“DAENERYS BECOMING A VILLAIN MAKES MORE SENSE IN THE BOOKS!”
What actually happens in the books: Daenerys Targaryen tends to be lenient (to her detriment in ADWD) in most cases. Indeed, seven people (Skahaz mo Kandaq, Daario Naharis, Groleo, Hizdahr zo Loraq, Brown Ben Plumm, Reznak mo Reznak and Strong Belwas; eight if you count Tyrion Lannister’s thoughts on how she should’ve handled the siege of Meereen) are seen advising Dany to use violence (or to tolerate violence against marginalized people, in Hizdahr’s case) and she rejects all of them.
On HBO: Show!Daenerys feeds a Meereenese noble to her dragons and doesn’t care if he’s truly guilty of the Harpy’s Sons’ murders, which never happens in the books (where she cares about only punishing the actual culprits). Show!Daenerys suggests to show!Hizdahr that she might burn Meereen someday, which never happens in the books (she refuses to use her dragons throughout most of ADWD and stops Hizdahr from killing Tyrion and Penny). Show!Daenerys plans to crucify the masters, burn their fleets and kill their soldiers, which never happens in the books and show!Tyrion urges her to be merciful (it’s the opposite in the books: he’s shown to be more ruthless than her). Show!Daenerys is criticized by show!Tyrion for her “temper” (and the audience is meant to agree with him) after she executed the Tarlys, never mind that 1) Tyrion also burned his enemies in battle and 2) Jon executed Janos Slynt for less and tried to stab Alliser Thorne due to an insult (while Dany chose to be merciful to Ghael even after he literally spat on her face). Show!Jon is outraged by show!Dany’s (OOC) decision to kill children when, in the books, his book counterpart claims to be willing to kill Gilly’s child and his child hostages if Gilly and the Free Folk disobey his orders and book!Dany herself is unable to kill her child hostages.
GRRM: By Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8, I was pretty much out of the loop.
GRRM: Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. | GRRM: He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire. | GRRM: No one ever looked for a girl. […] The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it. | GRRM: Well of course the two outlying ones, the things that are going on north of the Wall and Daenerys Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons are of course the Ice and Fire of the title, the Song of Ice and Fire. | GRRM: Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books. | HOTD (note that GRRM himself told them about Aegon’s prophecy): And if the world of men is to survive, a Targaryen must be seated on the Iron Throne. A king or queen strong enough to unite the realm against the cold and the dark. Aegon called his dream ‘The Song of Ice and Fire’.
GRRM: As I write these last two books, I’ll be moving towards the endings that I’ve known since 1991. | GRRM in the 1993 outline: Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow.
