space odyssey

GOJO GETS AN F IN TEACHING.

I understand why most of the focus is on Gojo, because yes Gojo's body is the one being violated here. He's not even allowed to rest in death after fighting on the front lines against Sukuna to the point where his brain was hemmoraging in the middle of battle and he was brutally cut in half.

Considering how much horror Gojo experienced when he saw Geto's body taken from him and made into Kenjaku's pupet. Cosidering the horrible pain that Nanako and Mimiko endured just seeing Geto's body still moving around denied a good death (Nanako and Mimiko were tellingly willing to let go and not try to take revenge against Gojo for killing Geto because of their friendship even though Geto was their whole world, but they'd never forgive Kenjaku for taking his body). Considering that Gojo even went out of his way to say he wanted to kill Kenjaku / Geto on Christmas Eve again in order to give him a proper burial it's understandable how horrifying this update is.

This is also a series where the two main antagonists are parasites who take the bodies, and steal away all bodily autonomy from characters like Yuji and Megumi and then force them to do horrible things they would never do and bear witness to it, such as the slaughter at Shibuya, or the murder of Tsumiki at Megkuna's hands.

It's understandable how people had such a visceral reaction to this chapter. However, I think the fandom has a tendency to paint Gojo like he's the central victim of all of Jujutsu Society when he's both victim and perpetrator.

Gojo is someone who has only been regarded as the strongest his entire life, and been used as a tool to keep Jujutsu Society stable his entire life. Gojo is also someone who never tried to be anything other than the strongest, never tried to empathize with anyone other than those who were just as strong as he is, and who raised all of his students to be tools too.

To illustrate my point here's an incredibly similiar character from Tokyo Ghoul: Arima Kishou. They are so similiar that they're both white haired mentor characters to the protagonist, they're both the strogest in their respective worlds, and Gege straight up copied this section of panels from the Tokyo Ghoul Manga.

Arima is a breeding project, who was bred by the Washuu Family who mxies blood between humans and ghouls through a series of controlled marriages for the purpose of creating hybrid ghoul human children. Arima isn't the ideal hybrid they were looking for, but he was so ungodly talented he quickly rose to being the most powerful and well-respected investigator in the CCG.

However, this is how Arima reacts to the fact that his entire purpose in life was just to be a weapon to kill ghouls.

Arima loathes violence, he loathes being an investigator, he loathes himself most of all and designs his entire political revolution around him finally being killed by Kaneki - to punish himself and also to relieve himself of the burden of living a life where he was only meat to kill others.

Gojo on the other hand loves being the strongest, he lives for Jujutsu. Arima's death is tragic and nihilistic believing his life had no real worth because all he ever was was a weapon to hurt others, whereas Gojo died satisfied.

Arima's last battle against Kaneki is grim, silent, and tragic, he does everything he can to make Kaneki despise him, to force Kaneki to kill him by being the worst version of himself and when Kaneki still wants him to live he just slits his own throat because even if Kaneki forgives him he can't forgive himself. Gojo laughs his head off and has the time of his life fighting against Sukuna, and going out in a blaze of glory.

Gojo dies smiling, Arima dies finally breaking into tears after a life of pretedig to be cold and emotionless. Gojo's dying regret is 1) that Geto wasn't there to say goodbye to him, and 2) that he wasn't able to draw out all of Sukuna's strength. Arima's dying regret was all the pain and suffering he caused throughout his life and how he was never able to rise above his circumstances and be anything other than what he was born to be.

These two characters are incredibly similiar, they are both the strongest, and they were both made into tools by a dehumanizing system they were born into. However, their attitudes are entirely different. Gojo enjoys being strong, and yes part of it is that Gojo himself doesn't realize he's a victim or what society has groomed him into becoming, but the other part is just because it's an ego trip for him. Gojo doesn't see himself as the tragic victim his fandom makes him out to be.

If you were to transplant him into Tokyo Ghoul Gojo would be happily killing ghouls, and he would think killing ghouls is fun because he's the strongest and best at killing ghouls. This is the complexity that is Satoru Gojo, he has been dehumanized and put on a pedestal his ow life, but Gojo also enjoys being on that pedestal and won't ever step down from it willingly.

I'm not saying that Arima is a better person than Gojo. I think the fact that Gojo doesn't think of himself as a victim is tragic in its own right, because he lacks the self-awareness to actually grow and change as a person. In the end both Arima and Gojo believe they couldn't be anything better than what they were, and their only release is death which is just insanely sad to me because as long as the future exists people always have a chance to get better no matter who they are. To give up on the future, to see an early death as a good thing simply because you can't endure life any longer is one of the most hopeless things imaginable.

Gojo's not sad because he was born to be a tool exploited for society's benefit, he's sad because he was lonely. He doesn't even realize it's his own darn fault he's lonely, because not only has Shoko said that he's not alone she's always been right there, but this chapter we get a repeat of Gojo's students begging him to let them in and Gojo himself decided to draw that line between himself and others and thinking an enlightened, godlike being like himself can't possibly be understood.

All of this to say I think Gojo is the sole victim here, but he's the middle of a chain of of victimhood. I think ultimately the biggest victim here is Yuta, and yes I will not only play trauma olympics here I'm going to win.

If this chapter goes to show anything it's that Gojo has completely failed in his ideals of protecting the youth from the dehumanizing system of sorcerers that takes children and reduces them to cogs in a machine.

A lot of people criticize Jujutsu Kaisen for dropping basically all of its political elements and themes of reform in the second half after Shibuya, and while I understand the criticism I think Gege intentionally shifted away from politics because Gojo's political revolution was never going to succeed.

From the beginning Gojo's solution to reforming Jujutsu Society and it's habit of taking away the youth of children and raising them up instead as child soldiers is... to make stronger child soldiers.

This is Gojo's blindspot and it has always been Gojo's blindspot.

It's why Gojo is completely okay with someone like Mei Mei who at the best uses her brother as a human shield to get out of curse domains and has stolen his entire childhood away to make him own pet little shoulder, and at worst actively molests him.

It's why Gojo is stated in the databooks to have only taken an interest in Megumi and Yuta because they were strong.

Gojo understands that he's being exploited by Jujutsu Society, but doesn't understand you need to deconstruct unfair systems of power and exploitation in order to build something better. Gojo from the beginning only had one plan, and that was to replace the people at the top with his own allies who'd support his agenda. He just thought waiting for them to die out and the children to grow up was the more peaceful way of doing it.

Gojo's political revolution was doomed from the beginning and that's why we see him go back on his word this chapter and just slaughter everyone at the top. His choice of a new leader for Jujutsu Society is hardly better than the elders, the person who executed Gojo's teacher and tried to get all the children to kill Itadori early on. Good choice.

This is what Gojo said would happen though, if he just wiped everyone out at the top no real systemic change would occur because they'd just be replaced with someone who wasn't that differet. Gojo's just given up on the notion of lasting change out of pragmatism.

Which is why Gojo himself is not that different from the elders in the first place, not because he's a bad person but because he was shaped by that same society and he's the pinnacle of that society.

I think the thing is and this point often gets ignored - a lot of the choices the elders make are because of outdated traditions like choosing to oppress Maki and Toji just because they challenge the traditional notions of cursed energy.

