The Betrayal of Daenery's Targaryen

Tyrion Lannister, The Game of Thrones' word master gives the most compelling line of the whole series:

“There is nothing in the world more powerful than a good story”

Let that resonate for a moment –

And now think how the show writers knifed the glorious Daenery’s story for a cheap narrative plot twist.

She is positioned as a powerful phoenix who rises from the ashes, mother of dragons, freer of slaves, anti-tyrant-woman-on-a-mission. And she’s not alone; thousands of true believers share her vision and are prepared to fight and die for her brave new world. But suddenly, in a massive U-turn ,she stopped being a powerful woman, queen, visionary and became a plot device to move off the screen as quickly as possible.

We might have forgiven this brutal assassination if Daeny’s emotional arc had been set up as more than a bit of incidental foreshadowing. Foreshadowing in a couple of previous episodes is not character development. So she’s conveniently knifed to get her off the stage to make way for the big resolution, in which she is ironically sacrificed to achieve the vey ideals she embodied up until this point.

After all the promise it is the old trick played on women in the history of story telling. Like all the raped, strangled and murdered corpses before Daeny is reduced to a plot device, a necessary victim to make way for the triumph of men.

Having said that, still I loved the ending which was deeply narratively satisfying. I felt like I was in the presence of great story masters. It’s just the road to get there was less satisfying.

And it's nice that Sansa Stark of the North, the other powerful ‘good’ woman ruler does get to retain the authenticity of her narrative arc, the satisfying culmination of the promise of her emotional development.

But that’s no excuse for narratively knifing Dani. There should be room for one than one authentic powerful woman.

Daenerys Stormborn deserves more.

#reviews #warriors #gettingwomenwrong

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