My great bear, Dany thought. I am his queen, but I will always be his cub as well, and he will always guard me. It made her feel safe, but sad as well. She wished she could love him better than she did.
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DAENERYS TARGARYEN APPRECIATION 2018 ELEMENT – AIR:  If I had wings, I would want to fly too, Dany thought. The Targaryens of old had ridden upon dragonback when they went to war. She tried to imagine what it would feel like, to straddle a dragon’s neck and soar high into the air. It would be like standing on a mountaintop, only better. The whole world would be spread out below. If I flew high enough, I could even see the Seven Kingdoms, and reach up and touch the comet.
Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward its
zenith. “Princess …” he began.
“Why do you call me
that?” Dany challenged him.“My brother Viserys was your king, was he not?”
“He was, my lady.”
“Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House
Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now.”
“My…queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee. “My
sword that was his is yours, Daenerys. And
my heart as well, that never belonged to your brother. I am only a knight,
and I have nothing to offer you but exile, but I beg you, hear me. Let Khal
Drogo go. You shall not be alone. I promise you, no man shall take you to Vaes
Dothrak unless you wish to go. You need not join the dosh khaleen. Come east with me. Yi Ti, Qarth, the Jade
Sea, Asshai by the Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and drink
what wines the gods see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I know what you
intend. Do not. Do not.”
This is the very first time Dany is referred to as a queen,
and it is interesting for two reasons. Â
Firstly, it shines light on the relationship between Dany
and Ser Jorah. Despite her wishes, Ser Jorah’s love for Dany is not a courtly
love, but rather a troubling romantic one.
Ser Jorah who is three times as old as Dany, is not only pursuing a
romantic relationship with her, but is also someone who called her “my
princess” freely but had to be coaxed
into calling her queen. Even after Viserys’s death, Ser Jorah didn’t
consider Dany to be his queen, until she challenged and demanded it of him. And
perhaps, not even afterwards:
He wants me, she realized.
He loves me as he loved her, not as a
knight loves his queen but as a man loves a
woman.Â
 Secondly, it shows how Dany was never considered a viable
candidate for being a ruler, not even by her first knight. The title of a queen
was not something that fell into her lap; rather it was something she demanded. Despite her own notions that it was
Drogo who made a queen out of her, the
truth is Dany made a queen out of herself– even when no one else believed
it, nor gave the title to her freely. Even her first knight did not give her
her due. Dany had to demand to be called queen. It was an identity that she
crafted with her confidence, her intuition, and her resolve. Yet, her idea of
being a queen is not of ownership or grown out of pettiness.
However, Dany does not consider that anyone who has the
power to be a ruler deserves to rule. In her mind, the concept of being a ruler
is intricately tied to both protection and justice.
“[…] Why do the gods make kings
and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?“
“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no
justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for.”
While Dany does scorn at Robert being king, it is not because she subscribes to Viserys’s
idea of kings – of bloodlines and superiority of the blood of the dragon.
Rather Dany believes that an integral part of being a king (or queen) lies in
upholding their end of the social contract – namely protection for their people
and swift justice. She considers being a monarch as a duty that she needs to fulfill for her people.
She would rather have
drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and
dreaming of a house with a red door, but
a queen belongs to her people, not to herself.
It is also interesting that as a queen, she does not think
that her people belong to her (to do with as she pleases), but rather that she
belongs to her people. In some sense, she is viewing her position as a queen as a
service or a calling that she needs to realize.
And yet people think she is an entitled brat. I mean c’mon. Danereys is such an amazing woman.
They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.
They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not.
“ she had it easy “ yeah right. Wish she did. When all you people loved the other characters and think she didn’t suffer enough, they had to sell her mother’s crown just to eat for a week.
One of the things that make me sympathize with her is that she’s one of those who suffered the most.
She lost all her family, lived in poverty, always hungry, scared, and never safe, she had no childhood, never knew love and knew plenty of abuse. In a very sick relationship she found love and hope for a family, that’s the main reason she started to accept her fate and circumstances, but then it was taken all away, again, before she could grasp it.
We see how other characters suffer, their pains, their tears, the injustice done to them and is so easy to say that the went through so much more and criticize Daenerys because apparently her life is too perfect.
