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I mean also in Book 5 it’s clear that she is losing her grip on her ‘goodness’ and is having to make choices that lead to the deaths of innocents to try to prevent the slavemasters coming back.
It’s pretty clear at the end of that book (which is the point where she first flies off on the dragon from the arena and is dumped with the Dothraki) that her attempts to rule as this golden, just ruler are doomed.
Which has this about the themes of AFFC and ADWD when you look at them as a whole single volume
The first theme that is explored in the two books is ruling the peace. Three characters share this arc, supported by some others. The three characters are Cersei Lannister (in A Feast for Crows ), Jon Snow, and Daenerys Targaryen (in A Dance with Dragons ). All three of them only recently came to power, and all three of them face the end of a war and a delicate, unstable peace. Their approaches radically differ. The outcomes don’t; they all lose their power at least temporarily. Jon and Daenerys are at opposite ends of the compromise spectrum: Jon is uncompromising and forces his vision of the peace against all resistance. In the end, his brothers are left behind by his policy, not convinced or adequately informed about it, and turn against him. Daenerys, on the other hand, compromises to the point of self-denial. She accepts the point-of-view and the sensibilities of the Meereenese, leaving her own power base in the dust and betraying all her ideals. In the end, it is hard to decide if Meereen is her city at all, or if she just restored it completely. Cersei, of course, uses the power she has in an entirely different way. She thinks she has to display force, which is right to a degree, but chooses the wrong opportunities and wrong styles for it - most notable in her decision to cease payments for the Iron Bank.
Emphasis is mine.
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I think it’s meant to be this idea that the Targaryens are so inbred and have dragon blood in them that they are genetically (and magically - there is a theme of magic through the entire world with the uneven seasons and ravens that are able to fly to places) predisposed to a kind of complete ‘madness’ or whatever we’re meant to simplistically see this as.
That said, I think this feels very weak as reasoning and it’s exacerbated by the nature of a TV version of a book that is told strongly from different character POVs giving rationale for all their actions. And fundamentally it could just be a shit idea of GRRM’s and what we’re seeing is just what he intended.
Presume it’s already come up that this also plays strongly into a trope of women being emotionally ruled and going crazy over rejection, which is true and a real shame. I mean I feel like this particular situation for Dany has been pretty telegraphed in the latter half of the show’s run but that doesn’t mean it sits happily.
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The local news had a lot of fun with the Green Bay quarter back getting incinerated.
I thought the episode was alright. Probably the best of the season, obviously still miles from standards set early on. Does seem like it’s run away from them.
I’d definitely lay a lot of blame for that at GRRM’s door as much as the showrunners. I think the simplicity of motives however is partly because he was going for that War of the Roses thing but in a very romantic way so he just took the basest of emotional arcs and applied them to a grittier fantasy than the Belgariad - which feels like the primary cause of him wanting to write this kind of grimmer fantasy series.
Some point around the end of Season 4 the show switched from being a representation of the books that happened to have a big TV following, to being a massive TV event that happened to have been based on some books. It’s taken me 4 seasons but I’m sort of at peace with the TV Drama First reasoning now.
Despite the resolutions the fact that pretty much nothing unfolded as I expected was a welcome factor. Most of the episodes until this one have lacked true surprises, so I was quite entertained by it all.
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Am I the only one that genuinely hated Cleganebowl? It felt like it was from an alternate universe where Marvel films are super gory and graphic. I get that this is a world with magic and blah blah blah but zombie mountain was always one of the shittest parts of the show, and that was like an ultraviolent a superhero fight.
One of the better parts of GoT was the fact that the reality was always a lot more mundane than the myth of things. This threw all of that out of the window and went “fuck it, people have been memeing it for ages so let’s just make them both superhuman.”
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She has literally been massacring folk all her arc. She toasted the Tarly lads for… What?
Honestly if you think Dany wasn’t at least on this path then you believed her when she said she wasn’t going to fuck everything. I never did. Tyrion never should. This is why the ‘turn’ felt entirely logical.
Now. I’m no book wanker but the series where her heroism is the least heroic were the ones based on books… So take from that what you will.
The show did the work. Saying it didn’t is wrong. Saying you didn’t believe it… Well then the show did work.
I agree that this was a bit shit. Chess board pieces.
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Not sure.
I mean the Mountain is a zombie so this was already going to have a supernatural aspect.
I thought it was pretty reasonable. The Hound has already survived apparent certain death and is known to be one of the greatest swordsmen in the kingdom. But the resulting fight seemed to basically be him discovering a dead man can’t be killed so as a total vengeance fight went it was more They Live than Marvel.
I’m not one who really wanted Cleganebowl. Obviously the issue is the ridiculous length of time these books are taking. If all 7 had been out in quick order the face off would have seemed a logical conclusion and not nearly as hyped.
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May just be because I’m a bookwanker so this sort of thing comes up at lot, but that felt okay to me at the time. She asked for fealty and they refused in the midst of war. This is pretty standard as a position I think. IIRC she even told the son he should yield.
There’s nothing about how she treats them that implies she is on the road to total nihilism at that point IMO.
I didn’t hate it but I didn’t feel the hype for it either.
I mean Sandor m8, he’s basically dead anyway. He’s not your big brother any more.
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Apart from, you know, roasting them alive and that.
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Are you saying that you’d be fine if she chopped their heads off? Dead is dead I think, particularly in as cruel a world as this.
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This season is paying off in terms of my semi-attentive watching style of previous seasons, it’s like watching a semi-lost history of an empire collapsing. My parents keep rooting for characters but I’m hoping the ending will be spectacularly hopeless tbh
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Yeah agree with this.
Wish they’d given this ending more time to develop with a few more episodes in last season and this. It’s really feeling now like a massive disappointment and missed opportunity
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Hmmm… dunno. Like I said, zombie mountain was already a terrible idea - don’t know if that’s on GRRM or the show but it’s genuinely dire - and at the beginning of the fight they literally showed him taking big chunks out of the walls with his sword having just protected Cersei from giant slabs of rubble falling in. Without taking a scratch. They made him an invincible supervillain.
And to compensate they upped the Hound from bastard-hard-man-with-sword to equally unkillable superhero so the fight wasn’t over in seconds. It just doesn’t work for me because it undoes all of the messaging about stories of great heroes and warriors being a load of crap and the reality being a lot more down to earth and grimy that were established in the first few years.
Ultimately it’s just another very clear example of the show veering away from usurping fantasy expectations to delivering on them instead.
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Yeah, also:
“Arya, I wouldn’t bother with Cersei. Castle’s falling in and there’s a dragon burning everything. She’s gonna die anyway.”
“Well then, same goes for your brother yeah?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Memes.”
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I liked Clegenebowl, mainly because it was a good resolution to the story of the brothers and also it was a fitting arc to The Hound who is one of the best characters. Them falling into the fire together was fitting but could have been OOT but IMO worked. The way they did it as a video game/marvel ultraviolent fight with swords smashing bricks and zombies not dying was great because it kind of showed the ‘legend’ of the fight that it could be in the future. A bit like the Tower of Joy/Sword of the Morning fight where you got the real version via T3ER compared to the legendary story that the Starks grew up hearing, and in this case with no witnesses or survivors it showed us the legend fight that people will talk about - the mountain couldn’t die so the hound had to sacrifice himself by pushing themselves both off the tower into the Dragonfire. It was badass
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No, I’m saying killing them is on her slide to “mad queen” or whatever.
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Basically I feel like everyone who is annoyed with Dany is actually annoyed with themselves over how the show made you root from someone who turned into a baddie.
I think the show did the work to make it work - clumsily maybe. And with some problematic work, true. But if you believed that she was inherently good doesn’t remember
- she kept drogo alive at the cost of her baby
- she sacked tonnes of cities in the east
- crucified surrendered folk
- executed the lannister army outright
Etc etc
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Cleganebowl looked like fucking Highlander. So shit.
I’ve been on board this whole series just cos it never felt that important to me but that was a genuinely awful episode.
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