dream – Apples and Dragons

This is a deep analytical dive into Dany’s first dream in AGOT 11 Daenerys II that I did during a re-read. As with most things, it is best read after reading the chapter. But rejoice, for there be dragon in it. Enjoy!

Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

I’m a big lover of metaphor and symbolism. I like to abstract what the words mean a lot. But I’ve learned that I tend to get too abstract too fast. Usually I find that a grounded look at the dream or prophecy has more information in it than I found before I became ungrounded in my thinking and began looking for symbolic meanings. I find that the grounded interpretation provides invaluable starting points and guard rails to prevent me from wandering too far into abstract nonsense. So now I try to start as grounded as I can be.

The first question I have is: Are the events in the dream connected? Because maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re flashes of random images, memories or events that don’t necessarily relate to one another. There’s a pivotal phrase in the dream that actually answers that question for me:

As if in answer,

It ties the second half of the dream to the first half, even if only through suggestion. Dreams are made of suggestion, so suggestion is plenty to go on. The second half is presented as potentially a consequence of the first half. And it inherently creates a mystery. The mystery is: Was the dragon a response to something Dany did? Like closing her eyes and whimpering?

So the parts of the dream are related, and it’s a causal relationship, which suggests that the dream is chronological too, because an effect can only occur after its cause.

So the dream tells a story. It’s a simple story, but I think it provides the overarching framework for how to approach it. The story is roughly: Dany is being abused by Viserys, then a dragon appears and rescues her from Viserys. There’s room to quibble about the details, like maybe the dragon is motivated by hunger rather than rescue, but that’s a good enough starting point. If I get stuck later I can return to this spot and challenge assumptions like that that I’ve made.

Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood.

The next question I have is whether or not the first part of the dream is something that really happened. After all, a dream that depicts an event that really happened in Dany’s past would be a dream that’s more grounded in reality and lends itself more to literal interpretation than a dream that depicts an event that didn’t really happen in Dany’s past and lends itself more to symbolic interpretation. So I would like to start with the most literal interpretation to see how it holds up.

When I recall the previous Daenerys chapter, AGOT Daenerys I, I find a line that confirms that the abuse that Viserys is visiting upon Dany in the first half of the dream has already happened in reality.

His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.” (AGOT Daenerys I)

So as it turns out, I was asking the wrong question. I asked whether or not the first part of the dream is something that really happened, but given as fact that it has really happened already, the question I should ask now is how much sense it makes to suppose that the first half of the dream is not depicting it? It’s the kind of abuse that is so traumatic and memorable that the idea that the dream is not depicting it is revealed to make little or no sense at all.

So the first half of the dream is in fact a real memory — or majorly derived from one — of something that happened to Dany in the past.

There’s one part of it that actually tells me when it happened. And it might even give me a big hint about why it happened.

Her thighs were slick with blood.

Remember, I learned in AGOT Daenerys I that Dany has already “had her blood.”

“She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal,” Illyrio told him, not for the first time. (AGOT Daenerys I)

So maybe Dany received this attack when she had her blood. And maybe the reason for the attack had something to do with her having her blood.

There are a number of questions that can come out of that, like: Did Viserys not want Dany to have her blood yet? If so, why not? Did Dany say or do something that set him off? What is that likely to be? Then I can look at Viserys’s character and his rampages to see what kind of things actually set him off, to help me make a better guess at what set him off in the past. But I’ll shelve that for now so I can finish the dream.

She was naked, clumsy with fear.

Dany being naked in the dream could mean Dany was actually naked at the time of this attack, or it could be a manifestation of Dany’s feelings of vulnerability from the day/time when she’s having the dream. But the second one is a symbolic interpretation, and I’m trying to stay grounded. So I’ll suppose that Dany is actually naked in the dream and at the time of the attack.

“Clumsy with fear” also seems to track with vulnerability.

She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly.

“Thick and ungainly” tracks with vulnerability too. She’s trying to run away from Viserys but she’s immobilized by her body. Maybe “having her blood” is what slowed down her body.

He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.”

Then Viserys strikes Dany again and she stumbles and falls while he kicks her and screams “You woke the dragon.” More rampage, more vulnerability.

The first half of the dream was pretty easy to understand. I think if I had launched into metaphorical interpretation too quickly, I would have missed the possibility that the first half of it was something that really happened.

