Let’s take a look at the case of Mad Queen and Dark Dany, shall we?
On the one hand we have the allegation that Daenerys decided, with full conscience, to burn King’s Landing to a crisp in advance to the attack, during her ‘Let it be fear’ scene with Jon Snow.
(Dumb&Dumber did say that it was a shift that happened in that moment and was not planned, but….. at this point do I even need to elaborate???)
This is the woman who lost her husband and baby and stepped into a fire with three dragon eggs. The woman that got her people out of the Red Waste alive only to have them all be slaughtered. The one that found herself captive to the Dothraki and escaped captivity as their fucking leader, in the most badass throw-me-to-the-wolves-and-I’ll-return-leading-the-pack moment of female empowerment.
Daenerys is the goddamn comeback Queen.
She’s been brutalised, abused, sold and raped. She’s lost more people than anyone. She’s been through everything. There’s nothing you can throw at her she hasn’t already known.
And you expect me to believe that what breaks her is Jon Snow being loved and idolised by a bunch of Northerners and wildlings that are coincidentally his buddies?
Daenerys Stormborn, the Breaker of Chains, the mhysa worshipped by her people was so incredibly jealous of Jon Snow, whom no one outside the North has even heard of, she decided to go completely berserk? She goes to the region that’s notorious for being isolationist and obstinate, sees them demonstrate the predictable, xenophobic attitude they have towards anyone that isn’t them and she just falls into despair? Does she plan to move the capital to Winterfell and worries about how she’s gonna cope? She literally doesn’t need to set foot in this wasteland for the entirety of her reign.
Do you expect me to believe that Dany was one breath away from her life’s goal achieved, with King’s Landing surrendering without the blood of a single innocent shed, and she just went ‘fuck it, let’s throw this all in the garbage. Three days spent with a bunch of elitist Northern little shits have convinced me that I’m a completely useless leader that will never be loved by anyone, even though my entire life I have found myself navigating cultures completely foreign to me, managing to adapt and integrate, and ultimately win the people’s love and respect. If I don’t have the Northern Stamp of Approval I’m nothing! ’?
Do you expect me to believe Daenerys, who has lost so many people in her life just couldn’t stand the idea of Jon Snow not loving her? Do you really expect me to believe Daenerys Stormborn went full Ophelia/Lady MacBeth combo because.. a man rejected her? That’s it?! A man she knows for no more than a few weeks and has cost her near everything while giving her nothing?
Wasn’t everyone crying about Dany being powerhungry and obsessed with the Throne until yesterday? So how the everliving fuck can they seriously consider a plot that has her throw her victory and lifelong dream away, in any way believable?
Wasn’t everyone crying about Dany’s notorious dark side and Targaryen ruthlessness? So why didn’t she go straight for the Red Keep to take her revenge by taking down the woman that murdered her best friend, the woman who’s family ordered the massacre and brutalisation of her niece, nephew and sister-in-law and tried to decimate the entire Targaryen House?
‘But that’s what made her lose it! She couldn’t handle it and turned mad! The Targaryen genes! The inbreeding!’
Five Targaryens have gone mad in three centuries. Five. And many others went down in history as some of the kindest, most benevolent rulers of the Realm.
You want to talk about her father, whom everyone loves bringing up with their smartass I-told-you-so comments? The man whom it took years to descend into madness and become the Mad King? The Nero of Westeros, that wanted to burn King’s Landing because he thought that would make him a fucking dragon? That’s the parallel you’re going for? Based on what?
How is a Pavlovian switch from sanity to madness, caused by bells of all things, a plausible depiction of a character descending into madness?
Dany was enraged, and she had every right to be so. She had every right to unleash holy hell to those who wronged her. Go full fire and blood.
I absolutely love Dany’s darkness, and I will defend the harshness with which she punishes her enemies, the slave masters and rapists and abusers, until my dying breath. I would have loved to see her every bit as ruthless getting her revenge from Cersei and her cronies, a living reflection of Visenya Targaryen, a dragon breathing fire herself.
But burning a city full of innocents to the ground is not how someone overcome with grief and rage that seeks revenge acts.
It’s not how any damn person acts, let alone the show’s posterchild of protecting the innocent and bringing justice. The woman that found a way to liberate Yunkai without shedding a drop of blood. The woman that refused to attack King’s Landing straight away, as any clever leader would do, to spare the innocents, lost her allies’ forces because of it, was willing to put everything on hold to save the North costing her dramatically, and negotiated with the devil for the umpteenth time to save those damn civillians.
Who has ever even done that? Stannis Baratheon that was about to sack the capital with his fleet? Robert Baratheon when he overthrew the Targaryens? Honestly what kind of conqueror bends over backwards, and turns their backs to an easy and certain win so that civillians won’t get hurt?
Daenerys fucking Targaryen did.
Meanwhile, every character we’ve spent seasons watching sit idly by as atrocities are committed, that have done their fair share of actually horrific shit in their day are suddenly clutching their pearls every time that Dany so much as voices the wish to finally fucking do what they came here for.
The gaslighting of Daenerys this past two seasons has been beyond outrageous. Cersei could literally throw her in a cell and Tyrion would be like ‘Your Grace, maybe it’s not wise, to move right away and release you…. Think of the innocent people…. The weather….. The omens…Flower power….’
She had to put up with all this patronising bullshit, suffer detrimental losses in her forces (that were then magically recovered but I am not getting into that shit) because of people that treated her as a mentally unstable liability and just take it.
And she did. She fucking took it all. She singlehandedly won King’s Landing with no civillian getting hurt after postponing the attack a million times already.
And I’m expected to believe that she threw it all away and just started burning everyone alive? Is this the Twilight Zone?
This clusterfuck was neither Dany embracing her fire and blood side nor going mad. It was merely a clownery meant to provide shock valur, that gave the audience the worst case of whiplash in the history of television and the character assassination of one of the most iconic female characters in fantasy.
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