However, some of the decisions they make are out of cold hard pragmatism. Gakuganji actually turned out to be right in his assassiation attempt against Yuji Itadori. If they had succesfully killed Yuji, then the massacre in Shibuya would have been prevented and likely Kenjaku's plans would have been pushed back. The elders didn't sentence Yuta to execution just to be cruel, or just because they're superstitious but because he's already had several incidents of nearly killing people because he can't control Rika.

It's easy to dismiss the Elders as evil because they're just faceless entities, but then we witness in this very same chapter the main characters making the same heartless decisions out of the same sense of pragmatism.

Gojo understands Jujutsu Society is flawed, but doesn't understand exactly why it's wrong. He doesn't raise his students to be independent free thinkers because then they might question him, he raises them to be very powerful because that's more pragmatic.

Here are the next generation of sorcerers who are going to bring about the change to Jujutsu Society that Gojo so desperately seeks.

Nobara Kugisaki: Dead

Hakari Kinji: His greatest ambition is to start a fight club

Yuji: Actively calls himself a mindless cog and just wants to kill whatever society points him at and tells him to kill.

Maki: Mass murderer.

Yuta: Just stole Gojo's body and said he had to become a monster i Gojo's place.

Megumi: Begging to be killed.

Inumaki: Tuna Mayo

Panda: Is a Panda

(Joke lovingly ripped off from @kaibutsushidousha)

I understand that fighting Sukuna takes precedence now, but do you think once the dust settles any of these characters are going to do anything to make lasting change?

Are we going to see anything for them at the end of the road other than a mountain of their fellow sorcerers corpses?

Gojo didn't nurture his students to grow into healthy adults, he raised them into stronger child soldiers and yes that's the pragmatic thing to do to help them survive in the Jujutsu World, but the elders make those decisions out of cold pragmatism as well.

MHA is also showing a story where the children are failing to learn from the previous generatio's mistakes, but it's far less frustrating to watch in JJK because it almost seems like that's the point?

Maki sacrificed Mai for the sake of becoming someone strong enough to reform the Zen'in Clan, only for her sister to die and Maki to slaughter the rest of her family failing in both her goals to reform her clan and protect Mai.

Yuji became the host of Sukuna in order to help others, because the total deaths of people in the world would go down if he ate all the fingers. Not only did that decision lead to the death of thousands in Shibuya, but he's even lost his role of being Sukuna's host to Megumi.

Yuta wanted to find a reason to live and a purpose in protecting his friends, and also wanted to pay back the man who saved him, not only is Yuta choosing to die in a way that breaks his friends heart he's also violating his beloved teacher's bodies.

There's a lot of arcs like this where characters fail in what they set out to accomplish, because like in most tragedies they don't try to grow as people they only care about getting stronger. It's the same choice over ad over again, a decision made of cold pragmatism that brings about their tragic ending.

I think it speaks to why systems like this perpetuate themselves, because it becomes so hard to hold onto your humanity that even trying gets you actively punished all the while people like Mei Mei crawl to the top. However, even if you throw your humanity away purely as an act of survival you're still helping perpetuate that system instead of fighting against it.

Anyway, that's enough hating on Gojo, onto the main event.

THE NEXT GOJO SATORU.

It's almost masterful how perfect the foreshadowing for this chapter's twist was. Yuta sharing a common ancestor in Sugawara with Gojo.

The irony that Kenjaku said out loud that someone like Yuta could never become Gojo, on top of the fact that Yuta's true power comes from detaining his loved ones soul. He's turning Gojo's body into a weapon the same way that he once used Rika's vengeful cursed spirit as one (he even channels her strength into a sword, the same way Maki uses the sword that Mai gave her life to create in battle).

The way that Yuji's first impression of Yuta from his powerful presence and cursed energy alone was calling him someone even creepier than Gojo.

The idea that Kenjaku has been trying to get his hands on the six-eyes for years, which is what led most of the fandom to theorize a possible Kenjaku return by stealing Gojo's corpse. The fact Tengen said the six eyes, himself and the star plasma vessel are all connected and one time Kenjaku killed the six-eyes from a child only for another one to appear right away.

Yuta being told he could never reach Sukuna's heights because he lacks the selfishness of a calamity.

Even Yuta trying to tell a nameless assassin Uro to be less selfish, only to be chastised by her for not understanding because it's impossible for someone as blessed as he is to know what it's like to not have a name, to not have a face, to not be someone important.

Now here Yuta is, not only is he making the selfish decision to use his teacher's body as a tool, he's also most likely in five minutes going to die in someone else's body, having sacrificed not only his name, and face, but also his personal values in order to become a monster.

This arc makes it seem like Yuta's gone against everything he's stood for, making his arc a complete circle from Jujutsu Kaisen Zero and that's kind of the point. Heck, even something as small as Yuta's decision to show mercy to Ishigori was rendered pointless because Sukuna immediately killed him soon after taking Megumi's body.

If Yuta's regressed in his character it's because Gojo's purpose was not to raise these children into healthy adults, but strong soldiers.

What happened to Yuta is a direct consequence of the way Gojo recruits these children, and the underhanded motivations he has behind those recruitments.

Yuta's decision to take Gojo's body is more tragic on Yuta's part then it is on Gojo's, because Yuta is a child, and Gojo is an adult.

It is sad that Gojo is all alone, that he's forced to become a tool to society, but Yuta shouldn't be the one who feels responsible for that. Gojo is supposed to protect Yuta, he's the adult, the teacher, the one with power and Yuta is the child. Yuta is not the one who should be making this speech because it is not Yuta's responsibility to do any of this - but Yuta thinks it is because he owes Gojo.

However, when Gojo recruits people it's with the unspoken implication that they now owe him. He wants them to feel indebted, because then they'll be easier to use as pieces in his intended political revolution. We see this blatantly with the way he recruited Megumi.

I'll make sure you and your sister don't starve but you owe me in the form of labor later on in your life.

Gojo saved Yuta because he thought Rika was powerful and the elders were foolish for executing a potentially powerful sorcerer for THE GREATER GOOD instead of teaching him to control his power out of fear. Gojo recruited Yuji, because someone with Sukuna's power and who could eat his fingers as a vessel had the makings to be an incredibly powerful sorcerer. Gojo didn't even think of Megumi until after Geto defected, and Gojo decided he needed to start making changes to Jujutsu Society.

While Gojo's pragmatism is understandable to a point it also poisons his more nobler intentions. Since Gojo expects payment in return when he sticks his neck out for people, because these children are assets first and children secod.

I think Gojo likes Yuta. I think he gets along with him well. Yuta clearly respects him as a mentor. He did in fact go to great lengths to save Yuta from execution. He was right that it was more ethical to teach Yuta to control his powers rather than execute him for the danger he might represet. He even gives Yuta emotional advice a couple of times.

However, if Yuta was just like a grade 4 sorcerer with no special talent I doubt Gojo would have blinked at his execution. He sees Yuta for his talent first, and his potential to become someone like him. If anythig there are clear comparisons to both Megumi and Yuta. They're both prodigies born with incredible techniques, but Yuta is a lot more receptive to Gojo's grooming than Megumi is who's too traumatized to function. Gojo's not just grooming Yuta into being a powerful sorcerer, but another version of himself.

So it's almost karmic that not only does Yuta basically turn his back on everything that makes Yuta himself (his love for people, his desire to live and be surrounded by others), he also does so by literally becoming Satoru Gojo and transplanting his brain into Gojo's body.

