So I have some predictions/requests/tear and wine driven posts from Tumblr:
Predictions/Requests
- Jaime and Cersei have a sad song written about them after they kill each other.
My favorite idea for a title: "Wildfire"
- Dany will not sit the Throne very long and return to Braavos
- Arya and Daenerys will cross paths PLEASE GRRM MAKE THIS HAPPEN
- Osha will die
Not Your Savior; or, Stop Underestimating and Overestimating Daenerys Targaryen
If a central theme of A Song of Ice and Fire is the deconstruction of typical fantasy tropes, then it’s very easy to see that Daenerys Targaryen is a deconstruction of the savior archetype. Fandom is so divisive in their opinions toward her because (and I’m just going off of what I’ve seen personally) she either kept their attention throughout her arc or she bored them after AGoT. Now, a person’s interest is actually a legitimate reason not to rank a character highly - like, I think Davos is nice and good and actually pretty smart, but he doesn’t really do much for me and so I can’t put him among my faves - but so often a huge complaint about Daenerys’s character is that she’s dumb and unfit to rule and she loses her purpose after she loses Drogo. And a huge compliment about her is that she’s fierce and fearless and so determined to do good.
And I just think both of those kind of… miss the point. Of her character and the series in general.
Daenerys isn’t your majestic heroine who will save Westeros and bring lasting peace. Hell, she won’t even last - she’s barren, and so I really doubt she’ll end up on the throne (if there is a throne at all). But I digress. Daenerys is thirteen when the series begins. I’m not sure how old she is at the end of ADWD, but I’m guessing it’s fifteen or sixteen. She’s very young, essentially. Way too young to be anybody’s idea of a mature, ideal ruler.
Age in the series is not judged by nonfantasy 21st century standards, but think about it: she is about Robb’s age when she’s ruling Meereen, Robb who had the company of his mother and uncle and loyal bannerman and yet still felt very lost, and she, too, starts to break down under stress in ADWD. She’s not wholly incapacitated, but she is feeling panicky, and she’s certainly exhibiting signs of beginning depression.
The facts are these: she is young. She acquired land by conquest, and conquest is much easier than ruling. She has few allies, and almost nobody she can fully trust after letting go of Jorah (she also feels he seriously betrayed her, and he was in charge of protecting her and helping her - like, imagine how that feels). She is, by nature, vicious and a bit vengeful and also loving and longing and hopeful and shrewd. But she was never taught how to rule. She knows very little about Westeros; most of her knowledge comes from stories and books, and that is so different from actually immersing oneself in the culture, you guys. Westeros is so divided and apart from Dorne, which is such a wildcard at this point, she has no allies there either. She doesn’t understand that the lords and ladies there won’t simply bend the knee to her. She thinks she’s got the upper hand because of her dragons, but she can’t even handle her dragons right now.
In short, she’s not in a good position to rule. And that’s why so many seem to be annoyed: she thinks she can just head to Westeros and rule as queen, but she’s ignorant of all the above. That’s a dramatic oversimplication of the issues. Yes, she seems unaware of her shortcomings. But that’s the point of her character. She is not perfect. She will not save the day. (Nobody will, actually) Anyone looking at her and thinking, “Oh, she thinks she’s the greatest when she actually sucks,” gets it so wrong.
Actually, they do get it a bit right: she is definitely not the ideal. But she isn’t supposed to be. People looking at her with the idea that she’s this hero who ended up flopping didn’t even notice she was never the hero in the beginning. She has good intentions (most of the time), but she is not supposed to be your fierce, take-no-prisoners, warrior queen who triumph over insurmountable odds to become the most beloved ruler in all of history.
In short, she’s neither as bad or as good as a lot of people make her out to be. She’s not your hero, she’s not your villain.
She is a teenage girl.
She has immense power she doesn’t know how to wield. She is trying to navigate a system she doesn’t understand. She has all the capacity to bring destruction down on everything she touches but she really just wants to make something good out of a mess. I love Daenerys because I find it so easy to relate to her because she is, ultimately, just a young woman who wants so much.
