Dragon Dreams🐉|❄🐺⧼⧼⧼🔥🐲💯

"Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor, and all of these things." ~ GRRM "If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons." - Ilona Andrews □icon by perlamarina •header by Melanie Delon

[rainhadaenerys]

Daenerys as a leader and a ruler

For the longest time, I wanted to write about Dany as a leader and a ruler. Most of the time, the metas I see from Dany haters just talk about what an awful ruler Dany is, and amongst Daenerys fans, this is usually not discussed a lot, mostly because I think Dany fans spend a lot of time defending Dany from the accusations that she is evil or mad, so other subjects are neglected. Before I start, I just want to make it clear that I am not any expert on medieval politics or war strategy, so this will be mostly my understanding of the story. And of course, I can’t forget to mention that many of the ideas of the Meereenese Blot are here as well, but this is going to be my interpretation.

In this analysis, I will show why I think Daenerys is an intelligent and capable leader and ruler. I want to look at everything we know about Dany in all of the books: her childhood and education, her political beliefs, her actions and the economic and political situation she’s in. I’ll try to focus on what Dany has learned in each book, and how it helped her become a better leader.

Some of the things I’ll write here are similar to metas that I’ve written before. But I want this one to be as complete as possible, and to analyze every facet of Dany’s storyline as a ruler that I can think of. I will bring book quotes to back up what I say, so this will be very long (It’s around 20k words, so I hope at least someone will be interested in reading it, because I spent months scrutinizing all of the books to write this).

In this essay, I will talk about the following topics:

Dany’s childhood and education

Dany’s intelligence, wisdom and introspectiveness

Dany’s changing political views

Dany journey as a leader in A Game of Thrones

Dany’s journey as a leader in A Clash of Kings

Dany’s journey as a leader in A Storm of Swords

Dany’s journey as a leader in A Dance with Dragons:

Economy

The war against Yunkai and the question of peace and war

The question of taking the wealth of the slave masters

Conflicting interests within the city

Morality

Practical aspects or ruling

Dany’s equalitarian practices

Some mistakes worth addressing

Is Daenerys a good ruler? What did she learn?

Seguir leyendo

[salialenart]

Daenerys comm 🪽for @sunbabyyyy

her second wedding look…

[unicornsandfigs]

𐑺 [ #danyweek2026 day 3: motifs]

“in sunspear hung a portrait of the princess daenerys who had come to dorne to marry one of arianne's forebears. in her younger days arianne had spent hours gazing at it.”

— commission done by @aisatsaa

[pagesofmoonlight]

‘to taste the salt of the stars in the sea’

✎ᝰ. vienguinn

dany week 2026 — day vii | au day

[pagesofmoonlight]

‘all i did was dream of you’

✎ᝰ. silveroakleafart_

dany week 2026 — day vii | au day

[unicornsandfigs]

⤷ [ #danyweek2026 day 4: family]

dany holding the last remnants of her mother and having a dream of her. (ft bloodraven)

— commission done by ArtLinxin

[umbraria]

The urge of wanting to climb to mama shoulders

[onex111x]

Commission

[unicornsandfigs]

.° [ #danyweek2026 ]

“the dragon must have three heads,” he wailed, “but i am too old and frail to be one of them. i should be with her, showing her the way, but my body has betrayed me.”

— commission done by Nikaardart

[unicornsandfigs]

♕ [ #danyweek2026 day 2: conquest ]

daenerys in aegon the conqueror’s garden

— commission done by artlinxin

[wrath-of-achilleus]

you can’t say mirri maz duur was justified in killing rhaego and also say that dany was not justified in killing mirri in response.

[rainhadaenerys]

[aerltarg]

grrm goes out of his way to explore ruling in dany's arc, and people turn around and say that she is a bad ruler. as if the same people aren't hypocrites themselves. just look at what grrm has to say on joffrey's death:

I also tried to provide a certain moment of pathos with the death. I mean, Joffrey, as monstrous as he is—and certainly he's just as monstrous in the books as he is in the TV show, and Jack has brought some incredible acting chops to the role that somehow makes him even more loathsome than he is on the page—but Joffrey in the books is still a 13-year-old kid. And there's kind of a moment there where he knows that he's dying and he can't get a breath and he's kind of looking at Tyrion and at his mother and at the other people in the hall with just terror and appeal in his eyes—you know, "Help me mommy, I'm dying." And in that moment, I think even Tyrion sees a 13-year-old boy dying before him. So I didn't want it to be entirely, "Hey-ho, the witch is dead." I wanted the impact of the death to still strike home on to perhaps more complex feelings on the part of the audience, not necessarily just cheering.

[...]

[...] I think Joffrey is a classic 13-year-old bully. Do you know many 13-year-old kids you'd like to give absolute power to? There's a cruelty in children, especially children of a certain age, that you see in junior high and middle school. We don't want 13-year-old bullies to be put to death. We probably do when we're their 13-year-old victims, but they grow up and most of them grow out of it, and sometimes people do regret their actions. But Joffrey will never get that chance, so we don't know what he would have become. Probably nothing good, but still… (GRRM, in this interview)

and this, too:

The reason I bring this up is because I think that’s an interesting question of redemption. That’s more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She certainly had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Everything she’d heard about him, he was wildly unstable, and he was about to marry her beloved granddaughter. The Queen of Thorns had studied Joffrey well enough that she knew that at some point he would get bored with Margaery, and Margaery would be maltreated, the same way that Sansa had been. Whereas if she removed him then her granddaughter might still get the crown but without all of the danger. So is that a case where the end justifies the means? I don’t know. That’s what I want the reader or viewer to wrestle with, and to debate. (GRRM in another interview)

he says all that about joffrey, someone who was directly responsible for deaths of many people and never saw the wrong in his own actions. but he was 13yo still, and the matter of killing him is a moral dilemma that grrm had intentionally written.

but see, he never wanted his death to be "hey-ho, the witch is dead". he wanted people to debate olenna's choice from "to kill the baby hitler or not" moral perspective. except this dumbass fandom doesn't do it. asoiaf fanbase nowadays cheer joffrey's demise because he wronged their faves, and they turn around and say that mirri maz duur was absolutely right to kill "baby hitler" in rhaego. you know. not the 13-year-old in the world where everyone is considered to be a fucking adult at 16, so at least you can justify some shit by saying that all the negative signs were already there. but an unborn baby. who didn't even draw a single breath. based on what? the fact that he was going to be born as a great khal's son? that there was a prophecy seemingly about him? funny how targs are always labelled "prophecy obsessed" when they do anything based on their belief in the prophecy, but non-targs always get a pass (as if the same people don't dismiss prophecies as fake or evil in the first place, but it's a whole other can of worms).

so, no, mirri was never justified in killing rhaego, and grrm couldn't imagine his readers believing this in his worst nightmare. dany's choice of burning mirri was not about her revenge only, as good comments above nicely explained, but even if it was, she would be justified to seek revenge, just like any other character does.

[alinaerys]

dany week 2026 [day 2; aegon the conqueror with teats]

“no one was calling her daenerys the conqueror yet, but perhaps they would. aegon […] had won westeros with three dragons, but she had taken meereen with sewer rats, in less than a day„

my commission by yukito_ssan

[haze-el-el]

Why nobody talks about Dany got pregnant AFTER having dragon dreams ??? Like after having a dream about TURNING to a dragon by burning she got pregnant. After acknowledging what she was, and realising (at least seeing) there was some life in the dragon eggs she get pregnant. I think her baby Rhogo was never meant to happen, it was just foreshadowing Drago and his siblings. Like she wasn't pregnant with a human baby she was pregnant with the eggs idk

[artsyaprilmr]

my beautiful girl and her fail loser brothers

[pagesofmoonlight]

‘I loved a maid as fair as summer with sunlight in her hair.’

✎ᝰ. vienguinn

dany week 2026 — day iii | romance, whimsy & motifs

[sunbabyyyy]

Daenerys Targaryen, Rhaenyra Targaryen, and the Amethyst Empress as the three Moirai 💜

✎ᝰ Commission by NileAgalin on Twitter 🫶

On the original post over on Twitter, you can read my accompanying thread on their parallels and how Daenerys subverts the ancient myth of the Blood Betrayal 🪡

For Dany Week 2026 Day 1: Prophecies, Magic and Visions 💖

[danys-lemon-tree]

tw // rape, slavery, reproductive trauma, child murder

tbh i think the situation with mirri and dany in agot is one of the most interesting to analyze and think about, because there is really no “good” and “bad” side. both dany’s and mirri’s actions are understandable, and yet not exactly morally good. there are so many layers to it, and i just love the complexity of it.

starting with looking at mirri’s perspective, a lot of her actions are pretty understandable. she was a healer who had to watch her town get destroyed and her people raped, killed, and enslaved by the dothraki. sure, she was “saved” by dany, but she was still a slave to drogo. she was forced to live with and serve the people who had massacred her community and was under the constant threat of death. she saw a chance to prevent a future in which the massacre she lived through was repeated over and over and over again. she saw it as an opportunity to prevent the suffering of thousands, and so she did it. tbh, i can’t blame her for that.

however, she did also kill a baby, who was completely innocent, and harmed/traumatized and possibly forcibly sterilized a 14 year old who was also enslaved and just trying her best to prevent suffering.

and if we look at dany’s side, her actions also become pretty understandable. at this point, dany is 14! she is a child. she, like mirri, is a slave. she was sold to khal drogo by her brother and forced to marry him, an adult man who she had never met before, under threat of death. dany has been raped by drogo multiple times, and she is also very much an outsider to the dothraki at this point, as seen by how drogo’s bloodriders treat her and threaten her when she does anything besides do what she’s told. she has the protection of being drogo’s wife, but her life is still left in the hands of the men around her. she is never truly safe. regardless, dany uses what power she has to try and save mirri from further suffering. and then, as she sees it, mirri betrays her, kills her husband aka the only person that kept her somewhat safe, and kills rhaego, her baby, her future, and her only family. any sense of happiness and safety that dany has is torn away from her by a woman who she risked her life to protect. dany is 14, she has lived through trauma after trauma, she has lost everything, and her only family left has been killed. so she kills mirri. and, while i don’t think it was the good or right thing to do, i can see why she did it.

however, she did still kill a woman who her husband had enslaved by burning her to death. and part of the reason she killed her was because she killed the man who enslaved her.

so idk. there’s so many layers to it and i can’t help but think about it. they are both women/girls who have been forced into slavery and just want to save others from the same fate. it’s just extremely tragic and sad