[TV/Books] Game of Thrones ***SPOILER Discussion***

[RobertoCarlos]

What do you mean "No"? I am objectively correct. It's literally the exact same speech:





Again, the entire point of Daenerys story is how easily good looks and heroic music can trick the masses. She literally said that they would "tear down their stone houses" and no one cared just because Generic Heroic music was playing on the background.

What happened in S8 is that she, well, tore down their stone houses. Like she clearly said she would in S6.

It's the same misunderstanding when people say "remember when she killed all those masters" what you mean the ones that killed innocents to stop her travelling through the area, those masters?

She went from queen of the people to ruler of the people in break neck speed

[Varodoc]

It's the same misunderstanding when people say "remember when she killed all those masters" what you mean the ones that killed innocents to stop her travelling through the area, those masters?

She went from queen of the people to ruler of the people in break neck speed

Except that she wasn't talking about the Masters in that speech. She was talking about the people of Westeros. She was talking about killing the people of Westeros and destroying their houses.

That speech should have been a huge red flag; but again, pretty face and Heroic music. The masses are easily-manipulated.

[Jastall]

Uhm, all Daenerys did in the final episode was repeat the exact same speech she made in S6.

Did you seriously think that GRRM would vindicate and validate Daenerys' motives when the entire story is a critique of absolute monarchy?

Yeah, same speech except all the parts about sacking the entire planet for the sheer deluded lulz of it while Sinister Music plays after deciding to immolate the city's civilians before killing her actual enemy. And the framing that makes it about as subtle as a WWII-era caricature.

There's a vast, vast gulf between "vindicating" Dany, whatever that means, and literally turning her into Hitler. That you fail to see that due to your obvious hatred of both her and, puzzlingly, her fans is nothing I can change. If one was to take your arguments at face value, it would make total sense for Jon to become a spree child killer because he ordered a kid executed that one time. You just want to ignore context due to your obvious bias.

[RobertoCarlos]

Except that she wasn't talking about the Masters in that speech. She was talking about the people of Westeros. She was talking about killing the people of Westeros and destroying their houses.

That speech should have been a huge red flag; but again, pretty face and Heroic music. The masses are easily-manipulated.

It's impossible that giving a rousing speech to your blood thirsty fighters and finally taking command of the dothraki who don't follow female leadership and firing them up to travel the seas for the first time to battle a foreign enemy might be different to how she speaks to general masses or her private council chambers?

[Varodoc]

It's impossible that giving a rousing speech to your blood thirsty fighters and firing them up to travel the seas for the first time to battle a foreign enemy might be different to how she speaks to general masses or her private council chambers?

Is it possible that someone who is trying to incite a warband of bloodthirsty slavers to invade and pillage a whole continent might be the villain?

[RobertoCarlos]

Is it possible that someone who is trying to incite a warband of bloodthirsty slavers to invade and pillage a whole continent might be the villain?

Well as the viewer we know the current leadership is corrupt under the lannisters and while cersei drinks her wine and fucks her brother the general masses are slowly starving to death. Yeah this bright eye dragon lady might be an improvement

[Varodoc]

Well as the viewer we know the current leadership is corrupt under the lannisters and while cersei drinks her wine and fucks her brother the general masses are slowly starving to death. Yeah this bright eye dragon lady might be an improvement

Yeah, she would have improved their lives by bringing over a horde of savage raiders who actively pillage and enslave anything they come across, great idea!

Also, Dragons and Dragon Wars totally don't have a tendency to leave entire fields and livestock incinerated.

[Mehrunes]

Uhm, all Daenerys did in the final episode was repeat the exact same speech she made in S6.

Did you seriously think that GRRM would vindicate and validate Daenerys' motives when the entire story is a critique of absolute monarchy?

The difference is, the books actually spent ages slowly building this plot up, starting with Quaith's prophecy (something to add to @eschatological's list) about how three betrayals await Daenerys, which makes her slowly become more and more paranoid and question every event that doesn't go her way as to whether it was one of the betrayals or not.

[Adamas102]

She "rejected that legacy" and yet she started a war against Westeros and burned a father and a son to ashes?

Something doesn't add up.

The legacy that her father (and on a more personal level for her, her brother) left was very different than that of the earlier Targaryens. Aerys wasn't a conqueror, that work had already been done long before his time. The legacy she rejected was the one of cruelty. Aegon the Conqueror also burnt countless people to ash, but his legacy was not one of madness and cruelty. THAT'S the one she was looking to follow.

It really seems that you people can't get over this notion of "burning and/or killing people bad". Those are just everyday realities in the setting. All the "heroes" kill, execute, and murder. Jon and Ned execute children, Arya incites cannibalism, Sansa has a prisoner mauled to death. In fact I'd argue that at least half of those are more "evil" than anything Daenerys does up till the last couple of episodes. And none of these characters (well, except for maybe Arya) show an actual enjoyment in killing the way the Mad King did.

