Sorry, But Daenerys Targaryen Was In The Right Here (Season Eight, Episode Five)

The last moment of Season 8 Episode 4 of Game Of Thrones was the moment you knew Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Breakfast of Champions was about to go No More Mister Nice Guy.

Can you blame her?

She’d lost the best part of her armed forces up north for little gratitude in return, everyone treating Jon Snow as the conquoring hero when in truth after another battle (one he clusterf**ked, in as usual) he was cowering behind a rock trying not to be turned into a giant popsicle by an undead Ice Dragon while she got to watch the only man who loved her unconditionally – Ser Jorah Mormont – die stab by stab, blow by blow, defending her to his last breath, after going through a pilgrim’s progress which would have broken most to get back to her.

It has finally dawned on her that a place of birth counts for nothing. She is a foreigner, an Essosian, with a foreign army none of whom share the same concepts of loyalty, trust and tradition as those in any part of Westeros. Her surviving Dothraki hordes concepts of war demand spoils afterwards – or they get upset. They’re nomadic like the Free Folk, so expecting them to settle down to the feudal system of Westeros is going to be difficult if not impossible. As for the Unsullied, her Pratorian Guard aren’t going to last forever, and what or who is going to be trained up to replace them?

To make matters worse, her boyfriend turned out to be her nephew (not even once or twice removed) and has a better claim to the Iron Throne. It doesn’t matter how much he protests he’s backing her to the last, it leaves her vulnerable so long as he lives to every plot and scheme to replace her when there’s a ready made replacement. The usually wise Varys demonstrated this – the one who took Tyrion across to Essos and sweet talked him into becoming her advisor.

Jon Snow-Aegon Targaryen has proven time after time a doughball with the tactical ability of a one move ahead chess player while Daenarys wins battles and conquors walled cities. Jon Snow has two victories to his name – Craster’s Keep and the attack on Castle Black by the Free Folk. Daenarys has meanwhile conquored most of Essos. The best claimant to a medieval throne is the one who can take it and hold it.

If Westerosians still believe having a cock overrides all other considerations (such as, um, conquering almost an entire continent with a ragtag army before you even land on Westeros) when it comes to the Iron Throne, it means anyone wanting to break the wheel is going to have to get as rough as the Romans or Normans did when invading Britain – to get the message across nice and clear that the only ‘old ways’ continuing are the ones she and only she agrees to.

From pragmatics to emotional reasons. She’s been made to feel further alone the last two episodes with the loss of another dragon in pointless fashion from sheer carelessness (the second time this happened) and worst of all losing her longest friend and confident Missandei, who died back in the very chains Daenarys swore to her and the Unsullied they’d never wear again.

When Missandei called out her last word – Dracarys! – she was calling to her Queen, to Grey Worm, to the Unsullied, to the Dothraki, to all of Daenarys followers to avenge her death which served no purpose other than a piece of evil petty spite by the evil petty Cersei Lannister towards her opponents, who like her bastard son Joffrey was only ever happy when making others unhappy simply to show she could. Honour alone demanded that Missandei’s memory be avenged.

(If that meant slaughtering everyone in King’s Landing … um, sorry but did anyone force them to go running through those gates inside to the ‘protection’ of the most hated person in Westeros? Meh, Darwin Award time here. Sympathy for innocent lives is one matter, sympathy for wilful stupidity of innocent lives is misplaced.)

There also lies another matter: on the battlements of King’s Landing did they demonstrate how they looked after their prisoners of war. Under such circumstances, why should they expect the same in return? As Daenarys said in a long overdue wake up call, when your opponents see your values as weaknesses to use against you, time to suspend them, no matter how much it hurts. It’s not a case of the ends justifies the means, simply the awful pragmatics of dealing with an opponent with no moral compass.

Last of all, there’s the matter of bloodlust in war. Game of Thrones is pretty accurate in depicting that civilians and prisoners of war alike are seldom treated well after a big battle, no matter how good the intent of commanders or the discipline of soldiers. The victorious may have won, but have lost good friends who will not be there to share a celebratory drink with them afterwards.

Soldiers in the field for too long go ‘kill simple’, and take little provocation to maltreat or butcher prisoners who minutes earlier they saw kill or hurt friends but now cannot touch because they’ve surrendered. War isn’t a game where you get to say ‘that’s it I’m not playing anymore’ once it’s not going your way without potential consequences.

Agincourt in 1415 saw some of the worst post-battle executions. The English army in the field hadn’t the numbers or wherewithal to keep prisoners save one or two knights worth high ransoms; feelings were high because the French had made it clear they would give no quarter towards longbow archers (which was regarded as an ‘atrocity’ weapon); it had been a particularly brutal encounter over three hours, during which King Henry V had received an axe blow to the head which only his helmet saved him from certain death; and despite their losses, the French were already regrouping with their reserves for another potential attack, whereupon no one could be spared to guard those captured. Slaughtering prisoners en masse in such a context was a matter of pragmatism, and there’s no more brutal pragmatism than in war.

