#agot characterization

In her dream they had been man and wife, simple folk who lived a simple life in a tall stone house with a red door. — ADWD, Daenerys II

Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario’s delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair. —Daenerys IV, ADWD

In my Seven Kingdoms, knights go on quests to prove themselves worthy of the maiden that they love. — ADWD, Daenerys IV

How beautiful, the queen tried to tell herself, but inside her was some foolish little girl who could not help but look about for Daario. If he loved you, he would come and carry you off at swordpoint, as Rhaegar carried off his northern girl, the girl in her insisted, but the queen knew that was folly. — ADWD, Daenerys VII

Another proof that Snowstorm shippers just see Daenerys as a self insert and don’t really know, like, or enjoy her character. Daenerys is NOT a warrior woman. She’s never had the privilege of being militarily or martially trained or given weapons to duel with. She likes brushing her hair and keeping it clean and bathing, things Jon seems to take issue with women doing.

Daenerys is willowy and tiny in stature as well, not hardened and tall. Yet more proof she isn’t Jon’s type and is exactly the type of feminine woman Jon reviles and is repeatedly derisive and misogynistic toward in his POV.

And I hate Jon’s line because Daenerys is a vulnerable and young orphan girl who suffered severe abuse from her brother. She wants to be rescued and protected. I don’t care about what Jon wants, except when it conflicts with what Daenerys wants.

Saying dragon "mysteries", in-world, will be revealed in the last two books AND Septon Barth got a lot right. I'm taking that to mean that dragons change sex (Viserion, here you come, baby!), like two particular Twitter mutes I have (danylanzhou and Branwynwitch). It also seems like he's confirming that dragons and the first 40 Valyrian families (which include the Targs, then and now) mixed dragon blood with their own in some long past ancient event AND that only these families, therefore, can bond with dragons to rides them safely or befriend them.

Which means Nettles is definitely of Valyrian/Targ-descent, which really should have been obvious. One of my mutuals also asserted that this makes the idea of Nettles-Sheepstealer/Rhaena-Morning being interchangeable for their supposed HotD merging GRRM-disapproved bc he makes a point to say that dragons don't tend to move far from their lairs that are usually very high up in mountains and volcanos. Sheepstealer can't be going to the Vale while having a lair in Dragonstone:

As for the thought of Sunfyre flying miles to get to Dragonstone...this is where he/they were born and where the real magic that sustains dragons is coalesced from hundred of years. It makes sense for him/them to fly to this castle even if Aegon weren't there after he had been bodied by Meleys/Meleys & Vhagar, looking for recovery. This is where the Targs get most of their eggs/dragons and it is near where most dragons in Westeros make their lairs.

Note that he says, in the very last paragraph, how:

Fantasy needs to be grounded.  It is not simply a license to do anything you like. Smaug and Toothless may both be dragons, but they should never be confused. Ignore canon, and the world you’ve created comes apart like tissue paper.

It appears he is VERY not happy about something to do with dragons in the show's second season, how they bond in the show, how a certain dragon is "explained" to have traveled a too-long distance for a certain pale-locked young girl who has been trying to hatch her own dragon for years...I see you GRRM, fighting for Nettles AND Rhaena I see.

Oh, and just bc he said he liked epi 2, doesn't mean that he cannot critique anything about HotD ever again...he is the writer and creator of this universe that they are capitalizing on. As long as a writer of any genre stays logically consistent and relatively undiscriminatory in their original writing, they definitely can tell any of us readers what is real and not real or possible in their own creations! That this is even up for debate is a travesty to logic.

Mind you, this is the same man who said the show and the book are two separate canons AND that adaptations "nowadays" tend to fail bc the adapters think they can make the story "better" and ignore critical lore details. And in his latest commentary on HotD's S2 first two episodes, he says, and I quote:

“Rhaenyra the Cruel” has been getting great reviews, for the most part.   A lot of the fans are proclaiming it the best episode of HotD, and some are even ranking it higher than the best episodes of GAME OF THRONES.   I can hardly be objective about these things, but I would certainly say it deserves to be in contention.   The only part of the show that is drawing criticism is the conclusion of the Blood and Cheese storyline.   Which ending was powerful, I thought… a gut punch, especially for viewers who had never read FIRE & BLOOD.   For those who had read the book, however… Well, there’s  a lot of be said about that, but this is not the place for me to say it.   The issues are too complicated.   Somewhere down the line, I will do a separate post about all the issues raised by Blood and Cheese… and Maelor the Missing.  There’s a lot to say.

Note that the latest post was about epi4 and this one I just linked is only abt epi 1 &2....so where are his thoughts for the hated/comedic epi3?! (we see each other, George). (BTW, I gave my thoughts on his thoughts about 1 & 2, HERE.)

