SPOILERS for Game of Thrones.
As I said in my recap of Game of Thrones Ep. 8.6 “The Bells,” I wasn’t “mad” that Daenerys burned the f–k out of Kings Landing. I’m mad that the “Mad Queen” narrative has been so poorly written and ham-fisted, but I feel like the general character arc for Dany is true and authentic. Would Dany have burned everything if Cersei hadn’t murdered Missandei? Would Dany have been so “kill them all” if she had gotten more credit for bringing her armies and her dragons to the North to fight for the living? Would Dany have stayed the Breaker of Chains if she hadn’t lost Drogo and Jorah and Viserion and Rhaegal, or if Jon had simply wanted to be with her, just as she is? I don’t know – but she was a sum of everything that happened to her, plus her Targaryen genes, plus her own faulty decision making.
What bugs me so much is the same thing that’s bugged me this whole season – the But Her Dragon Emails vibe, that Dany is being second-guessed and nitpicked to a ridiculous level because she’s a woman. People act as if there’s some magic code she just couldn’t access (because of her lady parts) which would have solved everything bloodlessly and everyone would have loved her. There was no code. There was no plot or strategy which didn’t involve killing many, many people, Cersei made sure of that when she surrounded herself with a human wall of civilians. Cersei was the one inviting Dany to kill everybody and Cersei expected Dany to be less bloodthirsty. What would have happened if Dany had accepted the surrender of the Lannister forces? She still would have needed to kill Cersei. And Cersei wasn’t going to leave the Red Keep until she saw the end, so Dany showed her the end.
Anyway, like they’ve been doing all season, HBO released a long behind-the-scenes video. David Benioff and Dan Weiss basically mansplain how crazy bitches are crazy and now I’m like… ugh. Weiss says: “I don’t think she decided ahead of time that she was going to do what she did. Then she sees the Red Keep, which is to her the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It’s in this moment on the walls of King’s Landing where she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to make this personal.” IT WAS ALWAYS PERSONAL, THE LANNISTERS AND BARATHEONS KILLED HER FAMILY. It didn’t suddenly become personal!!! Benioff says: “If circumstances had been different, I don’t think this side of Dany ever would have come out. If Cersei hadn’t betrayed her, if Cersei hadn’t executed Missandei, if Jon hadn’t told her the truth… if any of these things happened in a different way, then I don’t think we’d be seeing this side of Daenerys Targaryen.” Which is similar to what I said: Dany was pushed to her breaking point.
Here’s another HBO video where they talk more about how they shot the episode, which was very well-directed, honestly.
Anyway, I don’t have high hopes that the writers share my interpretation of Dany’s mindset at this point. They’ll point to her dragon emails and how “emotional” she was when Good Queen Cersei murdered her BFF and how Jon Snow should totally have the Iron Throne because he’s a dude. And here’s the preview for the last episode.
Photos courtesy of HBO.
O RLY? They believe so little in their writing they have to say something that anyone who’s been watching knows?
Despite the execution, that is & always will be lacking on this show- this is likely the direction this whole entire series has been headed.
There are no heros, saviors, good guys, or bad. That has been George R.R. Martin’s MO from the very beginning.
Fecking shite.
https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/lifestyle/viral-reddit-post-made-incredible-130700182.html
That’s what’s so frustrating — so it’s all been for nothing? Thanks for wasting eight years.
I was on board with Dany wanting to “brake the wheel.” While the other game-players did so with ambitions for power or wealth, Dany at least TRIED to do good by freeing slaves, wanting to change the power structure, and putting her own ambitions on hold to help the greater good. Then the writers just abruptly turned her into a genocidal tyrant. Because prior to this last episode, she hadn’t done anything as bad as Robert, or Joffrey, or Cersie, or Stanis, or the Boltons, or the Freys, or even the Starks. But now, she’s the biggest villain?
And anyway, I still think the biggest villain in all this is Tyrion. His bad decisions and loyalty to the Lanisters is how Dany ended up desperate and missing two of her three dragons. Even his idea of “starving” the people out of King’s Landing was a bad idea. Cersie would kill every last person in Kings Landing so that the food will hold out longer FOR HER. Some of Tyrion’s decisions have been so bad, there’s no way it was simply bad judgment. He should really be executed for treason (and yes, Sansa too) — but that will never happen. I think it’s clear how this show is going to end, and it’s too bad.
So, yeah, after 8 years, the kingdom will end with more of the same. Leadership passed down through inheritance rather than merit, houses fighting for more power, more of the same.
I don’t think it’s 8 years wasted or all for nothing, the show has provided amazing entertainment and thought provoking material. It’s been a wonderful escape from reality, which is exactly what I think it should be. I’ve felt every emotion possible from this show, and it’s still one of my all time favorites for many reasons. It’s not ending like most of us want it to, but we should’ve seen that coming as well. We rarely get what we want with GOT, otherwise Ned would still be alive, and Robb, and the list goes on and on and on:)
I was at an industry luncheon today and all anyone was talking about is how mad they are about this episode.
Good, I hope the producers do get pushback. Personally, if they had wanted Dany to go mad all along, then they should not have presented her as a good guy for so long. I mean, she did bad things all along, but was still presented as a hero, one of the good guys.
It’s Dany against the North now?? The last standing “kingdom.” Aawww sh*t.
Yeah, I think Jon will have to off her.
I hope she sends Drogon to eat Sansa.
And Arya and robin (wherever he is)
Yep, Jon will definitely kill Dany now. Then Jon will walk away because he’s been constantly telling everyone he doesn’t want the throne. So Jon will turn the throne over to Sansa, who is dumb and selfish, and unfit to rule — but again, pretty much ALL Northerners (other than the Mormonts, who are all dead) are dumb and selfish, so it’s pretty slim pickings.
The only thing I can’t figure out is what will happen to Drogon? The Northerners don’t have the capability or brains to figure out how to kill a dragon. The only thing I can think of is Jon will have to ride Drogon full-speed into a cliff to kill them both, but I don’t see that happening. I think Drogon will “peace out” after getting his revenge for his brother’s death, and take off to a far-away land.
No.
No, no, no.
No.
Jon Snow will die, just like every person that has been revived by the “lord of the light.”
Arya will kill Daenerys as per the “pale mare” prophecy.
For people that love to read between the lines, condemn that which doesn’t agree with them, and everything in between – there sure seems to be a lot of selective memories up in here.
I think she’ll off Tyrion and Jon won’t be able to face the knowledge that she will likely kill Sansa. He’ll kill her then return to the Wall
Tyrion and Sansa will be on the iron throne, after Arya kills Dany, and Jon dies in the conflict (he’s loyal to a fault- which is why he died the first time, as he couldn’t put down any of the Nights Watch for their insubordination).
Sansa and Tyrion are still married, technically (even though it wasn’t consummated) and somehow everyone’s forgotten that Rhaegar Targaryen likely is Tyrion’s father as well (he had numerous affairs with many prominent women- and it’s also one of the reasons why Tywin hated him so much) which is why the Dragons were okay with him last season…
Then again collective amnesia has been going around like the measles lately, so there’s that.
I assume she is going to kill or try to kill Jon Snow, it seems like the most logical thing to do. He’s a warrior that she needed, but the war is over and she won. I’m excited to see the series finale, but I’ve been really disappointed by this season.
She’s going to kill them all. At least try to.
So, basically, she’s decided she doesn’t care about the 7 kingdoms? Cause at this rate, she won’t have anyone to rule over.
