Rise of The Mad Queen: An Analysis of the Growth of Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen

"When a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin and all the world holds its breath."

Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons. Hitherto everyone's favorite queen from across the narrow sea. Until last week when she suddenly turned and, in a fit of cold rage, burned down the whole of King's Landing, killing thousands of people in the process. But what happened to Daenerys? What led the once young, timid, caring girl here?

When we first meet Daenerys, she is a young, timid girl being literally peddled off as a bride to Khal Drogo by her abusive brother, Viserys. At this point she has nothing and knows nothing of her own power. She is the perfect timid bride, and her new husband doesn't seem to care much for her. Yet. However, this changes quickly. Marriage to a Khal has made her a khaleesi, and though the Dothraki don't place much value on their women, fear of their Khal, the most powerful Khal amongst all the Dothraki Khalasars, gives her her first taste of power... and she is a natural at it. Slowly, her timidity evaporates until finally, she is able to stand up to her brother. The end of this first iteration of Daenerys is seen when, mad and drunk and desperate to get the army he so desires, Viserys gate crashes a ceremony he is not supposed to attend and is killed for it right then and there, while she watches coldly, with a crown of molten gold. Here, we get the first taste of Daenerys' innate coldness.

"He was no Dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon."

However, growing up under such abuse has given her a sense of compassion and this shows in the way she treats her slaves. They teach her things happily and before long, she becomes not only fluent in the Dothraki tongue, but in their traditions as well. She and her husband grow madly in love, something Viserys utterly did not expect, and soon she gets pregnant with his child. To ensure the child is strong, she is required to do something almost unspeakable: eat the raw, bloody heart of a horse. But Daenerys is not the weak foreigner everyone envisions. Not anymore. She is determined not only to please her husband, but to prove her strength. And here we get our first true look at that unfliching strength when she devours the heart whole in front of the entire Khalasar and her child is declared the 'Stallion who will mount the world' from Dothraki prophesy. The Stallion, they say, will conquer rhe entire world and bring it under one khalasar.

Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name. The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who mounts the world." -the prophesy.

For this act, the respect and power afforded her by the Khalasar increases.

The first true test of her power comes when she challenges Pono, one of Drogo's bloodriders after the Khalasar sacks a Lazharene village and he attempts to force himself on one of the women the Dothraki way. Pono steps off and the woman, a mage, enters her debt. Unfortunately, in the same battle, Drogo is fatally injured. He attempts to go on, but when he falls off his horse, the sign that a Khal is no longer fit for that position, Dany takes charge and orders the entire Khalasar to stop and make camp, wven though they were not yet on suitable land. Drogo gets worse and passes, but the mage whom Dany saved offers to help using forbidden blood magic. Though all her slaves and protectors advise her no to, she goes ahead. And now she experiences for the first time, the deceitfulness of human nature.

The mage takes her unborn baby's life for Drogo's, but the latter comes back without any will or sense of his own. Drogo's bloodriders meanwhile divide the Khalasar and ride off with most, leaving the extremely few who decide to stay with their Khaleesi. They have little food and little water. This incident hardens Dany's heart. For the first time, she sentences someone to death by fire, kills a man--her own husband--in mercy, and accepts that she will never have children. But then, led by instinct, she steps into the flames with her three fossilized Dragon eggs, emerging unscathed and with three newborn Dragons... Her children.

Now the leader of a resourceless khalasar, Dany takes her people across a treacherous landscape in search of a place to sustain them. They come upon Qarth, where word of her Dragons have reached and they are granted entry and hospitality. In Qarth, she meets three persons who influence her further. The rich merchant, Xaro, who wants to marry her dor her Dragons, Quaithe, who prophesies mre betrayals in her path, and the Undying, who attempt to trap her by magic and steal her dragons from her. In the house of the undying, she comes into more visions, the most important being that of the throne room of Kings Landing in ruins. To escape, she has to discover even more of her own magical control over and connection with the dragons which proves stronger than the Undyings' dark magic and results in her burning their sacred house down. No longer so naïve, she marches down and confronts Xaro and her slave/friend Doreah who both betrayed her and led to her dragon's capture. Xaro's riches, it turns out, is superficial, and she throws them into his empty vault and locks it forever. Her dothraki sack the city and take food, drink and gold, and now enriched, march on.

At this point, Dany has become a true and powerful political leader. She has faced betrayals more than once and no longer hesitates to sentence to death, she has killed and watched others die, and now, she will never again beg for resources, but use her power to get whatever she wants for her people who love her, and to take back her father's Iron throne in Westerosi.

I am Daenerys Targaryen, and I will take what is mine with fire and blood

It is important to note here that Dany herself had never been interested in the Iron Throne. Being born on the way out of Westerosi, she has never seen the land and all she knows comes from her brother's stories and obsessions. After she loses her husband (who was supposed to help them with an army to overthrow whoever was on the throne) though, she has only Westerosi as an aim and that is where she decides she will go, to complete the mission, fulfill her destiny and punish the 'usurpers'.

It is in this state she meets Ser Barristan who, like Ser Jorah her protector from the time of her marriage, had been a knight of Westerosi. With Ser Barristan and Ser Jorah by her side, she marches to Astapor to purchase an army. But the sight she meets appalls her. In Astapor (which is a part of slavers bay), slaves are treated horribly while the wise masters gorge themselves and lord themselves over the slaves. This touches her deeply, being someone who had gone through such abuse. However she does nothing and goes ahead to haggle for the army called the Unsullied, the most disciplined arny in the world... But also made up of slaves. Here, Daenerys shows her true cunning, pretending not to understand a word of High Valyrian while the owner insulted her openly and his slave translator, a young gentle girl called Missandei, struggled to euphemisize his words. And then, she offered him one of her dragons for his entire army. When he agrees though and passes ownership of the Unsullied to her, she reveals her true plan, ordering Drgon to burn the man and the unsullied to kill all the masters in Astapor and free the slaves. The girl Missandei becomes one of her servants and her official translator, and later a close friend while she leaves the slaves to appoint new rulers over themselves. This earns her another title: 'Breaker of Chains'...

At this point, Daenerys has becone a true conqueror, albeit a just one, willing to use violence but only to serve justice and help her people. At the same time, with Ser Barristan at her side, she begins to learn the truth about her family and why her father was ousted. She learns of the Mad King Aerys and the fall of the dragons. However, this does not change her mind about the usurpers or make her alter her course of action. The idea of the Iron Throne is too deeply rooted in her, especially when she learns Rhaegar was good, although he had raped and abducted a woman. Rather, with the help of Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan, she decides not to be her father, but more like her brother.

Now she has an army large enough to begin her conquest with. But she doesn't have ships, so she heads to Meereen...

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'Rise of the Mad Queen' continues in my next post. Remember to leave your comments below!

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