For this week’s Femme Fatale Friday, I have chosen to discuss Daenerys Targaryen, my favorite Game of Thrones character. Now, this post is likely a very long time coming, but it is not an easy one to write. I adored Dany from the very first time we meet her in the pilot, and at the beginning of the first novel. Her ending felt horrid, as they truly did this Queen dirty in how they portrayed her in the atrocity that was season eight!
Daenerys was a princess of the Targaryen dynasty as the series begins. Her elder brother had just arranged a marriage for her when we first see her in the pilot episode, as well as the first novel. In the series, they make it so that she is several years older than in the novels, as she was only 13 when the books began! This is an important change to make viewers more comfortable with the content, especially in the beginning when they had yet to know what they had signed up for.
Dany is married off the Khal Drogo because her brother wanted Drogo’s army to fight the Baratheons for the throne that he felt truly belonged to him. Of course, this would end in Drogo pouring molten gold upon his head when Dany was pregnant with their first child. It was a move that would cement Dany’s position as the successor of the Targaryen claim to the Iron Throne.
Her pregnancy would end with her losing both her child and her husband. This sadness is compounded by the fact that Daenerys had grown to actually love Drogo. She even chose to throw herself onto his funeral pyre in order to die with him. However, as a true Targaryen, she was able to survive this and gained one of her epithets, the Unburned! She became the Mother of Dragons during this incident, as well, given that the three dragon eggs she was given at the wedding were burned with her. This caused them to hatch, becoming living baby dragons.
She went on the lead the Dothraki and eventually amassed large armies willing to follow her as she quested to become the true Queen of the Seven Kingdoms! Over this long story that took many years, she is shown to be intelligent, determined, and willing to do so much to help those in need.
This willingness to free the enslaved and punish those that cause harm to innocents is what makes her eventual downfall so painful to watch! Yes, she was a Targaryen, meaning that the potential for madness was part of her psychological make-up. However, little is shown previously to her burning the entirety of King’s Landing to prove she may have inherited her father’s temperament. The only incident most can attest to is when she burned Sam’s family for a very minor slight. Other than that there is NOTHING to show she may be a Mad Queen!
That is my main reason for loathing the final season. I also hated that she could not end up with Jon, as the two of them ruling together was what I hoped would happen. George R.R. Martin had admitted that much of the battles for the throne were based on the Wars of the Roses. Dany was positioned to be the Henry Tudor of the tale and he won the war uniting with Elizabeth of York to bring the wars to an official end! This would make Dany and Jon uniting to be co-rulers of the Seven Kingdoms seem to be a foregone conclusion to those who knew the history!
Now that I have gotten all of that down I feel a bit of a sense of release, so I suppose this Femme Fatale Friday post was one I should have written a while ago. I hope that you have enjoyed this analysis of Daenerys. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is Dany from the pilot. I found the image on https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-America-Daenerys-Targaryen-Television/dp/B018Y844TC.
Further Reading/Watching
- A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
- A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
- A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
- A Feast of Crows by George R.R. Martin
- A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
- Game of Thrones (2011)
White Rose of Avalon 