JONERYS

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Here, I’m going to discuss the thoughts of some of my favorite writers of any fandom ever, who happen to believe that Dany is highly motivated by the prophecies she’s received (albeit not in a way that blatantly mischaracterizes her like in the quotes I brought up here because they’re both great writers who talk about her with nuance and without necessarily expecting or hoping for the worst).

Now, more than ever, Dany will view herself to be the agent of destiny, and this will very much guide her when she makes her decisions about Jorah and Ser Barristan in Dany V, and why she will feel so powerfully adrift when destiny seems to stop guiding her in ADWD.  (x)

~

Of all the main characters in asoiaf Dany is the most aware of her chosen one role, and the one who clings the most to the idea of being born for greatness, of having a bigger purpose. (x)

As of ADWD, however, I would argue that both statements are inaccurate. Dany mostly thinks about the prophecies to the extent that it showcases her desire for companionship and belonging. This is why the prophecies that get most attention in Dany’s thoughts are 

the one about the three treasons that she will know, for it means that “there was no one in the world that she could trust” (ASOS Dany VI) and

the one about her infertility (it might not be an actual prophecy that comes to pass, but that’s what it is for Dany), for it means she “will never have a little girl” (ADWD Dany X) and “House Targaryen will end with [her]” (ASOS Dany IV).

Dany remembers that she is the “Child of three, they called me. Three mounts they promised me, three fires, and three treasons. One for blood and one for gold and one for …”, but, aside from the treasons, those things never crossed her mind from her departure from the HotU until Quaithe asked her to remember the Undying. And then Dany never brings them up again, at least not onpage, which is where GRRM is supposed to add what’s essential to know about her characterization.

Also, there are plenty of instances where Dany can’t figure out what the prophecies mean, which frustrate her to no end, especially in ADWD (see, for instance, the sections of ADWD Dany VII and VIII). She can’t “feel so powerfully adrift when destiny seems to stop guiding her” - destiny never guided her in the first place, as she tells Jorah that “[she] went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead they’ve left [her] with a hundred new questions.” (ACOK Dany V)

Also, I would argue that Dany’s final moment in ASOS Dany IV where she embraces the freedmen is not one that is setting her up someone who views herself as an “agent of destiny” (at least not up until ADWD), it’s simply that she had already seen that this was going to happen in the HoTU; most importantly, the moment is particularly tied to her need for companionship and people to belong to.

Also, there is a major reason why Dany has often been skeptical of prophecies so far: her son, the stallion who mounted the world, died. In ADWD Dany IV, when the Green Grace declared that in a son of Dany and Hizdahr “the prophecies shall be fulfilled”, she thought to herself that she “knew how it went with prophecies. They were made of words, and words were wind”. And again, this mention ties back to her need of company and intimacy that’s been denied her whole life.

In my view, there are five main points that one could make to say that she is “aware of her chosen role”. I think neither proves their argument.

In ACOK Dany III, Quaithe tells Dany that the cause of mage’s growing powers is Dany herself, the Mother of Dragons. It means that Dany is aware that she is special and acts according to that knowledge, right? However, Dany never thinks of that again. In fact, she doesn’t even have the chance to react to what Quaithe just said, because Jhogo interrupts Quaithe and then Quaithe tells Dany that “To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.” This one came up again in ADWD Dany II and ADWD Dany X, which certainly isn’t as often as the other two I mentioned above. Regardless, it doesn’t ever cross her mind that she is the cause of magic growing back into the world ever again.

You could also point to the comet’s arrival. Right in ACOK Dany I, we get this:

“It is the herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.”

Notice GRRM’s wording, however: “she told herself” - she is not totally sure of it, but she needs to look confident for the sake of her khalasar. For the sake of herself, even. Right after this passage, we get this:

“The way the comet points is the way we must go,” Dany insisted … though in truth, it was the only way open to her.“

There is no other option for her to believe in. Actually, there is - falling prey to despair:

The comet mocks my hopes, she thought, lifting her eyes to where it scored the sky. Have I crossed half the world and seen the birth of dragons only to die with them in this hard hot desert? She would not believe it.

