{"id":455,"date":"2020-02-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/china.chinaacheru.com\/wp\/2020\/02\/05\/how-game-of-thrones-failed-daenerys-targaryen\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T00:00:00","slug":"how-game-of-thrones-failed-daenerys-targaryen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/how-game-of-thrones-failed-daenerys-targaryen\/","title":{"rendered":"How GAME OF THRONES Failed Daenerys Targaryen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

by Lindsey Romain<\/p>\n

In the finale of Game of Thrones\u2018 premiere season, \u201cFire and Blood,\u201d Daenerys Targaryen stands before the khalasar in Lhazar, a lit pyre framing her with red flame from behind. She speaks to them with a confidence larger than her slight frame; she is full of anger, she has recently miscarried, her husband Khal Drogo is dead by her own hand. Her body is sweaty from grief, but her words echo like thunder through the night.
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\u201cI AM DAENERYS STORMBORN OF HOUSE TARGARYEN OF THE BLOOD OF OLD VALYRIA. I AM THE DRAGON\u2019S DAUGHTER. AND I SWEAR TO YOU, THOSE WHO\u2019D HARM YOU WILL DIE SCREAMING.\u201d
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This quote has been passed around this week, in the aftermath of the show\u2019s most recent episode\u2014the series\u2019 penultimate, \u201cThe Bells\u201d\u2014as \u201cproof\u201d that Daenerys has always been hungry for vengeance, quick to kill, and prone to madness. Out of context, the quote may sound alarming. But seen in full, it\u2019s powerful and liberating. It comes after Daenerys offers freedom to any who seek it. And it comes with a qualifier: She will only kill \u201cthose who\u2019d harm you.\u201d Meaning slavers, rapists, pillagers. This is the Daenerys Targaryen we have always known; an orphaned girl turned abused woman, whose kind heart always swayed her from her inherited mental illness, and from the trauma that threatened to swallow her whole. She\u2019s imperfect, she\u2019s too idealistic, and her focus on legacy has allowed for much failure. But she was never a monster. And she was never \u201cmad.\u201d
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That\u2019s why her turn in the \u201cThe Bells\u201d has been such a hard pill to swallow. Because she had secured, through her battle prowess, the crown that she spent eight seasons seeking. She won the battle against Cersei. She proved that with the aid of her advisers and the assistance of her dragons she was capable of what the realm had, to that point, denied her. But instead of steering Drogon to the Red Keep and assassinating Cersei, she did the unthinkable: She targeted the citizens of King\u2019s Landing, deciding to \u201crule with fear\u201d instead of honor. These are the same innocent people that, two episodes before, she risked her fleet and dragons to protect in Winterfell. In the after-the-episode segment, actress Emilia Clarke explained that it was a rash decision made in the name of \u201cgrief.\u201d Grief over the loss of Jorah, Missandei, and her dragon Rhaegal, and grief over her lover Jon and her hand Tyrion\u2019s lost faith in their queen.
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But how on earth does that track with what we know of Daenerys? How do we reconcile the woman who two seasons ago locked her dragons in a tomb for burning a child, with the person who would ruthlessly destroy a city of innocent children after winning the only thing she ever cared about? There is a world where Daenerys going rogue makes sense, but this isn\u2019t it. This was an irresponsible, irrevocable undoing of an arc that enthralled and empowered a generation. And it sends a dangerous message: That women who seek power will piss it away the second their emotions kick in. The show might as well as have told us Dany was on her period.
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One default answer for Dany\u2019s turn is that her father\u2019s madness\u2014which was referenced in the \u201cpreviously on\u201d segment of \u201cThe Bells\u201d\u2014is coming through in this moment of emotional vulnerability. \u201cEvery time a Targaryen is born, the Gods flip a coin,\u201d the show tells us. But what does this mean? The show\u2014and, ostensibly, the books\u2014has always had a flimsy understanding of \u201cmadness.\u201d Is Dany a psychopath? A sociopath? There\u2019s no indication of that; her empathy for slaves and innocents, until this point, precludes her from those distinctions. Is she depressed, does she suffer from PTSD, is she bipolar? Those are all modern ways of categorizing mental illness, but they could help us understand her mindset here. And yet, there\u2019s no way of knowing the specific thing ailing her, because the show fails to orient us in her headspace. Is she triggered by something specifically? Is this really her way of processing grief, which she\u2019s suffered greatly in the past without a similar reaction? A little insight would go a long way. Instead, her \u201cmadness\u201d serves only one purpose: to punish her ambition.
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\u201cI AM NOT HERE TO BE QUEEN OF THE ASHES.\u201d
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And she will be punished. There\u2019s no way Daenerys Stormborn, breaker of chains, survives the story now. That could be a tragic ending if the show had found an in-road to her psyche. Or if she hadn\u2019t, for seasons now, displayed an eagerness to improve. Her descent could be chaotic if chaos was ever part of her philosophy. But even at her most tumultuous, past Dany always had a plan. She was trigger-happy in words only, never action. Recall, for a moment, her burning of the khalasar in season six, when she liberated the widowed women from their grieving huts. Vulnerable and alone, her advisers and her dragons far from her grip, she channeled her fiery energy into a revolution. She has never needed the reassurance of others to be strong. So why is it her breaking point? Why, in this moment, as the story is about to end before we can ever contend with the carnage her emotions conjured?
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Dany\u2019s journey has always been a mix of highs and lows. She once rode atop a wave of brown bodies, their white savior; an image that was, at the time, played for victory, but left a haunting mark on her legacy. And she has ruled with fire and blood in the past, but never indiscriminately. She burned the Tarlys, but only after she gave them the option to bend the knee. It was a harsh punishment, but in this world of broken honor, no different than Jon hanging Olly or Robb beheading Rickard Karstark. She was never more exactingly cruel than Arya, who killed for money and sport in the House of the Undying. Even Ned Stark executed boys for the sake of an agreement made on the basis of fantasy.
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But those actions didn\u2019t drive their perpetrators to annihilation. And Dany\u2019s didn\u2019t need to, either. The show made a decision, likely based on the blueprints of George R.R. Martin\u2019s unfinished story, but it laid the bricks haphazardly. It\u2019s dangerous, what\u2019s been done to Dany. Because it hinges her carefully deployed conquest on the unpredictability of feminine desire. That\u2019s what feels more out of nowhere than her fiery inclinations: The presentation of Dany as not only prone to her worst impulses, but careless in her actions. That\u2019s not the Daenerys who stood before the khalasar and pledged her life to the common folk. That\u2019s not the breaker of chains. If this is what the male-only creators think passes for earned female villainy, one has to wonder the intentions of telling this story in the first place.
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Culled from <\/em><\/strong>www.<\/u><\/em><\/strong>nerdist.com<\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

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by Lindsey Romain In the finale of Game of Thrones\u2018 premiere season, \u201cFire and Blood,\u201d Daenerys Targaryen stands before the khalasar in Lhazar, a lit pyre framing her with red flame from behind. She speaks to them with a confidence larger than her slight frame; she is full of anger, she has recently miscarried, her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_surecart_dashboard_logo_width":"180px","_surecart_dashboard_show_logo":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_orders":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_invoices":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_subscriptions":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_downloads":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_billing":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_account":true,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"china","author_link":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/author\/china\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"by Lindsey Romain In the finale of Game of Thrones\u2018 premiere season, \u201cFire and Blood,\u201d Daenerys Targaryen stands before the khalasar in Lhazar, a lit pyre framing her with red flame from behind. She speaks to them with a confidence larger than her slight frame; she is full of anger, she has recently miscarried, her…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}