"If I Look Back, I'm Lost"
I just want to talk briefly about the significance of this line of Dany’s: “If I look back, I’m lost.” She thinks it over and over again, utilizes it as a mantra over the course of the series, but there is an important evolution I think people should note.
Here’s the first instance of the quote from right after Dany is told about her son:
Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she looked back she was lost. Dany, AGoT
It begins as a reminder that she can’t change what has happened. That if she allows the horrible things in her past, the consequences of her choices, everything to dwell in her thoughts, it’d overwhelm her.
She continues focusing on the future when her past choices and their current consequences threaten to take her down:
“You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”
“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price.”
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was paid,” Dany said. “The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid.” She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s life.” AGoT
Can’t think about it, focusing on the goodness, moving on. She thinks it again and again at the end of AGoT- before mercy killing Drogo, when she finally realizes Mirri Maz Duur’s true actions, when she hears of Ereoh’s fate, when she takes control of the remaining Dothraki, and when she walks into the fire to hatch the dragons.
Dany is vulnerable in AGoT with the many changes (from Illyrio’s to the Dothraki to losing the Dothraki) and losses in her life (from Viserys to her son to Drogo.) She realizes if she allows herself to dwell on it all, she will fall and focuses on the future, accepts that she can’t change the past.
People forget that this mantra of hers dies out a bit. It doesn’t appear in ACoK and only appears once in ASoS when she’s preparing herself for her moves in Astapor, the beginning of it all, despite her “small and insignificant following."
Then in ADWD, things change for Dany. She’d been proactive, moving forward and not looking back, refusing to allow her doubt to take over. However, things from the past and present begin falling apart. By choosing to remain in Meereen, which Dany elected to do to test herself before going to Westeros and see if she could truly rule, Dany is forced to be still. She has to focus on the consequences of her actions because they’re appearing in front of her.
She thinks of her mantra again when Brown Ben Plumm turns on her and everything’s going to hell, she thinks of it when she opens the fighting pits again, she thinks of it when she considers her decision to lock up her dragons, and twice during her adventures with Drogon.
But here’s the thing, Dany was a child who needed a crutch like this mantra to keep her going when she created it. How else do you survive such horrible changes and losses and doubts but push forward?
Dany grows though, she matures. She chooses to rule in Meereen because she wants to shed her idealism and become a true ruler.
I’ve seen people say that Dany is immature and doesn’t understand the consequences of her actions, that she’s impulsive and leaves destruction in her wake because she doesn’t listen to council, but Dany seeks awareness and wants to make a change. That’s why by the end of ADWD she is maturing in a beautiful way symbolic of this mantra of hers. Quaithe told her:
“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
And Dany didn’t heed it at the time. But after everything in ADWD, Dany is listening, she has always wanted to make the right decisions and do the right thing, and she’s maturing.
And so in Dany’s most recent chapter, the last thing she says is this:
Drogon came, snorting plumes of smoke. The grass bowed down before him. Dany leapt onto his back. She stank of blood and sweat and fear, but none of that mattered. “To go forward I must go back,” she said. ADWD
Character development and growth, Dany’s still growing up, but she’s moving in the right direction.
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