The Unearned Madness of Daenerys Targaryen
In “The Bells,” the Mother of Dragons did exactly what she once said she wouldn’t: She became queen of the ashes. Did it have to happen like that?
“I am not here to be queen of the ashes,” Daenerys Targaryen announces in Episode 2 of Season 7 of Game of Thrones. Planning her invasion of Westeros, she reassures everyone that, while she may have the Thrones equivalent of nuclear bombs in her arsenal, she doesn’t intend to take a total-war approach to her campaign. Oh, how far we’ve come in … [squints] … 10 episodes. After “The Bells,” the penultimate episode of Season 8, Daenerys has the crown she’s always coveted—but she’ll be ruling over the very thing she said she wouldn’t just one season ago.
Thrones has been planting the seeds for a Mad Queen heel turn by Daenerys for years. A few moments from the series stand out in particular: In Season 1, she and Khal Drogo are excited to give birth to “The Stallion Who Mounts the World,” a near-messianic figure who Mirri Maz Duur says will burn cities to the ground. In Season 2, Dany repeats that idea, promising to “burn cities to the ground” once her dragons are fully grown, when she’s outside the gates of Qarth. In Season 6, she threatens to return the cities of Slaver’s Bay “to the dirt.” Throughout the show, Daenerys has burned people alive: first a master in Meereen, then the Tarlys, and then Varys in this latest episode.
Yet Sunday was the first time it ever seemed possible for Dany to burn innocents by the thousands. Despite years of foreshadowing, the character’s final tyrannical turn in this episode feels unearned. Did it really have to happen like that?
In the chaos of “The Bells,” the show forgot about the empathy that has been as fundamental to Daenerys’s character as her ruthlessness. She isn’t the Breaker of Chains for nothing. Daenerys used to personally save women from being raped by Dothraki warriors. She freed the Unsullied and countless other slaves. She took Yunkai, Astapor, and Meereen with minimal bloodshed, and she succeeded in creating a better world for the people in those cities. She wanted to rule, yes, but the girl who had spent so much of her childhood being bullied and tormented by more powerful men also knew what injustice was.
What Thrones seemed to be setting up for years was a conflict between Daenerys’s compassion and her dogged pursuit of the Iron Throne. What decision would she make when winning the crown required the loss of thousands of innocent lives? Yet this episode didn’t give us that dilemma. When Daenerys chooses to burn King’s Landing, it’s after the people of the city are ringing the bells and the Lannister soldiers have thrown down their weapons. The war is won—Dany just had to wait a bit for her armies on the ground to (peacefully) mop up before she can finally take the Red Keep. Yet it’s at that moment that Dany decides to lay waste to the city, indiscriminately pointing Drogon at both the Red Keep and innocent families.
It’s tough to figure out why Daenerys does this. As co-showrunner D.B. Weiss explained in the Inside the Episode segment for “The Bells,” Daenerys decides to burn King’s Landing because … she sees the Red Keep. “It’s in that moment,” Weiss says, “on the walls of King’s Landing, when she’s looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, that she decides to make this personal.”
She “makes it personal” by murdering thousands of innocent people that Cersei never even cared about? The same people that Jaime saved from her own father’s rage? None of this clicks.
By demolishing King’s Landing, Dany not only betrays the moral backbone Thrones spent six-plus seasons establishing for her, but she makes her impending queenship more difficult. The survivors of her assault will know exactly who burned their neighbors, friends, and family alive, and Daenerys will have to spend time rebuilding the city. Even the throne Daenerys coveted so badly will likely be destroyed. Actually, she may find that the throne room looks a lot like the vision she had in the House of the Undying all the way back in Season 2:
It always seemed as if that throne room was filled with snow, representing winter, the White Walkers, or even Jon Snow. But now we can definitively say it was ash (even if it’s a retcon).
It’s one thing to be ruthless, as Daenerys has always been; it’s another to be truly cruel and evil. Daenerys’s actions in “The Bells” were the latter. She instigated a completely unnecessary mass killing, a vicious act that is entirely outside her established character. Maybe Dany, who has much of the same foreshadowing in George R.R. Martin’s books, was always destined to become the Mad Queen—it just doesn’t make sense for it to happen without the show demonstrating any internal conflict or nuance. Yes, Daenerys recently lost two of her dragons in Rhaegal and Viserion, two of her closest friends in Jorah and Missandei, and Jon’s affections. All of that adds fuel to her rage, but it’s not clear what sparks it. If Dany had caused so much collateral damage as a byproduct of her quest for the throne, her heel turn would at least have been consistent with her character. Instead, she blindly kills thousands with no clear goal in mind. Say what you will about Dany’s inherent tyrannical tendencies, but murdering innocent children and families in their homes has never been who she is. The broad strokes may have been suggested earlier, but the specifics came out of nowhere.
The long-term questions about how Daenerys will rule in King’s Landing likely won’t matter, as she will almost surely die in next week’s finale. The show seemed to be hinting at Arya fulfilling the role of Queenslayer, but if it isn’t her it will be someone else. Daenerys was losing allies before she went into a blind rage; by next week, even Tyrion and Jon will surely have turned against her.
Given all the foreshadowing, Daenerys’s transformation into the Mad Queen was always a possibility, and there surely were ways to make the turn feel earned. But as she inexplicably laid waste to King’s Landing on Sunday, one thought kept running through my mind: Not like this.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
