#slaver's bay

[thewatcher0nthewall]

Stormborn

[thequeenofsastiel]

Man, fuck all these GoT prequels, I want a damn sequel. I want to see how big Drogon gets. I want to know what he did with Daenerys' corpse. If he's capable of changing his sex so that he can lay eggs, and spawns a new age of dragons. I want to know if slavery returns to the Bay of Dragons once the former slavers get wind of the fact that they'll no longer have to fear Daenerys coming after them.

I want to know if the cold in the north diminishes to the point where there's no more snow and everything is green like it was when the Children created White Walkers in the first place. Are cold and snow purely a byproduct of the creation of the White Walkers, and only exist in Westeros? After all, we didn't see anywhere in Essos have anything resembling cold weather. True, nowhere in Essos is as far north as the North in Westeros, but even Braavos, which geographically is about as far north as the boundary between North and South in Westeros, didn't seem to be cold at all by the time Arya left, even though it was snowing in the Vale over two years earlier. Will seasons go away? Will it just be that the cold goes away in places where there is cold, or will the South become uninhabitable because of an increase in heat? Putting that aside, if the cold does go away, how does that affect the population of the North? Will there be a massive influx in population? How will the loss of the cold affect Jon and the Free Folk? After all, Tormund didn't like that it was even slightly less cold south of the wall.

What ended up happening to the Dothraki? Did they stay in Westeros? And if they did, did they have the same attitude about roaming from place to place, sacking cities? How did the population of Westeros deal with that? And what did Arya discover to be west of Westeros?

Idk, I just feel like a continuation of GoT(with better showrunners) would be so interesting.

[beyondmistland]

Could the Wise Masters still be made to work while laughably incompetent? Like could there be more emphasis on how other cities are aiding Slavers Bay rather then it being implausible that people like the Little Pigeon and the Clanker Lords could really pose a proper threat?

@warsofasoiaf had one solution I really like, which would be to make their incompetence a direct result of Dany setting them against each other by using her knowledge of their culture and history. As for the solution you're proposing, I honestly don't think it passes muster. The other members of the slavers' alliance aren't proper antagonists, just background detail. If you wanted to make the primary antagonist, say, New Ghis, you'd have to rewrite Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen as being dependencies. However, that still wouldn't explain the fact GRRM's (insulting) equivalent of the Mamluks and Janissaries fight like Greek hoplites when Westeros and the Free Cities are firmly in the Late Middle Ages/early Renaissance (sans gunpowder).

Thanks for the question, @cynicalclassicist

[rosaluxembae]

Daenerys' problem in Slaver's Bay isn't that she compromises too much or too little. It's that she has no real social base, no vision for the future, and no plan of how to effect change.

That doesn't change and it can't change unless a) she fully embraces feudalism with all its oppression, which would be very unsatisfing for the reader and also go against her idealism or b) she abandons her legitimist quest for monarchal rule, which is the core of her identity and life mission and would probably be pretty ahistorical

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#and not only 'what would they do' but how would they handle how actually genuinely difficult it is when trying to prevent mass loss of life #and while being like. 16 years old #because yeah sure fantasy magic solution just unleash the dragons and be super cool and badass except #do they have plans in place for the infrastructure and the crops that could be destroyed. #do they know what the punishment will be for slavers that will prevent further crimes but not inspire further insurrection. #do they know what they'll do with the slaves who don't want freedom. #like there is so much leftover after 'beat the bad guys who are doing bad things' and it's not glamorous or fun#the plot in meereen asks the question what IS peace with people who fundamentally refuse to accept others' humanity #because sometimes coming in with your chosen one status and 3 dragons is not enough to undo the racism and violence intrinsic in the system #sometimes you try to make concessions to prevent bloodshed and end up with the same regime all over again #but then when you choose to burn the system down. you do actually need a plan in place that will keep it from resurfacing #and you will not magically feel no guilt over the death and destruction wrought along the way because you're a human being (via @hylialeia)

the thing about dany youve got to understand to get what meereen and astapor and yunkai and her entire time in slavers bay is about is that she is fundamentally an answer to fantasy fiction that introduces slavery as a plot device but refuses to meaningfully engage with it in any way. what if the the self-inserty magical protagonist saw that the world they lived in was unjust and that people were being sold in markets and that everyone around her told them that was just how the world worked? what would they do? well im not sure but let me tell you what my buddy dany did

[sare11aa11eras]

Daenerys Missandei Irri and Jhiqui!

