The Fall of Daenerys Targaryen
I am a big fan of Game of Thrones. I started reading the books over 15 years ago. And though I prefer the books to the show, I think the show, overall, has done a fantastic job adapting George RR Martin’s material. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about the way they have proceeded without the books to draw upon. This latest episode upset me greatly, and so I am undertaking this as a form of catharsis. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, and maybe what follows wouldn’t have played out any better on screen. But if the end to the show is indeed meant that Daenerys has gone full Targaryen, and is pretty much completely mad, then I think they went about showing it the wrong way. There is a non-zero chance that there is more to it than that, but since it’s the most likely scenario, we’ll use that as the premise here. The other premise I’m using here is that this is how I would approach it without rebuilding everything from the ground up. Which honestly, is what’s really needed. And so, using that, what follows are some ways in which I think her turn would have been more believable.
You focus on the idea of home, with the subtext of belonging.
Daenerys has never had a true home. In the books, she always remembers and longs for the house with the red door, where she lived when she was very little. But their guardian died and she and Viserys had to flee. She grew up running from place to place just ahead of Robert’s assassins, never staying in once place for long, and never belonging anywhere. When she is wed to Khal Drogo, for the first time in her life she feels like she is beginning to belong somewhere, and that she might have a home. It’s not the one she envisioned, but the Dothraki love her and she loves her husband. But even still, her thoughts remain on Westeros.
Then just when she starts to feel as though she belongs somewhere, Drogo dies, her unborn son dies, and she almost loses everything. It is at this point she wakes the dragons from stone and she truly begins to believe in her destiny. She realizes that if she is ever to have a home, she must find it for herself. So that is what she begins doing.
When she gets to Mereen, she tries to slow down a bit. Take a rest for her and her people. The freed slaves love her, but it seems that that sense of belonging is what matters more to her than their love. She tries to make something of a home in Mereen, but the ugly realities of the city prevent it. The old power structures work against her, and most of the people see her as a foreign conqueror. Most are scheming against her or outright betraying her, and there are few people she can trust. Even her new allies in the city only support her in order to raise themselves up rather than out of loyalty to her. Mereen cannot be her home, she will never belong there and she knows it.
Two passages from the last Daenerys chapter in A Dance With Dragons illustrate this:
“Mereen was not her home, and it never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Mereen would always be the Harpy’s city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy.”
…
“‘I had to take Mereen or see my children starve along the march.” Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. “I had to take Mereen to feed my people.’
You took Mereen, he told her, yet still you lingered.
‘To be a queen.’
You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros.
‘It is such a long way,’ she complained. ‘I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.’
No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.
‘Fire and Blood,’ Daenerys told the swaying grass.”
The first passage demonstrates that she knows she doesn’t belong in Mereen and it can never be her home. The second demonstrates that a home is something she’s desperately searching for, but not sure she will ever find (and also a hint of what may be to come).
That is all the background info that has been set up in seasons 1-6. In seasons 7 and 8, here’s what I think they should have done without fundamentally changing everything that happened:
If Daenerys is to find a home, that home has to be in Westeros. But by this point, she’s built it up so much in her mind that the reality can almost certainly never live up to her expectations. So, start with that. Focus on her disillusionment with what she finds in Westeros.
She arrives at Dragonstone and finds allies in Dorne and Highgarden. Except that again, they are allies out of convenience, not love or loyalty to Daenerys. Their main motivation is hatred of Cersei. Even the Greyjoys are there only because they need her backing against Euron. Jon shows up, and he’s unwilling to back her. The North has declared its independence and the only thing they remember of Targaryens is the mad king. Jon is the recalcitrant king of a recalcitrant people. Right off the bat, she is finding the same things in Westeros that she found in Mereen - old power structures working against her, allies that are there only because of what they can get from her, people that view her as a foreign conqueror, and few people she can trust. Illyrio used to tell Viserys that the small folk of Westeros drank secret toasts to his health and the people yearned for the return of their true king. Daenerys likely heard this from Viserys, and yet when she arrives, the small folk are indifferent or frightened of her, so more disillusionment. We see all of these things happening to her in the show, but we never get the sense that she realizes it. Westeros was supposed to be different, but she’s finding it to be more like Mereen.
