“When will he be as he was?” Dany demanded.

“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)

Here is a list of all of the characteristics that indicate to me that this quote is a prophecy beyond all doubt.

1. It seems to predict/foreshadow future events. – From an in-story perspective a prediction may be wrong because predictions are made by characters and characters may be wrong. From a meta perspective all foreshadowing must be imbued with consequence. IE: If the Red Wedding never happened then all the things we call RW foreshadowing would no longer be accurate or coherent to call RW foreshadowing. It doesn’t become foreshadowing until the event it foreshadows actually happens. The fact that Mirri’s words seem to predict something suggests that those things will happen. Critics will respond that that is circular reasoning, but it isn’t and here is proof. Critics recognize that Mirri’s words seem to predict something. It is the fact that those predictions seem impossible that the critics believe Mirri is simply saying never. If critics didn’t recognize that Mirri’s words seem to predict something then they would not have been able to formulate the opinion that Mirri is saying never.

2. The events are presented in coded imagery. – It isn’t clear whether the elements like “sun” refer to a literal or a metaphorical sun. Elements and events of the prophecy already exist in the story that seem to fit the prophecy as possible solutions and red herrings. (Quentyn, The Mountain, Rebirth, Womb of the world, Dothraki Sea, Mother of Mountains) The claim that Mirri’s statements are not a prophecy cannot exist without the claim that all metaphorical and alternative interpretations we find are the result of cognitive bias, coincidence, or that the author is intending to subvert the trope that all prophecies come true (See 8).

3. The events it predicts seem to be impossible and/or incoherent. – The sun normally rises in the east. Mountains are too big to blow in the wind. Khal Drogo is dead.

4. The character/s engage with the prophecy like a mystery. – Dany thinks about Mirri’s prophecy in every book she appears in from Game to Dance. She tries to figure out what it means, which prompts the reader to try to figure out what it means.

   He shall be the stallion that mounts the world. Dany knew how it went with prophecies. They were made of words, and words were wind. There would be no son for Loraq, no heir to unite dragon and harpy. When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. Only then would her womb quicken once again … (ADWD Daenerys IV)

5. The character/s misinterpret the prophecy. – Dany thinks the womb part of the prophecy means she can never have a human baby. Because of the combination of 1 and 8, the prophecy means she will absolutely have a human baby before the story ends. Another way Dany misinterprets the prophecy is that she thinks that the infertility part is the ultimate prediction. It’s actually a prerequisite for the Khal Drogo part, which is the ultimate prediction.

   “Then he will return, and not before.”

6. The prophecy has elements of self-fulfillment. – Due to Dany’s own misinterpretation of the prophecy, it is prematurely consequential to her in harmful ways. Her belief that she can’t bear human children weighs in her decision to pursue conquest rather than family. Because she believes she can’t have human children, she thinks of her dragons as children and that is at the heart of an unhealthy pathology. The reason prophecies in fantasy are self-fulfilling is because 8 introduces a problem with fate/determinism. If fate exists then the character’s actions never mattered. The solution to that problem is to direct fate back into the hands of the character by having the character’s actions cause the prophecy to come true. It creates a chicken and egg situation that is impervious to fate/determinism criticism.

7. The prophecy comes in three parts. – Three is the magic number throughout history and literature. Genies grant three wishes, Cerberus has three heads, jokes have three parts and so on. The reason is that three is the smallest number in which a pattern can exist. (ABA, 121) Humans are pattern seekers.

8. Dreams and visions never lie. Prophecies are derived from dreams and visions. Therefore prophecies never lie. Therefore prophecies always come true in some interpretation. – Any degree of research into prophecy in fantasy turns up the trope that prophecies always come true, just not in the way you expect. 1 2 Philip K. Dick is a perfect example why the trope exists. It’s a guideline for good writing. Nobody wants to read a prophecy that fails to come true, or rather, foreshadowing that fails to be imbued with consequence. The reason dreams and visions never lie is because it’s a manifestation of nature. To lie requires one to have an agenda. Nature doesn’t have an agenda. It just exists. You can’t argue with it. That’s why we call it nature.

Another way of saying “All Prophecies Come True” is “Prophecies Never Lie.”

I think people appear in visions and prophecies as their original, essential identity.

Examples:

Varys appears in Quaithe’s prophecy as a mummer rather than a spider.

Littlefinger appears in Bran’s and Ghost of High Heart’s prophecies as a giant rather than a mockingbird.

Aegon appears in a prophecy as a dragon.

Gendry appears in Melisandre’s Girl in Grey prophecy as a deer AKA the stag of House Baratheon.

The suggestion seems to be that prophecies and visions, or the gods who send them, can see through false identities and into true identities. The true identity manifests in the vision. Disguises may fool other people, but they don’t fool the gods.

Video versions:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeVV8mdT-xc
Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/tiww3gjNHDRI/
WordPress Embed:

Dany is smart as a whip like Tyrion. If you pose her a problem where there are only two options, she will think of a third. However, Dany struggles to tell the difference between justice and revenge, and that’s echoed in the story of Aerys, the father she doesn’t want to be like.

The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not . . .”

“. . . my father’s daughter?” If she was not her father’s daughter, who was she? (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Each of the main characters is struggling with identity. They need to figure out who they are, where they belong in the world and I gather that they must accomplish that in a way that does not neglect their history or heritage, but incorporates it. Their history and heritage is their House, childhood, home castle and home town, their animal sigil, the color of the sigil, the house words, previous friendships, enemies, noble deeds and crimes. Characters who deny their heritage and history are punished severely for it. They get lost in the wilderness. They’re captured and mutilated. They’re forced to live at court beneath the cruel thumb of a tyrant and, in some cases, they simply die. If you want to survive this story, embrace your heritage and find a way to make it work for you.

“He is part of you, Robb. To fear him is to fear you.”

“I am not a wolf, no matter what they call me.” Robb sounded cross. (ASOS Catelyn II)

Dany’s heritage is dragons, Fire and Blood, incest, the proudest of all Houses, Dragonstone, exile, Khal Drogo, slavery, rape, passion, rapid conquest, and betrayal. It’s burning ambition, red and black and hot.

Jorah is a useful guide for helping Dany accomplish the things she wants to accomplish, but he is not a moral compass. Barristan is her first advisor to serve as a proper moral compass. A gift from ye goode olde days. But I suspect Barristan is too late. So here is an idea that currently has me.

Daenerys is the antithesis of Ned’s ethic about justice.

Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”

“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. “Do you understand why I did it?”

“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry off women and sell them to the Others.”

His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do it.”

Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a headsman,” he said, uncertainly.

“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.” (AGOT Bran I)

In the first chapter of the series when Ned explains the ethic, it’s mentioned in the same passage that the Targaryens use executioners. The contrast between the Stark and Targaryen approach to justice is established immediately.

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice… that’s what kings are for.” (ASOS Daenerys III)

Justice sounds good, but what is it? Or perhaps more importantly, what is it not? That’s what Jon and Dany are going to explore!

First Trial

Jon

Jon’s first hands-on experience with justice is Ygritte. During a ranging with Qorin Halfhand, the group encounters and fights some wildlings. Jon notices at the last second that one of the wildlings is a young girl.

His hand froze. “A girl.”

“A watcher,” said Stonesnake. “A wildling. Finish her.” Jon could see fear and fire in her eyes. Blood ran down her white throat from where the point of his dirk had pricked her. One thrust and it’s done, he told himself. He was so close he could smell onion on her breath. She is no older than I am. Something about her made him think of Arya, though they looked nothing at all alike. “Will you yield?” he asked, giving the dirk a half turn. And if she doesn’t?

“I yield.” Her words steamed in the cold air.

“You’re our captive, then.” He pulled the dirk away from the soft skin of her throat.

“Qhorin said nothing of taking captives,” said Stonesnake.

Right away I can see that he doesn’t want to kill her. He’s hoping that she’ll yield and fearing that she won’t, because he doesn’t know what he will do if she doesn’t. It shows me that he doesn’t consider killing her an option even if she resists. I don’t blame him. I would have difficulty sticking a knife in a strange girl’s throat too. Jon holds back from killing her for now, against the advice of his companion.

Stonesnake gestured at the long-hafted axe that lay beside her sleeping furs. “She was reaching for that when you grabbed her. Give her half a chance and she’ll bury it between your eyes.”

“I won’t give her half a chance.” (ACOK Jon VI)

Jon accepts the responsibility and risk that comes with his decision, perhaps unwisely. Ygritte goes on to tell Jon the story of Bael the Bard, which I think humanizes them in each other’s eyes. Qorin and the other members return and lay down the law.

“Tell me true. If I fell into the hands of your people and yielded myself, what would it win me?”

“A slower death than elsewise.”

The big ranger looked to Jon. “We have no food to feed her, nor can we spare a man to watch her.”

“The way before us is perilous enough, lad,” said Squire Dalbridge. “One shout when we need silence, and every man of us is doomed.”

Ebben drew his dagger. “A steel kiss will keep her quiet.”

Jon’s throat was raw. He looked at them all helplessly. “She yielded herself to me.”

“Then you must do what needs be done,” Qhorin Halfhand said. “You are the blood of Winterfell and a man of the Night’s Watch.” He looked at the others. “Come, brothers. Leave him to it. It will go easier for him if we do not watch.”

All four Night’s Watch men have chimed in, and the order is clear. If Jon can’t bring himself to do his duty, he’ll consider himself a failure. His brothers will consider him a failure as well, and there’s the risk of Ygritte getting them all killed. Then the blood will be on Jon’s hands. Nobody will condemn Jon for killing her and in fact his deed may be celebrated. He will have killed an enemy of the Night’s Watch.

He raised Longclaw over his head, both hands tight around the grip. One cut, with all my weight behind it. He could give her a quick clean death, at least. He was his father’s son. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?

“Do it,” she urged him after a moment. “Bastard. Do it. I can’t stay brave forever.” When the blow did not fall she turned her head to look at him.

Jon lowered his sword. “Go,” he muttered. (ACOK Jon VI)

Is this a case of misplaced compassion, or Ned’s principle in practice? He looked into her eyes, listened to her words and could not swing the sword. Perhaps she did not deserve to die.

[[ It may very well be the case that Jon should have beheaded Ygritte. Maybe Jon needs to become a more stoic man if he wants to minimize suffering in the world. It’s arguable, but the purpose of the ethic is not to define the appropriate course of action or even to guide one towards it. I think the purpose might be to guide one towards the proper guide. To ensure that the execution of a sentence must always pass through the conscience of the person who passed the sentence. It postulates that human life is more valuable than the cost to one’s conscience, reputation, time, or bloody sword. When that cost is too heavy a burden for you, then maybe you are not fit to rule, pass sentences or swing the swords of justice. ]]

Dany

Dany’s first dilemma with justice is with Viserys. Her brother is cruel and abusive, but he’s still her brother.

“You do not understand, ser,” she said. “My mother died giving me birth, and my father and my brother Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so much as their names if Viserys had not been there to tell me. He was the only one left. The only one. He is all I have.” (AGOT Daenerys V)

Dany tries to protect him by nudging him in the right direction.

Viserys picked up the cloak and sniffed at it. “This stinks of manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse blanket.”

“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit for a khal.”

The power dynamic between them is reversed by Dany’s khaleesihood, and it all comes to a head in Vaes Dothrak.

“He can keep his bloody foal. I’ll cut the bastard out and leave it for him.” The sword point pushed through her silks and pricked at her navel. Viserys was weeping, she saw; weeping and laughing, both at the same time, this man who had once been her brother.

Viserys has drawn steel in a sacred place where steel is forbidden, and carved the skin of the Khal’s pregnant queen in front of the Khal and five thousand Dothraki riders. If at some point in this scene there was a chance for Viserys to walk out of this hall alive, I think this is the point where Dany recognizes that chance has all but vanished. From this point on, she thinks of Viserys as “the man who had once been her brother.” Dany has withdrawn from the sense of family duty she described moments before, and Viserys has certainly provided plenty of reasons to be disowned.

Jhiqui is afraid to translate what Viserys said, but Dany volunteers.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I shall tell him.”

She did not know if she had enough words, yet when she was done Khal Drogo spoke a few brusque sentences in Dothraki, and she knew he understood.

Did Dany give a word-for-word account of all the horrible things Viserys said? Or did she try to protect him one last time by omitting certain ugly details and injecting courtesy where it might be the difference between life and death? I have no way of knowing the manner in which Dany translated except to observe what happens next.

“What did he say?” the man who had been her brother asked her, flinching.

It had grown so silent in the hall that she could hear the bells in Khal Drogo’s hair, chiming softly with each step he took. His bloodriders followed him, like three copper shadows. Daenerys had gone cold all over. “He says you shall have a splendid golden crown that men shall tremble to behold.”

Viserys smiled and lowered his sword. That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at her afterward … the way he smiled. “That was all I wanted,” he said. “What was promised.”

With Dany’s chilling translation she seems to understand that what is about to happen is not good for Viserys, though she doesn’t bother to convey Drogo’s intent to Viserys. So far, Dany has been a passive bystander to her brother’s execution, but does her silence and inaction mean she is complicit? To what extent do you think Dany is a bystander or a participant?

When the sun of her life reached her, Dany slid an arm around his waist. The khal said a word, and his bloodriders leapt forward. Qotho seized the man who had been her brother by the arms. Haggo shattered his wrist with a single, sharp twist of his huge hands. Cohollo pulled the sword from his limp fingers. Even now Viserys did not understand. “No,” he shouted, “you cannot touch me, I am the dragon, the dragon, and I will be crowned!”

He’s not my brother anymore. I owe him nothing.

Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death. He kicked and twisted, whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the Dothraki held him tight between them. Ser Jorah had made his way to Dany’s side. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Turn away, my princess, I beg you.”

“No.” She folded her arms across the swell of her belly, protectively.

At the last, Viserys looked at her. “Sister, please … Dany, tell them … make them … sweet sister …”

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. “Crown!” he roared. “Here. A crown for Cart King!” And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering … yet no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

It’s difficult to tell one way or another, but I dare say Daenerys enjoyed that. And it’s hard to fault her considering what an asshole he was.

“I’d let his whole khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is bringing him over, and he will not see you crying.”

Since Dany did not technically or entirely pass the sentence or swing the sword, and since it isn’t clear whether or not she took pleasure in it, Dany has enough plausible deniability that there’s nothing to criticize with regards to Ned’s code of justice. Still, I can’t help but feel gross about the situation. Surely the method was unnecessarily cruel, but that’s just the Dothraki way. Besides, if Dany had insisted on a less agonizing mode of execution, it may have caused unnecessary problems between her and the Dothraki.

Dany took the easy road, but it isn’t clear that she took the wrong or right one. Where Jon shouldered the moral responsibility toward a stranger, Dany avoided the moral responsibility toward a brother. The circumstances are such that Dany and the sympathetic reader can easily defend that Dany was a helpless bystander, that this is not a fair comparison to Jon’s situation at all, and that Viserys deserved excess suffering anyway. I would have done everything Dany did.

Second Trial

Jon

The wildlings present Jon with a test of loyalty. They capture an old northern man south of the Wall and tell Jon to kill him, no questions asked.

He might have said a thousand things, or wept, or called upon his gods. No words would save him now, though. Perhaps he knew that. So he held his tongue, and looked at Jon in accusation and appeal.

You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them… But this old man had offered no resistance. He had been unlucky, that was all. Who he was, where he came from, where he meant to go on his sorry sway-backed horse… none of it mattered.

He is an old man, Jon told himself. Fifty, maybe even sixty. He lived a longer life than most. The Thenns will kill him anyway, nothing I can say or do will save him. Longclaw seemed heavier than lead in his hand, too heavy to lift. The man kept staring at him, with eyes as big and black as wells. I will fall into those eyes and drown. The Magnar was looking at him too, and he could almost taste the mistrust.

Jon knows that the man is going to die whether Jon does the deed or not, because someone else will do it instead. Jon tries to rationalize himself into action. The man is old anyway, he thinks. He had a good life. But Ned’s words are already in effect. Jon is looking into the man’s eyes with apprehension.

The man is dead. What matter if it is my hand that slays him? One cut would do it, quick and clean. Longclaw was forged of Valyrian steel. Like Ice. Jon remembered another killing; the deserter on his knees, his head rolling, the brightness of blood on snow… his father’s sword, his father’s words, his father’s face… (ASOS Jon V)

Jon tries to convince himself that it would be merciful, in fact, to do the deed himself, because he knows that he can do it in one cut.

[[ The ability to behead a person in one stroke is an admirable trait in this setting I think because it’s an intersection of the traits required to properly shoulder the responsibility of rule and to deal justice. Those traits are strength of character and strength of body. It’s both knowing what needs to be done and having the ability and fortitude to do it. One stroke against the back of the neck severs the brain from the nervous system, getting the job done efficiently while minimizing suffering. ]]

“Do it, Jon Snow,” Ygritte urged. “You must. T’ prove you are no crow, but one o’ the free folk.”

Jon knows that if he does not kill the man, Ygritte will consider it a betrayal of love.

“An old man sitting by a fire?”

“Orell was sitting by a fire too. You killed him quick enough.” The look she gave him then was hard. “You meant t’ kill me too, till you saw I was a woman. And I was asleep.”

“That was different. You were soldiers . . . sentries.”

“Aye, and you crows didn’t want t’ be seen. No more’n we do, now. It’s just the same. Kill him.”

He turned his back on the man. “No.”

Ygritte points out the similarities between this situation and the situation when they met. Ygritte attributes Jon’s mercy toward her to the fact that she’s a girl. It must be her wild red hair and crooked teeth. She accuses him of some kind of hypocrisy, double standard or inconsistency in character. As it turns out, the thing in Jon that compelled him to mercy toward Ygritte is the same thing that compels him to mercy toward the old man. Not her sex, but his conscience.

Unlike the execution of Ygritte, where Jon’s companions left him to do the deed in privacy, now people are watching him. The Night’s Watch’s job certainly does not include killing smallfolk. He knows that if he doesn’t do the killing, somebody else will do it anyway. He also knows that this is a test of loyalty and his own life likely hangs in the balance.

The Magnar moved closer, tall, cold, and dangerous. “I say yes. I command here.”

“You command Thenns,” Jon told him, “not free folk.”

“I see no free folk. I see a crow and a crow wife.”

“I’m no crow wife!” Ygritte snatched her knife from its sheath. Three quick strides, and she yanked the old man’s head back by the hair and opened his throat from ear to ear. Even in death, the man did not cry out. “You know nothing, Jon Snow!” she shouted at him, and flung the bloody blade at his feet.

Ygritte’s denial tells me that she feels betrayed. Despite great immediate risk to his life, Jon remembered Ned’s words and could not bring himself to swing the sword.

[[ I think this scene demonstrates an elaboration of Ned’s code of justice. Do not swing the sword for sentences you did not pass. Another elaboration seen here might be along this line. Even when congruity with the code would certainly cost your life, the cost of deviation is still greater than the cost of congruity.

That is a hell of a claim. It proposes that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Or that the path of minimum suffering for everyone might include your death. ]]

Dany

At the market in Vaes Dothrak, Jorah catches a wine merchant selling poisoned wine to a pregnant Daenerys.

“You will drink,” Dany said, cold as ice. “Empty the cup, or I will tell them to hold you down while Ser Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat.”

The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup … and grabbed the cask instead, flinging it at her with both hands. (AGOT Daenerys VI)

“Take this one away to await the pleasure of the khal,” he commanded, gesturing at the man on the ground. (AGOT Daenerys VI)

The Merchant Captain places the wineseller in the custody of Khal Drogo.

Dany was near tears as they carried her back. The taste in her mouth was one she had known before: fear. For years she had lived in terror of Viserys, afraid of waking the dragon. This was even worse. It was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her baby.

Jorah tells Dany that Robert Baratheon offers lands and lordships for her and Viserys’s death.

“My brother?” Her sob was half a laugh. “He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper owes Drogo a lordship.” This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged herself protectively. “And me, you said. Only me?”

“You and the child,” Ser Jorah said, grim.

“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself … and her eyes went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet.

It’s actually pretty funny, but the inclusion of her unborn baby in the bounty takes Dany from sadness, humor and fear to righteous fury. She has Jorah light a fire and sends him away so that she can try something a little crazy. She places her eggs in the fire and watches it for a long time until it burns out. Though the eggs glow, she’s saddened by the result.

“This seller of poisons ran from the moon of my life. Better he should run after her. So he will. Jhogo, Jorah the Andal, to each of you I say, choose any horse you wish from my herds, and it is yours.

Drogo passes a strange sentence for the wineseller, and it isn’t clear what it means until the very end.

The wineseller hurried behind them, naked, on foot, chained at throat and wrists. His chains were fastened to the halter of Dany’s silver. As she rode, he ran after her, barefoot and stumbling. No harm would come to him … so long as he kept up. (AGOT Daenerys VI)

Though the fate of the man seems obvious in retrospect, Martin obscures that this was an execution at all until A Storm of Swords.

She had dragged the wineseller behind her horse until there was nothing left of him. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Dany is slightly more involved with this execution than the first. Drogo was the one to pass the sentence, and I could easily make the case that Drogo swung the sword. He tied the man to the horse, after all. But Dany rode the horse, may have set the pace, and as far as I know, she did not insist upon a less cruel form of execution. To be fair, that objection would have been out of place among the Dothraki.

Once again, Dany is shrouded in plausible deniability. The reader is shielded from the knowledge of whether or not Dany enjoyed justice, in no small part because I enjoy it on her behalf. Nobody poisons my khaleesi! Her emotional state and social environment are such that her silence on the matter comes easily. And, of course, an excess of suffering is what pregnant-queen poisoners deserve anyway. I don’t know if I would have done what Dany did, but I could definitely see myself doing it.

Third Trial

Jon

Jon decides to execute Janos Slynt, to everyone’s surprise, but notice Jon’s thoughts before, during and after.

Jon slid the oilcloth down his bastard sword, watching the play of morning light across the ripples, thinking how easily the blade would slide through skin and fat and sinew to part Slynt’s ugly head from his body. All of a man’s crimes were wiped away when he took the black, and all of his allegiances as well, yet he found it hard to think of Janos Slynt as a brother. There is blood between us. This man helped slay my father and did his best to have me killed as well. (ADWD Jon II)

The temptation of vengeance is evident in Jon. Janos is fat, ugly, and Jon is loath to call him brother. Janos helped kill Ned and tried to kill Jon too.

“Keep your ruin, bastard.”

I am giving you a chance, my lord. It is more than you ever gave my father. “You mistake me, my lord,” Jon said. “That was a command, not an offer.” (ADWD Jon II)

Janos continues to disobey and begins spewing venomous insults, kicking furniture and storming out. Jon’s thoughts reveal how he really feels, but so far those feelings don’t seem to have influenced his judgement.

He could only hope that a night’s sleep would bring Lord Janos to his senses.

After all that, Jon still hopes that Janos will come around.

“Please take Lord Janos to the Wall—”

—and confine him to an ice cell, he might have said. A day or ten cramped up inside the ice would leave him shivering and feverish and begging for release, Jon did not doubt. And the moment he is out, he and Thorne will begin to plot again.

“—and hang him,” Jon finished. (ADWD Jon II)

Jon has spent some time in the ice cells himself, so he knows first-hand how torturous they are.

They had pulled him out this morning, after four days in the ice, locked up in a cell five by five by five, too low for him to stand, too tight for him to stretch out on his back. The stewards had long ago discovered that food and meat kept longer in the icy storerooms carved from the base of the Wall . . . but prisoners did not. “You will die in here, Lord Snow,” Ser Alliser had said just before he closed the heavy wooden door, and Jon had believed it. (ASOS Jon X)

In fact, Janos is the one who sentenced Jon to the ice cell to suffer while he awaits his hanging.

“Your father died by the sword, but he was highborn, a King’s Hand. For you, a noose will serve. Ser Alliser, take this turncloak to an ice cell.” (ASOS Jon IX)

How sweet would it be to give Janos the same treatment Janos dealt to you? But Jon is a better man than I. He foregoes the option to inflict certain suffering upon Janos because he believes it will be ineffective at reforming the man. The pursuit to minimize unnecessary suffering is a consistent characteristic of Ned and Jon’s justice.

“This will go easier if you stay still,” Jon Snow promised him. “Move to avoid the cut, and you will still die, but your dying will be uglier. Stretch out your neck, my lord.” The pale morning sunlight ran up and down his blade as Jon clasped the hilt of the bastard sword with both hands and raised it high. “If you have any last words, now is the time to speak them,” he said, expecting one last curse. (ADWD Jon II)

During the execution, Jon is genuinely committed to minimize Janos’s pain. He’s listening to his words and giving him the opportunity to speak.

Janos Slynt twisted his neck around to stare up at him. “Please, my lord. Mercy. I’ll … I’ll go, I will, I …”

Oh no. But there are two sides to this coin. Jon is resisting the temptation of revenge magnificently, but here is the temptation of compassion and it’s heartbreaking.

No, thought Jon. You closed that door. Longclaw descended.

He passed a clear sentence, looked into his eyes, listened to his words, swung the sword, took no pleasure in the task, did not look away, minimized suffering and bore the burden of justice on behalf of society in a manner that will minimally corrupt his conscience in future judgements. Well done from start to finish.

Dany

After Dany’s conquest of Yunkai, she travels to Meereen.

Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told. “I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more.

The temptation of revenge is building up, one slow mile at a time, and Dany demonstrates her fortitude. She’s committed to absorbing the emotional impact of her enemies’ crimes, and by the time the 163rd mutilated child is taken down, she is on fire.

She rode past burned buildings and broken windows, through brick streets where the gutters were choked with the stiff and swollen dead. Cheering slaves lifted bloodstained hands to her as she went by, and called her “Mother.”

Dany rides in glory through her conquered city, through piles of bodies and rubble as liberated slaves reach out in worship.

In the plaza before the Great Pyramid, the Meereenese huddled forlorn. The Great Masters had looked anything but great in the morning light. Stripped of their jewels and their fringed tokars, they were contemptible; a herd of old men with shriveled balls and spotted skin and young men with ridiculous hair. Their women were either soft and fleshy or as dry as old sticks, their face paint streaked by tears. “I want your leaders,” Dany told them. “Give them up, and the rest of you shall be spared.”

These masters are disgusting to her because of their decrepit bodies. Wait, no. I mean because of their horrible deeds.

“How many?” one old woman had asked, sobbing. “How many must you have to spare us?”

“One hundred and sixty-three,” she answered.

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood…

Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.

One hundred and sixty-three “great masters” were crucified in Meereen’s plaza on Dany’s orders. How many of them did she meet eye to eye and listen to their words? How many of the nails did she hammer through their limbs? Is it true that queens are incapable of using a hammer? Or is it that Ned’s code of justice does not apply to female rulers? Plausible deniability has gone out the window. Yet still, I may have done the same thing Dany did.

Maybe it’s no big deal to ignore the code every once in a while. I mean come on. A ruler can’t be expected to do all of the executions. A ruler has more important things to do besides performing executions. On the other hand, if so many execution sentences are being passed that the ruler can’t even afford the time to perform them himself, that seems like a better indication than most that he has forgotten what death is and that he’s unfit to rule.

“Flies are the dead man’s revenge.” Daario smiled, and stroked the center prong of his beard. “Corpses breed maggots, and maggots breed flies.”

“We will rid ourselves of the corpses, then. Starting with those in the plaza below. Grey Worm, will you see to it?”

“The queen commands, these ones obey.”

“Best bring sacks as well as shovels, Worm,” Brown Ben counseled. “Well past ripe, those ones. Falling off those poles in bits and pieces, and crawling with…”

“He knows. So do I.” Dany remembered the horror she had felt when she had seen the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor. I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Revenge makes dead men. Dead men breed maggots. Maggots breed flies. Flies are the dead man’s revenge. In other words, revenge begets revenge.

We will rid ourselves of the mess I have created, but I won’t dirty my hands. Do not burden me with a descriptive reminder of the horrors I have wrought in the pursuit of justice. (Not in the book)

If I kill your cousin, you’ll have to kill my brother. Then I’ll have to kill two of your brothers, and around and around it goes. I think that is the situation Dany is dealing with in Meereen.

Crucifixion is unnecessarily cruel where a simple beheading would accomplish the same thing. Or would it?

[[ There is a strong case to be made in favor of maximizing the suffering of a person before executing him. That is: to amplify the effect of the punishment as a deterrent to crime. That’s compelling because the world would certainly be better if no crimes were committed in the first place. So there is a moral case to be made for cruel justice. And sure enough, we can observe and measure that benefit on a shorter timeline. As short and quick as the lash of a whip.

One point that Ned’s code of justice posits, I think, is something along this line. The cost of deviating from the code is always greater than the benefit of deviating from the code.

However, such a thing cannot be easily proven because (1) the full scope and magnitude of the cost and benefit cannot be easily measured. For example, to what degree does the cruelty in crucifixion of a master cause the unnecessary suffering of his son and his daughter after him? (2) Life is too short for the cost to be observed over the duration of a civilization or evolutionary time.

So Ned’s position is not only a hypothesis, it’s a plea. It says “I cannot prove to you that this is true, but for the love of god please behave as if this is true.” It requires a down payment of faith, which is troublesome because competing codes, such as those involving a hammer or a whip, do not. ]]

In Dany’s pursuit to match the cruelty of the slavers and give them the suffering they deserve, Dany has learned first-hand what it feels like to commit the horrors that the slavers committed. Her conscience is screaming at her that it’s wrong, but she can’t reason why or how. When I look back on these events, I can see where her conscience was warning her all along.

Viserys smiled and lowered his sword. That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at her afterward … the way he smiled.

But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood…

Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.

But nobody taught Dany these things about justice. She didn’t have Ned Stark for a moral guide like Jon did.

you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.

What function does this part of Ned’s code really serve? Do I seriously believe that Jon took no pleasure in watching the fat ugly head of Janos Slynt roll across the mud? And what harm if he did? He may have. Who knows? Killing people, no matter how just, takes a toll on one’s conscience. I think the best anyone can do is minimize that toll as much as possible. The best way to do that is by pursuing actual justice rather than symbolic justice. I imagine there is a critic in Jon’s head whispering to him, as there is in mine.