[Image Description: A full-length drawing of four people, Daenerys Targaryen, Missandei of Naath, and Dany’s two Dothraki handmaidens, Irri and Jhiqui. They are standing progressively farther back from the viewer. Daenerys stands in profile, walking forward, talking to someone. Missandei and Jhiqui have their bodies facing the viewer, Irri is angled slightly to the right side of the drawing. Missandei, Irri, and Jhiqui look at Daenerys. They are standing on a red carpet against a blank background.

Daenerys wears a purple tokar with a gold fringe. She wears her dragon crown, a gold bangle, rings of various materials, a gold vambrace with purple stones, gold earrings with purple stones, and an elaborate necklace with purple stones. From the necklace and the crown dangle long strings of red and black beads. She wears an anklet and leather sandals. A few golden bells can be seen in her hair.

Missandei wears a knee-length light orchid-color dress. It hangs loosely around her. Her dress is trimmed at the hem with purple and blue beads of different lengths. She wears sandals similar to Dany’s. She wears a large V-shaped piece of jewelry similar to a collar around her neck and over her collarbones. It is gold, mostly decorated with purple stones, and a blue butterfly design. Missandei wears earrings with blue butterflies and purple, pink, and yellow stones. She wears a bracelet of alternating pink and yellow stones. Her hair is in braids to pull it away from her face, but is otherwise in an Afro-type style. She holds a tablet and writing utensil in front of her chest. She has an interested expression as she looks up from her writing towards Dany.

Irri wears Dothraki clothes. She wears long trousers, which are blue fabric with a fringed panel of leather along the inside of her leg and groin. She wears leather boots with green, white, and purple painted swirls on them. She wears a dark leather belt around her middle and a belt of gold discs over it. The central gold disc has a green stone. More blue fabric wraps around her chest, either pleated or wrappings. Over this is a painted vest, primarily decorated with blue, green, and white. On her upper arm is an armband with an illustration of a horse galloping in grass. She has leather wrappings on her wrist and opposite upper arm. She wears one visible ring. She wears a leather necklace with a triangular gold pendant and gold triangular earrings. Her hair is in at least three braids, tied off with gold beads. She has bangs. She wears a woven headband of green and blue, with jade stones. Her face is neutral.

Jhiqui also wears Dothraki clothes, although hers do not look practical for riding. Her clothes are primarily fabric of a deep raspberry color. Along the outer side of her trousers is a stripe of leather, fringed at the end, painted with pink and pale purple flowers. On her chest she wears a beaded brooch shaped like a flower, with pink petals and a green “stem”. She wears slippers, in the same material as the rest of her outfit, with a decoration of pink flowers on yellow around the heel. Her vest is laced closed over a green and gold under layer. Her vest is trimmed at the hem with gold discs. Around her middle is a dark leather belt, with a thin belt of gold discs over it. She wears a leather necklace similar to Irri’s, with a circular gold pendant with a garnet stone. Her earrings match this pendant. She wears two rings. Her arm band is gold and garnet. Her hair is worn similarly to Irri’s. She has a bracelet with chips of green jade set in silver on a leather cuff. She has a nose piercing with a gold chain that leads to her earring. She appears to be wearing rouge. She looks mildly interested in whatever is happening. End ID./]

[sunnysideaeggs]

If Rhaenyra married Daemon while Laenor was still alive and gave birth to Aegon and viserys, wouldn’t they be bastards too?

