Since you are indigenous and a fan of Daenerys, I wanted to ask you: what do you think of people saying that Daenerys is wrong to come in Slaver’s Bay without any insights of the culture and that she is destroying their culture, etc?
Ohhh man I have. A lot of feelings on this irt Dany as a character, and George as a writer, and it’s something a lot of white fans absolutely don’t like lol. I’ve made it clear that I like Dany AND I am a Mirri Maz Duur sympathizer and waaaaayyy back at the start of this blog, I got blocked by a mutual and then had no less than 15 vague posts and rants made because of that fact lol.
To start, I want to preface that I don’t think George did any of this intentionally. But a lot of aspects of Dany’s writing highlight that yes, he is an incredibly progressive man, he is still a liberal whose foundation of his ethos and leftism were formed by the 70’s. Especially his orientalism. I find it very hard to unmesh Dany’s writing, from the Orientalism hard baked into her narrative.
I know a lot of people kneejerk, and even George himself has done so, when people call it a White Savior narrative, but it is. Even if he sees Essos as a heavily multiracial society, with white people involved, it doesn’t change that he largely took from non white societies histories and cultures when he made the Dothraki and when he made Essos as a whole. Dany’s narrative is one of a Great White Savior to liberate the Mongol Dothraki Savage Horde, to save the slaves from their Egyptian and early Arabic colonizers Essosi slavers. Dany is a Foreign Aryanesque White Woman who fandom has convinced themselves that every aspect of Dothraki prophecy is about her, and that every single Essosi cultural aspect, is about her. Which is something that I personally rebuke and in many ways, I think the narrative itself tries to rebuke, but does so poorly.
For an example on that, people making the Stallion Who Mounts The World about Dany, floor me. Because people look at that prophecy with how violent and vile it is, and think that applies to Dany?? Of all people? Empathetic, even if naive, Dany? It’s a way that a majority white fandom takes non white cultures, to apply it to their white fave, as a way to legitimize her.
It isn’t enough for Dany to be a flawed teenage girl who is trying her best, but ultimately fails at times, and who sometimes makes wrong calls. People can’t accept that Dany often tries to understand other people and cultures, but her inherent biases do feed into her thinking that her way of thinking is the superior, and only, way to do things. There’s such reactionary levels of defensiveness that because misogyny has been leveraged at Dany’s character writing and as a character in the narrative itself, that we can’t critique George’s writing choices at times without it being a critique solely because she’s a woman. Which I find to be wholly useless tbh!
I think if George fleshed out Essos, and the Dothraki more, we wouldn’t even need to be having these conversations, but unfortunately, George himself seems to see a lot of Essos and it’s culture as simply existing because it needs to exist so Dany has a Great Big Bad to go against. Which is kind of a horrendous way to write and handle multiracial and multicultural societies. Like legitimately, when you look at every Free Cities lore, it’s just George shoving theeee most comically evil concepts into one continent (Lyseni pillow slaves eugenics forced breeding programs, quite literally everything about Qohor, R’hllorism being a ‘violent foreigner’ religion built off blood libel, the Dothraki being nothing but a great rape horde, Asshai being Evil Asian Adjacent Sorcerers who live off of child slavery, etc,.) and not balancing it out in ways that he has done with Westeros. For anything that is European adjacent, George puts in so much love and care for there to be good with the bad. He doesn’t seem to care to do so, at all, with Essos. Because to do so means that Dany’s actions get a lot murkier with her conquest.
Slavery needs to end. Dany is not wrong for doing so. But George hasn’t put much thought into any of the morality of the culture and people in Essos outside of ‘Slavery Bad’. Which like, yes! Slavery bad! But what else, George? What else, that isn’t heavily reliant on orientalist or fetish based ideas of the Middle East, Arabic trade, and South Western and Steppe Asians? Even the Essosi characters we are given are highly derivative Latin Lovers, sexed up sex slaves who enjoy their sex slavery, actually, Brown Men Are All Aggressive Pedophile Abusers, and Lustful Brown Men Covet The Powerful White Girl. It’s not… great.
TLDR; I think the conversation lies more irt George, his own biases, and how he reflects them onto Dany, than just an inherent Danyism thing. I think Dany would benefit from learning about the people she now see’s herself queen of. I think even back in AGOT this should have been done for the Dothraki in a vastly less oriental way than what we were given. I think humanizing the slaves she has interacted with and will interact with in the future outside of their relationship to Dany and what they have done for her irt morals, life lessons, and actual, physical, labor, would be great. And I think this fandom needs to get a lot better at not being fucking reactionaries when non white fans try to talk about these things, and stop taking it like we have personally shot their mother when we try to address the racism in the text itself and how fans treat Essosi characters and Dany’s place in Essos as a plotline.
For Dany specifically in the narrative itself, atp, I have to rationalize it with the fact that she is a teenage girl, with three dragons, and who is very mentally ill from the severe amounts of trauma and abuse she has faced. She makes her decisions with the framework she was raised in, and is doing her best. And in doing so, she has often ended up tone deaf about other people and cultures. In TWOW and ADOS going forward, I would love to see Dany actually try to be more understanding of other cultures and peoples. I would love for George to not demonize an entire continent of Indigenous, Black, Asian, Arabic, and Mediterranean people, and to actually let Dany experience the good things of Essos, outside of it’s wealth and what Magisters offer her.