She most likely will. You can’t incinerate almost a million innocent people in a couple of hours, one fine afternoon and not finish the job.
I think she’ll go full rogue. And that’s why Jon will have to stab her in the gut.
I still think she won’t go for Jon but def Sansa. Maybe even Bran, Arya and Sam, who know the truth. And that will make Jon kill her because of his family.
She is definitely going for Sansa.
She specifically mentioned it to Jon the night before the battle, and said it was a ‘victory’ for her.
Logically she also should go after Tyrion, who not only passed on the info but also defied her yet again by freeing Jaime.
I think she’s definitely going for Sansa. The thing is, Sansa isn’t stupid and isn’t going to underestimate Dany the way that Cersei did so I expect that toppling the Lady of Winterfell is going to take a bit more strategy than just “light her up.”
She’s been threatening Sansa since the beginning and in front of Jon.
To be fair, Sansa has been antagonizing her at every turn. I thought Dany’s responses were proportional to the level of disrespect Sansa was displaying.
Well, she was lighting up King’s Landing knowing full well that John and her army were in the city. She was not exactly being careful to avoid her own soldiers (or John). She was lighting that place up completely indiscriminately. So at this point, I don’t think she is so concerned with John being alive at this point. He’s simply a complication now. A threat. She may not kill John on purpose…but she might. At any rate, she won’t care when or how he dies.
And honestly, I think we’ve been seeing the Mad Queen bubble up to the surface over and over throughout the seasons. They rushed it, yes, and the writing has not been good, but I don’t see how any of this is a surprise to anyone,
Ugh. Just ugh. This show is trash and their comments only confirm what we have always known about Benioff and Weiss – they are misogynists who can’t write female characters.
Yeah, a lot of the female characters this season have been so awful. The point of this season seems to be that women in power are either manipulative or crazy or both.
I’m not seeing how this is a gender issue. D and D have also ruined the character of the men on the show. Jon has become a dumb jock who only does what women tell him to do. Tyrion, Littlefinger, and varsys have gone from geniuses to elementary school drop-outs. Jaime’s entire character arc is completely ruined, he never killed the Mad King to save the innocent civilians and has no desire to save the world from another tyrant- his sister.
There is nowhere on the Internet where bro’s are like “hell ya, I’m so glad Jon the idiot Beta male is winning” or “yippee, they made Tyrion dumb and Jaime irredeemable”. Both men and women are mad at D and D for ruining these characters. You will find the same amount of hardcore male GOT fans who hate the butchering of Danerys, Arya, and Cersei. These guys have been fans of the books for decades and hate that ALL the characters have been ruined.
The scripts for this season should have been written by GoT theorists on Reddit. They have a much better command of the characters and are better writers.
I don’t agree with a misogynistic point of view. They’ve written Dany with empathy issues for a long time, ruthless when she feels betrayed, even Cersei and papa Lannister say the good in letting Ned live, it was crazy Joffrey who killed him.
Dany had good advisors who she trusted, Barristan Selmy, Tyrion, Varys, Jorah , Missandei and Greyworm.
She failed to see that Tyrion would have issues against his family in particular, not getting to the throne, but letting them live. Varys told er upfront that going against the little folk would be the breaker point for him. The death of Missandei was not a leveling point for Greyworm and Dany alike.
Losing Selmy and Jorah was the worst, since she actually listened to them. even Olenna could’ve helped her a little.
She was left to her own devices and she went full vengeance.
My issue is that she should’ve begin with the Red Keep, it would have been more impactful, imo, if she had went from finishing off the fortress and started attacking the townspeople.
She felt she wouldn’t be loved, but she did not listen to Sansa in her pleas for letting people rest, she did not show mercy in Westeros, and the conditions were not the same as in Essos, so she did not get the “love” that she wanted/craved.
She should have compromised with Jon, what did he want for his silence? What would’ve he want from her? He wanted people to live, but he kept silent for fear or from respect, “love”, gratitude from helping them with the WW, whatever. He became her puppet.
While the writing is poor, I don’t really see it as a misogyny issue, if anything, the “lesson” here is that power will destroy you no matter who you are. Yes, these past 3 seasons, it’s been mostly women who have been shown to be power-hungry (Cersei, the Snakes, the Tyrrels, Dany, Greyjoy…) but that’s in part because all the dudes that were also seeking power have died in horrible ways that would have avoidable if they only accepted to share and compromise a bit. I’m ok with having women depicted the same way, though yes, it’d be great if the writing was better
Exactly. In this day and age, you can’t have two bad female characters with a good man riding in to save the day. So, if they’re smart, D&D will have a competent female on the throne at the end. That’ why I think that ultimately, it will be Tyrion and Sansa on the throne. Sansa’s proven herself to be a competent ruler who takes care of her people instead of ruling by fear.
Yep, and I’ll bet you anything that Sansa will wind up queen of the north. Because a woman who accepts male abuse as “character development” is the only one who deserves to live and succeed, yeah? Like, it’s actually nauseating that people defend this shit.
I think what Sansa said was more along the lines of “I cant undo what Ramsey did to me so the only thing I can do now is move forward”. I think all the people reading Sansa’s line as ” rape was good, it made me stronger” are projectingA LOT and shouldnt go around acting like their interpretation of things is the only valid one.
Cindy, exactly. She didn’t only go through rape. She was separated from her family, saw her father killed and had to see his head on a spike, she was emotionally abused by Joffrey and Cercei, she was betrayed repeatedly by Littlefinger and, yes, she was raped by Ramsay. She went through a lot.
Cindy, I agree with you completely here.
Cindy I agree, The Hound specifically says, “Littlefinger, Ramsey, none of it would’ve happened”. I took it as she felt it ALL made her stronger and maybe she would still be that little bird without it, not just the rape specifically. It came off as strange because their conversation started when other women were propositioning the Hound and Tormund, so sex was already kind of in the conversation.
They can’t even write male characters
This! God help them if the eff up Star Wars like they have GOT.
Star Wars fans are relentless
OKSA I was thinking the same thing… I am so surprised by people popping up with shock that this show is badly written. A few seasons back I could barely get through the episodes with all the bla bla bla and nothing happening, and then some character acting totally out of character and then back to bla bla bla. I hung in there because my husband liked the show. And because I loved everything with Slimy Little Little Finger lol.
This season, at least it’s action packed! But in my own personal opinion, this is less about women and more about bad character writing which has always been present.
However I will always remain disappointed in the “it made Sansa stronger” rape narrative. Incredibly regrettable and just wrong.
@snappyfish. WHAT?!?! These morons are writing for Star Wars? FFS it’s bad enough JJ Abrams butchered the new movies they have to ruin it even more with these 2 lazy hacks. Kathy Kennedy is doing a worse job than Lucas ever did.
Yep. They are equal opportunity hacks.
They can’t even remember or accurately parse what they wrote in some of the “inside the episode” talking heads at the end. It’s been noticeable this season particularly.
Every character has gotten worse the moment they no longer had the books to go off of.
There is a significant difference in between not able to create a female character and being a misogynists. Lets be please be clear about that.
Also I might be in the minority, but I do think they can create female characters. They did kinda destroy Brian with that sobbing tho.
I’ve stopped watching the Game Revealed features because I’m tired of being told things by D&D, but not shown them. Even the relationship between Dany and Missandei was tell, but not really shown. They barely had any scenes alone together, and when they did, they talked about boys.
What’s so frustrating to me is that there is a lot of great things this season. I loved much of the last episode, but the terrible pacing and unstable plot is overshadowing everything. In the end, D&D sat down, wrote bullet points for the final season and just turned those bullet points into episodes. But they never bothered to put in the work to build tension or character development. And that’s what’s so disappointing.