Then, in ACOK Dany II, we get this on the comet:

Her people had followed her across the red waste as she chased her comet, and would follow her across the poison water too, but they would not be enough. Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king … but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.

If she were so “aware of her chosen role”, one would think she would believe in such “foolishness”; that she would be shown to believe in destiny. If she does however, it must be offpage.

Then, in ACOK Dany III, the comet frustrates her once more:

“The comet led me to Qarth for a reason. I had hoped to find my army here, but it seems that will not be. What else remains, I ask myself?”

Then, in ACOK Dany IV, an illusion tells Dany this:

“We knew you were to come to us,” the wizard king said. “A thousand years ago we knew, and have been waiting all this time. We sent the comet to show you the way.”

But then, “doubt seized her” and “she ran from them”. Hardly the sort of experience that would make you think of yourself as an agent of destiny or the chosen one.

Then … Dany never thinks about the comet again. It seems hardly evidence to suggest that Dany is conscious of that role because of it.

Moving on to the third point: her dream about the Trident in ASOS Dany III.

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper’s rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.

Many speculate that the dream foreshadows her eventual participation in the fight against the Others, and this is probably accurate. The parallels between the masters and the Others, as they’ve been discussed by another of my favorite writers of any fandom ever, are striking. To these, I would add that, right before Dany declares to Kraznys that “a dragon is not a slave”, she thinks this:

It is time to cross the Trident, Dany thought, as she wheeled and rode her silver back. Her bloodriders moved in close around her. “You are in difficulty,” she observed.

“He will not come,” Kraznys said.

“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. “Dracarys.”

Which further enhances the parallels between the two, for GRRM himself explicitly wrote it so that Dany associated the attack of slave owners and the freeing the Unsullied to the dream, which, unbeknownst to her, exhibits the inevitable moment when she burns the Others and thereby frees humanity. Seems evident and deliberate connection of the two events from the writer’s part.

But it still doesn’t mean that Dany is aware of her destiny or her status. While the text may urge us to compare the two events and frame Dany as a hero, she herself does not know about the connection. To her, at this point, it is about being inspired by Rhaegar:

She felt desperately afraid. Was this what my brother would have done? She wondered if Prince Rhaegar had been this anxious when he saw the Usurper’s host formed up across the Trident with all their banners floating on the wind.

Even that inspiration is not enough for her not to be aware of “how small and insignificant her following truly was”, though she’s ultimately able to control her fear and thrive. This doesn’t prove that she primarily driven by any destiny or status.

The fourth point is the prophecy of the three-headed dragon. 

“The dragon has three heads,” she sighed. “Do you know what that means, Jorah?”

“Your Grace? The sigil of House Targaryen is a three-headed dragon, red on black.”

“I know that. But there are no three-headed dragons.”

“The three heads were Aegon and his sisters.”

“Visenya and Rhaenys,” she recalled. “I am descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and their grandson Jaehaerys.”

“Blue lips speak only lies, isn’t that what Xaro told you? Why do you care what the warlocks whispered? All they wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now.”

“Perhaps,” she said reluctantly. “Yet the things I saw …”


“A dead man in the prow of a ship, a blue rose, a banquet of blood … what does any of it mean, Khaleesi? A mummer’s dragon, you said. What is a mummer’s dragon, pray?”


“A cloth dragon on poles,” Dany explained. “Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight.”

Ser Jorah frowned.

Dany could not let it go. “His is the song of ice and fire, my brother said. I’m certain it was my brother. Not Viserys, Rhaegar. He had a harp with silver strings.”

Ser Jorah’s frown deepened until his eyebrows came together. “Prince Rhaegar played such a harp,” he conceded. “You saw him?”

She nodded. “There was a woman in a bed with a babe at her breast. My brother said the babe was the prince that was promised and told her to name him Aegon.”

