Why do people hate Dany?

[Stanmore]

You live in a big sprawling mansion with your family and your servants. One day someone, Jane, breaks in and takes you all hostage and starts calling herself Owner of the Manor. Jane shuts off all of the power to the house because she claims that your carbon footprint is increasing global warming. She kills some of your family and servants. The rest of you are starving since the food in the refrigerator and freezer have spoiled and you are running out of water because you're supported by your own well that is powered by electricity. Some more family and servants die due to starvation and dehydration. You're finally rescued and Jane is arrested. You find out that Jane is 16 and dropped out of school years ago and you find out that she is an activist for environmental issues. Are you going to cut her some slack because she's an ill-educated teenager who supports a noble cause? Does her age and education level somehow make it more bearable that nearly all of your family and staff are dead?

As fascinating as your scenario is, the age of majority in my country is 18, so baring home office intervention there’s a good chance that Jane would be tried as a minor and receive a corresponding sentence

Be honest. My assumption is that most people will say "fuck no, it doesn't matter how old she was or that she never finished school. She killed my family and staff and should be held accountable for her actions." Why are there people arguing that all of Dany's incompetent decisions should be considered justified just because she's young and ill-educated? What if Dany had actually turned Slaver's Bay into a bustling, prosperous free region in a month? By the ageist argument, her success really shouldn't be acknowledged because she's only 16 and 16-year-olds shouldn't be held accountable for their failures or successes. It's the most ridiculous argument I've ever encountered when discussing a fictional character who is in a leadership position.

How young would Dany have to be before you allowed her age to be brought up as a mitigating factor? Would a 12 year old Dany fall under the same scrutiny? A 9 year old? A toddler?

Also I don't think you can say that it's a double standard to praise a child who acts above their age but not criticise them when they make mistakes that are age appropriate.

A 3 year old who can play the violin would be lauded, but they wouldn’t be looked on as an adult would if they had a temper tantrum or pissed their pants.

Obviously Dany isn't a 3 year old, but she is still a teenager and is going to make mistakes that a more mature woman wouldn't make. That's just to be expected.

[butterbumps!]

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I'm still out of likes, but I wanted to say I agree very much with both of your posts.

Well your claim was "things would have turned out better if she did nothing" and my point was without the power of foresight she had no way of knowing that would be the case, and neither would you in her situation. And it's not like a city of freed slaves is a ridiculous proposition. Braavos is a city founded by refugees and the dispossessed, and it's grown to be one of the most prosperous cities in Essos.

I think for me, the issue is that Dany had already seen a couple of cases at the microcosm scale where it would have been less harmful to step in-- how good intentions blow up in your face. I'm with you that stepping in is the right move on a moral level, but she ought to have known that stepping in without considering outcomes is the wrong way to go about it, and that without such considerations, it would be better to do nothing.

The case of the Braavosi independence is very different though. The oppressed decided to leave their oppression (so it emerged by the people themselves) and form a new society in a new location from the fundamental principle of freedom. They got to start from scratch. Social revolutions have more success when the populace widely accepts the ideals from the bottom up, rather than enforced top-down approach seen in Meereen where the law was passed without advocacy targeted at changing these beliefs, a new economic system or "safety-nets" to ease the transition, or any attempt to understand the people in question. Also, as it pertains to Braavos, the newly freed did not resort to enslaving others, whereas in Meereen, the lack of bottom-up advocacy led to the oppressed becoming the oppressors, because of the fundamental difference in the way abolition was understood in both of these cases.

As fascinating as your scenario is, the age of majority in my country is 18, so baring home office intervention there’s a good chance that Jane would be tried as a minor and receive a corresponding sentence

I'm not sure if you're referring to America, but here, if the crime is truly egregious and if the defendant is particularly unremorseful or did the crime in cold blood, there have been cases where teens as young as 13 have been tried as adults (although in a couple of instances, the Supreme Court is debating the Constitutionality of this, but thus far it has held up).

