#mossador

[jays-asoiaf-reblogs-and-archive]

Art by acewithapencil/dragon-queensguard/ace_pencil

[horizon-verizon]

Thoughts on Daenerys publicly executing the former slave and how she went about it in S05x02?

In a word? Not great. Boo.

The show rewrite & repurposing of Mossader &seems like it was meant to rewrite progression of the "error" Daenerys makes with her dragons by essentially adding another one that I'm sure they didn't think was an serious error. A way for them to try to make Dany seem a worse leader & thinker than she really is. I don't like how the show basically tried to make her look tyrannical by making her violently suppress the actions of someone who was both devoted to her and really had already been shut down before when he was saying the right thing. Which was to just get rid of this harpy-hire dude at the very least and at most what she said abt sending a message.

I also hated how it made Mossader look irrational & nearly "savage" through a display of fanatics--in how he almost dreamily said he did it "for her", posing Daenyers' goddess-like stature as easily shiftable to threatening. Foreshadowing that horrible erroneous ending of her becoming a Hitler figure. Like the scene was saying to us she inspires generationally brutalized and dehumanized brown people to the point of irrational "frenzy" and she cannot even be nuanced or sympathetic as she had been before in her ruling for Mossader. This pathetic-ized person who had at one point called her Mhysa and believed in her.

But the narrative the show pushes is not even fair itself to this man (hypocritically) & is just using him to denigrate Dany; becasue why are we making the only male brown former slave besides Grey Worm do such a thing AND be as I said "fanatical" towards the white Dany??! This man, who was put on their council as the voice and reason of those freed Meereenese...appears to us as totally unreasonable bc we know and he "should" have known that there were consequences for disrupting the Westerosi-style of "fair trial" and "honor"...The trial would be a false one, bc this guy will not be let off or go free. His crimes are obvious. Even if we did posit him going free, he'd likely just go back to being a hire for the harpy!

Plus we saw how actual ineffectual and emotion-based/false honor-based actual Westerosi trials can be through both of the trials against Tyrion: at the Eyries; esp the one at the Red Keep after Joffrey dies. So much for fairness of the superior Westerosi style of justice! (another hypocrisy of the writing itself)

So the show has Dany simultaneously "fails" Mossader, and utterly. As if the bonds she has with the slaves and her mission really don't mean anything to her.

After all, does she not marry Hizdahr, reopen the fighting pits (later) to stop the killings of the freedmen...Then she kills the freedman who was supposed to rep them all??

And the points Hizdahr & Barristan Selmy tried to make against killing the dude besides the trial..."poor and young"; "Why should he want to bring back slavery? What did it do for him?"; " I don't know it, and I'm the head of a great family."...why are we even indulging in these stupid protests?!!! We know his presence is so the other nobles feel they have say and influence over Dany, but there was no rebuttal (or at least a sign from her dismissing Hizdahr, whether he sees it or not) from show!Dany against his absurd "logic" about "going easy" on this guy. Huh?!

Subsequently, she loses a lot of faith from the freedmen who beg for not only Mossader's life but for her to not bend to the masters' clear attempt to confuse the priority. Which is their total freedom at those masters' expense. Which is exactly what D&D wanted bc they hate her, refuse to understand her, and lost interest in this series.

It was just a huge mess!

CONTEXT for comparison

a)

Mossador died differently in the original book series ("A Dance with Dragons -- Daenerys II"):

In the show, he gets executed because show!Daenerys wanted to re-establish a peace of between the freedmen and the former (not so former) slavers and elites of Meereen. Some, if not all, of these elites formed the group "Sons of the Harpy", and in the show one of these are captured. Show!Mossader didn't believe that any of the Masters would just lie down and allow Daenerys' end to legal slavery in Meereen stick. And that they'd eventually somehow either get this prisoner out OR this Master would be somehow saved in the process of a the trial that was planned for him:

MOSSADOR: Sons of the Harpy, they want to put a collar back on my neck. On all of our necks. Please, Your Grace, you must kill him. DAENERYS: It would send a message. BARRISTAN: I think you should exercise restraint, Your Grace. DAENERYS: Why? BARRISTAN: For one thing, he may have valuable information. DAARIO: The Son of the Harpy has no more valuable information. BARRISTAN: How do you know that? DAARIO: Because I questioned him. HIZDAHR: And the information you did get, he is young and poor. MOSSADOR: He is born free. HIZDAHR: Why should he want to bring back slavery? What did it do for him? DAENERYS: Perhaps the only thing that gave him pride was knowing that there was someone lower than he was. MOSSADOR: They pay him. Great families afraid to do a thing. They pay poor man to do it for them. HIZDAHR: And how do you know this? MOSSADOR: Everyone knows this. HIZDAHR: I don't know it, and I'm the head of a great family. BARRISTAN: We do not know what this man did or didn't do. (to Daenerys) Give him a trial, at least. A fair trial. Show all of the citizens of Meereen that you are better than those who would depose. Teach them a better way. MOSSADOR: I do not know the place from where Old Ser comes. Things maybe are different there, I hope. But here, in Meereen, before Daenerys Stormborn, they own us. So we learn much about them or we do not live long. They teach me what they are. Mercy, fair trial: these mean nothing to them. All they understand is blood!

So he preemptively and vengefully kills the prisoner, and as you see here, he expresses no regrets about disobeying Daenerys and doing it:

DAENERYS: Why? MOSSADOR (Valyrian): For you, Mhysa. You wanted the Harpy dead, but your hands were tied. I set you free, as you did all of us. DAENERYS: He was our prisoner, awaiting trial. You had no right. MOSSADOR: He would rather rip your city apart than see slaves lifted from the dirt. DAENERYS: There are no more slaves. There are no more Masters. MOSSADOR: Then who lives in the Pyramids? Who wears gold masks and murders your children? When Grey Worm came to us, I was the first to take up the knife for you. I remember the look on my father's face as I struck down his Master, who had traded his infant son for a dog. My father died in the fighting. If we allow the Sons of the Harpy to return us to chains, he never lived. DAENERYS: The Harpy's life was not yours to take. Once, the Masters were the law-- MOSSADOR: And now you are the law! DAENERYS: The law is the law. Take him.

Mossador died differently in the original book series ("A Dance with Dragons -- Daenerys II"):

He's one of the many freedmen murdered by the Sons. And it's not until the 4th episode that her 2nd husband will appear, and he matters bc this is about how she gets on Drogon and re-orient her goals.

b) Attempt at a Summary (How Dany Actually gets to Marry Hizdahr, his role, and Riding Drogon out of the Pit.)

Bk!Dany does have an arc where she at first tries to acclimate or compromise with the former slave masters for the sake of peace in Meereen but comes to realize that her efforts is simply not going to work. She reopens the fighting pits where former slave gladiators would fight after Hizdahr zo Loraq petitions her several times and brings some famous gladiators to beg her to reopen them. She, like in the show, marries Hizdahr and makes him her royal consort when he meets her condition of bringing some 90 days of peace (the high priestess, the Green Grace Galazza Galare suggested a marriage to him). Absolutely no murders or attacks against freedmen nor those few nobles who actually are obeying Dany. In this observation and despite what another noble, Skahaz mo Kandaq, warned about Hizdahr being the the Harpy, leader of the Sons of the Harpy. He was one fo the nobles who decided to abandon the slavery society and "ways" other nobles want to keep going. Again, she wanted that peace and dismissed his warning, and Hizdahr starts to show his true colors in his dismissing Skahaz from his position as the leader of the new Meerenese "city watch", or police, and appointing one of his own cousins. He says that this is to get more of the nobles on her side. (He's not the Harpy, but he's definitely closely tied to them.)