You liked that didn’t you, Lord Snow? You’ve wanted to kill him for a long time, just like he killed your father. Just like he tried to kill you. That’s why you used the block over the noose. Admit it. You loved feeling the miserable life of Janos Slynt thrum up that stolen sword and into your numb hands. Smooth as the silk that polished it. Lady Catelyn saw you for what you really are, bastard, even if you’ve managed to hide it from everyone else for now. (Not in the book)

Man or woman, a ruler can’t escape his own conscience. So he must behave in a manner such that his conscience can withstand the savage internal criticisms he wages against himself.

An eye for an eye is a horrible doctrine, not because criminals don’t deserve to suffer the suffering they’ve inflicted on others, but because nobody can give another person what they deserve. It’s actually impossible. We have no idea what another person deserves and certainly no clue about how to give it to them. Only god can do that, if there is a god, which is perhaps a compelling reason to believe in god. If there is no god, then who will I think is going to make sure the bad guys get what they deserve? No one. Which means I will have to do it myself.

Maybe one important function of justice is not to give people what they deserve, but to alleviate everyone else of the responsibility of revenge. Revenge corrupts the conscience, the mechanism by which we navigate the moral landscape, and then that mechanism will lead us astray.

So why not use executioners, then? If we can have the executioner absorb the psychic toll of execution, leaving the man who passes the sentences uncorrupted, that seems like a good idea.

“Tell me, then – when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners – did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

At Astapor, Dany had a conscientious objection to buying and using an army of slave soldiers. Jorah taught Dany that death is all that matters at the end of the day, and that’s why I think Jorah is a bad moral guide. There are things worse than death. Like the death of your family, of everyone you know, of an entire city, of your culture, of the truth. But how could one person’s deviation from Ned’s ethic cause the death of an entire city?

“I want him dead, the traitor. I want his head, you’ll bring me his head, or you’ll burn with all the rest. All the traitors.” (ASOS Jaime II)

Jaime’s memory of the Mad King demonstrates the degree to which Aerys had corrupted. Aerys promised to burn an entire city and he ordered Jaime to bring him the head of Tywin, Jaime’s own father, on the threat of fiery death.

I’m at the character limit so I’ll end that I think Dany’s story is a sympathetic tragedy. Perhaps a lesson being that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think there is so much more to unpack with the justice theme in Jon and Dany. Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts and criticisms and see you in the comments!

Acclaim

“Enjoyed reading this.”

” I’m enjoying your analysis of the text and overarching themes of asoiaf and tbh this is my favorite type of discussion about the books.”

“Excellent analysis, this part in particular is going to stick with me for a long time.”

“I have nothing more of substance to add to this conversation but I just HAVE to commend you, this was such a wonderful and engaging read!”

“This is brilliant and, to me anyway, original.”

“Love posts like these.”

“Great post. Well thought about and well put”

“Thank you very much. This was very insightful commentary and I feel it illuminates the story. It is even more important to me now that I feel the show has disconnected from some of these deeper meanings.”

“Is this is new Preston Jacobs? The prophecy has foretold of a YouTuber…another, younger and with more subscribers, to cast him down and take all the tin foil theories.”

“this is a good ass video”

“awesome analysis you’ve got a new subcriber friend”

“That ending was some flowey undertale shit right there. Worth the 40 minutes”

Updated Apr 25, 2022 – Some clarifications and small changes
Updated Oct 13, 2022 – Embedded video

Video versions:

YouTube: P1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PR3f97asZI
Bitchute: P1 https://www.bitchute.com/video/cmlT0W8RHglX/
WordPress Embed: P1

I was reading Dany’s chapter in AGOT when she finds out that Mirri Maz Duur tricked her, and I was struck by a few lines.

Dany turned to the godswife. “You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”

“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price.”

Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was paid,” Dany said. “The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid.” She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s life.”

“As you command, Khaleesi,” the old woman said. “Come, I will take you to him.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)

Had she? Had Dany known that the price of bloodmagic was going to include the death of her unborn baby?

It seems like a pointless question in some ways. What difference does it make if Dany knew or didn’t know? Well, come with me on this journey and I’ll show you how that question and questions like it are helping me make sense of things in Dany’s story that have always puzzled me.

Taking Mirri Seriously

Many of Dany’s reactions suggest that Dany wasn’t expecting her baby to die at all. As she points out, the slaughtering of Drogo’s horse seemed like the ritualistic fulfillment of death paying for life. Why shouldn’t the death of an animal suffice? And why shouldn’t one death? Dany hasn’t been taught the ways of bloodmagic, so she isn’t qualified to question how it works. As far as Dany can tell, Mirri’s actions match her words and her words do not seem to leave space for any unspoken fine-print.

Mirri accuses Dany of lying to herself, which is an interesting thing to accuse somebody of doing. It raises a few questions itself. If I were Dany I might ask these questions to Mirri.

1. Why would I lie to myself?

2. What exactly is the lie?

3. And how the fuck do you know?

I think we have enough information to make a fair attempt at answering the second question. Maybe the lie is something like: “The horse is the whole price” or “My baby is not part of the price” or even more generally, “Everything will be okay.”

Let’s tackle the third question. If we adopt the relativity with which the story was written, (that the POVs of non-POV characters matter) then it’s possible that Mirri’s point of view is more valid than Dany’s point of view. Supposing that it is, then how would Mirri know when Dany is lying to herself?

One way that Mirri might be able to know is described to Arya by the Kindly Man in Braavos.

“I don’t whisper any names,” she said.

“You lie,” he said. “All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it . . . though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces. Tell me of these names.” (AFFC Arya II)

So maybe a lie was evident in Dany’s face or in her body language. Let’s visit the scene before this, when Dany gave Mirri permission to do the bloodmagic, and we’ll watch carefully for Dany’s expressions and body language.

“Is there no other way?”

“No other.”

Khal Drogo gave a shuddering gasp.

“Do it,” Dany blurted. She must not be afraid; she was the blood of the dragon. “Save him.”

“There is a price,” the godswife warned her.

“You’ll have gold, horses, whatever you like.”

“It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death may pay for life.”

“Death?” Dany wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rocked back and forth on her heels. “My death?” She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved.

“No,” Mirri Maz Duur promised. “Not your death, Khaleesi.”

Dany trembled with relief. “Do it.”

The maegi nodded solemnly. “As you speak, so it shall be done. Call your servants.” (AGOT Daenerys VIII)

As soon as the price of death is mentioned, Dany wraps her arms around her pregnant belly protectively. This body language might indicate to us and to Mirri that Dany knows or suspects that the real price of bloodmagic will be her baby.

But Dany does this thing with her arms all the time. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. We have to investigate this body language to find out.

And That Will Show Upon Their Faces

The first instance of Dany making this gesture is at the Dothraki naming ritual.

The one-eyed crone peered at Dany. “What shall he be called, the stallion who mounts the world?”

She stood to answer. “He shall be called Rhaego,” she said, using the words that Jhiqui had taught her. Her hands touched the swell beneath her breasts protectively as a roar went up from the Dothraki. “Rhaego,” they screamed. “Rhaego, Rhaego, Rhaego!” (AGOT Daenerys V)

Dany has just successfully eaten the heart of a horse, without vomiting, in front of an audience of captivated Dothraki. The roar of the Dothraki seems to startle her, and her first instinct is to touch her swollen belly to protect her baby.

Viserys laughed. “They can’t kill us. They can’t shed blood here in the sacred city . . . but I can.” He laid the point of his sword between Daenerys’s breasts and slid it downward, over the curve of her belly. “I want what I came for,” he told her. “I want the crown he promised me. He bought you, but he never paid for you. Tell him I want what I bargained for, or I’m taking you back. You and the eggs both. He can keep his bloody foal. I’ll cut the bastard out and leave it for him.” The sword point pushed through her silks and pricked at her navel. (AGOT Daenerys V)

At the feast, Viserys draws a sword on his sister and slides the blade over her pregnant belly. He presses it against her stomach and verbally threatens to kill the baby.

Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death. He kicked and twisted, whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the Dothraki held him tight between them. Ser Jorah had made his way to Dany’s side. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Turn away, my princess, I beg you.”

“No.” She folded her arms across the swell of her belly, protectively.

At the last, Viserys looked at her. “Sister, please … Dany, tell them … make them … sweet sister …” (AGOT Daenerys V)

Just before Viserys is gruesomely executed, Dany insists upon watching him die. She folds her arms across the swell of her belly protectively. I think the threat against her baby triggers a protective instinct in Dany, and it’s a big part of the reason that she has no problem allowing her brother to die in that moment and in that way, even though that decision seems to trouble her conscience later on.

That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at her afterward … the way he smiled. (AGOT Daenerys V)

At Vaes Dothrak, a wine merchant tried to assassinate Dany using poisoned wine.

“My brother?” Her sob was half a laugh. “He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper owes Drogo a lordship.” This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged herself protectively. “And me, you said. Only me?”

“You and the child,” Ser Jorah said, grim.

“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself … and her eyes went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet. (AGOT Daenerys VI)

Jorah tells Dany that the assassination is in response to a bounty that has been placed on her and her brother’s lives by Robert Baratheon. Dany seems to already suspect that her baby is part of the bounty too, because she asks “Only me?” She crosses her arms out of instinct to protect her baby from a threat that she has already imagined. Jorah confirms the threat, and Dany’s personality understandably changes to that of a ruthlessly protective mother.

As Khal Drogo lay dying, Jorah warns Dany about the urgency of the situation. They have to flee from the Dothraki before the king dies, or else Dany and her baby will be in danger.

“Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe,” Dany replied uncertainly, “but if he dies …” She touched the swell of her belly. “I don’t understand. Why should we flee? I am khaleesi. I carry Drogo’s heir. He will be khal after Drogo …”

Ser Jorah frowned. “Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling babe. Drogo’s strength was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone, Jhaqo and Pono and the other kos will fight for his place, and this khalasar will devour itself. The winner will want no more rivals. The boy will be taken from your breast the moment he is born. They will give him to the dogs …” (AGOT Daenerys VIII)

Even before Jorah explains the situation to her, her body language shows me that she already understands the situation. She touches her swollen belly out of instinct for fear of a threat to her baby that she has just identified. Jorah dutifully speaks the truth of the situation—a truth that perhaps she was afraid to acknowledge.

“You will die, maegi,” Qotho promised, “but the other must die first.” He drew his arakh and made for the tent.

