Sharing Navya's thread debunking the falsity that dany’s people are merely her servants/employees or that she lacks a home/family in them + an exploration of her unique motives for her political acts, rooted in an abstract love of humanity
—dany’s bloodriders are her “brothers, shadows, fiercest friends,” who share a single life with her. her bloodriders break long held dothraki tradition by being bloodriders, and eventually ko’s, to a woman, the first she-khal.
dany honors and respects them in turn, not merely by giving them positions of leadership, but also by defending them, worrying for them, and being fond of them. they’re important enough to her that the slavers take note of it
—dany loves irri, jhiqui, and doreah. she tries to protect irri and jhiqui from viserys and drogo, wears the bells jhiqui bestows on her, gets doreah a gift and feeds her water from her own skin and holds her as she passes, and calls irri “sweetling.”
it’s significant that the first she-khal wears a bell marking her strength from a formerly enslaved khal’s daughter, of an age with her (jhiqui). irri and jhiqui’s importance to dany is also known to the slavers, as they are part of dany’s inner circle, the one that hizdahr makes scarce during his councils when he takes over meereen in dany’s absence. doreah’s death continues to haunt dany long after it occurs.
—dany seeks to be a family with her tiny khalasar, and they respond in kind. she wants their hands and hearts and says there’ll always be a place for them with her, that they shall live as equals, as siblings and spouses. this is an explicit naming of family.
many of dany’s acts are motivated by the desire to protect this tiny, vulnerable family of hers. she follows the red comet to the red waste and refuses to give up on her people or abandon them. she doesn’t strike out in other directions specifically because the other khals would murder and enslave her people again. despite having recently miscarried a child, being weak and still recovering, only 14 years old, dany is the head of this family, and seeks to be its strength, to protect it and shield it.
in qarth, she refuses to join ships that won’t take dothraki, she trusts her people to be brave enough to cross the poison water for the first time, she refuses to sell her people or their goods to kraznys, and has protected them all the way from the dothraki sea to meereen:
—dany’s love for missandei is unequivocally and unquestionably the love a mother has for a daughter. there’s no denying this or getting around it.
grrm can’t make it more explicit than showing how missandei is linked to life, peace, and the dawn, for daenerys.
for more on dany & missandei, pls check out this thread!
—dany makes transgressive, subversive, and selfless political decisions for her people, whom she loves in defiance of all feudal norms.
Their eyes followed her. Those who had the strength called out. "Mother … please, Mother … bless you, Mother …"
Bless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me.
What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children? (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
"I am the blood of the dragon," Dany reminded him. "Have you ever seen a dragon with the flux?" Viserys had oft claimed that Targaryens were untroubled by the pestilences that afflicted common men, and so far as she could tell, it was true. She could remember being cold and hungry and afraid, but never sick.
"Even so," the old knight said, "I would feel better if Your Grace would return to the city." The many-colored brick walls of Meereen were half a mile back. "The bloody flux has been the bane of every army since the Dawn Age. Let us distribute the food, Your Grace."
"On the morrow. I am here now. I want to see." (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
"Mother, please … mother, help my sister, she is sick … give me food for my little ones … please, my old father … help him … help her … help me …"
I have no more help to give, Dany thought, despairing. The Astapori had no place to go. Thousands remained outside Meereen's thick walls—men and women and children, old men and little girls and newborn babes. Many were sick, most were starved, and all were doomed to die. Daenerys dare not open her gates to let them in. She had tried to do what she could for them. She had sent them healers, Blue Graces and spell-singers and barber-surgeons, but some of those had sickened as well, and none of their arts had slowed the galloping progression of the flux that had come on the pale mare. Separating the healthy from the sick had proved impractical as well. Her Stalwart Shields had tried, pulling husbands away from wives and children from their mothers, even as the Astapori wept and kicked and pelted them with stones. A few days later, the sick were dead and the healthy ones were sick. Dividing the one from the other had accomplished nothing. (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
"Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you." Dany vaulted down from the horse. "I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their Mother cares."