Next, you have her lose someone close to her relatively early in season 7. A military defeat like she had is fine, and I think necessary. But having her flip out and accuse Tyrion of disloyalty because of it just makes her seem petulant. She agreed to the plan he proposed, and you can’t expect to win every battle. But what if in addition to the military defeat, Cersei sent some assassins to Dragonstone and though they fail to get Daenerys, they kill someone like Grey Worm or Missandei? Or someone like Irri or Ser Barristan if they hadn’t bumped them off prematurely. Someone close to her that she trusts implicitly. Now Daenerys is grieving and also looking over her shoulder. They didn’t use Missandei for much in seasons 7 and 8 other than the impetus for her rage in the last two episodes, so kill her early and let Dany’s resentment build up over time. Westeros is the place that cost her her closest friend. Then have Dany talk about Missandei at times to remind us how important she was to her (something of which the show did not do a good job). This can also be a good way to draw her together with Jon, as she is looking for comfort in him.
Next, she loses Viseryon, one of her children. And though she loses a dragon, she gains the North and she believes she found the love of her life. Finally, things are starting to look like she thought they would. Jon loves her, and while it is also an alliance of convenience, he chooses to support her because he believes in her. In her mind, it is the best of both worlds, an alliance for both political reasons and for love. The show did a lot of this, but it was largely just a bunch of stuff that happened. Other than the one scene with her and Jon when he wakes up, you don’t get a sense of the impact losing Viseryon has on her, nor did they do a good job of showing how horrified she would be of Viseryon being raised by the Night King. And most importantly, they didn’t do a good job of showing how much her relationship with Jon means to her. Jon is her greatest chance for what she’s always wanted. Not only does he command the most difficult of the seven kingdoms, he loves her and is devoted to her. Not because she is the mother of dragons, but because of her character. And she loves him too. With Jon at her side, she can have it all - love, sense of belonging, and her rightful place as a queen. She can finally have her HOME.
As an aside, said relationship really only lasted one episode. They sleep together at the end of the last episode of season 7, and at the end of the first episode of season 8, Jon finds out his heritage, and their relationship is effectively over. You need to give it more time to breathe than that. A longer, deeper relationship would only increase the betrayal she feels later.
So, just when things are finally looking up for her, they start to go awry again. Jon loves her and trusts her, but the northerners don’t. Then, as the army of the dead approaches, Jon suddenly starts acting distant, and she doesn’t understand why. Right when she needs him the most, he is pulling back. And when he finally tells her the reason, her reaction shouldn’t solely be worry over losing the crown, but also worry over losing HIM. Recall what she tells Sansa: “I’m here because I love your brother. I trust him. And I know he’s true to his word. He’s only the second man in my life I can say that about.” This relationship is important to her. Daenerys is used to the idea of Targaryens intermarrying. Viserys blamed her for Robert’s rebellion because if she’d been born earlier, she would’ve been able to marry Rhaegar instead of Elia of Dorne. She sometimes thought that she would have to marry Viserys. She even thinks to herself in the books that if Rhaegar’s son with Elia (also named Aegon) hadn’t been killed during the sack of King’s Landing by the Lannisters (which in the books, he wasn’t), she might have married him because they were the same age. So, the idea of marrying her nephew is nothing strange to her, and if Jon becomes king, well guess what? She’s still the queen. Even if Jon would officially be in charge, she knows him. She knows he doesn’t long for the leadership mantle and can make the same assessment as Varys as to the influence she has over him. But as Varys pointed out, marrying your aunt isn’t common in Winterfell and Jon has a different outlook on things. Jon will need convincing and there is no time to do it because the army of the dead arrives. But the key should be her relationship with Jon, how much it means to her, and how much losing it would hurt her. Taking the throne is Dany’s raison d'être, but it is far from the only thing she cares about, which is what her reaction in the show makes it seem like.
The battle comes next, and she loses both Ser Jorah and large portions of her Dothraki and Unsullied armies (both of which are magically replenished later). They show her crying over Ser Jorah at the funeral pyre, but don’t focus much on what this loss means to her. At this point in the show, he was her oldest friend. And though he did betray her once, he was now fully devoted to her and one of the few people she could completely trust. They needed to show more of what he meant to her and how alone she is beginning to feel.
Then, prior to the victory feast, have a scene where she attempts to keep Jon’s affection and he is still reticent. That way, when she sees how everyone reacts to him at the feast, it’s more believable that she begins to feel her crown being threatened. She’s losing everyone close to her, she’s losing her love, and now potentially what she has always believed was her birthright. The home that seemed so close is slipping away quickly. Then you have her go to Jon again and beg him not to tell anyone about his heritage. And when he dithers, she realizes that time is against her. She is losing allies, and that will only continue. Then make that the reason she’s in such a hurry to get down to King’s Landing. The way the show executed it just made her look irrational and unhinged. Also, show her frustration that despite sacrificing so much of her army in defense of the North, the northerners still don’t trust her.