So: yes. She does fuck up. A lot. She’s messy and she makes bad moves. But, we stans argue, she’s trying! Her heart is in the right place, she just needs practice!
And I think that’s a bad attitude too. Daenerys does have a good heart, but we’ve seen how off her execution can be. At the time I thought it was noble for her to stay in Meereen and make good to the lives she had disrupted, but she didn’t understand the government or the culture or the instability she had wrought by (very benevolently) ending slavery. It wasn’t her place to intervene. These types of decisions are so potentially disastrous that saying her intentions are good ignores the fact that intentions don’t really matter all that much when the consequences are so harmful.
Now I’m realizing that I may have been too harsh in my judgment of Dany. She certainly has a lot of flaws, but the point I’m trying to make is that people misunderstand her place in the narrative. Nobody in this series is perfect, and that includes this hero warrior woman. Those who hate Daenerys (I’m looking at you westeros.org) seem to think she’s useless and a complete waste of a potentially great storyline. When Daenerys was never meant to be great; she’s meant to show how terrible it can be when a child is faced with a great destiny.
Daenerys wants freedom and peace and a better world, for herself and for others. But in the end she’s just a teenage girl struggling to find herself amidst the ruin while still facing up to her potential.
What is her mantra? “Keep walking. If I look back I am lost.” She’s walking in the wrong direction because her story is a tragedy as much as it is an epic. The little girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders. It’s horrifying. Nobody should have to live with that, and yet she keeps pushing forward. Unfortunately, in my opinion, she’s not facing up to her own problems. The entire point of the Targaryens (and I’ve written about this) is that, while powerful, they rot from the core. They fashion themselves as gods and don’t realize how human they are. They long for love and sew destruction. When Daenerys says, “If I look back I am lost,” it’s ultimately highly ironic because she actually needs, very much, to look back. The problem with the Targaryens is that they don’t analyze their past to improve themselves for the future. They don’t understand these ideas of destiny and a greater good are lies. They don’t know themselves.
Ultimately, that’s what has hurt Daenerys and what will hurt her, in the future. She - and the reader - needs to see herself as a person, not a savior.
ASoIaF Confessions (1/5): The Wolves Will Come Again
Despite my support of Houses Lannister and Targaryen, I have always been a Stark. Throughout the series, I found things to love about every character (save a few), but I always enjoyed reading an Eddard, Catelyn, Arya, Sansa or Bran chapter above others. When Ned was killed, I turned to Catelyn, and blamed stupidity for my Ned’s demise. That was the easiest loss. Cat had been my favorite for a long time, before I even found my love for Daenerys, I favored Catelyn. Her plight was relatable, and it was so connected to her own House’s words and beliefs, that her actions made me weep and cheer as one. Catelyn’s death at the hands of Walder Frey sparked an emotional distancing from any character of honor for me.
Arya’s escape from King’s Landing to the Riverlands to Braavos was one of the most cathartic stories in the series, invoking so many mixed feelings. After seeing her own father - the only person aside from Jon Snow that Arya could confide in or truly trust - killed, she went on a journey for an identity, and for home. Arya’s arrival at the Twins while Lady Catelyn and King Robb were being butchered made me feel so horrible and so sorry for Arya. She is torn apart inside and I felt I couldn’t help but be torn apart with her.
Sansa is so innocent in the first book that I thought she would perish as her father did. Sweet Sansa endured Joffrey and Cersei, and she became a survivor. Her survivability is an inspiration, as is her strength. Losing not only her father, mother, brothers, and sister, Sansa loses her last surviving female relative. She has the makings of the queen, and I mean to see her crowned.
The Starks are broken, lost, and blown to the wind. Hope seems bleak, and winter is here. But the wolves will come again. The Starks will always have my support. This blog is a testament to them, even though it may appear otherwise. My love for the series was built by the Starks, when I was sore beset and friendless. I told myself once, that I would stay with them to the end. I know no king but the King in the North, whose name is Stark!
I’m gonna go cry now.