“Prince Aegon was Rhaegar’s heir by Elia of Dorne,” Ser Jorah said. “But if he was this prince that was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when the Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.”

“I remember,” Dany said sadly. “They murdered Rhaegar’s daughter as well, the little princess. Rhaenys, she was named, like Aegon’s sister. There was no Visenya, but he said the dragon has three heads. What is the song of ice and fire?”

“It’s no song I’ve ever heard.”

This interaction between Dany and Jorah serves as exposition (and hopefully gives clues to the solution of the series’s magical plots) and ties into Dany’s characterization as someone who aches for family and connection.

The next time we hear of the three-headed dragon is right after Jorah forced a kiss on Dany and violated her boundaries and trust, in ASOS Dany I:

“My queen,” he said, “and the bravest, sweetest, and most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Daenerys—”

“Your Grace!”

“Your Grace,” he conceded, “the dragon has three heads, remember? You have wondered at that, ever since you heard it from the warlocks in the House of Dust. Well, here’s your meaning: Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar, ridden by Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen—three dragons, and three riders.”

“Yes,” said Dany, “but my brothers are dead.”

“Rhaenys and Visenya were Aegon’s wives as well as his sisters. You have no brothers, but you can take husbands. And I tell you truly, Daenerys, there is no man in all the world who will ever be half so true to you as me.”

Again, tied to the theme of Dany’s need for attachments. It’s Jorah trying to manipulate her into thinking he is supposed to be a husband of hers (also, notice how hypocritical of him to dismiss her reflection about the prophecies in ACOK Dany V and then use them to his advantage in ASOS Dany I… They are important, but only when he wants them to be).

Then Dany brings it up again in ASOS Dany V and ASOS Dany VI:

“If you were grown,” she told Drogon, scratching him between the horns, “I’d fly you over the walls and melt that harpy down to slag.” But it would be years before her dragons were large enough to ride. And when they are, who shall ride them? The dragon has three heads, but I have only one.

~

Could I love Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry, she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it.

~

The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon and his sisters.

Again, the theme of the need for bond and closeness remains. Nothing about being the chosen one or destiny. And that’s it for the three-headed dragon, at least as of ADWD.

The fifth point, I would argue, is AGOT. Most of the moments where the prophecies and dreams impact Dany’s storyline are in that book (at least to the best of my effort to find those moments). It is the one where she had numerous dragon dreams that gave her strength and where she birthed dragons by ultimately trusting her instincts. Ultimately, though, I’ve already brought plenty of evidence from the books that come afterwards to negate that this necessarily means that prophecies are a main factor in her decision making (or her self-perception).

This is not to say that Dany is completely skeptical about prophecies or magic, but she most often needs to have had previous evidence to trust them.

She believes in Mirri’s words that she is infertile (or rather, in her interpretation of Mirri’s words) because Mirri killed her son and left Drogo in a comatose state, thereby paying death with life.

She believes that death pays for life and attempts to perform a ritual to awake the dragons because she witnessed Mirri’s effectiveness (to be fair, here, Dany is relying on intuition and intuition alone as well, as she walks through the fire simply because she sees that the fire is hers. But it is the exception rather than the norm).

She believes in the treasons because she has been betrayed by Mirri (once for blood).

She believes that the kraken and the mummer’s dragon are coming because she has seen the sun’s son and the pale mare.

Which is not to say that she will not or cannot ever be motivated by her destiny or her heroic role in the future.

“What is he saying?” Tyrion asked the knight.

“That Daenerys stands in peril. The dark eye has fallen upon her, and the minions of night are plotting her destruction, praying to their false gods in temples of deceit … conspiring at betrayal with godless outlanders …”

The hairs on the back of Tyrion’s neck began to prickle. Prince Aegon will find no friend here. The red priest spoke of ancient prophecy, a prophecy that foretold the coming of a hero to deliver the world from darkness. One hero. Not two. Daenerys has dragons, Aegon does not. The dwarf did not need to be a prophet himself to foresee how Benerro and his followers might react to a second Targaryen. Griff will see that too, surely, he thought, surprised to find how much he cared. (ADWD Tyrion VII)

~

“Someone told me that the night is dark and full of terrors. What do you see in those flames?”