I'll say it once again: though GRRM praised the portrayal of grief, defended Cheese being lost, and loved the dog (the last I don't fault anyone for, I also loved them) in the Blood & Cheese episode, he also expressly talks AROUND how Blood & Cheese and Helaena actually interacted and comments on the Maelor-lessness (therefore the lack of Sophie's Choice) that many people--inclu myself--have been saying was a huge problem.

Now we have two different sources that seem to support the ideas of:

GRRM both not being as "involved" with the actual writing of this show for a bit AND not approving of a lot of critical changes

Daenerys had to learn everything she did for survival. She is empathetic to “small folk” because she may have been born royal but never lived that way until her dragons hatched. Young Griff learned everything he did just to fit a mold.

I think it’s also fun to think of Aegon V too. Unlike Daenerys and Young Griff, Egg knew what it was to live as a royal, he was given the full perspective of the class hierarchy. Him living as someone lowborn was what led him to deconstruct and question all the classism he had been fed. And what’s most important about this is that it was his choice to live undercover with Dunk, to temporarily give his privileges up and he got an experience that was some what in between manufactured like Young Griff and authentic like Daenerys.

As it relates to Young Griff, Egg could’ve quit his game at any moment. All it would take is pulling off his boot and calling his dad or Bloodraven, and he still always had Dunk to protect him. But undercover, he really did get an authentic experience of being low born.

And it’s so interesting how Varys took inspiration from Egg to create his own enlightened monarch by manufactured an Egg journey for Young Griff, but how much value is there in a journey like that when you know the endgame is to be king like Young Griff ?

If the last question wasn't rhetorical:

She looked about to see that no guards were near, and spat three times. "There's for the Tullys, and there's for the Lannisters, and there's for the Starks." "It's a sin and a shame," an old man hissed. "When the old king was still alive, he'd not have stood for this." "King Robert?" Arya asked, forgetting herself. "King Aerys, gods grace him," the old man said, too loudly. A guard came sauntering over to shut them up. The old man lost both his teeth, and there was no more talk that night. (ACOK, Arya VI)

This kind of sentiment isn’t new—it’s been a risk since the start of the series. The Targaryens gaining support once they start looking like a viable option has always been part of the story. Even Robert Baratheon, at his strongest, feared this possibility:

"Perhaps. There are ships to be had in the Free Cities, though. I tell you, Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now, but give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons with me. If the beggar king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors will join him." (AGOT, Eddard II)

Robert’s paranoia underscores the enduring loyalty of Targaryen supporters, many of whom remained dormant, waiting for the right moment to rise again. This fear was not unfounded. Daenerys has everything she needs to rally support: she’s Aerys’s daughter, Viserys’s heir, the mother of dragons, the Queen of Meereen, and she has an army. The stage is perfectly set for the Targaryens to look like the answer everyone’s been waiting for.

Daenerys is the reason Mirri was enslaved but Mirri bears no responsibility for her act of wanting revenge leading to Lhazareen women who were under protection of Daenerys getting raped and murdered or khals going off to rape and murder and enslave some more, how does that work ?

The irony of Mirri murdering an innocent child to stop the prophecy, only for Daenerys to fulfill it, the irony of hurting a innocent teenager and her child because of what happened to her people only for it to led the rape and death of women who had Daenerys’s protection.

It is absolutely fascinating to me. It shows how far this fandom has moved “beyond” even GRRM himself. His exact words are “Stannis’ decision to burn his daughter”. GRRM outright confirmed it. The text is filled with clues that readers spotted a decade before there even was a TV show. Every time Stannis doesn’t sacrifice Edric Storm and Mance Rayder’s son, it’s a set-up for the time he does sacrifice a child, his child (it took Azor Ahai three tries to successfully forge his sword; he sacrificed his wife on the third attempt), the character who we first meet when she wakes up from a dream saying she is scared dragons will eat her.

But even so, a not small percentage of fandom refuses to accept that GRRM outright explicitly said it will happen, going la la la, fingers in ears, and saying stuff like, “Well, I don’t see how it is logistically possible for X, Y, Z” or “Stannis is not an evil man” or other attempts at burying their heads in the sand because they liked the bad guy partway through an unfinished story.

Well, there you have it. All the points for how Stannis is definitely killing his own daughter.

Daenerys wasn’t formally educated but she’s still a gifted military commander and capable to create successful military tactics, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen all fell because of her, to the point Jorah and Barristan are impressed with her strategic acumen, even though they are seasoned veterans. She’s even good at healing wounds and understanding prophecies and visions. And its insane how overlooked Daenerys’s natural gift of learning languages is like she learned different languages quickly in her travels by living amongst different people yet many noblemen like Quentyn who had access to maesters and was educated in High Valyrian for years yet can’t even speak it.

