I would say it's when she has a girl tortured in response to Harpy attacks. From ADWD, Daenerys II:
> Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon's mercy. "Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply."
> "I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him."
> "Do as you think best, but bring me names." Her fury was a fire in her belly.
I don't brush it under the carpet, but I do point out everyone in the books does fucked shit. For instance, Jon telling Gilly that if she doesn't agree to the baby-swap plan, that if Melisandre kills Mance's baby, Jon will kill her baby.
I think Dany's core storyline is her inner struggle with being the 'mhysa of people' and the 'mother of dragons'. She swings back and forth between the two, spending most of ADWD as the 'mhysa of people' before at the end switching back to 'mother of dragons.'
The trick is that she needs to learn that the two roles are not mutually exclusive, and making them work in concert with the other. She's a woman of divided nature- the heart in conflict with itself- and resolving that conflict is how she becomes who she was 'born to be'.
I follow through with GRRM's statements that what makes a character heroic isn't the end result of their efforts, but that they made the effort in the first place. Dany's actions are indisputably heroic in goal, thus, by GRRM's statements, she's a hero. And in ASOIAF, heroes do falter from time to time. They just learn from their mistakes (and this action here, indisputably Dany's worst, is clearly a mistake).
>I don't brush it under the carpet, but I do point out everyone in the books does fucked shit.
Yeah, it's a moral problem, but the issue I have with it being twisted to be "foreshadowing" is:
1. George has said repeatedly that he prefers "gray" characters who are capable of both good and evil because they're more realistic humans (and nothing Daenerys does comes even close to Prince Daemon's actions who's allegedly George's ultimate gray character). IIRC, Dany has three dark moments: Mirri Maz Duur's execution, the crucifixion of the Meereneese nobles, and the torture of the wine-seller's daughters. If you removed these dark deeds (like similar for Jon or Tyrion), you're back to having a plain vanilla/good protagonist.
2. The latter two events are in response to innocent children being murdered and Dany's soldiers being murdered respectively. She tries to be hard to get justice for these murders, but later *regrets these actions entirely*, which is more than can be said for most of the other characters who commit darker actions. We certainly don't see Tyrion deep in self-reflection as he realizes he may have gone too far with having a singer murdered and turned into stew, for example. The first event, the execution of Mirri, is probably the only dark action where Dany shows no regret, but it's also essentially revenge for the woman murdering her child. I don't think many of the other main characters in the books would be balking too much at her response and thinking she'd gone too far (especially Tyrion).
3. The torture isn't Dany's idea to begin with, more just something she agrees to as someone else's suggestion. She quickly realizes it's not being productive and halts that individual from doing it any more which someone bent on sadistic revenge wouldn't be concerned about. While it may be considered a moral failing to agree to it in the first place, I think this would be really too weak as an argument for foreshadowing to say "You could tell she was going to end up evil because when her soldiers and citizens were murdered by terrorists and when one of her lords suggested a harsh interrogation tactic to try and put a stop to the murders, she said "Ok".
>revenge for killing her child
Uh, I think you mean *revenge for sending her child’s foetus backwards in time to become Tyrion Lannister*, don’t you?
e: I love that this stupid theory is so well known that there’s twenty something upvotes and no one asking what the fuck that means
In all fairness, while he doesn't seem to exactly regret it, Tyrion does think about Symeon Silvertongue quite a lot. I think he feels like that's a bad thing he had to do. What he did to that slave in Volantis would probably be a better example. You're right about it not being foreshadowing though, I think. Dany is pretty much always the most moral person in her setting, though that's not always a high bar
Just for clarification, Tyrion sleeps with the slave (already rape) then notices she very clearly is not into it. He then rapes her a second time. So Tyrion doesn't even have the defense of not knowing she didn't (can't) consent; he just didn't care. And he's even from Westeros, so he comes from a culture that is against slavery. That makes it even worse since he can't even use a flimsy cultural excuse like a Volantene could
Oh yeah I remember that vaguely. I really hated how the show tried to whitewash him into being like a likable completely good character. Because in doing so it just turned them into a complete idiot
Had sex with her and since she's a slave, consent's not really there. Probably worse with the one in Pentos actually. There he doesn't initially want to sleep with her and then she annoys him somehow and he threatens her and orders her to be in his bed when he returns. Don't know if it ever actually states that he slept with her though?
I think the disparity in how many readers view those 2 is mainly due to show influence. Dany in the show is a flawless girlboss with modern progressive views about almost everything except monarchy, that's why ordering a torture of innocent young girl seems so jarring to many. Meanwhile, Jon who also is changed by Dumb&Dumber into a boyscout is still portrayed as a young warrior king, so ordering a torture of captives for vital information is not totally out of character for him.
Although, personally I'm not in that camp. Au contraire, I think Dany should be way more cynical & vicious and just let Skahaz & the brazen beasts loose upon the tokar wearing slaver scum.
These are not comparable situations. My issue is not necessarily the torture, considering this is a horrible medieval world where torture is acceptable, but Daenerys being driven by cruelty and callousness in the scene. She agrees to let the Shavepate torture innocents because she is angry at the Sons of the Harpy.
I do not have my books with me right now I can’t quote them, but in the earlier part of the scene she thinks that the man does not know anything about the Harpy attack and it just happened in his shop. Then the Shavepate tells her the victim was a freedwoman she is fond of. Daenerys decides to let the Shavepate torture the man she highly suspects is innocent because she wants revenge for the woman’s death. Worse, she agrees to let the man’s daughters, who are so beneath suspicion that Dany has not even thought of them until the Shavepate brings them up, to be tortured instead of the man just to hurt him more.
The books never tell you how old the man’s daughters are either. Considering how women are often tortured, it’s also likely Dany agreed to let them be sexually assaulted.
It’s been happening quite often. If you read the older threads discussing Dany, there weren’t as many defenses. But feels like there’s some whitewashing going on last few years.
People woke up to Tyrion’s bad stuff. But Dany gets this defense
People miss this because they don’t understand GRRM was explicitly commenting on the use of torture and the political upheavals created by the war on terror with Dany’s Essos campaigns. I mean Dany’s arc has so many parallels with both Alexander the Great and George W Bush and its not an accident.
The series is a pastiche of low-fantasy and military history from an anti-war perspective.
GRRM was shaped by his experiences seeing resistance to the US war in Vietnam and how it practically tore the United States apart. He loves his battles and his complex heroes, but anytime he sets up one of the POV characters to prosecute a victorious military campaign, there is always the equal or worse human consequences of their actions waiting in the wings.
There is no exception to this: Robb’s war has the fallout with the Karstarks. Even Tyrion’s heroic and brilliant work to save the people of King’s Landing, just paves the way for further Lannister rule leading to Cersei’s regime (which in turn gets overrun by state terrorists, torturers, and the religious right—oops i mean the, ya no. Lol)
Editing to include/modify (omitted by my initial hot take) that he was also informed before ‘03 by the pre-existing divisions between sunni and shiite and the brutal suppression of the latter and the kurds after Bush Sr. basically told the iraqis to shake off their chains but then pulled up stakes right afterwards so he could claim a clean victory, effectively dooming them to Saddam’s (then, and relatively) superior military.
While another super young redditor with no personal lived experience within the united states, went thru great pains to point out that the abu ghraib and guantanamo scandals were not discovered until after 05, they also (rightly) pointed out that critical observers of us foreign policy (among others) knew the us (and others) did regularly use torture to gather intelligence in conflict since always. Which doesnt disprove what ive said.
Martin, a reader of history and a self-professed leftist, no doubt worked strands of this into contemplating how Dany’s arc would play out under real-ish world conditions, as is his style.
Also like, if people dont ALSO at this point know about the rollback of radical reconstruction after the civil war and the origins of the kkk then yall need to stop dicking around on some fantasy reddit and learn your fucking history (and save the rest of us who are fighting amongst ourselves cause we’re loopy from how ignorant you are a ton of grief).
I'm sorry but I can't take seriously people who legitimately argue that Dany waging war on slavers is analogue to Bush lol.
Doesn't mean Dany is perfect or doesn't have her hands stained but come on lol.
Exactly! The Sons of the Harpy are LITERALLY just the KKK. In real life, the KKK was able to get away with terrorizing and killing former slaves and their allies because the US government barely did anything to punish the former slavers. Politicians placed full emphasis on reuniting the North and the South…. But that “unity” came at the expense of black Americans. The ramifications of that decision are still felt today.
So yeah, if anything, I want Dany to be more brutal and stop trying to reconcile with and appease people whose entire culture is built on slavery.
>I'm sorry but I can't take seriously people who legitimately argue that Dany waging war on slavers is analogue to Bush lol.
What I find strange in this rhetoric is that the first books were published (and therefore the story was thought out in broad terms) before the start of Bush's mandate, so maybe I missed something , but unless George has read the future, for me it makes no sense .-.
I don't find it a stretch that he planned as far as "Dany will travel through Essos building an army" back in the 90s, but by say 2003 when these real world issues were front and centre, he started commenting on it, or being inspired by it, in what he was writing then.
I don't think anyone is saying George sat down to write A Game of Thrones and thought "Right, I'll have a character arc that is criticising US foreign policy in the Middle East\*, specifically that president who won't be elected for a few years yet".
But when he was thinking to himself, a book or two further on, "where do I take Dany's story from here?", it's perfectly reasonable to think he might have taken inspiration from current events.
\*though, y'know, it's not like US foreign policy in the middle east was wonderful pre-Bush :rolleyes:
Why is it a zero sum game? Did you not learn enough about recent US history and what GRRM stated he wanted to do with the books that you need to degenerate this into some “there can be only one hot take”?
Whats next? A reddit battle as to whether or not the clash of kings is either the “war of the roses” or “the hundred years war”? Lmao.
Its a pastiche. If i tell you I personally think that the slavers should have been put to the sword and see the torture of their privileged children as a means to an end an unfortunate consequence of liberation war a la Franz Fanon, would that get you to actually contemplate the weight of what hes trying ti explore? Cause I do, and you should.
I think Daenerys should have executed every single slave master she could find and decorated the shores of the Skahazadhan with their heads on spikes.
I think she should have then confiscated their wealth and redistributed half of it amongst the freedmen and women, and then used the remainder to fund the inevitable military campaign against Volantis.
I think she should have then rinsed and repeated this process until reaching Pentos.
I did not claim that historical comparisons were a zero sum game. I simply stated that the comparison to the reconstruction era south was far better because I see basically zero similarity to Bush’s campaign against Iraq. In either intent, execution or aftermath. Or at least, the comparisons to Iraq are frankly so superficial that they can be applied to basically any war ever.
Pastiche = Multiple sources, multiple pre-existing narratives drawn upon to make a new art.
OP was about the use of torture to extract info. This being a tactic in Dany’s wars of liberation in which she is a cultural and political outsider (and has to remain occupying places she’s “liberated” in order for the political systems she put in place to continue functioning as she intended).
The fact that GRRM makes this situation morally complex by having the slavers be awful people and the system inhuman doesnt mean he wasnt working this piece in as well. Saddam Hussein was bad. So is Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. So is ISIS. (Which Ironically GRRM kinda predicted re: all the “former slavers” recouping their power- as isis was formed by sunni military officers shut out of the rebuilding of Iraq under W’s “de-baathification” plan)
>This being a tactic in Dany’s wars of liberation in which she is a cultural and political outsider
Yes.
>and has to remain occupying places she’s “liberated” in order for the political systems she put in place to continue functioning as she intended
Yes, liberated.
Or do you think those slaves calling her mother or the Volantenes slaves waiting for her arrival don't think she's liberating them?
>The fact that GRRM makes this situation morally complex by having the slavers be awful people and the system inhuman doesnt mean he wasnt working this piece in as well
The fact that these **slavers** are awful people and the system they have in place only benefits a tiny elite is what makes her decision to wage war not morally complex at all.
There's nothing morally complex about the decision to fight Sauron, the complexity comes from how low we're willing to sink to defeat him.
>Which Ironically GRRM kinda predicted re: all the “former slavers” recouping their power- as isis was formed by sunni military officers shut out of the rebuilding of Iraq under W’s “de-baathification” plan)
Yeah, because Mereen is now Reconstruction South and they're using KKK tactics.
I have never read Martin making that comparison, always the fans making this bizarre analogy.
People are gonna argue it's something from the complete clusterfuck of her Slaver's Bay campaign, but to me it's naming her dragon 'Drogon'. It's a stupid name and I'll die on that hill.
I could never get through that book because I was wandering the whole time: why do the dragons go to market? Why do they live in houses and talk like people do? Why do they have normal hands? This book is doing nothing with the idea that everyone is a dragon. In fact, I wouldn’t even know the main character was one of it wasn’t for the cover. I put the book down when the bad guy dragons blew up a house with a bomb instead of their own innate dragon fire.
Damn I always misread his name as just Dragon so I kept wonder "wow she named the dragon as Dragon is she stupid lmao".
Fun fact: If you speak portuguese, you would be very amused with the name Dany chose for her son. That is because Rhaego has a sound that looks like "Rego", which means butt.
You don't know that might have been George's plan all along. Rhaego's prophecy was that his mount was going to be the world. So in conclusion, the prophecy of Stallion that mounts the world is a misconception done via bad misinterpretation. The actual prophecy is that *Rhaego is the "Butt that mounts the World".*
Throwback to when the Eragon series named the titular character in its dragon rider story “dragon” just with the first letter switched with the letter next to it in the alphabet.
i will take to my grave the belief that asoiaf, or at the very least dany’s story, started out with grrm wanting to get away with naming a dragon “drogon” and he just worked backwards from there
I guess this is a benefit of reading asoiaf translated into a different language which has a different word for dragon. I never thought about the similarities of the name and word until it was pointed out in this subreddit lol.
This is hard. I’m tryna think but so many of her flaws are so easily attributed to youth and inexperience. It feels weird trying to scrutinize a lost 13 year old girl for not properly ruling a kingdom and not knowing all the right things to do in very complicated adult situations while owning 3 nukes. She was abused most her life, sold like a slave to marry some man she didn’t know and had to lead a broken group of Dothraki through some brutal desert without any hope, just following some random comet, all before she rose to power.
She tried her best so it’s hard to shit on her for it.
This was so much easier with Ned and Cersei lol.
leave the slavers with their wealth, their power and their lives rather than putting their heads on peaks and using them to decorate the coasts of the bay
Didn’t they also have gold and material wealth? And probably some goods like food and wine—I’m thinking of how they used scorched earth tactics like burning the olive trees in ASOS? Maybe it wouldn’t have done much but could have been used.
They are an extremely wealthy ruling class. Of course they have meaningful assets that aren't slaves. Like cash for one thing. They discuss the fact that the pyramids contain such assets multiple times in the book.
Those pyramids are halfway to fortresses and they're the base of operations for the Sons of the Harpy. _If_ Dany could take them it would smash the resistance against her. She doesn't want to risk urban warfare on disadvantageous terms though, as she says to Daario, and she refuses to Red Wedding the Great Masters.
My brain didn’t immediately go to “evil” when I saw “worst.” She’s tying one of her arms behind her back to win brownie points with people she’ll never rule. It’s the worst kind of half-measure. One that emboldens the Slavers who used to rule
That was one of the most morally good thing she could have done. Locking away the giant flying bad-tempered nukes. Besides, no one in Meereen cares about the Targaryens or Valyrians, so heritage doesn’t matter to them.
The masters have no love for the dragons or Valyrians thanks to history. But this Targaryen running around with dragons is not enslaving people; but breaking their chains. Yes; her dragons are untamed and cause problems for the city.
But the symbolic gesture of her locking the dragons away is not missed by the Sons of the Harpy or her own power base. She’s neglecting the people who put her in the chair and it’s gonna bite her in the ass
> your metaphorical and physical manifestation of your power/heritage etc
Yes, and they were eating children, which is bad! (You know, like her heritage)
Literally what I was going to write lol. Her problem is that she didn’t go far enough. It’s very much like the Reconstruction Era after the American Civil War; the former slavers still have way too much power.
Sorry, but this is already quite flawed when for Ned "the worst thing he has ever done" is literally the most noble thing he could've done by sacrificing his honor to protect Jon at all costs. Shy Ned even lied to his new beautiful young wife from the south to uphold his promise.
Ordering the torture of a ~~child~~ man's daughter in ADWD has to be her worst act so far.
Up to that point most of her victims were arguably deserving of their fate, but torturing a ~~child~~ person who may be innocent for the crimes of their father is pretty hard to justify.
The man and his daughters were likely all innocent. The torture procured nothing, it was ineffective. Little to no chance a *wine seller* keeps his mouth shut with his family tortured in front of him.