This is so lazy though. D&D are the ones who wrote that breaking point for her and a large part of the viewers don’t buy it. I agree that this is partly due to the rose colored glasses people were wearing when it came to her. Conquering a whole country was always going to involve killing innocent people too – I don’t know why the people cheering her on are suddenly shocked that she would actually use fire and blood to get that throne…
I think D&D are lying or willfully misleading when they say this wasn’t always where her story was going. In the books this trajectory is clear and on the show she has been rigidly asking people to bend the knee for seasons now and spent all of this season talking about how the throne belongs to her. Suddenly nothing else mattered.
I do agree that they have been incredibly bad at leading up to it on the show in general though. I don’t think it’s mysoginist though – George never set out to write the next great feminist classic. He was always writing a Fantasy story in the tradition of Tolkien. He just wanted to subvert some of the tropes but it was always going to be about larger themes and never about who sits on the throne in the end.
I don’t think there is even going to be a throne when all is said and done. And that is the point.
It’s not rose colored glasses. Dany had won, she easily destroyed the soldiers, ships, scorpions, etc. But she decided to murder innocent people that were running and trying to hide and had already surrendered….that’s not conquering that’s just flat out murdering. It was shocking.
Her character literally locked up her baby dragons after they killed one innocent child earlier in the series and postponed her plans to take King’s Landing in order to help the North against the invading king. There’s a reason why tons of critics and viewers are looking at this episode as a giant “WHAT THE ABSOLUTE HELL,” and it has nothing to do with our inability to read context clues. It’s just flat out poorly written.
I did mention that it was poorly written. And all the people suddenly clutching their pearls also refused to think Dany’s plans through.
She came to Westeros with an army. Armies are for warfare. With the kind of warfare happening in this story it is always going to be the innocent civilians suffering.
You are being just as naive as Dany if you think she could just show up and have the Kingdom fall in her lap. Hence the burning people not willing to bend the knee… And please. Why in the hell should she get a cookie for helping to defeat the Knight King. If the army of thead wins there’s no kingdom to rule at all. As the future queen it was her DUTY to defend the realm and not ask for anything in return.
And as for King’s Landing. There was zero reason to even attempt to take the city at all. She didn’t need to keep insisting to take that throne. Of course the clues are not THAT obvious but they are there…
Nobody is “clutching their pearls” over Dany’s character. Don’t be condescending. We read the stories. We watched the show. The narrative framing of Dany was never as villain. That doesn’t make any sense based on how she was received within the text in her appeal to former slaves, abused women, and conquered peoples. That doesn’t make sense given her stated goals, the fact that she started from absolutely nothing, a victim of sexual violence and persecution. It doesn’t make sense based on her own previous behavior. She has her missteps and flaws, but her actions were not cast within a light this problematic until now. Everybody she killed until now was either an enemy actively fighting against her or outright evil, a slaver, rapist, etc. Nobody thinks war is a merry go round of positive delights, but there is a world of difference between a character like Cersei whose stated purpose has always been power, who blew up an entire group of negotiating parties, versus Daenerys, whose goal was to restore her family’s power and bring a united peace to the realm. Nothing in her behavior is madness. It’s calculated, and it is done with the intent of a goal.
I’m criticizing it because it’s not only bad writing, it’s sexist writing. Somehow two women vying for a throne is treated as a bigger danger to the world than a zombie Night King who wants to wipe out humanity. Plenty of the men in the show do utterly vile behavior and aren’t framed as subject to their emotional downfall. Jon Snow hanged a ten year old child and wasn’t treated as though he had the potential to go mad. Tyrion literally strangled to death a woman he loved for her betrayal and murdered his own father, and we still treat him as a sympathetic character within the story. Daenerys survives slavery, survives violence and rape, survives losing her entire family, survives watching everything she’s fought for taken away, survives watching the people she loves callously executed in front of her…and now she’s a villain, brought down by her own emotions. And that’s so insidiously vile to me, the idea that the pain and rage and violence of victims lashing out against a violent and brutal world can somehow be conflated with the villainy of the powerful, the perpetrators of the violence that created that conflict in the first place. They wrote that with no sense of irony, no insight into how that comes across to viewers. It’s basically the textbook definition of white men writing without a single different voice in the room.
@ BaronSamedi
The key issue here is that they take her from ruthless conquerer to monstrous serial killer in one fell swoop.
As far as I know, we’ve never seen her *knowingly* execute or even hurt an innocent person. Yes, we’ve seen her use violence against soldiers, slavers, rebels, enemy combatants, etc, but never against innocent bystanders – not knowingly. She was always pretty ruthless, but never outrightly cruel.
And then juxtapose that with the fact that she liberated The Unsullied and freed thousands of slaves in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen.
And then she goes from that to destroying almost a million innocent people (with helpless women and children) in one fell swoop. For absolutely no reason whatsoever.
It’s just not a credible leap.
@Veronica, YES!!! you have said everything perfectly. The Danny haters just love that she is this cartoon villain they always thought her to be but that is not how she has been portrayed until two episodes ago. It is lazy and insulting.
I agree, Baron. She told that she’d win with fire and blood. She’s had empathy issues for a while, especially when feeling betrayed, her not even considering or proposing Jon to reign together. More development was necessary in that relationship,It went too fast from attraction to fear.
Deep inside she wanted love, but showed no mercy towards enemies, not taking prisoners, she was better at instilling fear. I think they tried to portray that, she thought she was never going be loved, that that place, King’s landing was where her tragedy started and decided to off them all. How ironic. She is now Queen of the ashes, Cersei would’ve be proud.
For me, the people in Kings Landing would have died no matter what. Tyrion’s plan of “starving them out” would have resulted in Cersie killing everyone to keep the food for herself as long as she could, or just using wildfire to kill everyone, leaving Dany with nothing to rule over. So those poor saps were dead no matter what, and that’s because they had Cersie as a queen, and Cersie is selfish and insane.
What bothered me is that the show didn’t adequately set up Dany to WANT to kill every civilian in Kings Landing. That came out of nowhere for me. It would have been more in-character for Dany to directly attack the red keep to kill Cersie and show indifference to how many civilians died, rather than TARGETING the civilians. But, there’s only one episode left and the writers had to “tie off” Dany’s story line asap.
@Mrs.Krabapple. I completely agree with you. Dany directly burning the weak and innocent was some weird ass lazy writing. But I did see her obliterating Cercei and her armies, even if they had surrendered.
I love it how they say: “I think that…” dude, you bettah know ’cause you wrote it. We have a saying in my country – just thinking is knowing s**t. (pardon my French) but it’s true – these dudes are all Jon Snow. oh well, I said I’m over it but what you gonna do – let’s watch this out.
We’ve known for seasons that D&D are absolute morons. They didn’t know how to properly execute the story they’ve been foreshadowing for seasons, and refused the extra time or resources offered to them by HBO to make this happen. They had TWO YEARS to give us something decent and this is the best they could come up with. I’d weep for Star Wars if I didn’t think it was garbage anyway.
In the show’s context, by her murdering everyone she played right into Cersei’s hand. Now the Dragon Queen image to the people of King’s Landing is one of a bloodthirsty murderer.
Wow, i can’t imagine how that’s going to go./s
Cersei, even in death, essentially won the war against Dany. She’ll never rule.
It’s Game of Thrones for God’s sake. I don’t see anything wrong with the Mad Queen narrative. It has nothing to do with Dany being a female, we knew about it since season 4 or even before if you are picky with the details. On the hand the execution of this narrative is bs. That is my only complaint
But that’s exactly what the article and everyone is saying.
I always thought that’s how it would go for Dany, there were lots of signs. The books point towards this too, too bad the last two books aren’t out. Dying to know if it’s the same as the show
GRRM did an interview with Rolling Stone in April and he said he thinks they’ll be doing more or less what he told them the end was, but with some things changed and a lot added.
I agree that there have been a lot of signs that this was where it was going, I’m not surprised by that at all. I think they were slowly ramping it up and then all of a sudden she’s BOOM! Mad Queen. they didn’t do enough to show the transition IMO.
He said the ending for the main characters will be the same, but not necessarily for secondary characters.
Interesting considering Sansa’s story arc in the show was stolen from another character (in the books her friend Jeyne Pool is passed off as Arya and married to Ramsay. Sansa is in the Vale and is pretending to be Littlefinger’s bastard daughter. The plan is to get rid of Lisa Arryn’s son and then Sansa would re-appear as both heir to the Vale and the North).
I’m pretty sure Martin always wanted to do another Targaryen civil war and Dany was going from plucky underdog to antagonist.
It’s a shame they rushed everything. They could easily have done two more seasons and developed the characters realistically.
@DaggerIsle and don’t forget Dondarrion dying and Lady Stoneheart killing the Freys. I wonder if she is the one who’ll take down the Night King?
@Sof: there’s no Night King in the books, the Others don’t have a leader…
There’s also a random extra Targ showing up out of nowhere, the Dornish prince that shows up as a POV character only to burn up cuz he thinks he can get close to a dragon and so many other inconsistencies in the books. I think we tend to forget that GRRM also became bored and lazy while writing the books because the last 2 ones had holes in their plots too
And the Dornish Princess Ariana, who manages to get poor Myrcella’s ear and part of her face cut off. And Tyrion never actually meets Danerys but instead goes for a boat ride with the other Aegon Targaryen and Gryff, who is the one who gets greyscale rescuing Tyrion, not Jorah. And Penny the dwarf and her dog and pig. And whatever is going on with Sam and mysterious murders around the Citadel , and Davos being sent off to an island somewhere, and Mance Raydar still being alive but pretending to be a minstrel at Winterfell.
Wasn’t Sansa betrothed to Robin in the books? They mentioned that in the show too, yes?
And Gilly switching babies so that Mance’s son wouldn’t be burnt by Melisandre (that was actually a good idea and makes Gilly a much more complex character) But yeah, the last 2 books are full of WTF did I just read moments that leaves you wondering how everything can ever be pieced together (which I suspect GRRM also knows and it’s why he stopped)
@Maf, yes, Littlefinger arranges that Sansa and Robyn are betrothed. We last see them leaving the Eerie to winter down in the Vale because supplies can’t make it up to the castle when the snow comes.
@arpeggi, Jon switches the babies so Melisandre won’t kill Mance’s baby in her burn all the Kings thing. Sam doesn’t understand why Gilly is crying non-stop on the boat until Aemon tells him that Jon switched the babies. He sent Aemon away for the same reason, so Melisandre won’t burn him to death, but Aemon dies on the boat.
I didn’t think the Dorne prince was an inconsistency.
Doran Martell pretended to be buddies with the Lannisters but behind the scenes was preparing his long-thought-dead son to marry Daenerys and help re-gain the throne.
Of course Daenerys takes one look, decides secret prince is not good enough for her, prompting him to try his luck with a dragon and die.
Which in the next books will probably cause a lot of shit. Can’t imagine Doran will be happy about it.
And Sansa is meant to be getting engaged to Harry the Heir, a nobleman who is next in line for the Vale once Littlefinger gets rid of little Robert Arryn (who is very sickly in the books and not expected to live a long life).
I don’t think people are disagreeing that her arc went this way it’s just the execution of it. Its been rushed and was frankly lazy. It’s been obvs for a while that D and D are over the show but if that’s the case they should have moved aside and let others take over but their egos got in the way of telling the story properly.
These men can’t write women.
Also, if they were better writers, they wouldn’t have to do these Behind the Scenes videos after each episode to “explain” what we just watched, because the show should be able to do accomplish all that. Their writing has been sloppy and amateur this season, and it’s such a disappointment. They’re clearly only surrounded by sycophants.
They can’t write men either, look at what they did to Tyrion, Varys, Jamie and Littlefinger.
Dany’s attack on King’s Landing was the equivalent of the U. S. dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, but I don’t hear Americans referring to Truman as “The Mad President”.
Uhh, you’re right, but that’s an actual thing that happened, not a fictional event with mountains of foreshadowing played out on a television over the course of years.
And surely you’re not ignoring the fact that it’s one of the defining moments in US, if not world history, and how everyone is taught how terrible and awful the bombing was, and how we always need to actively work to avoid it ever happening again. It’s actually kind of gross to compare a historical event on that scale to a fictional tv show imo.
And surely you’re not ignoring the scores of historical “mad” figures across history, including but not limited to King Henry the 8th, Genghis Khan, the Kim Jongs, Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, and our very own Mango Mussolini? Yikes.
Her father was the Mad King…that’s why people are calling her the Mad Queen. It’s not that deep.
Their such a pair of hacks as writers – and don’t think anybody else is responsible for this. D&D are the ones who wrote all of the episodes after 3. Their excuse that this is foreshadowed – and which an ungodly amount of people are somehow buying is ridiculous – because foreshadowing and actual story development are not the same damn thing. Lots of things were foreshadowed for Dany: getting the Iron Throne with Jon (fire and ice), being a foil to Cersei, the dragons becoming risks, her fertility still being intact. All of those had more story basis than her madness, since not a single thing she’s done until this point presents madness. They chose none of that, and instead they went for some “when a Targ is born, a coin is flipped,” which is beyond maddeningly stupid as a plot development. It means that everything you’ve built up until that point means nothing, that you’re literally hinging your story on a 50/50 chance. Utterly inane, and misogynistic to a mindblowing degree considering JON IS A TARGAERYN TOO AND SOMEHOW NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO HIM.
*deep breaths* All I’m saying is that as somebody who writes both professionally and as a hobby, I’m actually embarrassed that these two are paid showrunners. Furious, too, because their absolutely disdain for women and minorities gets projected into millions of people’s livings rooms every day. The fact that so many fans want to justify their blatant sexism, ableism (crazy people are so violent hurr hurr), racism is really the biggest disappointment of them all.
Well it’s also the same reason they chose Arya to kill the NK despite him never being on her kill list nor having any background history with him. The prophecies require too much work, creativity and character development. Instead of writing a masterclass situation like the Red Wedding, they have taken the lazy way out using shock and “subverting expectations”.
I can see them going “Well you know Melisandre said Arya will kill people with brown, blue and greens eyes and she’s a trained Assassin, who cares if every human has either brown, blue or green eyes. Let’s put those two together and check off the NK plot from the list of to do’s?”
Same with the Danerys prophecies that she will be the Queen of ashes and have no children. Let’s fast forward all the character development and use the coin-flip phrase for Targaryens to explain why she is now the Mad women.
GRRM has an interview where he says he is against not following a prophecy you set up simply because your audience has figured it out and you want to surprise them (shock and awe)!
Jon and Dany’s upbringing were very different.
