What I hate from S8 is the character assassination of Varys, Him going "Jon should be the king, because he doesn't want to be the king and that makes him worthy" bullshit. Its a sentiment that his very American, that the people that should rule are those with no interest in ruling. Like the entire plot of the show wasn't kicked off by a king spending his time in the brothels rather than the council chamber.
People are best ruled by people that want to rule. Often they are badly lead by people that want to rule for the wrong reasons, but nothing sets up disaster more than apathetic leadership. Where somebody rules just enough to stymie effective ruleship, but not enough to stave off disaster.
Robert Baratheon didn't die because he preferred whoring and feasting to ruling. The kingdom wasn't necesarily in great shape while he was king but it wasn't falling apart, for the most part. He died because his wife hated him and really just wanted to bone her brother all day long.
Maybe if Robert had stayed king for another decade or two he'd have flushed the Seven Kingdoms down the shitter but he hadn't yet.
And he clearly wanted to rule at some point, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of installing himself as king.
The Kingdom was going down the shitter under Robert's rule. And he wasn't really going through most of the trouble to actually become king.
The fact that the kingdom went into immediate civil war once Robert croaked is proof enough that Robert ran it into the shitter. The fact that the civil war was called the war of five kings as in 5 separate faction all vying for the throne is proof as to how bad.
Wasn't that more a case of a disputed succession, combined with outraging the North? If Joffrey was black of hair I doubt everyone would be chomping at the bit to seize the throne. Well maybe the Greyjoys would revolt again.
it isn't really proof of that at all. The North went to war against the Lannisters because of the unlawful arrest of the Hand and generally the North was sick of being beholden to southern arseholes. Renly did because he was convinced he would be a better ruler than his brother and had the backing of the Tyrells because they had a daughter he would put on the throne alongside him. The Iron Islands always want power/independence. Plus the rumour of Joffrey not really being Robert's son had spread.
There's always a power struggle when it's time for a new monarch. The Targs had plenty of civil wars and power plays despite having a clear line of succession within the same family.
What we do know is that Robert had allowed the kingdom to fall into bankruptcy, but even that was because Littlefinger was master of coin and deliberately allowed it to happen to stir up tensions.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
I doubt Martin is going for "she heard some bells and had a mental breakdown and now she's crazy." She's going to descend into tyranny and brutality, but I'm guessing her self justification will be to improve the lives of the common people. Which is obviously a thing you see in the real world all the freaking time.
This was my issue.
It's not that Dany broke. Dany breaking is what I was expecting.
It's that the show decided to go with "Dany hears bells and decides to burn the entire city to the ground with everyone in it" as the thing that broke her especially when the editing was "after explicitly informing the viewers that she agreed not to do so."
They could have taken the time to show how she devolved into someone who would willingly burn King's Landing thinking they deserved it.
But they absolutely didn't do so.
They even had the perfect time for her to break and just didn’t use it properly. If after Missandei was killed. She hopped on her dragon and just started burning the whole thing to the ground. I think everyone would buy the motivation. It would have taking them changing a few things, but not much there could be a lot hole thing where Tyrion walks with her trying to talk her down and she not saying a word as she walks to her dragon and just Nods to Grey worm when she gets on top.
+3
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
All you fellas sayin' they didn't show her descend into madness well enough, what about the second to last episode where she starts out with her hair frazzled and no make-up on her face. Why, a gal like her choosin' to look so unkempt, that's nothing short of insanity I tell ya, insanity!
All you fellas sayin' they didn't show her descend into madness well enough, what about the second to last episode where she starts out with her hair frazzled and no make-up on her face. Why, a gal like her choosin' to look so unkempt, that's nothing short of insanity I tell ya, insanity!
Also, don't forget when she had a Starbucks cup appear in front of her. Who wouldn't be driven insane when confronted by clear evidence of time travel?
All you fellas sayin' they didn't show her descend into madness well enough, what about the second to last episode where she starts out with her hair frazzled and no make-up on her face. Why, a gal like her choosin' to look so unkempt, that's nothing short of insanity I tell ya, insanity!
Also, don't forget when she had a Starbucks cup appear in front of her. Who wouldn't be driven insane when confronted by clear evidence of time travel?
What I hate from S8 is the character assassination of Varys, Him going "Jon should be the king, because he doesn't want to be the king and that makes him worthy" bullshit. Its a sentiment that his very American, that the people that should rule are those with no interest in ruling. Like the entire plot of the show wasn't kicked off by a king spending his time in the brothels rather than the council chamber.
People are best ruled by people that want to rule. Often they are badly lead by people that want to rule for the wrong reasons, but nothing sets up disaster more than apathetic leadership. Where somebody rules just enough to stymie effective ruleship, but not enough to stave off disaster.
Robert Baratheon didn't die because he preferred whoring and feasting to ruling. The kingdom wasn't necesarily in great shape while he was king but it wasn't falling apart, for the most part. He died because his wife hated him and really just wanted to bone her brother all day long.
Maybe if Robert had stayed king for another decade or two he'd have flushed the Seven Kingdoms down the shitter but he hadn't yet.
And he clearly wanted to rule at some point, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of installing himself as king.
The Kingdom was going down the shitter under Robert's rule. And he wasn't really going through most of the trouble to actually become king.
The fact that the kingdom went into immediate civil war once Robert croaked is proof enough that Robert ran it into the shitter. The fact that the civil war was called the war of five kings as in 5 separate faction all vying for the throne is proof as to how bad.
Wasn't that more a case of a disputed succession, combined with outraging the North? If Joffrey was black of hair I doubt everyone would be chomping at the bit to seize the throne. Well maybe the Greyjoys would revolt again.
I would definitely say it's more disputed succession. The Roman Empire, for example, has plenty of cases of devolving into civil war after a competent ruler dies (using Roman Empire because that's what I'm most familiar with). Often it came down to not having a good succession plan, but sometimes it's just aspirations of someone wanting more power.
What I hate from S8 is the character assassination of Varys, Him going "Jon should be the king, because he doesn't want to be the king and that makes him worthy" bullshit. Its a sentiment that his very American, that the people that should rule are those with no interest in ruling. Like the entire plot of the show wasn't kicked off by a king spending his time in the brothels rather than the council chamber.
People are best ruled by people that want to rule. Often they are badly lead by people that want to rule for the wrong reasons, but nothing sets up disaster more than apathetic leadership. Where somebody rules just enough to stymie effective ruleship, but not enough to stave off disaster.
Robert Baratheon didn't die because he preferred whoring and feasting to ruling. The kingdom wasn't necesarily in great shape while he was king but it wasn't falling apart, for the most part. He died because his wife hated him and really just wanted to bone her brother all day long.
Maybe if Robert had stayed king for another decade or two he'd have flushed the Seven Kingdoms down the shitter but he hadn't yet.
And he clearly wanted to rule at some point, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of installing himself as king.
The Kingdom was going down the shitter under Robert's rule. And he wasn't really going through most of the trouble to actually become king.
The fact that the kingdom went into immediate civil war once Robert croaked is proof enough that Robert ran it into the shitter. The fact that the civil war was called the war of five kings as in 5 separate faction all vying for the throne is proof as to how bad.
Wasn't that more a case of a disputed succession, combined with outraging the North? If Joffrey was black of hair I doubt everyone would be chomping at the bit to seize the throne. Well maybe the Greyjoys would revolt again.
I would definitely say it's more disputed succession. The Roman Empire, for example, has plenty of cases of devolving into civil war after a competent ruler dies (using Roman Empire because that's what I'm most familiar with). Often it came down to not having a good succession plan, but sometimes it's just aspirations of someone wanting more power.
But in this particular case the inciting incident was Joffrey Baratheon, Golden Head. There are peripheral motives that come from that, but it's ground zero.
Joffrey: My dad was king, so I'm king!
Stannis: He wasn't your dad, you have no claim. I do as younger brother.
Renly: Yeah, but you suck, I'd be better.
Robb: You killed my father, you jerk. The southron can't be trusted, I'm out.
Balon: Wow, that idiot Robb removed the only leverage stopping me from rebelling. Excessively romanticized viking raids go!
I doubt Martin is going for "she heard some bells and had a mental breakdown and now she's crazy." She's going to descend into tyranny and brutality, but I'm guessing her self justification will be to improve the lives of the common people. Which is obviously a thing you see in the real world all the freaking time.
This was my issue.
It's not that Dany broke. Dany breaking is what I was expecting.
It's that the show decided to go with "Dany hears bells and decides to burn the entire city to the ground with everyone in it" as the thing that broke her especially when the editing was "after explicitly informing the viewers that she agreed not to do so."
They could have taken the time to show how she devolved into someone who would willingly burn King's Landing thinking they deserved it.
But they absolutely didn't do so.
They even had the perfect time for her to break and just didn’t use it properly. If after Missandei was killed. She hopped on her dragon and just started burning the whole thing to the ground. I think everyone would buy the motivation. It would have taking them changing a few things, but not much there could be a lot hole thing where Tyrion walks with her trying to talk her down and she not saying a word as she walks to her dragon and just Nods to Grey worm when she gets on top.
Another would have been if the second dragon hadn't died to the fleet Dany "forgot" about, and had it die early in the battle, inside the city wall.
Dany and Drogon perch exactly as she did during the bells scene, and she sees the peasantry butchering the fallen dragon for trophies. Her baby being ripped apart by the very people she was supposed to be saving. And deciding "well, fuck you all then."
Could still have done with some more setup, but it would have been better than the drek we got.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
All you fellas sayin' they didn't show her descend into madness well enough, what about the second to last episode where she starts out with her hair frazzled and no make-up on her face. Why, a gal like her choosin' to look so unkempt, that's nothing short of insanity I tell ya, insanity!
Also, don't forget when she had a Starbucks cup appear in front of her. Who wouldn't be driven insane when confronted by clear evidence of time travel?
It's layers within layers, I tell you!
It's like an onion.
In that a lot of people don't like it.
Except those people that don't like onion are objectively wrong
zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Also Joffrey is an idiot child. Even the British didn’t let an 11 year old run the country. They had a regent take care of running the place until the kid got older, or was assassinated.
I doubt Martin is going for "she heard some bells and had a mental breakdown and now she's crazy." She's going to descend into tyranny and brutality, but I'm guessing her self justification will be to improve the lives of the common people. Which is obviously a thing you see in the real world all the freaking time.
This was my issue.
It's not that Dany broke. Dany breaking is what I was expecting.
It's that the show decided to go with "Dany hears bells and decides to burn the entire city to the ground with everyone in it" as the thing that broke her especially when the editing was "after explicitly informing the viewers that she agreed not to do so."
They could have taken the time to show how she devolved into someone who would willingly burn King's Landing thinking they deserved it.
But they absolutely didn't do so.
