Dany...Duty vs Rights...

[The Idiots Lantern]

Nailing up 163 people for something they may not have done is not "justice." It's eye-for-an-eye nastiness that did nothing but give Dany the raging self-righteous fuzzies.

At least she didn't burn them in sacrifice to some dark god she doesn't even believe in. So, progress.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

At least she didn't burn them in sacrifice to some dark god she doesn't even believe in. So, progress.

True. However you'll notice that the people Stannis has burned were actually empirically guilty of a death penalty-worthy crime (treason, desertion, cannibalism).

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Every mistake made is a lesson learned, I guess.

Has she actually learned from her mistakes?

You misunderstand. She went through all this trouble of thinking up this gruesome public display of her ruthlessness and power, and they wouldn't even do her the courtesy of being frightened by it. Now all she's got is all these dead tortured bodies and nothing to show for it. Great. She probably won't try that again.

OK? You don't get points for effort or intent here. A fuck-up is a fuck-up.

All Dany wants to be a just and fair and noble queen who is respected by her peers, feared by her enemies, and loved by her people. She has a strong sense of justice, and I think the royal power to right wrongs and protect the innocent is a large part of why she wants to be Queen in the first place. She's also completely uneducated. The only teachers she's had have, mostly, abused her, double crossed her or tried to kill her. She has to learn by doing, which is far from ideal given the high stakes involved. But in a game that kills the runners-up, she's still alive. She's lost, frightened, and covered in blood in the desert, but she's ALIVE.

I agree that she's uneducated, but we don't usually look to uneducated people and think, "Wow, she should have the power of life and death over millions of people." In most civilized circles, a lack of education is usually a detriment to becoming a governor, and rightly so. And before you snipe at me, yes I know it's not her fault that she's uneducated. Nevertheless, she is. And if her crucifixion stunt is a "strong sense of justice," I want no part of it.

Yes, she's still alive. And all luck runs out eventually.

Jon Snow's brief exposure to the Game didn't end quite as well...

Trying to goad me by bringing up Jon. How pedestrian.

Maybe she didn't know she couldn't kill children. She might have believed she was more ruthless then she actually turned out to be, when the chips were down. You call it going soft when she should be driving harder. I call it erroring on the side of mercy. And it points away from, not towards, a destiny as a firey destroyer.

Up to now you'd be right. However her last chapter suggests otherwise. "Dragons plant no trees." She seems ready to give up on the mercy act.

[The Idiots Lantern]

I think her problem is actually that she got involved in the region in the first place, without a long-term plan or any form of consistency or the most basic understanding of the society she was trying to reform. As far as I'm concerned she was fucked up a creek before she ever reached Meereen. Second-guessing her initial actions in Meereen is like worrying about the structural integrity of a barn that's already on fire.

There are those who think merely walking into the fire to hatch her eggs was wrong and she should have gone to the wisewomen like a good little widow, or else sold her eggs and lived in a house somewhere and never bothered anyone else ever again. There are people who think every step she's ever taken, from straddling Drogo onwards, was a mistake.

Getting justice implies a process of finding those responsible, formally attempting to ascertain their level of guilt and responsibility, and punishing them after that level of guilt has been determined.

There's a big gulf between that and vengeance. What Dany did was the latter. So yes, she may be satisfied that she symbolically "avenged" the children in some way, but her gesture did not have the intended effect. Instead, what it showed was that you might be the victim of a mass murder if Dany decides that someone in your social class has committed a crime.

The general execution has indeed been accepted as a mistake. Still, at least she TRIED SOMETHING. She didn't ignore the problem or make it someone else's job to deal with it. Maybe the next solution she comes up with will be better. One can hope.

Stannis has had to rule, he's been ruling a fiefdom for a decade and a half.

With the benefit of having all the mechanics of ruling already in place. He has guards and soldiers and a stronghold and supply chains and bannermen sworn to him. Imagine he'd been dumped in a wilderness with no money, no connections, nobody knows him from Adam, he doesn't know the language and he's got to somehow amass an army to get home and claim the throne he believes is his. How well would he have done? Where would he have even started?

Stannis has had a different set of challenges to deal with, but he has not had an easy path either.

Nobody's had an easy path. Which is why I wish people would stop saying Dany's only gotten where she has by being lucky and having things drop from the sky right in her lap. It lessens everything about the story when people rob major characters of their agency from sheer spite.

