Why is Danys massacre at Astapor not addressed significantly?

[total1402]

On Cleon. I was a bit confused. When Dany made that council in charge, were they acting on her authoirty? Perhaps Cleon wouldn't have risked going against the council if Dany had said these people rule on my behalf, go against them, you go against me. Instead she made the council independent of her authority, thus Cleon was able to depose them without techniclly going against Daenerys; its not like these were royal officials. I can't blame Dany for that since she wasn't planning on being Queen of slavers bay so didn't imagine that she might have to own Astapor as well.

[danm_999]

Yes Astapor was a disaster, but there is such a double standard when it comes to Dany. Is it inspired by the idea that Dany is incapable of leading or prone to making bad decisions because she is a woman? I don’t know.

Yup, Daenerys is being criticised because she's a woman. Not because she made a horrible botch of the situation in Slaver's Bay.

She gets an unreasonable amount of blame for the condition of Astapor when in actuality she left the place with a counsel to serve the people. A governing counsel of a scholar, a priest, and a healer to rule. No one blames Cleon for killing the counsel and seizing power, they blame Dany for freeing the city in the first place.

Her naivety in leaving an amorphous counsel with no practical power and limited resources is precisely the reason she gets blame. An asshole like Cleon was the inevitable result of the power vacuum she left.

The best I heard was that Dany didn’t understand the culture of the slave cities so she shouldn’t have gotten involved. Who the heck wants to understand anyone or any place that mutilates little children and exploits them for gold. Who the heck wants to understand people who encourage young boys to find random babies and kill them?

Check your hearing.

People are criticising her for being, in your own admission, inexperienced and deciding to liberate entire cities with no concrete plan.

Of everyone involved the only person who did the right thing is Dany, but she gets crapped on.

And she kills more people than the degenerate slavers did. Have you ever head the expression the road to hell is paved with good intentions?

No one can teach Dany how to be a queen, she has to learn that on her own, from her mistakes.

I suppose the thousands she gets killed along the way will find some comfort in knowing they're Daenerys' tutorial to ruling.

Hind sight is 20/20 how could she have a plan when she had no idea what to expect by going to Astapor?

This is why you don't go in. If you don't have a plan to make people's lives better, and your entire reasoning for invading a region is to make people's lives better, maybe you don't invade a region.

I must be crazy but I'm not buying the idea that she did the wrong thing or she is a bad person because of the result. It was poorly handled because she has no experience in being a conquerer, she has no experience being a queen, it's being learned on the fly. I guess if anything she should apologize for having a conscience and not being able to handle outrageous crimes against humanity.

Consider this.

Ramsay Bolton is probably the worst piece of shit we've been introduced to in the novels. He's cruel, he's vindicative, and he likes to see people tortured.

But here's the funny thing. Ramsay Bolton's actions have gotten a vastly smaller amount of people killed than Daenerys', with all her compassion and good intentions.

[Lady Sansa Stark]

Yes Astapor was a disaster, but there is such a double standard when it comes to Dany. Is it inspired by the idea that Dany is incapable of leading or prone to making bad decisions because she is a woman? I don’t know.

She gets an unreasonable amount of blame for the condition of Astapor when in actuality she left the place with a counsel to serve the people. A governing counsel of a scholar, a priest, and a healer to rule. No one blames Cleon for killing the counsel and seizing power, they blame Dany for freeing the city in the first place.

Yes, she left the place with a council. A council of three, a scholar, priest and a healer. Very likely they also kept some slaves, though. And the biggest mistake she made is that she didn't left them some sort of backing force. Moreover, we don't blame Daenerys for 'freeing' the city, we blame her for handling the situation that bad and order the killing of innocents. (It was okay to kill people of 12 years of age and older, you are not going to convince me that those children were all guilty of whatever Daenerys accused them of). We blame Cleon for killing the counsel and the subsequent chaos, we sure do. It's kinda unreasonable to say we don't. However, we also blame Daenerys for the chaos that ensued after she was gone. Because, frankly, it was in part her doing. Not the Cleon-things of course, but the chaos; oh yes.

Of everyone involved the only person who did the right thing is Dany, but she gets crapped on. No one can teach Dany how to be a queen, she has to learn that on her own, from her mistakes. She has advisers that can give her counsel, but they often never consider the little guy. Thank the seven that she has some moral compass unlike other potential leaders in Westeros.

Hind sight is 20/20 how could she have a plan when she had no idea what to expect by going to Astapor? I must be crazy but I'm not buying the idea that she did the wrong thing or she is a bad person because of the result. It was poorly handled because she has no experience in being a conquerer, she has no experience being a queen, it's being learned on the fly. I guess if anything she should apologize for having a conscience and not being able to handle outrageous crimes against humanity.

Daenerys freed the slaves, yes, and you could call that a good thing. But the things we accuse her of, are not that she freed the slaves in the city (not the city itself, mind you), we accuse her of the mistakes she makes when she's 'learning to become a queen' as you say. If she had sense at that moment, she should have expected that something bad could have happened. The slaves were finally free, and those slaves aren't all just very nice people who want to live happily ever after. they want to get power as well, now that they got a taste from it. So setting up a council of people who ruled them before ain't helping, especially not without a backing force.

On Cleon. I was a bit confused. When Dany made that council in charge, were they acting on her authoirty? Perhaps Cleon wouldn't have risked going against the council if Dany had said these people rule on my behalf, go against them, you go against me. Instead she made the council independent of her authority, thus Cleon was able to depose them without techniclly going against Daenerys; its not like these were royal officials. I can't blame Dany for that since she wasn't planning on being Queen of slavers bay so didn't imagine that she might have to own Astapor as well.

Daenerys didn't give the council a backing force. And that was just stupid and I wonder why her advisors stayed silent on this. The slaves had tasted freedom now and Daenerys was gone, it was only a matter of time when some demagogue came along and wiped out the council.

[The Drunkard]

Yes Astapor was a disaster, but there is such a double standard when it comes to Dany. Is it inspired by the idea that Dany is incapable of leading or prone to making bad decisions because she is a woman? I don’t know.

She gets an unreasonable amount of blame for the condition of Astapor when in actuality she left the place with a counsel to serve the people. A governing counsel of a scholar, a priest, and a healer to rule. No one blames Cleon for killing the counsel and seizing power, they blame Dany for freeing the city in the first place.

I don't care if Dany is a bloody sentient lemon, if she makes a botch of something like the security and lives of an entire city's population, then she deserves criticism for it. It's not because she's a woman, let's not turn it into a sex issue.

And Cleon doesn't get criticised all that much for the same reason Ramsay doesn't get criticised all that much. We know they are dodgy people with dodgy motivations, so there's little need to debate it.

The best I heard was that Dany didn’t understand the culture of the slave cities so she shouldn’t have gotten involved. Who the heck wants to understand anyone or any place that mutilates little children and exploits them for gold. Who the heck wants to understand people who encourage young boys to find random babies and kill them?

Yes, every person in Slaver's Bay is an evil, puppy-eating monster that delights in castrating children and insulting foreigners. Every single one.

Of everyone involved the only person who did the right thing is Dany, but she gets crapped on. No one can teach Dany how to be a queen, she has to learn that on her own, from her mistakes. She has advisers that can give her counsel, but they often never consider the little guy. Thank the seven that she has some moral compass unlike other potential leaders in Westeros.

But she didn't do the 'right thing', hence the debate. Did you think this series would have such acclaim if it was all about 'right things' and 'wrong things'? And as to her moral compass, where exactly was this moral compass when she authorised the torture of a man's daughter in front of him because a body was planted outside his shop, in plain view? Thank the gods she was standing up for the little guy, right?

Dany is trying to balance her claim to the throne and do the right thing for and by the people. Does Stannis consider anyone but Stannis in his quest for the Iron throne? No. Yet he is the mighty Stannis (Mr. Ours Is The Fury). How many people lost their lives at Blackwater? Before, during, and after? But many still believe Stannis will be a great king.

Totally irrelevant issue. This thread isn't about Stannis, it's about Dany. If you want to discuss Stannis, feel free to contribute to one of the many threads out there or start your own. Don't drag him into this for no reason other than to deflect blame.

Dany has the sand to make a bad decision and learn from it, or else she wouldn’t have stayed in Meereen. No she will not just sit by and be a beautiful face, she can be much more. Westeros is in desperate need of a leader who actually gives a darn about more than the Iron throne. Title, land, and gold won’t count for much when much of the common folk lay butchered across the land.

Yes, she could be much more than a raging force of destruction that stumbles from one idiocy to the next, and hopefully that will come to pass come WOW.

Hind sight is 20/20 how could she have a plan when she had no idea what to expect by going to Astapor? I must be crazy but I'm not buying the idea that she did the wrong thing or she is a bad person because of the result. It was poorly handled because she has no experience in being a conquerer, she has no experience being a queen, it's being learned on the fly. I guess if anything she should apologize for having a conscience and not being able to handle outrageous crimes against humanity.

She shouldn't be learning on the fly!

Do you seriously believe she was justified is murdering likely thousands of innocent people because she "has no experience"? Really?

[R'hllor's Bastard]

Maybe if Davos smuggles some onions to Dany all will be forgiven?

[Lion of Judah]

I have an overtly different perspective, my family knows what it's like to have the atrocities of a nation rationalized and debated while their friends and neighbors along side them get murdered, mutilated, and robbed blind. My family knows what it's like to look to others to stand up and say this is wrong and everyone just stays silent. Undoubtedly this affects my approach to the situation, and by no means do I condone the murder of innocence. However if you lived in Astapor and stood by while these things were happening then you were a part of the problem. You can't wash your hands clean and say "well I wasn't a slaver." You don't stop from doing the right thing because it's inconvenient, what about all the people who died before Dany got to Astapor? What about the men who can have no wives or children of their own? By no means am I a pacifist. When the foundation of your city was built by those who advocate inequity then it's time to destroy and rebuild.

Side note-I must say that I like the spirited debate.

[SeanF]

Yes, she left the place with a council. A council of three, a scholar, priest and a healer. Very likely they also kept some slaves, though. And the biggest mistake she made is that she didn't left them some sort of backing force. Moreover, we don't blame Daenerys for 'freeing' the city, we blame her for handling the situation that bad and order the killing of innocents. (It was okay to kill people of 12 years of age and older, you are not going to convince me that those children were all guilty of whatever Daenerys accused them of). We blame Cleon for killing the counsel and the subsequent chaos, we sure do. It's kinda unreasonable to say we don't. However, we also blame Daenerys for the chaos that ensued after she was gone. Because, frankly, it was in part her doing. Not the Cleon-things of course, but the chaos; oh yes.

Daenerys freed the slaves, yes, and you could call that a good thing. But the things we accuse her of, are not that she freed the slaves in the city (not the city itself, mind you), we accuse her of the mistakes she makes when she's 'learning to become a queen' as you say. If she had sense at that moment, she should have expected that something bad could have happened. The slaves were finally free, and those slaves aren't all just very nice people who want to live happily ever after. they want to get power as well, now that they got a taste from it. So setting up a council of people who ruled them before ain't helping, especially not without a backing force.

Daenerys didn't give the council a backing force. And that was just stupid and I wonder why her advisors stayed silent on this. The slaves had tasted freedom now and Daenerys was gone, it was only a matter of time when some demagogue came along and wiped out the council.

IIRC, the councillors were freed slaves. But how were three people supposed to keep order throughout an entire city and its hinterland, when they themselves had no experience of governing, few resources of their own, and their authority derived from a ruler who'd marched away?

[SeanF]

I have an overtly different perspective, my family knows what it's like to have the atrocities of a nation rationalized and debated while their friends and neighbors along side them get murdered, mutilated, and robbed blind. My family knows what it's like to look to others to stand up and say this is wrong and everyone just stays silent. Undoubtedly this affects my approach to the situation, and by no means do I condone the murder of innocence. However if you lived in Astapor and stood by while these things were happening then you were a part of the problem. You can't wash your hands clean and say "well I wasn't a slaver." You don't stop from doing the right thing because it's inconvenient, what about all the people who died before Dany got to Astapor? What about the men who can have no wives or children of their own? By no means am I a pacifist. When the foundation of your city was built by those who advocate inequity then it's time to destroy and rebuild.

Side note-I must say that I like the spirited debate.

By the end of ADWD, everyone who'd lived in Astapor at the time of Dany's arrival, free or slave, was dead, apart from those who'd left the city with Dany. And Astapor was due to be repopulated with slavers and slaves. So Dany's actions benefitted no more than a minority of the population, and inflicted appalling harm on the majority of the population. This was not a catastrophe that came out of the blue. It was entirely predictable.

[Quentyn Baratheon]

Daenerys didn't give the council a backing force. And that was just stupid and I wonder why her advisors stayed silent on this. The slaves had tasted freedom now and Daenerys was gone, it was only a matter of time when some demagogue came along and wiped out the council.

Barristan even told her the "smallfolk sew your banner in secret" bullshit. She has no council, she has spineless yesmen.

[Lion of Judah]

By the end of ADWD, everyone who'd lived in Astapor at the time of Dany's arrival, free or slave, was dead, apart from those who'd left the city with Dany. And Astapor was due to be repopulated with slavers and slaves. So Dany's actions benefitted no more than a minority of the population, and inflicted appalling harm on the majority of the population. This was not a catastrophe that came out of the blue. It was entirely predictable.

You brought up a good point previously about leaving a counsel with no backing, I must highlight that because you're right, that was not smart. The population of Astapor was not annihilated by Dany, that was done by the Yunkai. Let's heap some blame on them while we are doling blame out, it's only fair. I can agree that the Asatpor debacle was very poorly handled, but who mentored Dany in the arts of war? Who natured the virtues of being a leader in her? Dany is prone to making severe mistakes because of a potent combination of power and lack of wisdom gained from experience.

Remember her motives was never to liberate Astapor she went there for a slave army and became more disenfranchised with the idea of slavery. She was blinded by doing what she believed to be right. Everyone around Dany at this point is only interested in the Unsullied. I'm not sure if it was Barristan or Jorah that recommended that she just leave, so all the people of influence around her was saying let them die. The only one that made any effort to make it better was Dany.

[Lion of Judah]

I have to go to class, but by all means keep the debate going I will respond later.

[PatrickStormborn]

It was widely know that those 13 year old Astapori girls were dangerous and vicious. Dany was just playing Tywin simulator.

She tells the Unsullied to "slay every man who wears a tokar" -- she does not tell them to kill 13 year old girls.

If you intend to criticise Dany, at least make some sort of effort to base it on facts from the books.

Yes, she left the place with a council. A council of three, a scholar, priest and a healer. Very likely they also kept some slaves, though. And the biggest mistake she made is that she didn't left them some sort of backing force. Moreover, we don't blame Daenerys for 'freeing' the city, we blame her for handling the situation that bad and order the killing of innocents. (It was okay to kill people of 12 years of age and older, you are not going to convince me that those children were all guilty of whatever Daenerys accused them of). We blame Cleon for killing the counsel and the subsequent chaos, we sure do. It's kinda unreasonable to say we don't. However, we also blame Daenerys for the chaos that ensued after she was gone. Because, frankly, it was in part her doing. Not the Cleon-things of course, but the chaos; oh yes.

• The council was LED by those three; it contained far more than that. You should probably re-read Daenerys III and Daenerys IV from ASoS.
  
• As this topic discusses, she wiped out the main slave-owning men (although Daenerys I from ADwD shows that many were left alive). She knew that the three she left in charge of the council were not slavers -- in fact, they sound like ex-slaves.
  
• Dany only killed tokar-wearing men. That means they were guilty of slavery, unless they were slaves wearing tokars just for fun? (Which was illegal.)
  
• Dany is responsible for the actions of Cleos, only if you accept that the slavers themselves are responsible for Dany's actions. :)
  

[R'hllor's Bastard]

Military atrocities are often overlooked if they are committed in the name of something perceived as morally superior, such as abolishment.

