Anonymous asked a question
love your blog and everything in it. I want to have your opinion on these dany asoiaf as a proof of how dany was a good ruler meereen:
Making trade deals with Lhazar and the hinterlands and trying to sell the little that Meereen currently has.“You spoke of help. Trade with me, then. Meereen has salt to sell, and wine …” “Ghiscari wine?” Xaro made a sour face. “The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well.” “I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees.” Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver’s Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany’s host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. “We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive. What of copper?” “A pretty metal, but fickle as a woman. Gold, now … gold is sincere. Qarth will gladly give you gold … for slaves.” “Meereen is a free city of free men.”
Planting grapes and wheat and replanting olive trees.
“Our stores are ample for the moment,” he reminded her, “and Your Grace has planted beans and grapes and wheat. Your Dothraki have harried the slavers from the hills and struck the shackles from their slaves. They are planting too, and will be bringing their crops to Meereen to market. And you will have the friendship of Lhazar.”
Building an irrigation ditch to bring water to plant beans. “Not a hole. A ditch, to bring water from the river to the fields. We mean to plant beans. The beanfields must have water.”
Training knights and organizing the Brazen Beasts“…Skahaz, make me a new watch, made up in equal parts of shavepates and freedmen.” “As you command. How many men?” “As many as you require.” Reznak mo Reznak gasped. “Magnificence, where is the coin to come from to pay wages for so many men?” “From the pyramids. Call it a blood tax. I will have a hundred pieces of gold from every pyramid for each freedman that the Harpy’s Sons have slain.”
Providing the refugees that come to Meereen with medical aid and food. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”
Holding court herself, listening to and conciliating the needs and demands of both freedmen and former slavers and making several pro-freedmen decisions Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done, she said, “What was the name of the old weaver?” “The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was … Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.” “Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”
Reznak would have summoned another tokar next, but Dany insisted that he call upon a freedman. Thereafter she alternated between the former masters and the former slaves.
i'm just wondering. some of these kinda sounds like she didn’t really care for a long term and shady... i think. and also meereen was kinda a shithole under her rule so it's a long ass lines, feel free to ignore this ask. and thank you in advance :)
Hi there!
Your ask was one of the asks that vanished when I deleted one ask - don’t ask me why it vanished - tumblr....
It took the liberty of organizing your ask somewhat and will try to answer to the different points.
First of all, thanks for the compliment!
Dany in Meereen is making a genuine effort, that is true enough. But she is bored by the tediousness of it all and by the slow progress she makes (which is addressed in some of the examples you gave). Olive trees need time!
In the famous essay that deals with Dany’s arc in Meereen, the Meereenese blob, the author argues that Dany’s politics had better results than she herself realized that the peace would have been availabe even if it would have meant decades of stable rule.
This sort of fits in the overall trope that GRRM uses quite often with Dany: The crossroads where she could have chosen peace and the effort of building but chooses violence and destruction and her ‘destiny’ instead.
So I think, some of the her methods are not that bad and they seem to be sensible, but there are also some twists. In some cases GRRM shows that the problems Dany has have their origin in her own politics before she came to Meereen and in other cases he shows that she is a hypocrite.
The first example shows that the lack of olive trees is at least in part due to Dany’s aggression. The Meereenese tried to stop her advance by putting the resources to the torch - a drastic and desperate measure but not an uncommon method. It ties in with another motive that GRRM picks up time and again: That Dany leaves a wasteland behind her (it happened already in AGOT when the Dothraki left a long path of brown grass behind them). And she tells Xaro at this moment that she will not sell slaves. This is revisited later when she decides that people can sell themselves into slavery and takes a cut from the profit - Hypocrisy.
I think the whole: She plants olive trees and waters beans is her attempt at peace - an attempt she abandons at the end of the book. It shows how difficult it actually is to plant and let grow. It’s not something that is to be done in the blink of an eye.
Her building an army and paying her armed men is only sensible. She needs these people to enforce her rule after all. I’m not sure why this should be ‘good’ ruling. It’s just ruling imho.
The refugees that come to Meereen: This is one of her occasional bouts of benevolence, I think. She has those. And indeed she later learns the suffering of her people (at least if you think that she got diarhoe, the bloody flux, when she had fled from Meereen). So this might be foreshadowing as well.
The scene with the weaver Elza is also about her hypocrisy: It looks like she has the interest of the weaver in mind, but she judges and sentences the former master for forgetting the name of the woman - and again later in the book she herself forgets the name of the little girl that was killed by Drogon - because she is not important enough.
I think you have to see these little scenes in context. One context is that GRRM shows us that peace would have been available. He also shows us that Dany makes an effort - at least for a while.
But all that is turned moot when she gets more and more impatient. GRRM throws shade on her seemingly nice and benevolent actions in the last chapters of ADWD when she reintroduces slavery, abandons her effort for peace, is bored by the work, forgets Hazzea’s name and decides that she does not want to plant trees after all.
All that is “what could have been, if Dany had kept working for peace” and it is also: look at her, this is what she says and here in the last chapter, there is what she does.
In some scenes the hypocrisy is shown within the scene itself:
A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a brothel. The whores had bedecked themselves in her jewels and clothes. She wanted her house back, and her jewels. "They can keep the clothes," she allowed. Dany granted her the jewels but ruled the house was lost when she abandoned it. (ADWD, Dany I)
How can Dany not see that this is herself? Dany practically sentences against her own right to return to Westeros!
So, yes, some of the decisions Dany makes in the first chapter of ADWD might have been successful. Some of her measures might have ensured a stable rule.
But we will never know. Because it is Dany who ultimately decides against all that.
“Dragons plant no trees.”
Thanks for the ask!