The Dragons Are Back

Why serve in Heaven? Her Majesty Daenerys Targaryen.

[lookingforasphodels]

Daenerys Targaryen

[tsukinosusagis]

Here’s the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, “bonus” relationships to the truly important ones. Women’s friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes children.

[agoraphcbja]

if i had a nickel for every time a female character suffered her entire life just to die at the end, i’d have too many fucking nickels stop doing this to them

[darklinaforever]

Me:

[darklinaforever]

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

I am a bit concern how much the fandom seems — I don’t want to use this term “eager” — very accepting to the idea that the orphan, penniless child is destined to murder innocent people, despite the compassion and kindness that is the established focal point of her character. Feminists in the 1970’s were denouncing the madwoman in the attic trope in Victorian liteature but feminists in 2025 desire a revival of it. I also tend to find that people often ignore the clear 90s-inheirtance in which ASOIAF is based on, where the norm for the savior was a male character, often unaware of their great lineage and power, which Jon clearly fits the bill (and which Martin has used the term “classical hero” before.) No one then or in world would have give Daenerys any inclination that she could be TPTWP or powerful in her own right. Indeed, whenever discussions around her is brought up, it is often the idea of what she could provide for others without full consideration of her own autonomy and personality.

For Robert, it was the fact she could birth more “dragonspawn”, for Viserys, it is an army in which to conquer his father’s throne, for Drogo, it is the ability for her to give him children and serve as his sex slave whenever he desires; for Euron and Young Griff, it is her dragons. This same train of thought tends to be exuberated by the fandom at large with ideas that Jon and potentially Tyrion would claim Daenerys’ dragons. Daenerys is often regulated as the same “gift-tool” often presented in literature where female characters exist to be gifts or tools for the male hero to use to win against the great evil (displayed in story with Nissa Nissa’s sacrifice). There is no real attempt to met out Daenerys’ character at her own, instead the dangers or uses she can provide for other, mostly male characters, with often ideas that she will be put down like a rabid dog because of some “female hysteria” that does not exist and her corpse to be the stepping stone upon which a man can fulfill his destiny.

We are now going back in terms of feminism and equality for all. Humans are becoming more racist, more homophobic, more misogynistic and more idiotic as a whole.

But the ASoIaF fandom for what I have heard (or read) has always been very misogynistic, but it got way worse after GoT. The treatment and understanding of Dany has only been muddied by the idiots who made GoT and people's own brain-rotting misogyny.

It's fucking sick.

[akahito]

A dream is only for the night. In the morning, a new day begins.

[sailorsenshigifs]

[densetsu-sailor-moon]

“Is this our cruel destiny?”

[awildwickedslip]

it’s really crazymaking how many people in hotd fandom are like i’m in it watch the targaryens to destroy themselves 😂 when the most devastating moment of moral truth in a game of thrones is when ned looks down at the destroyed small bodies of rhaenys and aegon targaryen and is horrified and even more horrified when his best friend insists it doesn’t matter that these toddlers had their brains bashed out against the wall in his name because they are “dragonspawn”. ned is horrified even though a targaryen possibly kidnapped and raped his sister and a targaryen DEFINITELY burned his father alive and murdered his older brother. it is not fucking normal to be this virulently hateful about the dragon incest people. you are aligning yourself with the moral viewpoint of robert baratheon, baby murder approver, attempted teenage girl assassin, marital rapist, and wife hitter.

[rhaenin-time]

I really don't get that mindset because I thought GRRM did a very good job expressing that the Targaryens were destroyed by assimilating into a system they were not compatible with, because no one is really compatible with feudalism and patriarchy. That does not make them the symbol of everything wrong with that system, it makes them the outsiders used to show how that system poisons people the more they compromise with it, while the other Houses are already emmeshed within that system.

The books are screaming, "Look at this family defined by their flexibility, changeable as flame, people who could be anything. And look what happens when they try to be THIS." And for some reason so many take it as "haha, foreign dragon weirdoes are crazy. Leave those innocent feudal lords alone!"

[mikesseleven]

Emilia Clarke still being irritated about the death of Daenerys Targaryen in the year 2026 is so relatable

Bonus +

[mollysunder]

Fanon surrounding Dany and Young Griff really like to give Dany a complex about him despite the fact he's kind of got a complex about her. Right now it's Young Griff's who's the one that gets defensive when he's compared to his "aunt". Daenery's accomplishments as a leader very clearly threatens his masculinity. She's the one who survived genuine hardship and anguish. She's the one who's amassed the loyalty of thousands from Dothraki to freedmen. She's the one who did the seemingly impossible and brought back dragons and magic into the world. Young Griff's the one that feels the need to put her down in conversation whenever her value as an ally is brought up.

If he genuinely believed that the Iron Throne would be his then Young Griff wouldn't be so obviously intimidated by Daenerys, but he is. Dany makes Young Griff feel so insecure that he's easily goaded by Tyrion to invade Westeros early. In doing so he's cut himself off from a vital ally in Dany and her dragons in the inevitable event when his impulsiveness gets him near death or killed.

It's just so telling how there's a fixation about Dany possibly feeling rejected by Westeros in favor of YG and resenting him for it to the point of madness and not how he's making irrational decisions when compared to her. It's not even just YG's insecurity and (at best) casual misogyny towards Dany, but his entitlement too. For YG, Dany is only relevant to him in how she serves his ascension. She can be a bridal slave to Khal Drogo or she could his own bride, her opinion on what she has or will endure, the endgame is about YG. Of course, those plans aren't his, they're Varys and Illyrio's plans. But the one time we see him take control, he chooses to explicitly cut out Dany and assume she'll drop everything to go to him once she eventually hears who he claims to be. Dany's supposed to follow him. She's supposed to suit his whims in a way that solely supports the narrative about himself.

[ieatratsyummy]

They could never make me hate you, complex female character whose reaction to trauma was not pretty and digestible like how people think it should be.

[drvoos]

daenerys ☹️

[xbrvcx]

all that daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known

dany

[belladonnafeli]

The Others and the wights are the most blatant slavery allegory ever 😭the others that have an army of undead thralls that can never be freed unless with fire. And Daenerys is freeing slaves with what? Fire. It blows my mind that people don’t see that

[mikesseleven]

Emilia Clarke still being irritated about the death of Daenerys Targaryen in the year 2026 is so relatable

Bonus +

[thelaughingtree]

I think when Dany is compared to the moon, sometimes the dark symbolism and meaning of this comparison is lost, especially in AGOT:

here we're presented with a story where a moon is a receptacle for a birth. something fragile, something that perishes in the fire, and something that gives way for that which is considered much more important: dragons. it is not venerated as a creator; it 'wanders', without intention, and then dies. it is passive, it does not exert much will, it does not have much control. notably, as much as 'the other moon will kiss the sun' is phrased romantically, it means destruction for that moon as well.

Irri and Jhiqui, however, dispute this telling:

'it is known,' of course, signals common knowledge that should not be questioned or disputed (read: we should question and dispute this). Here, the moon is positioned as a divine feminine who is defined by being a wife. It is a feminine construction but instead of being subservient to the process of childbirth, it is instead subservient to its husband. This is reaffirmed when Drogo calls Dany 'moon of my life' as a form of address. It is worth remembering how Dany has had choices made for her, her will and volition curved, and that marriage to a khal is not a marriage to an equal (and nor is marriage in Westeros); indeed, marriage in this workd is not about romantic unity, it is about consolidation of power.

As a result we have two symbolic constructions for the moon - both feminine, both passive, both involve a dissolution of will, and a destruction of sorts - either of personality and independence as ones wants and dreams are secondary to one's husband, or a literal fiery destruction in childbirth. These depict two dreary routes for Dany's future - wife or sacrifice - but also foreshadow the coming of dragons and a future outside of the Dothraki.

In any case, Daenerys manages to overcome this binary by being both sun & moon, by birthing the dragons by her own volition and will and decision, by using others as her sacrifice - others who represent the life she has rejected, Khal Drogo her husband and Rhaego her child and Mirri, most importantly, her midwife. She defies subservience. She walks into the fire. She forges her own path. But that path is not without blood (fire and blood, of course) and we should not forget that.