prosecuting and defense attourneys and how can we be sure they aren't bought and paid for as well? There is no concept of a modern judiciary system; no 'innocent until proven guilty.'

Ask the (former) slaves. They'd know who gave that order, who owned the slaves that were crucified, who actually took part in nailing those children up.

One of the reasons Gendry (and others) like Beric Dondarrion is because he actually holds trials. They're not exactly fabulous trials, but they're more than Dany's ever done. And Beric's band had far less resources to work with than Queen Daenerys did.

The main issue, for me, is that we see all of this through Dany's eyes, and it never seems to occur to her to hold each person accountable for his or her own individual actions. The principles of "justice" she espouses, that she tries to apply to the people she controls, are haphazard, inherently contradictory, and frequently hypocritical. And as she never seems to realize this, how could readers logically expect her to change her methods in the future? I think GRRM very intentionally pitted Dany against a group of people that he knew readers would see as two-dimensional. But what happens when she starts trying this stuff with people like Tyrion, Arya, Jon, and all of the other people in Westeros, those that readers see as three-dimensional? I don't think we're meant to just assume that all of the terrible things she does are inherently confined to Essos, but that in Westeros she won't do these things.

[eyeheartsansa]

Am I entertained that a bunch of people were crucified to prove that crucifying people is wrong? Uh, no. Horrified was more like it.

It's a very entertaining series; much of the entertainment value is derived from acts warfare, violence, treachery, and things that we would find 'horrifying' in real life. The Red Wedding, probably the most Fd up thing that's happened in this series, is one of the most exciting chatpers, for me. You're obviously cool with some level of violence in your fiction, since you have thousands of posts on this forum. So sue me for describing something as badass!

@BabyM: I'm envisioning patriotic music playing in the background of your post, and someone clapping slowly.

[BabyMeraxes]

Didn't you know? That's how we're determining merit these days. Based on badassness. How pathetic.

Fucking duh! This is literature, not American politics. You think it's dumb, I think it's awesome. That doesn't make me pathetic, it just makes me a different kind of reader. Lighten up, it's just conquest.

[jarl the climber]

You highlight another thing I find distasteful about Essos: ridiculously over the top villainy, to the point of absurdity. They have kids strangle puppies! They eat puppies! They throw children to bears! They have the icky combination of being both incompetent and evil. No wonder Dany looks so good to people, against them.

Didn't you know? That's how we're determining merit these days. Based on badassness. How pathetic.

I also dislike the way the culture of Slvers Bay is set up, it seems to have few redeeming qualities about it. This is intentional, the Slavers train these slaves for the rest of Essos and they want the time in the Bay to be as excruciating to them as possible so that servitude elsewhere will be seen as a blessed releif. I can't say why they are so fond of puppies and unborn puppies. The Ghiscari have the problem of not being threatened since the doom came to Valyria, the Dothraki would rather exchage gifts with them, the walls of Mereen are to stong and Astapor has Unsullied which they fear. Everyone else is content to trade with them. They seem incompetent in warfare because they have no experience with it all though the Yunkish slave army is a little over the top IMO.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

<snip>

As usual Tze swoops in with common sense.

[Silverin]

Welcome to the Dany Can't Win society, eyeheartsansa :) It takes a while to realise the inherent inconsistencies and double standards that litter the arguments of her most ardent haters, but eventually the realisation dawns.

What double standard? I don't think I do that. I said it was wrong for Karstark to do it (who is male, ugly, in Westeros), and I said it is wrong for Dany too (feemale, beautiful badass dragon princess).

By the way tyrion is guilty for it too. He gave the Antler Man death sentence and let Joff kill them (which was werse than crucifiction), withouth ever investigating wether they were guilty or not. We later learn that all of them had big debts to the Crown and by killing them it suffered great loss (they can't get it back), and since Varys was the one who told about them to tyrion they were probably innocent, and Varys just wanted to make the Throne even weaker.

And then there is UnCat, a vengenful zombie. Although she at least knows which Freys deserve to be hanged and which doesn't and so far we do not know wether if we meets a Frey who wasn't at the wedding what will she do, but she was ready to kill Pod, Ser Hyle and Brienne because of their association to Lannisters.

I generally try to be consistent with that. Collective punishment, punishemnt without even trying to determine wether the parties were guilty or not is wrong. I don't do favouritism.

It doesn't mean I say that that person don't have good qualities as well, Dany has, but when it comes to the crucufiction there is nothing positive about it, and right now that is the topic I am talking about.

Don't worry brashcandy I don't excuse either for it, so no I don't use double standards.

[Val the Wildling Princess]

There is no Western concept of justice in this ancient setting. 'Eye for an eye' is/was a very real concept in ancient history, not a phrase I'm throwing around because it sounds badass.