And if they are then Daenerys’ line shouldn’t technically inherit the throne. The next legitimate heir would have been Rhaena’s or Baela’s children but nobody knew

exactly anon, the show wanted to avoid the ‘bury your gays’ trope, but accidentally made bastards of all of rhaenyra’s children. or they could be legitimate: my personal pet theory is that the little rowboat that laenor escaped in was unfortunately ambushed by a mercenary ship, courtesy of daemon.

daenerys shouldn’t inherit the throne because the kingdom was rightfully conquered by robert, so she doesn’t have a claim to the IT by succession anymore. the targaryen line was replaced by the baratheon line. if we go by ‘lawful’ inheritance the rightful king is stannis and his heir is shireen, but again, the throne was (kinda) conquered by the lannisters, so now the baratheon line was replaced by the lannister line.

daenerys can win the 7K by conquest, and the ‘rightful heir’ thingy will only be a way to make her reign be accepted more easily. one big thing in asoiaf is that no one has an inherent right to the throne, and often the kingdom is gained by bigger army diplomacy. robert admitted it: he came and won the war, now he’s king. maesters brought up his grandmother rhaelle as a way to give him more legitimacy, but what could they do really? try and get him out of the throne and start another war?

if daenerys wins her conquest war the lords will make many excuses about her being ‘the rightful queen’ because she’s the last targaryen, but the truth is that no one can keep her from taking the throne even if she wasn’t. until another dude pops up and takes the throne from her and arguments about this new person being the rightful heir if we go by this tradition or blah blah come up again.

[horizon-verizon]

Calling Daenerys a “colonizer” or an “imperialist” is actually genuinely insane because both her ancestors and her personally are culturally Essosi, and Valyria was itself a big factor in why slavery exists in Essos at the scale it does at all. While Slavers Bay was part of Old Ghis thousands of years ago, it spent an equally sizable and influencial part of its history being part of Valyria, to the point where several of the masters we encountered spoke Valyrian as their first language. She’s not an outsider, and there is no cultural misunderstanding. Outside of the abhorrent practice of slavery, she is attempting to fit in culturally, right down to wearing a tokar.

Some people already explained how it’s not allegorically operation Iraqi freedom from an authorial standpoint, but also, just from a purely political standpoint, Slaver’s Bay is a massive imperialist force itself. It’s not an unstable developing region, and Daenerys is not an agent of a powerful foreign empire attempting to destabilize it for the enrichment and strengthening of that empire. She is a singular individual and former bridal slave being followed by a truly stateless group of former enslaved people from hundreds of different places who herself has literally nothing to gain by staying there. Any allegory to US intervention in the Global South fundamentally falls apart when you think about it for three seconds, because the Slaver’s Bay itself is more akin to the US than it is to any nation in the Global South. (Which is also why it has so many powerful allies in other slavery-practicing parts of Essos trying to get her gone.) It’s a powerful imperialist machine. It also falls apart because it requires to deliberately misunderstand why the US has the intervention policies it does (hint, it’s not actually to spread freedom and democracy. It’s to steal resources.) There are no resources Daenerys needs in Meereen, and she actually is interested in and working towards the longterm stability and improvement of the lives of the people there, which is why she didn’t just fuck off to Westeros (or at least Pentos until her dragons grew) after Astapor.

And her haters keep regurgitating the “she just killed 163 random slavers and didn’t find out who ackshulllyyyy was responsible” talking point, but contrary to the show, there was no poor sad little Hizdar’s daddy who was really really so sad about the 163 murdered enslaved children. Because that’s not how anything works. Killing 163 children to intimidate Daenerys was not something that a few bad eggs got together and did by themselves, it was an official act of the state. The state in Meereen is collectively run by the masters, and organizing that kind of deliberate, calculated horrific action, from planning to execution, is the collective responsibility of all of the officials in the state. Every single one of them was as guilty as the next and the only problem there was symbolically only killing 163 of them instead of the all of them.

just from a purely political standpoint, Slaver’s Bay is a massive imperialist force itself. It’s not an unstable developing region, and Daenerys is not an agent of a powerful foreign empire attempting to destabilize it for the enrichment and strengthening of that empire...Any allegory to US intervention in the Global South fundamentally falls apart when you think about it for three seconds, because the Slaver’s Bay itself is more akin to the US than it is to any nation in the Global South. (Which is also why it has so many powerful allies in other slavery-practicing parts of Essos trying to get her gone.) It’s a powerful imperialist machine. It also falls apart because it requires to deliberately misunderstand why the US has the intervention policies it does (hint, it’s not actually to spread freedom and democracy. It’s to steal resources.)

Absolutely, but they'll almost never admit to that (unless it's like that blonde whitey on TikTok who blase said she'd be fine with Southern states integrating slavery) part of U.S. liberalism is disguised conservatism bc white supremacy.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#my irl oomfie is reading them for the first time and i can’t explain or justify it lol #i like dany the character but whew. george needed to go to sensitivity training (via @visenyaism)

#oh god this is me right now reading it 😭 #“their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see?” #please george ☠️ (via @wolf-saint)

#it honestly does lessen the quality of the entire series and bogs down Daenerys as a character which is unfair because she doesn’t deserve #that but like :/ come on (via @wlwocprincess)

#its especially bad compared to jon chapters where he sincerely tries to humanize the wildlings too (via @goldcrescent)

revisiting daenerys chapters

[atopvisenyashill]

i totally get not shipping jonerys but i think there's too much potential for george not to explore. i do think jon is going to be critical of dany’s methods and they’re doomed, but they have a lot in common too? like wanting to impose their beliefs and world view on others, and they can bond over having really bad pr too! i just hope that it’s more interesting than the show, for my own sanity.

I do think there's potential to explore but I just do not see the romantic potential. Their commonalities are not the sort that would make them get along. Jon's bad PR is he's a reclusive dick running off bad advice (from another Targaryen to boot) who won't explain his long term plans to people he doesnt like, sends every single one of his allies away, and is trying to break down long held prejudices in the span of a few months. Dany's bad PR seems similar except on top of "breaking down long held prejudices" she trusts violent, shady ass men at every turn (while Jon just straight up executes Slynt! Do you see Jon misstep wrt Alliser and Bowen? Yes, but he is not sitting here justifying their violence the way Dany justifies men like Daario), compromises in ways that completely undermine the prejudices she's trying to break down, and has now simply accepted that her dragons killing innocent people is an acceptable loss. Dany takes a profit off the selling of slaves and I simply do not believe Jon would react so cavalierly to Dany telling him about how she burned her slave alive to hatch her dragons, especially after whatever shenanigans Melisandre and Stannis are going to be getting up to in TWOW. Not for nothing here, but Jon does not use Ghost as a killing machine; anyone or anything Ghost has killed has been in defense of Jon while Drogon is very much a weapon of war.

Beyond that, Dany's identity is very tied up in the being the last dragon. She's going to be ten times worse in the books about finding a dragonseed in Westeros, especially if Rhaegar found out Elia was killed and married Lyanna, thereby legitimizing Jon above Dany's own claim. She's going to kill Aegon VI and destroy KL, maybe even Casterly Rock and parts of Dorne as well! The thing I think everyone overlooks here though is that she is not getting to Westeros until the very end of TWOW at the earliest! She's going to have wracked up a kill count higher than every other character on page, probably a kill count higher than the Conquerors or the Dance or the Redgrass Field. Regardless of any similarities they have in their backgrounds, what Jon is likely to feel when she lands is horror, and a fair amount of nerves. Do I think he will feel guilt for having a hand in his aunt's death, in ending the line of Targaryens? Yes, absolutely! It doesn't mean his guilt will drive him to side with a woman who lands with a slave army and then sets fire to half the continent.

And to be completely honest, if they do hook up, if she lands and she's lauded as a hero after destroying the city states of Slaver's Bay, after slaughtering the khals of the dothraki, after taking a profit off slavery and engaging in collective and cruel & unusual punishment, if murdering Aegon VI for *checks notes* being lied to about who he is and having a better claim than her but not "earning" his ending, and finds some sort of happiness with Jon, I'm saying that's 100x more misogynistic than what the show did, not to mention nauseatingly imperialist and classist. The reason I am very firm in saying Dany will go dark is because it is my opinion anything less is a betrayal of the themes of non violence, the costs of war, and the punishing of the poor. Like, Robb's murder is a tragedy but the book does not shy away from the harm he does! Dany will not (should not!) be treated any different just because she's a woman; that's like the basis of feminist theory!

[rosaluxembae]

I've said before that Daenerys' position as an outsider intervening in Slaver's Bay has a slightly different character depending on if you focus on her as Westerosi, Valyrian, or Dothraki.

And like I think she views it mostly in the sense of her being Westerosi. Just coming from this other (more civilised™) culture to ban their barbaric practices and improve their society. That's why I say she's a Liberal Interventionist (if a less bad faith one than the real world counterparts)

But the Ghiscari see her mostly as Valyrian. Their old enemies repeatedly defeated them with their magic lizard nukes and completely destroyed their homeland™ ensuring nothing would ever grow there again. And now one of their descendants brings more dragons to destroy their way of life and turn their society on its head.

[cynicalclassicist]

I can't argue with this.

It's a problem with western fantasy fiction in general, going back through medieval literature in The Song of Roland and to Herodotus. It is the writer who put all this there. The problems with the text are due to what it's creator put in.

I love a lot of GRRM's work. I love his worldbuilding in many a place. But in Essos the worldbuilding really falls down a lot. It is basically generic orientalist tropes. And he really could have done better there!

i don’t know if these needs to be said but calling Dany’s slaver’s bay arc orientalist is not a criticism of Dany herself. it is a criticism of GRRM, the white westerner writing it. Dany is not responsible for the orientalist tropes that arise here, any more than say, Lyanna Stark et al are responsible for the disproportionate number of childbirth deaths in the series.

and I am aware that the people of slaver’s bay are of many different races, including white! GRRM has said that many times over. but the thing is that orientalism is not so much about race as it is the east vs the west. so whilst the racial dynamics here may be more ambiguous the juxtaposition of the east and the west is not. it’s in the names of the continents: Westeros, Essos. one is made up of familiar western fantasy and medieval tropes, the other is, well, other, and made up of a range of orientalist tropes. it’s in the food, the clothes, the sex, the accents, the religion, the everything. it is there. we have to reckon with that.

and if people are somehow blaming the presence of these tropes on Daenerys herself, that’s very much on them. it is extremely reductive to use these critiques as your pedestal in a stan war. it only shows that you do not even understand the argument at stake here. but if we refuse to acknowledge the orientalism in the story for the sake of defending a white character: that is also extremely reductive.

[daenerysoftarth]

it’s one thing to call the targaryens colonizers and imperialists (true), but it’s a whole nother thing to call daenerys this. she is a teenage girl who overthrew slavery in slaver’s bay and then married a nobleman from one of the cities there. canonically, that’s it. daenerys currently has dreams of ‘reclaiming’ the iron throne, but what that looks like and if she will actually go through with it are up to speculation. she is not a colonizer

[ladyaryawolf]

What show only fans will never understand its true importance:

The house with the red door

Needle

The direwolves

The dragon dreams

The wolf dreams

The birth of Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal

Dany ending the slavery in Essos

[alethiometry]

jorah mormont if i ever fucking catch you—

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

#that’s when u know you’re about to hear the worst Dany take of ur life (via @melrosing)

#dany with her one (1) state-city and no imperial core to speak of being called a colonialist #lmao (via @femrobespierre)

#dany isnt a colonial power shes not extracting the wealth and resources of the places she conquers to a central state #dany is a warlord #and maybe reconstruction #see: the economic dependency on slavery (via @rooses40stepskincareroutine)

#co-signed by ur local indigenous asoiaf blogger #people describe the conquest as colonialism and I immediately am like. oh! you’re stupid! got it! #if the conquest was colonialism every single house in westeros would be speaking some variation of valyrian. and the faith of the seven #and the old gods and the drowned god #would all be put to dragons flame with their practitioners being hunted for sport #westerosi culture would have been brutally stripped and oppressed and only practiced in secret #colonization occupation and conquering are three different things #and while they can overlap they aren’t interchangeable #the only colonial force seen in asoiaf is old valyrian and even that is like #the Romans. and not colonial England. (via @maekarlargenaturals)

I die a little inside every time asoiaf fans don't know what colonialism is or use the word colonialism to describe every single military takeover or conquest that has ever happened.