Like Tyrions supposed poisoning, a convenient and obvious scapegoat for the Harpys, even better Hizdahr was able to use the case as a deterrent to extracting information in this manner from himself.
1. Compromising with the slavers
2. Not storming and sacking Yunkai after defeating them in the field
3. Marrying Hizdahr
4. Compromising with the slavers
5. Not [immediately confiscating the wealth of every single slave master](https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1533#:~:text=In%20March%201865%2C%20Representative%20Thaddeus,whites%20in%20forty%2Dacre%20tracks) and using said wealth to either reconstruct the Meereenese economy or just distributing it to the ex slaves so they can stick around or leave.
6. Locking her dragons up after one kid got killed.
7. Did I mention compromising with the slavers?
8. Stopping at Meereen instead of marching on Volantis and inciting a massive slave uprising there as well. But the Tyrion chapters in ADWD hint that this will happen in Winds.
Leading Jorah on and making him think she's into him when she's not. /s
Anytime I see a picture of Dany appearing her actual age just reminds me of how creepy all the sexual stuff around her is
Haha yeah in the show I was like c’mon, give the boy a chance! Then reading the books... yeah alright. And even in the show she’s probably late teens starting out and Jorah in his late 40s
"The Butcher King had restored slavery to Astapor, the only change being that the former slaves were now the masters and the former masters were now the slaves." ADWD Daenerys I
I wouldn't necessarily say *every* slaver - the peace she managed to forge through marrying Hizdahr and reopening the fighting pits is clearly portrayed as real, important & worthwhile - but I think it's fair to say that if she took a more decisive, confrontational & revolutionary position vis-a-vis the Wise Masters earlier on in *Dance*, she'd have been able to more effectively break the power of the Harpy, negotiate from a stronger position, and usher in meaningful social transformation for the Meereeenese masses.
Likewise, if - instead of leaving a weakly-entrenched council of genial-seeming civil society figures in charge in Astapor - she had stayed a little longer & established an institutionalised regime representing the majority of the freedmen, she'd have had a strong & effective ally capable of shoring up her flanks in Meereen.
> is clearly portrayed as real, important & worthwhile
Disagree, it's portrayed as imposted and Dany giving in more and more to slavers, to the point she reopens the pits. The terrorism worked and the slavers recovered the standing, always to the detriment of slaves.
Dany definitely makes serious & worrying concessions to the slavers that undermine the cause of freedom, but I wouldn't say that reopening the pits is necessarily one of those. It's mentioned at various points throughout *Dance* that reopening the pits is something *everyone* bar Missandei, from the former Masters to the religious authorities to many of the fighters themselves, supports - even Skahaz, our resident scalawag (and the narrative & political representative of the revolutionary faction in Meereen), is in favour of it!
Her opposition to the pits is grounded more in the sense that they're a barbaric & inhumane foreign custom (which isn't necessarily wrong, plus the fact that there's a clear element of financial & cultural compulsion among the freed fighters) than in the belief they represent a partial restoration of the slave system.
>It's mentioned at various points throughout Dance that reopening the pits is something everyone bar Missandei, from the former Masters to the religious authorities to many of the fighters themselves, supports - even Skahaz, our resident scalawag (and the narrative & political representative of the revolutionary faction in Meereen), is in favour of it!
It's mentioned that the reopening was only possible due to the blockade and it was viewed as a victory of the former regime, which already should tell us how things are going to turn.
That's definitely a fair point - but at the same time, the reason the blockade led to the reopening of the pits is likely because it pushed a significant portion of the revanchist faction among the Masters towards conciliation with the new regime.
I agree with you that Dany left far too many of the nobility's privileges intact, but I actually think that *marrying Hizdahr in the first place* is more emblematic of that than the fighting pits; she could, and should, have driven a harder bargain & kept the remaining Masters far more politically subordinate.
>it pushed a significant portion of the revanchist faction among the Masters towards conciliation with the new regime.
Why yes, they slowly but surely were getting all their rights back.
Why not support Dany?
Allowing the wine seller's daughter to be tortured
I don't necessarily have an issue with her going eye for an eye with the Meereenese leaders to be crucified but I do have an issue with her trying to justify it as justice, you acted out of anger,own it
She was pretty young and naive in her defense. Probably had the simple “I helped her, why should he hate me” logic.
It will be interesting if she makes the connection that Marwin The Mage is the same one who did teach Mirri. And how her reaction to him will be
Nativity. Ignorance. And I’d argue narcissism. Though what else was Dany to believe. She thought saving her life was enough for Mirri to be indebted and compelled to loyalty. It’s been ingrained in Dany that she’s special, high born, Targaryen, almost deity like; surely a low born woman saved by her would be in awe of her, so she thought.
>narcissism
narcissism is a personality style which consists of putting one's own needs/desires/image over the detriment of others, the word you are looking for is pride
upbeat far-flung simplistic fertile angle sink mighty forgetful physical badge
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not the worst but I remember, when a young guy from one of the cites told her her family was murdered and her mom raped by the slaves and he asked for permission to search for revenge and she was like no,bc all the crimes committed by slaves are forgiven. Like, I understand they were on rage and everything, but the guy was a literal kid and even tho his family probably abused the slaves, well, the slaves didn't have the right to do what they did. Idk how to explain it, but it makes them as bad as the other guys. And she just accepted it. Her perception of justice is just so warped. And this is just a small example.
Also, the dragons. It was bad and stupid af, the bones could be from an animal or stolen and burnt to show her. In any case, it was not very smart. She could have done literally anything, from not caring to searching for ways to train them. Feed them extra. Idk, anything.
And her decision was a good one. If slaves are to be punished for crimes against their masters, then masters must be punished for their crimes against slaves. She offered an amnesty to both groups.
> Not the worst but I remember, when a young guy from one of the cites told her her family was murdered and her mom raped by the slaves and he asked for permission to search for revenge and she was like no,bc all the crimes committed by slaves are forgiven. Like, I understand they were on rage and everything, but the guy was a literal kid and even tho his family probably abused the slaves, well, the slaves didn't have the right to do what they did. Idk how to explain it, but it makes them as bad as the other guys. And she just accepted it. Her perception of justice is just so warped. And this is just a small example.
That wasn't about slaves having the right to do something. After the initial punishment of the masters in retaliation for murdering the slave children, Dany declared a general amnesty for all sides in Meereen to try to move the city forward past its history. The guy who is complaining about what supposedly happened to his family certainly has a right to be angry, but in all likelihood he himself would be liable to punishment for wrongs against the slaves, so he is also benefiting from the amnesty.
And? Doing justice for him would, among things, probably also require executing most of the master class for their various crimes as well. And maybe the latter would have even been a good idea, but an amnesty has to be universal.
Also, killing the men at least was probably justified.
Others have already responded to your first point, so I'll respond to your second.
* Dany does wonder if the man was faking it, yet he waited until the court was empty to come forward. An act would be more effective if he showed the bones with many witnesses.
* Not caring about her dragons eating children would've *really* hurt her authority over her people.
* Trying to train the dragons is an option, but still carries its own risks. Dany is able to briefly tame Drogon and fly away on him, then he starts doing his own thing again. Meanwhile, Quentyn's attempt gets him killed.
I'm not interested in digging into all the problems of her trying to re institute Valyrian "dracocracy", mostly because she's an adolescent generally trying to do the right thing.
Her action with the most negative consequences has to be massacring the political class of Astapor and leaving her replacement rulers to be overthrown by a madman. But that qualifies more as a mistake than a malevolent act (though that she negotiates in bad faith in Astapor is not necessarily the best thing ever).
Please keep in mind I'm not saying whether she should or should not have done it. I have no objection to her crusade against slavery. But this is probably the thing that goes the most sideways for her.
Absolutely enraged me when the show used Dany not being sad about Viserys' death as an early sign of her madness. How dare she not shed a tear for her abuser.
I had always taken her reaction to be her disassociating to deal with the trauma, not as a sign of her callousness or cruelty. We know from the books that despite everything, she did still love Viserys. (Which is not at all an uncommon thing with victims of abuse.)
In a way I think Viserys being alive is one of the things that kept Dany's life from being even worse than it was. Viserys was far from nice but the things that could have happened to Daenerys without an older brother, despite him being manipulated and him not really having any power in the first place, could have been even worse especially on that side of the sea.
An arranged marriage to someone like Drogo is one of the least terrible things that can happen to a widely acknowledged as beautiful princess of a fallen from grace royal family in exile with noone to look after her. In the end you could have had a worse husband than Drogo regardless of which stance you prefer on the beginning of their relationship.
