Why Do So Many ‘Game of Thrones’ Fans Hate Daenerys?
The final season of Game of Thrones comes back in just three days (squee!). And everyone’s wondering who’s going to finally take the Iron Throne. Daenerys has been one of the handful of characters to survive until the final season, and she seems like a strong contender. But over the past eight years, she’s made a few moves that have earned her some hate and brought her down on the “who is fit to rule Westeros” list.
Now don’t get me wrong: Dany can be a total badass, and watching her pull the rug out from under the Unsullied masters in Astapor, set them on fire, and mic-drop the whip as she rode away gave me more life than almost anything on the show. But there have been a few times that Dany has kind of rightfully earned some hate, and here’s why:
She doesn’t think about the consequences of her actions.
Dany likes to see herself as a gentle conqueror, liberating the people in the cities she enters. But the truth is that she often does this without thinking about the long-term effects. When she liberated the slaves in Meereen, which on the surface seems like a good thing, she did it without considering the fact that there were no backup social structures to help the slaves once they were freed, and it totally blew up in her face.
She couldn’t train her dragons.
Sure, they knew how to breathe fire on command, but Dany let her dragons get totally out of control and even kill a little kid. And then when she couldn’t control them, she just locked them up in a tomb. She’s the one who’s constantly going on about how these are her children, so what kind of mother abandons them without even checking to see if there’s anyone out there who knows a thing or two about taming dragons??
She’s entitled.
Dany’s motivation for everything she does is getting back the throne that’s “rightfully hers,” but here’s the thing: Dany knows nothing about Westeros. She doesn’t know the people, the land, or the houses. Hell, she said she doesn’t even have any memories of living there. Her father was pretty rightfully removed from the throne (read: killed by Jaime) because he had gone straight-up crazy and was saying he wanted to burn all his subjects. He kind of ruined Dany’s claim to the throne-a claim that she likes to constantly remind everyone she still has.
She wouldn’t be anywhere without her dragons.
Dany’s dragons have gotten her out of almost all the bad situations she’s been in thus far. She’s not exactly a fighter and let’s be real, homegirl hasn’t even actually led anyone into battle yet. She likes to sit back and let the army handle it, as opposed to your Jon Snows or Jaime Lannisters of the world who like to be front and center in the action. Despite Dany’s thinking that being the Mother of Dragons gives her some sort of extra power, which, yes, technically it does over the dragons, she as an individual without her dragons probably would have been dead a long time ago.
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