Defending Daenerys (aDwD) (Long post)

[Earth 1 Andrew]

She created a mess, and then run away when she couldn't handle it. If only she has responsibility to at least try and fix things and she chose the way out. A person who ran from her problems is not fit to rule, and the" excuses" about age, lack of knowledge etc only promote her inability to rule, not defend it.

I agree, that's my main reason for distrusting Dany as a leader, and why I dislike her now as a character. That and when she said that Eddard Stark died a traitor's death.

[Toxspecific]

'She's just a young girl, you can't expect her not to make mistakes' is the stupidest thing I've read as a defense of Dany. Yes she is young and that is just another reason for her not being allowed to rule a huge volatile continent.

[Elfaki]

I think that Tommen and his cats have a better chance at bringing peace throughout the land than Dany and her dragons (who eat small babies).

I am now rooting for this! The Cat has three heads! :cheers:

[total1402]

Why would he want to do this unless he intends to turn her into a villan? If she gets to Westeros w/her dragons and starts indiscriminately burning down things, like burning Storms End because it was the usurper's seat, incinerating armies, killing people who supported Robert Baratheon, who will cheer her to win the Iron Throne? I know there are a fair number of people who think this is exactly what he intends to do w/her, but I am not so sure. I'm inclined to believe she will end up fighting the Others and may die in the process or that she will fight the Others but ultimately decide she doesn't want to rule Westeros....because the truth is, that she does NOT like being a ruler, she finds it dull, she gets bored and frustrated with the intricacies and the time it takes for strategies to unfold, she lacks patience to stick w/her own policies....and she has so far shown an absolute unwillingness to distinguish between what she wants and thinks is right and what is practical and intelligent.

I wouldn't say villain. But in ADWD she is going totally for appeasement. She avoids confronting the slavers without evidence. Evidence, this woman watched her brother get incinerated two books ago yet here she is fussing over legal technicality. She avoids fighting the Yunkish and seeks peace. She avoids using her dragons as a weapon in any capacity and cages them. Because it is such an extreme the opposite need not move her into villain territory for the reader, though she will absolutely be viewed as such be many people. Simply using her dragon to destroy the armies of her enemies and their castles isn't evil. Plus, frankly, the people who supported Robert would not bend the knee to a Targ or the daughter of Aerys anyway so its a void issue. If somebody is already your sworn enemy who will fight to the death it really doesn't matter what you think of them.

This is what I am getting at. Danys arc is not about her experience as a ruler. It is about the moral indecision she faces as she struggles to do good even though her inner nature (remember who you are) is towards Fire and Blood. There are very few actual executive or administrative or legal duties for Dany to fulfill and its hard to see her fail at them. Martin focuses on the moral crisis of Dany as a character in ADWD and not on her as a ruler. She doesn't like dealing with "people she'd rather flay" and I think shes less bored than this simply reflecting her lack of engagement with her situation she doesn't like. Why should she want to spend her days playing toady to slaver lords? She is of two minds of how to deal with this, reluctant to do the hard decisions because of her doubts and so its not surprising that she doesn't commit to ruling. Plus, this is all on her and she has nobody to share these burdens with. This is wearying, especially when she has the harrowing experience of her situation and Astapor to deal with; hence why she tries to take some happiness with Daario. Its just that Martin made something meant to be sympathetic and mucked it up. Plus, you haven't considered that the lesson Dany needs to learn about ruling is that its not about her or her happiness (growing olives trees and rest) and its about serving others and making sacrifices for them (killing slavers, going to Westeros).

[Cas Stark]

You say her story isn't about her being a ruler, yet the driving force behind everything she has done is to get to Westeros and rule. A case could definitely be made that her epiphany on slavery was quite a happy coincidence happening exactly as she found the slave army she desperately needed but couldn't afford, which she sidestepped by liberating them to serve her. Her entire conscious motivation for everything she does is the Iron Throne. Now, again, I believe her true nature is not to rule, she wants to sit around and eat figs, have a cute boyfriend in the house w/the red door. Her struggle is the duality of her nature....she wants to hang out and be happy, yet she is quite good at conquering and killing massive amounts of people...and she tells herself she wants to rule, but this is a lie. She likes to lead, take action, get things done. She does not like the aftermath, the boring details of putting back together the things that get broken when you desire to remake the world as you see fit.