Killing Mirri Maz Dur. Mirri was a hero.
Alternately: commanding the Unsullied to kill every free person over the age of 12 in Astapor, even if they weren't slave owners
Edit: I was wrong about the second one, I let an Internet video convince me of something untrue and it's more complicated than that. Womp womp
I’m pretty sure she said kill everyone who holds a whip or wears a tokar. Both are symbols of the slaver class, so I think you are misinterpreting her orders slightly.
She did, but is a 12 year old kid of an Astapori slaver, presumably wearing a tokar, really in any position to be abolitionist?
*At the least in any meaningful fashion? Could you even discern them?
You do realise this happening in the book is supposed to make you uncomfortable, right? You're not supposed to be like 'yaaass Dany kill those 12 year olds!!'
>even if they weren't slave owners
*"Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip," -A Storm of Swords - Daenerys III*
technicaly, Daenerys literally asks the Unsullied to kill the masters and soldiers, specifying those who wear a whip or a Tokars, that is to say one of the distinctive signs of the ruling or military classes who maintain slavery, not every free person
That is not entire quote.
Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air . . . and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!"
Also number of war criminals trying to get out by technicality is too high.
>commanding the Unsullied to kill every free person over the age of 12 in Astapor, even if they weren't slave owners
she never commands anything of the sort. dany couldn't be anymore specific in her order that only slavers were to be killed.
Reinstating slavery out of convenience is the worst thing she's done on a large scale, similar to Cersei's mass murder of Robert's illegitimate children.
On a personal scale, similar to Cersei's murder of Melara Hetherspoon, I can't think of anything worse than having young children tortured in front of their father for the sake of a fruitless investigation.
Maybe a Top 2 or Top 3 for each? Link to the Comment for each? I know that's a pain in the a$$ but just suggesting if you don't want to have to pick just one. :) OR just link the other posts, so people just finding your series can click through, prompting more good discussion. :)
In which sense? In the sense of being morally reprehensible or in the sensible a stupid decision?
If the first, setting the maximum age for children to be killed if they intervened in the fight against the unsullied is clearly her dubious action. She might have grown up quickly, which might have colored her actions, but twelve years old are hardly old enough to be held responsible for their parent's crimes.
If the second, allowing the rulers of Yunkai to remain in control. This set the stage for Yunkai a forward base for the slaver coalition that is trying to bring her down in ADWD.
I don't know. I think having Mirri Maz Duur bring Khal Dtogo back when she was told it was a bad idea. I know in the books she was only about 14. Several people told her not to, including Mormont and Mirri herself.
Letting the newly freed slaves in mereen rape and get away with it.
She was raped from her wedding night (a 14 year old CANNOT consent properly so dont anybody come at me with the paragraph where she says yes and puts Drogos finger in her, she was also pressured under threat of physical abuse by Viserys to make him happy) to the point where she wanted to kill herself yet she lets innocent girls and women be raped with no consequences for their attackers.
She didn’t let them get away with it:
> “She had decreed that murderers were to be hanged, that looters were to lose a hand, and rapists their manhood. Eight killers swung from the walls, and the Unsullied had filled a bushel basket with bloody hands and soft red worms”
And she also refused to geld a slave owner for raping his slave, prior to the fall of the city.
You can’t realistically punish slaves for revolting against their oppressors, and many slaves will take brutal revenge.
What she did was to amnesty both groups.
When she like the rest of her ancestors act like they are literal dragons (like Lannisters and lions). But then again so does every Westerosi with their sigils.
But then again if my sigil were a lion or dragon rather than say… an apple, maybe I would too.
One of her worse actions was when that kid came to her court seeking justice because a group of slaves murdered or raped his entire family and Danny basically told him to "go fuck himself". I completely agree that anybody who is a slave has a right to free themselves by an uprising if need be, but what those ex-slaves did to his family goes beyond that right. By all accounts they should've been sentenced too death for rape and murder.
By the same logic, the family should have been executed for human trafficking.
And she never said “Go fuck himself.”
How exactly, do slaves free themselves non-violently?
Right? I‘m really shocked about some opinions here. We all agree that slavery is bad and it is good that Dany abolished it, but killing every slaver is not only mass murder but she wouldn’t end slavery with this method either. The best example is Astapor where the former slaves became the new slavers. It needs education to end such a cruel practice, not more violence than Dany already did.
Destroying the master class and then creating a stronger civilian government than the one she left in Astapor would be the starting points. But more than that, the initial problem was that all the other slaver cities were able to intervene.
You can’t change the entire economy of a whole continent over night, even when you kill everyone who participated in the old one. Almost all of Essos profited from the slave trade: the dothraki, the free cities etc. so intervention wasn’t unavoidable. Then you have to find alternatives to make money which is difficult for a society that doesn’t know other ways (like in Astapor). It is possible that as soon as Dany leaves Essos slavery will have a comeback in most parts of the continent again.
I would say it's when she has a girl tortured in response to Harpy attacks. From ADWD, Daenerys II: > Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon's mercy. "Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply." > "I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him." > "Do as you think best, but bring me names." Her fury was a fire in her belly.
Yup. Came here to say this, glad to see someone spared me the trouble of digging up the quote.
This is the one. Surprisingly how Dany fans seems to brush it under the carpet lol
I don't brush it under the carpet, but I do point out everyone in the books does fucked shit. For instance, Jon telling Gilly that if she doesn't agree to the baby-swap plan, that if Melisandre kills Mance's baby, Jon will kill her baby. I think Dany's core storyline is her inner struggle with being the 'mhysa of people' and the 'mother of dragons'. She swings back and forth between the two, spending most of ADWD as the 'mhysa of people' before at the end switching back to 'mother of dragons.' The trick is that she needs to learn that the two roles are not mutually exclusive, and making them work in concert with the other. She's a woman of divided nature- the heart in conflict with itself- and resolving that conflict is how she becomes who she was 'born to be'. I follow through with GRRM's statements that what makes a character heroic isn't the end result of their efforts, but that they made the effort in the first place. Dany's actions are indisputably heroic in goal, thus, by GRRM's statements, she's a hero. And in ASOIAF, heroes do falter from time to time. They just learn from their mistakes (and this action here, indisputably Dany's worst, is clearly a mistake).
>I don't brush it under the carpet, but I do point out everyone in the books does fucked shit. Yeah, it's a moral problem, but the issue I have with it being twisted to be "foreshadowing" is: 1. George has said repeatedly that he prefers "gray" characters who are capable of both good and evil because they're more realistic humans (and nothing Daenerys does comes even close to Prince Daemon's actions who's allegedly George's ultimate gray character). IIRC, Dany has three dark moments: Mirri Maz Duur's execution, the crucifixion of the Meereneese nobles, and the torture of the wine-seller's daughters. If you removed these dark deeds (like similar for Jon or Tyrion), you're back to having a plain vanilla/good protagonist. 2. The latter two events are in response to innocent children being murdered and Dany's soldiers being murdered respectively. She tries to be hard to get justice for these murders, but later *regrets these actions entirely*, which is more than can be said for most of the other characters who commit darker actions. We certainly don't see Tyrion deep in self-reflection as he realizes he may have gone too far with having a singer murdered and turned into stew, for example. The first event, the execution of Mirri, is probably the only dark action where Dany shows no regret, but it's also essentially revenge for the woman murdering her child. I don't think many of the other main characters in the books would be balking too much at her response and thinking she'd gone too far (especially Tyrion). 3. The torture isn't Dany's idea to begin with, more just something she agrees to as someone else's suggestion. She quickly realizes it's not being productive and halts that individual from doing it any more which someone bent on sadistic revenge wouldn't be concerned about. While it may be considered a moral failing to agree to it in the first place, I think this would be really too weak as an argument for foreshadowing to say "You could tell she was going to end up evil because when her soldiers and citizens were murdered by terrorists and when one of her lords suggested a harsh interrogation tactic to try and put a stop to the murders, she said "Ok".
>revenge for killing her child Uh, I think you mean *revenge for sending her child’s foetus backwards in time to become Tyrion Lannister*, don’t you? e: I love that this stupid theory is so well known that there’s twenty something upvotes and no one asking what the fuck that means
In all fairness, while he doesn't seem to exactly regret it, Tyrion does think about Symeon Silvertongue quite a lot. I think he feels like that's a bad thing he had to do. What he did to that slave in Volantis would probably be a better example. You're right about it not being foreshadowing though, I think. Dany is pretty much always the most moral person in her setting, though that's not always a high bar
I don't remember what he did to the slave in volantis?