Because Yuta is despite possessing a similiar level of talent as far from Gojo as possible. Gojo is not well liked by his comrades, he's there because he's needed due to his power. Yuta on the other hand has everyone vehemently disagreeing with his backup plan in the event of Gojo's death because they don't want to lose him.

People need Gojo, they want Yuta because of the connections that Yuta has made with them and because they care about Yuta as a person. Gojo is someone who deliberately draws a line between himself and others because he believes the strongest can't be comprehended, Yuta only fights for the sake of being accepted by others because he needs their approval in order to live.

Yuta's now turned his back on those two things, his tendency to put his loved ones first, and his desire to live, both because he feels he owes Gojo.

This comes about because of two factors, number one Gojo helping him with the implication that this help means that Yuta owes him something which makes Yuta desperate to pay him back and therfore easy to mold, and number two Gojo's intentions to begin with to take Yuta and make another Gojo out of him. To make a successor who would carry on the same burdens that Gojo did.

Gojo succeeded one hundred percent in making his successor as opposed to Megumi who turned out to be too different from Gojo i the end. He took what make Yuta unique and ironed out all those wrinkles until he was left with someone willing to make the same inhumane, pragmatic decisions that Gojo was.

I think it's tragic that as much as Gojo wanted to make things better for the next generation, he basically led Yuta down the same road he did, to make the same choice to throw his humanity away along with all of his loved ones. Especially since Yuta started out in such a different place.

Yuta has learned to become selfish like Gojo, because selfishness is apparently now the only way to get by in this world. A cycle that has been started with the elders, and continued on with Gojo, remains unbroken as Yuta becomes just another link in the chain. Yuta's likely going to die in a stranger's body, leaving all of his friends behind to mourn him, but even if he lives what life will that be exactly?

It speaks to the arcs in Jujutsu Kaisen that they're all kind of circles at this point. We have this heartwarming goodbye of Rika telling Yuta to live, and Yuta's whole arc was to learn to try to live without Rika and make new friends, but it's now likely goig to end with Yuta dying a year after Rika finally moved on.

Choso was told to try living on as a human and Yuki even sacrificed her life to give him the opportuity to escape the fight, and he only lived a month longer to die right in front of Yuji's eyes.

Gojo put all of his hope in the next generation, but now not only did he put all the power in Gakuganji's hands but he ended up dying a year after Geto did just like Yuta will likely die a year after Rika.

I think these character arcs are turning out to be circles because the characters aren't actually doing anything to try to break the cycles that they're trapped inside of - they're only trying to get stronger. Which is why they end up resembling the actions of the villains, Yuji becoming more curselike, Yuta stealing Gojo's body the way Kenjaku did with Geto's.

It reminds me of a quote from Critical Role that I absolutely adore.

“I have just taken an audience with the Raven Queen who has snuffed any hope of my redemption, for which I am truly grateful. With new clarity, I can finally see my life as a series of compounding, poor choices.” Vax winces. “There was nothing I could’ve done to save my family, yet I still sold my soul in search of vengeance. Later I allowed Ripley to leave, knowing full well she was a greater threat to the world than the Briarwoods would ever be. I traded the world’s safety for the belief that I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back. And once this lie was shattered I scrambled to find asolution, to make a deal, to undo my mistakes and balance the scales. I nowunderstand that there are no scales, there is no redemption, and no ledger that judges me good or evil. I am free to simply be myself and live with the terrible mistakes I’ve made."

Especially this sentence: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.

Maki is a character that I have not found all that interesting in a while because she committed such a huge mass murder, only for it to have no consequences in the narrative and never be mentioned again, but this chapter she suddenly became an interesting character again.

Maki who lost everything but gained strength, doesn't seem all that bothered by the loss. People compare Megumi's reaction to losing Tsumiki to Maki's reaction to losing Mai, but Megumi's reaction is much more interesting because it's always better to see a character be weak and fall apart then to be strong and power through things.

However, maybe the reason Maki hasn't experienced any grief at all towards Mai and has instead delighted in her newfound strength and independence is because of this, because she still had Yuta.

Maki is a character who's not really said anything other than exposition the past like twenty chapters, but now she's the most vocally against Yuta sacrificing himself for the greater good. Yet this is against Maki's own ideology of doing everything you can to be stronger, to win. Maki was always about individualism, not about friendship or the bonds between others, she severed her own bonds to be free. Yet, she can't stand to see Yuta do the same thing as her, to become more like her.

This might be the consequence of Maki's continued choice to value freedom and the power to achieve that freedom over all else. Now, the one time Yuta is trying to throw away the same things that she threw away she can't say anything meaningful or convince him to stop him.

Which reminds painfully of this chapter as well.

Mai killing herself in order to free Maki from cursed energy is an obvious parallel to Sukuna devouring his own twin in the womb, but the difference is in this situation Maki didn't want Mai to go, she begged her not to. However, just like with Yuta there was nothing Maki could ahve said or done by that point to convince Mai to stay. Maki has always chosen power over her sister, she's always abandoned Mai, so what exactly can she say to convince her that she cares more about Mai more? That her dream of defeating the Zen'in and having revenge against them isn't worth the price if it comes at the sacrifice of Mai?

Maki didn't want to abandon Mai, or for Mai to sacrifice herself, but tragically her every action indicated otherwise. It all comes down to this: I believed I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back.

Maki seems to have achieved peace by murdering the Zen'in, but we see the same kind of circular arc that we have for Yuta.

Maki gave up on everything for strength, but Maki's not strong enough to finish Sukuna then and there, forcing Yuta to sacrifice himself the same way Mai did.

Maki can't talk Yuta out of making that sacrifice, or come up with any convincing argument with why he shouldn't because of all the choices she's made before this.

Maki chose to murder her way to peace, but it came at the cost of her humanity and growth and thus she's faced again with the exact same situation with Mai and she's forced to watch her heart be taken from her again.

It goes to show that we think these characters are getting stronger but they're actually sacrificing something vitally important.

that voldemort is an unsympathetic victim of childhood trauma, but he is a victim nonetheless

there are no two ways about it, dumbledore and voldemort’s first meeting is disastrous and, even though voldemort doesn’t acquit himself particularly well in the proceedings (maybe don’t boast about all the children you torture?) the power differential in the relationship (dumbledore is at least in his late fifties, voldemort is eleven) means that responsibility for conducting himself fairly lies entirely with dumbledore.

however, i am going to begin this section with some dumbledore defence. i see a lot in fan-fiction the idea that the young voldemort is profoundly traumatised by dumbledore setting his wardrobe on fire, which of course does seem like an incredibly cruel thing for dumbledore to do to a child who presumably has basically no worldly possessions (which is what harry immediately thinks). the voldemort of canon, however, doesn’t seem to care that much:

Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged. Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand.  “Where can I get one of them?”

as we can see, any upset voldemort feels over the wardrobe disappears the minute he appraises magic’s ability to frighten, destroy, and control. similarly:

“All in good time,” said Dumbledore. “I think there is something trying to get out of your wardrobe.” And sure enough, a faint rattling could be heard from inside it. For the first time, Riddle looked frightened. “Open the door,” said Dumbledore… Riddle took down the quaking box. He looked unnerved. “Is there anything in that box that you ought not to have?” asked Dumbledore.  Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. “Yes, I suppose so, sir,” he said finally, in an expressionless voice... Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colourless voice, “Yes, sir.” …It was impossible to tell what he was thinking; his face remained quite blank as he put the little cache of stolen objects back into the cardboard box. When he had finished, he turned to Dumbledore and said baldly, “I haven’t got any money.”

while dumbledore’s behaviour here frightens and unnerves voldemort, he gets over it pretty quickly, and he then transitions into being unabashed at having been caught and planning his options for how to proceed (i am wedded to the headcanon that the clear and calculating look is him deciding not to return the stolen objects, and to test whether dumbledore will indeed know if he doesn’t), chief of which is his need to solve his money issues.

which is to say, dumbledore’s behaviour in this meeting undoubtedly establishes voldemort’s later dislike of him - although i think it’s worth noting that the voldemort of chamber of secrets treats dumbledore as a mere annoyance, rather than someone for whom he harbours a profound, traumatising hatred (voldemort's dislike of dumbledore transitions to hate, i think, following the fake job interview) - but i don’t think it’s the misstep many interpretations of voldemort and dumbledore’s relationship make it.

but dumbledore does make some decisions in their first meeting which i think are worth exploring more critically than they often are:

dumbledore’s failure to inform mrs cole that the young voldemort is a wizard makes his existence in two worlds impossible

we know that the families of muggleborn students are normally informed about the magical world during this visit by hogwarts staff in which their letter is delivered - and that this was the case even in the late 1930s, since myrtle warren’s parents are able to come to hogwarts after her death. in dumbledore’s decision not to mention voldemort’s magic to mrs cole, voldemort - whose sense of belonging to a family unit is already non-existent - must, then, become the only student at hogwarts whose legal guardian knows nothing about where he goes all year. potentially there are magical-legal reasons for this, but i can’t think of any particularly convincing ones.

dumbledore projects his own self-loathing onto the child voldemort and chalks his personality traits up to malice rather than neglect

dumbledore handles himself pretty well in the initial moments of his meeting with voldemort, keeping calm while he freaks out about whether he’s a doctor (as i’ve said in the previous part of this series of meta, voldemort’s fear of doctors - and especially whether it implies some deeper traumatic experience - is something worth thinking about). his attitude changes when voldemort accepts easily that he is a wizard:

His legs were trembling. He stumbled forward and sat down on the bed again, staring at his hands, his head bowed as though in prayer.  “I knew I was different,” he whispered to his own quivering fingers. “I knew I was special. Always, I knew there was something.”  “Well, you were quite right,” said Dumbledore, who was no longer smiling, but watching Riddle intently. “You are a wizard.”

dumbledore will tell harry later in the chapter this is taken from that he thought voldemort’s immediate pivot to believing himself special was a red flag, indicative of the arrogance which will define his adult self. his discomfort, although we don’t know this yet in half-blood prince, is evidently triggered by the fact that voldemort’s breathless awe at the potential - and especially the sinister potential - of his magical powers reminds him either of grindelwald or of himself.

but.

the young voldemort - a magical child surrounded by non-magical people - can do things which are objectively different and special. as he tells us:

“I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to.”

the obviously violent implication of the last two sentences aside, these abilities would be understood by anyone as so bafflingly unusual that special is a pretty reasonable word with which to describe them, particularly for a child who has only just been given the language to explain an aspect of his personhood he has clearly always been aware of, but never understood the cause of.

dumbledore’s immediate negative response to this statement, however, is the cause of his later assessment of the child voldemort as like his adult self:

“His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard and - most interestingly and ominously of all - he had already discovered that he had some measure of control over them, and begun to use them consciously. And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards: He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control…his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination.”

but, while the child voldemort’s cruelty is absolutely something dumbledore should have been made uneasy by - although, of course, he does nothing about it once voldemort starts at hogwarts, deciding to take a hands-off approach that harry clearly thinks is idiotic - his criticism of voldemort for being secretive (and also, later in this chapter, self-sufficient, independent, and friendless) is a bad-faith reading, based on his own loathing of the fact that these traits also describe him, of habits which are obviously caused by childhood neglect.

voldemort is secretive - as harry is - because he doesn’t have any trusted childhood confidants. he’s self-sufficient and independent - as harry is - because he has to be. he’s friendless as much because he’s a strange child with magical powers raised around other children who don’t have them - as, the text implies, is the case for hermione - as because he’s cruel. dumbledore’s failure to have any sympathy for the fact that voldemort’s institutionalised childhood drives these characteristics - instead ascribing them entirely to deliberate choices made by an eleven year old in order to assert malign dominance over his peers - is a failing. indeed, it is one he will repeat with harry.

but the most egregious of dumbledore’s cock-ups in this bit of the story:

dumbledore completely fails to understand the way voldemort’s childhood grief manifests itself

voldemort - in one of the few bits of this chapter in which he actually appears childlike - asks dumbledore:

“Was my father a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they’ve told me.”  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Dumbledore, his voice gentle. “My mother can’t have been magic, or she wouldn’t have died,” said Riddle, more to himself than Dumbledore. “It must’ve been him.” 

dumbledore seems to handle this quite sensitively. on our first reading.

but when we get deeper into the text, two things emerge which make this interaction - in my sincere opinion - the cruelest thing dumbledore does to the child voldemort. 

firstly, when discussing with harry the teenage voldemort shedding his father’s name, dumbledore refers to merope as voldemort’s ‘previously despised mother… the woman whom, you will remember, he had thought could not be a witch if she had succumbed to the shameful human weakness of death.’

but there is no implication in the above - surely the only conversation he and dumbledore ever have on the topic - that voldemort despises his mother. his statement reads like the magical thinking of any bereaved child - that his mother could have lived if she’d had supernatural powers, or there had been some sort of magical intervention, and so on. [a friend who's reading spare pointed out to me recently that prince harry was convinced for years that his mother had managed to fake her own death to escape a life she disliked, and that she would pop up any day to take him with her into her new reality. what voldemort is doing here is basically the same.]

dumbledore’s negative reaction to voldemort's words reflects his own relationship with death as ever-present - the spectre of ariana is clearly hovering constantly on his shoulder - rather than something which magic can dismiss or overcome, but voldemort choosing to think the opposite isn’t the behaviour of a pre-teen psychopath. it’s an entirely expected reaction for a grieving child, and dumbledore's response to it is unfair.

even worse though is this. when dumbledore is speaking to mrs cole, it is very clear that he realises that the child he is about to meet is half gaunt:

“And then she told me he was to be named Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for her father — yes, I know, funny name, isn’t it? We wondered whether she came from a circus.”

dumbledore must react physically to hearing the name marvolo - whom, since he can be presumed to be already on the wizengamot at this point, he is aware was sent to azkaban for defending his son's involvement in an anti-muggle attack - significantly enough that mrs cole notices it. in deathly hallows, voldemort himself is worried that dumbledore knew about his heritage from - since when else would he have learned voldemort’s full name - their first meeting:

An old unease flickered inside him. Dumbledore had known his middle name... Dumbledore might have made the connection with the Gaunts…

the child voldemort will then tell dumbledore that he is a parselmouth, a trait the gaunts must be known to possess, since marvolo and morfin both openly speak parseltongue in front of bob ogden. and yet dumbledore doesn’t mention at all that he might be able to identify a bereaved child’s - who we have no evidence at all even knows his own mother’s name - family line.

dumbledore overlooks voldemort’s grief at other points in the series - he doesn’t notice, for example, that the murder of hepzibah smith (who insults merope by suggesting she stole the locket) is clearly one of revenge, rather than gain - but it’s this sin of omission (later one of his most frequent missteps when dealing with harry) that always gets me.

that voldemort doesn’t just change his name because of his father

within five years of their first meeting, voldemort has stopped going by tom when with his friends. dumbledore will claim to harry that his decision to shed his birth name was caused by two things: his discovery that his father was a muggle and his desire to be seen as special. voldemort himself will emphasise the former in both chamber of secrets and goblet of fire - the latter of which also features his odd conviction that his father was the one who insisted on the name tom riddle.

dumbledore evidently believes that voldemort’s decision to no longer use the name tom is contemptible, and he - and later harry - will refer to him as tom whenever they come face-to-face. the narrative presents dumbledore as being unambiguously right to do this:

He raised his glass as though toasting Voldemort, whose face remained expressionless. Nevertheless, Harry felt the atmosphere in the room change subtly: Dumbledore’s refusal to use Voldemort’s chosen name was a refusal to allow Voldemort to dictate the terms of the meeting, and Harry could tell that Voldemort took it as such.

i am sympathetic to the idea that dumbledore should not be expected to refer to voldemort as ‘my lord’, although i don’t actually think that’s what voldemort is asking here, and i should say that i myself have written ‘voldemort’ as being a mask the adult tom takes on and off at whim, and i think there’s space for those interpretations in fan-fiction. but the evidence of canon is that voldemort lives exclusively as voldemort from the mid-1950s onwards and that he considers tom to be, without question, his deadname.

the name clearly doesn’t feel right to him even as child - he twitches ‘irritably’ when dumbledore points out he shares it with tom the landlord - even at a point in his life when he still feels positively towards the father whom he believes is a wizard as well. while dumbledore may be correct that he dislikes the name at this point because it’s not special enough, wanting a more unique name is not, in and of itself, a moral failing. voldemort calling himself voldemort is a completely neutral act. it is what he does under that name that’s the problem.

that dumbledore thinks it is a moral failing, however, can be explained by the backstory we learn in deathly hallows. elphias doge and muriel prewett both make clear that percival dumbledore’s arrest and imprisonment and kendra and ariana dumbledore’s deaths brought sufficient press attention that the dumbledore name was immediately recognisable and attached in the mind of the wizarding public to the various scandals which befell the family. dumbledore, who blames himself for much (or most) of what happened, clearly carries his name like a penance, and regards it as a dereliction of duty to try and escape the weight of one’s family drama by taking a new identity.

and this drives, i think, something which the doylist text doesn’t think is an issue, but which i think dumbledore is mistaken in when it comes to voldemort: that his background can be nowhere near as secret as dumbledore assumes; and that the only thing he rejects is a name which no longer belongs to him. for example, a significant number of death eaters clearly went to school with voldemort, the malfoys cannot be the only ones who have seen his teenage possessions, hagrid is seemingly aware that voldemort attended hogwarts alongside him, and dumbledore himself says in half-blood prince that people know what voldemort was once called and what he was like as teenager, but are just too scared to provide information about his life to the anti-voldemort cause. 

this leads to my belief that most of the death eaters are aware of voldemort’s blood status - lucius malfoy in order of the phoenix is clearly unsurprised to hear harry say voldemort’s a half-blood; bellatrix is furious, of course, but maybe that’s what over a decade in azkaban does to you - and, also, are aware that his political aims, as described in the previous meta in this series, are not the establishment of a pureblood oligarchy, but what we might term magic-supremacy. indeed, dumbledore’s interpretation of voldemort as lying to his death eaters that he’s a great pureblood champion always sits uneasily in canon alongside the fact that voldemort is shown to have enormous support among non-human magical creatures and, given how lacking the resistance to the the government of deathly hallows is, swathes of the majority half-blood population as well, which suggests that his closest supporters accept that his concern is getting the magical of any stripe behind him in order to take on the muggle world.

which is to say, dumbledore thinks that lord voldemort is a mask a half-blood man called tom riddle uses to hide his true self from his pureblood supporters. in reality, lord voldemort is just that half-blood man’s name.

that voldemort thinks the job interview is real

voldemort doesn’t lose his temper in the interview scene until dumbledore reveals the meeting - which voldemort has travelled some distance for and indicated his intentions for in advance - is fake (he handles dumbledore deadnaming him pretty magnanimously, for example).

dumbledore’s decision to lure him to hogwarts simply to assert his dominance over him is clearly the final nail in the coffin of their relationship, and it is another example of how dumbledore’s automatic bad-faith reading of decisions and desires which are clearly more complicated than just ‘i love evil’ (after all, dumbledore himself acknowledges that voldemort regards hogwarts as the only place he has ever truly felt at home) is the cause of voldemort’s hatred of him, rather than that hatred being the result of voldemort being afraid of dumbledore’s goodness or perspicacity or skill, as the pre-deathly hallows text likes to imply:

Voldemort sneered. “If you do not want to give me a job -”  “Of course I don’t,” said Dumbledore. “And I don’t think for a moment you expected me to. Nevertheless, you came here, you asked, you must have had a purpose.”Voldemort stood up. He looked less like Tom Riddle than ever, his features thick with rage. “This is your final word?” “It is,” said Dumbledore, also standing. "Then we have nothing more to say to each other.”

that voldemort has a very strange - but very pronounced - sense of honour

as i have noted in the previous meta in this series, voldemort has a remarkably well-defined sense of honour. for a murderer.

his often-repeated hatred of liars, hypocrites, and cowards appears to be genuine and - for narrative reasons, since he is often required to provide exposition for harry’s benefit which dumbledore can’t if he is to maintain his characterisation - he is rarely shown outright lying himself in canon, even if we’re told he is a pathological liar by other characters.

that he considers dumbledore in particular to be a hypocrite is clear in many of their interactions, especially this - which i always like - from order of the phoenix:

Dumbledore flicked his own wand. The force of the spell that emanated from it was such that Harry, though shielded by his stone guard, felt his hair stand on end as it passed, and this time Voldemort was forced to conjure a shining silver shield out of thin air to deflect it. The spell, whatever it was, caused no visible damage to the shield, though a deep, gonglike note reverberated from it, an oddly chilling sound...  “You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?” called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. “Above such brutality, are you?”  “We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,” Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk toward Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. “Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit — ”

at this point in the story, the reader doesn’t know that dumbledore is taking this merciful approach because he is aware he can’t kill voldemort. we do, however, already suspect that dumbledore’s dishonesty with harry about the prophecy is a direct cause of the chain of events which has just led to sirius’ death - as dumbledore himself will shortly admit to and as the death eaters are evidently aware of (lucius malfoy pointing out that voldemort is baffled that dumbledore didn’t tell harry about the prophecy always sends me). voldemort’s statement - ‘above such brutality, are you?’ - is ironic, and is a criticism of what he evidently believes to be dumbledore’s hypocrisy in performing mercy in public while regarding his men as expendable in private (and, especially, as expendable to protect harry - whom he maintains right up until the end of deathly hallows has been hidden and pampered from the reality of war by a procession of cannon fodder).