The truth about her family's history is one of the things Dany will need to learn and come to grips with if she hopes to rule Westeros, yes. The Targaryen legacy is not forgotten there and her continued ignorance puts her at a disadvantage when most of the nobility knows the signs of Targaryen excess and madness.

I'm not arguing with you there. It will be important for Dany to know the full story of the rebellion before any invasion plan can be practical. However, she is not currently invading anything. She's barely holding on to what she's already got.

it seems reasonable to expect that she intended to learn what she could of recent Targaryen history.

She probably still intends to. She's just gotten distracted. She probably intended to train her dragons as well and didn't find time for that either. They will probably BOTH end up being terrible mistakes on her part.

She's also found herself in a city full of all kinds of people, yet she makes no attempt to locate books about Valyria, Westeros, or administration. She makes very little attempt to learn how to rehabilitate the economy of Meereen, nor to locate counselors who can help her determine how she might use Meereen's resources to begin generating income again. She has a brief conversation with Xaro about a few possible exports, but afterward, there's no indication she tries to develop markets for any of the products she does have.

I agree it would have been GREAT if she'd done all of those things, but this is starting to sound like you're criticizing a character sometimes criticized as a "Mary Sue" for not being perfect. She grew up mostly without tudors, teachers, or even books beyond what she and her brother could carry, and everything she's learned up until now she's mostly learned by doing. Although it would have been the best thing if she'd immediately sought out expert knowledge and assembled some makeshift schooling to learn how to run a city, to do so just wouldn't gel with what we know of this character's backstory. For better or worse, it looks like she'll live or die thinking on her feet.

No, this would not be justice. It would be a silly, poorly-conceived attempt to bolster her own feelings at the cost of alienating those who hope to approach her with petitions. The man's petition was stupid, yes, and she should have dismissed it without doing anything else. How can anyone reasonably expect that on a given day, Dany might decide to punish them for forgetting the name of a person who died half a decade ago?

a SLAVE half a decade ago. Again, she she's hoping that if she continues to insist that slaves are people and must be shown common courtesy, it will eventually sink in. Maybe she was hoping that the next person to approach her with a petition will remember the name of the slave who's labor he'd like to now benefit from.

It's an admirable sentiment, though not very practical. Still though, we've seen worse.

[The Idiots Lantern]

Has she actually learned from her mistakes?

I don't know. Lets see if she repeats them.

OK? You don't get points for effort or intent here. A fuck-up is a fuck-up.

In which case, Ned Stark is the King of the fuck-ups and Robb Stark and Jon Snow deserved what they got. They all made mistakes for reasons that seemed right and good to them. There is no difference.

I agree that she's uneducated, but we don't usually look to uneducated people and think, "Wow, she should have the power of life and death over millions of people."

No, but we DO look at Lincoln and say "wow, he did all of that with no formal schooling, he must have been really smart!" Granted, she's no Lincoln, yet, but she's trying. That's better then not trying.

In most civilized circles, a lack of education is usually a detriment to becoming a governor, and rightly so. And before you snipe at me, yes I know it's not her fault that she's uneducated. Nevertheless, she is. And if her crucifixion stunt is a "strong sense of justice," I want no part of it.

And if Jon Snow really thought basically selling the Nights Watch to the Boltons was the best way to fight the White Walkers, then it's amazing he wasn't stabbed sooner.

Yes, she's still alive. And all luck runs out eventually.

I know. Just ask Jon.

Trying to goad me by bringing up Jon. How pedestrian.

Well this IS a thread about the double standards people use judging Dany that they don't apply to Jon or Stannis. The comparison is an appropriate one.

Up to now you'd be right. However her last chapter suggests otherwise. "Dragons plant no trees." She seems ready to give up on the mercy act.

She also seems ready to give up on the "life" act, considering her predicament. We'll have to wait and see.

[Pharnavaziani]

Well that, and the fact that the Sons of the Harpy are acting with impunity shows that whatever warning she was trying to send didn't stick. She may have crucified 163 people (who may or may not have been guilty of what they were being executed for), but she left enough alive to make her life a living hell.

True.

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I don't know. Lets see if she repeats them.

She has repeated them. She never did get the hang of the whole "little old ladies aren't necessarily trustworthy" thing.

In which case, Ned Stark is the King of the fuck-ups and Robb Stark and Jon Snow deserved what they got. They all made mistakes for reasons that seemed right and good to them. There is no difference.

Ned, Robb and, yeah, Jon had to deal with the consequences of their mistakes. Ned and Robb are dead and Jon was just stabbed. When is Dany going to face the consequences of her actions? You bring them up as examples, forgetting that they've actually paid the price for what they did whereas Dany has not.

No, but we DO look at Lincoln and say "wow, he did all of that with no formal schooling, he must have been really smart!" Granted, she's no Lincoln, yet, but she's trying. That's better then not trying.

What a terrible and hilarious comparison. Lincoln was self-taught but he was also a voracious reader, someone who listened to opposing viewpoints and took them into consideration ("team of rivals," anyone?) and someone who had a sincere appetite for learning and knowledge and the will to broaden himself. Forget "yet," Dany isn't Lincoln, period.

And if Jon Snow really thought basically selling the Nights Watch to the Boltons was the best way to fight the White Walkers, then it's amazing he wasn't stabbed sooner.

I must have missed that part, sorry.

I know. Just ask Jon.

I'm under the impression that Jon's story isn't quite finished yet.

Well this IS a thread about the double standards people use judging Dany that they don't apply to Jon or Stannis. The comparison is an appropriate one.

That or you're using my favorite character in a pathetically transparent attempt to get a rise out of me.

She also seems ready to give up on the "life" act, considering her predicament. We'll have to wait and see.

Same with Jon, surely. Double standards and whatnot, right?

[thewingedwolf]

And the people of the riverlands aren't monolithic? What do you know about any of them other than the few villagers that Arya comes into contact with or the handfull of peasants that make a brief appeal to Ned? They're just a random group of people. why should we care about them any more than the people in slavers bay? Either you care about human suffering or you don't. What makes one nameless mass of humanity any more deserving of sympathy than another?

I agree with your assessment. I guess the only caveat would be that people in Slaver's Bay whereas the smallfolk of the Roverlands are (technically at least) free. Aside from that however, I agree with you. The issue here I think is that some of the Dany fans (and fans of other characters for that matter) tend to view everything their favorite character does in a more positive light.

[Sevumar]

The general execution has indeed been accepted as a mistake. Still, at least she TRIED SOMETHING. She didn't ignore the problem or make it someone else's job to deal with it. Maybe the next solution she comes up with will be better. One can hope.

She has to do more than hope if she wants to be a successful ruler. She has to learn.

How well would he have done? Where would he have even started?

I don't know, but this has very little to do with the story. Dany could have, and should have, done better than she has in Meereen. She had several opportunities to learn important lessons, and she squandered many of them.

Nobody's had an easy path. Which is why I wish people would stop saying Dany's only gotten where she has by being lucky and having things drop from the sky right in her lap. It lessens everything about the story when people rob major characters of their agency from sheer spite.

Dany has had some accomplishments, but she has also been the beneficiary of a lot of luck along the way. So have many of the other protagonists in the books. She had the choice to leave Slaver's Bay and not to involve herself in a long, bloody war there. She was counseled not to pursue this course of action and she did it anyway. It's laudable that she wants to try to clean up the mess she made, but she has not been wise in her attempts to do so, and this mess is entirely of her own making.

She probably still intends to. She's just gotten distracted. She probably intended to train her dragons as well and didn't find time for that either. They will probably BOTH end up being terrible mistakes on her part.

When you're a ruler, people pay for these mistakes with their lives. She's not living in a vacuum where missteps cost her and Meereen nothing. Every lost opportunity, every ill-considered decision hurt her position and the people who are depending on her. She doesn't seem to be making the most of the chances afforded her. Instead of seriously examining her faults and using the resources at her disposal, she continues making the same mistakes over and over again.

I agree it would have been GREAT if she'd done all of those things, but this is starting to sound like you're criticizing a character sometimes criticized as a "Mary Sue" for not being perfect. Although it would have been the best thing if she'd immediately sought out expert knowledge and assembled some makeshift schooling to learn how to run a city, to do so just wouldn't gel with what we know of this character's backstory. For better or worse, it looks like she'll live or die thinking on her feet.

I'm not saying she should have been perfect, I was listing some of the resources at her disposal that she failed to use at all. I'm looking for progress, and of the leaders we saw profiled in Feast/Dance, she's one of the most stagnant. The lessons she's telling herself she has to learn at the end of Dance are precisely the wrong ones.

a SLAVE half a decade ago. Again, she she's hoping that if she continues to insist that slaves are people and must be shown common courtesy, it will eventually sink in. Maybe she was hoping that the next person to approach her with a petition will remember the name of the slave who's labor he'd like to now benefit from.

I can understand her being upset about this, but she should have understood this as one of the things that a slave system does to people instead of taking her anger out on this man in such an arbitrary way. The lesson that those present in the throne room will draw from this is that Dany is a capricious and unreliable leader who should not be approached if you don't want to be punished for seemingly random things.

[lostinwesteros]

I see very little 'duty' where Dany is concerned. She was courageous, granted, in not only adapting to but embracing the Dothraki people and culture, but that also served her single-minded purpose of gaining power/resources to 'retake' Westeros (which is fine in and of itself). However, regardless of her continual protestations about being "Mother" to all of the slaves she's freed, the telling tale is all too obvious in Meereen, as evidenced by her utter inability to care for them. That's not being responsible, it's being a short-sighted, arrogant, and grandiose steam roller operating under Messiah Complex delusions. IMO

[The Idiots Lantern]

She has repeated them. She never did get the hang of the whole "little old ladies aren't necessarily trustworthy" thing.

I was under the impression we were talking about the crucifixions, but if you'd rather talk about untrustworthy old ladies, that's up to you. The Green Grace seemed different enough.

Ned, Robb and, yeah, Jon had to deal with the consequences of their mistakes. Ned and Robb are dead and Jon was just stabbed. When is Dany going to face the consequences of her actons.

Her kingdom turned to shit, her husband tried to kill her, her people are dying like flies, and now she's lost alone in the wilderness hallucinating and wondering what the crap happened to all her good intentions. It's not exactly sunshine and rainbows in Dany-land.

What a terrible and hilarious comparison. Lincoln was self-taught but he was also a voracious reader, someone who listened to opposing viewpoints and took them into consideration ("team of rivals," anyone?) and someone who had a sincere appetite for learning and knowledge and the will to broaden himself.

Team of Rivals is one of my favorite books! Cheers! :cheers:

Forget "yet," Dany isn't Lincoln, period.

She's more like Lincoln then any other leader we've met, at least as far as slavery's concerned. But thank you for your absolute period statement, period. It's nice to see so much certainty in this uncertain world.

I'm under the impression that Jon's story isn't quite finished yet.

Neither is Dany's. She's still enjoying the dubious benefits of a pulse.

That or you're using my favorite character in a pathetically transparent attempt to get a rise out of me.

Or I'm attempting to draw comparisons you'd rather not make. But you may see it the other way, if you like.

Same with Jon, surely. Double standards and whatnot, right?

Exactly. I'm glad we finally agree!

She has to do more than hope if she wants to be a successful ruler. She has to learn.

I'm the one doing the hoping. I couldn't agree with you more.

[Alistair's Pantaloons]

screw her reasoning, it's annoying.

This. I know she doesn't think she's a flying lizard, it's still obnoxious. Worse, she always says it when she's being stubborn about something instead of thinking it through properly, as though her blood cleanses her of mistakes. I don't recall her once owning up to failure.

[SeanF]

This is probably the only thing she can do without provoking a revolt. It's also part of the hazard of walking into a hostile city with dragons that she can't control.

The conversation she has with Xaro is pretty enlightening on the issue of slavery. Yes, she does allow those who wish to be slaves to sell themselves into slavery. The reality is she really can't stop it, and it would've gone underground anyway. What she reveals to Xaro is that she has instituted slavery in all but name for some of the citizens of the city, by forcing them to dig trenches, work in the fields, or perform other physical labor for which they are not trained, at her command. She has taken upon herself to decide that some people must do certain kinds of labor, so she does not cherish all people's freedom as a necessity.

His point is that matters are not as simple as she would make them. Yes, she has freed the slaves that were held in bondage at the time she took the city, but she has made virtual slaves of others in their place. She has no real plan for rehabilitating the city or its populace and she reacts to things as they come up instead of trying to prevent problems in the first place.

My impression was that this man had lost everything in the Sack, and was labouring for food and shelter. Was he a conscript or publicly-owned slave?

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

My impression was that this man had lost everything in the Sack, and was labouring for food and shelter. Was he a conscript or publicly-owned slave?

Slaves are given food and shelter, too. That's the joke and what reveals Dany's hypocrisy. Her conversation with Xaro shows that this man is more or less a slave — doing hard labor against his will without payment other than food and shelter — even though she doesn't call him one. But if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and does uncompensated labor like a duck ...

<snip>

How about this: When Dany ever accomplishes something without it turning into complete and utter shit, I will give her credit for it. Until then, I will cite precedent and continue to think she's an incompetent moron. I think that's fair.