All the other children can remember their families with love, pride, cherish the many moments of happiness they shared, and hope to grow up to be like them and make them proud.
Daenerys cannot do it, and all she has is a hole that has always been empty. It’s so ironic, considering she has so much love to give, to her people, the slaves she freed and the dragons she brought to life.
Just because YOU don’t seeit happening, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect her. Because it does.
I have always felt that the reason why people ignore Dany’s tragic backstory and/or hardships is because we don’t get chapters/books establishing her character or setting. Her story in asoiaf starts in medias res.
In the very first chapter, she is getting engaged to Khal Drogo and things are happening to her (terrible things). There is NO establishing chapters where she is a naughty child or playing in the streets or laughing with her brother – so it is very easy to NOT sympathize with her and just see her as this tool for moving story forward (aka: dragons were needed, so she is dragon-lady).Â
This also makes all her trauma and her past to be seen through her memories – which antis find easy to discard (it is her memories, she is biased arguments).
However, she is also a teenagerlike the other main characters of asoiaf. She also longs for home. She had her family killed. She has starved. She was sold. She was raped. She was thrust in a hugely patriarchal society whose language she didn’t speak at the time. She had to take some very difficult decisions as a child and as a teen.Â
But yeah, let’s take the fanon characterization of “spoiled lady” or “entitled queen” and twist it to her canon characterization!
One of the things that Daenerys haters who have read the books love to say to the show watchers (to convince them to join their ranks I guess?) is that the show version is an “ideolized version” of the character, that the show writers “whorship” her and that in the books she is much worse and it is utterly untrue!Â
The show removed a lot of Daenerys’ kindness, her intelligence and political mind, as well as her emotions. The true Daenerys is softer, sweeter, brighter (without mentioning ten years younger) and her so called “questionable actions” are few in the novels. In fact, the only “questionable” thing I can think of is when she agreed to allow one of her advisors in Meereen to use torture on the only witness/suspect they had following the torture and slaughter of dozens of innocent people. But even that part – which is the darkest moment in Daenerys story – was made worse on the show, where she gave two Masters to be devoured to her dragons.
In the second novel, Daenerys never said the “when my dragons are grown we will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground” speech. She wasn’t insisting that the merchants of Qarth have to give her ships, she never locked up Doreah and Xaro Xhoan Daxos in a room to die of starvation, she didn’t plunder the city (not that I have a problem with show Daenerys about it, but she did not do that in the books). Doreah died in the Red Waste in Daenerys’ arms, and she gave her her last water although Doreah was dying and they were in a desert without provisions.
In the third novel, Daenerys didn’t enjoy the sack of Astapor and her quote was not “all men must die but we are not men” but “all men must die,
but not for a long while, we may pray.” She really wanted to forgive Jorah despite his betrayal but his behavior towards her is what made her banish him (he was insisting that he did no wrong and that she had to forgive him, and that in front of others) – and even after he was gone, she thought a lot of him and wished for him to find happiness back on his Bear Island.
In the fifth novel, Daenerys is the one who is compromising and navigating in the very complex political situation of Meereen. She is the one trying to negotiate with the former slavers and slaves. She never ordered one of her followers to be decapitated, and she never let her dragons eat the Masters. It is not Drogon who rescued her from the Sons of the Harpy, but she who ran toward him to help him after Hizdahr’s men tried to kill him. She didn’t fly away leaving her friends behind in danger, she and Drogon were the only ones in direct danger and she needed to protect him from harm – besides it was the very first time she rode a dragon and did not know how to control him.Â
Book Daenerys loves to hug children, kisses people on the cheeks, smiles and laughs and has a great sense of humor, doesn’t say things like “I am a Queen not a politician” and does not need men around her to restrain her from using dragonfire – it is actually the other way around. Everyone of her advisors in the fifth book wanted her to use dragons to burn her enemies but Daenerys was insisting to negotiate and build peace without using force.Â
I love show Dany, but book Daenerys is amazing and anyone who tries to claim that the show version is “overhyped” or “whitewashed” or “idolized” compared to the real, canon version is a liar.
🔥 There is beauty in destruction🔥 