One of the greatest disservices to Dany’s character is people constantly trying to rob her of her agency, whether it be about her political or magical actions. Not only because Dany grew up having zero agency whatsoever (and we spend almost the entire first book witnessing that) to the point she gets sold as a child bride to a foreign warlord by her own brother; but also because it ignores how she reclaims her agency and fights for it any way she can, and later how she decides to use it. First she is forced to claim some little illusion of agency, which actually belongs to her husband and her husband only, by sexually pleasing him through the constant violation of her own body (basically working as a sex slave) as a 13/14-year old. Her body is later violated again by Mirri murdering Rhaego in her womb and forcibly sterilizing her.
Then, when she can’t rely on Drogo anymore and that illusion of power is taken away from her, she ends up reclaiming her agency in an unprecedented, magical and even miraculous way. I’m talking of course about the birth of the dragons. Out of all the ways people try to take Dany’s agency away from her, this is the example that annoys me the most. Because this is the instance in which Dany reclaims her agency for real, not an illusion of it, not through someone else’s power; for the first time ever, she reclaims her life and autonomy and destiny as her own and doesn’t allow anyone to stand in her way. She stops working within a constrictive and oppressive system that will never allow her any real agency—like she had to do when she was Drogo’s Khaleesi—and instead breaks through it. She refuses to run away with Jorah or go back to the dosh khaleen and instead forges her own path. She doesn’t just birth the dragons, she rebirths herself. So to see so many people act like this is something that happened to her rather than something she actively chooses to do is honestly infuriating.
“The heat beat at the air with great red wings, driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was in her. She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough.”
“No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE?”
Dany made the dragons, not the other way around. She is their Mother. She births them thanks to her own intuition and knowledge, through her own sacrifice. She gives them life, she steps into the pyre herself to be born anew with them, thus breaking the chains of the system that was holding her prisoner. Dany and her dragons hatch together. She finally fully becomes her own person as they are born, taking charge of her own destiny. This power didn’t come from them, it came from her. Her dragons are simply a reflection of that; they’re not only a symbol of her reclaimed power, they’re a symbol of her reclaimed freedom.
And what is extraordinary is that she later extends this reclaimed power and freedom to tens of thousands of people: when she opens her eyes to the conditions slaves live in, she uses her dragons’ power—her own power—to free these people and let them reclaim their autonomy the same way she did for herself. She refuses to turn her back on them, she puts aside her own ambitions and dreams indefinitely to stay and protect them because she has accepted to be their Mother, and does everything in her power so that they can keep their freedom, even if this means restricting her own. It’s a self-sacrifice, but if the one that allowed herself and her dragons to be (re)born in the pyre was empowering for her, this one is meant to be empowering for her people, her children, even it happens at the expense of Dany and the agency she has fought to take back.
“[…] I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.”
“Enough.” Dany slapped the table. “No one will be left to die. You are all my people.” Her dreams of home and love had blinded her. “I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.”
“A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war. […] She wanted Westeros as much as he did, but first she must heal Meereen.”
This is who she is: someone who refuses to be a passive force in her own story even when she has no real control over it and is completely subjugated to other people’s will, someone who is ready to fight tooth and nail to reclaim her own power, someone who is willing to sacrifice herself so that other people can do the same.
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