Is Dany prophecy-driven and/or conscious of her heroic destiny?
Also check out this list.
Here, I’m going to discuss the thoughts of some of my favorite writers of any fandom ever, who happen to believe that Dany is highly motivated by the prophecies she’s received (albeit not in a way that blatantly mischaracterizes her like in the quotes I brought up here because they’re both great writers who talk about her with nuance and without necessarily expecting or hoping for the worst).
Now, more than ever, Dany will view herself to be the agent of destiny, and this will very much guide her when she makes her decisions about Jorah and Ser Barristan in Dany V, and why she will feel so powerfully adrift when destiny seems to stop guiding her in ADWD. (x)
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Of all the main characters in asoiaf Dany is the most aware of her chosen one role, and the one who clings the most to the idea of being born for greatness, of having a bigger purpose. (x)
As of ADWD, however, I would argue that both statements are inaccurate. Dany mostly thinks about the prophecies to the extent that it showcases her desire for companionship and belonging. This is why the prophecies that get most attention in Dany’s thoughts are
the one about the three treasons that she will know, for it means that “there was no one in the world that she could trust” (ASOS Dany VI) and
the one about her infertility (it might not be an actual prophecy that comes to pass, but that’s what it is for Dany), for it means she “will never have a little girl” (ADWD Dany X) and “House Targaryen will end with [her]” (ASOS Dany IV).
Dany remembers that she is the “Child of three, they called me. Three mounts they promised me, three fires, and three treasons. One for blood and one for gold and one for …”, but, aside from the treasons, those things never crossed her mind from her departure from the HotU until Quaithe asked her to remember the Undying. And then Dany never brings them up again, at least not onpage, which is where GRRM is supposed to add what’s essential to know about her characterization.
Also, there are plenty of instances where Dany can’t figure out what the prophecies mean, which frustrate her to no end, especially in ADWD (see, for instance, the sections of ADWD Dany VII and VIII). She can’t “feel so powerfully adrift when destiny seems to stop guiding her” - destiny never guided her in the first place, as she tells Jorah that “[she] went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead they’ve left [her] with a hundred new questions.” (ACOK Dany V)
Also, I would argue that Dany’s final moment in ASOS Dany IV where she embraces the freedmen is not one that is setting her up someone who views herself as an “agent of destiny” (at least not up until ADWD), it’s simply that she had already seen that this was going to happen in the HoTU; most importantly, the moment is particularly tied to her need for companionship and people to belong to.
Also, there is a major reason why Dany has often been skeptical of prophecies so far: her son, the stallion who mounted the world, died. In ADWD Dany IV, when the Green Grace declared that in a son of Dany and Hizdahr “the prophecies shall be fulfilled”, she thought to herself that she “knew how it went with prophecies. They were made of words, and words were wind”. And again, this mention ties back to her need of company and intimacy that’s been denied her whole life.
In my view, there are five main points that one could make to say that she is “aware of her chosen role”. I think neither proves their argument.
In ACOK Dany III, Quaithe tells Dany that the cause of mage’s growing powers is Dany herself, the Mother of Dragons. It means that Dany is aware that she is special and acts according to that knowledge, right? However, Dany never thinks of that again. In fact, she doesn’t even have the chance to react to what Quaithe just said, because Jhogo interrupts Quaithe and then Quaithe tells Dany that “To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.” This one came up again in ADWD Dany II and ADWD Dany X, which certainly isn’t as often as the other two I mentioned above. Regardless, it doesn’t ever cross her mind that she is the cause of magic growing back into the world ever again.
You could also point to the comet’s arrival. Right in ACOK Dany I, we get this:
“It is the herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.”
Notice GRRM’s wording, however: “she told herself” - she is not totally sure of it, but she needs to look confident for the sake of her khalasar. For the sake of herself, even. Right after this passage, we get this:
“The way the comet points is the way we must go,” Dany insisted … though in truth, it was the only way open to her.“
There is no other option for her to believe in. Actually, there is - falling prey to despair:
The comet mocks my hopes, she thought, lifting her eyes to where it scored the sky. Have I crossed half the world and seen the birth of dragons only to die with them in this hard hot desert? She would not believe it.