[Jastall]

The legacy that her father (and on a more personal level for her, her brother) left was very different than that of the earlier Targaryens. Aerys wasn't a conqueror, that work had already been done long before his time. The legacy she rejected was the one of cruelty. Aegon the Conqueror also burnt countless people to ash, but his legacy was not one of madness and cruelty. THAT'S the one she was looking to follow.

It really seems that you people can't get over this notion of "burning and/or killing people bad". Those are just everyday realities in the setting. All the "heroes" kill, execute, and murder. Jon and Ned execute children, Arya incites cannibalism, Sansa has a prisoner mauled to death. In fact I'd argue that at least half of those are more "evil" than anything Daenerys does up till the last couple of episodes. And none of these characters (well, except for maybe Arya) show an actual enjoyment in killing the way the Mad King did.

To me it's really puzzling that Dany gets to be pegged as the baddest girl because she executes prisoners in war in a gruesome way but we're obviously supposed to cheer at Arya, you know, murdering an entire extended family so she could feed them to their patriarch. I know the Freys are usually assholes but holy shit.

[RobertoCarlos]

Yeah, she would have improved their lives by bringing over a horde of savage raiders who actively pillage and enslave anything they come across, great idea!

Also, Dragons and Dragon Wars totally don't have a tendency to leave entire fields and livestock incinerated.

Well what you missed with that scene was she was gaining the dothrakis respect by being the best most fearsome rider by riding a dragon. You know how they basically worship horses and value being able to ride a horse and then this bitch isn't on a horse but a damn dragon.

I'll think they will listen to her like she stopped them from raping the witch and the ones that did disagree and rape would get dealt with like any large army of murderers

[Adamas102]

The prospect of Daenerys becoming like her father was force-fed to the viewers with repeated mentions of things like how gods throw a coin whenever a Targaryen is born.

But it really wasn't force-fed because she never did anything to suggest she'd be like her father until some bells triggered an out of character killing spree.

People really don't seem to understand Aerys' madness, the things he did, and the reasons he did them. Nothing Dany does over 8 seasons mirrors the sadistic joy the Mad King took in torturing and executing people. The whole "toss a coin" thing is also framed very poorly in the show since Varys is literally using it to try to put one Targaryen (Jon) over another (Dany) who hasn't exhibited any signs of madness. It wasn't that long before that Varys was also claiming Jon as the better candidate simply because he's a man. There's nothing crazy about Dany being sad when her dragons die or she loses close friends/advisors. So she doesn't eat for a bit and suddenly he's trying to assassinate her?

Daenerys snapping because of grief is a far more believable outcome (though in the show very poorly set up) than her suddenly developing literal mental illness in a similar way as her father.

[cubby]

To me it's really puzzling that Dany gets to be pegged as the baddest girl because she executes prisoners in war in a gruesome way but we're obviously supposed to cheer at Arya, you know, murdering an entire extended family so she could feed them to their patriarch. I know the Freys are usually assholes but holy shit.

I'm not sure that she was pegged as the baddest girl at the time she was doing them, i.e. the things that others did with different methods (Arya poisoning, etc). The issue is that she was doing things her father had done, in small but consistent ways, showing the path to her descent to madness slowly building.

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Daenerys snapping because of grief is a far more believable outcome (though in the show very poorly set up) than her suddenly developing literal mental illness in a similar way as her father.

The snapping because of grief was the final straw, so to speak, as each and every person (and "baby" - i.e. the dragons) were taken away from her.

[Adamas102]

The snapping because of grief was the final straw, so to speak, as each and every person (and "baby" - i.e. the dragons) were taken away from her.

Which of course was set up when she burned a whole village of innocents after her child and the love of her life were taken from her. And when she filled the vault with innocents after she was betrayed and her dragons were stolen. And how she lashed out indiscriminately, murdering people for no reason after each of her smaller dragons were killed. Oh, wait… That’s not how Daenerys was shown to deal with grief.

On top of that what you’re talking about would be more of a temporary insanity due to very real emotional distress (again, out of character since genocide has never been her response to losing loved ones), very different from the delusions and paranoid schizophrenia that her father suffered from.

[cubby]

Which of course was set up when she burned a whole village of innocents after her child and the love of her life were taken from her. And when she filled the vault with innocents after she was betrayed and her dragons were stolen. And how she lashed out indiscriminately, murdering people for no reason after each of her smaller dragons were killed. Oh, wait… That’s not how Daenerys was shown to deal with grief.

On top of that what you’re talking about would be more of a temporary insanity due to very real emotional distress (again, out of character since genocide has never been her response to losing loved ones), very different from the delusions and paranoid schizophrenia that her father suffered from.