We've seen a few people delivering justice, Ned, Jon and Robb are some examples, Stannis too, even though I dont agree with his method (yeah at this point I think everyone knows that I have a problem with the burning people alive thing). I didn't say anything about you using the "an eye for an eye" to sound badass, I think I have actually discussed about that with Patrick on another thread and that time I said I was totally against it, just wanted to make my point

Here's the thing. You're own personal sense of morality makes you distrust Dany's actions. You don't like her because you think the shit she's done is pretty fucked up. That's cool. Hate Dany for burning MMD, hate her for using her dragons as a tool for warcraft, hate her fro crucifying those slavers. Given our posts on these forums, I understand why you don't like her. I accept it, and I don't think you're a bad person or an idiot. I'm not even going to try and defend her actions to you, because it doesn't matter.

And thanks for the respect, sometimes it seems that if you don't like Daenerys your opinion isn't as valid as the rest of the people. I don't tell people to like her or not, and I don't dislike people who likes her. I just don't like her and i have explained a thousand times why, and it sure doesn't have anything to do with the people she sleep with, I have actually defended her on another thread regarding that matter :dunno:

[Morte]

Frankly I'd rather she crucified them all than have the Masters themselves decide who would be nailed up, which all but guarantees that at least a few patsies got thrown under the bus. Seeing as she had no interest in determining individual guilt, a mass wipeout would be the only way to definitively punish every guilty party. Not a moral solution either by any means.

At the risk of further setting off a flame war, I consider people like Jon and Davos to be in the middle ground.

As others have already said, there was no way to determinated the "more" guilty of the Great Masters.

What Dany most likely wanted to show with the 163 Masters:

1. don't mess with me and mine (importent for a ruler)

2. a slave child is worth a Master ( importent lesson for slavers)

3. I'm not as cruel as you (or else I would kill you all), and only teaching you lesson 1 and 2

Basically, one could argue that only killing 163 was not wise strategically, because it showed her enemies that she had a soft spot and that she would be more willing to adept then to fight (and right they were).

Are you not entertained?

I am! Fun fact: Every time I read that scene I see (before my imaginary eye) Sesostris, Haremhab, Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Vespasian, Titus, Trajan, Hadrian, [leaving out a bunch of good emperors and kings because of lenght] Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen [again leaving out a bunch...] Friedrich den Großen, Bismark, de Gaulle [etc.etc.pp.] trying to talk her into killing them all...

while Antoninus Pius, Marc Aurel and Saladin stand by and applaud her for being so mercifull.

Oh well, being a historian really makes it difficult to judge people out of their time and place. :dunno:

Back to the importence of being earnest:

It's not even that she wasn't feeling bad about it ... so much about the moral compass of different characters in the story.

[Northern Lass]

I don’t think Dany is a cheater. I think she is a bit of a bore, especially when contrasted with some of the other female characters. We have been told she is important, she must have an important role to play outside of being the last Targaryan and the mother of dragons. I think it would be more apparent if the story was just condensed into three books, as originally planned. For the majority of her story since she left Drogo’s pyre it seems to be just page filler. And that sucks, because her slightly unhinged nature gives her the potential for being a total bad ass, but she gets mired down in slave uprisings and boring romances, which technically should not be boring but just seem so flat.

I want to like Dany. When I get annoyed with her, I remember she is really still just a child. I recall that she was raised without guidance, outside of her sociopath brother, without a home, and raised to think that she was something special. Also, there is probably some genetic crazy in there from the inbreeding. I feel bad for her, because who has really had it worse than her? And I feel bad for her, because all of that hardship seems to make her unbelievable and she seems to be more of a plot device than a character. I don’t want her to go down in flames, like a lot of people on this board seem to, although I don’t think she should be immune from death. I want her to be relevant before her story ends, to have found her purpose, and for us to have a reward for having slogged through her chapters.

[Winter's Knight]

Who? You say "they"---but the whole point is that Dany never had any idea who crucified innocent slave children. Jorah Mormont committed a crime by selling slaves; does that mean that the Manderlys, the Umbers, or even the rest of the Mormont family, can be considered guilty of selling slaves, because Jorah was? Of course not. Gregor Clegane raped and murdered Elia of Dorne. So does that mean Gawen Westerling, Addam Marbrand, and every other Lannister bannerman is equally guilty of raping and murdering Elia of Dorne? Of course not. One person's particular crime isn't magically extended to every member of that person's social class. Dany tells herself it's "just" to crucify these people in retribution for those children. But then she completely fails to make sure she's punishing the actual person/people that committed this crime.

And before someone claims that Dany's act was justified because she was simply punishing these people for the crime of being slavers . . . no. Dany marries a slaver and gives another slaver the authority to torture a group of her subjects. Notice how she refuses to punish a slave master for raping a slave woman because "there was no rape" at the time, since slavery was legal and that woman was the slave owner's property at the time of the rape. If being a Great Master was inherently a crime in Dany's eyes, she'd have actually punished all of the Great Masters in some way simply for the act of having owned slaves. She never did. And it never occurred to her to do so.

She was trying to make a symbolic gesture, but she did it at the expense of dispensing actual justice.

Ask the (former) slaves. They'd know who gave that order, who owned the slaves that were crucified, who actually took part in nailing those children up.

One of the reasons Gendry (and others) like Beric Dondarrion is because he actually holds trials. They're not exactly fabulous trials, but they're more than Dany's ever done. And Beric's band had far less resources to work with than Queen Daenerys did.