They reopen the fighting pits to celebrate the wedding; Hizdahr insists the fighters volunteered. Hizdahr offers Dany locust treats, it turns out they are poisoned later on when we see Strong Belwas get very sick from them and it's only due to his large and heavyset body that he survives. Dany sees that he's very into the violence, in a way that gets mixed with a sexual excitement at it. During another fight, Drogon appears, Hizdahr calls for people to kill Drogon, and Daenerys jumps into the pit to calm and try to bring Drogon to heel, she's flies off, Drogon basically leading her. Dany, half starved & dehydrated, dreams of her brother and hallucinates Jorah Mormount (those close to her who've betrayed her) but it's also her reflecting on her persistent guilt for the girl Drogon killed that motivated her into the mistake of locking up her dragons. Narrowly escaping a Dothraki scout, she and Drogo fly to another place, eating horse, and that's where the scout's khal, Jhaqo, and his warriors find her. Resumably to try to rape & kill her or to to take her back to Vaes Dothrak to the dosh khaleen and become one of them forever.

In all the time Dany was gone, Hizdahr has been trying to use his marriage to Daenerys to rule Meereen in her absence and a plot (he likely enabled even by just taking instructions) to retake the city gets foiled under Barristan Selmy, Missandei, and Grey Worm's leadership. There are prisoners they take & essentially they are now running the city in Dany's name, waiting for her return. Hizdahr is one of those prisoners. But in the show, Hizdahr died at the pits when a Harpy stabs him.

[kellyvela]

Do you think that Dany killing Mossador in show was justified? Because he did killed Harpy without trial and Dany wanted to make sure others couldn't repeat this mistake. But maybe her timing was not right and she created a bad example in eyes of people of meereen who then attacked her. I think it didn't happen in books.

That only happened in the Show. In the Books, Mossador is one of Missandei's brothers. An Unsullied.

Despite all their flaws, I think D&D did a good job in their portrayal of the Meereenese arc. One of the few things they did well.

Joel Fry was excellent as Hizdahr zo Loraq. His dialogues with Dany were so good.

Dany randomly killed one hundred and sixty-three masters without a trial as well. She killed innocent people among that number. One of them was Hizdahr zo Loraq's father who opposed the killing of the hundred and sixty-three children.

But she couldn't show mercy at Mossador (a former slave in the Show) who killed a Son of the Harpy, a former slaver.

"The harpy's life was not yours to take" she said to Mossador...... This is almost like "They don't get to choose" from the last season.

At the end, she took Mossador's life, the same way she took the lives of one hundred and sixty-three masters, and later she took the lives of the Tarlys, and much later she took the lives of the whole population of King's Landing.

[rainhadaenerys]

Hey, ASOIAF artists, why exactly have I never seen a single fanart of Missandei with her brothers? Think about it: Missandei hugging her brothers after Dany frees them and celebrating being free and together again. Marselen comforting Missandei after Mossador’s death. All siblings as children in Naath. Marselen and Missandei returning to Naath together. I mean, look at the potential!

[walkofpenance]

Game of Thrones Definitive Favourite Character Ranking

#126/164 - Mossador - 29 Points

“A citizen of Meereen was awaiting trial and this man murdered him. The punishment is death.” - Daenerys Targaryen.

Seasonal Stats - X - X - X - 71 - 53 - X - X - X

Overall Stats - X - X - X - 120 - 108 - 122 - 125 - 126 

[fedonciadale]

Different anon from the one who asked about Robb, but on that subject: What do you think of Robb killing Lord Karstark vs Daenerys killing Mossador? I see a lot of ppl saying that this was a mistake of Dany's, but I saw it as one of the few times she adhered to law despite personal feelings. Do ppl say this is wrong bc of what she had just done to the masters, bc there wasn't a trial, or bc he had only just gained freedom? I don't remember Robb having a trial. Is it just too little too late?

Dear nonny,

as I have argued when I looked at Jon executing Thorne, Sansa killing Ramsay, Joffrey beheading Ned etc. Dany killing Mossador is actually the same as Robb killing Karstark: Trial? Check, The accused is guilty? Check. Execution according to law? Check; Method of Execution that is not to painful? Check.

Yes, Executing Mossador was a tough decision, but it was adhering to the law and it was one of the few instances where Dany did not put herself beyond the law in a rare moment of trying to actually pacify the situation (Because law is mostly there to ensure that we do not exterminate ourselves in retaliation and revenge). Dany had put laws in place after her conquest of Mereen and it was her duty to uphold this law. So it was not a mistake to execute Mossador.

