Women Love Fest Day 1: Why I Love Daenerys Targaryen Part 1: Strength in a Man’s World
womenlovefest
The celebration has begun! I’m looking forward to everyone’s posts so, so much.
I will be doing Daenerys Targaryen of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fame. In part because I’ve been very sad about the post ADWD hate she’s been getting, and the fact that people think she’s a Mary Sue (which: No), and in part because I just am completely enamored of her as a character. Many people on my flist are enamored with and feel a deep connection to Buffy. You guys, that’s how I feel about Dany, even though I am not really all that much like her at all. Something about her resonates with me.
For those of you who don’t know who she is at all and are curious (and aren’t afraid of slight spoilers - this is a scene from the fourth episode of the show, to give you a sense of how far into the story it is), THIS is my favorite scene with her in GoT (at least before the last episode) (I also embed it below). It should give you a little taste of what she’s about.
Anyway, to start the week, I have part 1 of a three part reflection on the different sides of Dany’s character and story that I love. This one is Game of Thrones centric, so no spoilers for those of you who have only seen the show.
Why I Love Daenerys Targaryen Part 1: Strength in a Man’s World Without Physical Strength
This post is all about Dany pre-dragons, aka Dany in Game of Thrones. Most people notice that Dany has the most defined/completed arc of the book/season (well, other than Ned, I guess), which is true. It’s an arc that leads up to the final moment, where she hatches the dragons and becomes a different kind of character, as I will discuss later this week. But for now, I want to talk about why I love her Game of Thrones arc so much.
Some people are inspired by kick-ass female characters who are, well, kick-ass. Buffy, Olivia Dunham, Sydney Bristow, Sarah Connor, Arya, etc, etc. I’m not. Don’t get me wrong - I love those kinds of characters. I enjoy action, and I especially enjoy action when there is a lady doing it. BUT I, personally, cannot find particular inspiration in these characters (or at least, not in their ass kicking), because it is so far removed from my own experiences and abilities. They are strong, and they are brave, and I appreciate that, but I don’t feel like I can emulate them, when their internal strength and bravery is so often linked to abilities I just don’t have.
The characters that inspire me are the ones that kick butt metaphorically, that look at their situation and make the best of it they can, without necessarily being physically strong. Peggy Olsen. Spencer Hastings. Daenerys Targaryen.
Dany’s arc in GoT is, boiled down, a very simple story of a woman going from being completely subjugated, a literal pawn in the plans of older men, to a woman who has realized her own agency and ability to wield power. Which is awesome, and I don’t think I have to explain why it’s awesome (though if you want to talk about, I’m down).
But what I love specifically about Dany pre-dragons (as I’ll get to later, dragons move her into a different territory - one I love equally, but is much larger and more mythical and less relatable) is that the agency she finds is very tied to navigating the world she is in. Which, yes, means that a lot of the way she wields power is by using her relationships to the men around her (or in the cast of her son, inside of her). Which I know bothers some people, but which I really like, because it feels very realistic, and, as someone who has a hard time bucking the system entirely, I find it very relatable. She plays by the rules, but she makes the rules work for her.
Here, my favorite Dany scene pre-finale from the show:
Click to view“I am a Khaleesi of the Dothraki. I am the wife of the great Kahl and I carry his son inside me. The next time you raise a hand to me will be the last time you have hands.”
This is the culmination of Dany’s slow realization that she doesn’t have to just be a pawn and a victim. She has already turned around her situation with her husband from a man treating his wife as property, literally raping her at will, by taking control of her sexuality, and demanding from Drogo an equal partnership in bed, which in turn transforms their relationship in general. He listens to her, because she realized she could make his listen to her by asserting her autonomy and desires. And in this scene, Dany finally realizes that that means she has power - even over the brother who had terrorized her physically and emotionally for her entire life.
And so yes, the way she phrases her power is very tied to men - she is the wife of the Kahl, the mother of the great stallion. Because in the world she lives in, men are absolutely the ones who have power, especially if you are a woman who can’t use physical strength to gain agency and some independence from that hierarchy (this is not true in all of the ASOIAF universe, but with the Dothraki? Oh yeah.)
But I like that. I like that she’s like, you know what? These men are trying to push me around, sell me off, use me for their own ends. But by doing that, they have dumped a huge amount of power in my lap if I just reach out and take it, winning over my husband and using my status as his wife and the mother of this child to do what I want (which starts by no longer listening to everything her brother says, and grows into trying to help other, more powerless women around her, to various effects that I’ll touch on in a later post).
No wonder she was so upset up Drogo - it’s not just that she loved him (though I do believe she came to) - he was her source of power.
And when she lost that? Well, having tasted it, she wasn’t about to give it up. She could have. She could have gone and lived with the other former Khaleesi. But she knew she wanted to be more than that, so she looked at what she had learned, and thus: Dragons.
And dragons change the equation, because dragons allow her to completely bypass the patriarchal hierarchy by giving her a form of power that is too significant to ignore. And what happens then…well, that’s for later.
But for now, I think the point I’m getting at is that if I were in the GoT universe, I would not be Arya. (Or spoilers for some names from the other books Brienne, Asha, Yigrette, etc.)
I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing for the rest of the week, but I'm thinking something like:
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/or 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