[Miryana]

(It was okay to kill people of 12 years of age and older, you are not going to convince me that those children were all guilty of whatever Daenerys accused them of).

That's something that seems good in theory (don't harm the children), but falls apart when you start thinking about it. Why 12? That's the same age Sansa was when she was forced into marriage, and I'll never buy the argument that it would not have been child rape if Tyrion had gone through with the consummation. What makes children under 12 innocents, and children of 12+ adults who aren't under Dany's protection? There's no direct statement of "it's okay to kill them at 12+" because that wasn't Dany's meaning, but when the age is mentioned like that it does imply it to someone who's not in Dany's head and able to know that her character is actually not intending to take the Tywin road. It's a stupid thing to be so specific and set the age so low. And how do they check the ages in a chaotic, violent situation? Do we assume that the killings spared all who didn't look like grown men (so you were out of luck if you were 16+), or that children of 9-11 were also killed because they were big for their age and "hey, she did say 12"?

Considering how Dany reacts to the crucified children and her hostages, I don't believe she meant any harm to the young of the city. But she didn't think either. She doesn't appear to have a goddamn clue about how to at least try to prevent atrocities, which doesn't make me look forward to her ignorant wrath and fairytale view of the world and politics (post-ADWD, apparently with added fire and blood too) being unleashed on Westeros. When Tywin goes all "oh, I forgot about Elia" I don't give him a pass. Dany is a POV character with a portrayal that seems intended to be sympathetic so she's not going to be getting Myrcella and Tommen (closer to 12 with every book and every delay Dany's return encounters) killed in a poorly planned sack of KL, but IMO, GRRM has done a pretty good job wrecking the potential she had in AGOT. Of course she wasn't trained for war and rulership, but despite the purpose of her stay in Meereen she also comes across as someone who's just not learning.

[SeanF]

Ordering the Unsullied to massacre the under 12's as well might actually have been more humane then massacring their families and then leaving them to fend for themselves.

[total1402]

She tells the Unsullied to "slay every man who wears a tokar" -- she does not tell them to kill 13 year old girls.

Yeah I guess its hard to judge the statement and who shes refering to. If she says only kill those in tokars, with whips and only men; as disqualifiers. Then, anyone who didn't meet those standards would already have been exempt from the judgement. So unless you were a forteen year old male overseer or a fifteen year old of high enough station to own a tokar and therefore have owned slaves; you would be exempt. Then she was refering to a very small culpable group before she adds no children under twelve.

[The Sleeper]

Thats one way of looking at it. A quick jolt of pain to alleviate malaise, rot, injustice and corruption. Although I kind of agree with Edmund Burke that that revolution went too far; easy for an outsider to say mind.

But oddly, I don't really think theres enough leeway to critique the character. The reader can still do that. But if the text marginalises or downplays the issue. Or makes the slavers unambiguously bad. Even avoids describing the event itself and its aftermath. This makes it hard for the reader to make an informed judgement or shake the feeling that the author himself isn't making an issue of it. If a character does something cruel then you expect somebody to question why a character did that. For instance Jamie is always probed about killing Aerys and the morals around that. Tyrion and Tywin have moral arguments over the Red Wedding and killing Ellias children. There are many other examples; the series tone can be very moralising. But at Astapor the situation is not only presented in a straight-forward manner but it never recieves anything like the same attention. Even though Dany possibly killed hundreds of thousands of people including those the reader ranks as children its essentially left as it is. I mean thats up there with Timur the Lame or Genghis Khan if we imply the extreme interpretation of those order we never see carried out.

All we know is that Dany finds a horrible city whose elite live in luxury off the suffering of others and she casts them down in a moment of wrath. Cruel, but no other way of achieving her end is presented. We don't have Barristan say "You could have just taken the Unsullied and the slaves then just stuck two fingers at the Astapori. They couldn't have stopped you at that point. Killing them makes no sense your grace.". Its made out as the only way of solving the problem. if only because the authordoesn't raise these issues. We can't criticise Danys methods (which is the main gauling point) if the author stays so silent and doesn't strike a debate on the issue. Her actions worked. The slaver were never going to change or accept freed slaves or lower living standards. Unwilling to change they were obstacles to that change and had commited immense crimes; so Dany destroyed them utterly. Nuance doesn't enter it. I mean if a people are utterly condemned, which is never the case in real life, and Dany has absolute moral authority in freeing the slaves; its hard to argue with that situation Martins set up.