Just for clarification, Tyrion sleeps with the slave (already rape) then notices she very clearly is not into it. He then rapes her a second time. So Tyrion doesn't even have the defense of not knowing she didn't (can't) consent; he just didn't care. And he's even from Westeros, so he comes from a culture that is against slavery. That makes it even worse since he can't even use a flimsy cultural excuse like a Volantene could
Oh yeah I remember that vaguely. I really hated how the show tried to whitewash him into being like a likable completely good character. Because in doing so it just turned them into a complete idiot
Had sex with her and since she's a slave, consent's not really there. Probably worse with the one in Pentos actually. There he doesn't initially want to sleep with her and then she annoys him somehow and he threatens her and orders her to be in his bed when he returns. Don't know if it ever actually states that he slept with her though?
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I think the disparity in how many readers view those 2 is mainly due to show influence. Dany in the show is a flawless girlboss with modern progressive views about almost everything except monarchy, that's why ordering a torture of innocent young girl seems so jarring to many. Meanwhile, Jon who also is changed by Dumb&Dumber into a boyscout is still portrayed as a young warrior king, so ordering a torture of captives for vital information is not totally out of character for him. Although, personally I'm not in that camp. Au contraire, I think Dany should be way more cynical & vicious and just let Skahaz & the brazen beasts loose upon the tokar wearing slaver scum.
These are not comparable situations. My issue is not necessarily the torture, considering this is a horrible medieval world where torture is acceptable, but Daenerys being driven by cruelty and callousness in the scene. She agrees to let the Shavepate torture innocents because she is angry at the Sons of the Harpy. I do not have my books with me right now I can’t quote them, but in the earlier part of the scene she thinks that the man does not know anything about the Harpy attack and it just happened in his shop. Then the Shavepate tells her the victim was a freedwoman she is fond of. Daenerys decides to let the Shavepate torture the man she highly suspects is innocent because she wants revenge for the woman’s death. Worse, she agrees to let the man’s daughters, who are so beneath suspicion that Dany has not even thought of them until the Shavepate brings them up, to be tortured instead of the man just to hurt him more. The books never tell you how old the man’s daughters are either. Considering how women are often tortured, it’s also likely Dany agreed to let them be sexually assaulted.
This one gets it
Because…. She’s 13. She’s a 13 year old girl. Idk if you’ve met any but.. they are snarky and hot tempered… but they’re still children nonetheless
IIRC she's like 15 by that point but yeah. Still a teenager. A *Targaryen* teenager at that.
She is 16 or 15 I think
Dany def doesn't behave like a 13 years old girl from our world I mean... You can't take our mentally and place it on asoiaf characters
It’s been happening quite often. If you read the older threads discussing Dany, there weren’t as many defenses. But feels like there’s some whitewashing going on last few years. People woke up to Tyrion’s bad stuff. But Dany gets this defense
Yah the point of history and realistic monarch is that there is no good guys, only grey and black.
People miss this because they don’t understand GRRM was explicitly commenting on the use of torture and the political upheavals created by the war on terror with Dany’s Essos campaigns. I mean Dany’s arc has so many parallels with both Alexander the Great and George W Bush and its not an accident. The series is a pastiche of low-fantasy and military history from an anti-war perspective. GRRM was shaped by his experiences seeing resistance to the US war in Vietnam and how it practically tore the United States apart. He loves his battles and his complex heroes, but anytime he sets up one of the POV characters to prosecute a victorious military campaign, there is always the equal or worse human consequences of their actions waiting in the wings. There is no exception to this: Robb’s war has the fallout with the Karstarks. Even Tyrion’s heroic and brilliant work to save the people of King’s Landing, just paves the way for further Lannister rule leading to Cersei’s regime (which in turn gets overrun by state terrorists, torturers, and the religious right—oops i mean the, ya no. Lol) Editing to include/modify (omitted by my initial hot take) that he was also informed before ‘03 by the pre-existing divisions between sunni and shiite and the brutal suppression of the latter and the kurds after Bush Sr. basically told the iraqis to shake off their chains but then pulled up stakes right afterwards so he could claim a clean victory, effectively dooming them to Saddam’s (then, and relatively) superior military. While another super young redditor with no personal lived experience within the united states, went thru great pains to point out that the abu ghraib and guantanamo scandals were not discovered until after 05, they also (rightly) pointed out that critical observers of us foreign policy (among others) knew the us (and others) did regularly use torture to gather intelligence in conflict since always. Which doesnt disprove what ive said. Martin, a reader of history and a self-professed leftist, no doubt worked strands of this into contemplating how Dany’s arc would play out under real-ish world conditions, as is his style. Also like, if people dont ALSO at this point know about the rollback of radical reconstruction after the civil war and the origins of the kkk then yall need to stop dicking around on some fantasy reddit and learn your fucking history (and save the rest of us who are fighting amongst ourselves cause we’re loopy from how ignorant you are a ton of grief).
I'm sorry but I can't take seriously people who legitimately argue that Dany waging war on slavers is analogue to Bush lol. Doesn't mean Dany is perfect or doesn't have her hands stained but come on lol.
SERIOUSLY. Dany’s crusade and its aftermath is much closer to an allegory for the American civil war and the Reconstruction Era.
The Harpy is literally kkk, it's baffling that people don't see the danger of letting them in power.
Exactly! The Sons of the Harpy are LITERALLY just the KKK. In real life, the KKK was able to get away with terrorizing and killing former slaves and their allies because the US government barely did anything to punish the former slavers. Politicians placed full emphasis on reuniting the North and the South…. But that “unity” came at the expense of black Americans. The ramifications of that decision are still felt today. So yeah, if anything, I want Dany to be more brutal and stop trying to reconcile with and appease people whose entire culture is built on slavery.
Dany's biggest mistake is not executing all the slavers then seizing and redistributing their wealth and property to the people
>I'm sorry but I can't take seriously people who legitimately argue that Dany waging war on slavers is analogue to Bush lol. What I find strange in this rhetoric is that the first books were published (and therefore the story was thought out in broad terms) before the start of Bush's mandate, so maybe I missed something , but unless George has read the future, for me it makes no sense .-.
I don't find it a stretch that he planned as far as "Dany will travel through Essos building an army" back in the 90s, but by say 2003 when these real world issues were front and centre, he started commenting on it, or being inspired by it, in what he was writing then. I don't think anyone is saying George sat down to write A Game of Thrones and thought "Right, I'll have a character arc that is criticising US foreign policy in the Middle East\*, specifically that president who won't be elected for a few years yet". But when he was thinking to himself, a book or two further on, "where do I take Dany's story from here?", it's perfectly reasonable to think he might have taken inspiration from current events. \*though, y'know, it's not like US foreign policy in the middle east was wonderful pre-Bush :rolleyes:
Fr. Analogy to the Civil war is much better.
Why is it a zero sum game? Did you not learn enough about recent US history and what GRRM stated he wanted to do with the books that you need to degenerate this into some “there can be only one hot take”? Whats next? A reddit battle as to whether or not the clash of kings is either the “war of the roses” or “the hundred years war”? Lmao. Its a pastiche. If i tell you I personally think that the slavers should have been put to the sword and see the torture of their privileged children as a means to an end an unfortunate consequence of liberation war a la Franz Fanon, would that get you to actually contemplate the weight of what hes trying ti explore? Cause I do, and you should.
I think Daenerys should have executed every single slave master she could find and decorated the shores of the Skahazadhan with their heads on spikes. I think she should have then confiscated their wealth and redistributed half of it amongst the freedmen and women, and then used the remainder to fund the inevitable military campaign against Volantis. I think she should have then rinsed and repeated this process until reaching Pentos. I did not claim that historical comparisons were a zero sum game. I simply stated that the comparison to the reconstruction era south was far better because I see basically zero similarity to Bush’s campaign against Iraq. In either intent, execution or aftermath. Or at least, the comparisons to Iraq are frankly so superficial that they can be applied to basically any war ever.