Lastly, you need a better reason for Sansa and Arya to distrust Daenerys than what they give in the show. They don’t have any great reason to trust Daenerys; they don’t know her. But neither do they have any great reason NOT to trust her, because again, they don’t know her. They didn’t live through the days of the mad king, Daenerys is the enemy of their two greatest enemies - Cersei and the Night King, and she is there to help defend them. At this point, Jon has pledged himself and the North to Daenerys and they (especially Sansa) are just throwing a tantrum over it. Sansa asks Daenerys “What about the North?” The question is conveniently left unanswered, and so Sansa assumes the worst. But really, why shouldn’t Daenerys expect the North’s support? Jon, their erstwhile king, has pledged himself and the North to her cause and she followed up by coming north to defend them. When they’re making plans to move against Cersei, Sansa and Arya seem upset that Daenerys is willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat Cersei. Well shit, that’s something they want too, isn’t it? And both have done some pretty terrible things to their own enemies. Sansa never bothers to ask Jon why he believes in Daenerys, she’s just mad that he gave up his crown.
By the by, Sansa clearly does not trust Jon’s judgement. She hasn’t trusted it all the way back to when they were reunited. And yet we’re to believe that she thinks he’d make a better ruler than Daenerys? If only Sansa had a brother with the magical ability to see everything that has ever happened anywhere in the history of the world. If she had that, she could go ask that brother what Daenerys Targaryen is like. Maybe then Sansa could’ve found out about her liberation of the slaves, her compassion, her loyalty, and willingness to sacrifice for those under her rule (including losing one of her dragons while saving Jon’s dumb ass life). Sadly, Sansa has no such resource available to her. Now, you may be thinking that Sansa was right not to trust Daenerys, because look at the way she torched King’s Landing. But Sansa was as complicit as anyone in pushing Daenerys down that path.
At any rate, give a better reason for their distrust. Like the fact that Daenerys basically held Jon hostage until he agreed to bend the knee, and how she was unwilling to fight for the North unless they capitulated. Despite this battle being an all or nothing fight against the dead, she would’ve let them all die unless she received a promise of future support. Maybe have the dragons do something bad. Drogon did eat a child in Mereen. Or the Dothraki warriors do what the Dothraki do and rape some women. Cause some tension between Daenerys’s forces and the people of the North and have Daenerys brush it off because there are bigger issues to deal with.
Once they get down to Dragonstone, you need a better pretext for what happened than “oh, the Iron Fleet ambushed them again.” Have they learned nothing? This is the same mistake for which Daenerys accuses Tyrion of disloyalty in season 7. Except that now it shouldn’t be a surprise at all. Jaime told them that Euron was returning with his fleet and the Golden Company. And you know the nice thing about having flying dragons? You can do some pretty good reconnaissance. Benioff said something along the lines of “Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet.” Really??! Isn’t it awfully convenient that they forget about the single greatest threat left facing them? This move just makes Daenerys, all her advisors, and the people on her ships seem utterly incompetent. Also, make the scorpions more believable. They hit Rhaegal three times in a row, then never hit again. The first shot wasn’t expected, so ok, have it hit. But have a few misses, and make it look like they might get away, show her hope. But Rhaegal is wounded, and they finally bring him down. Also, don’t have the scorpions fire like they’re machine guns. If they’re going to get ambushed, it has to be more believable. We don’t know what sort of garrison was left behind at Dragonstone, so maybe the Iron Fleet captured it while most of her forces were fighting up north. If you still want to use the scorpions, then they could have installed a few in the castle, so when the dragons land, they take out Rhaegal. It would be an easier shot. Or have fewer ships conduct the ambush, which were hidden amongst the rocks.
Rhaegal dying and seeing Missandei beheaded in front of her are both good reasons to push Daenerys closer to the brink. So, you can still do those things. If Missandei isn’t the one killed earlier in season 7, then she can die here. Ideally, they would’ve kept someone else around that was close to Daenerys, but maybe Grey Worm dies saving her from the assassins in season 7 instead. At any rate, she loses another dragon and another close friend and confidant. But remember, the problem isn’t that they didn’t give her a good enough reason to snap, it’s that they didn’t give her a good enough reason to take it out on the general population. So, in the time in between, focus again on the idea of home. How she doesn’t feel welcome in Westeros. She doesn’t feel like she belongs. And if she doesn’t belong in Westeros, where does she belong? Also, give us more scenes like the one with Tyrion where she isn’t sleeping or eating. Show us more of how betrayed she feels by Jon, the man she loved. Show her anguish. Show her conflict. Show how hopeless she feels. That even if she defeats Cersei, she can never get what she truly wants.