Jhogo sucked in his breath. "Khaleesi, no." The bell in his braid rang softly as he dismounted. "You must not get any closer. Do not let them touch you! Do not!"
Dany walked right past him. There was an old man on the ground a few feet away, moaning and staring up at the grey belly of the clouds. She knelt beside him, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and pushed back his dirty grey hair to feel his brow. "His flesh is on fire. I need water to bathe him. Seawater will serve. Marselen, will you fetch some for me? I need oil as well, for the pyre. Who will help me burn the dead?" (ADWD, Daenerys VI)
When Missandei was sound asleep, Dany slipped from her arms and stepped out into the predawn air to lean upon the cool brick parapet and gaze out across the city. A thousand roofs stretched out below her, painted in shades of ivory and silver by the moon.
Somewhere beneath those roofs, the Sons of the Harpy were gathered, plotting ways to kill her and all those who loved her and put her children back in chains. (ADWD, Daenerys II)
Dany sighed. "I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm. Perhaps we can starve the city out."
Ser Jorah looked unhappy. "We'll starve long before they do, Your Grace. There's no food here, nor fodder for our mules and horses. I do not like this river water either. Meereen shits into the Skahazadhan but draws its drinking water from deep wells. Already we've had reports of sickness in the camps, fever and brownleg and three cases of the bloody flux. There will be more if we remain. The slaves are weak from the march." (ASOS, Daenerys V)
"Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!"
"Dracarys!" they shouted back, the sweetest word she'd ever heard. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. (ASOS, Daenerys III)
"Even those who lack a man's parts may still have a man's heart, Your Grace," said Grey Worm. "This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels to lie with him and hold him."
The blood of the dragon does not weep. "Stalwart Shield," she said, dry-eyed. "That was his name?" (ADWD, Daenerys I)
—dany mourns her dead from the first and second books all the way to the fifth book and makes life changing, crucial political decisions in their memory:
"Do you remember Eroeh?" she asked him.
"They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my protection. Only when my sun-and-stars was dead Mago took her back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate."
"I remember," Ser Jorah said.
"I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn't have done that. He wasn't just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?"
"Some kings make themselves. Robert did."
"He was no true king," Dany said scornfully. "He did no justice. Justice . . . that's what kings are for."
Ser Jorah had no answer. He only smiled, and touched her hair, so lightly. It was enough.
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.(ASOS, Daenerys III)
The Shavepate disagreed. "If you had taken the Unsullied south to Hazzat, the Sons of the Harpy—"
"I know. I know. It is Eroeh all over again."
Brown Ben Plumm was puzzled. "Who is Eroeh?"
"A girl I thought I'd saved from rape and torment. All I did was make it worse for her in the end. And all I did in Astapor was make ten thousand Eroehs."
"Your Grace could not have known—"
"I am the queen. It was my place to know." (ADWD, Daenerys V)
"I had to take Meereen or see my children starve along the march." Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. "I had to take Meereen to feed my people."
You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered.
"To be a queen." (ADWD, Daenerys X)
a major reason people struggle to understand that dany loves her people, genuinely and selflessly, is obviously rooted in people hating dany. it's also caused by grrm's own racist writing, but more broadly, the fandom's racism and misogyny are to blame as well
for all of grrm's faults in his writing, he highlights time and time again that the political decisions dany makes in remembrance of her dead, or for her people, her children, are genuinely defiant, subversive, or selfless.
to illustrate how monumental this is, think about what motivates the other characters' transgressive political acts, or their acts of vengeance, or their bold choices, or even their mistakes and failures.
ned gives up his honor to save his daughter from the fate the lannisters would deal her. catelyn frees jaime to save her daughters. cersei retraumatizes herself by sleeping with osney kettleblack because she believes it will secure tommen's rule.
arya longs for her mother so much she unconsciously wargs nymeria, who fishes cat's corpse out of the trident, which leads to cat's reanimation as lady stoneheart. lady stoneheart is murdering through the riverlands out of her rage at robb's death & desire to find her daughters.
doran has planned a long, slow-simmering vengeance against the lannisters for what they did to elia, rhaenys, and aegon. the sand snakes want to assassinate tommen to avenge oberyn. theon wanted to die with robb at the red wedding.
jaime saves brienne from being devoured by a bear and follows her despite her likely taking him to lady stoneheart. tyrion is consumed with vengeance against jaime and cersei for what tywin did to tysha.
whether selfless decisions, selfish decisions, acts of anger and revenge, acts of love and honor, all of these characters are motivated by family. the desire to save their family, protect their family, avenge their family, impress their family, be validated by their family.
why is it hard to see that the exact same motives of family - love, hate, anger, grief, vengeance, validation, identity, legacy, selflessness, honor - that animate these other characters' is what motivates dany, with her found family and her people?
dany conquers meereen to feed the 80,000+ freedmen who followed her from astapor to meereen because she does not want to see her people dropping dead from hunger ever again, the way they did in the red waste. how is that not similar to robb taking up war for his father?
dany is motivated by eroeh's memory, and formulates her ideology of queenship around protecting the weak and innocent, because eroeh's murder haunts her, and she wants to protect all the eroehs in astapor. this contines to crop up in her arc, especially when the astapori refugees show up in meereen, and dany defies feudal norms and advice from her council to visit their camps, feed and bathe them with her own hand, and bury the dead with her own hand. she conquers astapor in eroeh's memory.
how is this not similar to the starks and starklings all contemplating forms of political treason for each other and being unable to give up on their names and identities because they love each other too much?
dany marries hizdahr, a man she hates, despite how miserable it makes her, and gives up her sexual autonomy, because she believes it will secure peace for her people. how is this dissimilar to catelyn, cersei, ned, and doran doing whatever they think it takes for their children?
even dany's most controversial acts, like allowing the wineseller's daughters to be sharply questioned, are motivated by her rage at mossador's death. if you can see that other characters do horrible or morally questionable things because of rage for their family, why is it hard to see dany in the same light? the other characters may certainly be doing it for parents, spouses, siblings, best/childhood friends, and lovers, but dany not being biologically related to her people doesn't make them any less her family.
other characters are going to war, making war, violating and making oaths, committing heroic and evil acts, plotting revenge, sacrificing themselves, doing immoral things, for their family, lovers, and childhood friends. dany does this for her people.
in asoiaf, you don't conquer cities, sanction torture, give up your happiness and sexual autonomy, stay to rule far away from home, delay your ambitions, feel rage and grief so sharp it hurts, for the sake of people you think are just your servants or employees.
the best example of this? dany isn't doing what she does for reznak mo reznak, galazza galare, hizdahr zo loraq, or skahaz shavepate, people who genuinely are just councilors/employees to her.
she very specifically conquers meereen for her children, her people. she's so enraged on missandei and mossador's behalf that she sanctions the questioning of the wineseller's daughters, but no way would she do that for skahaz or reznak. it's jhogo, hero, and daario whom the slavers take as hostages, because they know how precious they are to dany, not skahaz or reznak or random unnamed individuals. the slavers target people dany loves to hurt her: the weaving women, rylona rhee, stalwart shield, not randoms she has no connection to.
if you cannot understand that dany does not require a sexual/romantic relationship, or biological/blood tie, or childhood tie, to care for people, then you've missed out on what motivates her for all five books that have been published
if dany divided the world into "my future husband, my future biological kids, my future husband's family, and my dragons" vs "everyone else is my servant, employee, or enemy," then most of her arc wouldn't take place. she wouldn't endure the red waste or waste time in qarth or slaver's bay. she'd have sailed for pentos and westeros three books ago. she wouldn't put herself in dangerous and miserable situations if she viewed the world that way, or her people that way. she wouldn't embrace the title of "mhysa" if that were the case.
and i think tyrion being the first major character from westeros set up to meet her only highlights that. what is tyrion to her? an enemy, from an enemy family, not a childhood friend, lover, brother, or relative. yet he'll come to be incredibly important to her.
dany saves some, kills others, and makes political decisions all oriented around what's best for her chosen family and her people. to deny that this is motivated by her love, both abstract and concrete, is to deny what's explicit in the text.