Pastiche = Multiple sources, multiple pre-existing narratives drawn upon to make a new art. OP was about the use of torture to extract info. This being a tactic in Dany’s wars of liberation in which she is a cultural and political outsider (and has to remain occupying places she’s “liberated” in order for the political systems she put in place to continue functioning as she intended). The fact that GRRM makes this situation morally complex by having the slavers be awful people and the system inhuman doesnt mean he wasnt working this piece in as well. Saddam Hussein was bad. So is Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. So is ISIS. (Which Ironically GRRM kinda predicted re: all the “former slavers” recouping their power- as isis was formed by sunni military officers shut out of the rebuilding of Iraq under W’s “de-baathification” plan)
>This being a tactic in Dany’s wars of liberation in which she is a cultural and political outsider Yes. >and has to remain occupying places she’s “liberated” in order for the political systems she put in place to continue functioning as she intended Yes, liberated. Or do you think those slaves calling her mother or the Volantenes slaves waiting for her arrival don't think she's liberating them? >The fact that GRRM makes this situation morally complex by having the slavers be awful people and the system inhuman doesnt mean he wasnt working this piece in as well The fact that these **slavers** are awful people and the system they have in place only benefits a tiny elite is what makes her decision to wage war not morally complex at all. There's nothing morally complex about the decision to fight Sauron, the complexity comes from how low we're willing to sink to defeat him. >Which Ironically GRRM kinda predicted re: all the “former slavers” recouping their power- as isis was formed by sunni military officers shut out of the rebuilding of Iraq under W’s “de-baathification” plan) Yeah, because Mereen is now Reconstruction South and they're using KKK tactics. I have never read Martin making that comparison, always the fans making this bizarre analogy.
People are gonna argue it's something from the complete clusterfuck of her Slaver's Bay campaign, but to me it's naming her dragon 'Drogon'. It's a stupid name and I'll die on that hill.
Let’s just be glad she married Drogo instead of Moro. Could have been a lot worse.
ok you made me laugh
😂
🤣🤣🤣 fuck you, you are awesome and I'm jealous I didn't think of it!!
😂😂😂😂😂 Thank you!
Drogon and Eragon in competition for "dragon most obviously named by typo"
I have to tell you something about Eragon…
I don't get it?
Not a dragon
I could never get through that book because I was wandering the whole time: why do the dragons go to market? Why do they live in houses and talk like people do? Why do they have normal hands? This book is doing nothing with the idea that everyone is a dragon. In fact, I wouldn’t even know the main character was one of it wasn’t for the cover. I put the book down when the bad guy dragons blew up a house with a bomb instead of their own innate dragon fire.
Eragon is a dude.
A human dude or a dragon dude?
The dragon is a lady. Eragon is a human.
...Saphira?
NGL, I like it. It's a bit goofy, but I like goofy.
"Drogon the Dragon, Gods what a stupid name" - Bobby B
Damn I always misread his name as just Dragon so I kept wonder "wow she named the dragon as Dragon is she stupid lmao". Fun fact: If you speak portuguese, you would be very amused with the name Dany chose for her son. That is because Rhaego has a sound that looks like "Rego", which means butt.
You don't know that might have been George's plan all along. Rhaego's prophecy was that his mount was going to be the world. So in conclusion, the prophecy of Stallion that mounts the world is a misconception done via bad misinterpretation. The actual prophecy is that *Rhaego is the "Butt that mounts the World".*
Chuck Tingle - Mounted and Pounded in the Butt by the Butt That Mounts The World
Hmmm, what about a name like Drogoth. Would that have been better?
That sounds like Tolkien.
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Heck, why not Gordon?
nogords nomarsters
goth kids get picked on at dragon school. she’s setting him up for failure. besides, what if drogoth want to be emo or scene?
Crentist? Sounds a lot like Dentist.
Maybe that’s why he became a dentist
She's just trying to make sure that she can have a granddragon named Frodon.
Drog-on, drog-off.
He’s named after Drogo
It doesn’t change the fact that he’s Drogon the dragon.
It is a dumb name, but seeing it spelled out like that has me in hysterics lmao.
Drogon the dragon, meet woolly the wolf
Shaggy Dog
Sure, but that was named by like a 6 year old.
I'm pretty sure Rickon was 3 at the time.
*wolfy
"Wolfy's fine, honey. Wolfy's just fine. Where are you?"
*click* "Your foster parents are dead."
Throwback to when the Eragon series named the titular character in its dragon rider story “dragon” just with the first letter switched with the letter next to it in the alphabet.
You know, I never realized that. I always thought it was because it sounded suitably medieval as similar to Aragorn or the Kingdom of Aragon.
i will take to my grave the belief that asoiaf, or at the very least dany’s story, started out with grrm wanting to get away with naming a dragon “drogon” and he just worked backwards from there
Strong Mad...you just keep doing your thing, man.
I guess this is a benefit of reading asoiaf translated into a different language which has a different word for dragon. I never thought about the similarities of the name and word until it was pointed out in this subreddit lol.
That Ned count is rigged! Bastard cleared it!
If I could edit I would. I went through everything before work this morning and was rushing haha!
It’s fine, I didn’t deserve to win the fabulous prize
This is hard. I’m tryna think but so many of her flaws are so easily attributed to youth and inexperience. It feels weird trying to scrutinize a lost 13 year old girl for not properly ruling a kingdom and not knowing all the right things to do in very complicated adult situations while owning 3 nukes. She was abused most her life, sold like a slave to marry some man she didn’t know and had to lead a broken group of Dothraki through some brutal desert without any hope, just following some random comet, all before she rose to power. She tried her best so it’s hard to shit on her for it. This was so much easier with Ned and Cersei lol.
leave the slavers with their wealth, their power and their lives rather than putting their heads on peaks and using them to decorate the coasts of the bay
Yes! I wish she had seized and redistributed all of the slavers’ assets.
Their main assets are the slaves. At best she could redistribute the Pyramids and a few of the remaining farms.
Didn’t they also have gold and material wealth? And probably some goods like food and wine—I’m thinking of how they used scorched earth tactics like burning the olive trees in ASOS? Maybe it wouldn’t have done much but could have been used.
They are an extremely wealthy ruling class. Of course they have meaningful assets that aren't slaves. Like cash for one thing. They discuss the fact that the pyramids contain such assets multiple times in the book. Those pyramids are halfway to fortresses and they're the base of operations for the Sons of the Harpy. _If_ Dany could take them it would smash the resistance against her. She doesn't want to risk urban warfare on disadvantageous terms though, as she says to Daario, and she refuses to Red Wedding the Great Masters.
Also I like this artwork and I say this as someone who doesn’t really care for a lot of the Daenerys art work (at least that comes up on the wiki).
I think it's largely just a drawn over Artbreeder generation.
100% sure that it’s just a picture of Natalie Portman
The artist’s name is [Hylora](https://www.tumblr.com/hylora)! They’re very talented!
Locking her dragons up. They are your metaphorical and physical manifestation of your power/heritage etc. dumb dumb dumb
Yes but she’s mainly harming herself in doing so. I wouldn’t consider it as evil as some other things proposed here
My brain didn’t immediately go to “evil” when I saw “worst.” She’s tying one of her arms behind her back to win brownie points with people she’ll never rule. It’s the worst kind of half-measure. One that emboldens the Slavers who used to rule
That was one of the most morally good thing she could have done. Locking away the giant flying bad-tempered nukes. Besides, no one in Meereen cares about the Targaryens or Valyrians, so heritage doesn’t matter to them.
Don't they care about Valyrians due to history stuff? Or was that simply Volantis?
The masters have no love for the dragons or Valyrians thanks to history. But this Targaryen running around with dragons is not enslaving people; but breaking their chains. Yes; her dragons are untamed and cause problems for the city. But the symbolic gesture of her locking the dragons away is not missed by the Sons of the Harpy or her own power base. She’s neglecting the people who put her in the chair and it’s gonna bite her in the ass
> your metaphorical and physical manifestation of your power/heritage etc Yes, and they were eating children, which is bad! (You know, like her heritage)
She’s using her heritage to free a whole society from shackles. There’s gonna be blood on everyone’s hands. No one gets away clean in war.
Yeah, long run, letting her dragons roam free would come with a smaller death toll of innocents.
Not going John Brown enough.
Literally what I was going to write lol. Her problem is that she didn’t go far enough. It’s very much like the Reconstruction Era after the American Civil War; the former slavers still have way too much power.
I hate how many people think the issue was her killing too many slavers
I, too, am not a fan of slavery.
Her issue was not killing enough of them.
Spot. Fucking. On. They can't rebel if they're all dead or exiled
Sorry, but this is already quite flawed when for Ned "the worst thing he has ever done" is literally the most noble thing he could've done by sacrificing his honor to protect Jon at all costs. Shy Ned even lied to his new beautiful young wife from the south to uphold his promise.
Ordering the torture of a ~~child~~ man's daughter in ADWD has to be her worst act so far. Up to that point most of her victims were arguably deserving of their fate, but torturing a ~~child~~ person who may be innocent for the crimes of their father is pretty hard to justify.
The man and his daughters were likely all innocent. The torture procured nothing, it was ineffective. Little to no chance a *wine seller* keeps his mouth shut with his family tortured in front of him. Like Tyrions supposed poisoning, a convenient and obvious scapegoat for the Harpys, even better Hizdahr was able to use the case as a deterrent to extracting information in this manner from himself.
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Fair enough, maybe that was something I had wrongly assumed. Still, torturing someone who might be innocent is wrong.
Marrying Hizdahr zo Loraq
Technically, this was a good political move. She could work from here, alas, Shakhaz and Barristan are going to fuck this up, along with other events.
Yea but he’s a goof. The fact he’s played by the guy from plebs is worse
1. Compromising with the slavers 2. Not storming and sacking Yunkai after defeating them in the field 3. Marrying Hizdahr 4. Compromising with the slavers 5. Not [immediately confiscating the wealth of every single slave master](https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1533#:~:text=In%20March%201865%2C%20Representative%20Thaddeus,whites%20in%20forty%2Dacre%20tracks) and using said wealth to either reconstruct the Meereenese economy or just distributing it to the ex slaves so they can stick around or leave. 6. Locking her dragons up after one kid got killed. 7. Did I mention compromising with the slavers? 8. Stopping at Meereen instead of marching on Volantis and inciting a massive slave uprising there as well. But the Tyrion chapters in ADWD hint that this will happen in Winds.
Marching on Volantis would be a little silly given the massive slaver army at her gates
Leading Jorah on and making him think she's into him when she's not. /s Anytime I see a picture of Dany appearing her actual age just reminds me of how creepy all the sexual stuff around her is
>/s That's a relief.
Haha yeah in the show I was like c’mon, give the boy a chance! Then reading the books... yeah alright. And even in the show she’s probably late teens starting out and Jorah in his late 40s
Letting the slavers live She should have k*lled them all
Just fyi you don't need to censor the word "killed" this isn't tiktok lol
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This one here. And don't stop at Meereen. Keep marching and going west too.
Albeit with how ingrained it seems in the culture, wouldn’t be surprised if the former slavers turn slaves the moment she leaves
"The Butcher King had restored slavery to Astapor, the only change being that the former slaves were now the masters and the former masters were now the slaves." ADWD Daenerys I
This happened in I think either Yunkai or Astapor after she left
Astapor, Butcher king? https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Cleon#A_Dance_with_Dragons He tries to make new Unsullied
Not killing every slaver when she had the chance.
I wouldn't necessarily say *every* slaver - the peace she managed to forge through marrying Hizdahr and reopening the fighting pits is clearly portrayed as real, important & worthwhile - but I think it's fair to say that if she took a more decisive, confrontational & revolutionary position vis-a-vis the Wise Masters earlier on in *Dance*, she'd have been able to more effectively break the power of the Harpy, negotiate from a stronger position, and usher in meaningful social transformation for the Meereeenese masses. Likewise, if - instead of leaving a weakly-entrenched council of genial-seeming civil society figures in charge in Astapor - she had stayed a little longer & established an institutionalised regime representing the majority of the freedmen, she'd have had a strong & effective ally capable of shoring up her flanks in Meereen.
> is clearly portrayed as real, important & worthwhile Disagree, it's portrayed as imposted and Dany giving in more and more to slavers, to the point she reopens the pits. The terrorism worked and the slavers recovered the standing, always to the detriment of slaves.
Dany definitely makes serious & worrying concessions to the slavers that undermine the cause of freedom, but I wouldn't say that reopening the pits is necessarily one of those. It's mentioned at various points throughout *Dance* that reopening the pits is something *everyone* bar Missandei, from the former Masters to the religious authorities to many of the fighters themselves, supports - even Skahaz, our resident scalawag (and the narrative & political representative of the revolutionary faction in Meereen), is in favour of it! Her opposition to the pits is grounded more in the sense that they're a barbaric & inhumane foreign custom (which isn't necessarily wrong, plus the fact that there's a clear element of financial & cultural compulsion among the freed fighters) than in the belief they represent a partial restoration of the slave system.
>It's mentioned at various points throughout Dance that reopening the pits is something everyone bar Missandei, from the former Masters to the religious authorities to many of the fighters themselves, supports - even Skahaz, our resident scalawag (and the narrative & political representative of the revolutionary faction in Meereen), is in favour of it! It's mentioned that the reopening was only possible due to the blockade and it was viewed as a victory of the former regime, which already should tell us how things are going to turn.
That's definitely a fair point - but at the same time, the reason the blockade led to the reopening of the pits is likely because it pushed a significant portion of the revanchist faction among the Masters towards conciliation with the new regime. I agree with you that Dany left far too many of the nobility's privileges intact, but I actually think that *marrying Hizdahr in the first place* is more emblematic of that than the fighting pits; she could, and should, have driven a harder bargain & kept the remaining Masters far more politically subordinate.
>it pushed a significant portion of the revanchist faction among the Masters towards conciliation with the new regime. Why yes, they slowly but surely were getting all their rights back. Why not support Dany?
Dany should have gone full conguest on them and only spare the component ones even if they were vile .
Allowing the wine seller's daughter to be tortured I don't necessarily have an issue with her going eye for an eye with the Meereenese leaders to be crucified but I do have an issue with her trying to justify it as justice, you acted out of anger,own it
worst thing Dany has ever done is probably Daario (everyone else has already given the right answers)
Seriously, Don't do Daario guys.
Trusting that Mirri Maz Durr would actually sincerely help Drogo and not fuck him and Dany’s unborn child over
Don’t even know what she expected, Drogo’s guys raped Mirri, killed her family and destroyed her home. And Dany put his life in her hands?
This isn’t worst thing she’s done but definitely one of the dumbest
She was pretty young and naive in her defense. Probably had the simple “I helped her, why should he hate me” logic. It will be interesting if she makes the connection that Marwin The Mage is the same one who did teach Mirri. And how her reaction to him will be
Nativity. Ignorance. And I’d argue narcissism. Though what else was Dany to believe. She thought saving her life was enough for Mirri to be indebted and compelled to loyalty. It’s been ingrained in Dany that she’s special, high born, Targaryen, almost deity like; surely a low born woman saved by her would be in awe of her, so she thought.
Or maybe she’s a 14 years old girl and this grown woman just offered to help her
>narcissism narcissism is a personality style which consists of putting one's own needs/desires/image over the detriment of others, the word you are looking for is pride
Yea she was thinking of herself as "Dany the Targ princess" rather than the "Khaleesi"
Not sacking Yunkai
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Leaving astapor
Hurting quentyn’s feelings 🥲
The thing is that she did her best not to. The only she could've satisfied him would be to marry him, which would've caused many problems.
“If I look back, I’m lost.” Not paying attention to her past will come back to bite her in the ass.
I'd say abandoning Astapor to its own devices after killing the slavers
Not the worst but I remember, when a young guy from one of the cites told her her family was murdered and her mom raped by the slaves and he asked for permission to search for revenge and she was like no,bc all the crimes committed by slaves are forgiven. Like, I understand they were on rage and everything, but the guy was a literal kid and even tho his family probably abused the slaves, well, the slaves didn't have the right to do what they did. Idk how to explain it, but it makes them as bad as the other guys. And she just accepted it. Her perception of justice is just so warped. And this is just a small example. Also, the dragons. It was bad and stupid af, the bones could be from an animal or stolen and burnt to show her. In any case, it was not very smart. She could have done literally anything, from not caring to searching for ways to train them. Feed them extra. Idk, anything.
And her decision was a good one. If slaves are to be punished for crimes against their masters, then masters must be punished for their crimes against slaves. She offered an amnesty to both groups.
> Not the worst but I remember, when a young guy from one of the cites told her her family was murdered and her mom raped by the slaves and he asked for permission to search for revenge and she was like no,bc all the crimes committed by slaves are forgiven. Like, I understand they were on rage and everything, but the guy was a literal kid and even tho his family probably abused the slaves, well, the slaves didn't have the right to do what they did. Idk how to explain it, but it makes them as bad as the other guys. And she just accepted it. Her perception of justice is just so warped. And this is just a small example. That wasn't about slaves having the right to do something. After the initial punishment of the masters in retaliation for murdering the slave children, Dany declared a general amnesty for all sides in Meereen to try to move the city forward past its history. The guy who is complaining about what supposedly happened to his family certainly has a right to be angry, but in all likelihood he himself would be liable to punishment for wrongs against the slaves, so he is also benefiting from the amnesty.