Then when she’s sitting on Drogon and the bells are ringing, she looks over the city and the Red Keep. This is the city that her ancestors built. It is her ancestral home. It was supposed to be HER home. Her last and only chance for one. Her place and her people. But it isn’t. She doesn’t belong here or anywhere. And in that moment, she snaps. That makes it not just about Cersei, but about the city itself and the people in it. Maybe she thinks she can only have a home by burning everything down and starting new, or maybe she just wants everyone to feel her pain. But by making it about more than just Cersei, it becomes much more believable that she would begin torching the city instead of just going straight to the Red Keep.
Finally, it is important to sprinkle in bits and pieces that show the beginnings of her madness. Have her talk to those closest to her about how she feels different, she doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, and how she’s frightened of some of her impulses. Daenerys has a kind heart, as Ser Jorah said, and in her calm, rational moments, the things she does would terrify her. In her less rational moments, show her as impulsive, where sometimes her counselors can talk her back other times they can’t. In the show, she pretty much always allowed herself to be talked down, except when it came to flying north to save Jon. Have someone close to her, like Missandei start to express concern. (Grey Worm and Missandei never questioned her once in seasons 7 & 8) You need to show her struggling with what she’s becoming. It even helps make it more believable for people like Tyrion and Varys to question her, rather than just seemingly flipping instantaneously when she wants to attack Kings Landing. Yes, it will lessen the shock value when she does snap. But Daenerys is one of the main protagonists of the story. People like her and root for her. So, when she fails at the end, believability is vastly more important than shock. In Lord of the Rings, you see Frodo struggling with the control the ring is exerting over him, and ultimately at the end, he fails in his quest and claims the ring as his own. It’s only Gollum that inadvertently saves the day. You can see it coming, but you still have the same reaction as Sam: https://youtu.be/c24-0Amwyik?t=106 You hold out that hope that she’ll overcome what she’s struggling with. It is not as shocking, but it is still shocking, because you want to believe in her and it is always shocking to see your heroes fail so spectacularly.
The way her fall is written in the show does not give Daenerys any agency. It is a series of terrible things that happen to her, which she seems powerless to prevent. And in the end, we’re told that she’s got faulty genetics that cause her to go mad. She literally cannot win. Her supposedly clever advisors are giving her terrible advice. If she listens to them, she loses. If she doesn’t listen to them, she loses, because everyone thinks she’s unreasonable. Events such as Ned’s beheading, the Red Wedding, and even Jon’s murder by the Night’s Watch are all the direct and logical result of decisions made by those characters. You can see them coming, and they are nonetheless shocking when they happen. Any one of those events could have been prevented had the characters involved not made serious mistakes along the way. The moments are all terrible, but they feel earned. Daenerys is simply stripped of what’s most important to her under circumstances that are questionable at best, and then her genetics take over.
Ned, Robb, and Jon all have the potential means to avoid their ultimate fate (maybe Ned can take the black, maybe Walder Frey will accept Edmure instead, maybe the brothers of the watch will remain loyal). And we root for that right up until those avenues of escape are closed. And when they do close, it hurts, but we understand why. With Daenerys, we’re asked to believe that she’s got a chance to win this if she makes the right moves. If only the battle to take the city goes well, everything will be fine. But the battle to take the city DOES go well. Better than any of them could have reasonably expected. Yet she decimates the city anyway, because apparently none of it matters in the end. Even if none of those terrible things had happened to her, she would have eventually gone mad anyway, because inbreeding. Daenerys is doomed no matter what she does. I don’t find that to be a compelling arc under almost any circumstances. But if that’s her arc, then it is important to paint Daenerys as a tragic figure and not an out-and-out villain. I think that is what George RR Martin intends to do, and even what the show runners intended on some level. Yet by going for the maximum shock value instead of showing her gradual descent and struggle, they have made her into more of a villain. If done correctly, we would have been allowed to empathize with her as she struggled and mourn for her when she failed. Instead, they flipped the switch as if to say “Gotcha! She’s really the main villain, not the Night King. We totally fooled you!” This is why so many people feel angry and betrayed.
With a story so long and expansive, the audience has a significant investment in it, both in time and emotions. And let’s not forget the even greater investment the cast and crew have in this. Building someone up for 70 episodes only to knock them down in 3 is just irresponsible, especially when the turn isn’t fully believable. Complete madness isn’t something that hits you overnight. This show used to take it’s time with story arcs, and now it is just rushing to the finish. And worst of all, it was self-imposed. HBO would’ve been perfectly happy to have full 10-episode seasons for 7 and 8. They had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, yet this is what they chose. The rushed character arcs feel unearned, and characters are doing things for the sake of the plot rather than acting like the character we have been presented with up until now. I was a nervous wreck before and throughout my first viewing of The Long Night episode, because I care about these characters and what happens to them. I will not be a nervous wreck before the finale. These last two episodes have irrevocably destroyed that. I will be feeling bitter and cynical, and with basement-level expectations. I imagine many others will be feeling this way as well. We all deserved better, and so did Daenerys.