The main issue, for me, is that we see all of this through Dany's eyes, and it never seems to occur to her to hold each person accountable for his or her own individual actions. The principles of "justice" she espouses, that she tries to apply to the people she controls, are haphazard, inherently contradictory, and frequently hypocritical. And as she never seems to realize this, how could readers logically expect her to change her methods in the future? I think GRRM very intentionally pitted Dany against a group of people that he knew readers would see as two-dimensional. But what happens when she starts trying this stuff with people like Tyrion, Arya, Jon, and all of the other people in Westeros, those that readers see as three-dimensional? I don't think we're meant to just assume that all of the terrible things she does are inherently confined to Essos, but that in Westeros she won't do these things.

I don't understand-she crucified the slavers as a gesture that slavering will not be tolerated. It didn't matter if the ones she crucified did or did not crucify the children.

The message was clear and brutal-slavering and associating with slavers would not be tolerated under her reign.

[PatrickStormborn]

Who? You say "they"---but the whole point is that Dany never had any idea who crucified innocent slave children. Jorah Mormont committed a crime by selling slaves; does that mean that the Manderlys, the Umbers, or even the rest of the Mormont family, can be considered guilty of selling slaves, because Jorah was? Of course not. Gregor Clegane raped and murdered Elia of Dorne. So does that mean Gawen Westerling, Addam Marbrand, and every other Lannister bannerman is equally guilty of raping and murdering Elia of Dorne? Of course not. One person's particular crime isn't magically extended to every member of that person's social class. Dany tells herself it's "just" to crucify these people in retribution for those children. But then she completely fails to make sure she's punishing the actual person/people that committed this crime.

And before someone claims that Dany's act was justified because she was simply punishing these people for the crime of being slavers . . . no. Dany marries a slaver and gives another slaver the authority to torture a group of her subjects. Notice how she refuses to punish a slave master for raping a slave woman because "there was no rape" at the time, since slavery was legal and that woman was the slave owner's property at the time of the rape. If being a Great Master was inherently a crime in Dany's eyes, she'd have actually punished all of the Great Masters in some way simply for the act of having owned slaves. She never did. And it never occurred to her to do so.

She was trying to make a symbolic gesture, but she did it at the expense of dispensing actual justice.

Sigh. ALL the Great Masters are guilty of being slavers. She decided that crucifying 163 of them would be a symbolic gesture. They were lucky that she didn't just wipe them out completely. Was it justice? Well, it wouldn't be in 21st Century Western societies. But this is a medieval, pre-Industrial Revolution time period, so "an eye for an eye" is as close to justice as it gets.

It's irrelevant that Dany married Hizdahr. She crucified the 163 Great Masters for being slavers, but that was supposed to be it. She was naive and didn't think she'd have to follow that punishment up. The slave master raping a slave woman was, like she said, legal at the time. So she couldn't do anything about it.

The main issue, for me, is that we see all of this through Dany's eyes, and it never seems to occur to her to hold each person accountable for his or her own individual actions. The principles of "justice" she espouses, that she tries to apply to the people she controls, are haphazard, inherently contradictory, and frequently hypocritical. And as she never seems to realize this, how could readers logically expect her to change her methods in the future? I think GRRM very intentionally pitted Dany against a group of people that he knew readers would see as two-dimensional. But what happens when she starts trying this stuff with people like Tyrion, Arya, Jon, and all of the other people in Westeros, those that readers see as three-dimensional? I don't think we're meant to just assume that all of the terrible things she does are inherently confined to Essos, but that in Westeros she won't do these things.

You think that Martin created two-dimensional characters (thus effectively somewhat weakening his series) ... so that we'd be tricked into thinking Dany was a fabulous hero? Ok. Good logic.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

It's irrelevant that Dany married Hizdahr. She crucified the 163 Great Masters for being slavers, but that was supposed to be it. She was naive and didn't think she'd have to follow that punishment up. The slave master raping a slave woman was, like she said, legal at the time. So she couldn't do anything about it.

But slavery was legal at the time that Meereen's slaver's had slaves! So if she can't do anything about the rape, she has no right to crucify 163 of them either! It's inconsistent.

It is entirely relevant to Dany's character that she initially reacts to the horrors of Slaver's Bay with brutal violence in an attempt to smash slavery and then tries to stay and rule Meereen and ends up compromising with the former slave masters, even to the point of allowing people to sell themselves into slavery and have Meereen profit off of it. That is the whole point of the arc.

[Winter's Knight]

But slavery was legal at the time that Meereen's slaver's had slaves! So if she can't do anything about the rape, she has no right to crucify 163 of them either! It's inconsistent.

It is entirely relevant to Dany's character that she initially reacts to the horrors of Slaver's Bay with brutal violence in an attempt to smash slavery and then tries to stay and rule Meereen and ends up compromising with the former slave masters, even to the point of allowing people to sell themselves into slavery and have Meereen profit off of it. That is the whole point of the arc.

Exactly so-she learnt that brute force can help you to win kingdoms but not to keep them.