Hey guys, Pete here. picking up on my Game of Thrones Season 8 problem series
today gonna talk about the mother of dragons Daenerys Targaryen. first a
reminder of why I decided to do this problem series it's because the ending
could go in so many different ways. focusing on the problems as a way to work through it
so it's not a series saying Game of Thrones Season eight will be bad or Game
of Thrones is so bad now. I think the end of the series will be good or at least
enjoyable even though there are such high expectations but when trying to sit
through all the textual evidence we have in the books and what we've seen in the
show I find it very hard to see what a good ending looks like.
Daenerys Targaryen is obviously one of the central characters in this story.
from the very beginning in the very first episode we see her married to Khal Drogo
against her wishes she starts out as a pawn in the game of restoring her family
to their rightful place on the Iron Throne in the beginning that plan
includes installing her brother Viserys who turns out to be a total douchebag on
the Iron Throne she goes through a lot of awful stuff like awful stuff she ends
up making something out of a pretty terrible situation only to lose
everything anyways she pays her dues so to speak and ends up with three dragons
as a result not to sell any of this short after losing her unborn son and
her husband she walks into a funeral pyre and emerges with newborn dragons
it's miraculous. however this is the first problem with Daenerys in relation
to the end of the series - she has those dragons. she has the nuclear option while
everyone else is running around with swords of course the knight King has a
dragon now - but as I mentioned in the first video of this series we don't
expect him to win. Daenerys on the other hand is a contender and the dragons
ensure that the dragons as a weapon are great in the war for the dawn but what
makes her a great character in my opinion her sincere desire to make
things better coupled with her ability to use her dragons power is a problem
she has conflict built-in she hasn't had the world handed to
but she has a clear advantage. this affects everything and ultimately her
story will be good or bad based on the decisions that she makes every other
problem I run into in relation to Daenerys and her endgame is related to
this problem like I said she's had a real struggle she has shown herself to
have great intentions but at the end of the day she is the blood of old Valyria
the blood of the dragon her motivation is giving credibility to who she was
born to and the second problem that comes up when you think about Daenerys
is related to this directly she doesn't have a great track record as a ruler
she's run into some serious concerns issues like slavery and injustice but
ultimately she's used these dragons in order to bend things to her will I can
admit that when I first went through a dance with dragons I got tired of
Daenerys and her story it wasn't so much that I was anti Daenerys it was just
that you know she was stuck in Mereen she kept running into these problems of
ruling and in the back of your mind or back in my mind I should say I just kept
thinking this doesn't even matter we just need to get to Westeros so things
can get going over time and seeing other people talk about it and discuss these
same issues it becomes apparent that she is there for a reason she needs to run
into these problems here in Mereen and we've seen that in the TV show as well
but it again highlights this problem that even when you have real problems of
injustice when you handle it with power the results aren't just magically okay
it's not like you just destroy things because you want to destroy them and
everything works out fine in the end and the book she makes more sacrifices and
things are still stuck in Mereen so we don't know exactly how that transition
goes when she leaves from there and the TV show they kind of use Tyrion as a
buffer where he's better at politics so you know he was able to at least work
together with her and there's a lot of people who dislike her just because she
has dragons and it's kind of this irrational thing of like oh well none of
the other characters have dragons so we like them better or something silly like
that but there still is an underlying problem with that apartment it's a
problem of magic in general which I'll get into in a video later on in this
series but regardless of which side of whether you're a Daenerys fan or your
Daenerys hater she isn't necessarily the right fit
based on that thing that she had nothing to do with and that was that she was
born into that family Daario says to her you know you're not a ruler you're a
conqueror and that's not necessarily her fault but it still is important in her
story where she's most effective is when she uses that power and that's always in
the background of what she wants to do for it it's worth I think that she has
the right kind of ideas the kind of ideas that are inspiring you know
stopping slavery and making the world better in that way but having the
ability to really bring those things to task it causes a lot of backlash and
we've seen that whether it's in the books or on the show you know people
aren't going to just go along because they respect her power they're going to
fight back people are going to die and if we look at what happened with her in
the east and we apply that to Westeros is it really gonna be all that much
different there's a couple other problems that come up when we think
about her in the endgame and those are practical problems the first is related
to what we've just been talking about but she isn't actually the heir to the
throne after all and she is gonna find that out because she happens to be in a
relationship with the rightful heir. of course he is actually her nephew which
is another layer to that side of the problem but the second is that she is
likely pregnant with the actual heirs child these two problems are obviously
connected and well that makes things complicated luckily we have a big battle
coming up to help move things along the second of these two has been on my mind
related to that battle a lot lately actually because I haven't really heard
too many other people talking about that if Daenerys is pregnant with John's
child and they get through the whole problem of being related to each other
because of that fact what are the chances that everyone concerned feels
good about sending Daenerys out to fight on Drogon's back against the night King
then part of me thinks Danny needs to be pregnant because that makes it a lot
harder for John to break off their new romance we know that making another
bastard for the world would be difficult for a guy whose whole identity has been
defined by his bastard status assuming then that she is pregnant that this
brings them together despite being related by blood then wouldn't it also
disqualify her from going out to fight against the night King in maseri on like
wouldn't that really mess up the whole plan of fighting against the White
Walkers together maybe she's not pregnant
or maybe I'm under estimating the reality of the situation but it seems
like John wouldn't be okay with someone who is pregnant with his child risking
their life if there was any chance they could win without that happening and
again that is practical these are both practical considerations they'll
probably work themselves out in the normal course of the story I do think
the primary problems with her ending up on top at the end are her dragons and
her heritage in the same way that I don't think that the knight King can win
that he can use his magic his power to bring about the winner that never ends
it kind of doesn't make sense for Daenerys to be able to become the dragon
queen because where is the balance in all of that is it a story that just pits
two different kinds of magic and the best one wins it doesn't really seem
that way this has led to some people believing that she would turn mad Queen
or see what ended up being bad guy I don't think any of that's
going to happen personally when I think about these characters I think about
them through the lens of what I think I know about the author and the story so
far you've heard it a million times just like I have the human heart and conflict
george RR martin writes about the human heart in conflict with itself
tenaris has come a long way as a character who has more or less grown up
during the series she's made mistakes but they have mostly been related to not
thinking about what comes after she makes a move I think to showed the
picture as having learned from those mistakes when I rewatched the season
seven have a second guessing why she listened to Tyrion at all in relation to
attacking King's Landing there was a whole idea of creating the siege and
that would basically starve out the people like they with the people that
ones who paid for that you know the the small folk would be dying of starvation
but that seemed like a better idea at the time than just using the dragons to
kill Cersei of course Tyrion is right in some ways she doesn't want to be the
queen of ashes but you can see that this is a dragon problem you know what I mean
like the actual better thing to do would be just to go in and kill Cersei drone
style with the Dragons not starve out everybody else in trying to do it that
way but she was opening to listening to that because she didn't want to make
mistakes that she had already made in the past but yeah I mean I think that is
her conflict right she wants to do well she has more power than anybody should
have and like I said at the beginning it's all going to come down to the
decisions that she makes so are those decisions that she's set up to make
those hard decisions that will define her as a hero in this kind of story do
those involve her making the ultimate sacrifice does it mean that she goes
down fighting for the right side or for just cause or does it and her up as
being the literal hero who sits on the throne
and continues to rule from that place of power I think just with the normal
problems that she has to deal with like her conflict is that she wants to do
well but she has this shortcut to getting things that she wants it doesn't
make her bad it doesn't make her character bad but it makes things a
little bit too unbalanced so while I like the character I still just can't
imagine that at the end of the series that she would end up ruling as the
Dragon Queen there are a lot of ways that they could get around this however
if you watched my video about my death predictions you know that I think that
it's pretty likely that she's going to die and that's a problem as far as her
character is concerned as well because I think that her death would be the most
impactful I think that we would feel that the most of course we felt bad
whenever Viserion died and we would feel bad if the other two dragons died but
all of what she's gone through I just think that that would be crushing to see
her go down in the end and it would be really just good TV for better or worse
a good story but you know I don't know I made this series because it's hard to
figure out what's the best combination of all this is I find it surprising
sometimes whenever I'm on Twitter and I see people really hating on the
character and fall on that mindset of oh she didn't have dragons she wouldn't be
anybody kind of thing that it doesn't really fit into my calculation of how
the story goes I mean that's what she is she is the mother of dragons and the
conflict I see is that she wants to be a mother a mother character but she also
has the dragon side the ability to just crush her opponents if necessary and I
think that the ending will have a system in place or a ruler in place that won't
be able to do that so easily I wouldn't rule it out all the way I mean as we're
going to get into in the next couple of videos no one is a good fit and I talked
about this the last video in the series as well no
one's really a good fit so I'll be interested to see what you guys think
what are your problems with Daenerys how do you hope that her story ends how do
you see it ending let me know in the comments I'll try to get the next video
in this series out in the next couple days so please check back if you want to
follow along you know what to do. thanks for watching, I will talk to you
soon.