Women Love Fest Day 6: Why I Love Why I Love Dany, Part 3: But she's also just a teenaged girl, yo
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Day 6!
Sorry guys -- I failed yesterday, do to internet weirdness. But here's Day 6. Day 7 coming in a bit.
So, my third post about why I love Dany. As before, I'll do a bit that's Game of Thrones friendly. The other part will have spoilers through A Dance With Dragons. I'll mark where it switches!
Women Love Fest Day 6: Why I Love Daenerys Targaryen , Part 3: But she's also just a teenage girl, yo
I've already talked about why I love Dany's empowerment arc, and Dany as a a super-human figure. But now it's time for some brief thoughts on another element of Dany's character that is important (and why I CAN'T understand people calling her a Mary Sue):
She's also a teenaged girl. A teenaged girl who is attracted to manly men, and believes in other people's good intentions more than she should, and doesn't always grasp all the complexities or politics of a situation.
In Game of Thrones this is most obvious with her interactions with Mirri Maz Duur. Her choice to save Mirri is obviously motivated by very, very good intentions, and no one would argue with it. Her choice to TRUST Mirri, on the other hand, comes from naivete -- a belief that if she has treated some one well, they will respond in turn. And this mistake costs her EVERYTHING: Her husband, her child, the life she had built for herself.
And I LIKE that. Because it's a mistake that makes sense, and comes from a good place, but is still dead wrong.
SPOILERS THROUGH DANCE WITH DRAGONS
And that is what continues. I've seen a lot of backlash against Dany in ADWD but I LOVED her in ADWD -- exactly because of all of the mistakes she makes. She is a teenage girl who has taken up this mantel of mother to the slaves, and she does it with good intentions, but she has no idea what to do once she's freed these people. She has no idea how to rule a city. And why should she? Nothing in her background would prepare her, and nothing about her natural strengths -- which involve wanting to right injustices and the use of power as a blunt weapon -- are suited for courtly intrigue. She can fight armies, not assassins in her city or people trying to poison her (note that she has had to be saved by others from attempted assassinations multiple times).
As a side note, this is why I don't buy that her storyline is a "all these savages need is a noble white person" story. Because they DIDN'T need Dany. Sure, she freed the slaves, which from our POV is the morally right thing to do, but she went about it all wrong. You can't just barge in, say "you're free" and expect things to work out. Arguably Dany made everything worse by completely disrupting the political balance in Slaver's bay -- if anything, it's a subversion of that trope.
BUT -- I LIKE her for this. Because here's the thing. I don't think most of the choices she made in ADWD were THAT bad. They weren't right, but she rarely had a clearly good option. Her actual mistake was back in ASOS, when she chose to invade Meeren in the first place. But, again, that choice came from a good place -- the desire to help, the desire to free. But once again her teenage naivete, the belief that doing the "right" thing will get the right result, was the stumbling block.
And that's cool, because she IS a teenage girl. It makes her a more believable character.
In the end, I don't think Dany should sit on the Iron Throne. She cares about her subjects, which is great, but she isn't very good at the politics -- which if anything are worse in Westeros -- and more to the point, she HATES them. I think being Queen would sap Dany of all her energy, all of her Dragon's fire.
And that's interesting, because she's set up this whole arc where she keeps doing what she thinks she should do, but it's not actually what she should be doing. She should be going up to the wall, fighting against the Others with her dragons -- fighting the darkness with fire, exactly what she's good at -- and then retire off in the distance, hopefully with a partner. Because our girl likes power, but she also likes being happy, and sensual (see: Darrio), and the best thing she could do for herself and for everyone else in Westeros is save it from the Others, and then make sure someone else, someone who cares but is also good at the day-to-day politics, is on the Iron Throne.
And then, hopefully, be happy. But will she figure that out? It's ASOIAF, so probably not. But one can hope.
Coming up:
Day 1: Why I Love Daenerys Targaryen Part 1: Strength in a Man’s World
Day 2: Vid and art recs.
Day 3: Why I Love Dany, Part 2: Dany as Mythical Godess Figure of Life/Destruction
Day 4: Favorite Dany quotes and moments.
Day 5: Dany Icons
Day 6: Why I Love Dany, Part 3: Dany as Mistaken Teenager, plus some thoughts on race
Day 7: Dany GIF spam/summery of awesomness