“No,” she shouted, “you mustn’t.” She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within. “Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.” (AGOT Daenerys VIII)

Having now agreed to go through with the bloodmagic, most of the Dothraki are turning against Dany. Qotho promises to kill Dany after he kills Mirri, and things start to get physical. Dany crosses her arms to protect her baby again, perhaps remembering Jorah’s warning from earlier.

In every situation in which Dany crosses her arms over her belly protectively, there is a threat to her baby that she has identified. So when Dany does this protective motion for the final time in front of Mirri Maz Duur, we have the tools available to help us answer that haunting question during Dany’s moment of cognitive dissonance. “Had she?” Had she known that the price of bloodmagic would include her unborn baby?

Dany turned to the godswife. “You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”

“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price.”

Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. (1)

[[ At the end of one journey, I find myself at the beginning of the next. Mirri may have just provided us with the definition of a phrase that Dany repeats to herself all throughout the series. Maybe whenever Dany thinks “If I look back I am lost“, it means she is lying to herself. ]]

If I Look Back I Am Lost

Dany’s scene with Mirri is the first time the phrase appears in the books. There are twelve (12) total, as of ADWD.

• 4 AGOT Daenerys IX

• 2 AGOT Daenerys X

• 1 ASOS Daenerys III

• 1 ADWD Daenerys VI

• 2 ADWD Daenerys VIII

• 2 ADWD Daenerys X

We can go through each one and test Mirri’s words to see if they work as a definition. Let’s try to identify the lie Dany is telling herself, or the truth she is avoiding.

Eroeh

On the Dothraki sea, Drogo’s khalasar has conquered a Lhazareen village.

Across the road, a girl no older than Dany was sobbing in a high thin voice as a rider shoved her over a pile of corpses, facedown, and thrust himself inside her. Other riders dismounted to take their turns. That was the sort of deliverance the Dothraki brought the Lamb Men.

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate.

The girl is the same age as Dany, about thirteen, and I think Dany sees some of herself in Eroeh. Remember, Dany has had her own traumatic experience with rape, or something very much like it.

She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night … (AGOT Daenerys III)

[[ I am the blood of the dragon seems to be a mantra that Dany uses throughout the story to harden her heart. I think she’s practicing stoicism. On a spectrum that ranges from idealism to stoicism, let’s be mindful of how Dany’s position on that spectrum changes over time.

Stoicism – That people should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity. ]]

Dany is faced with the dilemma of whether or not to rescue Eroeh. She has to balance the threats that each decision would pose. Perhaps on one hand is the question, “Will helping the girl cause me unbearable suffering from my environment?” Her environment includes the Dothraki culture, her Dothraki husband, her reputation and status as khaleesi. And perhaps on the other hand is the question, “Will ignoring the girl cause me unbearable suffering from my conscience?” Whatever she decides, she has to live with the decision. Both threats are very real and I think she needs to walk a middle path.

Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing wail that went on and on and on. Dany’s hand clenched hard around the reins, and she turned the silver’s head. “Make them stop,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

“Khaleesi?” The knight sounded perplexed.

“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.”

The warriors exchanged a baffled look.

Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. “Princess,” he said, “you have a gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward.”

Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany’s ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken his place. (AGOT Daenerys VII)

Dany is rescuing Eroeh from a brutal fate, but the Dothraki don’t see it that way. The right to take slaves, to rape and murder them, is considered a traditional part of the spoils of Dothraki conquest. It’s their reward for risking their lives on behalf of their king. Without those rewards, whatever semblance of order exists in Dothraki culture might fall apart.

Dany rescues the girl from Mago and the other Dothraki.

“You are your brother’s sister, in truth.”

“Viserys?” She did not understand.

“No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.” He galloped off.

Jorah encourages Dany’s decision, in contradiction with the counsel he gave her. It is an admirable thing she has done, to the extent that compassion and bravery are admirable. But more admirable will be if she can successfully manage the risks that come with her decision.

They passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave.

As if in response to Jorah’s encouragement, Dany rescues several more Lhazareen, robbing many more Dothraki of their rights.

“You cannot claim them all, child,” Ser Jorah said, the fourth time they stopped, while the warriors of her khas herded her new slaves behind her.

“I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded him. “It is not for you to tell me what I cannot do.”

If rescuing one slave has earned her the title of “Rhaegar,” then Dany seems to be aiming for “Baelor the Blessed.” The risks are building up, one slave at a time, and the culmination of those risks is foreshadowed at a tense trial when Mago brings his complaints to Khal Drogo.

Dany turned on him angrily. “The dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike.”

Khal Drogo smiled. “See how fierce she grows!” he said. “It is my son inside her, the stallion who mounts the world, filling her with his fire. Ride slowly, Qotho . . . if the mother does not burn you where you sit, the son will trample you into the mud. And you, Mago, hold your tongue and find another lamb to mount. These belong to my khaleesi.”

The Khal rules in favor of Dany. The issue with Mago seems to be finished, but the issue of the Dothraki war custom seems to be ignored. Rape has not been outlawed, but Dany gets to keep her stolen slaves.

After Khal Drogo dies, the Dothraki abandon Dany and take her slaves.

“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,” Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal’s and yours, yet they left some few.”

“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.

“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.”

“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo.

If I look back I am lost. (2) “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)

Dany asks about Eroeh and learns that Mago has taken his spoils after all. He has amplified the girl’s suffering before killing her, perhaps to spite her rescuer and to reaffirm the long-held Dothraki tradition. The event even seems to reaffirm those beliefs in Aggo, one of the few Dothraki who remain loyal to Dany.

“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo.

Dany is struggling with the harsh realization that, despite her best intentions, she could not save Eroeh from her brutal fate. Moreover, Eroeh’s fate may have been less brutal if Dany had not intervened in Eroeh’s life at all. Perhaps the truth Dany is avoiding is along the line of: “Eroeh would have suffered the same or less without me.” Or maybe more fundamentally, “There is something wrong with the way I wield compassion.” Not to jump ahead, but Dany eventually expresses this recurring plight in A Storm of Swords, when she learns of the events at Astapor:

All my victories turn to dross in my hands, she thought. Whatever I do, all I make is death and horror. (ASOS Daenerys VI)

In a moment of impulse, Dany tried to outlaw a Dothraki custom that has existed for a long time. A cultural change of that magnitude might rightly take a lifetime to accomplish. A ruler has to choose her battles wisely. I don’t think it was necessarily a mistake to rescue Eroeh, but maybe there was a way to save Eroeh and appease the insulted Dothraki at the same time. As unwelcome a thought as it is, it’s worth considering that not rescuing Eroeh was the lesser of two evils. That challenge is a threat to Dany because it strikes at the heart of her compassionate nature. The threat Dany feels from that challenge is proportionate to the magnitude of the systems in her that it would modify.

[[ While the short term consequences of rescuing Eroeh seemed to improve the world, the long term consequences did not. The results of the Eroeh experiment stand in Dany’s memory, forever in contradiction to her understanding of the world. The results say “You’re wrong about the world and how to behave in it. Those deeds are permanently part of your past. And your past is permanently tied up in your identity.”

What can Dany possibly say against a criticism like that? It’s no wonder why she develops this mantra to cope. If I look back I am lost. That phrase says to me that Dany recognizes that there is no way to undo what she has already done, and that she believes she must continue forward in the same manner that she has done, lest new patterns of behavior contradict the old ones and re-frame her past deeds as unbearable mistakes.

On the idealistic-stoic spectrum, I think the Eroeh situation demonstrates that Dany is on the far end of idealism. She has a vision for a better world, perhaps one where people aren’t raped, murdered and enslaved, but she doesn’t have a good plan for how to realize that vision. However, her thoughts indicate that she’s aware that stoicism is necessary.

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne. (AGOT Daenerys VII)

Dany recognizes the value in separating her emotions from her decision-making in service of a greater good, but she doesn’t seem to have incorporated that knowledge yet. Her approach was not sophisticated enough to affect meaningful, lasting change.

“I want no rape.” ]]

Bloodmagic

“You knew,” Dany said when they were gone. She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength. “You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay it.”

“It was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great Shepherd.”

“This was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. (3) “You cheated me. You murdered my child within me.”

“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)

With the line “you let me pay it”, Dany acknowledges her involvement in Rhaego’s death. As much as she would like to lay the blame wholly upon Mirri, Dany thinks of her mantra, which tells me that she knows it would be a lie to blame Rhaego’s death wholly on Mirri. Still, she does it anyway.

“You cheated me. You murdered my child within me.”

Dany’s use of the phrase If I look back I am lost is evolving. It says “There is some difficult error in my past that I can’t bear to address, therefore I will avoid the painful process of addressing it and move forward.” She is abbreviating that whole logical process to its conclusion: “move forward”. It helps her cope by rewriting the call to action. A call that once said “address the errors of the past” now says “pay attention to the future.” The lie she is telling herself is nested in the conclusion: You don’t need to address the errors of the past.

[[ The fiery elements in Daenerys’s story are present at a psychological level. Like a forest fire, Dany will not turn around to revisit something she has already done. By its nature, the only direction a fire can move is forward, and destructively. ]]

Mirri has told Dany that Drogo will be as he was when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, among other seemingly impossible events. Dany interprets Mirri’s words to mean that Drogo will never recover.

Never, the darkness cried, never never never.

Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. (4) It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.

She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face.

Dany is using the phrase to make herself go forward, to do the most difficult thing she has ever had to do. I think part of what makes it so difficult is the truth that lives in her past. She disregarded the Dothraki warnings about maegi and bloodmagic. In no small part, Dany is the cause of her own suffering.

“Khaleesi,” he said hesitantly, “this is not done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman.”

“Aggo,” Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo’s words. If I look back I am lost. (5) “To you I give the dragonbone bow that was my bride gift.” It was double-curved, shiny black and exquisite, taller than she was. “I name you ko, and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”

Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a ko.” (AGOT Daenerys X)

Dany gives away her valuable belongings before she apparently attempts suicide in the pyre. The Dothraki reject her words due to their cultural beliefs. Dany is running afoul of Dothraki culture again, but I think she’s conscious of it. The placement of her mantra leads me to believe that she’s looking back on the previous times she disregarded Dothraki beliefs, such as those involving rape and bloodmagic, and she’s making a conscious choice to disregard them again on the matter of a female ruler.

But why? Disregarding Dothraki beliefs hasn’t worked out well for her, so why deliberately repeat the mistake? I think there are two forces at play in Dany, and neither of them have much to do with the discriminatory belief itself.

One force is that she feels as though a new pattern of behavior would re-frame her past decisions as unbearable mistakes. Her pattern is that, in every case, she has acted on passion.

Passion – Any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.

Remember, Dany meant to ignore Eroeh until the girl’s screams pierced Dany’s stoic veneer.

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate.

Love is another kind of passion, and I think Dany’s love for Drogo is what tempted her toward bloodmagic.

She told herself she would die for him, if she must.

Vengeance is a passion. I think revenge played a role in Dany during the executions of Viserys, the wineseller and now Mirri.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

At Drogo’s funeral pyre, Dany is acting on passion again, which brings me to the other force at play in Dany.

Dany half believes she will survive the pyre.

“Please, Khaleesi. I know what you intend. Do not. Do not.”

“I must,” Dany told him. She touched his face, fondly, sadly. “You do not understand.”

“I understand that you loved him,” Ser Jorah said in a voice thick with despair. “I loved my lady wife once, yet I did not die with her. You are my queen, my sword is yours, but do not ask me to stand aside as you climb on Drogo’s pyre. I will not watch you burn.”

“Is that what you fear?” Dany kissed him lightly on his broad forehead. “I am not such a child as that, sweet ser.”

“You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my queen?”

“I swear it,” she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms that by rights were hers.

There are a number of things to which we could credit Dany’s confidence that she will survive the pyre. Maybe it was one of her dreams. Maybe Dany has gathered enough evidence of her heat resistance.

“You do not understand.”

We may never know for sure what is prompting Dany’s confidence, but whatever the reason, it seems to be rooted in instinct.

She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered her tent. The Dothraki were muttering and giving her strange sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond eyes. They thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know soon enough. If I look back I am lost. (6)

While Dany’s words demonstrate confidence that she will survive the pyre, her thoughts here reveal her uncertainty. She is suicidal, which is a synonym of “mad” in this setting.

I think the reason she disregards another Dothraki belief can be found in the interplay between those two forces. On one hand, her instincts may prove reliable and she will survive the pyre. On the other hand, this is the lowest point in her life so far. Maybe some part of her does not terribly mind if she dies in the pyre. There is a sense that this is an act of both hopelessness and faith. Maybe she is thinking: If my passionate way-of-being is as unfit for this world as it seems to be, then I would prefer not to be part of this world anymore. But if this ultimate act of passion is successful in some way, then it will reaffirm my passionate way-of-being and reveal a path where it is fit.

[[ She’s giving this cruel and unfair world an ultimatum. It’s a feeble thing to do. But Dany’s bargain with the universe pays off. It earns her the undying loyalty of the remaining Dothraki who, as a rule, would not otherwise have followed a female ruler. A path forward has been revealed in a way that did not require Dany to address or adjust for her past mistakes of disregarding Dothraki beliefs. It only required her to muster more passion.

This doubling-down on her unaddressed mistakes becomes a regular thing with her, as does her disregard for Dothraki superstition. I think the Dothraki occupy a wise-fool role in Dany’s story. ]]

Astapor

Tomorrow is the big day that Dany will trade Drogon for an army of Unsullied. Her plan to conquer the city hasn’t been revealed to the reader yet, but there are clues along the way. Chief among them, I think, is the way Dany spends her time on the eve of the trade.

“When you are … when you are done with them … Your Grace might command them to fall upon their swords.”

“And even that, they would do?” (ASOS Daenerys III)

Dany seeks to learn more about the Unsullied from Missandei, to ensure that her orders to turn the Unsullied against the people of Astapor will be obeyed without hesitation.

She meant to sleep afterward, to be well rested for the morrow, but an hour of restless tossing in the stuffy confines of the cabin soon convinced her that was hopeless. Outside her door she found Aggo fitting a new string to his bow by the light of a swinging oil lamp. Rakharo sat crosslegged on the deck beside him, sharpening his arakh with a whetstone.

On the ship, Dany sees Aggo and Rakharo tending to the maintenance of the weapons she gave them so long ago, the night she stepped into the pyre.

[[ Dany is being very secretive in this chapter, and the secret is withheld from the reader until the moment the battle begins. Because of the secrecy, her thoughts, words and actions seem disconnected. We’re meant to imply Dany’s thoughts (and the connections between them) from her perceptions. In this story, written entirely from a first-person point of view, thoughts and perceptions are the same thing. The sight of Aggo and Rakharo with their weapons suggests that Dany’s mind is on the events at Drogo’s pyre. ]]

So what is it about Drogo’s pyre that relates to Dany’s current worries? Dany is hours away from deliberately committing a risky act of passion, much like she did at the pyre.

Dany’s passion is directed at the topics she is exploring on this evening. One object of her passion is the Unsullied, whose suffering she researched through Missandei. I think another object of her passion comes up in the next conversation. They are the people responsible for that suffering. Masters, rulers, kings and queens, they are all those people who occupy positions of power. Even a king brother.

“Do you remember Eroeh?” she asked him.

“The Lhazareen girl?”

“They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my protection. Only when my sun-and-stars was dead Mago took her back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate.”

“I remember,” Ser Jorah said.

“I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for.”

Dany is working her way through some complicated issues about kings and justice. She is testing her ideas on Jorah, who is being a good listener. Dany’s stress on the last word suggests to me that Dany is uncertain and/or wishful along these lines:

• She can’t find anything wrong with the idea.

• She wants to believe the idea is true.

• She’s trying to convince herself the idea is true.

• She’s trying to make it true by saying it out loud.

• She’s uncertain that it’s true/complete.

I think this rationale helps her justify her plan for Astapor. I don’t see anything wrong with the idea either, for what it’s worth. Justice might be the most important role of a ruler. But I’m worried that her experiences haven’t given her good ideas about what justice is, what it isn’t, or how it should be done.

Dany is haunted by the Eroeh event, perhaps still searching for what it means and what she should have done differently. As if in conclusion, Dany remembers the cruelty of Viserys and that he failed to protect her. What is the role of a ruler, if not to protect the weak? Despite Eroeh’s tragic end, Dany is justifying her attempt to rescue Eroeh. She is still unable to find an error in her past decisions.

[[ Having now justified three acts of passion—the pyre, Eroeh, Viserys—I think this has helped Dany justify what she is about to do to Astapor. In this passage, I think we have just witnessed the moment when Dany incorporates her past deeds into her way-of-being. Her unaddressed mistakes of the past are now baked into the recipe of a dish she calls justice. There are dangers with passion in matters of justice. The nuances of those dangers, such as the temptations of compassion and revenge, are not accessible with this understanding of justice. Dany has set herself up to make decisions in the name of queenly duty that are based on precedents set by her past decisions, which are contaminated by misguided passion. ]]

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper’s rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.

In her dream, Dany exults in defeating her enemies with dragonfire. It’s a dream shrouded in symbolism and metaphor, so I don’t know what it means with respect to foreshadowing and prophecy. But I think an important take-away for Dany’s character development is the last part. In life, Dany feels as though she is living in a nightmare.

“Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”

Quaithe visits Dany in the darkness of the cabin and she offers Dany the same cryptic advice that she first offered in Qarth. It isn’t clear what it means, but I think we’re close to understanding one part of it. To go forward you must go back, but going back is something a fire cannot do. Perhaps a fair rewrite of this line is: In order to go forward in a manner that is not self-destructive, Dany needs to go back to those events in her past that haunt her, and find the lessons.

[[ She needs to go back to the Eroeh event and figure out that there were more paths available than the two she was unable to reconcile. Perhaps rescuing Eroeh would have ended differently if Dany had not tried to rescue so many other people at the same time, or if she had made peace with Mago. If it’s true that Viserys needed to die, maybe his death should not have been so gruesome.

In the future, Dany’s use of these precedents will cause her to more readily repeat the same mistakes of overreaching with her compassion and being unconcerned with the amount of suffering caused by execution. ]]

If I look back I am lost, (7) Dany told herself the next morning as she entered Astapor through the harbor gates. She dared not remind herself how small and insignificant her following truly was, or she would lose all courage. Today she rode her silver, clad in horsehair pants and painted leather vest, a bronze medallion belt about her waist and two more crossed between her breasts. Irri and Jhiqui had braided her hair and hung it with a tiny silver bell whose chime sang of the Undying of Qarth, burned in their Palace of Dust. (ASOS Daenerys III)

Across all the lies that Dany might tell herself, there is something in common. I think that commonality is the fundamental lie that Dany is acting out whenever this mantra comes up. You don’t need to address the errors of your past.

Dany has dressed for battle.

On the road through Astapor, Dany’s internal conflict manifests in her environment in the following two scenes.

The river’s banks were strangely tranquil. The Worm, the Astapori called the stream. It was wide and slow and crooked, dotted with tiny wooded islands. She glimpsed children playing on one of them, darting amongst elegant marble statues. On another island two lovers kissed in the shade of tall green trees, with no more shame than Dothraki at a wedding. Without clothing, she could not tell if they were slave or free.

The humanity of the Astapori is on full display today, or perhaps Dany is just more apt to notice it on this day in particular. Children run and play, not unlike how Dany used to run and play at the house with the red door. Two lovers kiss in the nude beneath the open sky without shame, reminiscent of the night Dany and Drogo wed. Stripped of clothing, the couple highlights the limitations of man-made judgements, perhaps weakening Dany’s resolve.

Then she rode her silver nearer and saw the raw red flesh beneath the crawling black stripes. Flies. Flies and maggots. The rebellious slaves had been peeled like a man might peel an apple, in a long curling strip. One man had an arm black with flies from fingers to elbow, and red and white beneath. Dany reined in beneath him. “What did this one do?”

“He raised a hand against his owner.”

Her stomach roiling, Dany wheeled her silver about and trotted toward the center of the plaza, and the army she had bought so dear.

An encounter with horrendously mutilated slaves strengthens her resolve again, the final course-adjustment.

Meereen

It has been half a year since Dany’s conquest of Astapor. In that time, she has conquered Yunkai, conquered Meereen, crucified 163 Great Masters of Meereen, and covered up Hazzea’s burning.

Dany stiffened. “I left a council to rule Astapor. A healer, a scholar, and a priest.”