It would only be temporary if it hadn't been built up over several seasons. Her threatening to burn entire cities if she wasn't helped in S2 all the way through the litany of examples myself and others have provided throughout this thread.

[Jastall]

I'm not sure that she was pegged as the baddest girl at the time she was doing them, i.e. the things that others did with different methods (Arya poisoning, etc). The issue is that she was doing things her father had done, in small but consistent ways, showing the path to her descent to madness slowly building.

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The snapping because of grief was the final straw, so to speak, as each and every person (and "baby" - i.e. the dragons) were taken away from her.

Her father was paranoid and saw enemies everywhere. She's never been like her father in this way since she's never been portrayed as especially paranoid. The series tries to portray her rampage as grief-induced which is quite different, but Dany's never dealt with grief by slaughtering random shmucks at a whim before dealing with those responsible for her loss. The showrunners themselves said that it was the bells that reminded her of when her family lost the city that triggered the rampage, which is completely nonsensical since she wasn't even born back then. The parallels with Aerys are surface-level at best in this context. Aerys's plan to burn the city was long nursed due to his extreme paranoia, not a spur of the moment bout of madness.

Hell I don't even like Dany but I still feel the need to remind that foreshadowing is no replacement for character development.

[cubby]

Her father was paranoid and saw enemies everywhere. She's never been like her father in this way since she's never been portrayed as especially paranoid. The series tries to portray her rampage as grief-induced which is quite different, but Dany's never dealt with grief by slaughtering random shmucks at a whim before dealing with those responsible for her loss. The showrunners themselves said that it was the bells that reminded her of when her family lost the city that triggered the rampage, which is completely nonsensical since she wasn't even born back then. The parallels with Aerys are surface-level at best in this context. Aerys's plan to burn the city was long nursed due to his extreme paranoia, not a spur of the moment bout of madness.

Hell I don't even like Dany but I still feel the need to remind that foreshadowing is no replacement for character development.

The way I saw it was all the foreshadowing (season after season) with little snippets demonstrated that her potential to snap was there, and the intensity of losing almost everyone she cared about in a short period of time (including the claim to the throne itself) was the breaking point.

It was certainly rushed though - and something like that can come off poorly if not done correctly.

[Jastall]

The way I saw it was all the foreshadowing (season after season) with little snippets demonstrated that her potential to snap was there, and the intensity of losing almost everyone she cared about in a short period of time (including the claim to the throne itself) was the breaking point.

It was certainly rushed though - and something like that can come off poorly if not done correctly.

She had the throne when she burned the city. Literally, she had just won the battle and all that remained was to fly up to the Red Keep, fry Cercei and win. Of course it came off poorly. Her actions make no logical sense and aren't in character, and it was all clearly rushed because the series needed to end in literally the next episode so the story needed a final villain to kill and she got turned into one. So they went with the "she mad lol" low-hanging fruit to justify it all and had her host her own Nuremberg rally just to throw all pretense at nuance and subtlety out of the window.

Again, clumsy foreshadowing isn't character development. You could similarly foreshadow Jon deciding to torture children for funsies and link it back to Olly's hanging, it would still make no sense at all for his character to do so.

[cubby]

She had the throne when she burned the city. Literally, she had just won the battle and all that remained was to fly up to the Red Keep, fry Cercei and win. Of course it came off poorly. Her actions make no logical sense and aren't in character, and it was all clearly rushed because the series needed to end in literally the next episode so the story needed a final villain to kill and she got turned into one. So they went with the "she mad lol" low-hanging fruit to justify it all and had her host her own Nuremberg rally just to throw all pretense at nuance and subtlety out of the window.

They do if you put them in context of her character throughout the series. There are dozens of little points that show her potential for madness, and then leading up to it - she was threatening to burn cities to the ground in S2. Definitely agree it was rushed. But even rushed, that was the ending GRRM intended.

Again, clumsy foreshadowing isn't character development. You could similarly foreshadow Jon deciding to torture children for funsies and link it back to Olly's hanging, it would still make no sense at all for his character to do so.

Wasn't clumsy at all - tons of examples in this thread. Don't be silly....

[Adamas102]

It would only be temporary if it hadn't been built up over several seasons. Her threatening to burn entire cities if she wasn't helped in S2 all the way through the litany of examples myself and others have provided throughout this thread.

It wasn't built up. The examples you cite as "signs of madness" aren't mad at all. She has dragons. They're tools, just like a sword or an army. She's a Targaryen. She grew up with the idea that ruling was her birthright. Threatening to use the weapon she has in order to achieve her goals is not crazy. Extreme? To us, perhaps, but within the setting it's not at all crazy. Again, you seem completely incapable of understanding the difference between what made the Mad King actually crazy and these things about Daenerys that you simply find extreme.