it’s worth saying i think this is unfair from voldemort - dumbledore makes decisions which any general has to, and they will of course be messy and difficult; and voldemort’s characterisation of harry is always unnecessarily harsh - but it is indicative of a belief expressed by voldemort at other points in the series that dumbledore is a hypocrite, that he is a coward, that he is dishonourable, and that he is dishonest. and he isn’t entirely wrong, as the conclusion of the series reveals. 

dumbledore obviously thinks exactly the same things of voldemort. and, of course, he’s not wrong either. but, as always, there is projection from dumbledore of his discomfort with the performance and concealment his own life requires onto voldemort. and voldemort clearly picks up on it.

that his view of love as sacrificial can’t be understood by someone who has nobody to sacrifice anything for

what it says on the tin, really.

dumbledore’s past - especially his profound guilt and grief over the fact that his embrace of desire, carnality, and other ‘selfish’ aspects of love caused his sister’s death - is the cause of his view of love as, in essence, something defined by sacrifice and loss. dumbledore always discusses love in terms of the nobility of suffering, and he never - throughout the canonical series (except maybe, obliquely, at king's cross) - suggests that love can be comforting, self-indulgent, restorative, uncomplicatedly pleasurable, and fun. we see, after all, that harry has to give up a love which is all of those things - his relationship with ginny at the end of half-blood prince - in order to pursue dumbledore’s version of it.

harry’s own pathology - especially his enormous saviour and martyr complexes, as well as the circumstances of his own orphanhood (as i have had voldemort point out on several occasions in my writing, harry’s mother could be bothered to live long enough to die for him, voldemort can’t relate) - makes him amenable to the concept of love-as-sacrifice. voldemort, in contrast, fears sacrifice and vulnerability because he fears powerlessness - and he fears powerlessness because he’s an orphan who would have nothing without his power (under which umbrella, of course, comes his immortality).

this is what he means by:

“The old argument,” he said softly. “But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore.” 

and:

How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments.

and:

“Is it love again?” said Voldemort, his snake’s face jeering. “Dumbledore’s favourite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter — and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?”

and:

To tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust Bellatrix and Malfoy: Didn’t their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise it was ever to trust? 

as he tells us in philosopher’s stone, there is only power and those too weak to seek it. everything can be done on one's own. it is foolish to rely on other people.

sacrifice is a concept which cannot exist within this world view.

but i think voldemort could be made to understand the idea of love-as-pleasure. after all, he is clearly someone who enjoys things - when harry is able to pick up on his moods in order of the phoenix he is happy as often as he is angry - magic chief among them. he likes shiny objects and, therefore, presumably understands sensory pleasure. he conceives of himself as someone who is generous and who gives gifts. his relationship - whether you see it as sexual or not - with bellatrix in canon is surprisingly tender; he allows her to be physically very close to him a lot of the time, to touch him, to talk to him in a way which undermines his sinister vibe, and to be visibly pregnant with his baby (if you accept that, and i understand why basically nobody does), and he is clearly known to spend a great deal of time in her company by the other death eaters. he appears to genuinely like several of his minions, particularly snape. he obviously misses his mother, but nobody external to him ever acknowledges that grief. he is obviously as lost as all orphans are in a world which places a great deal of emphasis on lineage, and that is again never acknowledged.

It's very hard not to have some level of empathy for Daenerys throughout the entirety of the first book, because she suffers horrendously and it is obvious that she has been suffering for a great while before the audience ever meets her. However, the nature of reading through her point of view has a way of masking the darker realities of the choices that she makes from the jump, and it largely obscures the fact that from the moment Daenerys decided to be queen, she also decided that villainy was a worthy price for power. Despite the fact that she is only present for a few chapters, Mirri Maz Duur is one of the most influential characters in the entire saga. However, upon further examination of her short character arc, her influence likely doesn't come in the way that most readers or viewers believe that it does.

Mirri is among the Lhazareen who are captured when Drogo's khalasar is enslaving people in order to sell them and fund the quest to claim the Iron Throne for Dany and Rhaego. Mirri is one of the many women that Dany believes that she has saved from being further repeatedly raped by the Dothraki by taking them as her personal slaves instead.

When Dany realizes that Drogo has been hurt badly in the sack of the Lhazareen, Mirri offers to help by giving him a salve, and although the Dothraki are suspicious of her, Daenerys orders her to help. Mirri does, and she gives Khal Drogo specific instructions on how to continue the treatment. “You must say the prayers I give you and keep the lambskin in place for ten days and ten nights,” she said. “There will be fever, and itching, and a great scar when the healing is done.” “Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy,” she cautioned him. “Pain you will have, but you must keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits.”

However, despite these specific directions, Drogo adheres to none of it, and in many instances does exactly what Mirri Maz Duur told him not to do. "Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur’s poultice had itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a maegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well."

By the time that Daenerys seeks out Mirri Maz Duur's assistance again, Mirri essentially tells her that it is already too late to save Drogo. “The time for that is past, my lady,” Mirri said. “All I can do now is ease the dark road before him, so he might ride painless to the night lands. He will be gone by morning.” Her words were a knife through Dany’s breast. What had she ever done to make the gods so cruel? She had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love and hope. She was finally going home. And now to lose it all … “No,” she pleaded. “Save him, and I will free you, I swear it. You must know a way … some magic, some …” Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys through eyes as black as night. “There is a spell.” Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. “But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands.”

Now, it's easy to miss one of the key elements of this exchange, but it really feels like a vital insight into Dany's perspective at this moment. Dany begs Mirri to save Drogo, and offers Mirri her freedom if she does so successfully.

To be clear, Mirri Maz Duur is a middle aged woman who was free up until a few days ago, and unless she failed to mention it, she had never been a slave before. She was enslaved and brutally, repeatedly raped as a captive specifically in service of Dany's quest for the Iron Throne, and that is a price that Dany was actively willing to let others pay for her benefit. As she sees the horror of the sacking around her, she literally thinks to herself "This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne."

So with that in mind, this agreement becomes far more disturbing. Mirri Maz Duur was a free woman who suffered horrendously while being forced into subjugation, and her master has agreed to free her if and only if she saves the man who led the destruction of her entire community. In order to get back what she already had, she has to serve the two people who were the entire driving force behind her slavery and suffering in the first place.

Another one of their exchanges seems to offer even more insight into this unsettling dynamic. Mirri says: “It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death may pay for life.” “Death?” Dany wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rocked back and forth on her heels. “My death?” She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved. “No,” Mirri Maz Duur promised. “Not your death, Khaleesi.” Dany trembled with relief. “Do it.”

Now, there is arguably something admirable and brave about Dany's willingness to offer herself up as a sacrifice. But it's more than a little disturbing that once Mirri says that Dany isn't the one who has to die, she simply says "do it".

Firstly, that seems like the kind of scenario that requires some follow up questions. But secondly, it seems to indicate that Dany is willing to use someone else as a sacrifice to save Drogo. This isn't a particularly shocking revelation given that the Dothraki have a larger-than-average appetite for slaughter, but it's also incredibly grim that Dany is willing to kill someone else, anyone else, in order to save her warlord husband.

Things fall apart around Daenerys quite quickly after this. Once again, Mirri Maz Duur gives extremely specific directions about what should and should not be done, and once again those directions are not followed.

Mirri says: “Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them.”

When Dany and Rhaego become distressed, Dany's reaction is desperate. "No,” she wept, “no, please, stop it, it’s too high, the price is too high.”

Once she goes into labor, things quickly devolve into chaos, and because she is delving into dark magic, no one wants to assist her, so Jorah brings her into the tent while Mirri Maz Duur is completing the ritual.

After this, Daenerys is obviously in a dire state, and is unconscious or barely conscious for an extremely long time. And interestingly, Mirri is one of the slaves tending to Dany while she's recuperating.

Once she's finally fully awake, she inquires about Rhaego, and what Mirri describes is fascinating and seems incredibly important. “Monstrous, twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.” Darkness , Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she looked back she was lost. “My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent,” she said. “I could feel him kicking, fighting to be born.” “That may be as it may be,” answered Mirri Maz Duur, “yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.” Dany's immediate reaction to this is also vitally insightful towards the decisions she makes in the immediate aftermath. Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp.

Daenerys is understandably gutted when she realizes that Drogo is essentially the living dead, and after accusing Mirri Maz Duur of tricking her, Mirri comes as close as she ever does to outright admitting that she did this on purpose. Much of what she says and doesn't say here is incredibly interesting, but one particular line stands out here: “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”

What is still very telling about this entire exchange is that while what Mirri says seems quite pointedly brutal towards Dany and her childish, self-centered view of what has been done to her and her people, Mirri never actually says that she has done any of this intentionally. She never actually admits to the crime that Dany seems to be accusing her of, and that is in addition to the fact that there is considerable evidence pointing to the possibility that none of this was Mirri's actual intentions.

However, the question of what Mirri Maz Duur did or did not do quickly becomes irrelevant.

The story quickly hurtles towards arguably the most important moment of Dany's life, and Mirri Maz Duur is bound to the pyre and burned alive in the great fire that brings dragons back into the world. And because these twists and turns are so shocking, it's easy to lose track of what is actually happening here.

Because, while Dany makes a point of freeing all of the slaves that are left in her caravan before putting herself on the pyre, she does not ever free Mirri. The evidence of Mirri's crimes are pretty tenuous, so in the most positive reading of the scenario, Daenerys is burning her slave alive for rebelling against her master, and in the worst, Daenerys is burning her slave alive for something she didn't even do.

From that point of view, ultimately Mirri's supposed guilt is somewhat irrelevant. I mean, in order to believe that Mirri Maz Duur is actually guilty of a crime and death is a worthy punishment for her, then one would have to accept that slaves do not have the right to act out against their masters. But honestly, it seems far more likely that Mirri actually didn't intentionally do any harm to Daenerys or Drogo at all.

It's very easy to get caught up in Dany's POV trap in many ways, but one of the biggest traps is that because she sees herself as the world's main character, the reader or viewer immediately assumes that she must be right. But in her reality, the vast majority of people around her, especially in A Game of Thrones, see her as nothing more than the child bride of a warlord.

Mirri's position in the story is pretty clever, because ultimately, her guilt cannot be proven. Literally every rule that she gives in order for her assistance to work is broken, Drogo doesn't use her poultice in the way it's intended and Daenerys and Jorah enter the tent when she specifically told them not to. What Mirri's true aims were is impossible to suss out because we never get to see what would have happened if everything went according to her plan. And on that basis alone, it seems very unlikely that she was using her abilities as a maegi against Daenerys or Drogo.

But if we are actually meant to assume that Mirri suffered and labored in service of Dany in order to teach her this incredibly elaborate life lesson, the bigger question is, why? If this was all some grand plan to teach Daenerys a lesson, why would Mirri actually care to do this? Why would she spend so much time and energy, why would she do something that would ultimately get herself killed, just to teach some random kid a life lesson that she doesn't actually learn anyway?

It's another a clever use of Dany's point of view trap, because again, she sees herself as the main character, so someone doing this to her makes some sense to her. But Mirri spends what seems like weeks enslaved by the khalasar, she offers her assistance unprompted, she seemingly treats Daenerys after her miscarriage, she seemingly stays when she was afforded quite a few opportunities of escape, and we're supposed to believe that she does all this just so she can have one good gotcha moment with Dany before Dany executes her in the most brutal way possible? It simply does not make any sense.

However, even with that under consideration, if Mirri Maz Duur did whatever she could to undermine Daenerys and Drogo, if she went out of her way to do harm to them, she would still be in the right. Again, we're talking about a master-slave relationship, so to claim that Mirri has no right to harm them or kill them would mean that a slave has no right to rebel against their master. But then, there is Rhaego.

Rhaego is an interesting component of this entire scenario, because he is arguably the only truly innocent party who shouldn't have to pay for his parents' crimes. But there are actually a lot of really compelling subtleties about this situation that call Mirri's culpability into question.

Firstly and most importantly, once again, Mirri is a slave. Interestingly, the story goes out of its way to repeatedly remind the reader of that, because Drogo reprimands Dany for asking Mirri to do something instead of commanding her as you would a slave, and Mirri herself actually corrects Dany and says that you do not ask a slave, you tell them.

So once again, this casts the following events into a different light. When Daenerys demands that Mirri save Drogo, she doesn't inquire any further after Mirri says that Dany's death is not the price. Perhaps an argument could be made that Mirri was being intentionally misleading by not outright saying that Rhaego's life was the price for Drogo's, but still, Mirri's guilt in this scenario is questionable given that she is literally a slave following the orders of her master. But, I think it's actually far more likely that Mirri wasn't responsible for Rhaego's death at all.

Dany obviously wouldn't be aware of it, but the fact that Targaryens have had similar stillborn children that are monstrous and twisted like Rhaego seems like it's very unlikely to be coincidental. It's not particularly shocking either, with a gene pool as shallow as the Targaryens, birthing children who have unsurvivable abnormalities is almost to be expected. So the likelihood that Rhaego was always going to be a stillbirth seems pretty high.

But, there's another interesting dimension to Rhaego as well. Because Mirri does imply that Dany knew that the price of Drogo's life was Rhaego, and she says something that is absolutely fascinating in a broader context. When Dany asks when Drogo will be as he was, Mirri says “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”

Now, this is definitely veering into tin foil hat territory, but the fact that Mirri says "when your womb quickens again and you bear a living child, Drogo will return to you" could be incredibly telling, and actually seems to support the theory that Mirri was being straight up with Dany and Drogo the entire time.

Because yes, she didn't directly state that Rhaego was the price for Drogo, but Dany figures it out quite quickly when the ritual starts, and Mirri says that Dany knew what the price was. Plus, it just makes sense, sacrificing the child to save the father in a ritual based on blood magic seems like a pretty logical guess. However, Rhaego's deformity and Drogo's state could be connected.

So, if we assume that Mirri Maz Duur was actually telling the truth and was sincerely using her blood magic to save Drogo's life, then the fact that Rhaego was never going to survive no matter what and may have even been dead inside Dany in the first place would have an effect on how this magical life exchange worked. If Mirri's blood magic ritual is intended to trade the life of one living human for another, then actually doing that ritual and unknowingly using a possibly already dead half-dragon baby would probably have severe consequences, and it would actually make sense that Drogo wound up as the non-functioning nearly catatonic husk of a person he became. And, Mirri's statement about Drogo becoming as he was when Daenerys births a living child may not have been an insult, but a literal statement of fact, and a direct explanation of what went wrong in the ritual.