In fact, now that I wrote all this, she bears a somewhat scary resemblance to Bob Baratheon, who was also a fantastic leader and soldier, who excelled at killing and getting people to love him and follow him. But who, upon winning the throne, was wholly uninterested in the boring details of running the seven kingdoms.

[Zman1863]

You say her story isn't about her being a ruler, yet the driving force behind everything she has done is to get to Westeros and rule. A case could definitely be made that her epiphany on slavery was quite a happy coincidence happening exactly as she found the slave army she desperately needed but couldn't afford, which she sidestepped by liberating them to serve her. Her entire conscious motivation for everything she does is the Iron Throne. Now, again, I believe her true nature is not to rule, she wants to sit around and eat figs, have a cute boyfriend in the house w/the red door. Her struggle is the duality of her nature....she wants to hang out and be happy, yet she is quite good at conquering and killing massive amounts of people...and she tells herself she wants to rule, but this is a lie. She likes to lead, take action, get things done. She does not like the aftermath, the boring details of putting back together the things that get broken when you desire to remake the world as you see fit.

In fact, now that I wrote all this, she bears a somewhat scary resemblance to Bob Baratheon, who was also a fantastic leader and soldier, who excelled at killing and getting people to love him and follow him. But who, upon winning the throne, was wholly uninterested in the boring details of running the seven kingdoms.

Her resemblance to Robert only goes to the surface. She learns that most of ruling is boring and that the rest is agonizing dilemma, soar ass cheeks and headaches. But this realization doesn't just result in her throwing up her hands and withdrawing as Robert did- at least not in a permanent way. Do we expect her to return with Drogon and then tell Barristan to keep doing everything while she goes off to guzzle wine? She has a much deeper sense of duty and responsibility. Her parallel desire to live a normal life and indulge in selfish desires is a by product of the fact that she is still a teenage girl despite her status as a powerful leader. Robert's vices were much more a reflection of personal failings as a ruler than Dany's are because Robert was a fully mature man when he took his crown. I would say Dany's dual desires to rule and to be normal are much more comparable to Robb's experience. Like with Robb, Dany's personal desires have contributed to her problems.

[Morienthar]

'She's just a young girl, you can't expect her not to make mistakes' is the stupidest thing I've read as a defense of Dany. Yes she is young and that is just another reason for her not being allowed to rule a huge volatile continent.

I know,By that logic Joff should be excused for everything he was younger.

[Toxspecific]

I know,By that logic Joff should be excused for everything he was younger.

Yeah Joffrey shouldn't have been made King because 1. he was a psychotic moron and 2. he was a kid.

[Parwan]

In my opinion, page 16 contains an interesting mixture of the good, the bad, and the debatable. I wanted to reply sooner. Unfortunately, the real world has kept me away too long. Perhaps this thread has run out of energy. Just in case there are still interested parties reading these posts, I'll make a few observations and see if there are any replies.

I agree, that's my main reason for distrusting Dany as a leader, and why I dislike her now as a character..

This criticism doesn't hold water.

She ran away? That flies in the face of the facts. How long did she have to make a crucially important decision--a minute or two? Perhaps less than that. Drogon came out of the sky and things rapidly went to hell. "She ran away" and similar comments I've read on various threads make it sound like the queen is one of those real housewife of whatever county, or maybe a spoiled teenager from a rich family, unsatisfied with the money currently being spent on her sweet 16 party. Things get too tough, or aren't up to her standards, and she just checks out, hops on a plane and goes to Bermuda or something. What actually happened was not like that at all. She saw Drogon out in the arena attacked by one of the Meereenese guards. This was obviously an unpleasant sight for a Targaryen. More importantly, Drogon was a wounded beast, an extremely dangerous thing. Later in the story, the two other dragons are released. Ser Barristan observes that they could have destroyed the entire city, perhaps would have destroyed it if not for the rain. There is every reason to believe that Drogon could have lit as many fires as his siblings, and there wouldn't have been any rain to save the day. Dany had to act, and she had to act quickly. She got the dragon under control and took him up and away. Quentyn had this to say about how things should be done with the flying beasts:

Master them, as Daenerys mastered Drogon in the pit. The girl had been alone, clad in wisps of silk, but fearless

That is an accurate observation about the dragon queen. The Dornish prince overestimates his ability, but that isn't relevant here. Neither he nor anyone else in the story indicates that Dany just skipped out and is now on vacation somewhere.

I wouldn't say villain. But in ADWD she is going totally for appeasement. She avoids confronting the slavers without evidence. Evidence, this woman watched her brother get incinerated two books ago yet here she is fussing over legal technicality. She avoids fighting the Yunkish and seeks peace. She avoids using her dragons as a weapon in any capacity and cages them...

This is what I am getting at. Danys arc is not about her experience as a ruler. It is about the moral indecision she faces as she struggles to do good even though her inner nature (remember who you are) is towards Fire and Blood...

The "going for appeasement" criticism is a worthwhile one. There have been commenters on these forums who said that Dany was a frustrating character. Sometimes she seems smart, even cagey. At other times she seems stupid. I can understand this point of view. I'm not sure what you mean by "avoids confronting the slavers without evidence." Overall though, I'd say that she made some really dumb moves in her negotiations with the Yunaki'i. Her dragons are not easy to use. However, both she and her advisers fail to see things clearly. They miss opportunities. If nothing else, they should realize that there are possibilities to bluff their opponents.

The struggles that Dany goes through seem realistic to me. There are some quandaries. This is one reason why I find her an interesting character.

You say her story isn't about her being a ruler, yet the driving force behind everything she has done is to get to Westeros and rule. A case could definitely be made that her epiphany on slavery was quite a happy coincidence happening exactly as she found the slave army she desperately needed but couldn't afford, which she sidestepped by liberating them to serve her...

I believe I see what you're driving at. However, I don't think that "epiphany" and "happy coincidence" are the best phrases to use here. Dany's attitude toward slavery started evolving long before she arrived in Astapor. The experience of bargaining for the Unsullied can be viewed as a breaking point, a final shock to the system that turned her completely against slavery. I don't think there's much of a coincidence involved. She avoids payment by attacking the slavers, something she could have done without liberating anyone.

Her resemblance to Robert only goes to the surface. She learns that most of ruling is boring and that the rest is agonizing dilemma, soar ass cheeks and headaches. But this realization doesn't just result in her throwing up her hands and withdrawing as Robert did- at least not in a permanent way. Do we expect her to return with Drogon and then tell Barristan to keep doing everything while she goes off to guzzle wine? She has a much deeper sense of duty and responsibility...

I agree that there isn't that much similarity between Robert and Dany in ruling style. There are, however, some important similarities between her and Westerosi rulers in general. I'll repeat here what I've said many times before. Daenerys Targaryen isn't an outlier. The main problem with her isn't that the stands out in any way. The main problem is that she fits in.

[Frey Pentos]

As far as I am concerned, she is still using an army of slaves as her main military force and so her "freeing of slaves and protecting them" really does not strike as anything more than hypocrisy that serves well her lust for blood and need of having some on whom she can try to be a ruler. And I am sure many of those people would rather remain slaves than being at mercy of a totally incompetent ruler whose main concerns consist of eating olives and being taken in "every way man take a woman" while her city suffers from famine and crime she caused.

Blind hate is such an ugly emotion.

[SeanF]

You say her story isn't about her being a ruler, yet the driving force behind everything she has done is to get to Westeros and rule. A case could definitely be made that her epiphany on slavery was quite a happy coincidence happening exactly as she found the slave army she desperately needed but couldn't afford, which she sidestepped by liberating them to serve her. Her entire conscious motivation for everything she does is the Iron Throne. Now, again, I believe her true nature is not to rule, she wants to sit around and eat figs, have a cute boyfriend in the house w/the red door. Her struggle is the duality of her nature....she wants to hang out and be happy, yet she is quite good at conquering and killing massive amounts of people...and she tells herself she wants to rule, but this is a lie. She likes to lead, take action, get things done. She does not like the aftermath, the boring details of putting back together the things that get broken when you desire to remake the world as you see fit.

In fact, now that I wrote all this, she bears a somewhat scary resemblance to Bob Baratheon, who was also a fantastic leader and soldier, who excelled at killing and getting people to love him and follow him. But who, upon winning the throne, was wholly uninterested in the boring details of running the seven kingdoms.

I don't think that retiring into private life could ever be more than a pipe dream for Dany, now. There are simply too many people who want to kill her. The best outcome for her would be to win the Iron Throne, and choose a highly competent Small Council to delegate power to. She'll never be a Louis XIV or Henry VII, who were their own chief ministers. But, she might be a Louis XIII, who finds a Richileu to govern competently.

[Ser No One]

the truth is, that she does NOT like being a ruler

But who does?