Onto the second half!

She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

Dany closes her eyes and whimpers, no doubt a response to being kicked and shouted at. I want to point out that each sentence logically follows from the one before it, and that’s how I can tell that the events are all happening in the same scene and chronologically, rather than being random flashes of unrelated or loosely related images. I don’t have any reason in particular to think that Dany closing her eyes and whimpering is not caused by Viserys’s rampage, or that “As if in answer” is not referring to Dany closing her eyes and whimpering.

there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire.

Dany’s eyes are closed now. I’ve seen everywhere else in the story that the story sticks to a POV writing style in which the amount of information that the reader is allowed to perceive is strictly limited to what the POV character can perceive. So when Dany closes her eyes, she loses vision, and so do I. Instead, there are only sounds to go by.

As of this line, there’s nothing I’ve seen yet that could reasonably explain these two sounds. Neither Viserys nor Dany are the sort of things that would make a hideous ripping sound or a fire sound. So the line immediately creates a question of: What the heck is going on out there, beyond Dany’s closed eyes?

When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon.

Dany opens her eyes, and I see some big clues to help me answer the question. Viserys is gone and there’s a dragon where he was standing, surrounded by great columns of flame that presumably surround Dany, too.

So maybe the hideous ripping sound was the dragon eating Viserys. Maybe it was the dragon’s wings when he flew in. Maybe it was the sound of the dragon magically appearing, as things can do in a dream. Or maybe it was Viserys transforming into a dragon. Those are a few ideas that occur to me.

Considering that Viserys was attacking Dany, I feel safe to assume that Viserys was facing Dany. And since Viserys was facing Dany, I think the dragon is not Viserys, because the dragon had to turn its head to look at Dany.

It turned its great head slowly.

So that strongly suggests that the dragon was not facing her, and so the dragon is not a transformed Viserys. With that possibility ruled out, I can see that the only possibilities remaining that make sense to me are the ones in which the dragon got rid of Viserys. Maybe he squashed him, burned him, or ate him, I don’t know. But Viserys is definitely gone, so is Dany’s problem, and the dragon definitely did it. dragon flying 200

When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

The dragon looks Dany in the eyes, and then she wakes up. Here I learn that the dragon’s eyes are molten. His molten eyes and great head are the only identifying characteristics I get to see. Since there are only a few known living dragons in the story, as of ADWD, that’s plenty of information for me to narrow down the possibilities.

Viserion: When Dany passed his eyes came open, two pools of molten gold. (ADWD Daenerys I)
Drogon: His scales were black, his eyes and horns and spinal plates blood red. (ADWD Daenerys IX)
Drogon: His eyes were molten. I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away. (ADWD Daenerys IX)
Drogon: In the smoldering red pits of Drogon’s eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Two of Dany’s dragons have eyes that are described as molten. Since the dream doesn’t say gold, and since Drogon is Dany’s main dragon and largest dragon, I think the dragon in the dream is most likely Drogon.

As an aside, that gives me an idea of how long this story is willing to withhold some of its secrets. The color of Drogon’s eyes aren’t given until ADWD, that I could find. So if the dragon is Drogon, the identity of a dream dragon in the first book is held in ambiguity until the fifth book.

she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

When Dany woke she was shaking, sweaty and she had never been so afraid. It doesn’t seem like part of the dream, but since dreams are made of suggestion I think it’s fair to say that the way she feels in the dream is part of the dream. And when the way she feels immediately after the dream matches with the way she felt in the dream, it’s fair to say that is a product of the dream and therefore part of the dream, too, at least for my purpose of trying to understand it.

Phew. So that is the most grounded version of my interpretation of Dany’s dream. So far, I haven’t tried to explore symbolic meanings of the dragon, of Viserys, of the blood or anything. The dragon is very much a dragon, not three dragons or a symbolic representation of power or anything like that. Viserys is very much Viserys, not Drogo.

But when I look at the dream in the context of the chapter, I can see why I would tend to want to interpret the dream in the context of Dany’s marriage to Drogo. The marriage is the premiere event of the chapter. It’s certainly where Dany’s fear is placed in the chapter. Look what the story is doing immediately after the dream.

She had never been so afraid . . .

. . . until the day of her wedding came at last.

