blue-sunflowers replied to your post “Is Jon dumb though? Seems to me like he's the only character with his...”
So....she helps them, then afterward he stays in open rebellion against her?
@blue-sunflowers excellent question. (legitimately). because tbh I don’t know what the right answer is in this situation, which is part of why I didn't mention Daenerys at all in the above post.
Jon’s inadequacies as a ruler are a mostly separate and much simpler problem from fealty Daenerys; his problem could be solved if he talked to literally anyone, like I said. If he’d talked to his advisors/vassals/bannermen/sansa and gotten their agreement or even input before bending the knee, there would be no problems in this situation at all.
But to answer your question: First of all, I would question whether the north is in open rebellion at all. Technically, the last non-stark monarch the North swore true fealty to was Robert Baratheon; he’s dead and his line has been completely destroyed except for Gendry, who’s a bastard and has no legitimate claim or general interest in being king.
Fealty to the Lannisters was sworn under the Boltons, who won the North through treachery and have since been ousted, so that fealty is null.
So in reality, the true sovereign rulers of the North at this point are the Starks, as both the last (Robb) and also most recent (Jon, in his capacity as a stark bastard and not a targaryen) monarchs who earned fealty from the entire North. You can’t be in open rebellion against someone who isn’t your rightful ruler.
But even if you ignore that, I don’t think the north could be in open rebellion against Daenerys because Daenerys isn’t de jure or de facto ruler of the seven kingdoms yet. She does not hold king’s landing, has not killed Cersei, and has not gotten sworn fealty from a majority of the noble houses in westeros. Once she does that, maybe she can claim the north not bending the knee as open rebellion.
Now, Daenerys has laid claim to the seven kingdoms through her Targaryen heritage as the last (or so she thinks) living Targaryen. The Targaryens are the rightful rulers of westeros -> Daenerys is the last Targaryen -> Daenerys is the rightful ruler of westeros.
What we know now is that Daenerys is not the last living Targaryen, and that (because of show shenanigans) Jon is actually the legitimate Targaryen heir to all of Westeros. So Daenerys can no longer lay legitimate claim to the seven kingdoms through her Targaryen heritage; that’s invalid.
All she has left at this point is right of conquest, what her generations past ancestors used to conquer the seven kingdoms: dragons. So technically Daenerys could have declared war against the North for refusing to bend the knee and beaten them into submission, provided they didn't bend the knee like Torrhen Stark, last king of the north, did, as a form of surrender. But that didn't happen.
tl;dr the north can’t be in open rebellion against Daenerys.
Now, to answer ur actual question, which if I'm reading it right is, why should daenerys help them if they’re not part of her kingdom, if they refuse to compromise with her?
Simply put, she should help the because if she doesn’t, the North falls to the white walkers and the dead and actually joins their ranks, and the whole thing become an even bigger threat to her and the rest of the country she’s trying to become ruler of.
Well then, you say, why is it Daenerys who has to compromise something? Why is it her responsibility to give in this situation, and not the north’s?
First, because she still gets something out of it; like Jon keeps saying, the dead are everyone’s problem, and the sooner they stop it the easier it will be to stop it, and the sooner they can get back to killing each other for monarchship. This affects her just as much if not more than it affects the North/Jon.
Second, because Daenerys has already established a precedent in Westeros for granting individual kingdoms their sovereignty back with the Iron Islands. Yara had to agree to a code of conduct for her men to get that, which is arguably a compromise, but uh. Promising not to rape and pillage is a very low bar, and the North is already doing that and shouldn't be punished for already not raping and pillaging (as a cultural way of life, not, you know, a one on one basis) by being stripped of their sovereignty.
Third, because it’s the right thing to do, and Daenerys has compromised her own mission to be ruler of the seven kingdoms to do the right thing before. She delayed her arrival in Westeros for years in order to establish a stable and free government in Slaver’s/Dragons’ Bay. And yeah, you could say she was “practicing ruling,” but that’s not why she did it. She did it because she hated slavery and wanted to help these people get better lives/freedom/etc. That’s the Daenerys I know and love, and the one I wish we had gotten to see in this situation.
I mean, imagine what happens if Daenerys had immediately said yes, I will help you not only because it helps me in the long run, but also because it is the right thing to do. Imagine all the time that would have saved; imagine how much more the north would have liked her if she had done that! Imagine how much better relations would be right now! Imagine that she and Jon had gone to the negotiating table in king’s landing not as Queen and lord but as two separate monarchs approaching a third for an alliance. not saying Cersei would have been any more willing to help then, but you have to admit that's a more attractive offer.
I honestly think that would have been more true to Daenerys’ character as we’ve seen so far. That would have been such a cool character moment for her, too: having the conviction to continue doing the right thing even in the face of sacrificing her main goal, or altering what her main goal looks like.
so anyway. in conclusion, writing this all out has given me the right answer I thought didn’t exist.