He had a stable, common sense father-figure and lots of brothers and sister, even if he was displaced, he led a privileged, safe life because of Ned sacrificing his honor. Instead, Dany was a nomad, a beggar, suffering her unhinged brother, listening to his rants and delusions, being used as a paw and a coin, yearning for a home she lost a long time ago, while at the same time thinking she deserves and has a destiny of ruling long lost kingdom and will get it with fire and blood. When she learns there is another deserving heir, she tries to shut him up instead of thinking of cogoverning, if she is not going to be loved, then there is an opportunity, open up, but she is too fixed-upon being her own destiny. Let’s see how GRRM works with this.
But the thing is – why wouldn’t she be angry? She’s the one who has done all of the work to get the story to that point – why wouldn’t she be terrified of losing it all simply because somebody happened to have the right gender coming into it? All of the women have been the drivers of the story, and it’s the men who get to reap the benefits of it? Are the writers not even giving one thought of how that looks?
Even the claim that doesn’t want to share power doesn’t make sense based on their own story. We watch her listen to her counselors all the time in previous seasons. She listens to Jon’s request to move her armies to the north to the fight the Night King. We see Dany give him one of the dragons to fight in battle. She reaches out to him privately and appeals to him personally before she ever makes a violent move. None of those behaviors suggest somebody who is power drunk to the point of being utterly unreasonable. It’s like the writers aren’t even paying attention to their own story. It’s just seven seasons right down the drain. I don’t care if Dany had to give up the throne at the end – on a narrative level that makes perfect sense! – but for her to go mad and descend into insane villainy within the span of a few episode is just nonsense. It’s poor writing, and it’s ridiculously sexist writing when you have a male Targaryaen character right there who suffers none of the same concerns from the rest of the cast.
Angry at the wrong people. That appeal was more of an order, she could’ve managed thing better with Jon, he saw that her primary focus was the throne, the throne, and the throne. Like someone upthread said, if she’s going to reign, she has to protect. Cersei is the one who betrayed the treaty by not sending the troops north. They told her that the dead were a big threat, and they were ultimately lucky to survive. She could’ve rested her troops, but choose not to. The script blames her at rushing things. Still no misoginy. She could’ve won kings landing on her own, she demos trated it. No need to kill all the people, tho. She said she was going to get rid of tyrants, well…
I know this article is about sexism, but I wanted to thank you for pointing out the racism too. Who here thinks there will be any people of color left standing when the finale ends? Yeah, we all know that white people will rule all the lands, being advised by other white people, and *maybe* we’ll get a glimpse of some POC scrubbing toilets or do back-breaking stone work to rebuild the city walls.
As for the sexism, I also dislike the way the show “explains” Dany’s madness as Jon and the people not loving her. Because, as Ray Parker Jr. said, a woman needs love – and without that, she goes crazy? Or maybe it was just her time of the month, lol! Women, amiright?
yeah, well, Westerns is chock full of whites people, the only darker people come from Dorne, a few here and there and the ones Dany brought with her from Essos as warriors, soldiers and I imagine some of the Dothraki women. Of course a lot of the POC will die in these wars, and most of them did not even have a name in the show. I imagine that in the books is more or less the same. It seems that Braavosi are the same ethnicity as the Westerosi, with other ethnicities being disseminated further inland. Only the Dany storyline, Tyrion’s currently adventures and maybe Arya’s to an extent are including different ethnicities in their stories.
Remember this fantasy story was about the War of the Roses, and it is centered in a medieval European-like setting. Male reigned, women bore children, there were lords and peasants and magic. Still, wonderful male and female characters could exist and they had been brought to life.
@Veronica S.
A-FREAKING-MEN. Thank you.
Great article, thank you for this! Misogyny all the way!
Sansa has already said that she wants the North to be independent from whatever happens after Jon and Dany do their thang at King’s Landing. Even though there are at least 3 1/2 Starks left to defend the North, what have they got against Dany, her dragon, and the Dothraki?
I think it’s pretty clear that Jon will kill Dany during the aftermath at King’s Landing. The North is out of the picture for now, until Jon tuns away from the throne in disgust, and gives it to dumb, selfish Sansa. Then the game goes on like it always has, the last eight years having been for nothing.
She is the latest claimant from a colonizer family who were only in power because they showed up in Westeros with WMDs killed a bunch of people in the South and threatened to do the same to them
The backlash for this episode (49%n on RT LOL) and what they did to Dany is so huge.
It didn’t even look like killing the people were necessary. She should’ve been going after Cersei in the tower. Instead, she gave her plenty of time to escape. Thankfully, she didn’t but it still all seems dumb and pointless.
She went after the area of the city that surrounded the Red Keep and then the Red Keep itself. And to me it’s obvious why. She wanted to make sure Cersei couldn’t escape – I think she knew deep down after being duped so many times that even though the bells were ringing that Cersei had an escape plan. And she wasn’t wrong, thanks to Tyrion. If Dany hadn’t done what she did, Cersei and Jaime definitely would have escaped.
My interpretation was that she did it out of anger. She realized how easy it was and then thought about everything she lost not following her instincts and listening to Tyrion and Varys and she was pissed off.
Here’s how the show could have played it. She should have taken Kings Landing end of season six or early season seven. Then we see how she struggles to rule. The Starks when the Battle of the Bastards and the North demands independence. How does she handle that? What does she do? You could still have the subplot with her helping the North and all that jazz and Jon’s real parentage coming out. Then you have Varys starting to plot against her – there are so many better ways this could have played out. But D&D went for spectacle over consistent characterization and plotting and also they couldn’t get over their obsession with Cersei, The Lannister’s, and Sansa – non of whom, outside of Tyrion are part of GRRM’s big five characters (Jon, Bran, Tyrion, Dany, and Arya).
She started with the entrance, she got closer eventually, but started burning people ASAP, going back and forth. It took her a while to get to the red keep, which would’ve the most impactful thing to do.
I agree that Lena Headly (sp?) was the show’s biggest problem — she is just too darn good! The show, understandably, wanted to keep her around as long as possible, but that ended up messing up the plot and other characters’ motivations and actions. If they had better writers, maybe they could have pulled it off.
As for Sansa, it’s clear the show wants her on the throne at the end (characters break the fourth wall to remind us, “She’s really smart now!”). But again, they needed better writers to pull that off.
I wanted to add – maybe Dany didn’t KNOW Cersie was in the red keep? Tyrion lies about a lot of things, and Dany couldn’t trust that Cersie was in the keep, or that the bells weren’t just another trap. Logically, I can make excuses for Dany. But what I can’t excuse is that it looked like Dany WANTED to burn the civilians. That is what the show failed to adequately build up to.
Honestly, give me a break with the smash the patriarchy on GOT narrative. It’s a fantasy show written by men from a brilliant bunch of books written by a man….expectations seem a tad high. I’ll save my indignation for real shit like abortion rights and equal pay for equal work. Dany going Mad Queen is entertaining. That’s the point right?
I tend to agree with your pov. The book series is called The Song of Fire and Ice, lest we forget. That song is Jon Snow. It’s been there from the beginning.
Yep. And he’s been sidelined on the show in favor Sansa. Book Jon is a complex interesting character, who is also pretty similar to Dany. He does horrible things and can be unyielding. Show Jon is a goody two shoes who hasn’t truly done much since he was resurrected – and keeps getting undermined by other characters. It’s a true pity. Ditto for Tyrion. Actually, now that I think about it, none of GRRM’s big five have been done right by the show – just look at Bran.
@Patty So true. I can’t stand what they did to Jon Snow.
“The book series is called The Song of Fire and Ice, lest we forget. That song is Jon Snow.”
Thank you! Jon has been to reduced to a love sick idiot blindly following Dany instead of who the series is about. His creation was the cause of Robert’s Rebellion, the downfall of the Tarygaryn empire and was resurrected from the dead because his mission of ending the long night was larger than a throne. Dany will meet her end in the books but again against a more powerful and capable Jon Snow a la The Dance of Dragons part 2.
Patty,Bran is hard to portray in a show. I haven’t finished the books, but his inner dialogue is difficult to convey on TV. The visions, yes, but it will always be lacking. HE takes us in his journeys, whereas in the show there is so much they can show with just images, especially if they are rushing things. Still people are complaining “nothing happens, it is just dialogue, bran is sitting there”. Hey, I like that kind of episodes.
I tend to agree with this, but I don’t agree that Jon has been sidelined in favor of Sansa. Sansa is one of the only characters that hasn’t undergone the “character assassinations” that people are up in arms about (Dany, Jon, etc.) but I don’t feel like Sansa is the star of this season by any stretch of the imagination. She wasn’t even in this last episode and she was barely in the Battle of Winterfell. If anything, they’ve relegated her to someone pulling the strings behind the scenes. Tyrion basically does the same thing (with a fraction of the efficacy) but he always manages to snag a pretty significant role in each episode.
Amen!
D&D are increasingly dumb, they have no idea what they are doing.
If they wanted to make Dany mad they had to build ther arc in several episodes (and no, the foreshadow isn’t an arc). Instead they have made the classic cliché of the emotional woman, prey to the emotions she can’t handle. In short, they painted her using the stereotypes that many also use to say why a woman is not suitable to be President.
At this point I’m surprised that they didn’t say that Dany was on her period.
Maybe they’ll mansplain that she burned them all because of killer PMS.
And to really add insult to injury, the last straw seems to be the rejection she suffers from a man; Jon Snow.
The only good thing in this last season is Emilia Clarke’s acting. Her performance is immense and of rare beauty. I never thought she could be that good. I can see an Emmy nom for her and maybe also a win, it would be deserved.
Absolutely.
I’ve always thought she was one of the weakest actors on the show but she has been killing it this season.
The way she’s portrayed Daenerys’ loss and increased isolation, as well as her anger at not being loved by Westerosi folk (let’s face it, Dany has always been entitled. She has freed slaves who obviously worshipped the ground she walks on, and every man who’s followed her has been in love with her. Her reaction at Jon ‘loving’ her and yet rejecting her sexually was very telling) has been amazing.
One of the most shameful things (besides misogyny) is the fact that D&D attempts to pass on the message that mental illness is genetic, that if your father was mad as much as you are different you will eventually go crazy. It’s something irresponsible that does nothing but increase the stigma towards these diseases.
To be fair, she’s inbred to a point where her genes are 75% Targ and the mental defect gene would resurface a lot in a family of inbreds. And not as much to do with her being a female. Viserys seemed pretty mad himself. Rhaegar didn’t live long enough for us to see him go mad.
I don’t think Dany is mad, not with what was shown to us. She is suffering from the continual deaths in the last few episodes (Jorah, Missandei, a dragon who is like a child to her) and has not yet had the chance to process this mourning. It’s like she’s suffering from PTSD.
Plus she doesn’t trust her advisers anymore (and she is right IMO) and her love with Jon is impossible. She’s a hollow person, not a crazy person (and perhaps burning the city is her way of letting go of all her repressed feelings and maybe even the only way she thinks of getting the only thing left: the iron throne).
@Loretta,
Agree. I pretty much said the same thing in my reply to Becks below. It may not necessarily be that she’s a
crazy, but even any “normal” sane person could experience a breakdown given the circumstances she’s going through right now. She’s dealing with a lot. I’m not at all excusing her actions, because she crossed a terrible line. But I can understand where it’s all coming from and it doesn’t have to necessarily be that she’s, *just* crazy. Coupled with the fact that she’s always had an impulsive streak to begin with, this could all be the catalyst for a mental breakdown if she was to have one. It’s not far fetched. There is a trigger moment for emotional or mental breakdowns.
It’s a fantasy show with fantasy diseases and generations of inbreeding that somehow did not end up with Dany and Viserys looking like Charles II of Spain.
LOL. Right. One thing I did like in the last episode was Dany’s relationship with Grey Worm. I love he was trying to protect her from Jon – those two are simpatico. I was actually thinking that Grey Worm was going to off Jon – and I kind of wished he had. That would have been shocking and unpredictable.
She probably didn’t because she needed the northern troops. Actually, not, but she wants toreign overthe 7 kingdoms. She needs allies.
She’s the dragon queen. Her father was the Mad King that’s been discussed since the pilot episode. Fire and blood. In the end, her doing anything other than annihilation through dragon fire shouldn’t have surprised anyone. It’s so funny how devoted Daeny fans fight and defend this character. She’s the unburnt! I’m glad someone other than Cersei burned KL to the ground. I’m not happy about rushed storylines at all, but in this particular episode, the dragon was on fire! I’m in mourning lol.
So, I think it was always obvious that the series was going to end with Kings Landing burning, whether by Cersei or dany has been the main question of the past few seasons. So turns out it was Dany and we can argue whether or not Cersei forced her hand.
I agree that they have rushed the end, and I agree with what someone said yesterday about how this episode didn’t feel “earned.” But I don’t think it was a “dany is emotional so she burned the city.” If anything I think it was the opposite. She decided to burn the city because she could; she knew before the battle she was going to burn it. It was a decision made rationally, which is why it was so chilling.
And Bran saw the vision of the Dragon flying over KL so it wouldn’t surprise me if he knew this was all about to go down.
Dany did what she did out of impulse over the anger and pain from dealing (or not properly dealing) with her grief. She has given in to temptation and the natural instinct she’s always had to react with violence to solve the issue of people not doing what she wants. After all, she was raised by her awful, petulant brother, She learned a lot of that behavior from him.
I’ve said before I can’t totally blame her, but I can see exactly why she would have an emotional/mental breakdown after all that she’s been through this season. Losing people she considered family, another “child”, finding out people in your own company are conspiring against you, feeling rejected and unloved, and knowing that people like your nephew more than they love you. It’s enough to send anyone over the edge.
I don’t think she learned violence from Viserys. She was a small, fragile teenager, and becoming a Khaleesi finally empowered her to end her brother’s abuse of her, and her increased confidence helped her to end Drogo’s abuse of her. Dany isn’t strong enough to swing a sword in battle. Her strength is her dragons.
It drives me crazy how people say she’s evil for executing via her dragons. She could have had Jon or Grey Worm kill the Tarlys (after giving them two other choices) and Varys. But her method is no different than Ned’s belief that the man who lays down the sentence swings the sword. Drogon is Dany’s sword. When Ned, Jon, or Robb executed by sword it was called honor and justice. When Dany does it she’s evil. And I’m specifically discussing the Tarlys and Varys here, not the burning of the innocents at King’s Landing.
@Aryasmum,
I’m not saying she learned violence from him, but a lot of his behaviors rubbed off on her. Don’t wake the dragon, going back to Westeros to take back what was his, etc. It may not be intentional on her part, but growing up listening to your brother talk, you might occasionally pick up certain behaviors or mentalities. Same way with Jon to an extent who is a Targ, but raised by Ned, picked up a lot from him.
That’s a great point, Regina.
Poor Jamie’s character was “humbled” when his sword carrying had was chopped off of his body (while trying to save Brienne from rape) and no one cared enough about it to write articles about it being a plot device to emasculate him lol. The cherry picking just astounds me.
It amazes me at how much info needs to be force fed to the general audience before they notice things.
Judging by all of the hints and foreshadowing throughout the show and just common sense, I was able to predict most of what we’ve ended up with. I remember when people to the bitter end were arguing that Jon was really Robert Baratheon son when it was all in your face that he was Rhaegar’s lol.
Dany has always chosen violence as her go-to emotion and has always needed someone to hold her back and change her mind, whether it was Barristan, Jorah, Tyrion and even Jon last season. Now that she’s lost her most trusted advisors and doesn’t trust the ones that are left, she is going with her first instincts. “I will take back what’s mine with fire and blood. I will burn cities to the ground!” – Dany S2.
She’s modeled after Mary of Portugal who was also a product of inbreeding (Dany is 75% Targ) who started out as a good, decent ruler, until she started experiencing a mental breakdown. Then she was known as Mad Mary
Thank you, I agree completely. I also don’t see this as misogyny, rushed writing and character development yes, but hatred of women?! No, I think with everything going on in our world today with women it’s tempting to see it as the same, but the signs of Dany going mad have been there from season one. I’m rewatching the entire series and can’t believe how much I missed. Every single character has been through hell and seen some seriously messed up shit, they’ve made bad decisions based on high emotions just like Dany did. It’s not just women they write this way, her reaction was extreme but we’ve seen this coming, the fans had this “mad queen” theory years ago.
Jaime’s arc was ruined and I read NCW has been arguing with the writers since season 4 because he wanted Jaime to be less into Cersei as per the books.
Thanks for this, I see no misoginy here. There have been good and bad rulers, male or female. Of course female rulers have had it tougher, and still do today, but being a woman does not guarantee being a good, fair ruler. Dany started out better, but will follow her family destiny. Now can you imagine if Viserys had gotten to Westeros?
Her delusions of the people of Westeros praying for her return is pure Mary Stuart and her Jacobite great grandchildren
I liked the Ozzy Man youtube review on this episode.
I haven’t seen it yet but they are great. God, this season is so lazy and badly written. “Dany forgot about the Iron fleet”, you mean you did and couldn’t be arsed rewriting. Jon couldn’t be arsed giving Ghost some farewell scritches. Sansa waited like, what, five whole minutes before breaking her oath to Jon? Tyrion has developed the intelligence of Cersei. And on and on and on…
Anyway, Davos still rules, I hope he ends up Hand of the [whoever is left] ‘cos it ain’t gonna be Dany.
Yep, the writers forgot the Iron Fleet. And what a magical, invisible fleet it was – until they magically appeared and shot Rhaegal out of the sky.
I love Ozzy Man’s reviews. He’s hilarious.
I honestly don’t understand the backlash. There are more strong, well written, fully fledged women characters in this show than almost any other. This is not a superhero show. It’s not just good vs evil. It sometimes good vs sometimes evil. Why do people love to complain so much? People at home sitting on their butts no less.
Brienne and Jaime: she cries her eyes out as he leaves. The Brienne I’ve been watching since season 2 may well have cried her eyes out but would call Jaime out on his guff and most likely punch him in the face and tell him to get his head out of his ass. Instead, our last shot is her weeping in a dress. Brienne.
And begging him not to leave HER.
She was in a house coat. Not a dress.
The Brienne we knew was one who was always emotional but tried to hide it behind her armor, literally and figuratively. Her story of why she was so ride or die with Renly was because she was hurt and he wiped away her tears and gave her supportive words. From that moment she loved him and was willing to give her life for him.
It’s it that far fetched to believe that she wouldn’t put herself out there to the man she just gave her virginity to? She had already made herself vulnerable to him and she was being honest with her feelings. She knew he was going to KL to die with Cersei. If there is any time to wear your heart on your sleeve, it would probably be at that moment.
She was weeping in a dress because she was heartbroken. She loved Jaime and allowed herself to receive love and be vulnerable for the first time ever in her life presumably, and he still decides to leave her. Brienne knew exactly where he was going: back to Cersei and, most likely, his death. I think it was totally believable and actually made Brienne seem like an ever more nuanced character.
@ Grant
Thank you. I was happy they gave her character a little more depth by allowing her show her vulnerability so openly to a man. I thought it was quite sad that she had such a one note story arc before Jaime.
Now, would I have picked Jaime as the mad for her? No. Maybe Tormund. Or even Sandor (RIP).
What do people sitting home on their butts have to do with anything? We pay for this show and have invested years into it. Would it be better if the people who complained never sat home on their butts and watched it? If we’re running at the gym and watching it are we allowed to complain? Should only screenwriters critique the show? I guess I’m not understanding your point.
I am from the country where most telenovelas are from. There used to be pretty great ones, coming from stories from the radio to the early TV.
I used to watch some of the prime time ones, and usually they were filmed almost completely before being aired, that meant that the story created by writers and pitched by producers ended up being done without input from the public. They either liked it or not.
I don’t like that today it is the contrary. The public feels entitled to give input, the producers or whatever even monitor where the series are going according to the public bias, and they change the ending to please the public, or being shocking or whatever. I miss the days when the series happened, even if they did not follow the textbook religiously. It has become too much.
Forget about the fact that she burned Mirri Maz Duur, people really thought a woman who walked into a pyre was sane?
What I can’t stand of Daenerys defenders is that they justify all her actions due to her sufferings yet they treat Cersei as a mad woman when she clearly had her reasons to kill Robert (her abuser), the Tyrells (who murdered her son and tried to take the other) and the Sparrows (the inquisition?). As a girl she learned that her little brother was going to kill her, hence her hate towards Tyrion. Not to mention how her father played with her mind and treated her as an object since she was a little girl.
Again, if you justify Daenerys crazy antics then do the same for Cersei.
We know that Cersei has been abusive since she was a young girl. She had a servant child punished to the extent that she lost an eye. She tried to pinch off Tyrion’s penis when he was a helpless baby. Cersei didn’t kill Robert to end his abuse. She killed him to get him out of the way so that her incest Lannister children could rule. She overruled Margaery’s order for the excess wedding feast to be given to the hungry. She was a selfish, cruel woman who only ever cared about her children, and she only cared about them because they were extensions of herself. Lena Headey’s performance made Cersei human, but that’s due to her exceptional acting.
I wasn’t trying to justify Cersei’s actions, I was trying to say that no matter what, Daenerys always gets justified.
As you said, Cersei killed Robert because he was in her way to the throne, now Daenerys will kill everyone who knows she has a weak claim to it. It’s ok if she wants revenge for her family, but she (and Jon) lost their claim when their father got killed. It’s understandable that the Westerosi don’t trust her, she is the new usurper.
…or forgive them because she is a woman.
Don’t forget the Sand Snakes, who killed her innocent daughter who was in love with their own prince and Ellaria’s nephew, out of revenge for Oberyn. I really wasn’t mad at Cersei for what she did to them, tbh.
A Cersei defender!!!! My, my, my……it’s an HO out to observe one in the wild. 😬👍
On a serious note though, the thing with Cersei is that Lena played her so beautifully – that understated approach that ended up being even more menacing….
The actress I thought was exquisite; the character, despicable.