“Dragons," Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. (ADWD Tyrion VIII)

Not only Dany will likely be acclaimed as the Stallion Who Mounts the World by the Dothraki in TWOW, she is poised to, right afterwards, learn more from Moqorro about yet another prophecy involving her, which might then convince her. Then the prophecies might actually become a central part of her motivations.

I wouldn’t rule this out, especially considering that, if we follow the 1993 outline, we’re still on the first act of Dany’s story. In that outline, the first book would be about her experiences in Essos, the second about her return to Westeros and the third about the "final battle” (as GRRM puts it) against the Others. With that in mind, I expect Dany to have more character development in TWOW and ADOS (whose plots were originally meant to cover two acts of her story) than in, say, ACOK and ASOS.

But to say that we have textual evidence, as of ADWD, that the prophecies are a primary force in her actions is, I would argue, inaccurate.

I will end my argument with this line from Dany:

“The dragon has three heads,” Dany said when they were on the final flight. “My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes. I know why you are here.”

“For you,” said Quentyn, all awkward gallantry.

“No,” said Dany. “For fire and blood.”

I just wanted to highlight a few moments (some of which you already quoted) that show how Dany is frustrated and skeptical of prophecy:

He shall be the stallion that mounts the world. Dany knew how it went with prophecies. They were made of words, and words were wind. - Daenerys IV ADWD

Three treasons will you know. Once for gold and once for blood and once for love. Was Plumm the third treason, or the second? And what did that make Ser Jorah, her gruff old bear? Would she never have a friend that she could trust? What good are prophecies if you cannot make sense of them? – Daenerys VI ADWD

The sun’s son. A shiver went through her. “Shadows and whispers.” What else had Quaithe said? The pale mare and the sun’s son. There was a lion in it too, and a dragon. Or am I the dragon? “Beware the perfumed seneschal.” That she remembered. “Dreams and prophecies. Why must they always be in riddles? I hate this. Oh, leave me, ser. Tomorrow is my wedding day.” – Daenerys VII

Dany doesn’t like prophecies. She thinks they are no good, and don’t help her at all, because she can’t make sense of them. If Dany was someone who was so confident in her own magical destiny, she wouldn’t have such doubts about what the prophecies mean.

And Dany doesn’t let her actions be dictated by prophecies:

There were times when Dany wondered if that razor might not be better saved for Reznak’s throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei? – Daenerys I ADWD

When Reznak and Skahaz appeared, she found herself looking at them askance, mindful of the three treasons. Beware the perfumed seneschal. She sniffed suspiciously at Reznak mo Reznak. I could command the Shavepate to arrest him and put him to the question. Would that forestall the prophecy? Or would some other betrayer take his place? Prophecies are treacherous, she reminded herself, and Reznak may be no more than he appears. – Daenerys II ADWD

"It has been so long,” she had said to Ser Barristan, just yesterday. “What if Daario has betrayed me and gone over to my enemies?” Three treasons will you know. “What if he met another woman, some princess of the Lhazarene?” – Daenerys II ADWD

His bitterness dismayed her, so much so that Dany found herself wondering if the grizzled Pentoshi could be one of her three betrayers. No, he is only an old man, far from home and sick at heart. - Daenerys V ADWD

Obviously, it’s only natural that the prophecies she received make her worried about being betrayed. But she never lets herself be paranoid about it: she distrusts all these people, but she never does anything about it. She keeps Reznak as her advisor, despite being worried about a betrayal. She has a relationship with Daario, despite wondering if he would betray her. She wonders to herself if arresting Reznak would forestall the prophecy, only to tell herself that “prophecies are treacherous” and proceed to ignore her doubts. This is, by the way, a clear contrast to Cersei, who spends the entirety of AFFC trying to forestall a prophecy.