“Your Worship, those sly rogues betrayed your trust. It was revealed that they were scheming to restore the Good Masters to power and the people to chains. Great Cleon exposed their plots and hacked their heads off with a cleaver, and the grateful folk of Astapor have crowned him for his valor.”

The rulers that Dany left in place at Astapor seem to have encountered the same difficulties that Dany encountered with the Dothraki. Those are difficulties associated with an abrupt, forced, massive change to their customs and values. Those values were foundational to the social, political and economic systems that kept things orderly, even if corrupt.

“The city bleeds. Dead men rot unburied in the streets, each pyramid is an armed camp, and the markets have neither food nor slaves for sale. And the poor children! King Cleaver’s thugs have seized every highborn boy in Astapor to make new Unsullied for the trade, though it will be years before they are trained.”

The thing that surprised Dany most was how unsurprised she was. She found herself remembering Eroeh, the Lhazarene girl she had once tried to protect, and what had happened to her. It will be the same in Meereen once I march, she thought.

In the face of unbearable disorder, maybe the council of Astapor thought it was necessary to reestablish order using the structures that existed before Dany arrived. Cleon overthrew Dany’s council for reinstating slavery, but it seems even Cleon could not find a way to establish order without reinstating slavery too.

Dany used to believe the world works in such a way that everyone can be saved. That was evident in Lhazar. Her pessimistic thoughts here suggest to me that her ideal has been decayed by her experiences. She’s coming to accept the idea that the world is just a terrible place. The normalization of terror relieves her of the responsibility to address those terrors, and thus her involvement in creating them. In the future, Dany will more easily categorize terrible things as commonplace and necessary.

“I warned your king that this war of his was folly,” Dany reminded him. “He would not listen.”

“Great Cleon sought only to strike down the vile slavers of Yunkai.”

“Great Cleon is a slaver himself.”

“I know that the Mother of Dragons will not abandon us in our hour of peril. Lend us your Unsullied to defend our walls.”

And if I do, who will defend my walls? “Many of my freedmen were slaves in Astapor. Perhaps some will wish to help defend your king. That is their choice, as free men. I gave Astapor its freedom. It is up to you to defend it.”

“We are all dead, then. You gave us death, not freedom.” Ghael leapt to his feet and spat into her face. (ADWD Daenerys III)

The people who believed in Dany the most are suffering the most, but Dany’s hands are clean, aren’t they? She did her part. She freed the slaves. She gave them the “right” values—slavery is bad—and now it’s their job to figure out how to use those new values in a way that produces more order than chaos.

Dany has doled out freedom haphazardly without an adequate understanding of the ancient systems she has demolished, and without a sufficiently sophisticated plan for the transition from one set of values to another.

Skeletal women sat upon the ground clutching dying infants. Their eyes followed her. Those who had the strength called out. “Mother … please, Mother … bless you, Mother …”

Bless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me.

The Astapori truly believe in Dany’s cause, but I get the impression that their devotion has to do with the fact that they have nowhere else to go. Now they camp outside the walls of Meereen as a ghastly sickness known as the pale mare gallops over them.

“Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you.” Dany vaulted down from the horse. “I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their Mother cares.” (ADWD Daenerys VI)

Nobody wants to deliver food to the Astapori for fear of catching the sickness themselves. Dany delivers the food herself and the sight of suffering moves her. In a commendable act of benevolence, Dany devotes the day to helping the Astapori, at great risk to herself and her guards, and she inspires her guards and councilors to do the same. They separate the living from the dead, they wash the living, they stack and burn a dozen piles of bodies.

Dany can’t invite the sickly Astapori into the city or else they will infect everyone else, but her enemies are on the march and they will arrive at the gates of Meereen soon. These helpless Astapori are completely exposed.

“Please,” Dany said, but only Missandei seemed to hear. The queen got to her feet. “Be quiet! I have heard enough.”

“Your Grace.” Ser Barristan went to one knee. “We are yours to command. What would you have us do?”

“Continue as we planned. Gather food, as much as you can.” If I look back I am lost. (8)

“We must close the gates and put every fighting man upon the walls. No one enters, no one leaves.”

The hall was quiet for a moment. The men looked at one another. Then Reznak said, “What of the Astapori?”

She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now. (ADWD Daenerys VI)

With the gates closed, the people who followed Dany from Astapor are left to starve, to be slaughtered, and re-enslaved by the Yunkai’i. It’s a painful and frustrating choice because it doesn’t feel like she has a choice at all. It is probably made more painful by the time she spent with them.

[[ Dany’s past choices have led to this situation. As the mistakes of her past pile up, so do the parts of her way-of-being that need to be modified. The threat of addressing the past continues to grow. With her past unaddressed, Dany has set a new precedent for a “price” that, though unacceptable, is one that she will be able to say that she has paid once before. ]]

So Daenerys sat silent through the meal, wrapped in a vermilion tokar and black thoughts, speaking only when spoken to, brooding on the men and women being bought and sold outside her walls, even as they feasted here within the city. Let her noble husband make the speeches and laugh at the feeble Yunkish japes. That was a king’s right and a king’s duty.

Much of the talk about the table was of the matches to be fought upon the morrow. Barsena Blackhair was going to face a boar, his tusks against her dagger. Khrazz was fighting, as was the Spotted Cat. And in the day’s final pairing, Goghor the Giant would go against Belaquo Bonebreaker. One would be dead before the sun went down. No queen has clean hands, Dany told herself. She thought of Doreah, of Quaro, of Eroeh … of a little girl she had never met, whose name had been Hazzea. Better a few should die in the pit than thousands at the gates. This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost. (9)

Dany’s intention with the phrase has just inverted. Dany has used the phrase to avoid the truth and to compel herself to act on passion, but from here on out, she uses the phrase to suppress her passion in favor of stoicism. Her transition from maximally idealistic to maximally stoic is complete.

Why did Dany’s use of the phrase invert? Because her options have narrowed to a point that she doesn’t have a choice in what to do anymore. She cannot find a path forward that doesn’t require her to adjust her way-of-being. Doubling down on passion won’t work in these situations. She’s forced to weigh the lives of the sick Astapori against the lives of everyone in the city, in contradiction with her “Everyone can be saved” ideal. She’s forced to weigh her marriage to Hizdhar against the lives of everyone in the city, in contradiction with her heart’s desire. She’s forced to open the fighting pit as part of the agreement, in contradiction with her anti-slavery values.

Dany has agreed to let Yunkai continue slaving. In exchange, Meereen will be left in peace to be a slave-free city under the rule of Queen Dany and King Hizdhar. The agreement is particularly difficult for Dany for several reasons. The Yunkai have set up a slave market right outside Dany’s city. The Yunkai have brought their slaves into Meereen for the wedding celebrations with the agreement that their slaves will not be freed while inside the city. Dany’s revulsion to slavery and the people who practice it is so strong that her victory towards peace tastes a lot like defeat.

Dany scarce touched a bite. This is peace, she told herself. This is what I wanted, what I worked for, this is why I married Hizdahr. So why does it taste so much like defeat?

Furthermore, Dany has finally agreed to open the fighting pits and allow the fighting slaves to kill each other for sport and glory.

All of this is a necessary price for peace, Dany tells herself. Dany’s thoughts show me all of the other events that she has placed in the category of “Necessary Price:”

• Dany thinks of her fair-haired handmaiden, Doreah, who loyally followed Dany into the red waste, against Dothraki counsel, where she withered and died. A necessary price.

“That way lies the red lands, Khaleesi. A grim place and terrible, the riders say.”

“The way the comet points is the way we must go,” Dany insisted . . . though in truth, it was the only way open to her. (ACOK Daenerys I)

• Dany thinks of Quaro, Drogo’s bloodrider who once rescued her from Viserys’s cruelty and again from the winseller’s poison. When Quaro tried to stop the bloodmagic that ultimately killed Dany’s baby, he was killed for it. But Quaro’s life was a necessary price.

• Dany thinks of Eroeh, the girl she may have been able to save from gang rape and butchery if she had taken a less volatile approach to changing the culture. A necessary price.

• Dany thinks of Hazzea, the charred remains of a young girl whose burning by dragonfire never officially happened. A necessary price.

If Dany doesn’t categorize these events as unavoidable necessities, she can’t bear them.

Stoicism – submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity.

Each challenge was an opportunity to address a difficult truth. And each foregone opportunity increases the difficulty of the next challenge.

I want to take apart what it is, exactly, that is making these challenges more difficult. There seem to be two pressures at play whenever Dany needs to decide what to do.

1. External pressure. Her environment and circumstances can pose physical threats to her life. Dany has a choice about what to do externally. For example, to marry Hizdhar or not to marry Hizdhar. If Dany doesn’t marry Hizdhar, she will be free to marry someone else later, but she may be conquered and killed by the enemies that surround her city.

2. Internal pressure. Dany has a choice about what to do internally. She can address her nagging conscience or she can continue running from it. She can’t bear the pain of addressing her past mistakes. With the mistakes unaddressed, her way-of-being does not receive the updates necessary to prevent her from repeating those mistakes.

Repeated mistakes exacerbate the pressures from 1 which exacerbate the pressures from 2, creating a negative loop.

When pressures from 1 become too dangerous, Dany’s list of options narrows. First it narrows to a point where she no longer has the opportunity to address her past mistakes. She’s forced to commit further to her chosen path. If her options narrow too much then her last option remaining, in the face of death, is to go all Fire and Blood on her problems. Because survival is the fundamental imperative.

Ideally, Dany can maneuver through life in a way that she never encounters that imperative. But she has been fleeing from her past mistakes for so long and repeating them so much that, in her latest decisions, her options for dealing with external pressures are narrowed to those two. Either change your way or kill everyone in your way.

Better the butcher than the meat. All kings are butchers. Are queens so different? (ADWD Daenerys IV)

Daario suggests the latter. He wants Dany to round up all the Great Masters in one place and kill them. But Dany has come to learn that her understanding of slavery and how to change it is incomplete.

“My queen?” Daario stepped forward. “The riverside is full of Meereenese, begging leave to be allowed to sell themselves to this Qartheen. They are thicker than the flies.”

Dany was shocked. “They want to be slaves?”

