Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Week

Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Week

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Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick, yet it was her dragons she feared for. Her father had been slain before she was born, and her splendid brother Rhaegar as well. Her mother had died bringing her into the world while the storm screamed outside. Gentle Ser Willem Darry, who must have loved her after a fashion, had been taken by a wasting sickness when she was very young. Her brother Viserys, Khal Drogo who was her sun-and-stars, even her unborn son, the gods had claimed them all. They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not.

Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Month 2021 || Day 27 - Historical Parallel: Daenerys I Targaryen and Elizabeth I Tudor

The sister post of this edit can be found at asoiafdaenerysdaily

fixing game of thrones →  Rhaella survives Dany’s birth and gets to raise her children in Essos 

While i completely agree woth your point about the starks and dany comparing themselves to their animals. Wouldn't it be very different for someone to want to reclaim the home they grew up in then for someone wantong to reclaim the throne of a country they've never been to, that an ancestor they never met conquered and who's line of descendants brought as much evil as they did good? I mean i love Dany and the show did her dirty and she woulda been the best queen. I just think that one falls flat

I hope this isn’t rude but I think your logic is a bit flawed.

Sure, you could say it’s unfair to compare Daenerys wanting to reclaim and rule a place she didn’t grow to the Starks wanting to reclaim and rule what they did grow up in.

The thing is that it’s not like this is generations of generations of Targaryens being in exile, she was conceived in Kingslanding and would have been born and raised in there had Roberts Rebellion not have happened. Her family reigned there for literally three hundred years. Her mother and father lived and ruled there. Had Aerys not sent Rhaella and Viserys to Dragonstone, they all would have most likely been slaughtered alongside Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon. Daenerys story is very much about home, ever since she was old enough to comprehend, her brother was telling her of how they would take back their home. Hell, Viserys sold her like a horse and told her he’d allow 40,000 men rape her and their horses too if it got him his army, so they could go home.

“...reclaim the throne of a country they've never been to”

Daenerys was born in Westeros, to say that she’s never been to the ‘country’ is incorrect. Sure she was a baby, an infant, but it’s still her place of birth and the place where her family had reigned for three whole centuries prior.

“...that an ancestor they never met conquered and who's line of descendants brought as much evil as they did good?”

I’m not sure what this has to do with anything or than prove my point that there is a double standard when it comes to Daenerys and the Starks even further.

“....that an ancestor they never met conquered...”

The exact same thing could be said about the Starks. The First Men ‘conquered’ the North, and the Stark children have never met them.

“...and who's line of descendants brought as much evil as they did good?”

Daenerys's father being a terrible and evil King doesn't erase the other terrible Kings of winter and horrible lords of Winterfell did that existed before. So I ask, why should Daenerys be punished for the crimes and bad deeds that those before her committed, but the Stark children aren’t? Why shouldn’t you be asking the same question about the Starks when they want to reclaim their home? Every system brings “good” and “bad” to the table. The Starks are loved by the North, but that doesn’t mean they don’t profit off of the poor / peasants labor. Also, this doesn’t erase the fact that a poor / horrible Stark ruler could still emerge in the future. The system is inherently flawed, that’s the problem with hereditary monarchy in general.

Hope this answered your question.

The Red Comet appears exactly 400 years after the Doom of Valyria. Doesn’t that seem significant?

Because round numbers like that make me want to look twice here… and in doing so, there’s something very interesting in the timeline that GRRM has made efforts to keep slightly veiled.

The Red Comet appears a year before the turn of the century in ASOIAF—that is to say, 299 AC. The Doom occurs in 102 BC. The non-existent year zero of this kind of timekeeping makes it look wrong, but that’s exactly 400 years.

I always thought it was interesting that the Doom of Valyria happened in 102 BC—it’s so close to being a round number, but it’s just off. Just enough off, though, that the Red Comet in 299 AC lines up.

Round numbers feel meaningful, and that’s even true for the characters within the world of ASOIAF:

Joffrey and Margaery shall marry on the first day of the new year, which as it happens is also the first day of the new century. The ceremony will herald the dawn of a new era. (ASOS Tyrion I)

The new century, of course, is 300 years since Aegon’s Conquest:

It’s a new century, my lady. The three hundredth year since Aegon’s Conquest. (ASOS Sansa IV)

It’s almost dissatisfying that all this talk of the new century doesn’t line up with the Doom and doesn’t line up with the Red Coment.

So do we have Aegon to blame for making these numbers not line up? Actually, no—Aegon invaded Westeros in 2BC, exactly 100 years after the Doom of Valyria.

It was then that he crowned himself… but that’s not the date that Westeros counts years from; Westeros counts the years from his coronation in Oldtown. This is a detail apparently so interesting (and perhaps important) that it’s described twice in The World of Ice and Fire. For example:

Only a handful of lords had been present for Aegon’s first coronation at the mouth of the Blackwater, but hundreds were on hand to witness his second, and tens of thousands cheered him afterward in the streets of Oldtown as he rode through the city on Balerion’s back. Amongst those at Aegon’s second coronation were the maesters and archmaesters of the Citadel. Perhaps for that reason, it was this coronation, rather than the Aegonfort crowning or the day of Aegon’s Landing, that became fixed as the start of Aegon’s reign.

If Westeros counted years from the year Aegon crowned himself, rather than from the year Aegon was crowned by the Citadel, then the year that the Red Comet appeared in the sky would be 300AC, and that would be exactly 400 years after the Doom. Seen that way, everything lines up curiously well…

So much happens when the Red Comet arrives—the revival of dragons and the return of magic in the world, whatever the relationship between those things is. Those events, and that year, feels much more like the “dawn of a new era.”

Additionally, seeing it all line up so well raises some eyebrows. Seeing all the dates like this make it seem significant that Aegon invaded exactly 100 years later, and makes room for interpreting the Red Comet as potentially having some kind of relationship to the Doom, because 400 years feels just too regular. Why does the comet appear exactly 300 years after Aegon’s invasion, exactly 400 years after the Doom?

At the least, there’s a sense of fate involved that Dany’s dragons wake exactly 400 years after the Doom—or do the revival of magic and the return of dragons both relate to some unknown third factor?

Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Month 2021 || Day 27 - Historical Parallel: Daenerys I Targaryen and Elizabeth I Tudor

The sister post of this edit can be found at asongoficeandfiresource