They even had the perfect time for her to break and just didn’t use it properly. If after Missandei was killed. She hopped on her dragon and just started burning the whole thing to the ground. I think everyone would buy the motivation. It would have taking them changing a few things, but not much there could be a lot hole thing where Tyrion walks with her trying to talk her down and she not saying a word as she walks to her dragon and just Nods to Grey worm when she gets on top.
Another would have been if the second dragon hadn't died to the fleet Dany "forgot" about, and had it die early in the battle, inside the city wall.
Dany and Drogon perch exactly as she did during the bells scene, and she sees the peasantry butchering the fallen dragon for trophies. Her baby being ripped apart by the very people she was supposed to be saving. And deciding "well, fuck you all then."
Could still have done with some more setup, but it would have been better than the drek we got.
That'd have been a really good idea! If they wanted her to still unsympathetic, that idea even lets you show peasants or Lannisters surrendering while, say, a Golden Company guy lands a lucky hit with a ballista or greek fire grenade or whatever, and still have a more believable massacre when she torches everyone in response.
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
I don't really understand why so many people still cling to the idea that the show can be 'fixed' by some small motivational change for Daenerys. She had to be portrayed as unhinged as possible in order to make sure that Jon murdering her is 100% justified. A mercy kill, really. A rabid dog that needed to be put down. Oh no Dany, look what you made Jon do...
What I hate from S8 is the character assassination of Varys, Him going "Jon should be the king, because he doesn't want to be the king and that makes him worthy" bullshit. Its a sentiment that his very American, that the people that should rule are those with no interest in ruling. Like the entire plot of the show wasn't kicked off by a king spending his time in the brothels rather than the council chamber.
People are best ruled by people that want to rule. Often they are badly lead by people that want to rule for the wrong reasons, but nothing sets up disaster more than apathetic leadership. Where somebody rules just enough to stymie effective ruleship, but not enough to stave off disaster.
Robert Baratheon didn't die because he preferred whoring and feasting to ruling. The kingdom wasn't necesarily in great shape while he was king but it wasn't falling apart, for the most part. He died because his wife hated him and really just wanted to bone her brother all day long.
Maybe if Robert had stayed king for another decade or two he'd have flushed the Seven Kingdoms down the shitter but he hadn't yet.
And he clearly wanted to rule at some point, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of installing himself as king.
The Kingdom was going down the shitter under Robert's rule. And he wasn't really going through most of the trouble to actually become king.
The fact that the kingdom went into immediate civil war once Robert croaked is proof enough that Robert ran it into the shitter. The fact that the civil war was called the war of five kings as in 5 separate faction all vying for the throne is proof as to how bad.
Wasn't that more a case of a disputed succession, combined with outraging the North? If Joffrey was black of hair I doubt everyone would be chomping at the bit to seize the throne. Well maybe the Greyjoys would revolt again.
I would definitely say it's more disputed succession. The Roman Empire, for example, has plenty of cases of devolving into civil war after a competent ruler dies (using Roman Empire because that's what I'm most familiar with). Often it came down to not having a good succession plan, but sometimes it's just aspirations of someone wanting more power.
But in this particular case the inciting incident was Joffrey Baratheon, Golden Head. There are peripheral motives that come from that, but it's ground zero.
Joffrey: My dad was king, so I'm king!
Stannis: He wasn't your dad, you have no claim. I do as younger brother.
Renly: Yeah, but you suck, I'd be better.
Robb: You killed my father, you jerk. The southron can't be trusted, I'm out.
Balon: Wow, that idiot Robb removed the only leverage stopping me from rebelling. Excessively romanticized viking raids go!
I still think it fits into a historical perspective of having numerous individuals think they are most deserving of the throne. I think GRRM does a pretty good job of setting up that the succession is rather messy because Robert was kind of a shit ruler and Joffrey was an absolute shit ruler.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
There must be a lot of lead in the drinking water of Westeros, because a lot of seams fly rational people are a bunch of idiots, all the time.
Only 3 people in the series act in a deliberate, intelligent and meaningful way. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, and Lord Bronn.
Everyone else acts in varying degrees of stupidity and shortsightedness.
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
Also Joffrey is an idiot child. Even the British didn’t let an 11 year old run the country. They had a regent take care of running the place until the kid got older, or was assassinated.
Wasn’t Cersei the regent and she went along because she didn’t want to tell him no?
I mean in real life an 11 year old Joffrey would have been told to shut the fuck up and let adults take care of things (but perhaps not if the king was the age of Joffreys actual actor at the time) or worse probably would have come down with an unfortunate illness and died suddenly. There were certainly instances of older kings doing things like that, though (most of them eventually ended up with a bad case of dead one way or another eventually but so did Joffrey.)
Tywin is presented as kind of a terrible person right from the getgo in the books. I'm pretty sure the story of Tyrion's vegas wedding and it's aftermath actually happens before we see Tywin for the first time. It's certainly in the first book.
Dany's path towards being more ruthless is going more slowly but it's definitely there. I wouldn't be shocked if she does something nasty but the context of it is unknowable at this point so I'm not sure there's much one can say about it.
It's after we meet Tywin, but I believe it's the same chapter.
Honestly Tywin is presented as a pretty terrible person from the get-go in the show, too; there's no reason for one of the most powerful people in the world to be dressing a deer other than that he enjoys it, which is kind of fucked up.
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
Re Robert. Robert was a terrible king and was uninterested in ruling. He was always uninterested in ruling and only rebelled because Aerys killed his sister. He was King because no one else had the backing. And he was backed because he was good at war. Everyone who supported his rule was assuming they would have a position after he left and it was the Lannisters who provided the main support, because Tywin wanted a Lannister on the throne because he wanted to rule.
Tywin is presented as kind of a terrible person right from the getgo in the books. I'm pretty sure the story of Tyrion's vegas wedding and it's aftermath actually happens before we see Tywin for the first time. It's certainly in the first book.
Dany's path towards being more ruthless is going more slowly but it's definitely there. I wouldn't be shocked if she does something nasty but the context of it is unknowable at this point so I'm not sure there's much one can say about it.
It's after we meet Tywin, but I believe it's the same chapter.
Honestly Tywin is presented as a pretty terrible person from the get-go in the show, too; there's no reason for one of the most powerful people in the world to be dressing a deer other than that he enjoys it, which is kind of fucked up.
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
Re Robert. Robert was a terrible king and was uninterested in ruling. He was always uninterested in ruling and only rebelled because Aerys killed his sister. He was King because no one else had the backing. And he was backed because he was good at war. Everyone who supported his rule was assuming they would have a position after he left and it was the Lannisters who provided the main support, because Tywin wanted a Lannister on the throne because he wanted to rule.
Nope, Aerys executed Ned's Father and Brother, then ordered Jon Arryn to kill Ned and Robert. And the Starks were executed because Lyanna Stark, Robert's fiance, disappeared, purportedly with Aerys' son Rhaegar. The outcome determined the name Robert's Rebellion, because it was Jon Arryn who first called his banners.
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
GRRM's conception of inbreeding like the Targeryn's is that it tends to produce extremes. There's a quote somewhere where he talks about this idea. So you get some really great individuals, like Rhaegar, and you get some really bad ones, like Aerys. And Aerys himself was supposedly not that bad a person in his youth and slowly over time became a worse and worse ruler and also more and more paranoid and vengeful and so on.
It is not inconceivable that Dany starts heading down a darker path in terms of tyranny and brutality and vengefulness and anger. It just all depends on how you establish that change and there's already been some of that done in the books.
Tywin is presented as kind of a terrible person right from the getgo in the books. I'm pretty sure the story of Tyrion's vegas wedding and it's aftermath actually happens before we see Tywin for the first time. It's certainly in the first book.
Dany's path towards being more ruthless is going more slowly but it's definitely there. I wouldn't be shocked if she does something nasty but the context of it is unknowable at this point so I'm not sure there's much one can say about it.
It's after we meet Tywin, but I believe it's the same chapter.
Honestly Tywin is presented as a pretty terrible person from the get-go in the show, too; there's no reason for one of the most powerful people in the world to be dressing a deer other than that he enjoys it, which is kind of fucked up.
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
It's also symbolic: a deer is the banner symbol of House Baratheon, which he was at war with.
Tywin is presented as kind of a terrible person right from the getgo in the books. I'm pretty sure the story of Tyrion's vegas wedding and it's aftermath actually happens before we see Tywin for the first time. It's certainly in the first book.
Dany's path towards being more ruthless is going more slowly but it's definitely there. I wouldn't be shocked if she does something nasty but the context of it is unknowable at this point so I'm not sure there's much one can say about it.
It's after we meet Tywin, but I believe it's the same chapter.
Honestly Tywin is presented as a pretty terrible person from the get-go in the show, too; there's no reason for one of the most powerful people in the world to be dressing a deer other than that he enjoys it, which is kind of fucked up.
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
It's also symbolic: a deer is the banner symbol of House Baratheon, which he was at war with.
There's a deleted scene in season three where Pycelle talks to Tywin while Tywin is fishing. And guess which house whose castle is Riverrun gets screwed over later on?
Tywin is presented as kind of a terrible person right from the getgo in the books. I'm pretty sure the story of Tyrion's vegas wedding and it's aftermath actually happens before we see Tywin for the first time. It's certainly in the first book.
Dany's path towards being more ruthless is going more slowly but it's definitely there. I wouldn't be shocked if she does something nasty but the context of it is unknowable at this point so I'm not sure there's much one can say about it.
It's after we meet Tywin, but I believe it's the same chapter.
Honestly Tywin is presented as a pretty terrible person from the get-go in the show, too; there's no reason for one of the most powerful people in the world to be dressing a deer other than that he enjoys it, which is kind of fucked up.
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
Re Robert. Robert was a terrible king and was uninterested in ruling. He was always uninterested in ruling and only rebelled because Aerys killed his sister. He was King because no one else had the backing. And he was backed because he was good at war. Everyone who supported his rule was assuming they would have a position after he left and it was the Lannisters who provided the main support, because Tywin wanted a Lannister on the throne because he wanted to rule.
Nope, Aerys executed Ned's Father and Brother, then ordered Jon Arryn to kill Ned and Robert. And the Starks were executed because Lyanna Stark, Robert's fiance, disappeared, purportedly with Aerys' son Rhaegar. The outcome determined the name Robert's Rebellion, because it was Jon Arryn who first called his banners.
Technically the Starks were killed because after Lyanna everyone assumed Rhaegar had kidnapped her and Brandon Stark went down to King's Landing and yelled at the king about it and Aerys killed him for it cause he was a paranoid crazy motherfucker.
Tywin is presented as kind of a terrible person right from the getgo in the books. I'm pretty sure the story of Tyrion's vegas wedding and it's aftermath actually happens before we see Tywin for the first time. It's certainly in the first book.
Dany's path towards being more ruthless is going more slowly but it's definitely there. I wouldn't be shocked if she does something nasty but the context of it is unknowable at this point so I'm not sure there's much one can say about it.
It's after we meet Tywin, but I believe it's the same chapter.
Honestly Tywin is presented as a pretty terrible person from the get-go in the show, too; there's no reason for one of the most powerful people in the world to be dressing a deer other than that he enjoys it, which is kind of fucked up.
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
Re Robert. Robert was a terrible king and was uninterested in ruling. He was always uninterested in ruling and only rebelled because Aerys killed his sister. He was King because no one else had the backing. And he was backed because he was good at war. Everyone who supported his rule was assuming they would have a position after he left and it was the Lannisters who provided the main support, because Tywin wanted a Lannister on the throne because he wanted to rule.
Nope, Aerys executed Ned's Father and Brother, then ordered Jon Arryn to kill Ned and Robert. And the Starks were executed because Lyanna Stark, Robert's fiance, disappeared, purportedly with Aerys' son Rhaegar. The outcome determined the name Robert's Rebellion, because it was Jon Arryn who first called his banners.
Technically the Starks were killed because after Lyanna everyone assumed Rhaegar had kidnapped her and Brandon Stark went down to King's Landing and yelled at the king about it and Aerys killed him for it cause he was a paranoid crazy motherfucker.
True. But then Aerys called for both Ned and Robert to be executed basically as a precaution. It didn't take.
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
GRRM's conception of inbreeding like the Targeryn's is that it tends to produce extremes. There's a quote somewhere where he talks about this idea. So you get some really great individuals, like Rhaegar, and you get some really bad ones, like Aerys. And Aerys himself was supposedly not that bad a person in his youth and slowly over time became a worse and worse ruler and also more and more paranoid and vengeful and so on.
It is not inconceivable that Dany starts heading down a darker path in terms of tyranny and brutality and vengefulness and anger. It just all depends on how you establish that change and there's thalready been some of that done in the books.
Ah, could you provide me with a link to this quote you refer to? The books make it clear that there is something magical going on with the blood of Old Valyria, but like I said, the 50% madness - greatness coinflip is clearly an exaggeration if you actually dive into their history - history which GRRM did obviously write and decided to portray the way it is portrayed.
I have never claimed that Dany heading down a darker path is inconceivable. I do agree that it's almost a certainty at this point, although it never felt inevitable to me until the clown version of the ending was released. But 'darker path' is quite a vague term which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. If it turns out to be actual 'rah rah massacre the innocents, burn them all!', then, well... that is a choice. GRRM obviously has the talent to have it all make much more sense than the show and I certainly believe that he can portray a believable descent into madness. Regardless, it is a conscious choice to go out of your way to specify that the only two women who have ever sat on the Iron Throne were both 'Mad Queens'. And it is a conscious choice to propagate the idea that your genetics determine your fate and that you will never escape the legacy of your parents.
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
GRRM's conception of inbreeding like the Targeryn's is that it tends to produce extremes. There's a quote somewhere where he talks about this idea. So you get some really great individuals, like Rhaegar, and you get some really bad ones, like Aerys. And Aerys himself was supposedly not that bad a person in his youth and slowly over time became a worse and worse ruler and also more and more paranoid and vengeful and so on.
It is not inconceivable that Dany starts heading down a darker path in terms of tyranny and brutality and vengefulness and anger. It just all depends on how you establish that change and there's thalready been some of that done in the books.
Ah, could you provide me with a link to this quote you refer to? The books make it clear that there is something magical going on with the blood of Old Valyria, but like I said, the 50% madness - greatness coinflip is clearly an exaggeration if you actually dive into their history - history which GRRM did obviously write and decided to portray the way it is portrayed.
I have never claimed that Dany heading down a darker path is inconceivable. I do agree that it's almost a certainty at this point, although it never felt inevitable to me until the clown version of the ending was released. But 'darker path' is quite a vague term which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. If it turns out to be actual 'rah rah massacre the innocents, burn them all!', then, well... that is a choice. GRRM obviously has the talent to have it all make much more sense than the show and I certainly believe that he can portray a believable descent into madness. Regardless, it is a conscious choice to go out of your way to specify that the only two women who have ever sat on the Iron Throne were both 'Mad Queens'. And it is a conscious choice to propagate the idea that your genetics determine your fate and that you will never escape the legacy of your parents.
“I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
GRRM's conception of inbreeding like the Targeryn's is that it tends to produce extremes. There's a quote somewhere where he talks about this idea. So you get some really great individuals, like Rhaegar, and you get some really bad ones, like Aerys. And Aerys himself was supposedly not that bad a person in his youth and slowly over time became a worse and worse ruler and also more and more paranoid and vengeful and so on.
It is not inconceivable that Dany starts heading down a darker path in terms of tyranny and brutality and vengefulness and anger. It just all depends on how you establish that change and there's already been some of that done in the books.
Also aerys had like a year of torture and captivity orchestrated "probably" by tywin.
Man those books are fun to discuss. Unfortunately they are impossible to write with how fucking complex everything gets
Ah, I do realize now that I might have misinterpreted what was meant by 'GRRM's quote'. I assumed it referred to a direct comment made by him, not something said by a character. I'm of course familiar with Barristan quoting Jaehaerys II, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned the memetic coin flip.
The point I was trying to make is that Dany's supposed 'madness' seems to really conform to the shitty stereotype of the hysterical woman who definitely shouldn't be trusted with power. You can be ruthless to a degree that you become a complete monster like Tywin, but nobody ever tries to paint him as psychotic.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
GRRM's conception of inbreeding like the Targeryn's is that it tends to produce extremes. There's a quote somewhere where he talks about this idea. So you get some really great individuals, like Rhaegar, and you get some really bad ones, like Aerys. And Aerys himself was supposedly not that bad a person in his youth and slowly over time became a worse and worse ruler and also more and more paranoid and vengeful and so on.
It is not inconceivable that Dany starts heading down a darker path in terms of tyranny and brutality and vengefulness and anger. It just all depends on how you establish that change and there's thalready been some of that done in the books.
Ah, could you provide me with a link to this quote you refer to? The books make it clear that there is something magical going on with the blood of Old Valyria, but like I said, the 50% madness - greatness coinflip is clearly an exaggeration if you actually dive into their history - history which GRRM did obviously write and decided to portray the way it is portrayed.
I have never claimed that Dany heading down a darker path is inconceivable. I do agree that it's almost a certainty at this point, although it never felt inevitable to me until the clown version of the ending was released. But 'darker path' is quite a vague term which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. If it turns out to be actual 'rah rah massacre the innocents, burn them all!', then, well... that is a choice. GRRM obviously has the talent to have it all make much more sense than the show and I certainly believe that he can portray a believable descent into madness. Regardless, it is a conscious choice to go out of your way to specify that the only two women who have ever sat on the Iron Throne were both 'Mad Queens'. And it is a conscious choice to propagate the idea that your genetics determine your fate and that you will never escape the legacy of your parents.
The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. Also, there's sometimes a fine line between madness and greatness. Daeron I, the boy king who led a war of conquest, and even the saintly Baelor I could also be considered "mad," if seen in a different light. ((And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interperted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction))
(fyi this was a question about Egg specifically but the answer is still applicable here)
This is the framework of the effects of Targaryen inbreeding in the story. It magnifies both the strengths and weaknesses of the bloodline. Higher highs, lower lows, and just generally more extreme individuals. Dany I think is meant to be no different. It's not that she's going to see the Queen of Diamonds and suddenly go blabbering mad. But that she's prone to more extreme behaviours and we are probably going to see her express that in terms of some level of brutality and tyranny as she retakes Westeros. This is part and parcel of who Targaryen's are.
On the question of the gender framing you are talking about I don't think that's really a conscious choice here at all. I don't think there's any intention that you should draw that pattern and I don't really think it's there.
There must be a lot of lead in the drinking water of Westeros, because a lot of seams fly rational people are a bunch of idiots, all the time.
Only 3 people in the series act in a deliberate, intelligent and meaningful way. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, and Lord Bronn.
Everyone else acts in varying degrees of stupidity and shortsightedness.
Yes lead in the water was definitely a genuine problem with Mediaeval plumbing.
But lack of intelligence is a problem with aristocratic rule. Imagine if the UK was actually ruled by the Royal Family!
Lack of intelligence and long term thinking is just a human problem. Once again in looking at the Roman Empire there are plenty of examples of shortsightedness and people doing things because it helped them personally.
I think the worst position one could have is that of emperor/Augustus.
Great leaders are few and good ones as well. Adequate is what you want to hope for most of the time.
PSN ID - Buckeye_Bert
Magic Online - Bertro
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
There must be a lot of lead in the drinking water of Westeros, because a lot of seams fly rational people are a bunch of idiots, all the time.
Only 3 people in the series act in a deliberate, intelligent and meaningful way. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, and Lord Bronn.
Everyone else acts in varying degrees of stupidity and shortsightedness.
Yes lead in the water was definitely a genuine problem with Mediaeval plumbing.
But lack of intelligence is a problem with aristocratic rule. Imagine if the UK was actually ruled by the Royal Family!
Lack of intelligence and long term thinking is just a human problem. Once again in looking at the Roman Empire there are plenty of examples of shortsightedness and people doing things because it helped them personally.
I think the worst position one could have is that of emperor/Augustus.
Great leaders are few and good ones as well. Adequate is what you want to hope for most of the time.
Augustus is one of the few leaders who was a good administrator and was an effective conquerer. And he had a succession plan. He was probably the closest to Tywin Lannister from a historical context.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
There must be a lot of lead in the drinking water of Westeros, because a lot of seams fly rational people are a bunch of idiots, all the time.
Only 3 people in the series act in a deliberate, intelligent and meaningful way. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, and Lord Bronn.
Everyone else acts in varying degrees of stupidity and shortsightedness.
Yes lead in the water was definitely a genuine problem with Mediaeval plumbing.
But lack of intelligence is a problem with aristocratic rule. Imagine if the UK was actually ruled by the Royal Family!
Lack of intelligence and long term thinking is just a human problem. Once again in looking at the Roman Empire there are plenty of examples of shortsightedness and people doing things because it helped them personally.
I think the worst position one could have is that of emperor/Augustus.
Great leaders are few and good ones as well. Adequate is what you want to hope for most of the time.
Augustus is one of the few leaders who was a good administrator and was an effective conquerer. And he had a succession plan. He was probably the closest to Tywin Lannister from a historical context.
Especially since his succession plan, such as it was, kept failing. From the death of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, him having no natural sons, his nephews/adopted sons both dying before 20 and the fact he lived to his mid 70s.
Tiberius wasn't a plan, he was the "Oh shit!" handle and the closest blood or legal relative once Agrippa Posthumous was killed on his exile island before Augustus was even buried.
BlackDragon480 on
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
There must be a lot of lead in the drinking water of Westeros, because a lot of seams fly rational people are a bunch of idiots, all the time.
Only 3 people in the series act in a deliberate, intelligent and meaningful way. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, and Lord Bronn.
Everyone else acts in varying degrees of stupidity and shortsightedness.
Yes lead in the water was definitely a genuine problem with Mediaeval plumbing.
But lack of intelligence is a problem with aristocratic rule. Imagine if the UK was actually ruled by the Royal Family!
Lack of intelligence and long term thinking is just a human problem. Once again in looking at the Roman Empire there are plenty of examples of shortsightedness and people doing things because it helped them personally.
I think the worst position one could have is that of emperor/Augustus.
Great leaders are few and good ones as well. Adequate is what you want to hope for most of the time.
Augustus is one of the few leaders who was a good administrator and was an effective conquerer. And he had a succession plan. He was probably the closest to Tywin Lannister from a historical context.
Especially since his succession plan, such as it was, kept failing. From the death of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, him having no natural sons, his nephews/adopted sons both dying before 20 and the fact he lived to his mid 70s.
Tiberius wasn't a plan, he was the "Oh shit!" handle and the closest blood or legal relative once Agrippa Posthumous was killed on his exile island before Augustus was even buried.
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Wasn't that more a case of a disputed succession, combined with outraging the North? If Joffrey was black of hair I doubt everyone would be chomping at the bit to seize the throne. Well maybe the Greyjoys would revolt again.
There's always a power struggle when it's time for a new monarch. The Targs had plenty of civil wars and power plays despite having a clear line of succession within the same family.
What we do know is that Robert had allowed the kingdom to fall into bankruptcy, but even that was because Littlefinger was master of coin and deliberately allowed it to happen to stir up tensions.
Also, don't forget when she had a Starbucks cup appear in front of her. Who wouldn't be driven insane when confronted by clear evidence of time travel?
It's layers within layers, I tell you!
It's like an onion.
In that a lot of people don't like it.
I would definitely say it's more disputed succession. The Roman Empire, for example, has plenty of cases of devolving into civil war after a competent ruler dies (using Roman Empire because that's what I'm most familiar with). Often it came down to not having a good succession plan, but sometimes it's just aspirations of someone wanting more power.
Magic Online - Bertro
But in this particular case the inciting incident was Joffrey Baratheon, Golden Head. There are peripheral motives that come from that, but it's ground zero.
Joffrey: My dad was king, so I'm king!
Stannis: He wasn't your dad, you have no claim. I do as younger brother.
Renly: Yeah, but you suck, I'd be better.
Robb: You killed my father, you jerk. The southron can't be trusted, I'm out.
Balon: Wow, that idiot Robb removed the only leverage stopping me from rebelling. Excessively romanticized viking raids go!
Another would have been if the second dragon hadn't died to the fleet Dany "forgot" about, and had it die early in the battle, inside the city wall.
Dany and Drogon perch exactly as she did during the bells scene, and she sees the peasantry butchering the fallen dragon for trophies. Her baby being ripped apart by the very people she was supposed to be saving. And deciding "well, fuck you all then."
Could still have done with some more setup, but it would have been better than the drek we got.
Except those people that don't like onion are objectively wrong
That'd have been a really good idea! If they wanted her to still unsympathetic, that idea even lets you show peasants or Lannisters surrendering while, say, a Golden Company guy lands a lucky hit with a ballista or greek fire grenade or whatever, and still have a more believable massacre when she torches everyone in response.
The entire family is touched, they think they are dragons. Whatever happens with Dany, it's not gendered. The setup for her losing it is a long list of her male relatives doing crazy shit, like trying to transform into a dragon by drinking wildfire. Her insane family was tolerated because they had the only weapons of mass destruction, melting castles to prove a point. Ned and Robert promptly stopped putting up with that when there were no more dragons. She's constantly compared to that, the Mad King. Nobody ever even hints that her madness is anything but Targaryen.
I mean, if you want examples of the hysterical woman trope, Cersei is available. The ladies in Dorne are completely driven by emotion. Lady Stoneheart is the crazy reincarnation of the woman that freed Jaime Lannister, throwing her nation away for her children. I don't feel that Dany fits in this category, she's just living up to her family.
I still think it fits into a historical perspective of having numerous individuals think they are most deserving of the throne. I think GRRM does a pretty good job of setting up that the succession is rather messy because Robert was kind of a shit ruler and Joffrey was an absolute shit ruler.
Magic Online - Bertro
Only 3 people in the series act in a deliberate, intelligent and meaningful way. Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, and Lord Bronn.
Everyone else acts in varying degrees of stupidity and shortsightedness.
If you actually check the family tree, the number of Targaryens who can genuinely be considered insane isn't really all that big. Idiots and cruel tyrants? Sure, you can find them in any great house, but a 50% coinflip is much more of an in-universe meme than factual reality. How do you explain the 100+ years reign of the Targaryens after they lost all their dragons, if such a large amount of them are apparently insane? The last dragon died in 153 AC, Robert's Rebellion started in 282 AC.
But yes, people in-universe certainly seem to believe it. And surely, medieval societies are well known for their insights into genetics and human psychology so we should all just take that at face value, right? Full biological determinism ftw!
As for the other examples of 'crazy' women you're providing, does it really seem as if I'm saying that no female character should ever be portrayed in a negative light? My point in regards to Daenerys is simply that if you specifically create a world in which a medieval society has certain prejudices, and then those prejudices are proven to be 100% correct, I think that's pretty shitty. Westeros' dislike for women on the Iron Throne is reinforced by everything that happened during the Dance of the Dragons with Rhaenyra. If you specifically write something like that in your lore and then have the second woman to ever sit the Iron Throne become a 'Mad Queen' as well, I'm giving you the side eye.
Wasn’t Cersei the regent and she went along because she didn’t want to tell him no?
I mean in real life an 11 year old Joffrey would have been told to shut the fuck up and let adults take care of things (but perhaps not if the king was the age of Joffreys actual actor at the time) or worse probably would have come down with an unfortunate illness and died suddenly. There were certainly instances of older kings doing things like that, though (most of them eventually ended up with a bad case of dead one way or another eventually but so did Joffrey.)
I feel like that era doesn’t get a lot of attention paid to it but would make a great miniseries or Assassins Creed game or something.
Yes lead in the water was definitely a genuine problem with Mediaeval plumbing.
But lack of intelligence is a problem with aristocratic rule. Imagine if the UK was actually ruled by the Royal Family!
Nah. It there to show that Tywin is
1) willing to get his hands dirty
2) willing to do it himself.
Sure him dressing a deer is something he doesn’t have to do but him doing it is not because he enjoys it. But because it must be done
Re Robert. Robert was a terrible king and was uninterested in ruling. He was always uninterested in ruling and only rebelled because Aerys killed his sister. He was King because no one else had the backing. And he was backed because he was good at war. Everyone who supported his rule was assuming they would have a position after he left and it was the Lannisters who provided the main support, because Tywin wanted a Lannister on the throne because he wanted to rule.
Nope, Aerys executed Ned's Father and Brother, then ordered Jon Arryn to kill Ned and Robert. And the Starks were executed because Lyanna Stark, Robert's fiance, disappeared, purportedly with Aerys' son Rhaegar. The outcome determined the name Robert's Rebellion, because it was Jon Arryn who first called his banners.
GRRM's conception of inbreeding like the Targeryn's is that it tends to produce extremes. There's a quote somewhere where he talks about this idea. So you get some really great individuals, like Rhaegar, and you get some really bad ones, like Aerys. And Aerys himself was supposedly not that bad a person in his youth and slowly over time became a worse and worse ruler and also more and more paranoid and vengeful and so on.
It is not inconceivable that Dany starts heading down a darker path in terms of tyranny and brutality and vengefulness and anger. It just all depends on how you establish that change and there's already been some of that done in the books.
It's also symbolic: a deer is the banner symbol of House Baratheon, which he was at war with.
There's a deleted scene in season three where Pycelle talks to Tywin while Tywin is fishing. And guess which house whose castle is Riverrun gets screwed over later on?
Technically the Starks were killed because after Lyanna everyone assumed Rhaegar had kidnapped her and Brandon Stark went down to King's Landing and yelled at the king about it and Aerys killed him for it cause he was a paranoid crazy motherfucker.
True. But then Aerys called for both Ned and Robert to be executed basically as a precaution. It didn't take.
Ah, could you provide me with a link to this quote you refer to? The books make it clear that there is something magical going on with the blood of Old Valyria, but like I said, the 50% madness - greatness coinflip is clearly an exaggeration if you actually dive into their history - history which GRRM did obviously write and decided to portray the way it is portrayed.
I have never claimed that Dany heading down a darker path is inconceivable. I do agree that it's almost a certainty at this point, although it never felt inevitable to me until the clown version of the ending was released. But 'darker path' is quite a vague term which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. If it turns out to be actual 'rah rah massacre the innocents, burn them all!', then, well... that is a choice. GRRM obviously has the talent to have it all make much more sense than the show and I certainly believe that he can portray a believable descent into madness. Regardless, it is a conscious choice to go out of your way to specify that the only two women who have ever sat on the Iron Throne were both 'Mad Queens'. And it is a conscious choice to propagate the idea that your genetics determine your fate and that you will never escape the legacy of your parents.
Also aerys had like a year of torture and captivity orchestrated "probably" by tywin.
Man those books are fun to discuss. Unfortunately they are impossible to write with how fucking complex everything gets
I finally dug it up after digging through the wiki for a bit:
https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Egg_and_the_Targaryens (fyi this was a question about Egg specifically but the answer is still applicable here)
This is the framework of the effects of Targaryen inbreeding in the story. It magnifies both the strengths and weaknesses of the bloodline. Higher highs, lower lows, and just generally more extreme individuals. Dany I think is meant to be no different. It's not that she's going to see the Queen of Diamonds and suddenly go blabbering mad. But that she's prone to more extreme behaviours and we are probably going to see her express that in terms of some level of brutality and tyranny as she retakes Westeros. This is part and parcel of who Targaryen's are.
On the question of the gender framing you are talking about I don't think that's really a conscious choice here at all. I don't think there's any intention that you should draw that pattern and I don't really think it's there.
Lack of intelligence and long term thinking is just a human problem. Once again in looking at the Roman Empire there are plenty of examples of shortsightedness and people doing things because it helped them personally.
I think the worst position one could have is that of emperor/Augustus.
Great leaders are few and good ones as well. Adequate is what you want to hope for most of the time.
Magic Online - Bertro
Especially since his succession plan, such as it was, kept failing. From the death of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, him having no natural sons, his nephews/adopted sons both dying before 20 and the fact he lived to his mid 70s.
Tiberius wasn't a plan, he was the "Oh shit!" handle and the closest blood or legal relative once Agrippa Posthumous was killed on his exile island before Augustus was even buried.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I prefer Claudius the God myself, but there's no denying that Robert Graves could smith some words.
~ Buckaroo Banzai