You focus on the idea of home, with the subtext of belonging.
Daenerys has never had a true home. In the books, she always remembers and longs for the house with the red door, where she lived when she was very little. But their guardian died and she and Viserys had to flee. She grew up running from place to place just ahead of Robert’s assassins, never staying in once place for long, and never belonging anywhere. When she is wed to Khal Drogo, for the first time in her life she feels like she is beginning to belong somewhere, and that she might have a home. It’s not the one she envisioned, but the Dothraki love her and she loves her husband. But even still, her thoughts remain on Westeros.
Then just when she starts to feel as though she belongs somewhere, Drogo dies, her unborn son dies, and she almost loses everything. It is at this point she wakes the dragons from stone and she truly begins to believe in her destiny. She realizes that if she is ever to have a home, she must find it for herself. So that is what she begins doing.
When she gets to Mereen, she tries to slow down a bit. Take a rest for her and her people. The freed slaves love her, but it seems that that sense of belonging is what matters more to her than their love. She tries to make something of a home in Mereen, but the ugly realities of the city prevent it. The old power structures work against her, and most of the people see her as a foreign conqueror. Most are scheming against her or outright betraying her, and there are few people she can trust. Even her new allies in the city only support her in order to raise themselves up rather than out of loyalty to her. Mereen cannot be her home, she will never belong there and she knows it.
Two passages from the last Daenerys chapter in A Dance With Dragons illustrate this:
“Mereen was not her home, and it never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Mereen would always be the Harpy’s city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy.”
…
“‘I had to take Mereen or see my children starve along the march.” Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. “I had to take Mereen to feed my people.’
You took Mereen, he told her, yet still you lingered.
‘To be a queen.’
You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros.
‘It is such a long way,’ she complained. ‘I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.’
No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.
‘Fire and Blood,’ Daenerys told the swaying grass.”
The first passage demonstrates that she knows she doesn’t belong in Mereen and it can never be her home. The second demonstrates that a home is something she’s desperately searching for, but not sure she will ever find (and also a hint of what may be to come).
That is all the background info that has been set up in seasons 1-6. In seasons 7 and 8, here’s what I think they should have done without fundamentally changing everything that happened:
If Daenerys is to find a home, that home has to be in Westeros. But by this point, she’s built it up so much in her mind that the reality can almost certainly never live up to her expectations. So, start with that. Focus on her disillusionment with what she finds in Westeros.
She arrives at Dragonstone and finds allies in Dorne and Highgarden. Except that again, they are allies out of convenience, not love or loyalty to Daenerys. Their main motivation is hatred of Cersei. Even the Greyjoys are there only because they need her backing against Euron. Jon shows up, and he’s unwilling to back her. The North has declared its independence and the only thing they remember of Targaryens is the mad king. Jon is the recalcitrant king of a recalcitrant people. Right off the bat, she is finding the same things in Westeros that she found in Mereen - old power structures working against her, allies that are there only because of what they can get from her, people that view her as a foreign conqueror, and few people she can trust. Illyrio used to tell Viserys that the small folk of Westeros drank secret toasts to his health and the people yearned for the return of their true king. Daenerys likely heard this from Viserys, and yet when she arrives, the small folk are indifferent or frightened of her, so more disillusionment. We see all of these things happening to her in the show, but we never get the sense that she realizes it. Westeros was supposed to be different, but she’s finding it to be more like Mereen.
Next, you have her lose someone close to her relatively early in season 7. A military defeat like she had is fine, and I think necessary. But having her flip out and accuse Tyrion of disloyalty because of it just makes her seem petulant. She agreed to the plan he proposed, and you can’t expect to win every battle. But what if in addition to the military defeat, Cersei sent some assassins to Dragonstone and though they fail to get Daenerys, they kill someone like Grey Worm or Missandei? Or someone like Irri or Ser Barristan if they hadn’t bumped them off prematurely. Someone close to her that she trusts implicitly. Now Daenerys is grieving and also looking over her shoulder. They didn’t use Missandei for much in seasons 7 and 8 other than the impetus for her rage in the last two episodes, so kill her early and let Dany’s resentment build up over time. Westeros is the place that cost her her closest friend. Then have Dany talk about Missandei at times to remind us how important she was to her (something of which the show did not do a good job). This can also be a good way to draw her together with Jon, as she is looking for comfort in him.