The difference is, Dany tried to help the downtrodden and did give people a choice (Mirri, the slave owners, the Tarleys). Cersie is the victim of her own choices (other than Myrcella – that death lies with the Sand Snakes and Tyrion). But Cersie wanted to marry the king, no matter who that king was. She continued to sleep with her brother while married to the king (which is treason), giving the country a crazy, inbred heir, whom she enabled in his cruelty. She had Robert killed, which lead to unrest in the lands and war. She also enabled the Sparrows out of jealousy and fight for power with Margery. She didn’t care that Tommen loved Margery, or what Margery’s death would do to Tommen. Cersie is a victim of her own actions. And, she is the biggest misogynist in Westeros. Lena Headley is a great actor, but the *character* is selfish, insane, and cruel. Dany — at least in the beginning — wanted to help slaves and other oppressed people. They are not the same characters at all.
Apparently Aaron Rodgers got himself a cameo… he looks really dorky with Frankenstein bangs:https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/game-of-thrones-aaron-rodgers-cameo
Why is it that a woman has to be raped to show character development and become a warrior? Over it.
Don’t think was being questioned because she was a woman…she was being questioned because of her pushing ahead with injured dragons and dwindled forces. After big losses. Also during the battle of the dead, they had ALL agreed on a plan, including Dany and she decided to go out on her own as she has many times.
There are many other example of her leadership being inconsistent and reactive. Dany demands to be followed or she will destroy your as* if you don’t . Would you trust a leader that destroys people who won’t bow to her? That is why she is being questioned by her minions.
Look at Sansa she has steadily grown in wisdom, proved her leadership and the people and the North are now trusting her decisions. That is a sign of good leadership that gains trust and doesn’t demand it. A woman they are willing to follow. Actually think here is a big chance she ends up on the Throne
I do think Sansa will end up on the throne, but she is an idiot. How much do dragons eat? Who cares — without them, all Northerners will be wiped out, and dead people don’t need food, so problem solved. What did Sansa want, anyway? For Dany to take her dragons and army, and go home? Leave the North to fight the undead all by themselves? And wtf does Sansa know about soldiers? Nothing. As we saw in this last episode, Dany’s army was reading and able to fight without the extra rest Sansa advocated for (which would have given Cersie time to build even more giant crossbows, and receive even more intel on what Dany was planning). But again, yeah, the show made it very clear they want Sansa on the throne (“remember, she’s really smart now!”), despite not showing her actually doing anything smart. But again, it looks like all Northerners are incredibly dumb, selfish people, so Sansa is probably the pick of the litter at this point.
GRRM has said the ending will be the same as the books but the path there may be different; so unless D&D decided to mix it up, Sansa will not end up the throne. At most she’ll be Lady of Winterfell.
where did all those Dothraki come from? didnt like 95% of them get wiped out by the NK army?
Tbh I think calling D&D’s writing mysoginist is a favor because it implies they are only butchering the female characters. Jon, Tyrion, Jamie, Bronn – every character in this damn show really has been reduced to incompetent waste and it’s like they forgot everything that happened from seasons 1-6.
At the end of the day I think Sansa is the only character whose arc ended somewhat well.
So true. What happened to Tyrion? He used to be my favorite character – so smart. He has been an idiot the last few seasons. As soon as they went past the books, the complexity of the characters has taken a nosedive – whether they are male or female.
Euron as well. I did not read the books, but did read an article that described him from the books. He was evil incarnate and TERRIFYING. Instead, we got this Jack Sparrow Wannabe that all the viewers made fun of. To NOT show him as being as scary as the original character was written just lost so much nuance. We all were waiting to see what would happen when he found out Cersei’s baby was NOT his…well, imagine the tension if he had actual seemed super scary?
Breaking point or not I still can’t wrap my head around her torching civilians. I was sure she was just off to pulverise the Red Keep and Cersei. When they showed civilians freaking out in the street as Drogon flew overhead, I was sure they were just panicking because they saw what a dragon could do. Right up until she flamed the first pack of civilians in the alley I was sure of all this. Then, in complete disbelief, I screamed at the TV, “really?! You’re really doing this?!” In retrospect, I think I was talking to the writers, not Dany.
It’s also so nonsensical. Not nonsensical in the sense that it made her mad, but in the way it made her stupid. For the most part she torched people who were victims of Cersei?
Had she moved directly to the Red Keep and went for Cersei she would have been a liberator instead of a war criminal.
Dany perpetrated genocide. I can have empathy for her past experiences, but I can’t use them to justify those actions. Most of the main characters have also been subject to extremely dehumanizing experiences as well.
This writing this season and the character arc have been terrible. I can’t single out Dany’s character for such execrable treatment and I can’t take the bad writing personally either.
I’ve read the books and have been disappointed how season 8 has progressed. What is the actual point of Bran; bait for the Night King? In the books there is no Night King, just “The Others” so an entire plot line has been abandoned. This season, Jon is almost a periphery character, brooding and reduced to dialogue mutterings of “she’s my Queen” or “I don’t want it”. I could go on but the thing that really annoys me is that D&D made decisions on character arcs because they thought “it would be cool”; that is a direct quote from one of the inside the episodes videos. They rushed and ruined plot and character arcs for the juvenile thrill of doing cool stuff. What a waste.
I’ve found this season a huge disappointment as well. True, there had been hints of things to come in previous seasons, but nothing that’s happened in this season makes any real sense to me. It’s all so unrealistic. And YES, I’m fully aware that the very story is all fantasy – hence dragons – but even in the context of fantasy, I’ve found myself uttering, “WTF?” more often than not in 8.
Please correct me if I’m wrong (gently, please, as I am an old person and prone to forgetting) but wasn’t it Tyrion who ran to Varys and reported what Sansa had confided to him about Jon being the true heir? For what purpose? Tyrion ratting out Varys seemed so out of character, pointless and maddening to me. It really feels like this season was written backwards, from ultimate outcome and then hastily filled in with random events to achieve that outcome.
GOT seems to have succumbed to the same destiny of so many other shows that start out beloved… the writers get tired and bored and ready to move on to new projects and don’t have love and respect for the characters anymore. I think it should be a real option when writers start exhibiting this behavior, to buy out their contracts and allow the fans to take over.
@Hunter, Varys was actively trying to poison Daenerys.
That’s what the scene with the little girl was about at the beginning of the episode.
She comes in and tells Varys that Dany won’t eat. He tells her to try at supper. She says Dany’s men are watching her she’s sure. Her tells her it’s worth it to keep trying.
DS9- I KEEP forgetting that Varys was trying to poison Dany. It was CLEAR as day, and I saw it, understood it…and yet , continually have put it out of my mind.
I keep thinking that Tyrion ratted on Varys because they want to show how devoted he is, still, to Dany. And I thought that was being shown so that it would be all that much more tense when HE ultimately kills Dany. Sigh. No such luck.
Oh, wow. Somehow I totally missed that. Thank you for pointing that out. It does explain Tyrion’s actions.
Has anyone listened to the song Power is Power from the album For the Throne? The Weeknd and SZA sing it and one of the lyrics sung by SZA goes “only love could kill me, god bless” and then “the knife in my heart couldn’t slow me down…” Hmmm…so maybe Jon will try to kill her in the final episode?
“There was no plot or strategy which didn’t involve killing many, many people, Cersei made sure of that when she surrounded herself with a human wall of civilians.”
Come on, that is just not true. Yeah, it was really impossible to let all the civilians to get out of the city after ringing the bells and demolishing the walls. she could have targeted just the Red Keep and let the civilians leave the city by foot.
I just…I understand that people don’t like the writing, don’t like how the story is going (newsflash:any war you’re involved in will always go unexpectedly for you, trust, that’s reality of war), but continually excusing genocide, even in fiction, just to excuse the character is mind-boggling to me.