I have always felt alienated by Sansa Stark as a character. Born high-born and privileged, she epitomizes classic, traditional, feudalist white womanhood. In spite of how clever and hardened she has become, she still exudes an aura of, shall we say, white female purity that prompts fans to fight over her and viciously defend her, to the point that anyone who doesn’t immediately fawn over her is despised, called vicious slurs, and hated. Any female character in the show that clashes with Sansa is also hated. 

Fans of Sansa have been known to mock Arya’s gender non-conformity and even claim that preferring Arya to Sansa is a form of “anti-femininity”; they have been known to call Daenerys a foreign whore/a colonizer/an “invader”, which as an immigrant I find amusing because being called an “invader” is one of the more mundane xenophobic insults we deal with; most recently, they have even been known to defend Northern racism and xenophobia, which Sansa has tacitly endorsed by showing hostility toward Daenerys and her armies, and openly questioning how to feed those armies before said armies were sacrificed for the sake of white Northerners, and some Sansa fans even made racist comments about Missandei, simply because Missandei made a gently critical comment toward Sansa in 8.03. This is how defensive people are of Sansa - if you don’t worship her, you’re branded persona non grata, a misogynist of the ages. Sansa fans, most of whom are white liberal feminists/liberal feminists in general, weaponize progressive misogyny to glorify Sansa at the expense of other female characters, and believe they are in the right for doing so (e.g. celebrating Dany or Missandei’s deaths, calling Cersei slurs, making fun of Arya’s gender norm-defiant habits). Yet if someone were to point out Sansa’s objective flaws, or the flaws in her storylines, they would be branded an irredeemable misogynist. Any analysis of Sansa’s flaws is waved away with “she’s traumatized; yet Cersei is stripped of her agency as a traumatized woman and assigned the trope of one-dimensional mad queen, while Daenerys is assigned pure villainy, rather than moral complexity, and her trauma is not allowed to be factored in. 

I am a South Asian bi woman, and an immigrant. I have never been able to relate to Sansa’s story because she was born privileged and because she embodies a pure version of white womanhood that prompts people to be viciously defensive. This mirrors exactly how people are with regards to white women in real life. People will tear apart women of color for the sake of white women. Historically, men of color, especially Black men, have been beaten or killed if they so much as looked at white women “the wrong way”. White women have been able to weaponize “crocodile tears” to demonize women of color. When watching Game of Thrones, I was never very into Sansa as a character for this precise reason. Even before Season 8, even before I saw how the got/asoiaf fandom on Tumblr is, even before I knew that Sansa fans hate Daenerys, even before all of that, I was not able to like Sansa because she reminded me far too much of the vicious white women I grew up with, the ones who were beautiful and feminine and skinny and could bat their eyelashes one minute and get what they want. Sansa has gone through a lot, of course, and undeniably so, yet she is by far not the only female character who has gone through a lot; yet fandom expects that we worship her and only her, which is far too reminiscent of how I have been shoved aside or demonized for the sake of white women. Moreover, Sansa interacts entirely with only white people; it is no wonder that Daenerys, who is dubbed a foreign invader, and who interacts with many people of color, is more relatable as a character to me (and this is before even mentioning everything Daenerys does as a liberator). 

I mention Sansa’s epitomization of a specific form of white femininity for a reason. Femininity is a co-construct of colonialism and patriarchy. White femininity could not be created without the concurrent rape, dehumanization, brutalization, and exclusion of women of color (including enslaved women from African nations, Indigenous women, and colonized women from Asia, Africa, and South America). I’m not going to go into more specific details about this because it requires a separate meta. In short, though, Sansa’s femininity is so alienating to me because it is not a femininity I could ever fit into. Being coercively masculinized is an experience most women of color can relate to at least somewhat, since most of us at some point or another have been excluded from white definitions of femininity and womanhood. For more reading, I highly recommend The Coloniality of Gender by Maria Lugones, especially if you don’t understand why I’m saying that femininity as we understand it is a product of both colonialism and patriarchy and what ramifications this has for women of color. 

