#and i know that in my tags i come off v. caustic towards her and again i make no apologies for that

[beavesaintmarie]

okay i usually don’t meta outside of my tags lol but i felt like with all this new GOT content we’ve been getting lately i should probably layout how i feel about dark d/any and mad queen d/any theories and what they mean to me. cause i think the two are often conflated and mischaracterized and i just wanna set the record straight on my end. 

now if you know me, you know that i am no d/any fan. by even the slightest measure. and i make no apologies for that. but i do not believe that d/any is going mad in S8. 

i think d/any has become relatively paranoid in recent years but i also think that is to be expected given her background of living under the constant threat of assassination when she was younger. 

but i do think d/any absolutely has the capacity to allow her more darker impulses to rule her emotions and therefore dictate her behavior and choices in s8. 

cause let’s be honest here, d/any’s ambitions for the IT have completely defined who she is as a character these past 8 years. her dragons, her mission to occupy that seat of power and her belief that she is the rightful heir to the throne is her identity.

j/on now becoming a real threat to that; to her identity, will cause issues between them. i think it is naive to believe that on with a series such as this, that the biggest bombshell, 20 years in the making; will have little to no impact on all of these characters’ lives. it’s been carefully constructed to have maximum impact. it’s a tectonic shift in the lives of not only j/on and d/any but also their allies, the starks and the rest of westeros.

and it can’t be solved easily with the option of marriage because of one of these characters would have to agree to take the role of consort, therefore having their power diminished by the other to some degree because at the end of the day whoever is the sovereign is the one with whom the real power rests. 

there’s no real concept of co-rulers in westeros. people often cite alysanne and jaeherys but there are instances in F&B where it was clear that no matter the great influence alysanne had over jaeherys; the final word was ultimately his. meaning that if they came to a stalemate, he was the tie breaker. 

and j/on agreeing to be consort even though he is true heir doesn’t work once you look at the logistics of his own popularity throughout the realm. he’s not just any ole johnny appleseed. 

he’s been hailed as a war hero, people know that he was raised by the most honorable man in westeros and some even consider him to be some kind of god for having literally died and come back to life again. all of that coupled with the blood-claim makes him the king westeros has been wanting and needing for a long time.

and it is of little matter, whether or not, he wants the throne. we’ve seen time and time and time again j/on be put up for jobs he didn’t want but ultimately took on because it was the right thing to do or because it enabled him to get things done that were for the good of the realm. so if he survives and if westeros or what’s left of westeros wants him to lead them, then as history has shown....he will ultimately do so. 

and frankly, d/any’s introduction to westeros has been a VERY rocky one. i won’t go into all of the details but from s7, we can easily infer that the people might not view her as quite the savior she was viewed as in essos.

even with the upcoming WFTD, where most are hoping she proves her worth as a savior of the realm; one could make the argument that if she never had her sights set on conquering westeros and never brought her dragons there with the express intentions of doing so, the NK would have never gotten his hands on a dragon; therefore making his threat to the realm an even more devastating reality than it already was because now he too has nuclear fire power. 

and it also bears noting that she is one of the very few characters left who still has the same primary ambition she’s had since season one and that is why her story ending in her getting the thing she’s always wanted flies in the face of the very structure of this series.

none of these characters get exactly what they want or they do but in a totally different way than they were expecting which......is sometimes worse than not getting it at all. 

every single person who has actively pursued the IT or even pursued association to the IT has failed in that regard and have been punished by the narrative. cersei being the last person left to be punished. 

and d/any is no different in that regard. she is pursuing a representation of absolute power that at this point has become a proverbial relic of past seasons whereas most of the characters have moved on and have evolved past their season one hopes and dreams. 

which is why i think that once d/any is faced with the many realities she will have to face when she hits WF, it’s going to be very hard for her to process the concept that everything she has worked for for most of her life might be taken from her on a technicality. and i can hear the chorus of ‘well j/on and d/any love each other so they will decide to rule together’ but as i mentioned before, as nice as a notion as that may seem; no matter what: there is only ONE seat of power. 

d/any would have to sit next to j/on the rest of her life with the knowledge that he’s getting something she’s dedicated her life to even though he’s never wanted it and from that grows resentment and bitterness. so i don’t see how that makes for a happy marriage in the long run. 

and if j/on has to sit next to her for the rest of his life, he’d be a living reminder that she is effectively a usurper. and is occupying a seat that is not hers by right. that was given to her by j/on just cause he didn’t want the job. 

...and let’s not forget the concept of a ‘usurper’ is something she has bore nothing but pure contempt for for years. 

so no matter how you slice it, d/any wanting to take what she deems to be hers with fire and blood is the very essence who of she is. she has reiterated it many times on the show. she’s done good things in the pursuit of power yes but at the end of the day, it always comes back to that mission of sitting the IT for her. 

and that notion is at the root of the dark d/any theory. a theory that posits a d/any throwing away any pretenses of this being a noble mission and pursuing the IT with an even deeper passion because she wants it, because she has always wanted it, because it is the crux of her identity, because she believes herself to be only person who truly deserves it because no one has given as much to the cause as she has and therefore whoever stands in her way is a threat. 

right now she believes herself to be the rightful heir but once it’s been made clear to her that she isn’t, will she just abandon everything she’s worked for? her years in essos building her armies, the years waiting for her dragons to grow and most of her youth dedicated to this one cause.... 

will she be satisfied with divesting herself of the identity of being the last dragon? is she even capable of taking on a new identity now when this one has been so heavily entrenched in who she is?

will she be satisfied with having to share power she’s never had any intentions of sharing? 

should she be satisfied? 

and if you’re a d/any fan........would you want her to be satisfied giving all that up? 

lol i’m not a fan of hers and even i feel a way about the idea of her giving all that up...