Then, in ACOK Dany II, we get this on the comet:
Her people had followed her across the red waste as she chased her comet, and would follow her across the poison water too, but they would not be enough. Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king … but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.
If she were so “aware of her chosen role”, one would think she would believe in such “foolishness”; that she would be shown to believe in destiny. If she does however, it must be offpage.
Then, in ACOK Dany III, the comet frustrates her once more:
“The comet led me to Qarth for a reason. I had hoped to find my army here, but it seems that will not be. What else remains, I ask myself?”
Then, in ACOK Dany IV, an illusion tells Dany this:
“We knew you were to come to us,” the wizard king said. “A thousand years ago we knew, and have been waiting all this time. We sent the comet to show you the way.”
But then, “doubt seized her” and “she ran from them”. Hardly the sort of experience that would make you think of yourself as an agent of destiny or the chosen one.
Then … Dany never thinks about the comet again. It seems hardly evidence to suggest that Dany is conscious of that role because of it.
Moving on to the third point: her dream about the Trident in ASOS Dany III.
That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper’s rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.
Many speculate that the dream foreshadows her eventual participation in the fight against the Others, and this is probably accurate. The parallels between the masters and the Others, as they’ve been discussed by another of my favorite writers of any fandom ever, are striking. To these, I would add that, right before Dany declares to Kraznys that “a dragon is not a slave”, she thinks this:
It is time to cross the Trident, Dany thought, as she wheeled and rode her silver back. Her bloodriders moved in close around her. “You are in difficulty,” she observed.
“He will not come,” Kraznys said.
“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. “Dracarys.”
Which further enhances the parallels between the two, for GRRM himself explicitly wrote it so that Dany associated the attack of slave owners and the freeing the Unsullied to the dream, which, unbeknownst to her, exhibits the inevitable moment when she burns the Others and thereby frees humanity. Seems evident and deliberate connection of the two events from the writer’s part.
But it still doesn’t mean that Dany is aware of her destiny or her status. While the text may urge us to compare the two events and frame Dany as a hero, she herself does not know about the connection. To her, at this point, it is about being inspired by Rhaegar:
She felt desperately afraid. Was this what my brother would have done? She wondered if Prince Rhaegar had been this anxious when he saw the Usurper’s host formed up across the Trident with all their banners floating on the wind.
Even that inspiration is not enough for her not to be aware of “how small and insignificant her following truly was”, though she’s ultimately able to control her fear and thrive. This doesn’t prove that she primarily driven by any destiny or status.
The fourth point is the prophecy of the three-headed dragon.
“The dragon has three heads,” she sighed. “Do you know what that means, Jorah?”
“Your Grace? The sigil of House Targaryen is a three-headed dragon, red on black.”
“I know that. But there are no three-headed dragons.”
“The three heads were Aegon and his sisters.”
“Visenya and Rhaenys,” she recalled. “I am descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and their grandson Jaehaerys.”
“Blue lips speak only lies, isn’t that what Xaro told you? Why do you care what the warlocks whispered? All they wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now.”
“Perhaps,” she said reluctantly. “Yet the things I saw …”
“A dead man in the prow of a ship, a blue rose, a banquet of blood … what does any of it mean, Khaleesi? A mummer’s dragon, you said. What is a mummer’s dragon, pray?”
“A cloth dragon on poles,” Dany explained. “Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight.”
Ser Jorah frowned.
Dany could not let it go. “His is the song of ice and fire, my brother said. I’m certain it was my brother. Not Viserys, Rhaegar. He had a harp with silver strings.”
Ser Jorah’s frown deepened until his eyebrows came together. “Prince Rhaegar played such a harp,” he conceded. “You saw him?”
She nodded. “There was a woman in a bed with a babe at her breast. My brother said the babe was the prince that was promised and told her to name him Aegon.”
“Prince Aegon was Rhaegar’s heir by Elia of Dorne,” Ser Jorah said. “But if he was this prince that was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when the Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.”
