Daenerys

This post is the second half of a diptych and contains Game of Thrones spoilers.

I’ve been reading A Dance with Dragons (Part 5), and experienced a sinking feeling when reading about Daenerys. The young dragon queen started out so well; she conquered three cities in a row (Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen) to liberate all the slaves. The end of human trafficking in Slaver’s Bay, one would think. But old habits are hard to break.

In Part 5, Daenerys is bogged down in Meereen. Astapor is destroyed and Meereen is besieged by Yunkai, where the slave trade has resumed.

Dangers are inside and outside. Innocents are killed every day within the city walls. Plague-ridden refugees from Astapor camp in the fields, while the mercenary armies of Yunkai march on the city. Food is growing scarce. Daenerys has grown afraid of her own dragons, since one of them killed a child; two are chained, while the third roams wild.

Surrounded by death and the prospect of death, Daenerys wants peace. To accomplish that, she must marry a nobleman from Meereen, Hizdahr, who can stop the killing inside the walls, appease the nobility, and make peace with Yunkai. But peace means compromise. The slave trade in Yunkai is no longer to be opposed, and the fighting pits in Meereen are to be reopened for gladiator shows.

After the glorious conquests of pure idealism with dragons, this is rather depressing.

Daenerys accepts. She marries. Her new husband takes her to preside with him at a show in the fighting pits. On the way they come across a man who has collapsed while carrying someone in a seat:

“Those bearers were slaves before I came. I made them free. Yet that palanquin is no lighter.” “True,” said Hizdahr, “but those men are paid to bear its weight now. Before you came, that man who fell would have an overseer standing over him, stripping the skin off his back with a whip. Instead he is being given aid.”

It was true. A Brazen Beast in a boar mask had offered the litter bearer a skin of water. “I suppose I must be thankful for small victories,” the queen said.

In Daznak’s Pit, a young man dies:

“A boy,” said Dany. “He was only a boy.”

“Six-and-ten,” Hizdahr insisted. “A man grown, who freely chose to risk his life for gold and glory. No children die today in Daznak’s, as my gentle queen in her wisdom has decreed.” Another small victory. Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad.

How can you be a proper queen-liberator in the face of all the obstacles and resistances the world presents? How do you keep the momentum of your charge and care for all your charges at the same time? How do you avoid the poison of the choice for the lesser evil?

At this point nothing serves except the draco ex machina. The wild dragon returns and lands in the Pit. Daenerys fights him, tames him, rides him into the sky. And I heave a sigh of relief. The problems are far from over, but at least the queen has found her element again.

Well, dear readers, that was it for today. I hope you are savouring the time between Ascension and Pentecost.