[Nictarion]

Ned, Robb and, yeah, Jon had to deal with the consequences of their mistakes. Ned and Robb are dead and Jon was just stabbed. When is Dany going to face the consequences of her actions? You bring them up as examples, forgetting that they've actually paid the price for what they did whereas Dany has not.

Isn't that exactly what happened when against the advise of others she trusted MMD to heal Drogo and deliver her baby? I would say it cost her the ultimate price, the life of her husband and child. Most parents would probably tell you they would rather die, than outlive their child.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

Isn't that exactly what happened when against the advise of others she trusted MMD to heal Drogo and deliver her baby? I would say it cost her the ultimate price, the life of her husband and child. Most parents would probably tell you they would rather die, than outlive their child.

She loses her husband and son and gains three weapons of mass destruction out of it. What would she rather have: Drogo and Rhaego, or her dragons that have gotten her virtually everything she has so far? An actual consequence would involve actually losing something without a gigantic neon silver lining attached to it that, arguably, outshines the loss.

[Nictarion]

She loses her husband and son and gains three weapons of mass destruction out of it. What would she rather have: Drogo and Rhaego, or her dragons that have gotten her virtually everything she has so far? An actual consequence would involve actually losing something without a gigantic neon silver lining attached to it that, arguably, outshines the loss.

I'm sure she would rather have her son. Most people would trade anything in the world for their children's lives.

[SeanF]

It's not her naivete about the Great Masters that is the problem here. It's the fact that she allows these people to choose 163 victims from among themselves (probably allowing them to settle several scores in the process) without even making an attempt to ascertain the guilt of the individuals she has decided to murder here. Individual responsibility is something she just doesn't understand and it's a big flaw.

I'm not saying that she's not trying in her way, but she makes virtually no meaningful efforts to improve her skills as a ruler. She does not avail herself of the counsel or information that Barristan represents. She engages in no useful self-examination or self-reflection about what she might do better. At the end of the book, she is drawing exactly the opposite conclusion that she should

She should have just dismissed his petition and sent him on his way, but instead because she is offended by his forgetting the name of the weaver, she decides to engage in a little revenge. This kind of behavior sends the message that the Meereenese stand a chance of being punished for something that's not a crime if the queen decides that she doesn't like something about you. That's going to make her seem less approachable and more prone to discriminating against Meereenese nobles simply because of who they are/

Destroying an entire social class of people what was she did in Astapor, and it did what most of us thought it would do, it left a power vacuum leading to the collapse of the city. Whether she likes it or not, the nobility of

Meereen represents the people who have the wealth and knowledge she's going to need to rebuild the city and return it to economic health. Eradicating them or acting unfairly toward them is not going to get her anywhere, yet she does this several times

I don't think it's a fair or helpful compromise. Again, she probably should have set a standard amount of value for what freed slaves should receive, then there could be no dispute. But the fact that she decided to rubber stamp the theft of this woman's house shows that she doesn't really understand the importance of having a consistent code of laws. What's even more interesting is that by her own logic, her family's claim to the Iron Throne is forfeit.

The mass crucifixion was both too harsh, and not harsh enough. It was a horrible punishment, inflicted on people of indeterminate guilt, while many guilty men remained in power. It enraged her enemies without cowing them.

I don't object to her treatment of Grazdan. He was just wasting the Court's time. The ruling that the woman had forfeited her house (but not her jewels) doesn't seem to make sense at any level.

When I recently re-read her last chapter in ASOS, I was struck by how downbeat and depressing it is, in contrast to the triumph she feels when sacking Astapor and campaigning. She learns that Cleon has seized Astapor and resumed slaving; that Yunkai is gathering allies. We learn how grim the Sack of Mereen was, and she has no one to turn to. Everything that happened in ADWD was pre-figured in that chapter.

[assjfjgjsgjljljglgjfjsduar]

I'm sure she would rather have her son.

I think ultimately she'd rather have the dragons, even if she couldn't admit it to herself. Agree to disagree.

[SeanF]

Slaves are given food and shelter, too. That's the joke and what reveals Dany's hypocrisy. Her conversation with Xaro shows that this man is more or less a slave &mdash; doing hard labor against his will without payment other than food and shelter &mdash; even though she doesn't call him one. But if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and does uncompensated labor like a duck ...

That's Xaro's argument, but it's not necessarily a fair one, unless the man is actually compelled by the government to be a labourer. In medieval societies, servants were often paid in kind, rather than receiving salaries.