“I remember,” Dany said sadly. “They murdered Rhaegar’s daughter as well, the little princess. Rhaenys, she was named, like Aegon’s sister. There was no Visenya, but he said the dragon has three heads. What is the song of ice and fire?”
“It’s no song I’ve ever heard.”
This interaction between Dany and Jorah serves as exposition (and hopefully gives clues to the solution of the series’s magical plots) and ties into Dany’s characterization as someone who aches for family and connection.
The next time we hear of the three-headed dragon is right after Jorah forced a kiss on Dany and violated her boundaries and trust, in ASOS Dany I:
“My queen,” he said, “and the bravest, sweetest, and most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Daenerys—”
“Your Grace!”
“Your Grace,” he conceded, “the dragon has three heads, remember? You have wondered at that, ever since you heard it from the warlocks in the House of Dust. Well, here’s your meaning: Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar, ridden by Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen—three dragons, and three riders.”
“Yes,” said Dany, “but my brothers are dead.”
“Rhaenys and Visenya were Aegon’s wives as well as his sisters. You have no brothers, but you can take husbands. And I tell you truly, Daenerys, there is no man in all the world who will ever be half so true to you as me.”
Again, tied to the theme of Dany’s need for attachments. It’s Jorah trying to manipulate her into thinking he is supposed to be a husband of hers (also, notice how hypocritical of him to dismiss her reflection about the prophecies in ACOK Dany V and then use them to his advantage in ASOS Dany I… They are important, but only when he wants them to be).
Then Dany brings it up again in ASOS Dany V and ASOS Dany VI:
“If you were grown,” she told Drogon, scratching him between the horns, “I’d fly you over the walls and melt that harpy down to slag.” But it would be years before her dragons were large enough to ride. And when they are, who shall ride them? The dragon has three heads, but I have only one.
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Could I love Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry, she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it.
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The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon and his sisters.
Again, the theme of the need for bond and closeness remains. Nothing about being the chosen one or destiny. And that’s it for the three-headed dragon, at least as of ADWD.
The fifth point, I would argue, is AGOT. Most of the moments where the prophecies and dreams impact Dany’s storyline are in that book (at least to the best of my effort to find those moments). It is the one where she had numerous dragon dreams that gave her strength and where she birthed dragons by ultimately trusting her instincts. Ultimately, though, I’ve already brought plenty of evidence from the books that come afterwards to negate that this necessarily means that prophecies are a main factor in her decision making (or her self-perception).
This is not to say that Dany is completely skeptical about prophecies or magic, but she most often needs to have had previous evidence to trust them.
She believes in Mirri’s words that she is infertile (or rather, in her interpretation of Mirri’s words) because Mirri killed her son and left Drogo in a comatose state, thereby paying death with life.
She believes that death pays for life and attempts to perform a ritual to awake the dragons because she witnessed Mirri’s effectiveness (to be fair, here, Dany is relying on intuition and intuition alone as well, as she walks through the fire simply because she sees that the fire is hers. But it is the exception rather than the norm).
She believes in the treasons because she has been betrayed by Mirri (once for blood).
She believes that the kraken and the mummer’s dragon are coming because she has seen the sun’s son and the pale mare.
Which is not to say that she will not or cannot ever be motivated by her destiny or her heroic role in the future.
“What is he saying?” Tyrion asked the knight.
“That Daenerys stands in peril. The dark eye has fallen upon her, and the minions of night are plotting her destruction, praying to their false gods in temples of deceit … conspiring at betrayal with godless outlanders …”
The hairs on the back of Tyrion’s neck began to prickle. Prince Aegon will find no friend here. The red priest spoke of ancient prophecy, a prophecy that foretold the coming of a hero to deliver the world from darkness. One hero. Not two. Daenerys has dragons, Aegon does not. The dwarf did not need to be a prophet himself to foresee how Benerro and his followers might react to a second Targaryen. Griff will see that too, surely, he thought, surprised to find how much he cared. (ADWD Tyrion VII)
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“Someone told me that the night is dark and full of terrors. What do you see in those flames?”
