Daenerys doesn’t need to be a villain to be interesting
One thing I keep seeing being argued by Dany haters is that if she doesn’t turn into a villain, then she’s a boring character and a Mary Sue. That they want her to be a villain because it’s more “interesting” and “good writing”. Some even say that they “love Dany because she’s such a good villain”. And I couldn’t disagree more.
So I want to talk about this idea that Dany isn’t an interesting character. How can anyone even think that Dany is not interesting? I know that not everyone will be compelled by her story or its themes, but Dany has so many different things going on in her story, she’s far from being “boring”:
Dany story is one of abuse and survival. In her, we see many conflicting feelings that make for a very interesting story: she was abused by her brother, gradually musters the courage to stand up to him, but at the same time she still loves him because he’s her brother. She’s a victim of marital rape that falls in love with her rapist, but at the same time she hates the idea that she was sold. Maybe we could criticize the fact that Dany fell in love with Drogo, but my point here is: we have a story of a girl with very realistic, complex and conflicting feelings, who persevered and survived abuse. That’s interesting.
We have a rags to riches story – someone that came from poverty and rose to become the most powerful person in the world. That’s interesting.
Dany longs for a family and a home, and this comes into conflict with Dany’s selfless desire to help people and free slaves. There’s an internal conflict between what Dany wants (to go home to Westeros) and Dany’s duty to stay in Meereen. Her selfish desire for home clashes with her selfless desire to care for and protect the people that she freed. That’s interesting.
Dany also has to make other personal sacrifices for her people, like staying away from Daario, the man that she truly desires, to stay with a man that she doesn’t love. This leads Dany to wonder if she’ll ever be loved, and this is a constant question for her, if someone could ever love a dragon, or if anyone would want a barren woman. That’s interesting.
Speaking of barrenness, this is another very interesting part of Dany’s story. While other stories could treat this as the main concern for a female character, Dany is allowed to be concerned about other things. While Dany is sad about this, her story doesn’t revolve around it. That’s interesting.
Dany’s story deals with a lot of magic: she has prophetic dreams that she struggles to interpret, and she receives prophecies from both the House of the Undying and Quaithe. The fandom spends a lot of time trying to decipher those prophecies, and I think that if people spend so much time on it, it’s because it’s interesting.
Dany’s story deals with the question of peace and war. We see the consequences of war, and the horrible things that can come with it. But at the same time, things are not black and white, and the peace also has downsides. To make peace in Meereen, Dany has to give indemnity to slavers, she has to reopen the fighting pits, and has to accept that slavery will return outside Meereen. Dany, as a ruler, has to reflect on all of this, and decide which path she wants to take. Using force has downsides, and making compromises has downsides, so there’s no easy choice. That’s interesting.
She also has to deal with her dragons. She loves them, but at the same time, she fears them and can’t control them. She wants them to be free, but she also wants to protect her people from them. And the dragons are symbolic of her internal conflicts, between the Dany that wants peace, and the Dany that needs to use violence to defeat her enemies. That’s interesting.
Also in Meereen, Dany has to deal with a complex political situation. The economy of the city was mostly based on exportation of slaves, so Dany has to try to rebuild the economy by planting and trying to make trade deals to sell the little that the city has to offer. She has to deal with slavers and former slaves both wanting revenge on each other, and both wanting compensation. She has to deal with war from outside her walls and rebellion and terrorism from inside. She has to deal with prejudice and guilds that don’t want to allow freedmen to work on their business. She has to deal with refugees and plague, and has to decide if she is going to help these people and risk spreading the disease into her city, or if she’s just going to abandon them. She has to deal with slaves that want to be free, and slaves that were well treated by their masters and prefer the captivity. She has to deal with Meereenese nobles that support her because of ambition, and Meereense nobles that want to destroy her and everything she represents. It’s so complex, there are so many people with many different interests around her… that’s interesting.
Dany is a female character allowed to be flawed. She is selfless, but she also has selfish wishes. She’s good, but she also has moments of anger that she comes to regret. She’s inexperienced, she doesn’t know everything, so she has to make mistakes and learn along the way. That’s interesting.
Dany’s story also deals with sexism, and how women in power are demonized. People in Essos say that Dany gives newborn babies to her dragons, that she bathes in the blood of virgins to keep her beauty, that she kills the men who can’t sexually satisfy her… that’s interesting.
Dany is quite an unique character. Maybe I’m just reading and watching the wrong things, but I don’t think it’s frequent to see female heroes also be leaders and have so many accomplishments and titles. Most female heroes that I see are badasses, but never the leader of the group, never one of the main protagonists and never someone who can boast so many titles and accomplishments. There are some female characters that are some of those things, but never all of them at the same time. If a female character is smart, she’s not as strong. If a female character is strong, she’s not that smart. If a female character is strong, smart and accomplished, she’s not the protagonist of the story: she’s either a villain or a secondary character. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female character be so accomplished, and also be a hero, a leader, and protagonist. But Dany is different. She’s not just a badass: she’s intelligent, she learns from her mistakes, she’s compassionate, motherly, selfless, a leader, a hero and a protagonist. And I love that about her. She’s the ultimate female power fantasy. And I consider being a power fantasy a good thing. We have many male power fantasies, but not so many female characters like this. And while Dany is a very powerful character, she’s also very well written, flawed and complex. How can anyone think this isn’t interesting? It’s awesome!
Dany is also a subversion of tropes, exactly because she is a hero: she has the foreign barbaric armies, she has “evil” dragons, but she’s a hero. She’s also the most powerful person in the story, and she is the chosen one of many prophecies. This is a role usually reserved for male characters, but Dany subverts that. And there’s also the fact that usually in fiction, queens are allowed to be only two things: either they are the perfect pure virginal queen, or they are the evil queen. Dany is a subversion because she has flaws, she’s not virginal, and yet, she’s still a good queen. That’s amazing!
Why making Daenerys a villain would be bad writing
So Dany already is an interesting character, she doesn’t need to be a villain to be interesting. But my opposition to the idea of Villain Daenerys goes beyond that. Not only do I think Dany doesn’t need to be a villain to be interesting, I think that Dany being a villain would be bad writing and it would make her less interesting, for several reasons:
It ignores her characterization. I’m not going to go into details here. I and many others have written at length about how Dany is a kind and selfless person. She has many times put aside her personal ambitions for the good of her people, she’s not power hungry. She has gone to great lengths to establish peace, she has chained her dragons, because she wants to avoid the loss of innocent life. She sometimes does make mistakes out of anger, like when she crucified the masters. But one of Dany’s main qualities is that she is self critical, she is willing to address her mistakes, change and learn. She could be a darker character in the future, but being a villain would be completely out of character. I don’t even see her as a well intentioned extremist. Dany has so far been very moderate in her politics, and she has many times been paralyzed because she was not sure about what was the right thing to do. A character that is this self critical would not, in my opinion, turn into a well intentioned extremist, because Dany reflects a lot about her actions.
It goes against the themes of the books. The theories about Dany as a villain usually say that Dany is a fallen hero. That she was a good person that turned evil, that her good intentions are going to lead her to do horrible things because the ends justify the means. They also argue that her good intentions only lead to bad consequences, that no matter the fact that she has good intentions she can never do anything good and is fated to be the “Queen of the Ashes”. But the thing is: Dany story is all about struggling to do what’s right. She tries to end slavery, but ending slavery isn’t easy. She wants to be a good queen , but ruling isn’t easy either. Basically, doing the right thing is never easy. But as GRRM says, the heroes are the ones that try to leave the world a better place, even if they are not perfect. If the culmination of Dany’s struggles to leave the world a better place is her bringing nothing but destruction to the world, then what was the point? What’s the point of seeing a hero struggle, only for them to fall and do nothing good? ASOIAF is not a nihilistic story. It’s a story about heroes struggling to do what’s right and facing realistic challenges. Having Dany as a villain would be nothing but nihilism.
It would fall into tired old tropes, like the Evil Queen trope. If Dany becomes a villain, then all the discussion in the story about sexism and women in power being demonized (like when people say that Dany is mad and bathes in the blood of virgins to keep her beauty) is for nothing, because a villain Dany would just prove them right. A villain Dany would reinforce the idea that unless a woman is perfect and pure, she can’t be a ruler.
Dany is actually a deconstruction of the Evil Queen trope and of many other villain tropes. She’s not chaste as a good queen is supposed to be. She’s sexually active, she deals with sorcery and blood sacrifice, all things associated with female villains, with Evil Queens. She also has, as pointed above, evil dragons and a foreign barbaric army. Dany is a subversion of many villain tropes (and some of these tropes rely on sexist stereotypes), so making Dany into a villain would actually take away from the critical examination of these tropes that the story is trying to make.
I also consider it a sexist writing choice for another reason: in ASOIAF, we have four POV characters that could be considered the main rulers in the story. They are Jon, Tyrion, Cersei and Dany. These are the characters that have had entire books dedicated to them ruling. So we have two men, and two women. And how are the men portrayed? Jon is a hero, and while Tyrion may be a darker character, he’s still a hero, and is probably the most politically savvy character in the series. But with the women, we already have Cersei as the evil queen (and she’s not a competent queen either). Making Dany into a villain would mean that we have both male rulers be good, while both women are villains. That would be terrible for the representation of women in power.
Making Dany and Cersei villains is also sexist for other reasons. Let’s suppose Sansa becomes a ruler in the next books. If that happens, many people could think “well, now we have Sansa to be a positive representation for female rulers, so it’s ok to make Dany a villain”. But there’s a problem with this. Dany and Cersei are the main female rulers in ASOIAF. They are the ones that had long arcs and entire books exploring how they rule. And they have stories that parallel the main male rulers. Sansa’s story doesn’t parallel the main male rulers like that. So if Sansa is the only good female ruler in the end, she’ll still be secondary to Jon and Tyrion, while Dany would not be secondary, she would be an example of female ruler that is as much a protagonist as the male characters, and who has had a ruling arc as long and detailed as theirs.
Finally, Dany and Cersei are both women that defy Westerosi norms of female sexuality. They both have sex for pleasure, outside of marriage. Sansa, on the other hand, is the pure maiden. Making both Dany and Cersei evil queens while Sansa is the good female ruler (be it a queen or a lady) would fall into the terrible Madonna-whore dichotomy. It would send the message that a woman can only be a good queen if she’s pure and virginal. And this would be very sexist.
So, in my opinion, making Daenerys a villain would not be “brilliant writing”. There’s nothing inherently brilliant or groundbreaking about making heroes turn into villains. The fallen hero is a trope that has existed for a long time, and the use of this trope doesn’t automatically mean that it’s “good writing”. It all depends on how this trope is used, and in Dany’s case, I think it doesn’t fit her story, it doesn’t fit the themes in ASOIAF, and it actually takes away from the complexity of Dany’s character. It takes away from the exploration of how female rulers are perceived, it takes away from her struggles with leadership, it takes away from the subversion of villain tropes and sexist tropes.
Dany is already an incredibly interesting character, full of internal conflict, with complex and interesting political and magical storylines, and she’s a very unique and powerful female character, a character that is pretty much a female power fantasy like I’ve never seen before. I understand that not everyone will be compelled by her character, but saying that she needs to become a villain to be interesting is just wrong.
