no dany’s ultimate happy ending is not about winning the iron throne and becoming the most righteous ruler in the history of the seven kingdoms and restoring the targaryen dynasty because it’s her “right” as the heir of a super special bloodline. it’s about the *rejection* of the throne, the choice to abandon her war and go north to fight the others instead. dany’s arc will culminate in the same question that she’s struggled with from the beginning—how can she exercise top-down power in a way that doesn’t clash with her most basic moral values? how can she conquer westeros without turning the common people into collateral damage? over and over again, we see dany choosing the people over an easier path to the iron throne (stopping the rape of the lhazareen women, freeing the unsullied, liberating the entirety of slaver’s bay, remaining in meereen to create peace). while other lords and monarchs are waging war without a thought for the common people (at least until “their” smallfolk are put to the sword), dany has always made her priorities clear:
Dany had no wish to reduce King's Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father. (ACOK, Daenerys II)
“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" (ASOS, Daenerys III)
What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? (ADWD, Daenerys IV)
She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself. (ADWD, Daenerys IX)
so when dany does finally reach westeros, her defining moment isn’t going to be some glorious ascent to the iron throne—it will be the choice to fight for the people of westeros in the long night, rather than using her dragons to assert her own claim to power. presumably she’s going to witness the cost of war on the people of king’s landing (“it’s too high, the price is too high”) after some accidental wildfire explosion, or after she’ll have to make some morally questionable choices at the urging of her advisors (probably tyrion, given that he makes no secret of wanting to see king’s landing burn). and at whose cost? the common people. the same people who she has made it her mission to protect from the beginning, back when she wielded power for the first time in her life. and as people have pointed out, there’s also the parallel between dany as the “breaker of chains” and the others essentially enslaving people in death.
dany’s ultimate choice of turning north to fight the others will remind her of who she has always been: a protector of those who cannot protect themselves, someone who refuses to play the “game of thrones” at the cost of the common people, choosing instead to uproot corrupt systems of power entirely. she’s going to remember that her dragons represents a choice—to enslave and colonize as her valyrian ancestors did, to conquer and wage war as the targaryens did, or to liberate and protect people as SHE has always done. dany is going to see through her own dream of the iron throne, the illusion of stability and belonging, of home and love. she’s going to ask herself, whose dream is this? mine or my brother’s? she’s going to realize that the iron throne is not the path to the house with the red door, and how dangerous it is to conflate them.
(btw this is not me trying to gatekeep dany as a character. obviously everyone has the right to envision whatever ending they want for her. it just baffles me how some people rooting for her actually want her to sit the throne, as if the iron throne isn’t completely at odds with who she is as a person. like isn’t that a major theme of adwd? how both dany and jon have this abstract desire for power because they’ve never been allowed to hold any? because they believe it to be a path to belonging and purpose? because they want to use it to create a better world? only to realize how soul-crushing top-down power truly is? how much it fragments their senses of selves? how neither of them actually enjoys ruling? isn’t that the whole point ??)