Next, she loses Viseryon, one of her children. And though she loses a dragon, she gains the North and she believes she found the love of her life. Finally, things are starting to look like she thought they would. Jon loves her, and while it is also an alliance of convenience, he chooses to support her because he believes in her. In her mind, it is the best of both worlds, an alliance for both political reasons and for love. The show did a lot of this, but it was largely just a bunch of stuff that happened. Other than the one scene with her and Jon when he wakes up, you don’t get a sense of the impact losing Viseryon has on her, nor did they do a good job of showing how horrified she would be of Viseryon being raised by the Night King. And most importantly, they didn’t do a good job of showing how much her relationship with Jon means to her. Jon is her greatest chance for what she’s always wanted. Not only does he command the most difficult of the seven kingdoms, he loves her and is devoted to her. Not because she is the mother of dragons, but because of her character. And she loves him too. With Jon at her side, she can have it all - love, sense of belonging, and her rightful place as a queen. She can finally have her HOME.
As an aside, said relationship really only lasted one episode. They sleep together at the end of the last episode of season 7, and at the end of the first episode of season 8, Jon finds out his heritage, and their relationship is effectively over. You need to give it more time to breathe than that. A longer, deeper relationship would only increase the betrayal she feels later.
So, just when things are finally looking up for her, they start to go awry again. Jon loves her and trusts her, but the northerners don’t. Then, as the army of the dead approaches, Jon suddenly starts acting distant, and she doesn’t understand why. Right when she needs him the most, he is pulling back. And when he finally tells her the reason, her reaction shouldn’t solely be worry over losing the crown, but also worry over losing HIM. Recall what she tells Sansa: “I’m here because I love your brother. I trust him. And I know he’s true to his word. He’s only the second man in my life I can say that about.” This relationship is important to her. Daenerys is used to the idea of Targaryens intermarrying. Viserys blamed her for Robert’s rebellion because if she’d been born earlier, she would’ve been able to marry Rhaegar instead of Elia of Dorne. She sometimes thought that she would have to marry Viserys. She even thinks to herself in the books that if Rhaegar’s son with Elia (also named Aegon) hadn’t been killed during the sack of King’s Landing by the Lannisters (which in the books, he wasn’t), she might have married him because they were the same age. So, the idea of marrying her nephew is nothing strange to her, and if Jon becomes king, well guess what? She’s still the queen. Even if Jon would officially be in charge, she knows him. She knows he doesn’t long for the leadership mantle and can make the same assessment as Varys as to the influence she has over him. But as Varys pointed out, marrying your aunt isn’t common in Winterfell and Jon has a different outlook on things. Jon will need convincing and there is no time to do it because the army of the dead arrives. But the key should be her relationship with Jon, how much it means to her, and how much losing it would hurt her. Taking the throne is Dany’s raison d'être, but it is far from the only thing she cares about, which is what her reaction in the show makes it seem like.
The battle comes next, and she loses both Ser Jorah and large portions of her Dothraki and Unsullied armies (both of which are magically replenished later). They show her crying over Ser Jorah at the funeral pyre, but don’t focus much on what this loss means to her. At this point in the show, he was her oldest friend. And though he did betray her once, he was now fully devoted to her and one of the few people she could completely trust. They needed to show more of what he meant to her and how alone she is beginning to feel.
Then, prior to the victory feast, have a scene where she attempts to keep Jon’s affection and he is still reticent. That way, when she sees how everyone reacts to him at the feast, it’s more believable that she begins to feel her crown being threatened. She’s losing everyone close to her, she’s losing her love, and now potentially what she has always believed was her birthright. The home that seemed so close is slipping away quickly. Then you have her go to Jon again and beg him not to tell anyone about his heritage. And when he dithers, she realizes that time is against her. She is losing allies, and that will only continue. Then make that the reason she’s in such a hurry to get down to King’s Landing. The way the show executed it just made her look irrational and unhinged. Also, show her frustration that despite sacrificing so much of her army in defense of the North, the northerners still don’t trust her.
Lastly, you need a better reason for Sansa and Arya to distrust Daenerys than what they give in the show. They don’t have any great reason to trust Daenerys; they don’t know her. But neither do they have any great reason NOT to trust her, because again, they don’t know her. They didn’t live through the days of the mad king, Daenerys is the enemy of their two greatest enemies - Cersei and the Night King, and she is there to help defend them. At this point, Jon has pledged himself and the North to Daenerys and they (especially Sansa) are just throwing a tantrum over it. Sansa asks Daenerys “What about the North?” The question is conveniently left unanswered, and so Sansa assumes the worst. But really, why shouldn’t Daenerys expect the North’s support? Jon, their erstwhile king, has pledged himself and the North to her cause and she followed up by coming north to defend them. When they’re making plans to move against Cersei, Sansa and Arya seem upset that Daenerys is willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat Cersei. Well shit, that’s something they want too, isn’t it? And both have done some pretty terrible things to their own enemies. Sansa never bothers to ask Jon why he believes in Daenerys, she’s just mad that he gave up his crown.
By the by, Sansa clearly does not trust Jon’s judgement. She hasn’t trusted it all the way back to when they were reunited. And yet we’re to believe that she thinks he’d make a better ruler than Daenerys? If only Sansa had a brother with the magical ability to see everything that has ever happened anywhere in the history of the world. If she had that, she could go ask that brother what Daenerys Targaryen is like. Maybe then Sansa could’ve found out about her liberation of the slaves, her compassion, her loyalty, and willingness to sacrifice for those under her rule (including losing one of her dragons while saving Jon’s dumb ass life). Sadly, Sansa has no such resource available to her. Now, you may be thinking that Sansa was right not to trust Daenerys, because look at the way she torched King’s Landing. But Sansa was as complicit as anyone in pushing Daenerys down that path.
At any rate, give a better reason for their distrust. Like the fact that Daenerys basically held Jon hostage until he agreed to bend the knee, and how she was unwilling to fight for the North unless they capitulated. Despite this battle being an all or nothing fight against the dead, she would’ve let them all die unless she received a promise of future support. Maybe have the dragons do something bad. Drogon did eat a child in Mereen. Or the Dothraki warriors do what the Dothraki do and rape some women. Cause some tension between Daenerys’s forces and the people of the North and have Daenerys brush it off because there are bigger issues to deal with.
Once they get down to Dragonstone, you need a better pretext for what happened than “oh, the Iron Fleet ambushed them again.” Have they learned nothing? This is the same mistake for which Daenerys accuses Tyrion of disloyalty in season 7. Except that now it shouldn’t be a surprise at all. Jaime told them that Euron was returning with his fleet and the Golden Company. And you know the nice thing about having flying dragons? You can do some pretty good reconnaissance. Benioff said something along the lines of “Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet.” Really??! Isn’t it awfully convenient that they forget about the single greatest threat left facing them? This move just makes Daenerys, all her advisors, and the people on her ships seem utterly incompetent. Also, make the scorpions more believable. They hit Rhaegal three times in a row, then never hit again. The first shot wasn’t expected, so ok, have it hit. But have a few misses, and make it look like they might get away, show her hope. But Rhaegal is wounded, and they finally bring him down. Also, don’t have the scorpions fire like they’re machine guns. If they’re going to get ambushed, it has to be more believable. We don’t know what sort of garrison was left behind at Dragonstone, so maybe the Iron Fleet captured it while most of her forces were fighting up north. If you still want to use the scorpions, then they could have installed a few in the castle, so when the dragons land, they take out Rhaegal. It would be an easier shot. Or have fewer ships conduct the ambush, which were hidden amongst the rocks.
Rhaegal dying and seeing Missandei beheaded in front of her are both good reasons to push Daenerys closer to the brink. So, you can still do those things. If Missandei isn’t the one killed earlier in season 7, then she can die here. Ideally, they would’ve kept someone else around that was close to Daenerys, but maybe Grey Worm dies saving her from the assassins in season 7 instead. At any rate, she loses another dragon and another close friend and confidant. But remember, the problem isn’t that they didn’t give her a good enough reason to snap, it’s that they didn’t give her a good enough reason to take it out on the general population. So, in the time in between, focus again on the idea of home. How she doesn’t feel welcome in Westeros. She doesn’t feel like she belongs. And if she doesn’t belong in Westeros, where does she belong? Also, give us more scenes like the one with Tyrion where she isn’t sleeping or eating. Show us more of how betrayed she feels by Jon, the man she loved. Show her anguish. Show her conflict. Show how hopeless she feels. That even if she defeats Cersei, she can never get what she truly wants.
Then when she’s sitting on Drogon and the bells are ringing, she looks over the city and the Red Keep. This is the city that her ancestors built. It is her ancestral home. It was supposed to be HER home. Her last and only chance for one. Her place and her people. But it isn’t. She doesn’t belong here or anywhere. And in that moment, she snaps. That makes it not just about Cersei, but about the city itself and the people in it. Maybe she thinks she can only have a home by burning everything down and starting new, or maybe she just wants everyone to feel her pain. But by making it about more than just Cersei, it becomes much more believable that she would begin torching the city instead of just going straight to the Red Keep.
Finally, it is important to sprinkle in bits and pieces that show the beginnings of her madness. Have her talk to those closest to her about how she feels different, she doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, and how she’s frightened of some of her impulses. Daenerys has a kind heart, as Ser Jorah said, and in her calm, rational moments, the things she does would terrify her. In her less rational moments, show her as impulsive, where sometimes her counselors can talk her back other times they can’t. In the show, she pretty much always allowed herself to be talked down, except when it came to flying north to save Jon. Have someone close to her, like Missandei start to express concern. (Grey Worm and Missandei never questioned her once in seasons 7 & 8) You need to show her struggling with what she’s becoming. It even helps make it more believable for people like Tyrion and Varys to question her, rather than just seemingly flipping instantaneously when she wants to attack Kings Landing. Yes, it will lessen the shock value when she does snap. But Daenerys is one of the main protagonists of the story. People like her and root for her. So, when she fails at the end, believability is vastly more important than shock. In Lord of the Rings, you see Frodo struggling with the control the ring is exerting over him, and ultimately at the end, he fails in his quest and claims the ring as his own. It’s only Gollum that inadvertently saves the day. You can see it coming, but you still have the same reaction as Sam: https://youtu.be/c24-0Amwyik?t=106 You hold out that hope that she’ll overcome what she’s struggling with. It is not as shocking, but it is still shocking, because you want to believe in her and it is always shocking to see your heroes fail so spectacularly.
The way her fall is written in the show does not give Daenerys any agency. It is a series of terrible things that happen to her, which she seems powerless to prevent. And in the end, we’re told that she’s got faulty genetics that cause her to go mad. She literally cannot win. Her supposedly clever advisors are giving her terrible advice. If she listens to them, she loses. If she doesn’t listen to them, she loses, because everyone thinks she’s unreasonable. Events such as Ned’s beheading, the Red Wedding, and even Jon’s murder by the Night’s Watch are all the direct and logical result of decisions made by those characters. You can see them coming, and they are nonetheless shocking when they happen. Any one of those events could have been prevented had the characters involved not made serious mistakes along the way. The moments are all terrible, but they feel earned. Daenerys is simply stripped of what’s most important to her under circumstances that are questionable at best, and then her genetics take over.
Ned, Robb, and Jon all have the potential means to avoid their ultimate fate (maybe Ned can take the black, maybe Walder Frey will accept Edmure instead, maybe the brothers of the watch will remain loyal). And we root for that right up until those avenues of escape are closed. And when they do close, it hurts, but we understand why. With Daenerys, we’re asked to believe that she’s got a chance to win this if she makes the right moves. If only the battle to take the city goes well, everything will be fine. But the battle to take the city DOES go well. Better than any of them could have reasonably expected. Yet she decimates the city anyway, because apparently none of it matters in the end. Even if none of those terrible things had happened to her, she would have eventually gone mad anyway, because inbreeding. Daenerys is doomed no matter what she does. I don’t find that to be a compelling arc under almost any circumstances. But if that’s her arc, then it is important to paint Daenerys as a tragic figure and not an out-and-out villain. I think that is what George RR Martin intends to do, and even what the show runners intended on some level. Yet by going for the maximum shock value instead of showing her gradual descent and struggle, they have made her into more of a villain. If done correctly, we would have been allowed to empathize with her as she struggled and mourn for her when she failed. Instead, they flipped the switch as if to say “Gotcha! She’s really the main villain, not the Night King. We totally fooled you!” This is why so many people feel angry and betrayed.
With a story so long and expansive, the audience has a significant investment in it, both in time and emotions. And let’s not forget the even greater investment the cast and crew have in this. Building someone up for 70 episodes only to knock them down in 3 is just irresponsible, especially when the turn isn’t fully believable. Complete madness isn’t something that hits you overnight. This show used to take it’s time with story arcs, and now it is just rushing to the finish. And worst of all, it was self-imposed. HBO would’ve been perfectly happy to have full 10-episode seasons for 7 and 8. They had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, yet this is what they chose. The rushed character arcs feel unearned, and characters are doing things for the sake of the plot rather than acting like the character we have been presented with up until now. I was a nervous wreck before and throughout my first viewing of The Long Night episode, because I care about these characters and what happens to them. I will not be a nervous wreck before the finale. These last two episodes have irrevocably destroyed that. I will be feeling bitter and cynical, and with basement-level expectations. I imagine many others will be feeling this way as well. We all deserved better, and so did Daenerys.