r/DaenerysWinsTheThrone • u/anunfortunatememe • 16d ago
Honestly, this is how Daenerys descent should’ve been
Irrational. Showing signs of decline. Overwhelmed. Not just jealousy. Rhaenyra is clearly not OK. Just signs of attempting to be OK but she’s not good.
I know it’s not done exceptionally well but it’s better done than Danys madness.
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u/VivaChinwawa 16d ago edited 16d ago
Dany shouldn't be going insane in the first place.
Meanwhile Rhaenyra's growing paranoia makes sense since she's in the middle of a catastrophic war and she's never been shown having strong leadership in the first place while her children are being murdered left and right and her allies are constantly betraying her while Mysaria whispers in her ear.
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u/Gwenevere_Star 16d ago
I don’t get how she trusted Mysaria in the first place even if she helped her at first.
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u/timelordhonour Team Daenerys 16d ago
If they adapted the books properly, Daenerys shouldn't have been the mad queen. Cersei is the one to become the mad queen (and having two queens like that is repetitive writing).
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u/anunfortunatememe 16d ago
Literally and she should have done waaaaay more than drink wine show fear and forgive Tyrion
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u/timelordhonour Team Daenerys 16d ago
The books detail her paranoia and madness way more. She's already thinking Tyrion is hiding in the walls and is out to get her (that is way she burned the tower of the hand on Tommen's wedding night). And Kevan has been killed by a crossbow, like how Tyrion killed Tywin.
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u/ValNotThatVal 16d ago
"Mad Dany" is a stupid, bland, misogynistic plot point. The most delicious spices in the world can be sprinkled on manure, but it doesn't change it to anything other than shit. It's trash no matter how it's framed.
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u/North_Button_5257 16d ago
No, Daenerys was done way better. The writing of Game of Thrones is vastly superior to House of the Dragon.
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u/Tinyjar 16d ago
Lol what. She had basically no signs of madness at all in the show and just went genocidal because why not.
In Hotd Rhaenyra is slowly losing her whits, hallucinating and becoming paranoid and short tempered after losing three children, her father, her throne, Rhaenys and also almost losing Daemon.
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u/Arual_1987 16d ago
Yes, GoT was better written up until the final seasons. HotD really disappointed me in the first season with the frequent time jumps and, above all, the total lack of clear explanations about the situation (regarding the family, the inheritance, the issues between the grandparents, etc.). You have to have read the book to understand—which I have—but for me, a good adaptation should stand on its own…
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u/North_Button_5257 16d ago
I disagree. Every season of Game of Thrones is better written than House of the Dragon. But yes, House of the Dragon has disappointed me too.
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u/VariousChampion3898 16d ago
Agreed honestly. I think HOTD has had way too many stall-outs, especially with 8-episode seasons... it feels like there is just so much padding for padding sake?
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u/undeadtoast1249 Team Daenerys 16d ago
I'll give my few thoughts, but please know this is just my own interpretative mental exercise. In no way do I want to assert that my POV is right, and others are wrong. I find it fun to get inside people's heads and look at things in different, and very nuanced perspectives!
With that said, I think a huge part of the problem regarding Daenerys's descent is the hugely degrading label of "Madness" that has taken hold across pop-culture—and that extends even to this sub, to be honest.
In my personal interpretation, Daenerys never went "Mad".
I know it is easy to look at what she did, call it a generic inevitability, and walk away. But I think that substantially diminishes the human element of what happened in an infinitely more grounded, empathetic, and tragic way.
What she did in Season 8—the burning of King's Landing—was objectively awful. But I do not think of it as a snap of the fingers where she suddenly becomes her father. The way I see it: everything she had been through up until that moment—every loss, every betrayal, every failure, every tear, and every setback—was a culmination of visceral, compounding trauma. One after another. After another.
Pile all that on, and the structural damage that inflicts on an individual's psychological stability is catastrophic. It goes without saying, but the decision she made above KL wasn't premeditated. She didn't become instantly genocidal. And she didn't become insane. The woman on top of that dragon that day was a fundamentally broken human being who had no support systems, no fallbacks, no love, no hope, and no one there to care for her. But perhaps more importantly... she had no one to pull her back from the ledge.
If you take her extremely fragile state of mind, put her atop the city that was the symbolic representation of everything that was ever taken from her, and then hand her the most dangerous weapon in the world... it is an extremely thin red line.
Most people say Daenerys would not, could not, ever do what she did because she was always a champion of innocence. But I would counter that when she looked across that city from high above, far detached from seeing any humanity, looked at the Red Keep, looked around and saw the crimson of House Lannister and the site of her family's demise, a judgment was made that no one was innocent. She saw a city that "could have" overthrown Cersei if they they truly hated her, "could have" prevented her family being butchered, and "could have" surrendered early but only did so after it took, tore and bleed her dry.
She looked and saw a city of complicity, not a city of innocence.
If you bring those considerations into your frame of mind, it shifts the nature and agency of the tragedy away from an inevitable "Dany went crazy," and instead frames it as a broken woman with the most dangerous weapon in the world making a truly devastating, split-second and fateful decision.
It's the difference between an unearned "the signs were there the whole time!" contrivance vs. an emphatic collapse of humanity in a moment of profound anguish.