Looking at the totality of circumstances, it actually seems fairly likely that Mirri Maz Duur was attempting to do exactly what she said she was doing, and factors outside of her control prevented them from being successful. Drogo doesn't use the medicine she gives him correctly, and he gets sicker. Daenerys doesn't keep other living people out of the tent, and the ritual fails. Drogo's child is the life that he's meant to draw from, but he's actually not really alive.

And ultimately, it seems like Dany knows this. Or at the very least, she does not know for certain that anything that Mirri did actually caused all of these bad things to happen to her. But, regardless of that, what is essentially Daenerys' first act as a Targaryen queen is killing her slave in the most brutal fashion imaginable because she might have rebelled against her. But again, the broader question is, why?

The exchanges between Mirri and Dany are interesting, because it's overtly implied that there is a certain knowledge between them that is unsaid. It's evident that Dany believes she has figured out how to bring dragons to life, and it seems like Mirri has figured out that Dany has figured it out too.

In order to understand the broader context of this entire situation, one of the most interesting keys to explaining the entire story likely lies in the tragedy at Summerhall.

The incident at Summerhall is one of the most fascinating facets of the world of ice and fire, and despite the fact that it deserves in-depth analysis on its own, the amount of information that is actually known about the entire tragedy is shockingly sparse. Therefore, the fact that a great deal of the information available about the tragedy of Summerhall almost perfectly matches up with Daenerys resurrecting the dragons is even more meaningful.

In both scenarios, there was a great fire that consumed a king and a prince, and both infernos were started with the direct intention of bringing dragons back into the world. But one specific, incredibly strange detail about Summerhall seems to demonstrate that the dragons would not have been resurrected without Mirri Maz Duur, and that the driving force behind Dany killing her may have been knowing her potential usefulness in the ritual and nothing more or less than that.

In A Dance With Dragons, Daenerys 4, there is a very interesting exchange between Dany and Ser Barristan where Ser Barristan explains a bit of backstory about House Targaryen. “I saw your father and your mother wed as well. Forgive me, but there was no fondness there, and the realm paid dearly for that, my queen.” “Why did they wed if they did not love each other?” “Your grandsire commanded it. A woods witch had told him that the prince was promised would be born of their line.” “A woods witch?” Dany was astonished. “She came to court with Jenny of Oldstones. A stunted thing, grotesque to look upon. A dwarf, most people said, though dear to Lady Jenny, who always claimed that she was one of the children of the forest.” “What became of her?” “Summerhall.” The word was fraught with doom.

This conversation seems to imply that Barristan believes that the character better known as the Ghost of High Heart was actually killed at Summerhall, when we obviously know that is not true. This is a bizarre exchange that mostly comes out of nowhere, and it's odd that this particular detail is seemingly intentionally placed there. So why in the world would George RR Martin include this incredibly minor detail that the reader already knows is incorrect?

It's a baffling choice that actually seems to make sense in the context of Mirri Maz Duur, and it is really a significant game-changer for the entire lore of the series. If Barristan had been correct and the woods witch had died at Summerhall, then the tragedy of Summerhall would would be a pretty direct one-for-one mirror of Daenerys, her ritual sacrifice, and her successful birth of dragons. The fact that he thinks the Ghost of High Heart actually died is bizarre, but could hint to the fact that her death was intended by the royal family, and that her survival was essentially a mistake. This entire passage seems to imply that King Aegon V almost got the ritual right, and that Mirri's death by fire may have been the linchpin that actually brought dragons back into the world.

Then, when looked at in the greater context of Euron Greyjoy and his obsession with killing the holy magical leaders of every religion he can find as well as killing his own unborn child in order to gain a great deal of magical power, it seems incredibly probable that this particular combination is a standard magical recipe, and that Dany and Mirri both somehow knew this.

Ergo, the supposed righteousness of Dany avenging Drogo and Rhaego by executing Mirri Maz Duur kind of goes out the window. It is possible that Dany has convinced herself that Mirri truly is responsible for everything that has gone wrong, but it actually seems quite probable that she is simply using that trumped up excuse as a pretext to use her in a ritual sacrifice in order to gain more power. Clearly, the parallel with Euron should make it obvious enough that Dany has chosen villainy in this moment, and frankly it is far from the first or last time that she has shown a willingness to let the innocent die in service of her own agenda. So then, what actually makes Mirri Maz Duur important?

The first and most obvious horror in this situation is obviously that, even in the most generous reading of Dany's actions, she is killing her slave in the most violent, brutal way possible because that slave disobeyed her. There are many moments that call Daenerys' abolitionist beliefs into question, but the fact that so much of her Slaver's Bay conquest relies on slaves rebelling against their masters while Dany believes she has the right to execute her own slave for supposedly rebelling against her is arguably one of the most extreme examples of Dany's seeming adherence to the concept of "rules for thee but not for me".

However, that is just the most generous interpretation, and one that seems to pretty clearly be incorrect. Dany does not seem to believe that Mirri is culpable in any of these mishaps to begin with, and she only appears to come around to that idea when she doesn't get what she wanted from Mirri and when she seems to realize that perhaps Mirri's death would serve her better than Mirri's life.

And if that is the case and Dany doesn't actually think Mirri is behind Drogo and Rhaego's demise, then it shows a willingness for Dany to essentially invent supposedly justifiable reasons to slaughter someone for her own benefit, which again seems to be the first instance in a considerable line of instances where Dany creates a tenuous pretext of justice to get exactly what she wants or needs at the time.

But, even if Daenerys does sincerely believe that Mirri Maz Duur played her for a fool, she doesn't actually know, nor does she investigate any further in order to actually figure it out. And this is the start of a terrifyingly long line of people that Daenerys very violently executes for committing crimes that she doesn't actually know that they have committed. For her, her suspicion alone is enough, and even when she is aware of or confronted with evidence that contradicts her belief, it's not something that seems to give her much pause or causes her to question whether or not immediately killing someone because you think they have done something to act against you is the right course of action.

And, although it's obviously not confirmed that Daenerys will burn King's Landing at the end of A Song of Ice and Fire just as she did in Game of Thrones, the groundwork for that moment was laid as early as this one. While Game of Thrones deserves criticism for many things, establishing the foundation of Dany burning King's Landing is not one of them. There is a pretty direct narrative through-line from burning Mirri Maz Duur alive for her own benefit based on some half-baked belief that Mirri was acting against her to killing everyone in King's Landing for not being appropriately deferential to Daenerys and not actively fighting for her to be their queen regardless of whether or not she's even doing the right thing or doing something to help them.

Ultimately, there are many moments before and after Mirri Maz Duur's death that indicated that Daenerys was willing to go down a villainous path as long as it gave her the power she believes is rightfully hers. But Mirri Maz Duur's presence in the narrative is one of the most widely misunderstood and overlooked elements of Daenerys' character arc.

The birth of the dragons is typically interpreted as the true start of Dany's hero's journey, and the death of Mirri Maz Duur is often seen as righteous vengeance for a wronged victim, but that is only because this story is viewed from Dany's eyes. A more realistic version of this story is in fact that Mirri Maz Duur was someone who was horrifically victimized, enslaved, and then brutally slaughtered because her owner suspected that she may be rebellious and thought that killing her was more useful than keeping her alive was.