A common talking point I’ve briefly stated is that Daenerys is a colonizer/imperialist/white savior, perhaps as common as the point that she is fated to become a Mad Queen. It is expected by a small but vocal minority of this fandom that if you are a woman of color, or an “ally” to women of color, you’ll hate Daenerys and consider her to be a white feminist character. The voices of actual women of color who like Daenerys are completely erased in this scenario; in many cases, those of us who do like her are deemed ignorant, or told that we need to educate ourselves. Women of color who do like Daenerys, funnily enough, get called racist and misogynistic slurs by white Sansa fans, who are then the same fans that turn around and call Daenerys a white savior. This cliché that “hating Dany = being an ally to woc” is so popular that any time Daenerys is brought up, it is almost expected that a WHITE Sansa fan will say “she’s a white savior” or “y’alls white savior fave [….]”. It is evident that white women do not understand what white saviorism is or how it actually operates, especially when these white women act like Sansa herself isn’t white and high-born, or when they act like preferring Sansa to Daenerys is more progressive/less white feminist, or when they even go as far as claiming that preferring Dany to Sansa is “white feminism” even though, again, BOTH Sansa and Dany are white women (and GRRM only considered writing one of them as Black, and it wasn’t Sansa, my friends). Stripping fans of color of their voices and agency is not actually progressive. It’s not progressive to weaponize critical race discourse for the sake of fandom drama, or for fights between fans of two white female characters. It’s not progressive to tokenize women of color or racialized misogyny. It’s not progressive to claim that women of color who like Daenerys are white or stupid or can’t have their race card anymore or worship white people or that they should “take a 23andme” test or whatever, especially if the argument is that you should hate one white woman (Dany) only to love another (Sansa). Yet all of this is done in the name of Sansa, which again goes back to my point that her brand of white femininity is the dangerous and insidious type, the one that makes my skin crawl in trepidation. 

By the way, I’ve debunked the “Dany is a white savior” argument here.

Anyway, that I as a woman of color am expected to care more about a hyper-feminine white girl who was born privileged and grew up privileged and is overtly classist and has done nothing revolutionary for marginalized people or the smallfolk than about a white woman who, while feminine, was born in poverty and exile, and has explicitly enacted revolutionary actions against slavers, rapists, and child abusers, all in the name of going against white feminism/white saviorism, is genuinely funny to me. All this just makes me feel even more that it is Sansa who is the quintessential white liberal feminist character, NOT Daenerys. In this world, the white feminist character is not the one who gleefully burns slaveowners and child murderers and is then reviled (by both the narrative and the fans) for doing so. 

This is why Slavoj Zizek’s review of the Game of Thrones finale is so on point. By the way, Zizek is a famous Marxist academic. He’s not my favorite by any means, and I have a lot of problems with him, but if you’re going for leftist critiques of GOT, here’s one of many: 

The one who remains (as the queen of the autonomous kingdom of the North) is Sansa, a type of women beloved by today’s capitalism: she combines feminine softness and understanding with a good dose of intrigue, and thus fully fits the new power relations. This marginalisation of women is a key moment of the general liberal-conservative lesson of the finale: revolutions have to go wrong, they bring new tyranny, or, as Jon put it to Daenerys: “The people who follow you know that you made something impossible happen. Maybe that helps them believe that you can make other impossible things happen: build a world that’s different from the shit one they’ve always known. But if you use dragons to melt castles and burn cities, you’re no different.”

Consequently, Jon kills out of love (saving the cursed woman from herself, as the old male-chauvinist formula says) the only social agent in the series who really fought for something new, for a new world that would put an end to old injustices.