The age thing is odd. I'am sure its been mentioned that Sandor was fighting and killing around ten or twelve with many others at that age serving as squires. We also have a world where Robb was age 14 when he went to war leading a whole Kingdom and the like. So I assumed that like with the girls puberty is considered to be when a child matures to become an adult. Which I think is how it was in the middle ages, the 16, 18 benchmarks are just a modern social construct to bracket up the life cycle. Age is important in the sense that an adult bears the responsibility for their actions and is subject to the law. Since they were slavers or slave owners it or invested in that society it makes them liable to judgement.

Oh it is mentioned in Dany hate threads.

While the particular issue of the slaughter in Astapor seems hardly addressed, in the terms that you put it, the means and methods of applying neccessary social change as well as the consequences that follow it and the moral boundaries one can move within to bring it are sort of the theme of Dany's stint in Meereen.

[Lady Sansa Stark]

• Dany only killed tokar-wearing men. That means they were guilty of slavery, unless they were slaves wearing tokars just for fun? (Which was illegal.)
  
• Dany is responsible for the actions of Cleos, only if you accept that the slavers themselves are responsible for Dany's actions. :)
  

She ordered to kill every soldier, every tokar-wearing human being and people with a whip which probably meant half the population. After that she says that they shouldn't harm children under twelve, so it's okay, according to Daenerys, to kill children above twelve then and there. You are not going to convince me that no innocents were among them.

As I said, Daenerys isn't responsible for the actions of Cleos. Perhaps you should re-read my comment. ''However, we also blame Daenerys for the chaos that ensued after she was gone. Because, frankly, it was in part her doing. Not the Cleon-things of course, but the chaos; oh yes.'' There. See? Okay. Then I can move on to say that Daenerys is responsible for her amoral actions and the chaos that ensued in Astapor because she thought a council without any backing force after you just freed slaves is the greatest idea ever. The slavers got what was coming to them and I surely won't defend them, but in my opinion, she handled this situation far worse than she could have. Temper of the dragon. Or just ''a girl who knows little of the ways of war'' as she herself often likes to point out when she plays the innocent. (According to Barristan)

[jarl the climber]

The thing we have to keep in mind and I have no idea if anybody has brought this up, but we do not know what percentage of the population was free and what pecentage was enslaved. The Unsullied obey their orders to the letter but they are not considered bloodthirsty like the Dothraki. She had her Dothraki with her but not enought to pillage and rape on a large scale. We lack enough detalis to really say with any certianty what exactly happened at Astapor except that the city was sacked and a lot of the former slaves left with Dany when she moved on.

[Sevumar]

Martin means for us to be bothered by Dany's order to murder all the males 12 or older who wore a tokar or carried a whip. This is basically an order to wipe out the vast majority of the ruling class in Astapor (as we see no women in positions of power inside the city) whether or not they were directly involved in the behavior of those who offended Dany. You can bet the Unsullied weren't stopping people to ask their age or to see ID. This was just a brutal and completely unnecessary overreaction on her part.

More than that, it directly leads to the failure of Astapor down the line. Dany made some small effort to setup a government in the city, but she did not really provide them the means to fill the power vacuum effectively and to enforce their rule throughout the city. She left with the only notable armed force (and really the only means of keeping order) and in her wake, a substantial number of former slaves looted the city and followed her horde. Dany did next to nothing to contain this upheaval and to ease the city's transition, despite being the one who made the mess in the first place. It's an early indication of her inability to plan for the long-term and a impressive demonstration of just how naive she is when she plays queen.

As readers, we should bear her actions in mind when we think about how she might try to rule the Seven Kingdoms. Turning on the cruelty has not served Daenerys well, yet when we see her at the end of Dance, she has determined to do just that once again. She has learned exactly the wrong lesson from her time in Slaver's Bay and she's nearly destroyed the whole region doing it.