Robert hated it and he was a bad king, Jon doesn't like it but he's not too bad (could be better), Ned didn't want to be the Lord either, and he was a good lord, Stannis doesn't want to be a King either, it's just his duty (according to him).

Isn't the only character who likes being a ruler Cersei? She's convinced of her own greatness, and let's say it, completely crazy. An other one would be Tyrion, but he's not really a ruler, more of a very good counselor.

I don't think wanting to be a ruler, or liking it has anything to do with how good a ruler you can become. It would still be her duty (unless she meets someone she deems has a better claim than her)

[Parwan]

I don't think that retiring into private life could ever be more than a pipe dream for Dany, now. There are simply too many people who want to kill her. The best outcome for her would be to win the Iron Throne, and choose a highly competent Small Council to delegate power to. She'll never be a Louis XIV or Henry VII, who were their own chief ministers. But, she might be a Louis XIII, who finds a Richileu to govern competently.

Good points. I'd say that it's not just about her enemies though. She feels, quite legitimately, that she has incurred obligations to her supporters. At the very end, there may be some possibility to retire from public life. Perhaps after enough blood and fire she could decide, "to hell with it, enough of this." It comes to her that the one time she was happy was back in Braavos. She goes back to look for the house with the red door.

But who does?

Robert hated it and he was a bad king, Jon doesn't like it but he's not too bad (could be better), Ned didn't want to be the Lord either, and he was a good lord, Stannis doesn't want to be a King either, it's just his duty (according to him).

Isn't the only character who likes being a ruler Cersei? She's convinced of her own greatness, and let's say it, completely crazy. An other one would be Tyrion, but he's not really a ruler, more of a very good counselor.

I don't think wanting to be a ruler, or liking it has anything to do with how good a ruler you can become. It would still be her duty (unless she meets someone she deems has a better claim than her)

I like this analysis. One matter is the business of insanity. We see it from different angles. Most of these angles suggest a relationship between madness and other things--dreams, visions, flying...There is a relationship between madness and rule, perhaps even madness and greatness. Cersei is not the only one who likes being a ruler though. Ramsay enjoys it, and he is a psycho. Euron likes it; I say that he is nuts also. The man has imbibed too much of that black blue stuff; it has damaged his brain.

[Phewdi]

But who does?

Robert hated it and he was a bad king, Jon doesn't like it but he's not too bad (could be better), Ned didn't want to be the Lord either, and he was a good lord, Stannis doesn't want to be a King either, it's just his duty (according to him).

Isn't the only character who likes being a ruler Cersei? She's convinced of her own greatness, and let's say it, completely crazy. An other one would be Tyrion, but he's not really a ruler, more of a very good counselor.

I don't think wanting to be a ruler, or liking it has anything to do with how good a ruler you can become. It would still be her duty (unless she meets someone she deems has a better claim than her)

:agree:

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

Grrm had to let Dany go through this trope "Woman with a queenly mask" for character development.

It wouldn't make sense for her to move from the "classical princess" trope to the "Good Queen" trope.

Hence all her mistakes and blunders in Mereen lol.

[Rhymes with Weak]

Grrm had to let Dany go through this trope "Woman with a queenly mask" for character development.

It wouldn't make sense for her to move from the "classical princess" trope to the "Good Queen" trope.

Hence all her mistakes and blunders in Mereen lol.

She's going to enter the "good queen" phase? News to me.

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

She's going to enter the "good queen" phase? News to me.

She never did and will never go there, cause GRRM already let her go through the "woman with a Queenly mask" trope.

[Atropis the Elf]

I agree, that's my main reason for distrusting Dany as a leader, and why I dislike her now as a character. That and when she said that Eddard Stark died a traitor's death.

Dany had no idea who or what Ned truly was. I think people are forgeting the fact that she grew up with stories said only by Viserys. She was forced to be a wife AND a khaleesi, and then she started developing her character. She also counts three murder attempts against her.

While I understand that opinions are explicitly objective, the massive hatred Dany receives seems unfathomable to me.

[Rhymes with Weak]

She never did and will never go there, cause GRRM already let her go through the "woman with a Queenly mask" trope.

Praise the sun, I'd hate her even more if that weren't the case.

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

Praise the sun, I'd hate her even more if that weren't the case.

However the "woman with the Queenly mask" trope often leads to the "wise queen" trope not good but "wise" trope in fantasy series, but that depends on whether GRRM wants her to be a queen at the end of the series.

Also why do you hate her just curious? :P