It was tragic, yes, because Mossador was her follower, because he had suffered and wanted revenge on the masters. This is why we get the feeling that it is somehow unfair, but it is not. Dany feeding the masters to her dragons, that was unfair (in the sense that it was arbitrary, there was no trial and she had no idea if the masters were actually guilty of conspiration with the sons of the harpy.) So, you could argue that Mossador suffered because Dany had arbitrarily decided that from this moment on she would adhere to the law. Mossador who knew masters had been killed outside the bounds of law, just did the same and expected not to be punished for something Dany herself had done. But Dany is a law unto herself... I do think she actually wanted to change this, when she started to pacify Mereen, but like in the books, it was too tedious, too much bother and she resorted to “Fire and Blood” again.

So, Mossador has it right, when he thinks it is unfair, that he gets punished for something Dany herself did as well. And he is right, that is unfair... That is why it is so important to keep the law all the time. So the last thing would be: Is there a trial every time? Are people punished the same for the same crime? And this is where Robb and Dany are different.....

That is the problem with law. It is fair according to a set of rules and that is not at all times compatible to our gut feelings. But that is why we have law, because if everyone would just act according to their gut feelings, we might have quite a lot of problems....

Thanks for the ask!

[sayruq]

What is your opinion of what Dany did to Mossador. I used to be a fan of hers but when she had him executed it made me feel sick. It just didn't sit right with me and I haven't been a fan of hers since. I don't see many people bringing that scene up.

I was beyond disgusted. Get this, she walks into Meereen and has 163 people crucified to make herself feel better without caring about the executed children’s families or finding the rest of the culprits who had demanded that those children be executed like that. She does all of this in the full view of all the former slaves. Then she adds Mossador to the council and he tells her that the Sons of the Harpy want to enslave the freed people again. This is a man who was a slave all his life of course he’d be terrified of them and of course he hated them. People rightfully call out Tyrion for thinking he understands what it means to be a slave but Dany doesn’t understand either. The way Drogo uplifted her esp after she became pregnant is something no slave has ever experienced (eg Doreah). Mossador a man who was oppressed by the Meereenese slave owners tells Daenerys something that becomes very obvious towards the end of the season, the ruling class and the Sons of the Harpy don’t care about fairness, they only understand brutality. The concept of giving the captured Son of the Harpy a trial was pushed by Barristan a Westerosi who, like Daenerys, didn’t have to live outside of a heavily protected pyramid like the rest of the former slaves. When the Sons of the Harpy attack, they kill the defenseless and that is who Mossador represented and who he wanted to protect.

Mossador kills the captured Son of the Harpy to send a message and Daenerys decides to execute him for disobeying her orders in front of both the former slave owners and the former slaves. Mossador has only known freedom for a short moment in his life of course he would respond violently to any threat to that freedom. Other former slaves agree with him, it’s their lives at stake and if they want to kill the ruling class until they are left to live their lives in peace, who is Daenerys a former slave owner to stand in their way? Reminder that Dany killed 163 people without a trial more horrifically than what Mossador did so what right does she have to judge him? It proves my point that Daenerys chose to become anti slavery to gain power, too bad the show didn’t show that in the books many people in Astapor and Yunkai followed her out of fear of retaliation, fear of being enslaved again (though many remained and they suffered) and that Dany saw them as soldiers for her army so show Dany seems more altruistic than book Dany.

[alatariiels]

Hey, y'all know I love Daenerys Targaryen, but can we admit that she could have been merciful to Mossador? That man had been a slave and had killed a terroristic harpy pos that was fighting and waging war to bring back slavery. Yes, he broke the law by killing the man without a fair trial, but so has Dany (feeding those slave masters to her dragons). Mossador dying for what he did doesn’t sit well with me at all especially when Dany turned around and did the same thing. 

edit: I’m going through season 5 right now (the last season I need to finish before I have completed all seven seasons, so I know Daenerys grows from this (or at least she appears so to me). So no comments in that regard please. Just giving my thoughts on the episodes I just watched.