Dragons die. But so do dragonslayers

For the longest time, I wanted to write about Dany as a leader and a ruler. Most of the time, the metas I see from Dany haters just talk about what an awful ruler Dany is, and amongst Daenerys fans, this is usually not discussed a lot, mostly because I think Dany fans spend a lot of time defending Dany from the accusations that she is evil or mad, so other subjects are neglected. Before I start, I just want to make it clear that I am not any expert on medieval politics or war strategy, so this will be mostly my understanding of the story. And of course, I can’t forget to mention that many of the ideas of the Meereenese Blot are here as well, but this is going to be my interpretation.

In this analysis, I will show why I think Daenerys is an intelligent and capable leader and ruler. I want to look at everything we know about Dany in all of the books: her childhood and education, her political beliefs, her actions and the economic and political situation she’s in. I’ll try to focus on what Dany has learned in each book, and how it helped her become a better leader.

Some of the things I’ll write here are similar to metas that I’ve written before. But I want this one to be as complete as possible, and to analyze every facet of Dany’s storyline as a ruler that I can think of. I will bring book quotes to back up what I say, so this will be very long (It’s around 20k words, so I hope at least someone will be interested in reading it, because I spent months scrutinizing all of the books to write this).

In this essay, I will talk about the following topics:

Dany’s childhood and education

Dany’s intelligence, wisdom and introspectiveness

Dany’s changing political views

Dany journey as a leader in A Game of Thrones

Dany’s journey as a leader in A Clash of Kings

Dany’s journey as a leader in A Storm of Swords

Dany’s journey as a leader in A Dance with Dragons:

Economy

The war against Yunkai and the question of peace and war

The question of taking the wealth of the slave masters

Conflicting interests within the city

Morality

Practical aspects or ruling

Dany’s equalitarian practices

Some mistakes worth addressing

Is Daenerys a good ruler? What did she learn?

WIP: Quaithe inspired ceramic mask

OK, so let's say Egg does the "good" thing, the "righteous" thing, the "dutiful" thing, the "kingly" thing etc etc

Duncan and Jenny are forcefully parted. (No matter how kindly done) she is dissappeared from the country. Bound and gagged or at least under durress, Duncan is dragged to the altar to "do his duty".  "With this kiss, I pledge my love". Yaaaaay!

"[I wanted to capture] mostly just the feeling of how small she is compared to these huge creatures that she's reared from babies."

"The Trinity? The one that cracked the IRS D-Base?" "That was a long time ago..." "Jesus." "What?" "I just thought…You were a guy." "Most guys do."

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS