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Dany or Mirri? Which one was in the Right?


SeanF

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*Something* tells her to do it, there's no denying that, but exactly what is not clear. Doesn't change my point that it's not conscious knowledge though. Note that I'm not saying "she got lucky", because it's too mediated to be just that, but you yourself bring up Summerhall, and my personal theory is that something along the same lines went down there, only the time wasn't right then / something unspecified went wrong, and well... the rest is (rather crispy) history.

I agree on the timing not being right. In an SSM GRRM described Dany's magic as based upon instinct, and we all know that her instinct was based off her dreams and observations of the eggs, so my assumption is that Egg also had the same instinct, considering he brought his whole family which means he was very sure it would work. Dany's advantage I believe was the timing of the event (magic returning) and also her realizing that a sacrifice is needed to hatch the dead eggs.

Patrick Stormborn has pointed out how meticulous her preparations were for the ritual. What entity was guiding her at this point remains a mystery. I'd also love to know what happened when she was in the flames. Did she strike a bargain with a deity or demon in there?

My guess is that the dragons are the entity that guided, the black dragon (Drogon) was the one that seeked Dany out in her dream, why he didn't seek anyone else in the khalasar I believe come down to the Valyrians of old tampering with their blood for dragons to have an increased affinity to them, it would also explain why Targaryens have been haunted by dragon dreams even after the death of dragons.

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I agree on the timing not being right. In an SSM GRRM described Dany's magic as based upon instinct, and we all know that her instinct was based off her dreams and observations of the eggs, so my assumption is that Egg also had the same instinct, considering he brought his whole family which means he was very sure it would work. Dany's advantage I believe was the timing of the event (magic returning) and also her realizing that a sacrifice is needed to hatch the dead eggs.

My guess is that the dragons are the entity that guided, the black dragon (Drogon) was the one that seeked Dany out in her dream, why he didn't seek anyone else in the khalasar I believe come down to the Valyrians of old tampering with their blood for dragons to have an increased affinity to them, it would also explain why Targaryens have been haunted by dragon dreams even after the death of dragons.

Yes this is the only explanation that makes any sense at all, that the bloodline and the dragons are guiding her.........for Daenys the dreamer to have prophetic dreams, all the way down to Dany also having them 300+ years later in the same bloodline! It also explains Targ women having deformed dragon babies during pregnancies gone wrong, further, it explains how Dany inherently knew what to do with the eggs. I am not saying all Targs are just like Dany, She is unique even in her family.

'The shifting lamplight limned their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king.

Was it madness that seized her then born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, "Ser Jorah,light the brazier."

"Khaleesi?" The knight looked at her strangely. "It is so hot. Are you certain?"

She had never been so certain......

When the coals were afire, Dany sent Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what she must do. This is madness she told herself as she lifted the black and scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack and burn, and it's so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet.......

Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals.'

This is from GOT the first time she tries to hatch the eggs, she already knows how to do it, where to do it, that she must do it alone. She gets all this info from her blood, from her dragonlord family, and that's all. She is in the zone while she is doing this, in a form of ritual 'she heard her own voice saying', like something that has taken her over and is guiding her, and that is her dragonlord blood, her ancient Valyrian family.

She is even arguing with herself, part of her thinks she is doing something mad, and the other part just knows what to do somehow. Obviously we know that she is not mad, that she IS doing the right thing and that she will succeed on her next attempt, as a sacrifice and her walking into the fire are the missing elements here. Which she also realizes and just figures out completely on her own. At Summerhall there were many people involved, many Targs, who may have even had written instructions on what to do (how to hatch the dragons) and they still failed, but not Dany. At this point arguing against what I am saying is going against what is clearly written out in the text.

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That's not at all true, but it is true that Darwin was not writing about why individual humans survive in a society. In other words, Darwin is not responsible for "social Darwinism."

Didnt accuse him of that. Some other idiots a few decades ago tried to abuse him. And this was "not so cool".

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Yes this is the only explanation that makes any sense at all, that the bloodline and the dragons are guiding her.........for Daenys the dreamer to have prophetic dreams, all the way down to Dany also having them 300+ years later in the same bloodline! It also explains Targ women having deformed dragon babies during pregnancies gone wrong, further, it explains how Dany inherently knew what to do with the eggs. I am not saying all Targs are just like Dany, She is unique even in her family.

'The shifting lamplight limned their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king.

Was it madness that seized her then born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, "Ser Jorah,light the brazier."

"Khaleesi?" The knight looked at her strangely. "It is so hot. Are you certain?"

She had never been so certain......

