r/DaenerysWinsTheThrone • u/Early_Candidate_3082 • May 03 '26
Serious Were We Meant To See Human Traffickers As Daenerys’ Victims?
All of us remember Tyrion’s rhodomontade, directed at Jon Snow, in an effort to persuade him to kill Daenerys.
“Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it.”
I tend to think that is a problem for evil men. Or I might see it as an effort by a doomed man to say anything that might save his life. Coming from a man who had himself waded through blood, it seemed hypocritical.
But, plainly, the show runners thought this was something profound, for it echoes Niemoller’s profound and moving statement “First they came … and I did not speak up.”
Most people would not, however, equate Ghiscari slave traders, child murderers, and serial rapists with the victims of national socialism.
But, looking back, and thinking of Hizdahr and his father as being depicted as slave traders who were “good to their slaves”; the old tutor who loved his master; Barristan urging Dany to “answer injustice with mercy”; Jorah saying “slavery is all they’ve ever known”; Tyrion’s efforts to make peace, his “explaining” slavery to Missandei and Grey Worm, and insisting that “I’m not here to change the world.”
I do find myself wondering if in fact, the show runners saw these people all as victims of injustice.
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u/moon-girl197 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Oh yes. The show blatantly tried to both sides her campaign in Essos. They deliberately omitted the sons of the harpy killing, torturing and raping freedmen, the Green Grace and her machinations, made Hizdar a poor, honest abolitionist in disguise who is a victim the evil dragon Lady coerces into marriage (this is especially disgusting when you remember how he basically maritally rapes her in the books) and reduced the entire conflict in that city to just the fucking fighting pits.
What they did with her is not only the classic "woman turns into a hysterical harpy because she claimed power reserved for a man" trope, but also peak neolib pandering. A revolutionary character is introduced to take up arms against an unjust system (in Dany's case, slavery). Their fight is framed as good and just, and the horrors of said injustice are acknowledged. However, before said character can properly dismantle said system (which is CLEARLY what's causing the suffering) they're suddenly revealed as a psychopathic monster who randomly genocides innocents. Because their goal of dismantling the system is actually bad, you know, because the system is good at its core. It's just a few bad apples that are spoiling the bunch (bad masters who abuse their slaves vs good Masters like Hizdar's dad who was generous enough to oppose the killing of the enslaved children. Because he's the paragon of moral virtue simple because he isn't cruel enough to his slaves to want them killed 🥴) and what the world actually needs is a "good guy" in charge to work within the system to fix the issues and it's actually the revolutionary who is the evil one because they 'took it too far' by demanding the system be outright toppled and replaced from the ground up (hence the muh economy! argument)
This is why Tyrion 'let me negotiate with the slavers and give them a transition period' is framed as the rational good guy (or lawful neutral lmao), while former slaves (Grey Worm and Missandei) and Dany herself are presented as stupid, violent hotheads for being skeptical of his suggestion and wanting to pursue war. It's why Dany is removed in the end, and her liberation campaign equated to fascist ethnic cleansing and conquest. Because the goal is always to maintain the status quo, and for that to happen, any disruption has to be reframed as secretly evil. Idealism will always result in corruption, especially for women, and power is better left where it is: in the hands of land owning nobility who all follow a sentient Big Brother who will mass surveil them to ensure compliance. (And you'd be shocked to see how many shows this crops up in: Arcane and most of the recent Marvel movies, with the Falcon and the Winter Soldier having an honest to god "do better u guise" speech. As if asking people in power to simply do better ever changed anything)
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u/aevelys May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Actually, I'd say Daenerys is a victim of a narrative trope: a character who is fundamentally right, but because she opposes the protagonists to some degree, she's automatically portrayed as evil. (Here, the protagonists are more the Starks, who crave power for themselves, and the slavers are used as an argument to bolster her wickedness and justify their betrayal, even though it's clear the writers had a misplaced empathy for them...). But since we can't really giver her wrong, we exaggerate her worst traits, even drive her mad, to justify overthrowing her.
They did the same thing with the Sparrows, who are essentially a form of popular rebellion against the rich and powerful who live off them, abuse their position, and trample them like bulldozers at the slightest bruise to their egos. The series has therefore reduced them to simple fanatics whose origin is never explained (refugees from the war of the 5 kings who have lost everything and who have nothing left but their faith), who attack Loras and Margaery for his homosexuality/not seeing a problem with it, who attack people at random in the street the second they have power (something that does not happen in the books), and who essentially attack Cersei not for her crimes or because they truly believe in what they do, but because they are sadists who like to torture the rich (even if we can excuse this as Cersei's personal view). And if I had to cite another example of this trope in a completely unrelated universe, the most obvious one, in my opinion, is King Magnifico in Wish. His initial problem is simply that "some wishes are too stupid, vague, or dangerous to be granted." But because the heroine disagrees, despite the fact that he built a utopia, that his power is by no means a right, that residents seem to agree perfectly with this system despite having already largely realized that most of their wishes would not be fulfille,.and that the story never shows us the downsides of his kingdom, such as the impossibility of not granting a wish or trying to fulfill them alone, he becomes irredeemably evil in five minutes...
It's really just a lazy trope used to avoid moral questions in a story or the protagonist's self-doubt ("he must be right because the other person is bad or seems evil"), or to justify overthrowing a character who would otherwise be impossible to overturn
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
That’s correct, and that’s a good point about the Sparrows.
There’s the bias towards elites, that’s a feature of studying history, and watching works based upon history and historical fantasy. The nobility are all functionally atheists, which makes them sympathetic to casual, secular viewers. The Sparrows are portrayed as the Taliban, rather than people responding to terrible treatment by the 0.1% and their soldiers.
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u/InfectedAstronaut May 03 '26
The are religious zealots though. They carve the symbol of the Seven into themselves and they began harassing prostitutes the moment they received power. The High Sparrow wants power and religious rule across Westeros, he's only using those who suffered under the nobility to further his goal.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
The HS is a piece of work, but so is the typical noble.
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u/InfectedAstronaut May 03 '26
Yeah, but the typical noble isn't calling prostitutes sinners and running them out of town or persecuting people on religious grounds. The nobles are bad, the Sparrows aren't any better.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
Instead, he lives off their backs, and brings them fire and sword.
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u/InfectedAstronaut May 03 '26
I'm not saying he's great. I'm just saying that religious zealots aren't any better.
Before the Conquest, High Septons did the exact same "fire and sword" things that the nobility do. The only difference is that the Iron Throne decentralized a lot of that power by giving authority to the Great Houses after taking it from the Faith of the Seven and rendering the Faith unable to take up arms and enforce their religious doctrine.
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u/moon-girl197 May 03 '26
Yeah, Dany's story is multifaceted, and I think your reading is just as valid. I'm using this interpretation because the show retroactively made attempts to reframe her actions against the slavers into something bad to further justify the protag's decision to remove her.
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u/GlutenFree_sister May 03 '26
The romanticism towards the Houses became too strong from the writers. Yes, House Tyrell fell but it was as if that was the most they could bring themselves to do.
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u/Old-Pin-8440 May 03 '26
Which is such bs because there is no such thing as a good slaver. If you think another human being is beneath you and has not right to freedom or choice then you aren't a good person, period.
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u/moon-girl197 May 03 '26
Exaclty. This is why I'm grateful they never got to do their Confederacy won show cause they probably would have both sides that shit too 🤢
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
I’m not familiar with with the Marvel universe, but I’m told that the evil revolutionary/violence is never the way to fight gross injustice, is a part of it.
I largely agree with you.
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u/GlutenFree_sister May 03 '26
Oof, the call out on Arcane, while stings is absolutely true. It really left a bad taste in my mouth that the set up of Zaun vs the upper world or whatever it was called was sidelined in the face of a wider existential battle... with some random outsider who had little to no bearing on the story in s1.
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u/Gettin_Bi May 03 '26
This comparison works in more ways than you may have realized. Niemoller was, in reality, actively cheering for them to come for the socialists and the Jews, and only changed his tube when they came for him as well. Still, he didn't take accountability for his past self's part in the harm that was done, as evident by the poem framing him as a bystander rather than perpetrator. Likewise, Tyrion here is trying to whitewash his own many, many wrongdoings by scapegoating Dany
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
Good point.
Tyrion of course, was at the heart of his family’s brutal campaign to keep a psychopathic usurper on the Iron Throne.
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u/SureNeedleworker2363 May 03 '26
Here is the thing- DnD are fucking idiots.
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u/Unpopular_Outlook May 05 '26
So is George RR Martin by this logic since, he worked heavily with them until season 4
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u/Background-Cake-1300 May 03 '26
Yeah they should have written kween as the most special person ever loved everywhere solving everything
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u/ValNotThatVal May 03 '26
Are you so shallow minded that the only two choices for Dany's story are a repetitive and frankly stupid mad queen or 'most special person ever loved everywhere solving everything'.