[A Time for Wolves]

It's simple, because she is *clears throat* Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryren the first of her name, The Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Princess of Dragonstone, Khaleesi, Breaker of Shackles/Chains, Queen of Meereen, and Queen of the Andals, and the Rhoynar, and of the First Men! And she will take what is hers with FIRE and BLOOD! *bows head and walks away* :D

Any woman who must say, "I am the dragon!" is no true dragon.

[Dr. Pepper]

As fascinating as your scenario is, the age of majority in my country is 18, so baring home office intervention there’s a good chance that Jane would be tried as a minor and receive a corresponding sentence How young would Dany have to be before you allowed her age to be brought up as a mitigating factor? Would a 12 year old Dany fall under the same scrutiny? A 9 year old? A toddler? Also I don't think you can say that it's a double standard to praise a child who acts above their age but not criticise them when they make mistakes that are age appropriate. A 3 year old who can play the violin would be lauded, but they wouldn’t be looked on as an adult would if they had a temper tantrum or pissed their pants. Obviously Dany isn't a 3 year old, but she is still a teenager and is going to make mistakes that a more mature woman wouldn't make. That's just to be expected.

I think if Dany were anywhere from 0-10, her age might be a valid argument. That's a big maybe because I think even children that young know the difference between right and wrong, and can understand simple concepts like murder. I would hold the adults around a child between 0 and 10 more responsible than the child. I certainly hold the adults more responsible for the problems with Tommen's reign. However, I don't give Joffrey a free pass for murdering people who wanted food just because he was a teenager. He was old enough to know better.

I think it's absolutely a double standard to blame age for mistakes but not for successes when you're considering a conquering and murdering ruler. If one can claim that her failures are due to age then they are also claiming that because of her age all of her success is due to pure luck. A 16-year-old conqueror is not even close to comparable to a 3-year-old musical prodigy. The toddler isn't destroying hundreds of thousands of lives by playing her violin or throwing a temper tantrum.

Returning to my scenario, I used 16 because it's the age of majority in Westeros and in many countries around the world, yet it's still firmly in the teenage years. Even where the age of majority is 18, people younger than that are sometimes tried as adults. Regardless of what sorts of sentences are applied to 16-year-olds, I seriously doubt that if you were the victim of Jane's actions you'd shrug your shoulders and say to the judge, "No ma'am, Jane shouldn't get the harshest punishment the law allows since she's only a teenager and teenagers make mistakes." If that's what you'd do, well then I can see why we'd have a difference of opinion. I know I wouldn't be thinking Jane deserved a pass due to her being 16 and my victim's statement would be all about Jane being punished to the fullest extent possible.

I do not have a problem with Dany making mistakes. I have a huge problem with her not learning or attempting to correct her mistakes. Even a toddler would learn not to put their hand on the burner after the first time.

[Ser_Patreck]

I wonder - Do the people that keep saying we should forgive Dany for her worst actions because she's a teenage girl would support/like that someone else acts as her Regent/Lord protector until she turns 16 or 20 or whatever? As in, keeping all the power away from her?

Because, you know, that's what you do when someone is too young/immature to handle power. You take it from them.

[Stanmore]

I think for me, the issue is that Dany had already seen a couple of cases at the microcosm scale where it would have been less harmful to step in-- how good intentions blow up in your face. I'm with you that stepping in is the right move on a moral level, but she ought to have known that stepping in without considering outcomes is the wrong way to go about it, and that without such considerations, it would be better to do nothing. The case of the Braavosi independence is very different though. The oppressed decided to leave their oppression (so it emerged by the people themselves) and form a new society in a new location from the fundamental principle of freedom. They got to start from scratch. Social revolutions have more success when the populace widely accepts the ideals from the bottom up, rather than enforced top-down approach seen in Meereen where the law was passed without advocacy targeted at changing these beliefs, a new economic system or "safety-nets" to ease the transition, or any attempt to understand the people in question. Also, as it pertains to Braavos, the newly freed did not resort to enslaving others, whereas in Meereen, the lack of bottom-up advocacy led to the oppressed becoming the oppressors, because of the fundamental difference in the way abolition was understood in both of these cases.

I suppose if I think about it the story of Braavos is more similar to the American revolution whereas the situation in Slaver's bay has more in common with the French. In France a handful of agitators gained massive popular support and a centuries old Regime was overturned without much thought of what was going to replace it. Things didn't go so well for the French either, with a new breed of petty dictators growing up in place of the old aristocracy and a number of concerted attempts from outside powers to restore the old ways and the old ruling classes.

t's slightly different in that Dany came from without and the French revolution was started from within, but other than that it's pretty similar. If you'd have been around in the blood soaked years following the French revolution I think you'd have been hard pressed to call it a success, but ask any French person today and I think they'd tell you it worked out ok in the long run. Bastille Day is still celebrated after all.

I'm not sure if you're referring to America, but here, if the crime is truly egregious and if the defendant is particularly unremorseful or did the crime in cold blood, there have been cases where teens as young as 13 have been tried as adults (although in a couple of instances, the Supreme Court is debating the Constitutionality of this, but thus far it has held up).

Nope i'm English. We do things slightly differently over here. ;)

[Lord Ben]

Well your claim was "things would have turned out better if she did nothing" and my point was without the power of foresight she had no way of knowing that would be the case, and neither would you in her situation. And it's not like a city of freed slaves is a ridiculous proposition. Braavos is a city founded by refugees and the dispossessed, and it's grown to be one of the most prosperous cities in Essos.

Actually your counter claim was that I didn't know the end result of every decision in my life or whatever the exact wording is. That is a strawman.

Saying that I didn't know what would happen in this particular case as you're now claiming wouldn't have been a strawman. Still wrong, but not a strawman.

[danm_999]

Nope i'm English. We do things slightly differently over here. ;)

Do you? I'll say two words.

James Bulger.

[Stanmore]

I do think she's been given too much power too young. Her people are awed by her dragons and they see her as some sort of Messiah figure. I think they forget how young she is, and how little training she's had in the art of rulership.

The age of majority in Westeros apears to be 16 or perhaps lower, so I guess she's technically an adult. However I doubt she'd be making all the decisions on her own if she were back in westeros. I'm pretty sure her small council and her Hand would take a lot of the burden away from her until she'd had time to ease into ruling.

Thing is she's not had that luxury, she's found herself in charge and no one's really questioned that. Instead she's found herself accumulating followers where ever she goes. Jorah, her khalasar, Selmy and Belwas, her freed slaves. It's small wonder she feels she has a right to rule.

[Lord Ben]

How young would Dany have to be before you allowed her age to be brought up as a mitigating factor? Would a 12 year old Dany fall under the same scrutiny? A 9 year old? A toddler?

Whether or not something was or wasn't a bad decision doesn't have to include the age of the person. If my 4yo decides to touch a hot pan I just got out of the oven and burns his hand it was a bad decision. Being 4 doesn't make it a good decision.

Leaving a path of destroyed cities in your wake because you enjoy freed slaves calling you mother for a few days until they realize you don't have any food is a bad decision whether you're 3 or 7 or 9 or 15 or 65.

She didn't tell Jorah or Barristan what her plans were so they couldn't possibly have consulted her. Both of them told her to ignore the city and it's slave army and GTFO of town but she didn't listen to either of them and made her own decision.

[Stanmore]

Do you? I'll say two words. James Bulger.

Like it or not, the Bulger killers were children and they were tried as shuch. I don't think this is the right place to get into a debate about the merits of that ruling, so i'm not going to say any more on the matter.

[danm_999]

Like it or not, the Bulger killers were children and they were tried as shuch. I don't think this is the right place to get into a debate about the merits of that ruling, so i'm not going to say any more on the matter.

They were convicted of murder. They only do that to adults.

[butterbumps!]

I suppose if I think about it the story of Braavos is more similar to the American revolution whereas the situation in Slaver's bay has more in common with the French. In France a handful of agitators gained massive popular support and a centuries old Regime was overturned without much thought of what was going to replace it. Things didn't go so well for the French either, with a new breed of petty dictators growing up in place of the old aristocracy and a number of concerted attempts from outside powers to restore the old ways and the old ruling classes. t's slightly different in that Dany came from without and the French revolution was started from within, but other than that it's pretty similar. If you'd have been around in the blood soaked years following the French revolution I think you'd have been hard pressed to call it a success, but ask any French person today and I think they'd tell you it worked out ok in the long run. Bastille Day is still celebrated after all. Nope i'm English. We do things slightly differently over here. ;)

Does that make Dany Robespierre? :cool4:

[Stanmore]

Whether or not something was or wasn't a bad decision doesn't have to include the age of the person. If my 4yo decides to touch a hot pan I just got out of the oven and burns his hand it was a bad decision. Being 4 doesn't make it a good decision.

Leaving a path of destroyed cities in your wake because you enjoy freed slaves calling you mother for a few days until they realize you don't have any food is a bad decision whether you're 3 or 7 or 9 or 15 or 65.

She didn't tell Jorah or Barristan what her plans were so they couldn't possibly have consulted her. Both of them told her to ignore the city and it's slave army and GTFO of town but she didn't listen to either of them and made her own decision.

Rubbish. Children are not adults and can not be held to the same standards of accountability. If a 4 year old touches a hot pan it;s because they haven't learned the consequences of such actions. children don't enter this world knowing everything they need to know in life. That's why we have schools, and universities.

A child is physically, emotionally and intellectually undeveloped. That's the reason we make the distinction between children and adults in the first place. To suggest otherwise is quite frankly ludicrous.

[Stanmore]

They were convicted of murder. They only do that to adults.

They were sent to juvenile detention and released on lifelong probation at age 18. There was some home office intervention to extend this sentence to age 25, but it was overturned on human rights grounds. One of the killers has since broken his probation and has been returned to jail. The other remains free.

A pair of adults under the same circumstances would have received much harsher sentencing. Once again I'm not debating the morality of this. Just stating the facts of the case.

[BabyMeraxes]

So, on my nightmare commute this morning, I was trying to think of why I didn’t and don’t give a shit about all these egregious human rights violations Dany commits in Slavers Bay:

• As stated previously on this thread, GRRM fills Salvers Bay with terrible, unabashed, unforgivable assholes. The people of Astapor’s main form on entertainment involves tying slave children to posts, covering them in various forms of deliciousness, and then taking bets on which child bears devour first. Mind you, this is entertainment for everyone, not just the rich people. That’s pretty fucked up. Now, I’ll concede that this is a pretty lazy form of character/world building, especially when paralleled with Westeros and its many shades of grey and nuance. At the same time, I think George wanted to give Dany a Hell that pulls at her particular heartstrings, and I also think he wanted to present the readers with an enemy that we could all agree was uniformly awful. Again, I can totally understand how people might find this problematic.
  
• While Slavers Bay is terrible, and we can read between the lines and come to the conclusion that a lot of probably innocent (“innocent”) people were killed during the sacking of its cities, Slaver’s Bay is also a device that provides Dany’s arch with situations necessary to her character development and plot. Dany is established a conquering, military force (although, I don’t think she’ll end up fulfilling that role), that’s the lynchpin to her strategy for taking back Westeros. So, we needed to see how she handled herself in various military situations. Slaver’s Bay shows us how Dany: treats with enemies, how she strategizes and directs her military, how she councils with her allies. The point of Slaver’s Bay was to highlight Dany as a commander, not to give us well constructed society – that’s we don’t get any Meereenese POVs, and that’s why we don’t get any direct contact with either of the sackings and bloodshed. That wasn’t the point, and that why I don’t care.
  

Martin gives us a completely evil enemy so that we don’t focus on the atrocities of Dany’s conquest, but of it’s intricacies and effects on Dany’s development. I think Martin wants to concentrate on the microcosm of Dany, not Essos. Again, this is a problematic line of thinking, because a good deal of readers, I assume, come to Martin for his intricate world building. Little did he know, right?

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Any woman who must say, "I am the dragon!" is no true dragon.

Amen. Can you imagine Jaehaerys I, Aegon III, Daeron II, or Aegon V going around saying they were "blood of the dragon" and you'd better do what they say? I can't. The worst Targaryen kings were the ones who were the most obsessed with the dragon imagery — Baelor prayed for eggs to hatch, Aegon IV built wooden dragons and gave eggs away as status favors, Aerys I read about prophecy while his kingdom rotted, Aerys II was just nuts.

Now, other than because it's cool, why do you think GRRM has fleshed out the Targ kings' backstories? Might it be so that we can pick up on patterns of behavior and see where that behavior leads? Namely, getting too deep into thinking of yourself as a dragon always ends badly?

Does that make Dany Robespierre? :cool4:

Robespierre ends up getting guillotined, yes? B)

[Dr. Pepper]

I do think she's been given too much power too young. Her people are awed by her dragons and they see her as some sort of Messiah figure. I think they forget how young she is, and how little training she's had in the art of rulership. The age of majority in Westeros apears to be 16 or perhaps lower, so I guess she's technically an adult. However I doubt she'd be making all the decisions on her own if she were back in westeros. I'm pretty sure her small council and her Hand would take a lot of the burden away from her until she'd had time to ease into ruling. Thing is she's not had that luxury, she's found herself in charge and no one's really questioned that. Instead she's found herself accumulating followers where ever she goes. Jorah, her khalasar, Selmy and Belwas, her freed slaves. It's small wonder she feels she has a right to rule.

Dany has what amounts to a small council and she often ignores or refuses advice. I don't think simply being in Westeros would make Dany more likely to consider the advice of her small council.

She hasn't "found herself in charge". It didn't just happen to her. No one gave it to her. She actively sought out this situation. She took possession of a slave army that is trained to not question their master in order to claim a position as ruler. She continues to have a slave army despite calling herself the freer of slaves. She chose this.

[BabyMeraxes]

@Stanmore

At this point, I would argue that Dany is a prodigy, and so she doesn't get to use her age as a defense for her major failures. She razed those cities, and she placed a crown on her head, and by doing so, she freely chose to take on the responsibilities and ramifications of those actions. Conquest and Queenship are this not traditionally associated with a teenager, but that doesn't mean she gets a free pass, either. Yes, she might be inexperienced, and no one isn't saying that governance and war aren't difficult, but these are the choices Dany makes. On the other hand, I think Dany's age can be used as a defense when it comes to her choice in dudes, and her initial rashness in staying in Slaver's Bay to help the slaves. Although the latter doesn't really mitigate the resulting issues, but I can see how a teenage girl would see something like a slave trade, and ideally (and irresponsibly) resolve to fix the situation as Dany does.

[Stanmore]

Dany has what amounts to a small council and she often ignores or refuses advice. I don't think simply being in Westeros would make Dany more likely to consider the advice of her small council.

Funny. I think Dany listens to her current advisers a bit to much. Reopening the fighting pits, allowing the brazen beasts to interrogate prisoners, marrying Hizdahr.... The problem isn't that she doesn't take advice. The problem is pretty much everyone around her is giving her the wrong advice.

She hasn't "found herself in charge". It didn't just happen to her. No one gave it to her. She actively sought out this situation. She took possession of a slave army that is trained to not question their master in order to claim a position as ruler. She continues to have a slave army despite calling herself the freer of slaves. She chose this.

Dany never set out to rule. Growing up she always knew that Viserys was destined to rule. She was just a tool to help him achieve that. Then later after her brother had died it was her son that she pinned all her hopes on. He was the "stallion who'd mount the world" not her.

It wasn't until Drogo died and his khalasar fell apart that she actually found her self in a position of leadership. Half of the remaining people were slaves she'd already pledged to protect and he other half were in awe of her. She felt that protecting these people was her duty.

Since then people have been lining up to support her. The people of Qarth sought her out. Illyro sent ships to fetch her. Selmy travelled half the world to meet her. The slaves she freed from Astapor called her mother and followed her when she expected them to stay and rebuild. Tyrion, Aegon, Quentin, Victarion Moqorro. The list goes on and on.

Like it or not she had leadership thrust upon her. Much in the same way that Robb and Jon did.