DAENERYS TARGARYEN’S OUTFITS IN A DANCE WITH DRAGONS
Last September, I commissioned the amazingly talented @ilrex to draw fanart of every single Dany outfit that’s described in the books. I can’t thank them enough for accepting my request, for making me so happy and excited whenever I received updates of their progress, for finishing such a huge project, for giving me such diverse options to use as my tumblr icon (lol), for greatly enriching my (re)reading experience of Dany’s chapters and for surpassing all my expectations with their gorgeous style and attention to detail. Ilrex deserves all the praise for their depiction of these outfits, which will be posted per book on different days.
So here are Dany’s outfits in A Dance with Dragons, along with the book descriptions (a few of them were skipped for being too repetitive and/or vague) that ilrex had in mind in order to draw her costumes:
Dany clutched her lion pelt to her chest. Underneath, a sheer white linen tunic covered her to midthigh. (ADWD, Daenerys I)
Only then did Dany go back inside the pyramid, where Irri and Jhiqui were waiting to brush the tangles from her hair and garb her as befit the Queen of Meereen, in a Ghiscari tokar.
The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master’s garment, a sign of wealth and power.
[…] The floppy ears she chose today were made of sheer white linen, with a fringe of golden tassels. With Jhiqui’s help, she wound the tokar about herself correctly on her third attempt. Irri fetched her crown, wrought in the shape of the three-headed dragon of her House. Its coils were gold, its wings silver, its three heads ivory, onyx, and jade. Dany’s neck and shoulders would be stiff and sore from the weight of it before the day was done. (ADWD, Daenerys I)
As the sky lightened and the stars faded one by one, Irri and Jhiqui helped her don a tokar of violet silk fringed in gold. (ADWD, Daenerys II)
In his honor Daenerys had donned a Qartheen gown, a sheer confection of violet samite cut so as to leave her left breast bare. Her silver-gold hair brushed lightly over her shoulder, falling almost to her nipple. (ADWD, Daenerys III)
“What does Your Grace wish to wear?” asked Missandei.
Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario’s delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. When first they met, the captain brought her flowers every day, all the way from Yunkai to Meereen. (ADWD, Daenerys IV)
“Bring the grey linen gown with the pearls on the bodice. Oh, and my white lion’s pelt.” She always felt safer wrapped in Drogo’s lionskin. (ADWD, Daenerys IV)
Dany’s riding clothes were stained and sooty as she stepped back from the pyres. (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
“Irri, bring the green tokar, the silk one fringed with Myrish lace.”
“That one is being repaired, Khaleesi. The lace was torn. The blue tokar has been cleaned.”
“Blue, then. They will be just as pleased.” (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
Dany hurried off, calling for her handmaids. She would not welcome her captain home in a tokar. In the end she tried a dozen gowns before she found one she liked, but she refused the crown that Jhiqui offered her. (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
“Help me find my crown. Oh, and some clothes to wear, something light and cool.” (ADWD, Daenerys VII)
“…The wedding garb is fraught with meaning too. The bride is dressed in dark red veils above a tokar of white silk, fringed with baby pearls.”
The queen of the rabbits must not be wed without her floppy ears. “All those pearls will make me rattle when I walk.” (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
Afterward, as Jhiqui was patting Daenerys dry, Irri approached with her tokar. Dany envied the Dothraki maids their loose sandsilk trousers and painted vests. They would be much cooler than her in her tokar, with its heavy fringe of baby pearls. “Help me wind this round myself, please. I cannot manage all these pearls by myself.” (ADWD, Daenerys VII)
So Daenerys sat silent through the meal, wrapped in a vermilion tokar and black thoughts, speaking only when spoken to, brooding on the men and women being bought and sold outside her walls, even as they feasted here within the city. (ADWD, Daenerys VIII)
“I keep my promises,” he told her, as Irri and Jhiqui were robing them for bed.
[…] No sooner had her handmaids retired for the night than he tore the robe from her and tumbled her backwards into bed. (ADWD, Daenerys VIII)
Jhiqui slipped Dany’s silk robe from her shoulders and Irri helped her into her bathing pool. (ADWD, Daenerys IX)
Jhiqui brought a soft towel to pat her dry. “Khaleesi, which tokar will you want today?” asked Irri.
“The yellow silk.” The queen of the rabbits could not be seen without her floppy ears. The yellow silk was light and cool, and it would be blistering down in the pit. The red sands will burn the soles of those about to die. “And over it, the long red veils.” The veils would keep the wind from blowing sand into her mouth. And the red will hide any blood spatters.
As Jhiqui brushed Dany’s hair and Irri painted the queen’s nails, they chattered happily about the day’s matches. (ADWD, Daenerys IX)
She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.
“Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”
“Taking off my floppy ears.”
[…] “Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet. When she landed in the pit she lost a sandal. Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough.
[…] She scrabbled in the sand, pushing against the pitmaster’s corpse, and her fingers brushed against the handle of his whip. […] Dany hit him. “No,” she screamed, swinging the lash with all the strength that she had in her. The dragon jerked his head back. “No,” she screamed again. “NO!”
With a hisssssss, he spat black fire down at her. Dany darted underneath the flames, swinging the whip and shouting, “No, no, no. Get DOWN!” His answering roar was full of fear and fury, full of pain. His wings beat once, twice … (ADWD, Daenerys IX)
And Daenerys … Her hair was aflame. She had the whip in her hand and she was shouting, then she was on the dragon’s back, flying. (ADWD, The Queensguard)
The sun was hot this morning, the sky blue and cloudless. That was good. Dany’s clothes were hardly more than rags, and offered little in the way of warmth. One of her sandals had slipped off during her wild flight from Meereen and she had left the other up by Drogon’s cave, preferring to go barefoot rather than half-shod. Her tokar and veils she had abandoned in the pit, and her linen undertunic had never been made to withstand the hot days and cold nights of the Dothraki sea. Sweat and grass and dirt had stained it, and Dany had torn a strip off the hem to make a bandage for her shin. I must look a ragged thing, and starved, she thought, but if the days stay warm, I will not freeze.
[…] As she splashed her face, she saw fresh blood on her thighs. The ragged hem of her undertunic was stained with it. The sight of so much red frightened her.
[…] The day grew warmer, and the sun beat down upon her head and the burnt remnants of her hair.
[…] As the western sky turned the color of a blood bruise, she heard the sound of approaching horses. Dany rose, wiped her hands on her ragged undertunic, and went to stand beside her dragon. (ADWD, Daenerys X)
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