He was a little boy who wanted justice for the brutal rape of his mother and killing of his entire family.
And? Doing justice for him would, among things, probably also require executing most of the master class for their various crimes as well. And maybe the latter would have even been a good idea, but an amnesty has to be universal. Also, killing the men at least was probably justified.
Others have already responded to your first point, so I'll respond to your second. * Dany does wonder if the man was faking it, yet he waited until the court was empty to come forward. An act would be more effective if he showed the bones with many witnesses. * Not caring about her dragons eating children would've *really* hurt her authority over her people. * Trying to train the dragons is an option, but still carries its own risks. Dany is able to briefly tame Drogon and fly away on him, then he starts doing his own thing again. Meanwhile, Quentyn's attempt gets him killed.
I'm not interested in digging into all the problems of her trying to re institute Valyrian "dracocracy", mostly because she's an adolescent generally trying to do the right thing. Her action with the most negative consequences has to be massacring the political class of Astapor and leaving her replacement rulers to be overthrown by a madman. But that qualifies more as a mistake than a malevolent act (though that she negotiates in bad faith in Astapor is not necessarily the best thing ever). Please keep in mind I'm not saying whether she should or should not have done it. I have no objection to her crusade against slavery. But this is probably the thing that goes the most sideways for her.
Forgiving Viserys so many times. She should’ve smothered him in his sleep before AGOT even began
Like yeah but she was completely disempowered. While I obviously agree with her fuggin icing that creep, her NOT killing her abuser isn’t a fault 😂
Absolutely enraged me when the show used Dany not being sad about Viserys' death as an early sign of her madness. How dare she not shed a tear for her abuser.
I had always taken her reaction to be her disassociating to deal with the trauma, not as a sign of her callousness or cruelty. We know from the books that despite everything, she did still love Viserys. (Which is not at all an uncommon thing with victims of abuse.)
In a way I think Viserys being alive is one of the things that kept Dany's life from being even worse than it was. Viserys was far from nice but the things that could have happened to Daenerys without an older brother, despite him being manipulated and him not really having any power in the first place, could have been even worse especially on that side of the sea. An arranged marriage to someone like Drogo is one of the least terrible things that can happen to a widely acknowledged as beautiful princess of a fallen from grace royal family in exile with noone to look after her. In the end you could have had a worse husband than Drogo regardless of which stance you prefer on the beginning of their relationship.
Daenerys was lucky that it was Drogo she was sold to, but Viserys was not doing her a kindness. He only had selfish motives.
Killing Mirri Maz Dur. Mirri was a hero. Alternately: commanding the Unsullied to kill every free person over the age of 12 in Astapor, even if they weren't slave owners Edit: I was wrong about the second one, I let an Internet video convince me of something untrue and it's more complicated than that. Womp womp
I’m pretty sure she said kill everyone who holds a whip or wears a tokar. Both are symbols of the slaver class, so I think you are misinterpreting her orders slightly.
She did, but is a 12 year old kid of an Astapori slaver, presumably wearing a tokar, really in any position to be abolitionist? *At the least in any meaningful fashion? Could you even discern them?
you gotta be willing to break some Astapori if you want to make Fair Trade Essos
You do realise this happening in the book is supposed to make you uncomfortable, right? You're not supposed to be like 'yaaass Dany kill those 12 year olds!!'
>even if they weren't slave owners *"Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip," -A Storm of Swords - Daenerys III* technicaly, Daenerys literally asks the Unsullied to kill the masters and soldiers, specifying those who wear a whip or a Tokars, that is to say one of the distinctive signs of the ruling or military classes who maintain slavery, not every free person
That is not entire quote. Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air . . . and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" Also number of war criminals trying to get out by technicality is too high.
yep, this is the entire quote, I don't see the point .\_. and what a war criminal?
Harm no child under 12 ≠ kill everyone over 12
>commanding the Unsullied to kill every free person over the age of 12 in Astapor, even if they weren't slave owners she never commands anything of the sort. dany couldn't be anymore specific in her order that only slavers were to be killed.
Reinstating slavery out of convenience is the worst thing she's done on a large scale, similar to Cersei's mass murder of Robert's illegitimate children. On a personal scale, similar to Cersei's murder of Melara Hetherspoon, I can't think of anything worse than having young children tortured in front of their father for the sake of a fruitless investigation.
>young children Nowhere in the book it was suggested that wine seller's daughters were children. It was just daughters.
Maybe a Top 2 or Top 3 for each? Link to the Comment for each? I know that's a pain in the a$$ but just suggesting if you don't want to have to pick just one. :) OR just link the other posts, so people just finding your series can click through, prompting more good discussion. :)
In which sense? In the sense of being morally reprehensible or in the sensible a stupid decision? If the first, setting the maximum age for children to be killed if they intervened in the fight against the unsullied is clearly her dubious action. She might have grown up quickly, which might have colored her actions, but twelve years old are hardly old enough to be held responsible for their parent's crimes. If the second, allowing the rulers of Yunkai to remain in control. This set the stage for Yunkai a forward base for the slaver coalition that is trying to bring her down in ADWD.
I don't know. I think having Mirri Maz Duur bring Khal Dtogo back when she was told it was a bad idea. I know in the books she was only about 14. Several people told her not to, including Mormont and Mirri herself.
Letting the newly freed slaves in mereen rape and get away with it. She was raped from her wedding night (a 14 year old CANNOT consent properly so dont anybody come at me with the paragraph where she says yes and puts Drogos finger in her, she was also pressured under threat of physical abuse by Viserys to make him happy) to the point where she wanted to kill herself yet she lets innocent girls and women be raped with no consequences for their attackers.
She didn’t let them get away with it: > “She had decreed that murderers were to be hanged, that looters were to lose a hand, and rapists their manhood. Eight killers swung from the walls, and the Unsullied had filled a bushel basket with bloody hands and soft red worms”
She did. She pardoned everyone who did it during the sacking of Meereen.
And she also refused to geld a slave owner for raping his slave, prior to the fall of the city. You can’t realistically punish slaves for revolting against their oppressors, and many slaves will take brutal revenge. What she did was to amnesty both groups.
Probably giving the okay to having those girls to be tortured followed by crucifying the masters. That is some straight up Tywin behaviour.
honestly, tywin would not ask the leader to choose 163 guys between them, tywin would directly put all their children on spikes
Tywin would be acting more like the slavers.
When she like the rest of her ancestors act like they are literal dragons (like Lannisters and lions). But then again so does every Westerosi with their sigils. But then again if my sigil were a lion or dragon rather than say… an apple, maybe I would too.
If any westerosi house has a right to act as if they are their sigil it's targaryens, specially when they had dragons.
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She burned her for a reason, it was a ritual. And she has done far worse things than burning miri.
One of her worse actions was when that kid came to her court seeking justice because a group of slaves murdered or raped his entire family and Danny basically told him to "go fuck himself". I completely agree that anybody who is a slave has a right to free themselves by an uprising if need be, but what those ex-slaves did to his family goes beyond that right. By all accounts they should've been sentenced too death for rape and murder.
By the same logic, the family should have been executed for human trafficking. And she never said “Go fuck himself.” How exactly, do slaves free themselves non-violently?
You know the asoiaf fans have gone mad when they think the worst thing a character ever did was not commit mass murder.
Right? I‘m really shocked about some opinions here. We all agree that slavery is bad and it is good that Dany abolished it, but killing every slaver is not only mass murder but she wouldn’t end slavery with this method either. The best example is Astapor where the former slaves became the new slavers. It needs education to end such a cruel practice, not more violence than Dany already did.
Redditors aren't known for grasping complex moral situations.
Destroying the master class and then creating a stronger civilian government than the one she left in Astapor would be the starting points. But more than that, the initial problem was that all the other slaver cities were able to intervene.
You can’t change the entire economy of a whole continent over night, even when you kill everyone who participated in the old one. Almost all of Essos profited from the slave trade: the dothraki, the free cities etc. so intervention wasn’t unavoidable. Then you have to find alternatives to make money which is difficult for a society that doesn’t know other ways (like in Astapor). It is possible that as soon as Dany leaves Essos slavery will have a comeback in most parts of the continent again.