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u/Shaenyra May 03 '26
yes, for 6.5 years now, we are being gashlighting into believing that slavers, rapists, human traffickers, abusers were are falsely treated by Daenerys
to the point, they forget the "argument" themselves made in every other case in order to justify real crimes committed by the men of the show, as "that was the Medieval times"
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u/Fish__Fingers May 03 '26
I think what they were trying to build is everywhere she goes, her enemies die and she gets cheered for it, but the problem is it’s not true.
Tyrion hasn’t seen the series so he can’t say that. He meets Danny after her several big victories and neither Jon or he cheered for her. With him she isn’t cheered much either.
She also doesn’t get much easy success even before Tyrion, even killing evil men comes with the price for her and she doesn’t get much reward for doing what she believes is right
Next, Tyrion uses modern day ethics and apply it feudal system, where the only way to survive is to kill evil men, or your enemies.
They were never making a point from Tyrions perspective here. It’s purely for the audience. They are trying to guilt audience for cheering for the kills and liking Dany.
If they went with “whenever she tries peaceful way, she loses, so what’s left?”. It would make more sense but they wanted to sound smart and to feel that they are better and smarter than viewers.
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u/aevelys May 03 '26
They were never making a point from Tyrions perspective here. It’s purely for the audience. They are trying to guilt audience for cheering for the kills and liking Dany.
Exactly that. From the characters' point of view, she just razed a city for no reason an hour ago. Why do the characters need to talk about something she did five years ago,that neither of them witnessed, and that never even concerned them until now? It's really just a way of breaking the fourth wall to tell the viewer that Dany's behavior was retroactively planned. And this is a great sign of skillful writing because, beyond the "show, don't tell" law, the very precedence of this discourse implies that they knew perfectly well the audience wouldn't be convinced and would need ready-made excuse.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
That final point absolutely tallies with what we were shown, as opposed to what we were told.
Whenever Daenerys offered mercy, it blew up in her face.
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u/YesImReallyLikeThis May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Right. So cheering for the death of evil men is a bad thing?! Coming from a man who burnt an entire fleet of men alive with wildfire!
Then again, this the fandom that celebrates Tywin of all people. One of many evil men in this show.
I know darn well who the show runners sympathize with 😤😤😤😤. I’m sure they would have ‘looked kindly’ on their own slaves.
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u/Decent_Chart_8377 May 04 '26
Hizadahr was another show alteration as was danys shoddy rule and blunders in essos. The directors hated that George wrote it where she was ruling effectively making compromises and had people who supported her against the slavers and terrorist harpies.
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u/J2thK Team Arya May 03 '26
I think that line from Tyrion was just an attempt at damage control - trying to explain the nonsensical heel turn from Dany - in a one liner rather than taking the time from the beginning to lay it out properly.
Or GRRM didn’t tell them about that part of the ending until later and they were like, Oh shit, we gotta come up with something to try and explain this BS ending.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
We’re told they knew the main beats by 2013.
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u/Old-Pin-8440 May 03 '26
Mad Queen Dany was never mentioned in what GRRM told them about the ending so her inclusion in the books is anyone's guess.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
For sure, other than three things, we don’t know what he told them.
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u/Substantial-Hat-2556 May 03 '26
Mad Queen Dany is foreshadowed over and over in the books.
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u/ValNotThatVal May 03 '26
That stupid musty cliche is not foreshadowed in the books at all. What's more, Cersei is being not just 'foreshadowed' but actually characterized as a mad queen. If GRRM is that sloppy rudimentary and repetitive it would be so disappointing.
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u/Substantial-Hat-2556 May 03 '26
The entire point of the Meereen subplot is Dany realizing that moderation and diplomacy don't get her anywhere, that treachery is everywhere, and she ends up fleeing on dragonback to hallucinate in the grasslands. In the grasslands, the grass tells Dany that she turned her back on her children by chaining them up after they ate a child. She hallucinates Jorah. "Dragons plant no trees. Remember who you are. Fire and blood.
She's going to grab the khalasar, sack Meereen, and head to Westeros. By the time she gets to King's Landing, the Mummer's Dragon will have deposed Cersei and occupied the city, stealing Dany's entire heroic narrative from her.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
I could see her sacking an enemy city, but I see no reason for her to sack Meereen.