“The ones who come are well spoken and gently born, sweet queen. Such slaves are prized. In the Free Cities they will be tutors, scribes, bed slaves, even healers and priests. They will sleep in soft beds, eat rich foods, and dwell in manses. Here they have lost all, and live in fear and squalor.” (ASOS Daenerys VI)

Knowing that, Dany’s compassionate nature will no longer allow her to kill everyone in her way like she did at Astapor, so she’s forced to take the only other route and change her way from passionate idealism to passionless stoicism. Since Dany was forced by her circumstances to change her way, rather than by voluntary self-examination, her past mistakes remain unaddressed.

By any political measure, Dany is doing splendidly ever since she began to suppress her passion and shift to stoicism. She won 90 days of peace for her city by making the marriage deal with Hizdhar. She set aside Daario and won permanent peace for the entire region by marrying Hizdhar. She has removed slavery from Meereen, the greatest city on the bay. Now she is positioned to prove the superiority of her anti-slavery values economically, politically, socially, and set the precedent for a slave-free Slaver’s Bay over the course of her lifetime. She has kept most of her dragons locked up where they can’t burn any more innocent people. She’s making all the proper sacrifices and they’re paying off magnificently.

Her stoicism proves to be incredibly effective. The problem with it is that, having not found the lessons in her past mistakes and incorporated them, her stoicism is an act. She can see that it’s effective but she can’t understand why doing the right thing feels so shitty. The costs of Dany’s decisions have always been incurred majorly on the external world. Now the costs of her decisions are incurred on her internally. She’s suppressing her passionate nature, her desire to run away with Daario, her desire to kill the slavers in her city, and her disgust for the fighting pits. Her spirit and ideals are dying as she compromises them in pieces, and it’s unbearable.

Even with the amount of pain Dany is feeling now, it’s worth considering the possibility that, given her past mistakes, this is the minimum amount of pain necessary in order for her to accomplish her goals to stay alive and to produce meaningful and lasting change in the world.

Dragons

Dany has just married Hizdhar and now she wants Quentyn to leave Meereen. She can’t marry him anymore. He isn’t safe around Daario and Hizdhar. And Dany isn’t attracted to him anyway. As Dany and Quentyn descend the pyramid to the dragon pit, Dany’s personality changes.

One of the elephants trumpeted at them from his stall. An answering roar from below made her flush with sudden heat. Prince Quentyn looked up in alarm. “The dragons know when she is near,” Ser Barristan told him.

Every child knows its mother, Dany thought. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves … “They call to me. Come.” She took Prince Quentyn by the hand and led him to the pit where two of her dragons were confined.

The sound of her children fills her with heat. It might be motherly love, nostalgia, excitement, arousal, awe, or something else. Whatever it is, it’s an intense emotion.

“Drogon is hunting.” He did not need to hear the rest. “The white one is Viserion, the green is Rhaegal. I named them for my brothers.” Her voice echoed off the scorched stone walls. It sounded small—a girl’s voice, not the voice of a queen and conqueror, nor the glad voice of a new-made bride.

Her voice changes to that of a girl rather than a ruler. In combination with the heat, this might be a rare glimpse of Dany in her element. Being near her dragons seems to make her happy.

“They are … they are fearsome creatures.”

“They are dragons, Quentyn.” Dany stood on her toes and kissed him lightly, once on each cheek. “And so am I.”

Dany commonly gives platonic kisses when she is overcome with emotion, so I think she’s clearly in a very good mood. I think her mood is important to contextualize her thoughts when she leaves the dragon pit.

“I am a prince of Dorne, Your Grace. I will not run from slaves and sell swords.”

Then you truly are a fool, Prince Frog. Dany gave her wild children one last lingering look. She could hear the dragons screaming as she led the boy back to the door, and see the play of light against the bricks, reflections of their fires. If I look back, I am lost. (10) “Ser Barristan will have summoned a pair of sedan chairs to carry us back up to the banquet, but the climb can still be wearisome.” Behind them, the great iron doors closed with a resounding clang. “Tell me of this other Daenerys. I know less than I should of the history of my father’s kingdom. I never had a maester growing up.” Only a brother.

“It would be my pleasure, Your Grace,” said Quentyn. (ADWD Daenerys VIII)

The phrase If I look back I am lost in this scene shows me that Dany doesn’t want to leave her dragons. Her back is turned to them as they protest her leaving. It suggests that she feels regret or guilt about the decision to lock them up. Her stoic commitment to their imprisonment is painfully punctuated by the offensive clang of their prison.

Viserys is still in her thoughts and I sense some bitterness about her childhood in exile when compared to Quentyn. He was raised with all the advantages and stability of home and with a mentor figure who likely did not abuse Quentyn the way that Dany’s mentor abused her.

Dany is using the phrase to suppress her passionate way again. I think the passion Dany is suppressing here is her desire to stay with her dragons, perhaps the one place in Meereen where she feels free to be herself, temporarily relieved of the living nightmare of her circumstances internally and above ground.

And no matter how far the dragon flew each day, come nightfall some instinct drew him home to Dragonstone. His home, not mine. Her home was back in Meereen, with her husband and her lover. That was where she belonged, surely.

Keep walking. If I look back I am lost. (11)

Memories walked with her. Clouds seen from above. Horses small as ants thundering through the grass. A silver moon, almost close enough to touch. Rivers running bright and blue below, glimmering in the sun. Will I ever see such sights again? On Drogon’s back she felt whole. Up in the sky the woes of this world could not touch her. How could she abandon that? (ADWD Daenerys X)

In this final chapter, Dany’s last two uses of the phrase help her suppress a desire to abandon everything and live out the rest of her days in the wilderness with Drogon. Dany seems to envy Drogon his freedom to follow his natural instincts, to go wherever he wants to go whenever he wants to go there. It contrasts with Dany’s lack of freedom to act on her passions and to go where she has always wanted to go, but can’t remotely justify doing so. To go to Westeros now with her bay in shambles would be reprehensible by her own standards. It would be an unprecedented disregard for her responsibilities and an admission of absolute failure, three years in the making.

She turned back the way she’d come, to where Dragonstone rose above the grasslands like a clenched fist. It looks so close. I’ve been walking for hours, yet it still looks as if I could reach out and touch it. It was not too late to go back. There were fish in the spring-fed pool by Drogon’s cave. She had caught one her first day there, she might catch more. And there would be scraps, charred bones with bits of flesh still on them, the remnants of Drogon’s kills.

No, Dany told herself. If I look back I am lost. (12) She might live for years amongst the sunbaked rocks of Dragonstone, riding Drogon by day and gnawing at his leavings every evenfall as the great grass sea turned from gold to orange, but that was not the life she had been born to. So once again she turned her back upon the distant hill and closed her ears to the song of flight and freedom that the wind sang as it played amongst the hill’s stony ridges. The stream was trickling south by southeast, as near as she could tell. She followed it. Take me to the river, that is all I ask of you. Take me to the river, and I will do the rest.

The hours passed slowly. The stream bent this way and that, and Dany followed, beating time upon her leg with the whip, trying not to think about how far she had to go, or the pounding in her head, or her empty belly. Take one step. Take the next. Another step. Another. What else could she do? (ADWD Daenerys X)

At the end of the book, Dany’s notable lack of options is coupled with the “only forward” motif three times here in rapid succession, and several times in this chapter alone. She is visited quite literally by the ghosts of her past who compel her forward in the ways of the dragon, the Targaryen and passion. Everything that troubles her conscience resurfaces in her thoughts now.

The Red Waste

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.

Eroeh

Mago, his bloodrider, raped and murdered Eroeh, a girl Daenerys had once saved from him.

Viserys

If I’d had a dragon, I would have taught the world the meaning of our words. Viserys began to laugh, until his jaw fell away from his face, smoking, and blood and molten gold ran from his mouth.

Quaithe

“Remember who you are, Daenerys,” the stars whispered in a woman’s voice. “The dragons know. Do you?”

Jorah

“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.

Hazzea

“Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …” Dany could not recall the child’s name.

Bloodmagic, Drogo, Rhaego and Mirri

Her sun-and-stars had fallen from his horse, the maegi Mirri Maz Duur had murdered Rhaego in her womb, and Dany had smothered the empty shell of Khal Drogo with her own two hands.

I think we’re on the verge of witnessing one of two possible changes in Dany’s psychological path forward. Either she will dig out the lessons in her past mistakes, finally take responsibility for them, incorporate them and achieve moral intervention, or, faced with the unbearable pain of unattainable success, she will find another unexpected way to double down on passion and redefine success.

Outro

This thing was a challenge to focus. I was tempted at times to bake in threads about identity, Dothraki as wise fools, relativity of slavery, Dany’s cushions and Jorah’s shortcomings as a moral guide. Without the full picture, it comes across overcritical of Dany. But with any luck it came out focused enough to highlight what I wanted it to highlight, which is the way in which a person can bundle up all the mistakes of their past into a monster they call destiny. So I just want to close out by saying that I don’t think every bit of Dany’s woes are entirely her own fault. I think she’s an incredibly sympathetic character and that that is the point of her. Her mistakes, if they are mistakes, are all decisions I likely would have made in her circumstances too.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and be sure to leave a comment. I’m sure I have misjudged some things, misused some words, and I absolutely want to know where, how, and what you think!

Acclaim

“This is good work. Well written too. Congrats”

“This really good analysis! Well done. I prefer analysis of characters like this – their psychological so to speak.”

“i am sorry, im busy at the moment so i didnt read the entire thing, just parts of it but it is really well done! This is also my favorite kind of analysis,”

“I’ll start off with saying I only read the first 20% of your post (it’s a lot), and that what I read was very well written and didn’t exaggerate or reach to far in any way.”

“So i had a giant reply written but my reddit crashed and did not save it. Suffice it to say I really enjoyed reading these posts. Thank you for taking the time to write them.”

“First of all major props for what seems to be a very high quality post: I’ve yet to read it all but insofar the first part hides a lot of very solid insight and I’ve got the feeling the trend will continue >_>”

“These are so well done. Please keep making vids. You don’t take the road most traveled. We need that.”

“Another great video my friend.

Updated Oct 13, 2022 – Embedded video

Sorry that all the book quotes are italicized. George RR Martin didn’t write the whole series in italics, but he did write a few select parts in italics. But you don’t get to know what those parts are! Because for whatever reason, wordpress has decided to take it upon themselves to place some idiot designer’s misplaced sense of aesthetic higher on the priority list than any writer’s intended meaning.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton