Winning the Game of Thrones: The Host of Characters and their Agendas (25 page)

Daenerys is famous for protecting the weak, whether it is the Lamb Men in the first book or the mute slaughtered children of the third, all pointing voicelessly at the city Daenerys conquers in retribution. “Before long, she was actively inciting change in the hyper-masculine Dothraki culture – particularly when she appealed to her husband to stop the systematic rape of captured women,” one critic notes.
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However, intervening often makes things worse for people in the long run, as with the girl Eroeh.

Daenerys thus learns to resist pity, allowing her brother’s execution even as he calls for her aid. Though tempted by Drogo and her child awaiting her in the House of the Undying, she leaves them behind. She takes pity on diseased people of Astapor, but won’t allow them to endanger the people of Meereen. Daenerys even chains up her dragons when one does the unspeakable.

On many occasions, she punishes those who betray her and those too dangerous to live, though she tries to spare the innocent, sometimes to her regret. Martin adds, “Daenerys is still very young. She has lessons to learn. That [conquering a city and killing hundreds of slaveowners] was one of them. It is not as easy to do good as it might seem, no matter how noble your intentions.”
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A similar test may await her at the series’ climax.

Death and Rebirth

The hero and heroine always descend into death only to be reborn more powerfully – as the Ironborn would say, “
What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.” In fact, the Ironborn embody this journey, deliberately drowning themselves literally or symbolically to enter new stages of life. While this is a metaphor for undergoing trauma or despair and growing stronger from the challenge, fantasy tends to address this literally. Daenerys
 
faces death in the first book when Drogo
 
is fatally wounded: She loses her child, she enters the tent of death, she nearly dies herself, and she finally gains the wisdom and pitilessness to slay the shell that remains of Drogo. “
If her treatment of the witch Mirri Maz Duur in last night’s episode is any indication, Daenerys has no mercy left in her,” one reviewer comments.
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Indeed, she lashes the Maegi
 
to the fire
 
and enters it herself, vanishing into the flames
 
all night and burning down to her core – clothing, hair, all that concealed her is burned away, and a new Daenerys
 
rises from the ashes, no longer the marriage
 
pawn and subservient wife
 
of Drogo, but a leader of men and the Mother of Dragons. On the threshold of death, she calls herself Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen for the first time—she’s growing from khaleesi to conquering queen.

Coming out of the fire naked, with her three young dragons, it was as if she’d been reborn. Though Daenerys loved Khal Drogo, she doesn’t need him anymore; she can raise a khalasar on her own. If Daenerys is truly “the dragon,” the hatched eggs are almost a surrogate for the son she lost in childbirth. And with her new allies, she’s poised to take back the iron throne.”
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The comet, an ancient symbol for dragons, blazes overhead.
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The egg that was Daenerys
 
has broken open at last.

      
As Melisandre
 
the Red Priestess foretells:

When the stars bleed and the cold winds blow, a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. That sword will be Lightbringer. The one who draws it will be Azor Ahai…When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

Dragonstone, Daenerys’s birthplace, is covered in volcanoes and surrounded by sea. Amidst tears and a funeral pyre, Daenerys is reborn under the red comet as a figure of prophecy and magic, dragons woken from their petrified eggs.

The first book of a series often covers the entire mythic journey, as does the series as a whole, serving to entice readers early and keep them present for the entire epic.
Star Wars
 
and
Harry Potter
,
among others, follow this pattern. Thus, while Daenerys
 
dies and is reborn in the first book, this almost certainly echoes a more dramatic death
 
and rebirth at series’ climax.

In fact, just as the first book revealed her dazzling destiny and hidden powers, another revelation may appear in the final book. Through their Targaryen bloodline, Rhaegar and Daenerys have prophetic dreams like the Starks. Also like the Starks, Daenerys raises her special pets, sigils of her house, from babies so that they trust and defend only her. It’s possible that the Targaryens, like the Starks, have the power of animal transformation and Daenerys will ride in the mind of her dragons, as Bran does with Summer. Her ancestor Brynden “Bloodraven” Rivers is a warg with no Stark or Northern blood at all.

Aerion the Monstrous dreamed he could transform into a dragon so he drank wildfire and died, while Mad King Aerys believed if he burned his city with wildfire he would rise from the ashes, a dragon. His son
prince Viserys, like his ancestor Prince Aerion from “The Hedge Knight,” threatens that Daenerys will “wake the dragon.” All four claim that they
are
the dragon—it seems likely their prophetic dreams are feeding their madness with a grain of truth. Perhaps it is Daenerys who will wake the dragon someday.

The Prophecy

In the House of the Undying, Daenerys receives a prophecy detailing the path her story will take (Martin noted at Worldcon 2012 that this was dropped from the show as producers were unclear – unlike Martin – in how this would be fulfilled and there are no guarantees the show will last until the story’s end.)

three heads has the dragon . . .
. . . three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love . . .
. . . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . .
. . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . . (
II.515)

Some of the prophecy has been made clear: “The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah [in season one] the second,” Daenerys thinks (V.38). More of the prophecy is guessable. These three heads represent a partnership – three dragonriders to share the three magical mounts. As Daenerys notes:

The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon [the Conqueror] and his sisters. (III:981)

As for the three mounts, the first is Daenerys’s beloved Silver, which she rode on their wedding night as she and Drogo galloped their steeds into the wilderness. The “dread” is the mightiest of her three dragons, Drogon. The fire of death will accompany it in battle or in bringing the undead Others to a true death. It’s fitting that love ends each of these patterns, since if Daenerys is the foretold prince, she will need to follow in the footsteps of Azor Ahai, the first hero to forge Lightbringer:

To fight the darkness, Azor Ahai needed to forge a hero’s sword. He labored for thirty days and thirty nights until it was done. However, when he went to temper it in water, the sword broke. He was not one to give up easily, so he started over. The second time he took fifty days and fifty nights to make the sword, even better than the first. To temper it this time, he captured a lion and drove the sword into its heart, but once more the steel shattered. The third time, with a heavy heart, for he knew beforehand what he must do to finish the blade, he worked for a hundred days and nights until it was finished. This time, he called for his wife, Nissa Nissa, and asked her to bare her breast. He drove his sword into her breast, her soul combining with the steel of the sword, creating Lightbringer. (II:115)

The fire Daenerys must light to love may be this forging, or this sacrifice may be the punishment for the love that betrays her.

Enemies and Mission

The adversary on the heroine’s journey is the evil stepmother who slays the innocent, like Mirri Maz Duur. However, the heroine often faces the male heads of power as well. Daenerys defeats the patriarchy as old men in charge of the old way – cruelty and exploitation of the innocent. First are her brother and Drogo, though she only watches the former’s death, and the latter is a mercy-killing.

Following this, she meets Pyat Pree in the House of the Undying – an entire edifice devoted to avoiding the cycle of life. There the withered Undying Ones rule, with violet skin from drinking shade-of-the-evening, preserved and unnatural. On the show, Pree’s deep-set eyes make his face resemble a skull. They kidnap Daenerys’s “children,” and Daenerys’s dragon “child” kills them in retribution.

After, Daenerys visits cities of Slaver’s Bay, beginning with Astapor, to purchase Unsullied. When she discovers their masters make them murder babies, she ends the practice forever, killing all the “Good Masters” and freeing all the slaves of the city. She commands the Unsullied to kill the leaders and soldiers but “harm no child under twelve and strike the chains off every slave you see” (III:381). In Meereen, she kills one aristocrat for every slave child those in charge have murdered. Her enemies are the murderers of the city, even as she rules fairly and destroys the old order.

Daenerys may go on to slay more patriarchs of the old world and slavery, murderers and exploiters of the weak, but she must advance to her ultimate adversary. The heroine’s greatest enemy is the destroyer of life – sometimes as a mysterious force, neither male or female, sometimes as the dark matriarch, slayer of children. The former is clearly the evil god bringing unending winter on the world, while the evil mother has more possibilities. Melisandre, birther of shadows, slayer of the life-loving Renly, is one such figure. Another is Lady Stoneheart, once a mother, who now preys on the innocent. 

The ultimate evil mother of Westeros is Cersei. “From what I saw of Joffrey, you are as unfit a mother as you are a ruler,” her uncle says scathingly (IV:114). Her producing the twisted Joffrey is only surpassed by the treacherous adultery that throws the succession into doubt and shatters the realm. She uses people, from her young cousin Lancel to Ros, whom she beats. Consumed by a prophecy that “Queen you shall be . . . until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear” (IV:540), she preys on the future queens of Westeros. Daenerys may be this young queen to cast her down.

This is Daenerys’s battle in the physical world, while her more spiritual battle against the Others will guide her to light her third fire for love and pat the ultimate price for peace and salvation.

End

The heroine’s journey usually ends with her triumphing over the destroyer of the innocent and becoming a mother, giving birth to our nurturing the next generation.

Can Daenerys have another child? Or is her role as Mother to the Slaves sufficient? If she is the last Targaryen, her line and dragon power may die with her. (Indeed, the children of the forest and giants are fading, so this may be magic’s last gasp. Or she may restore magic and bring about a new dynasty).

“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he [Drogo] will return, and not before” (I:635). All this seems a highly-unlikely synonym for “never.” Martin comments, with regards to Daenerys’s fertility, “I am sure Daenerys would like to know. Prophecy can be a tricky business.”
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This reference to prophecy suggests these words may come true in a way. From the “sun,” a child of Martell, to the Dothraki sea beginning to dry and pyramids turning to ash in
A Dance with Dragons
, these conditions can be seen in the khaleesi’s story arc.

The history of her relationships suggest love awaits her – after Drogo, the lord of a patriarchal, chauvinist culture who trades for her like a slave, Daenerys experiments with an untrustworthy lover, a political marriage, and occasional dalliances with her handmaid, whose kisses “tasted of duty” (II:993). The one relationship she hasn’t experienced is a loving partnership of equals. Many fans believe Daenerys’s vision of the blue rose on the ice wall with a pleasant scent means she’ll fall for Jon, another child of destiny about her age and the possible co-heir to her Targaryen legacy. Other heroes, from Greyjoys to Targaryen claimants, seek her hand as well.