When the coals were afire, Dany sent Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what she must do. This is madness she told herself as she lifted the black and scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack and burn, and it's so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet.......

Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning coals.'

This is from GOT the first time she tries to hatch the eggs, she already knows how to do it, where to do it, that she must do it alone. She gets all this info from her blood, from her dragonlord family, and that's all. She is in the zone while she is doing this, in a form of ritual 'she heard her own voice saying', like something that has taken her over and is guiding her, and that is her dragonlord blood, her ancient Valyrian family.

She is even arguing with herself, part of her thinks she is doing something mad, and the other part just knows what to do somehow. Obviously we know that she is not mad, that she IS doing the right thing and that she will succeed on her next attempt, as a sacrifice and her walking into the fire are the missing elements here. Which she also realizes and just figures out completely on her own. At Summerhall there were many people involved, many Targs, who may have even had written instructions on what to do (how to hatch the dragons) and they still failed, but not Dany. At this point arguing against what I am saying is going against what is clearly written out in the text.

She also uses instinct to deduce that courage is essential to taming dragons. Almost in a similar manner to the instance you pointed out

Drogon roared. The sound filled the pit. A furnace wind engulfed her. The dragon’s long scaled neck stretched toward her. When his mouth opened, she could see bits of broken bone and charred flesh between his black teeth. His eyes were molten.

I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away. She had never been so certain of anything. If I run from him, he will burn me and devour me.
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She also uses instinct to deduce that courage is essential to taming dragons. Almost in a similar manner to the instance you pointed out

Drogon roared. The sound filled the pit. A furnace wind engulfed her. The dragon’s long scaled neck stretched toward her. When his mouth opened, she could see bits of broken bone and charred flesh between his black teeth. His eyes were molten.

I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away. She had never been so certain of anything. If I run from him, he will burn me and devour me.

YUP!

Excellent point :)

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Frey Pies are funny. But, objectively, they are evil.

Dany's decision to burn Mirri alive seemed justified to me, the first time I read it. On reflection, I find it hard to justify. To me, Mirri was certainly more sinned against than sinning. It's not just that it's a very cruel death. It's also the fact that someone is being sacrificed to make a piece of magic work.

The chapter ends triumphantly, with dragons being brought back into the world. But, that may not be a good thing.

Yes, the bolded fact is vital. Trying to determine "Which One Was Right?" just doesn't work. It's not an unnatural question, but it misses the most important points.

...

I will admit that during the first reading I was all for "fuck yeah, give those Freys the pill they deserve" and the like but now I see those things much more critical. And I can understand Catelyn and Elaria much much better now when they raised the question where should all of this end...

Revenge is not the way to go, see the delusional Sand Snakes or even Doran who nurtures his wish for revenge for 15 years. To what end? His son is dead and his daughter has been alienated for years.

Obviously you cannot force a reader to look behind the surface. And some of those readers will become posters here. Of course it is just fiction, just fantasy. There is no Westeros in RL. But the themes and questions raised in these books are real in the sense that they exist in reality too. And that is the reason why I cannot cheer for Frey pies. In my inner eye I see two men slaughtered and butchered and fed to their brothers and family. Yes, it's a joke but a very sick one.

What Westeros (and Essos) need is justice. Not revenge. I wished that some users here (not you of course) could see it more that way.

For me, ASoIaF, starting with the first prologue, shows us that something has gone very wrong.

Some thing

not

Some one

This is essential to the story, and it becomes clearer as we go along. Things like obsession with revenge are part of the deal. Dark and troubling aspects of magic are closer to the theme of this thread.

Patrick Stormborn has pointed out how meticulous her preparations were for the ritual. What entity was guiding her at this point remains a mystery. I'd also love to know what happened when she was in the flames. Did she strike a bargain with a deity or demon in there?

"Bargain" is a good word. It brings up some ideas and issues that have been discussed elsewhere. Stannis has been compared to Faust. I think there may be something of Pandora in Dany. These are not exact parallels, but they are worth considering. I'm definitely not saying that either of these characters is a villain. However, they, and pretty damn near everyone else, take actions that are troubling.

A few times I have put forth the assertion that the burning of the Peasebury men indicated that Stannis Baratheon was turning his criminal justice system over to a bunch of demon worshipers. Read that chapter again. There is no mention of the laws of the land or the king's justice. The rhetoric centers on the ritual sacrifice of a group of human beings and how this will please a "god," who will respond by melting the snow. Even if you don't accept this interpretation, you still have to deal with the general idea of sacrifice and the significant number of times this idea occurs in the text. Sacrifice is a form of worship. Inflicting suffering and death on humans as a form of worship is troubling on many levels. This is true even if there are no actual demons in the world. There definitely is some kind of power out there. When you sacrifice to this power, how can you maintain that you are not strengthening it? When you strengthen something that requires human suffering and death as a form of worship, how can you maintain that there is no evil involved in the process?

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I agree on the timing not being right. In an SSM GRRM described Dany's magic as based upon instinct, and we all know that her instinct was based off her dreams and observations of the eggs, so my assumption is that Egg also had the same instinct, considering he brought his whole family which means he was very sure it would work. Dany's advantage I believe was the timing of the event (magic returning) and also her realizing that a sacrifice is needed to hatch the dead eggs.

My guess is that the dragons are the entity that guided, the black dragon (Drogon) was the one that seeked Dany out in her dream, why he didn't seek anyone else in the khalasar I believe come down to the Valyrians of old tampering with their blood for dragons to have an increased affinity to them, it would also explain why Targaryens have been haunted by dragon dreams even after the death of dragons.

We're straying off-topic, but none the worse for that.

I'd say that Dany was meant to hatch the eggs, in the same way that Bilbo was meant to find the One Ring. Egg wasn't. But meant by whom?

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.

A few times I have put forth the assertion that the burning of the Peasebury men indicated that Stannis Baratheon was turning his criminal justice system over to a bunch of demon worshipers. Read that chapter again. There is no mention of the laws of the land or the king's justice. The rhetoric centers on the ritual sacrifice of a group of human beings and how this will please a "god," who will respond by melting the snow. Even if you don't accept this interpretation, you still have to deal with the general idea of sacrifice and the significant number of times this idea occurs in the text. Sacrifice is a form of worship. Inflicting suffering and death on humans as a form of worship is troubling on many levels. This is true even if there are no actual demons in the world. There definitely is some kind of power out there. When you sacrifice to this power, how can you maintain that you are not strengthening it? When you strengthen something that requires human suffering and death as a form of worship, how can you maintain that there is no evil involved in the process?

It reminds me somewhat of Martin's short story "And Seven Times Never Kill Man." This finishes with a military/religious cult slaughtering their own children in honour of their god. To the reader, it's clear they've gone mad.

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I'd say that Dany was meant to hatch the eggs, in the same way that Bilbo was meant to find the One Ring. Egg wasn't. But meant by whom?

Perhaps, a key difference is that in the Lord of the RIngs, we have the Valar and ultimately Eru Iluvatar who has set the world in motion and decided its fate (through song, no less), whereas ASOIAF (and I do note the Song in the title, there) there's no clear sign of Gods or other omnipotent beings guiding or controlling the world - and yet there's magic and prophesies.

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In AGOT, Dany saves Mirri from rape, when her town is stormed by Khal Drogo's men. Subsequently, Drogo falls ill from a wound that he took, and Dany asks Mirri to treat him. She prepares a poultice, and tells him not to remove it, and to abstain from wine or milk of the poppy.

Drogo ignores her instructions, removes the poultice, and drinks heavily. He deteriorates and is on the point of dying. His Bloodriders start to beat Mirri up, notwithstanding that her instructions were ignored, and Dany saves her. She asks him to save Drogo, and she says she can only ease his passing. Dany begs her again, and she says she can use a spell but "death would be cleaner", and only a life can pay for Drogo's life,

Dany agrees, and Mirri tells her to sacrifice a horse. She doesn't say outright that sacrificing a horse will save Drogo, but it's implied. Dany subsequently gives birth, and is brought into the tent where Mirri is casting her spell, despite instructions that no one is to enter.

Dany wakes to find her child died (indeed, was a monster) and Drogo is in a vegetative state. When she accuses Mirri of betrayal, she doesn't deny it. She simply says that Drogo shouldn't have burned her temple, and that Dany's dead son will burn no cities. She then lists the atrocities that were carried out against her people. It seems clear to me that Mirri betrayed Dany, either by causing the spell to work in the way that it did, or by failing to warn her what its outcome would be.

When Dany realises Drogo can't be brought back into sentience, she suffocates him, and prepares his funeral pyre. She then burns Mirri alive, both for revenge, and to make her dragon eggs hatch (as the spell requires a human sacrifice to work).

Yet, I find myself sympathising with both characters. Dany is right to feel furious at Mirri's betrayal. Mirri is right to be furious at what Drogo did to her people and to strike him down. Do other posters feel so conflicted, or do you clearly identify with one character rather than the other?

Just like you, I fully sympathized with both characters.

Dany did the best she could under the circumstances to save Mirri and the other rape victims and protect them. To have Mirri trick her into sacrificing her child for nothing - since Drogo would be a vegetable - was a terrible tragedy for Dany, and when Mirri outright said she had wanted revenge, it must have felt like one of those "no good deed goes unpunished" situations. I don't even blame her for burning the person she held responsible for this terrible thing that happened, while also using it to try to to make something out of this despair and ruin of her own life.

Mirri, on the other hand, was completely understandable and justified in not feeling any sort of gratitude or loyalty to Dany. For her point of view, Dany was a part of that same Dothraki force that was responsible for raping her, murdering murdering, burning and destroying everything that she held dear. Dany was the khal's wife and cared about the khal despite everything that he and his forces were doing. I can see why she would be less than impressed that this woman then came to save her life - while making her and the other women her own slaves and making them live with those same people who had destroyed their town and murdered the people they loved, making them live alongside their own rapists and, as a supposedly happy outcome, perhaps have to marry them. Now, we know that Dany was not realistically able to do more as she didn't have the power in the khalasar to do more - she was already causing Drogo's bloodriders to defy him and be angry because of her influence - but I wouldn't expect someone in Mirri's position to be understanding, and Dany was too naive when she expected gratefulness and loyalty. It makes sense that Mirri wanted revenge; and not just revenge, but to - as she believed - prevent even worse atrocities in the future. What Mirri did to Rhaego is morally ambiguous - destroying a baby and tricking his mother into letting it happen is a terrible thing, on one hand, but since Mirri believed in the Stallion that Mounts the World prophecy, and was sure Rhaego would grow up to be an even worse danger than someone like Drogo, from her POV it was something like "would you kill Hitler in the womb if you could".

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Just like you, I fully sympathized with both characters.

Dany did the best she could under the circumstances to save Mirri and the other rape victims and protect them. To have Mirri trick her into sacrificing her child for nothing - since Drogo would be a vegetable - was a terrible tragedy for Dany, and when Mirri outright said she had wanted revenge, it must have felt like one of those "no good deed goes unpunished" situations. I don't even blame her for burning the person she held responsible for this terrible thing that happened, while also using it to try to to make something out of this despair and ruin of her own life.

Mirri, on the other hand, was completely understandable and justified in not feeling any sort of gratitude or loyalty to Dany. For her point of view, Dany was a part of that same Dothraki force that was responsible for raping her, murdering murdering, burning and destroying everything that she held dear. Dany was the khal's wife and cared about the khal despite everything that he and his forces were doing. I can see why she would be less than impressed that this woman then came to save her life - while making her and the other women her own slaves and making them live with those same people who had destroyed their town and murdered the people they loved, making them live alongside their own rapists and, as a supposedly happy outcome, perhaps have to marry them. Now, we know that Dany was not realistically able to do more as she didn't have the power in the khalasar to do more - she was already causing Drogo's bloodriders to defy him and be angry because of her influence - but I wouldn't expect someone in Mirri's position to be understanding, and Dany was too naive when she expected gratefulness and loyalty. It makes sense that Mirri wanted revenge; and not just revenge, but to - as she believed - prevent even worse atrocities in the future. What Mirri did to Rhaego is morally ambiguous - destroying a baby and tricking his mother into letting it happen is a terrible thing, on one hand, but since Mirri believed in the Stallion that Mounts the World prophecy, and was sure Rhaego would grow up to be an even worse danger than someone like Drogo, from her POV it was something like "would you kill Hitler in the womb if you could".

I liked your comment on the re-read "Dany did her best, and her best wasn't good enough."

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The funny thing is, while "killing" Drogo and his son may have saved lives (if you believe Drogo was doing more damage in his "Iron Throne" campaign with his 40,000 raiders than all of the separate warlords are doing now), it probably was preferable from Drogo's perspective. If Drogo had been healed and allowed to begin his journey to Westeros, he would have died a painful and humiliating death before he ever got there, likely after seeing his horde collapse.

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Perhaps, a key difference is that in the Lord of the RIngs, we have the Valar and ultimately Eru Iluvatar who has set the world in motion and decided its fate (through song, no less), whereas ASOIAF (and I do note the Song in the title, there) there's no clear sign of Gods or other omnipotent beings guiding or controlling the world - and yet there's magic and prophesies.

That's an excellent point actually, I completely agree. IN TLOTR we know there are mystical gods in Valar watching down on the line of kings and the fate of the eldar. In ASOIAF we have nothing like that, that's very interesting :)

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