So justice prevailed – but what kind of justice? The new king is Bran: crippled, all-knowing, who wants nothing – with the evocation of the insipid wisdom that the best rulers are those who do not want power. A dismissive laughter that ensues when one of the new elite proposes a more democratic selection of the king tells it all.

And one cannot help but note that those faithful to Daenerys to the end are more diverse – her military commander is black – while the new rulers are clearly white Nordic. The radical queen who wanted more freedom for everyone irrespective of their social standing and race is eliminated, things are brought back to normal.

Why am I as a woman of color expected to love/care more about the white woman who only spends time with other white people, most of whom are high-born and are xenophobic regardless, and who is handed her Queen status on a silver nepotist platter, but revile the white woman who spends time with people of color, has freed slaves, is a queen who is chosen by those who follow her, and fights for the smallfolk, only to be reviled by the men around her? It is precisely because Sansa is the personification of upper-class, nativist, xenophobic white womanhood, and she appeases the appetites of liberal feminists but is both soft and gentle enough to not be threatening to men, the same men who call Daenerys a crazy bitch for burning slaveowners, rapists, or the abusive traitor Randyll Tarly, and celebrate her death. 

Dan & David, as stupid as they are, were clever enough to realize that by granting Sansa QiTN status, they would be giving breadcrumbs to her (mostly white) liberal feminist fans who only care about her and would see Cersei dead and defanged, as well as Daenerys dead and demonized, to get this achieved if need be (which is exactly what happened). They are also rich white capitalist men who thrive off propaganda. The argument that first she came for the slavers and rapists, then she came for the innocents, is explicitly white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal propaganda, which D&D are happy to promote, because it aligns with their interests. It rings the same bells that “anti-fascists are the REAL fascists” or “BLM activists are the REAL terrorists” or “proletarian revolutionaries are all going to turn out like Stalin” because the same types of people (rich white men with neoliberal agendas) are churning out the same soundbites. And a lot of you fall for it, because as long as the precious, pure, angelic white woman, who is beautifully feminine, has the purity of a white bloodline, and can do no wrong, gets her happy yes queen ending, then we can turn a blind eye and root for Dany’s death. 

Take note, of course, that all but one of the characters who gets a happy ending are white. Grey Worm is the only character of color with speaking roles and interiority left on the show; I do not count the unnamed Dornish Prince because, well, he’s unnamed, he doesn’t speak, and the Dornish don’t gain independence, despite 1) retaining independence against the Targaryens and 2) being as brutalized/fucked over by the Lannisters as the Starks were. Notably the Greyjoys, who sided with the revolutionary-turned-evil Queen, don’t get independence either. The North, belonging to the King’s Sister, does, and unquestionably so, without the consent of the people, and we are supposed to be satisfied with a happy oligarchy in which Brienne can write about a man who broke her heart and used her, and men can joke about brothels. The evil revolutionary queen dies early in the episode, some tears are shed for her, she’s called a tyrant, and then we’re done with her, and most focus on the real heroes: the Starks. Zizek points out: 

…the last struggle between the Starks and Daenerys – ultimately between traditional “good” nobility (Starks) faithfully protecting their subjects from bad tyrants, and Daenerys as a new type of a strong leader, a kind of progressive bonapartist acting on behalf of the underprivileged.

We are told that the Starks ultimately earned their happy ending, even though Bran did not participate in the game of thrones at all, even though Sansa did nothing in the fight against either the Night King’s Army or against Cersei, even though Daenerys is the only one shown actually liberating marginalized people and ruthlessly holding their oppressors accountable. Dany is called a white savior for doing those things, and her mistakes in pursuing her anti-slavery agenda are held against her, and yet the same people accept nepotism and oligarchy without argument, again because they, from the beginning, accept the argument that traditional, isolationist, nordic feudalist white people are the real heroes, and anyone who defies this norm is a villain. Do we see a single scene of the Starks fighting on behalf of the serfs whose labor they profit off of? No, and yet we call Daenerys the “white supremacist” character, or the “mad” character, or the “tyrant”. This kind of propaganda is so successful in America, even among liberal feminists, because socialist revolution is synonymous with tyranny and anti-liberty in this country. 

