What D and D should have included in Daenerys’ arc but didn’t...
1) Her ordering the Unsullied to kill all freeborn teenage boys (those wearing a tokar) in Astapor. And then showing them killing those children - because teenagers are still children!
“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air … and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” (ASoS, Daenerys III)
2) Dany not only allowing people to sell themselves into servitude but also taking a portion of the profits from the sales. Thus she becomes part of the slave trade without even realizing it.
“My queen?” Daario stepped forward. “The riverside is full of Meereenese, begging leave to be allowed to sell themselves to this Qartheen. They are thicker than the flies. “Dany was shocked. “They want to be slaves?” “The ones who come are well spoken and gently born, sweet queen. Such slaves are prized. In the Free Cities they will be tutors, scribes, bed slaves, even healers and priests. They will sleep in soft beds, eat rich foods, and dwell in manses. Here they have lost all, and live in fear and squalor.” “I see.” Perhaps it was not so shocking, if these tales of Astapor were true. Dany thought a moment. “Any man who wishes to sell himself into slavery may do so. Or woman.”She raised a hand. “But they may not sell their children, nor a man his wife.” “In Astapor the city took a tenth part of the price, each time a slave changed hands,” Missandei told her. “We’ll do the same,” Dany decided. Wars were won with gold as much as swords. “A tenth part. In gold or silver coin, or ivory. Meereen has no need of saffron, cloves, or zorse hides.” (ASoS, Daenerys VI)
3) Dany’s rare moments of insight and self-doubt, the moments where she recognizes her brutality but then justifies them to herself or represses them.
She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood … Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children. (ASoS, Daenerys VI)
Dany remembered the horror she had felt when she had seen the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor. I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice. (ASoS, Daenerys VI)
“I made a horror just as great!”
All my victories turn to dross in my hands, she thought. Whatever I do, all I make is death and horror. … The way before her was fraught with hardship, bloodshed, and danger. Ser Jorah had warned her of that. He’d warned her of so many things … he’d … No, I will not think of Jorah Mormont. (ASoS, Daenerys VI)
Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I. (ADwD, Daenerys II)
4) What happened in Astapor AFTER she left for Meereen. They should have showed us this, not just told us - and they did neither.
The master of the Indigo Star was Qartheen, so he wept copiously when asked about Astapor. ”The city bleeds. Dead men rot unburied in the streets, each pyramid is an armed camp, and the markets have neither food nor slaves for sale. And the poor children! King Cleaver’s thugs have seized every highborn boy in Astapor to make new Unsullied for the trade, though it will be years before they are trained.“ (ASoS, Daenerys VI)
Frog would be glad to put Astapor behind him. The Red City was the closest thing to hell he ever hoped to know. The Yunkai'i had sealed the broken gates to keep the dead and dying inside the city, but the sights that he had seen riding down those red brick streets would haunt Quentyn Martell forever. A river choked with corpses. The priestess in her torn robes, impaled upon a stake and attended by a cloud of glistening green flies. Dying men staggering through the streets, bloody and befouled. Children fighting over half-cooked puppies. The last free king of Astapor, screaming naked in the pit as he was set on by a score of starving dogs. And fires, fires everywhere. He could close his eyes and see them still: flames whirling from brick pyramids larger than any castle he had ever seen, plumes of greasy smoke coiling upward like great black snakes. When the wind blew from the south, the air smelled of smoke even here, three miles from the city. Behind its crumbling red brick walls, Astapor was still asmolder, though by now most of the great fires had burned out. Ashes floated lazy on the breeze like fat grey snowflakes. (ADwD, The Windblown)
5) Her authorizing the torture of the wineseller’s daughters.
Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.” “I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.” “Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly. (ADwD, Daenerys II)
6) They should have SHOWED us the sack of Meereen:
She heard the city fall from half a league away, though, when the defenders’ shouts of defiance changed to cries of fear. Her dragons had roared as one in that moment, filling the night with flame. The slaves are rising, she knew at once. My sewer rats have gnawed off their chains.
When the last resistance had been crushed by the Unsullied and the sack had run its course, Dany entered her city. The dead were heaped so high before the broken gate that it took her freedmen near an hour to make a path for her silver. Joso’s Cock and the great wooden turtle that had protected it, covered with horsehides, lay abandoned within. She rode past burned buildings and broken windows, through brick streets where the gutters were choked with the stiff and swollen dead. Cheering slaves lifted bloodstained hands to her as she went by, and called her “Mother.” (ASoS, Daenerys VI)
These details would have made her descent into darkness more coherent but they wanted to have their cake and eat it too… They wanted the “badass” YAS KWEEN moments that powered the marketing of the show - but they also wanted her descent into villainy. And thus we got a narrative arc that zig-zagged between extremes of heroism and villainy in a way that had a large portion of the audience confused.
Her story is a tragedy where she ends up becoming what she originally opposed - all because her methods were as brutal as the people she fought against. She has become what she abhorred because she chose to fight inhuman brutality with her own brand of inhuman brutality. That is utterly tragic but it wasn’t something that happened overnight and not just because she lost loved ones. It was a path she stepped on when she decided to treat the Masters just as inhumanely as they treated their slaves. She didn’t rise above their brutality and savagery, she joined them - and that is her tragedy.
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