Anyway, you don’t have to guard or feed a corpse, simply bury it, burn it, or if you’re Ramsey Snow Bolton feed it to your dogs.

With this in mind, go back now and imagine what it would be like to be Daenarys Targaryen on her last dragon Drogon on some King’s Landing roof. She offered a peaceful, bloodless surrender, the reply was the beheading of her last true friend.

She’s tired, upset, hasn’t eaten for days, and wants the war she’s feels she’s been fighting most of her adult life to be over one way or another, because no matter what happens she’s not going to be the conquering heroine, she’s not going to get a happy-ever-after, she’s realised the personal price for her victory was never going to be worth what it cost but only when it was too late.

Yet at enormous risk, she begins the attack on King’s Landing single handed, the very last action anyone expected her to do, least of all her opponents. She comes out of the sun and uses Drogon’s speed and turn to out-manouevre the entire Iron Fleet with their Scorpion ballistas which are slow to turn manually.

After barbequing the lot, she does the same to the ballistas on the King’s Landing battlements, again at enormous risk to herself and Drogon (who, you may remember came off the worst in a battle with Bronn before), smashes the expensively assembled Golden Company in two sweet passes, and for her final trick, blows open the gates to King’s Landing.

Did you read that last bit? Blows open the gates to King’s Landing. The bell had not rung when she did so, it took an awful lot of slaughter and mayhem before finally and very late in the day people began shouting out ring the bells – when it was already too late.

The moment those gates were blown, it was Game Over – Insert Coin.

Remember the Siege of Riverrun with a certain Jaime Lannister kicking out the Tullys without anyone being killed (except the Blackfish for being a silly old fool)?

Remember the warning Tyrion Lannister gave to the King’s Landing troops at the Battle of Blackwater about what would happen when Stannis’ army breached the gates?

‘This is your city Stannis means to sack. That’s your gate he’s ramming. If he gets in, it will be your houses he burns, your gold he steals, your women he will rape.’

This is in order to reduce lives lost by defenders holding out against an army they cannot realistically hold out against or see the siege lifted.

A famous example was after the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn where the English garrison refused to allow the fleeing King Edward II to enter Stirling Castle, since the terms of a truce on the siege upon it was that it would be relieved by an army within a hundred days, or they would surrender. That relieving army had been vanquished. The castellan Philip de Mowbray and his men were outlawed by Edward II for doing so, with the result when the castle was surrendered to the Scots as promised, King Robert the Bruce granted those in the castle land elsewhere and the right to live in Scotland the rest of their lives in peace as honour demanded.

(Edward II’s lack of proper chivalric conduct contributed to his deposition and regicide at the hands of his nobles, but that’s another topic)

Another was the siege of Skipton Castle, where Cromwell’s forces did not realise they were trying to blow up walls thirty five feet thick. After three years and the Royalist forces beaten everywhere else in England, they only got the castle to agree surrender terms in December 1645 when the defenders had run out of lead from the roof to make shot for the matchlock guns Lady Alice Clifford loaded herself for her troops. They were allowed to leave with their banners raised and without being made prisoners, since Cromwell did not wish to continue a costly siege as part of a war Parliament had already won.

Return now to Daenarys Targaryen and Drogon on that King’s Landing roof. She’s won, finally won the whole damn War of the Five Kingdoms, but only after more needless bloody slaughter, and a Lannister Army which only dropped their weapons and rung the bells when it was clear the battle was lost. A Lannister Army which had exterminated the Tyrrells without mercy, as they had House Reyne. Only a fool would show mercy to an army which marched to ‘The Rains of Castarmere’?

In the position she was in, with the emotions going through her at that time, to say nothing of her own armed forces with their own losses, could you really blame them for deciding, at that moment in time, wiping King’s Landing off the face of the earth (or at least a sizeable chunk) was right and just?

Those tell tale green plumes of wildfire going up at various points also made it looks pretty clear Cersei was preparing to blow up the city if it looked like Daenarys was about to win it anyway (same as Daenarys’ dad planned to do) – or as a booby trap once her army was encamped inside in an attempt to turn the tide. Cersei’s inner circle had no qualms about blowing up the King’s Landing Sept to kill all her enemies and ‘meh! whatever!’ if a few peasants got killed in the process. Which again made for a terrible pragmatism to burning the whole place down to protect her own forces.

Brutal, morally repugnent, but in terms of military and political strategy, in retrospect Daenarys made a fair judgement call , no matter what Jon Snow and his goldfish gob thinks.

Besides, didn’t she owe The Lord of Light some recompense for surviving two episodes back by making King’s Landing go up a treat?