“Dragons," Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. (ADWD Tyrion VIII)
Not only Dany will likely be acclaimed as the Stallion Who Mounts the World by the Dothraki in TWOW, she is poised to, right afterwards, learn more from Moqorro about yet another prophecy involving her, which might then convince her. Then the prophecies might actually become a central part of her motivations.
I wouldn’t rule this out, especially considering that, if we follow the 1993 outline, we’re still on the first act of Dany’s story. In that outline, the first book would be about her experiences in Essos, the second about her return to Westeros and the third about the "final battle” (as GRRM puts it) against the Others. With that in mind, I expect Dany to have more character development in TWOW and ADOS (whose plots were originally meant to cover two acts of her story) than in, say, ACOK and ASOS.
But to say that we have textual evidence, as of ADWD, that the prophecies are a primary force in her actions is, I would argue, inaccurate.
I will end my argument with this line from Dany:
Dany folded her hands together. “Words are wind, even words like love and peace. I put more trust in deeds.[”] (ADWD Daenerys IV)
I forgot one three-headed dragon moment! It’s from ADWD Dany VIII.
“The dragon has three heads,” Dany said when they were on the final flight. “My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes. I know why you are here.”
“For you,” said Quentyn, all awkward gallantry.
“No,” said Dany. “For fire and blood.”
But it still doesn’t undermine the main argument as it’s also connected to her need for companionship.
Excellent meta!
I just wanted to highlight a few moments (some of which you already quoted) that show how Dany is frustrated and skeptical of prophecy:
He shall be the stallion that mounts the world. Dany knew how it went with prophecies. They were made of words, and words were wind. - Daenerys IV ADWD
Three treasons will you know. Once for gold and once for blood and once for love. Was Plumm the third treason, or the second? And what did that make Ser Jorah, her gruff old bear? Would she never have a friend that she could trust? What good are prophecies if you cannot make sense of them? – Daenerys VI ADWD
The sun’s son. A shiver went through her. “Shadows and whispers.” What else had Quaithe said? The pale mare and the sun’s son. There was a lion in it too, and a dragon. Or am I the dragon? “Beware the perfumed seneschal.” That she remembered. “Dreams and prophecies. Why must they always be in riddles? I hate this. Oh, leave me, ser. Tomorrow is my wedding day.” – Daenerys VII
Dany doesn’t like prophecies. She thinks they are no good, and don’t help her at all, because she can’t make sense of them. If Dany was someone who was so confident in her own magical destiny, she wouldn’t have such doubts about what the prophecies mean.
And Dany doesn’t let her actions be dictated by prophecies:
There were times when Dany wondered if that razor might not be better saved for Reznak’s throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei? – Daenerys I ADWD
When Reznak and Skahaz appeared, she found herself looking at them askance, mindful of the three treasons. Beware the perfumed seneschal. She sniffed suspiciously at Reznak mo Reznak. I could command the Shavepate to arrest him and put him to the question. Would that forestall the prophecy? Or would some other betrayer take his place? Prophecies are treacherous, she reminded herself, and Reznak may be no more than he appears. – Daenerys II ADWD
"It has been so long,” she had said to Ser Barristan, just yesterday. “What if Daario has betrayed me and gone over to my enemies?” Three treasons will you know. “What if he met another woman, some princess of the Lhazarene?” – Daenerys II ADWD
His bitterness dismayed her, so much so that Dany found herself wondering if the grizzled Pentoshi could be one of her three betrayers. No, he is only an old man, far from home and sick at heart. - Daenerys V ADWD
Obviously, it’s only natural that the prophecies she received make her worried about being betrayed. But she never lets herself be paranoid about it: she distrusts all these people, but she never does anything about it. She keeps Reznak as her advisor, despite being worried about a betrayal. She has a relationship with Daario, despite wondering if he would betray her. She wonders to herself if arresting Reznak would forestall the prophecy, only to tell herself that “prophecies are treacherous” and proceed to ignore her doubts. This is, by the way, a clear contrast to Cersei, who spends the entirety of AFFC trying to forestall a prophecy.
Dany doesn’t let her actions be dictated by prophecy, and as stated in the original meta, when she does believe in a prophecy, it’s only when she has evidence to believe that the prophecy is real.