The woman who proposes breaking the wheel of rulers and freeing slaves and serfs around the world is actually turned into a villain at the very last minute. In fact, her killing of evil men is explicitly framed as evil, through Tyrion’s very speech to Jon in 8.06. She kills evil men, so of course it’s no wonder that she’s now gone mad and killed civilians. This is the same kind of warning that rich white people utter in real life; if we allow antifascists, or Black Lives Matter activists, or leftist feminists, or labor organizers to run amok, we’ll be overwhelmed by tyranny and anarchy and authoritarianism. So, instead, the woman who lived her life in privilege should be handed a royal status by her Brother the King, and we should cheer this on and accept this because she worked so hard and she went through so much and she’s so precious and clever and pure (development of her cleverness hardly being shown aside, we MUST accept that she is /the/ cleverest character on the show, because she had some snappy yes queen lines that we know to fawn over). 

Daenerys has been far more threatening to the egos of male fans than Sansa has been over the eight years got has aired. It’s no wonder - Dany routinely kills evil men as Tyrion pointed out. Where we cheered on when Sansa fed Ramsay to his dogs or conspired against Petyr Baelish, we view Dany killing slaveowners, rapists, and child murderers as evil and as foreshadowing madness. This discrepancy in similar actions undertaken by two traumatized women is only possible because Sansa appeases the white liberal feminist appetite without threatening male viewers, white viewers, or capitalist norms, and because she does so with a more genteel face and a naive facade. 

This is why, to me, Sansa is the ultimate white feminist character of got/asoiaf. We fall for her trap of white femininity and endorse the most egregious forms of racism and misogyny just for her sake, and we call it feminism and we call it progressive, and we sometimes even have the gall to claim it is pro women of color to do so. Yet the type of femininity and power Sansa has is exactly the kind that excludes women of color and, in real life, would necessarily feature the marginalizing, sidelining, or demonizing of women of color. That eerily xenophobic rhetoric is used against Daenerys is thus not surprising. If we aren’t too careful, according to both white liberal feminist fans of Sansa and according to white men, we’ll end up letting foreign revolutionary evil mad queens like Daenerys in our midst, and they’ll hold too many evil men accountable for their actions. 

thank you … for allowing your daughters to be involved in this mess … for trusting me.

Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation 2018: Queen

like the parallels in both their stories are borderline ridiculous and i can’t believe none of us are talking about it or why civil war didn’t even allow them to have a conversaTION

they simultaneously grew up too fast and didn’t get to grow up at all, wanda living as an orphan in a warzone and bucky looking after steve in the great depression, and had their youths stolen from them when she became the scarlet witch and he the winter soldier

they both dedicated themselves to their countries and were ultimately betrayed by their own patriotism, they both gave themselves to a cause and were punished thousands of times over for it

both have been carved and molded from the flames of russian paranoia

they both were tortured and ripped of their humanity, they were both forged into weapons of war

they’re both hydra pets

they’re both trying to figure out who they are if not assets

she lost pietro, he lost his family

they’re both seen as monsters by the public but all they want to do is do the right thing

they both have immense power and they’re both struggling so much to control it

they’re both so filled with self-hatred and blame but they both just need to be swaddled with blankets they’re such beautiful loyal cinnamon rolls

they both fear their own minds

they’re both these sort of displaced souls from other worlds and times

they’ve both had to be on their own

NOT TO MENTION THAT WANDA CAN LITERALLY HELP BUCKY TAKE THE PROGRAMMING FROM HIS HEAD

i’m actually kind of outraged they didn’t at least interact in civil war - they are literally two sides of the same tragically tarnished coin and its literally a narrative sin that they, despite all these similarities and parallels in their stories, despite the connection and bond they could share, despite them literally both being on team cap with plenty of room to give us interaction, they havent even exchanged a word onscreen