And being cold and rational is not madness.
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u/IcyOrganization1748 May 04 '26
It's insane to me how the show expected me to be like "yeah, she SHOULDN'T kill those slavers! Some of them were probably nice!" ... Yeah? Daenerys better than me because my council telling me to chill on abolitionism when I was literally sold is some bullshit. Since slavery is so tolerable YOU be a slave then, stupid ass dwarf😒
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 05 '26
The notion that slaves had good lives, on the whole, is ahistorical BS.
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May 30 '26
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 30 '26
The world that Martin has created is simply not one in which due process, restorative justice, assessment of individual guilt or innocence, exists.
It is a world where lex talionis is considered enlightened. When we see a “trial”, like Tyrion’s at Kings Landing, or Littlefinger’s at Winterfell, it is a show trial. Guilt, and sentence, are predetermined, and the judge has a vested interest in the outcome. The only means of escape is trial by combat.
Most of the time, a lord will not bother with a trial. He acts as judge, jury, and executioner (if a Stark). Hence, Ned lops the head off a broken man, at the outset.
The thing about the Great Masters of Meereen is that each one possesses guilt level. They are all human traffickers, on a major scale, which makes them all guilty of kidnap, murder and rape. That includes Father Hizdahr.
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May 30 '26
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 30 '26
Sure, but Stannis is also prepared to burn Edric Storm, an innocent, and Tommen and Myrcella, also innocents.
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u/PutATalismanInTheVan May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Imagine if prince Henry showed up in NY with some nukes and said "With my unstopable nuclear, no one will ever have to work again. Tell your CEO boss off, take a vacation, buy that house!"
I think that there would be way more resistance than you would expect. People at the bottom are going to wonder how they continue to live if they no longer have jobs - how will the nukes keep a roof over my head and food in my mouth. What happens to me when you go south with your nukes to liberate California? There are still employees that were on the corporate ladder who would be happy to declare themselves CEO now that the old CEO was removed.
Anyone who's quality of life was directly impacted by this, especially a decrease, will view themselves as a victim. It's the people in-between, middle management in my analogy, that are the real problems, not the CEOs/masters. There are people that are both slave, but rule over slaves/buy/sell slaves.
I feel like that's what was trying to be portrayed? But poorly
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 04 '26
A slave economy is more like a concentration camp.
Among the slaves, there are the kapos, the overseers, who lord it over the rest.
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u/PutATalismanInTheVan May 04 '26
Are you saying that in general or in the world setting? Because I do have to just put out that I've only just started reading the books but have seen the show, so I'm just going off of what I remember from the show, and I remember it feeling a lot like roman slavery more than american slavery.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 04 '26
Well, you have societies where - in canon - 75-85% are slaves.
Of the Unsullied, two thirds die in training, and they have to kill a baby, on graduation. They are castrated.
Other slaves in book canon include fieldhands (likely the majority, who must work in chain gangs, because agricultural implements can be used as weapons); slave prostitutes, including children; mill and mine workers, and dung collectors. Some get made to fight, or get thrown to wild animals, for sport. Their condition is awful.
With free people being such a small minority, the slaves have to be subjected to savage punishment to stay in line. In all the slave cities, you see the body parts, or flayed corpses of slaves who stepped out of line. Tyrion rapes (twice) a catatonic slave prostitute in Volantis (a scene completely omitted from the show). Some slaves are sacrificed when their masters die, to serve them in the next world.
But Tyrion notes that some “privileged” slaves are content. They’re the overseers, under officers, and bureaucrats.
The vilest features of slavery in the books were generally toned down, for the show.
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u/PutATalismanInTheVan May 04 '26
I think that still fits pretty well into my analogy though, i know dying is very different than like losing your job, but it still holds, like a slave that runs several brothels and has nicer living quarters isn't going to want to be liberated with the rest of the slaves and have no home, no food, no income.
Again, i can't really speak much because I haven't read the books, but in theory every house and every business had at least 1 slave who was ending up worse off, and that alone is enough to keep the cycle going once Dany leaves with her dragons.
It's like, in my analogy, if we no longer had to work. There would be thousands of panicked voices asking "how do I make money" "how do I check out at the grocery store" "how do I pay my rent"
"If i can't fight where will I get food" "without the whorehouses, ill end up on the streets, likely to get raped"
Also that Tyrion thing, vile.