And even for her age, she wasn’t naive to Illyrio’s intentions. She learns that Illyrio is seedy, cunning, and untrustworthy. She knows how he’s obtained his wealth through murky means, and doesn’t believe Illyrio’s picturesque words about Westeros waiting for Viserys. Though she does not have any “agents” to tell her this, she observes how Illyrio smiles wryly while speaking of such dreams, and can deduce that he’s lying.

Which take, anon , bc the most recent one I've seen is from rainadaenerys who argues how Dany being formally educated might have helped in some ways but wouldn't take her all the way she needed to go AND she manages besides bc of her own intelligence. THIS POST.

A lot of fans hate that Daenerys is the one that brought dragons back in the world, and the only hope for survival in Westeros. If Daenerys doesn’t go to Westeros, everyone dies! There’s no hope to defeat the Others without her, but people still think that she isn’t the Prince that was Promised. And please the Song of Ice and Fire is about a war between Ice and Fire, not someone who comes from Ice and Fire (Jon being the son of a Stark and a Targaryen is not a union of Ice and Fire), it’s a war between the side of death (Ice, the Others) and the side of life (Fire, Daenerys and her dragons).

All true. And I think people purposefully "misunderstand" what the Prince that was Promised & Azor Ahai's roles are in ASoIaF's world's legends so they can deny they both refer to the same person AND that Dany is ultimately neither. That bc the term "ptwp" is used more often by Westeorsi and the term "Azor Ahai" is used more often by Essosi people, that these are two completely different entities. That because the Azor Ahai has a specific mythic story to it (Nissa-Nissa being the sacrifice for AA's sword, the gods in the Yi-Tish [but not exclusively] and how they/humans/Amethyst Empress-Bloodstone Emporer brought about the first Long Night), that the Prince is completely unrelated to Azor Ahai...even though the Valyrian word meaning "prince"--which is where the word that is part of the term in the first place--is a gender-neutral and can refer to a woman.

Other than the word, it is rather because comparatively the "PTWP" has less information or place of origin than the lore for AA that it actually always stemmed from the myth of AA AND is actually just another name for AA. We know Essos and many of its present societies are far older than any Westerosi civilization and we know that both the FM and the Andals came from Essos in their separate migrations and at least the Andals have lived at one point under Valyrian exapnsion and rule. When humans migrate, they bring with them the most relevant or inspiring stories for their cultural and mental survival, not to mention that the stories of AA have existed for millennia in most of Essos, from the Narrow Sea to the where we could touch Sothoryos. Many Essosi cities are inheritors of Old Valyria's rule or have developed their own socieiites much from the remnants of Valyrian rule. Through old Valyria's wide colonization and empire, places with great distances b/t them would have had stories and other things translated through Valyrian or carried through Valyrian devices and for hundreds of years. Much of Westeros' commerce and other sorts of exchanges--we hear several times in AWoIaF of maesters learning some tidbits about some Essosi, scientific, legends of Westrsoi travelers like Lomas Longstrider, etc. Even just the knowledge of how people continue to travel b/t Essos and Westeros provides another way as to how the AA prophecy reached Westeros and just as in real life people develop different names for either the same thing. Melisandre, who travels to Westeros from her mission given to her or iparted to her by the Red Priests uses "PTWP" and AA interchangeably, and says AA more often bc it is the most familiar and the older of the two.

Thereby, that the PTWP prophecy came from Essos and is thus just the most recent iteration for AA is proven and very obvious but people are in extreme denial, ignorant, and/or just purposefully sexist. For god sake's, we have THREE separate sources linking the PTWP to AA: Melisandre, Maester Aemon, and Archmaester Marwyn, with the same refrain of "bleeding star", under which Dany is told to us has already hatched her 3 eggs. PTWP is often pictured as having some sort of sword...a principal part of the AA prophecy contain a story about a "sword", and both often have "light" and fire symbolism to connote driving away the "cold" and "dark" of an all consuming, destructive evil. The "last hero" that supposedly drove away the Others with DRAGONGLASS/obsidian (again, a material often shown to be from Valyrian origins and very connected to Valyrian steel swords).

But even with all this reference to an actual sword, we know a singular sword is not gonna do much against a force such like the Others and even a whole army isn't enough (dead bodies coming back and all): magic and fire that come in the form of dragons--who are fire embodied as well as just magical creatures--to utterly obliterate and "purify" the threat is necessary. The fire x "light" creates swords but is a weapon in of itself, not just an "ingredient", as the Others are a mass elemental problem that needs an elemental solution--fire spreads, swords cannot, when we want to get literal.