The ceremony began at dawn (…)

The story deliberately pulls my attention back to the wedding before I’ve had time to give the dream due attention in the context of Viserys’s actual death and the greater story.

Our author is a sly man, indeed. But don’t let me jump the gun. I’m not finished with this dream yet!

Using the powers bestowed upon me by Daenerys V, I can see that this dream foreshadows a whole lot about Viserys’s death. Viserys wasn’t killed by Drogon, but he did die, and that’s significant enough to call this dream foreshadowing of it. What catches my attention the most is how Dany’s role in the dream mirrors her role in Viserys’s death.

In both situations, there’s an impenetrable layer of ambiguity regarding the question of Dany’s involvement with Viserys’s death. In the dream, the ambiguity is created with the phrase “As if in answer.” At least a few questions come out of that, like: Did Dany somehow summon the dragon? Did she want it to kill Viserys? How does she feel about it afterwards?

At Viserys’s execution, the ambiguity is created in a number of ways, and the same questions are present.

Did Dany somehow summon Drogo? — Dany translated Viserys’s damning insults and threats from the common tongue to the Dothraki tongue for Drogo, and the reader is left in the dark about whether or not Dany used the opportunity to try to save Viserys’s life, or at least earn him a less painful execution, by softening or changing Viserys’s words through the translation.
Did Dany want Drogo to kill Viserys? — Another layer of ambiguity is the question of to what extent, if any, a khaleesi is culpable when her khal executes her brother.
How does Dany feel about it afterwards? — And another layer of ambiguity is the question of why Dany insisted on watching the execution when Jorah advised her to look away.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon. (AGOT Daenerys V)

So what the dream and Viserys’s execution have in common is ambiguity surrounding Dany’s involvement in Viserys’s death. That ambiguity may very well be another thing that the dream foreshadows.

When I look at Viserys’s death in Daenerys V, an obvious symbolism grabs my attention. Drogo is the person who killed Viserys, and Drogon is named for Drogo. So that seems to retroactively confirm that the identity of the dragon is Drogon.

Taking a step back, my initial tendency, based on the context of the chapter, was to see Viserys in the dream as a symbolic representation of Drogo, because Dany is afraid of marrying Drogo, and Dany is afraid of Viserys, so the most obvious relationship between Drogo and Viserys is that Dany is afraid of both of them. But when I consider the dream in context of a greater portion of the story, it turns out that the dragon is a symbolic Drogo, and that Drogo plays a more protective role in the dream than a threatening one.

This is one of countless expressions of the Good and Evil theme that I’ve stumbled across in my journeys analyzing this story . It was my prejudgement that “Drogo is a scary bad guy” that blinded me to the possibility that “Drogo is a protective good guy” in the dream.

Looking back on the whole investigation, I can see the way that my revelation with the dream mirrors my revelation with this chapter. Drogo is built up in Dany’s thoughts as a scary figure who might hurt her.

“I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up.

I’m instilled with a sense of dread for the consummation of the marriage, because Dany is understandably afraid of it throughout the chapter and leading up to it.

“No?” he said, and she knew it was a question.

When Drogo asks the question, it shows that Drogo cares about Dany’s feelings and respects her freedom to refuse him if she wants to.

Dany recognized it as a question and therefore as respect for her feelings, driving home the loudest implication of the whole sex scene from beginning to end: “You and Dany were wrong about Drogo!” Drogo’s every Dothraki word and touch stands in contradiction to Dany’s and the reader’s expectations of him.

She took his hand and moved it down to the wetness between her thighs. “Yes,” she whispered as she put his finger inside her.

And that’s why Dany became comfortable enough with Drogo to become aroused and consent to sex in unmistakable terms. The lesson of the chapter is “You and Dany were wrong about Drogo.” The lesson of the dream is the very same one. I think it’s a good example of the way the story conceals its bigger mysteries, such as those found in the symbolic images of dreams and prophecies, by hiding them in the fog created by the reader’s unchallenged perceptions.

Another thing I notice is that my adherence to a grounded interpretation was, in the end, rewarded with some pretty awesome and resilient symbolism. (Dragon=Drogo) I think that’s a pattern in the story too. The story seems to reward the reader for walking a middle path between taking things too symbolically and taking things too literally.

That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading!