We Need to Talk about Daenerys
Warning: Spoilers ahead
Character may not count for much on Game of Thrones, but characters always have: at its core, it has aimed to be a character-driven story. But that has changed in recent seasons. As the show outpaced its source material, it sacrificed intricately-plotted, character-motivated storytelling for spectacle in two forms: big set pieces and shocking twists. Both kinds of spectacle propelled the final season’s penultimate episode, “The Bells” (Season 8, Episode 5). In the apocalyptic Battle of King’s Landing, Game of Thrones revealed one of its most consequential twists: Daenerys Targaryen breaks bad and becomes the “Mad Queen.”
After leading a brilliant assault on the capital of Westeros in her quest to claim the Iron Throne, Daenerys snaps when she hears bells marking King’s Landing’s surrender: instead of accepting the city’s surrender or making a beeline to the Red Keep to execute Queen Cersei Lannister – the show’s hitherto villain – Daenerys inexplicably unleashes hell on her newly-won capital. Atop her fire-breathing dragon, she charts a methodical, zigzagging path of destruction through the city itself, laying waste to King’s Landing and torching thousands of innocents along the way. The moment is as shocking in its presentation of the horrors of war as it is in the definitive, dark turn of one of the show’s central protagonists as she gives in to “Targaryen madness,” her apparent genetic inheritance. (Props to Emilia Clarke – who has done her best work this season – for brilliantly, wordlessly marking Daenerys’s chilling transition from exhausted victor to merciless war criminal in the span of only a few heart-breaking seconds. Give that woman an Emmy!)
Let me first acknowledge that there is something compelling in the idea that Daenerys becomes the story’s final villain. Thematically, it’s on brand. Daenerys’s breaking bad moment suggests power corrupts everyone, even those with noble intentions. It’s classic Thrones to tear down her arc by transforming her into the villain who becomes the very thing she sought to destroy: a tyrant who murders the little guys. Daenerys’s turn also fulfills the prophecy of mental instability that has long haunted the Targaryens. Her father, after all, was “Mad King” Aerys who threatened to “burn them all.” Fearing this mental inheritance, Daenerys has always tried to listen to her better angels rather than give in to her worst impulses. It’s utterly tragic that she becomes the thing she tried so hard not to be; the abused becomes the abuser, and the cycle of violence continues. I get it. As Ramsay Bolton said, “If you think this will have a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” So, of course Daenerys would become the Mad Queen. “Mad Dany” was almost inevitable.
Almost.
Make no mistake: they did Daenerys dirty.
Was the “Mad Dany” twist the best choice for her character and the story?
Most critics agree. They claim the “Mad Dany” turn is an interesting idea but criticize how the show executed its eleventh-hour twist. Daenerys’s sudden turn was unearned and didn’t make much sense. The mishandling of Daenerys’s twist is symptomatic of the show’s recent tendency to fit characters into plot points and sacrifice development for shock twists. Thrones may have foreshadowed Daenerys’s darkness, but foreshadowing is not the same thing as character development. Her decision to commit a war crime comes out of nowhere: the show leapt from “Dany kills her enemies and protects innocents” to “Dany murders enemies and innocents en masse” too quickly. If the show had more time to develop her turn, they argue, it would have been a thrilling thing to behold.
I wholeheartedly agree with these critiques about character development, pacing, and execution. But I want to shift the conversation. I think it’s fair to question the narrative decision to have Daenerys break bad. Was the “Mad Dany” twist the best choice for her character and the story? Is Daenerys’s descent the best direction for her arc? I would argue that it was a mistake to conclude her arc in this way. Why? There are several reasons why this was the wrong path for her:
It’s Out of Character
Prior to this season, Game of Thrones has largely been a character-driven enterprise: character clashes and collaborations drove the plot, not the other way around. But by turning Daenerys into a villain, the show has betrayed her: it forces her into a plot-point, and that’s a disservice to both the story and the character.
The show has never given any indication that Daenerys is capable of murdering innocents in any context. In fact, that feels antithetical to the character she has always been. Fundamentally, Daenerys’s story is inspiring: she is someone who has been marginalized, minimized, and abused – and then she becomes a survivor. After being abused by her older brother and, in her own words, “sold like a brood mare, chained and betrayed, raped and defiled,” Daenerys decided to be a champion for those who could not protect themselves. Daenerys was the Khaleesi who asked the Dothraki and Ironborn to stop raping; she locked her dragons up because they killed an innocent child; and she instinctively knew that people who traded in human flesh could not be trusted. Moreover, she is willing to put the needs of others – and the good of the realm – before her own. She put her own quest for the Iron Throne on hold to assist Jon Snow in defeating the Army of the Dead – she agreed to it before Jon bent the knee to her. Daenerys has always made it her business to protect innocents.
Daenerys is also remarkably self-aware. Unlike many of the potential rulers in Westeros, Daenerys took queenship seriously and went about learning how to lead. To become a better queen, she surrounded herself with people who could help her make wise and just decisions. She listened to the counsel of others, sometimes to her own detriment. Though the show partly framed her turn as frustration at being given bad advice repeatedly, her reaction to torch the entirety of King’s Landing – rather than just the Red Keep, where she still would have killed innocents – seems too extreme for a character who has always been precise in her vengeance.
To be clear, she’s never been a perfect character. She has always had a strong whiff of colonialism about her as she steamrolled entire civilizations. Daenerys is a conqueror who upends societies in Essos and liberates people from bondage in equal measure. Her white-savior arc has been as problematic as her rigidity, self-righteousness, entitlement, and ruthlessness.
Indeed, Daenerys’s ruthlessness is one of her defining characteristics – but she wasn’t indiscriminately ruthless. She drew a line between victims of violence and those who perpetrate it. Before “The Bells,” Daenerys almost always directed her ruthlessness at her abusers (totally justified), those who abuse others (also justified), and political enemies who crossed her.
The ruthlessness that she has directed at her enemies checks out in the moral universe of the show. Though critics have been quick use her crucifying of the masters of Essos or torching of the Tarlys as evidence of her extreme instability, the fact is she did both in response to provocation: the masters murdered slave children to send her a message and the Tarlys refused to bend the knee after she gave them the opportunity to do so. She’s executed her enemies in the same way that we’ve seen male characters do so on the show – yet, they are never labeled “mad.” Ned Stark’s mantra was, “He who passes the sentence should swing the sword,” and that’s exactly what Daenerys has always done. Even the upstanding Jon Snow executed dissenters who refused to follow orders or committed treason. (Remember the sneering Janos Slynt? Or scowling Olly?) Ruthlessness to one’s enemies isn’t the same thing as the mass murder of innocents.
Daenerys is neither wholly good nor wholly bad; she exists firmly in the gray space between “hero” and “villain.” So it’s pretty reductive to turn her into a baddie by pushing her into an explicitly villainous role. Rather than shoehorn her into a “villainous” turn, it might have been more interesting – and more thematically potent – to push a solidly “good” character into gray territory. An interesting candidate for this would be Jon Snow, a character so reliably honorable that he, perhaps more than anyone else, fits into mold of the traditional, virtuous hero. Putting Jon Snow in a situation in which he must murder innocents might have been far more interesting than further darkening Daenerys’s shades of gray.
We’ve Seen This Arc Already
Daenerys’s quest for power ultimately led to her downfall. If this arc sounds familiar, it should: only a few seasons ago, we saw the end of Stannis Baratheon, another would-be monarch whose dreams of ruling Westeros ended in flames.
Like Daenerys, Stannis believed that becoming king was his birthright. As the younger brother of King Robert Baratheon, Stannis believed that the crown should go to him after his brother’s death, since he (rightly) claimed that Robert’s children were actually illegitimate Lannister offspring. Just as Daenerys embraced ideology – in her case, as a liberator of the enslaved – so too did Stannis: his chief advisor was a Red Priestess of the Lord of Light who stoked Stannis’s ego by claiming he was the god’s chosen champion. But after experiencing a series of losses and setbacks – like Daenerys – Stannis’s quest for the throne became increasingly desperate and murderous, culminating in the heinous act of sacrificing his young daughter to the Lord of Light by burning her alive.
This story was a cautionary tale about how the thirst for power can corrupt leaders. Stannis went from a leader who trumpeted his entitlement to the Iron Throne to one who was willing to do terrible things to get it. By giving Daenerys a similar arc, Game of Thrones is essentially repeating the same story about the corrupting influence of power. We get it, guys.
The “Mad Dany” Twist Trashes Some of the Show’s Core Themes
One thing that has been clear since the beginning of the show is that decisions matter – characters are defined by them, and decisions have consequences. Robb Stark learned that the hard way: his decision to renege on his promise to wed a daughter of House Frey was the spark that led to the Red Wedding. In that same vein, characters who have made terrible decisions are often given the opportunity to atone for them: Theon had more redemption arcs than I care to remember, for example. (Though, with only one episode left, it’s doubtful that Daenerys will get a redemption arc of her own – those seem to be reserved largely for the show’s male characters.) By emphasizing the power of decisions, the show challenges the idea of inevitability or the significance of prophecy. This ultimately gives characters more agency and accountability.
In the show’s logic, an individual shouldn’t be held accountable for family mistakes: the choices you make, not the genetics or problems you inherit from your family, ultimately define you. Sansa learned not to repeat her father and brother’s mistakes. Likewise, neither Jon nor Daenerys held children responsible for their parents’ sins: Jon gave castles back to young Alys Karstak and Ned Umber, while Daenerys legitimized Gendry and made him Lord of Storm’s End, even though his father had usurped hers.
But by having Daenerys go full Targaryen and succumb to a fit of madness, Game of Thrones backtracks on these themes entirely. The “Mad Dany” trope throws all that out the window. By repeatedly foreshadowing that Daenerys would eventually break bad, the show encouraged the audience to anticipate her turn. Moreover, by emphasizing Targaryen madness as a genetic quirk, the show also made her turn feel inevitable. The showrunners themselves framed it that way: “ultimately she is who she is,” David Benioff affirmed, “and that’s a Targaryen.” In other words, Daenerys inherited the Targaryen “crazy gene” and was unable to control herself – she was predisposed to madness, and “fire and blood” was inevitable. By this nihilistic logic, serial killers beget serial killers, mass murderers beget mass murderers, and no one can escape their family or what they’ve inherited from them.
By making it explicitly about Daenerys’s predisposition to “madness,” Game of Thrones essentially argues that parts of life are ultimately inevitable rather than variables shaped by decisions a person makes. Though Daenerys has consistently decided to listen to her advisors, protect the innocent, and be a breaker of chains, none of that really matters because “ultimately she is… a Targaryen” who flew off the handle. This approach goes against everything that previous seasons have worked to establish.
Whether purposeful or not, the “Mad Dany” turn ultimately endorses the idea of inevitability, whether in the form of family fate or genetics. This undermines the notion that a person is defined by the decisions he or she has made.
The “Mad Dany” turn suggests genetics really do matter. This does a disservice to people living with, or have family members who live with, mental illness – it sends the message that they can’t escape genes, either. Worse, by connecting Daenerys’s war crime to Targaryen madness, the show basically upholds the stigma between mental illness and criminality. (How very 19th century.)
Whether purposeful or not, the “Mad Dany” turn ultimately endorses the idea of inevitability, whether in the form of family fate or genetics. This undermines the notion that a person is defined by the decisions he or she has made.
The Gender Optics Are Terrible
Let’s be honest: Game of Thrones has been wildly uneven in its representation of gender. This has accelerated in the last season, when all characters have been flattened into cartoonish versions of themselves as the show rushes too quickly towards its conclusion. This has hit female characters especially hard, unfortunately, transforming them into stereotypes rather than fully-realized humans: Sansa credits her rapist for making her strong and becomes a catty “mean girl” who can’t play nice with Daenerys; Arya does kill the Night King, but only after two male characters get to fulfill their destinies by acting as her protectors; and Cersei is never depicted as actually ruling Westeros – instead the show wastes Lena Headey’s talent by asking her to scowl down at people from the throne, her window in the Red Keep, or King’s Landing’s ramparts.
Daenerys’s turn into the “Mad Queen” only heightens the show’s problems with gender representation. Her descent into madness is undeniably, inescapably gendered. Madness, hysteria, and emotionality have historically been codes to mark women as unfit to rule. This trope is as old as it is boring and offensive: women cannot rule because they are too emotional. Though madness is apparently a Targaryen family trait, Daenerys is the main target of this concern. Nobody wrings their hands over Jon’s mental health. If madness is a Targaryen quirk, shouldn’t he be at risk for inheriting his grandfather’s insanity, too?
The show makes the connection between madness and queenship explicit in its two final villains. While on the surface, it is feminist to have women vying for power and acting as villains, the show genders this conflict by reducing two powerful female rulers into hysterical, fire-loving mad queens: Cersei, who used wildfire to blow up the Great Sept of Baelor in Season 6; and Daenerys, who incinerated the city she had just won. Lady rulers, the show seems to suggest, can’t govern kingdoms because they can’t even govern themselves. They need men around to make sure they don’t go berserk. Indeed, the show leans into this idea: Daenerys only checked her worst impulses because she had male advisors like Jorah Mormont, Barristan Selmy, Tyrion Lannister, and Varys to keep her in line. The implication is clear: without men to rein her in, Daenerys was free to give in to her emotions and torch the city.
Indeed, Daenerys’s decision to raze the city was presented as an emotional one. The show set it up so her “snap” stemmed from a series of emotional blows. First, she was grieving the loss of her best friend Missandei and her dragon-child Rhaegal. Though the idea that grief is a form of madness is interesting, the show made her emotions political, too. She felt isolated and betrayed: Tyrion repeatedly gave her terrible advice, Jorah died, and Varys betrayed her. The straw that broke the camel’s back was Jon Snow’s rejection of her in the moment she most needed his love and support. By using heartbreak to motivate her turn, the show reduced Daenerys to a crazy ex-girlfriend whose rage at being dumped fueled her quest for vengeance.
Game of Thrones decided this was the best way to frame Daenerys’s dark turn.
The atrociously gendered “Mad Dany” turn rings false in 2019. It is tone-deaf for Game of Thrones to transform a rape survivor – a character that rape survivors identify with, no less – into a deranged villain in the post-#MeToo, post-2016 Election era. Representation matters and context always creates art, so leaning into “Mad Dany” feels like an egregious misstep when we are in the midst of national debates about sexual assault, women’s rights, and women in politics. George R.R. Martin began his book series in the early 1990s – before Monica Lewinsky, Candidate Hillary Clinton, or Christine Blasey Ford – and I wonder how his stories might be different if he had started them today. Even if “Mad Dany” was always Martin’s endgame, the showrunners didn’t have to tell that story in the television adaptation, especially since they have changed so much already. An outdated character-turn is still an outdated character-turn, no matter how well executed it is. While creative choices should be made on their own merit, arbiters of popular culture must shoulder the burden of representation and be open to cultural critiques. 2019 is not 2011 or 1991; it is a different context, and we are not telling stories the same way that we were then. Considering that Hollywood is undergoing a moment of reckoning, Benioff and Weiss’s decision to uphold damaging gender tropes in the form of the “Mad Queen” stereotype is disappointing, to say the least.
Want to Subvert Expectations? Let Her Be the Complicated Hero
Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are obsessed with subverting audience expectations on Game of Thrones. I would argue that the best way to subvert what the audience expects in a fantasy story would be to let a woman be the ultimate hero. Daenerys could have – and maybe should have – fulfilled this role.
The story has repeatedly established Jon Snow as the main hero. He’s had a hero journey – complete with a death and resurrection – and seemingly can do no wrong. Jon is the moral compass of the show; his only real flaw is that he is honorable to a fault. He will probably need to destroy the source of corrupting power before it destroys the realms of men.
For a show that has been criticized for its gender representation and unnecessary sexposition, it would have been a bold choice to have Daenerys emerge as the ultimate complicated hero of Westeros.
The best way to subvert expectations for the classic fantasy hero would be to have Daenerys fulfill that role. Most fantasy heroes – ranging from Luke Skywalker to Harry Potter – must make a choice: turn from darkness or fall victim to it. For several seasons, Game of Thrones heavy-handedly foreshadowed that Daenerys might fail this test and succumb to Targaryen madness. But what if the show swerved at the last minute? What if Daenerys had chosen to reject the darkness within her and restrain herself on the city ramparts? What if she actually made good on her promise to break the wheel and melted the Iron Throne, the chair of power that her ancestors had built? If this had been her fate, she would have been a complex female hero in a genre that remains disproportionately about male heroes. Daenerys would join the shamefully slim ranks of fantasy heroines like Lyra Belacqua and Meg Murry. For a show that has been criticized for its gender representation and unnecessary sexposition, it would have been a bold choice to have Daenerys emerge as the ultimate complicated hero of Westeros.
Though Game of Thrones certainly foreshadowed Daenerys’s dark turn, the show could have taken her character arc in a different direction. Instead of becoming Westeros’s ultimate villain, she could have become the savior she always hoped to be.
There is no guarantee that Daenerys’s story in George R.R. Martin’s books will end the same way, though chances are very good that it will. Fans of the books have long anticipated Daenerys’s turn and have faith that Martin will execute her descent with more nuance and care than the show. That may be true. But I sincerely hope that is not where the character is headed in the books. No matter how well executed it may be, bending Daenerys’s arc towards evil would be a disappointing end for a character with so much potential.
Photo Credits: HBO
Discussion about this post