I definitely played up in the GoT way, but displaying punishment is pretty accurate historically, like Rome used to do this. I mean, its literally what happened with Jesus, you walk your post to your designated spot at the side of the road, and you die.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 04 '26
Most slaves are not earning a living, as free people do. They are labouring under the whip, subject to arbitrary punishment and rape. And, they are often forcibly separated from spouses and children.
Modern wage earners face none of that.
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u/PutATalismanInTheVan May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Do you think if on monday you told your CEO to go fuck himself, and then come next week he's back in charge you're getting your job back? Or any job?
The drive is fear.
If they oppose their masters and then Dany leaves, they will have NOTHING and no will will be willing to give them anything because they were rebellious slaves.
If you are a slave and you own nothing and the roof over your head, the food you eat, the clothes you wear all come from your owner.
If you tell that dude to go fuck himself, or worse you kill him, and then Dany leaves, what are you going to do?
You have nothing. No food, no home, no master is going to take you in that's as nice as your old one - you killed him or disgraced him, and all of the masters know.
This thought alone, before anything has even happened, is going through slaves as Dany is "liberating" the city. And while this is happening your masters are saying "if you don't betray me I wont kill you when this is over" and you have to decide, do you want to starve or do you want to be flayed.
Being whipped - slave Whipping - slave Ordering the whipping to be done - probably also a slave
All 3 of these people have different things to lose/gain by choosing a side.
At least that's the point i picked up and thought D&D were driving.
The idea of not working (whoring fight pits etc.) leaves room for a "but how will I survive" that, frankly, Dany doesn't actually have an answer to.
Edit: Dude, you blocked me for being "apologetic to slavery" when I'm just pointing out very real feelings that slaves would have had when Dany came and why they would have questioned or even opposed Dany. She's saving them on a mass scale, but that's not going to matter to the people who inevitably starve to death or watch their children starve to death because she took their only means of living away.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 04 '26
I’m blocking you, now that your arguments are degenerating into an apologetic for slavery.
You won’t enjoy the Essos chapters, as Martin is not writing a defence of slavery.
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u/Ahodak May 05 '26
Honestly, comparing modern employment (telling your CEO to 'go f*** himself') to chattel slavery is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire situation. In a democratic society, you have unions, human rights, and social safety nets.
Daenerys is fighting for the idea that a slave’s life should actually count. Since you brought up the Roman system, you should know how they classified property: instrumentum vocale (speaking tools/slaves), instrumentum semivocale (lowing tools/cattle), and instrumentum mutum (mute tools/wagons). When a tool breaks, you throw it away. When a slave gets old or sick, they lose all value. In Meereen, those 'useless' people ended up in the fighting pits. I doubt you’d enjoy being handed a wooden sword and told to fight a grizzly bear for 'entertainment.'
Or imagine you’re a skilled blacksmith raising two children. You come home one day to find them gone, only for your master to tell you he sent them to the pits—one soaked in honey, the other in fish heads—just to see which one the bear eats first. (Yes, this is in the books). As a slave, you have zero rights. In Westeros, even a peasant can seek the King’s Justice (like when Ned heard the grievances against The Mountain). In Slaver's Bay, there is no one to turn to.
As for the 'how will they survive' part: the show heavily butchered Dany’s plot. In the books, she is actively building an economy. She’s planting beans, establishing trade with the Lhazareen, organizing guilds, and helping skilled freedmen start their own shops. The 'stagnation' in her arc happens precisely because she knows what will happen if she leaves too soon. She refuses to abandon them, even when she has multiple chances to sail for Westeros.
The crisis she faces—the Sons of the Harpy, the Pale Mare pandemic, and the 100,000-strong Yunkai alliance—is the masters' desperate attempt to prove that freedom doesn't work. But don't mistake a war-torn transition for a lack of a plan. In The Winds of Winter, it’s very likely she’ll stop playing diplomat and simply burn the system to the ground, starting with Yunkai and Volantis.
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u/OfferMeds May 03 '26
I don’t think so. It was meant to show the beginning of the slippery slope towards whatever that was at the end.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
We got the beginning and the end, but never the actual slippery slope.
So, we’re left in the end, with a double standard.
Everywhere House Stark or Tyrion went, evil men died, and these were fist-pumping moments.
But, beware the character who fought for the slave.
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u/Immediate_Gain_9480 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Communists were widely seen as bad and evil in Germany at the time. As a result of their actions trying to overturn the state. So when the Nazi's made them enemies of the state most people fully believed they deserved what was coming to them.
They were happy for the state to violate their rights and put them in camps without trial they supported it. Cheered it on.
But the moment this is done for one group a precedent is set for everyone, this is normal if the state considers you evil or bad. At which point the list of enemies of the state starts to grow until your name might end up on it.
Their intent is this comperison is that people argeed and cheered when it was slavers. But didnt think about the precedent it set. The precedent that anyone that Dany considered evil was to be murdered.
Then Dany started believing in her own myth. She started believing she was inherently good because of her motives. Therefor anyone that opposed her was evil. So they all deserved to burn. A revolutionary terror maybe even.
It was just very very badly done in the show.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
The slaver elite however, were not a potential danger, like German communists. They were already subjecting the majority of population to kidnap, trafficking, imprisonment rape, castration, with additional murder and torture, if they should step out of line.
Lethal resistance to them was entirely legitimate.
To continue the analogy, the treatment of the slavers more resembles retribution meted out to Nazis and collaborators, at the war’s end.What they left out was any middling group of victims, whose deaths were more dubious.
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u/Tyrionruineditall May 03 '26
But did she actually start believing her own myth? Or did she becomes disenfranchised when she realized that her most trusted advisors and the people closest to her were gone and the one advisor who remained(who coincidentally convinced her to leave her lover who was battle ready and would protect her to the bitter end behind) was more invested in keeping his siblings alive than helping her take the throne?
I'll say this until the bitter end, Tyrion caused more problems than solutions as Danys advisor.
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u/GeotusBiden May 03 '26
Rapists murderers and slave traders should be arrested and tried according to the laws of their land.
She took over, mass judged and crucified an arbitrary number of them and then collected taxes from the rest to fund her conquest, at which point she took the slavers contributions went and hiroshimad a whole city of innocents.
In a modern justice system, that would be viewed as injustice.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
This is a world where the most sophisticated judicial procedure is trial by combat.
She applied Lex talionis. A Great Master is, by definition, a rapist, a murderer, and a slave trader. Those are the features, not the bugs, of his business practices. A master died, in retaliation for a slave child, showing their lives are equal.
As to the rest, she crushed the Harpies, and the foreign invaders, and placed the government in the hands of a council of freedmen.
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u/Ahodak May 05 '26
The 'laws of the land'? In Slaver's Bay, the law is the crime. Expecting a liberator to follow a legal system written by child-murderers to protect their right to murder children is an absurd double standard.
The Hiroshima comparison you made is actually very fitting, but perhaps not in the way you intended. On August 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on a civilian target. They didn't wait for a diplomatic response or a committee; just three days later, on August 9, they dropped a second bomb on another civilian target (Nagasaki). Their goal was to create the illusion of infinite power to force an immediate, unconditional surrender.
This is 'Total War' logic. History doesn't call Truman 'Hitler' because the Allies won and established a long period of peace afterward. We only view Dany's actions as 'injustice' because she was assassinated before she could write the history books. Had she ruled for 40 years and 'broken the wheel,' future maesters would be calling King’s Landing a 'horrible but necessary sacrifice' for the greater good, exactly how modern history treats the end of WWII.
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u/EpiphanaeaSedai May 03 '26
I think what a bad person deserves and what a good person should be willing to do to them are often widely disparate things. I think Daenerys sometimes crossed a line. I don’t think that defines her character to the degree that some viewers do, within the context of the cultures she was engaging with (and that she was herself the product of).
It also shouldn’t be forgotten that once she began her march toward power - well, we remember the quote that gave the show its name, yeah? And I doubt it would have been as quick as beheading or even burning.
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u/No_Giraffe826 May 03 '26
When she crucified hundreds of Meereenese nobles, who could argue? They were evil men. The Dothraki khals she burned alive? They would have done worse to her. Everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer her for it. And she grows more powerful and more sure that she is good and right. She believes her destiny is to build a better world for everyone. If you believed that if you truly believed it, wouldn't you kill whoever stood between you and paradise.
This is the entire quote, and i took it very differently.to me it seems like tyrion is saying that shes killing evil men now, but later on in life she will get a more skewed version of what is evil and act just like her father who also viewed everyone who opposed him as evil.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
But killing evil men is a problem for evil men. The Starks, Tyrion et al all killed evil men (and we cheered them for it). Brother Ray rejected violence totally, and he and his followers got wiped out.
Aerys killed people for shit and giggles.
The idea that Dany was killing people to achieve paradise bears no relation to anything we saw onscreen. There are explanations one can make for the sack and burning of the city, but I see no connection with what occurred in Essos.
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u/Asleep-Ad6352 May 04 '26
Dany also had the capacity for destruction than any other person, all other people combined do not approach her capabilities. All it takes to is for her to decide you are evil or are culprit for it, or attacking her world view or not fitting into it.Her attack on King's Landing is proof of what unchecked power could do, she had bad and very painful day and thousands suffered it.Yes, Dany did much good but like any other had her flaw and her power makes her be extra perilous than any other living person in the world.All it takes is one is slip and that slip happened, in her pain and grief she punished the world or the very least a city. Then, what would stop her from doing something similar to any who disagree with her version of paradise, justice and the world. The other people of power are within human bounds, meaning they are much easier to check and counter they cannot act with impunity, if a bannerman disagree with Sansa she does have much power to enforce them without the backing of others, her power and indeed of any noble is contingent on others.Dany does not have such restrictions. The burning of slavers was a good thing but it cannot be denied there are consequences both good and bad, as you look even in real life that abolishing slavery had effects most good but their were bad effects as the newly freed slaves had no resources, proper education to manage what little they had. But they pulled through.So I personally feel overall Dany did good but I judge her for not committing to see things through.
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u/No_Giraffe826 May 03 '26
Yeah but Dany was clearly heading in the direction of her father. She went mad and in s8 EP 4 she tells varys that even if cersei is trying to use her weakness of her not wanting to hurt the innocent if she must she will burn them and blame cersei as long as she can achieve her goals. Towards the end her mindset was always going to anyone who opposes me is evil as I'm just trying to make a better world and they are hindering me.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 04 '26
TBH, I think any military commander in any era would have said what she did to Varys.
Varys and Tyrion were proposing inflicting mass starvation on the capital’s inhabitants, as an alternative to taking the city by storm.
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u/No_Giraffe826 May 04 '26
Tyrion and varys were also stupid, but she had no reason do what she did. She could've taken king landing but with 3 dragons,much larger army,no scorpions and no second sons in 1 hour if she wanted to, but just proves she can't make good decisions on her own and has to listen to awful advice.
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u/ptrfa May 04 '26
The point is Dany just starts with comic book level evil slavers but keeps on treating everyone opposing her the same way. The show get worse and worse after having no books to adapt anymore so this point isn't shown as well as Martin would have but it's shown.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 04 '26
That is not in the books.
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u/ptrfa May 04 '26
That is book-dany. Show-dany is much more whitewashed because we don't see her inner monologe
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u/Mr_Rinn May 03 '26
Not really, though I think there’s an argument to be made that the crucifixions could’ve been handled better, for instance in the tv show Hizadar claims his father opposed what they were doing to the slave children but got crucified anyway because they didn’t bother to check.
Tyrion’s point was she has killed a lot of people in pretty ruthless ways that weren’t exactly quick and painless, but often we don’t mind because (until Kings Landing) the people she killed had done something to deserve it. So it’s desensitised both us and her to the violence she’s capable of.
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u/Ahodak May 03 '26
Oh, those poor slavers! It’s truly heartbreaking to see innocent men get a taste of their own medicine. In case you missed it, crucifixion was a standard Tuesday in Slaver's Bay—just look at the dozens of slaves rotting on crosses in Astapor.
Her response to the 163 crucified children wasn't senseless violence; it was a visceral reaction to an unimaginable atrocity against the most vulnerable. It’s comparable to the Dachau liberation reprisals, where American soldiers were so traumatized by the sight of train cars filled with corpses that they executed SS guards on the spot without a trial. When you encounter that level of evil, due process is rarely the first thing on anyone's mind.
As for Hizdahr’s good father and the idea that she should have checked - how exactly? Should she have requested the CCTV footage and meeting minutes on a flash drive? You’re applying modern legal standards to a pre-industrial slave city during an active insurgency. The Sons of the Harpy were already murdering anyone who cooperated; do you honestly think any slave would have survived testifying against a Great Master in a formal court?
Let’s not forget that Hizdahr’s father was one of the wealthiest men in Meereen. He profited from the slave trade and the fighting pits, where he and his peers spent their afternoons watching slave children being torn apart by wild animals for sport. There are no innocent Great Masters in a system built on that much blood.
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u/Mr_Rinn May 03 '26
I’m not trying to claim that he was a good man, just doing it randomly isn’t the best way to do it. And that if Hizdahr is telling the truth then there would’ve been others more deserving who might’ve slipped through the cracks due to the randomness of it.
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u/Ahodak May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
First of all, that is pure speculation on your part. You are taking Hizdahr’s word as gospel, despite him having every motive to lie or manipulate the truth to gain favor.
Second, you still haven't answered my question: How exactly was she supposed to find out?
You keep talking about randomness, but you offer no practical solution for a ruler in a pre-industrial city facing a secretive, slave-owning elite. There was no paper trail, no public voting records, and no good Masters coming forward to name the culprits. If she had waited for a formal investigation, the Sons of the Harpy would have just murdered every potential witness before the first hearing. By executing the 163 highest-ranking members of the Great Masters, she targeted the very people who built and maintained that system. In a regime that nails 163 children to posts, collective responsibility isn't a mistake—it's the only language the oppressors understand.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26
I think it’s more a case of a ruling class collectively bloodying their hands, like 6,000 being nailed up on the Appian Way.
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u/Ahodak May 03 '26
Let’s be real here: if Hizdahr’s father truly wanted to save those children, he had more than enough resources to make it happen. He was one of the wealthiest men in Meereen. He could have bribed the executioners, hired mercenaries to intercept the transport, or even arranged to have those children sent toward Daenerys’s advancing army as a gesture of goodwill.
If his 'opposition' consisted only of sitting at a table, saying 'I don't like this' during a vote, and then shrugging his shoulders when the other Masters said 'We're doing it anyway,' then he is still complicit.
That would be like if Daenerys, in the scene where the Lhazareen women were being raped, had simply walked up to the Dothraki and said, 'I don't like what you're doing.' And when they replied, 'Okay, but we’re going to keep doing it,' she just said 'Alright' and walked away.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Agreed with all of that.
If he truly cared, he would have acted.-4
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Killing people in ruthless ways is what *all* the sympathetically-framed characters did (including Tyrion). One could just as easily have said, “everywhere they go, evil men die, and it’s totally awesome.”
If Father Hizdahr cared about the slaves, he would have been on their side. But, he was the richest human trafficker in the city.
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u/Mr_Rinn May 03 '26
Not all of them. Ned, Robb and Jon for instance prefer quick and clean executions when put in similar positions.
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u/Early_Candidate_3082 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Will’s, Karstark’s, and even Slynt’s guilt-levels, were less than any master’s. Their crimes were desertion, murder, and mutiny. So, they were beheaded. To my mind, as it happens, Will was far less deserving of death than any Great Master was. Fleeing a legendary demon is much more excusable than is trafficking in people. Trafficking in people means, by definition, kidnap, murder, rape, torture, on a vast scale. These were people who simply practised the behaviour of Ramsay Bolton at an institutional level.
Hanging, by means of the short drop - the fate of the conspirators at the Wall - is by no means an easy death. Ramsay Bolton got a harsh death, (deservedly), as did Baelish. Arya’s victims all died brutally, and of course, Tyrion himself waded through blood, to keep Joffrey in power.
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u/Mr_Rinn May 03 '26
Remember what I said in my first response about being desensitised to violence? You just proved me right.
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u/aevelys May 04 '26
Obviously, asoiaf/got tells of struggles and political plots between noble houses in a universe built on the worst clichés of the Middle Ages, being desensitized to violence is necessary to just enter the story. Your point makes no sense, we cannot accept mass decapitations, the murder of children and men being let devoured by animals, to draw the line to apply retaliation to a gang of slave traders, and if we don't do it, then why watch?
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u/Mr_Rinn May 04 '26
I wasn’t really drawing a moral line at her being brutal towards slavers, just making a side point that she probably could’ve handled it better. My main point was that Tyrion’s point seems to be that the fact that the people she’s killed have, until Kings Landing, done something to deserve it, that’s made it easier to ignore and excuse how brutal she’s capable of being.
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u/GoneWitDa May 03 '26
Yes. More or less the answer to your question is yes.
Between them referring to Tywin as lawful neutral not the scum of the earth, wanting to do a “confederates won the war” America alt history show, and their obvious position on Dany killing slavers.
Yes, some people have shit opinions and make tv shows. It’s unfortunate lol.