Two Of The Many Reasons I Hate House Of The Dragon:

Two of the many reasons I hate House of the Dragon:

-- They're doubling down on GOT's vitriol that "the best ruler is the one that doesn't want to rule" that they used to vilify Dany in the end.

-- They made Alicent and Rhaenyra into these peace-loving characters, and gave many of Dany's peace-loving qualities to them. Which led to a bunch of show-watchers (and plenty of book readers that don't know the books well) to believe that Rhaenyra and Alicent are better queens/more peaceful/more reasonable than Dany. These fans end up loving Rhaenyra and Alicent while hating Dany, even though the reasons they love show!Rhaenyra and show!Alicent are precisely the qualities that the showrunners stole from book!Dany and gave to them.

When he was gone, Missandei brought the queen a simple meal of goat cheese and olives, with raisins for a sweet. "Your Grace needs more than wine to break her fast. You are such a tiny thing, and you will surely need your strength today." That made Daenerys laugh, coming from a girl so small. -ADWD, Daenerys VII

cute moment of the day: itty bitty 11-year-old Missandei calling 15-year-old Dany "tiny" on the morning of Dany's wedding to Hizdahr.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN BOOK!DAENERYS’ AND SHOW!RHAENYRA’S VIEWS ON QUEENSHIP 

(none of the Dany quotes above were included on Game of Thrones)

Marc Simonetti:  On the ADWD cover for Brazil, I put Daenerys at the top of the stairs of the Meereenese pyramid. I had undoubtedly been, unconsciously, influenced by the series. And George [R. R. Martin] told me that Daenerys wants equality for everyone, she wants to be at the same level as her people, so I had her climb down to keep it consistent.

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GRRM:  By Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8, I was pretty much out of the loop.

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GRRM: So I think what you’re going to find is, when “Winds of Winter” and then, hopefully, “Dream of Spring” come out, that my ending will be very different.

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GRRM: As I write these last two books, I’ll be moving towards the endings that I’ve known since 1991. | GRRM in the 1993 outline: Five central characters will make it through all three volumes. […] The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow. | GRRM: Not all of the characters who survived until the end of GAME OF THRONES will survive until the end of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, and not all of the characters who died on GAME OF THRONES will die in A SONG OF ICE & FIRE.

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GRRM: Well of course the two outlying ones, the things that are going on north of the Wall and Daenerys Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons are of course the Ice and Fire of the title, the Song of Ice and Fire. | HOTD (Aegon’s prophecy reveal came from GRRM):  And if the world of men is to survive, a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne. A king or queen strong enough to unite the realm against the cold and the dark. Aegon called his dream ‘The Song of Ice and  Fire’. | GRRM: Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books.

What do you think of the theory that the targaryens' dragon dreams pre-dany is actually dany hatching the dragon eggs, and they mistaken dany as themselves?

genuinely believe that like how the red wedding was a crime of such gravity that the violation of sacred guest rite literally tore a hole in the narrative and is causing time and reality in the riverlands to refract around itself and open asunder, what daenerys did at the end of AGOT was SO huge, this literal nuclear bomb of magic rippling out into the timeline, that it pinged the radar of generations of Targaryens before her who were tuned in to dreams like that. They’re little psychic aftershocks of the big one but none of them knew how to interpret it (how would they?) and so they killed themselves concluding that they were dany. they’re not dany.

"dragons plant no trees" gets thrown around a lot as fact, but i think the veracity of that claim is still up for debate in the books. because dany (like bran and jon and many others) is a narrative symbol of hope and rebirth within the series because of her connection to dragons and fire, not in spite of it. this is because dragons in asoiaf have a much more expansive narrative function than simply 'nuke metaphor'. the 'exclusively weapons of war' image they have acquired breaks down immediately if you recall that the first thing dany does with them is begin dismantling an unjust status quo. she rallies the unsullied at the gates of astapor with cries of dracarys! dracarys! freedom! <- dragons as a symbol of hope and freedom for the persecuted. and obviously they've been built up as an oppositional force against the others. we're told when the last dragon died summers became shorter. in that respect the dragons, or more specifically, fire which is warmth which is passion—very much embodies life against the numbing, deadening threat of eternal winter that the others represent. but fire also consumes, which simultaneously makes dragons agents of destruction, or as adwd shows: the monsters who eat little girls and leave behind their bones. but when dany found herself chained to a false peace which effectively undid her cause in meereen, it was the dragon that rescued her and reignited her fire to fight back—which is to say that dragons represent a wealth of contradictions within the text and this is likely something grrm means to parallel with the others to some extent, by questioning their apparent narrative role as the one true evil. because i doubt the series is gearing up towards a spectacle-esque battle wherein our heroes get to practice righteous, easy violence on a monolithic army of monsters. that feels like it would undo a lot of asoiaf's preoccupation with investigating violence against socially acceptable targets, even if said target is ice sidhe. and this binary between a one true good and a one true evil, i.e. melisandre's philosophy ("if half an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. a man is good or he is evil.") is not something the story takes as given.

instead there's this exchange between bran, jojen, and meera in asos: "but you just said you hated them." / "why can't it be both?" / because they're different. like night and day, or ice and fire." / "if ice can burn. then love and hate can mate."—and i think it's talking about reconciling two conflicting ideas. because the dream of an eternal summer is just as unsustainable as the threat of eternal winter. i think the battle for dawn is more about questions of seasonal harmony. the first line from agot's summary says, "long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance", so it's not totally out of question for the series to end with that seasonal balance restored once more. and that question of balance and how it can be achieved then works as a metaphor for a bunch of other things. because asoiaf at its core is very interested in exploring big contradictions, like love and duty? how do you keep all your oaths without betraying someone you love? how can one hope for a just, rightful ruler in a world where the systems in place can never allow such a thing? how do dragons plant trees?

you cannot frame dany's arc as a binary choice between planting trees or embracing (dragon)fire. because the fire is hers, it is a part of her, that's who she is. and her character has always existed outside of rigid dichotomies. at the end of agot she had two options, resign herself to a life of seclusion as a widow or die with the last of her family in that pyre, instead she performed a miracle. presently, i think grrm means to explore necessary, revolutionary violence with her arc because you cannot deal with institutional slavery by simply negotiating with slavers like she does in adwd. and the consequences thereof because she's also been set up to be more reckless with dragonfire in the future. but i think there will be an eventual reconciliation there, between her dreams "to plant trees and watch them grow." and her role as the mother of dragons, as a revolutionary figure. because if ice can burn, then maybe dragons can plant trees. they'll learn how to.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

George R.R. Martin to Al Jazeera: the two outlying ones, the things that are going on north of the Wall and Daenerys Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons are of course the Ice and Fire of the title A Song of Ice and Fire.

George R. R. Martin to Adria's News: I mean… Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books.

"No one ever looked for a girl. [...] The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it." (AFFC, Samwell IV)

"She [Daenerys] is Azor Ahai returned [aka the Warrior of Light, the Son of Fire, the one who shall "wake dragons out of stone"] … and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end … death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn …" (ADWD, Tyrion VI)