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theusurpersdog · 5 years

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The Beggar Queen

Following up my post on Daenerys in A Game of Thrones, I also have a lot of thoughts on her arc in A Clash of Kings. In many ways it’s a very unexpected continuation of her story; at the end of A Game of Thrones, she has just hatched three dragons and walked out of a burning pyre, seemingly at the top of the world. Instead of a more typical fantasy story, A Clash of Kings sends Daenerys back down to being powerless. There’s a reality to how GRRM writes the story; sure, she has three dragons, but what good are they in the middle of a vast desert? What good are they when they can’t even fly or breathe fire yet? These are all questions Daenerys has to try and find answers to, while also trying to keep her and her people alive. And she’s also trying to build an army and fleet to take her to Westeros while navigating the wonders and horrors of Qarth.

The Bleeding Star

When Daenerys is about to step into Drogo’s funeral pyre in A Game of Thrones, she looks up to the stars and sees a streaking red comet blazing across the sky, and sees it as a sign of her dragons. That same comet guides her through the Red Waste in A Clash of Kings:

The Dothraki named the comet shierak qiya, the Bleeding Star. The old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened. It is a herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.

The comet is the connecting thread between everyone in the story. From each point of view character, we learn some new truth or interpretation for what it means:

Cressen had never seen a comet half so bright, nor yet that color, that terrible color, the color of blood and flame and sunsets

- Prologue

That night she lay upon her thin blanket on the hard ground, staring up at the great red comet. The comet was splendid and scary all at once. "The Red Sword," the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still red-hot from the forge. When Arya squinted the right way she could see the sword too, only it wasn't a new sword, it was Ice, her father's greatsword, all ripply Valyrian steel, and the red was Lord Eddard's blood on the blade after Ser Ilyn the King's Justice had cut off his head.

- Arya I

Doubtless that was what they told Joffrey; Sansa was not so sure. "I've heard servants calling it the Dragon's Tail."

"King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his son," Ser Arys said. "He is the dragon's heir—and crimson is the color of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey's ascent to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over his enemies."

- Sansa I

When Bran repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. "Your wolves have more wit than your maester," the wildling woman said. "They know truths the grey man has forgotten." The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, "Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet."

- Bran I

All of those descriptions of the comet have one thing in common – Daenerys Targaryen. Whether it be Cressen seeing Fire & Blood in the sky, Arya seeing beauty and horror and Valyrian steel and blood, Sansa calling it the Dragon’s Tail and Arys Oakheart seeing it as the coming of Aegon’s heir, or Osha’s warning to Bran of “blood and fire, and nothing sweet.”, Daenerys is tied to the comet. Because it was meant for her. In the House of the Undying, Daenerys learns that the warlocks sent it to guide her to Qarth so they could feed off her and her dragons.

So, what does it mean, that this comet belongs to Daenerys? I think it’s very similar to how waking the dragon was used in A Game of Thrones. All of our protagonists find horror in the red streak across the sky, where only our antagonists (such as Theon) believe it belongs to them. In one way, all of the ominous foreshadowing for the comet is because the Warlocks were trying to kill Daenerys with it. But, the symbolism of the comet aligns shockingly well with Daenerys’ own path. She thinks it’s a sign of her reign, of her coming glory in the Seven Kingdoms. But instead, it leads her toward ruin; while she narrowly manages to escape the House of the Undying, following the comet almost kills her. The comet is just like the Queenship she’s chasing in Westeros; this thing she can’t let go of, that she’ll follow blindly, until it destroys her.

The comet also allows us to fully understand what Daenerys now represents to the people who saw her step out of Drogo’s Pyre:

"We follow the comet," Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo's people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.

Daenerys is very far from a normal political figure or leader; she is a messiah figure to her people, the product of hundreds of years of magic and prophecy. Her khalasar will follow her through the desert chasing a comet, because they watched her do the impossible. This kind of relationship she has with her people is crucial to understanding how Daenerys reacts to them. She puts an immense amount of pressure on herself to live up to the legend that made her the Mother of Dragons:

They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

Daenerys knows her people are the weakest, the oldest and youngest, the outcasts, the people who cannot provide for themselves. So they turned to her, their only chance after the rest of the Dothraki abandoned them. And Daenerys is aware of this, and trying desperately to save her people and herself, but she doesn’t know how. Her dragons are only hatchlings, and all the enemies she made when Drogo died leave her no choice but to take her people through the Red Waste. As we’ll see later, her magical abilities failing her forces her to become a political and practical leader of her people, whether she is capable of that or no.

In later books, Daenerys begins to gather other followers, but in A Clash of Kings, the Dothraki are all she has. And they follow her because might makes right within a khalasar, and no one is mightier than the young girl who walked out of a fire with no burns and three dragons. Later books are much more invested in examining both the good - but especially the bad - that this kind of relationship can cause between a ruler and her people, but that part of Daenerys’ arc is already set up here in A Clash of Kings.

This dynamic does give us a glimpse into the altruistic part of Daenerys that is still there, and especially on display when Doreah dies in her arms:

Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on.

Daenerys gives Doreah some of her own water, knowing that the girl was going to die anyway, just to ease her passing. She holds her hand as she dies, and refused to let Jhogo and the khalasar disrespect Doreah.

Daenerys is aware of the huge sacrifice her few followers made to be with her, and she’s willing to sacrifice tremendously to repay their loyalty.

The Dragons Are All The Difference

In my last meta, I talked a lot about how Daenerys is the truest possible version of what a Targaryen is, Fire & Blood writ large, and how much that has to do with the connection she shares to her dragons; and that theme is built upon even more in this book.

Now she has actually hatched her eggs, but quickly realizes that having dragons doesn’t help you feed your people:

Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died.

The dragons eat many times their weight a day (and while that doesn’t seem like much since they’re so small, it’s important to remember that Dany’s people are starving to death) and don’t offer anything in return.

This is another case where the dragons function as a stand-in for Daenerys. While she gained tremendously from everything that happened at the end of A Game of Thrones, by becoming a khal and hatching dragons, the people who follow her lost everything. They didn’t even choose to stay with her; the environment she helped create was rejecting of their weakness and left them behind to die with her. And while they have their “freedom” now, it doesn’t mean much when Doreah dies in the Red Waste. Having dragons doesn’t make Daenerys capable of actually saving these people she’s led into the wilderness.

When Daenerys and her khalasar finally find the city they name Vaes Tolorro, at first Daenerys wants to make it their home:

In the coolness of her tent, Dany blackened horse-meat over a brazier and reflected on her choices. There was food and water here to sustain them, and enough grass for the horses to regain their strength. How pleasant it would be to wake every day in the same place, to linger among shady gardens, eat figs, and drink cool water, as much as she might desire.

And later, this happens:

"I've brought you a peach," Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

The specific fruit Jorah gives her, a peach, makes this very important. In this same book, Renly tries to get Stannis to enjoy a peach in their last conversation, and Stannis will never stop thinking on what Renly meant by it; to us, it’s quite clear that the peach is the little pleasures in life, joy, happiness, pausing to love the things and people around you. The heartbreak of Stannis as a character is that he will never be able to understand the world in that way; the heartbreak of Daenerys as a character is that a part of her can sit and simply savor a peach, but something pulls her away from it; and, of course, that something is dragons:

She dreamed of Drogo and the first ride they had taken together on the night they were wed. In the dream it was not horses they rode, but dragons.

The next morn, she summoned her bloodriders. “Blood of my blood,” she told the three of them, “I have need of you. Each of you is to choose three horses, the hardiest and healthiest that remain to us. Load as much water and food as your mounts can bear, and ride forth for me.”

And while this choice is fairly reasonable at the time, since she doesn’t know what awaits her in most directions, she thinks later that she could go back to Vaes Tolorro:

Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.

The dragons always stop her from turning back, from being happy where she is. They are her reason to take the Seven Kingdoms, the motivation she has to restore her family to the glory Aegon the Conqueror raised it to.

A part of Daenerys wanting to turn back to Vaes Tolorro and start her kingdom there, is an interesting contrast to her thoughts on conquering Westeros:

Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

She has all these wonderfully idealistic dreams for her kingdom, yet all of them are made meaningless with the line “But before she could do that she must conquer”; while she wants everyone in her kingdom to be happy, she’s going to have to kill their Kings and Lords and many of the people before she can achieve that goal. The fact that she has to reclaim the Seven Kingdoms by nature means she will force many to sup on tears. But Vaes Tolorro gives her an out; a ready-made city, a rich oasis in the desert, where she could be Queen and grow her people.

But that will always be too small for Daenerys Targaryen, seed of Kings and Conquerors. She will never be content with the small matters of Essos, not when the Red Keep and the throne that by right is hers is sat by the Usurper and his dogs. The connection she has to the Targaryens who took their dragons and conquered Westeros is always going to pull her away from the part of her that just wants simplicity.

Daenerys’ understanding of how dangerous her dragons are is also touched on when she is in Qarth:

And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom to waste.

She thinks a lot about how she wants to go back to Westeros, and how she wants to avoid laying waste to it. It’s very interesting to note just how aware she is of her dragons’ destructive nature this early in the story, because it suggests she is much more culpable in their actions than some people want to admit. A lot of characters in the story make decisions that end up being disastrous, but are too young or had no reasonable way of knowing how tremendous those decisions would turn out being – the two obvious examples being Sansa telling Cersei that Ned intends to leave King’s Landing, and Bran warging Hodor – and most people file Drogon’s murder of Hazzea as a similar accident for Daenerys. Yet she is already aware that without training they will completely devastate the lands of Westeros, and actively thinks she should try and train them to avoid that. So, once they are much bigger and flying around Meereen killing sheep, it seems like willful ignorance on her part not to do something about them. I think this is so important because the line between Daenerys and her dragons has always been thin, and the further the series progresses the more that line blurs, so Daenerys choosing to look passed or ignore how violent her dragons are is very interesting in the context of how she views herself.

Viserys Always Said. . .

One part of Daenerys’ story that isn’t talked about enough, is how devastating Westeros will be to her. In A Game of Thrones, she thinks to herself that all the doors will be red in the Seven Kingdoms. She knows that the house with the red door and lemon tree in Braavos is the last place where she felt at home, and ever since then she’s been running from one place to the next, a guest in the house of strangers trying to take advantage of her and her brother’s name. She watched her brother slowly lose his mind the more they were turned away, and had to suffer through his abuses. But when she marries Khal Drogo and meets Ser Jorah Mormont, all the things her brother said about Westeros are suddenly within her reach. Instead of thinking that a house in Braavos she can never return to is her home, she can tell herself that the Seven Kingdoms are her real home; they are the place where she’ll finally feel as if she belongs. She builds it up in her mind as this place where all the doors could be red, every house a home to her. And all the things Viserys said about how beautiful it is also stay with Dany:

She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.

And when thinking of Westeros, Daenerys specifically thinks that it is home. Previously in A Game of Thrones, Viserys misunderstands her when she says “home” because Daenerys had never viewed Westeros as her home. But now all of that has changed, and Westeros has become a promise to her. She never feels quite at home with the Dothraki, she certainly does not feel at home in Qarth, but waiting for her across the Narrow Sea is the most beautiful place on earth - and she is going to be the Queen.

But us readers have spent much more time in Westeros than Daenerys has, and we know that almost everything Viserys said wasn’t true. The Red Keep is a beautiful castle, but it has no pools or gardens that could compete with Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ manse. Even at Westeros’ height, it lags behind as far as arts and architecture and all the small beauties Daenerys is so enamored by in Essos. And Westeros is far from its best; while Daenerys sits in Xaro’s pool dreaming of gardens of lavender and mint, the War of the Five Kings is tearing Westeros apart. It was never going to live up to the place Viserys told Daenerys it would be, but the War of the Five Kings leaves it broken and fractured in a way Westeros had never seen before. It is not going to be the home Daenerys needs it to be.

The idea of Westeros being Dany’s house with the red door is something that follows her through the next two books, as well. In A Clash of Kings, Daenerys has firmly rejected any other future she could have to chase the Iron Throne, but she has yet to hit the emotional lows that A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons bring her to. She has almost never felt at home her whole life, and the exclusion she feels from both the Dothraki and the Qartheen pushes her further into the promises of Westeros’ red doors, but she is not hopeless in Essos yet and still enjoys so much of its cities and cultures. The next two books will find her in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, though, and her hatred of those cities will make her emotional dependence on Westeros grow.

A Horse Girl With A Curious Pet

A huge part of Daenerys arc is how out of place she is. A combination of being the daughter of a disgraced King from a place she’s never set foot, to being a little girl running from place to place never settling, to being sold as a child bride to the Dothraki, Daenerys has never actually had a people or a place where she feels she belongs. A lot of her more problematic characteristics come from the need she has to find a place where she feels at home.

Being a Khaleesi is the closest Daenerys has come to being somewhere she feels she belongs, but the last few chapters of A Game of Thrones saw that completely implode. While she still has a khalasar and her own blood riders, there’s a distance she has from the Dothraki that is heightened in A Clash of Kings. This book is an introduction to a lot of the issues people point to when saying Daenerys is a colonizer and white savior:

She glanced at her bloodriders, their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see? she wondered. How savage we must seem to these Qartheen.

The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them.

Daenerys does not understand the Dothraki, and is still an outsider among them. When she enters Qarth and sees all the beauty and splendor of the city, she quickly favors their way over that of her khalasar. Daenerys’ thoughts on the Dothraki are far from simple, since she herself is the victim of their more negative views on people and women specifically, but she also refuses to see them in a different light. She doesn’t even consider the possibility that the Dothraki could settle in Westeros and adjust to a more permanent lifestyle; instead she tries to find a new army to take Westeros with.

It’s really hard to find the line on what is reasonable from Daenerys in this situation, and what is her being irrational. She was sold to Khal Drogo as a child bride and brutalized for weeks or months, and then saw her life fall apart when she demanded the Dothraki be more humane in their warfare, so certain misgivings she has are reasonable.

But Daenerys doesn’t acknowledge her own culpability, and how she herself is not that far removed from the “savagery” of the Dothraki. When she thinks on how the Dothraki sack and ruin cities, it is in the context of her using them to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. Even though she could take her dragons and khalasar and live a perfect and peaceful life in the Free Cities, Daenerys is choosing to take an army – which she views as savage – and conquer a continent.

And there is a certain dismissiveness she has when addressing their beliefs and customs:

Other searchers returned with tales of other fruit trees, hidden behind closed doors in secret gardens. Aggo showed her a courtyard overgrown with twisting vines and tiny green grapes, and Jhogo discovered a well where the water was pure and cold. Yet they found bones too, the skulls of the unburied dead, bleached and broken. "Ghosts," Irri muttered. "Terrible ghosts. We must not stay here, Khaleesi, this is their place."

"I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts." And figs are more important. "Go with Jhiqui and find me some clean sand for a bath, and trouble me no more with silly talk."

In the above exchange between Daenerys and Irri, she does have a point. If they decide not to stay in Vaes Tolorro, they could die of dehydration and exhaustion; Daenerys does not really have a choice, they must stay in the ghost city. But she has no patience for the religious beliefs of the Dothraki, and how important they are to the culture, referring to it as “silly talk”. As we see in later books, there is often a logic to Dothraki superstition and Daenerys would be better off if she took Irri and Jhiqui’s advice into consideration.

Speaking of how Daenerys overlooks how important some things are to the Dothraki, I think this passage is especially illuminating:

“We are the blood of your blood,” said Aggo, “sworn to live and die as you do. Let us walk with you in this dark place, to keep you safe from harm.”

This is right before Daenerys going into the House of the Undying, when she is telling her blood riders that she must go alone. One thing that I want to make clear, is that the blood riders are very different from any other type of group sworn to protect their King/Queen; the Knights of the Kingsguard, for example, are sworn to die in defense of their King, but are under no oath to die if their king does, and won’t be punished by death if they save themselves instead of their king. Dothraki blood riders, on the other hand, are sworn to die after they avenge their Khal; so, if Daenerys dies, she has sworn her blood riders to committing suicide. The interesting thing is, Daenerys never really thinks much about that; I think, in her mind, blood riders were something that khals had and so she should have them too, never really thinking further on what she was swearing these men to do. Daenerys builds her brand on being very anti-slavery, and the blood riders live much better lives than chattel slaves, but there is something interesting to the idea that Daenerys has a group of men essentially chained to her – because their lives depend on hers, and as the quote above shows, they actively seek out to be with her when things are most dangerous; not because they want to protect her, but because they are risking their own lives when they let her leave. Of course, she didn’t force them into being her blood riders so they chose this, but Daenerys never thinks on what her choices mean for their lives when she does something risky.

Daenerys’ thoughts on the savagery of the Dothraki leads her to distance herself from the Dothraki when she arrives in Qarth, and she begins acting like the Qartheen to try and win their favor. She dresses in their traditional clothing, lives in Xaro’s palace, does not comment (or think to herself) on the city’s slaves, and tries to use their political systems to buy an army and fleet to sail to Westeros. This leads to some conflict with Jorah, who is instantly distrustful of Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos. Their arguments over the Qartheen are so insightful as far as both of their characters individually, and the relationship they have.

The things Jorah tells Daenerys about Qarth are not inherently wrong, and he actually gives her good advice. From his perspective, Daenerys has told him she thinks Xaro and Pyat Pree will help her win her crown, but he knows by instinct these men are scheming, so he tries to remind her of the reality of conquering Westeros. But the problem is the way he delivers the advice, and how he assumes Daenerys is much more naïve and stupid than she is:

Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen?

Daenerys is aware of how he views and sexualizes her, but she also notices the way he sometimes treats her as if she’s a child. The way Jorah talks to her makes Daenerys both sad and upset; even her closest advisor doesn’t treat her like a Queen.

But Dany isn’t entirely blameless in why her advisors don’t fully trust her to act as Queen. It becomes much clearer in the Plaza of Punishment, when she doesn’t reveal her plan to Barristan or Jorah for really no particular reason, but she has a problem of communicating with her advisors. Since we are in Dany’s head, we understand that she too is nervous and distrustful of Xaro and Pyat Pree, and is trying to use them just as much as they want to use her. But all she tells Jorah is that she thinks they will help her win her crown, when she is actively taking measures to protect herself from Xaro and Pyat Pree. While she is still outsmarted a bit by the rich merchants of Qarth, Daenerys sees through a huge amount of their lies and flattery. Knowing that Pyat Pree would only show her the parts of Qarth that fit his narrative, Daenerys picked groups of her men to search every street of the city, both day and night. She also keeps guards with her dragons all day and all night, in case someone were to try and steal them.

It says a lot about him that Jorah naturally assumes the least of her, but it becomes a growing problem for Daenerys that she is unwilling to explain her actions to anyone. The reason for that, of course, is that she is Daenerys Targaryen, blood of the dragon, and her word should be law. She has an expectation for how people should treat her as a Targaryen Queen, and I’ll get into that more below, but it is a huge factor in how she interacts with those under her when she disagrees with them. She rarely understands why people don’t jump to follow her.

And as Daenerys grows further from Ser Jorah and the Dothraki, she is trying to win over the people of Qarth. As I said above, she is trying to use them to get to Westeros, so she never invests in them the way she did the Dothraki, but in order to win their favor she has to follow their customs and traditions. And to do that, she takes advantage of Xaro’s own ambition, by living in his palace and using his ideas to make enough money to buy the Thirteen and Pureborn into her favor.

I really want to emphasize how well Daenerys is treated in Qarth, even though they refuse to help her get to Westeros. I titled this “The Beggar Queen”, because Daenerys thinking of herself as one is extremely telling as to her expectations of people around her. Here is how Daenerys lives in Qarth:

Trader captains brought lace from Myr, chests of saffron from Yi Ti, amber and dragonglass out of Asshai. Merchants offered bags of coin, silversmiths rings and chains. Pipers piped for her, tumblers tumbled, and jugglers juggled, while dyers draped her in colors she had never known existed. A pair of Johos Nhai presented her with one of their striped zorses, black and white and fierce. A widow brought the dried corpse of her husband, covered with a crust of silvered leaves; such remnants were believed to have great power, especially if the deceased had been a sorcerer, as this one had. And the Tourmaline Brotherhood pressed on her a crown wrought in the shape of a three-headed dragon; the coils were yellow gold, the wings silver, the headed carved from jade, ivory, and onyx.

Yet this is how she thinks on all of her gifts:

I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same.

The people of Qarth are willing to give Daenerys everything the entire world has to offer, except the Iron Throne. And even though Daenerys has received plenty from Qarth, she leaves feeling used:

They never saw me for a queen, she thought bitterly. I was only an afternoon’s amusement, a horse girl with a curious pet.

I think this highlights a certain attitude of entitlement Daenerys has. If you look from the perspective of the Qartheen, they have no incentive to help her reclaim Westeros. She wants to sail immediately, before her dragons could help her with the conquest, and she wants to take their ships and their soldiers to do it. She can’t offer them any improved position, because they are wealthy beyond comprehension, and she can’t offer any improvement in their businesses because they already trade freely with Westeros. The only thing she is offering is the name Daenerys Targaryen, which is meaningless to the Essosi who never loved the Valyrians, and never had any investment in who sat the Iron Throne. Yet Daenerys, even though she has almost nothing to offer, refuses to beg:

“Tell me the words of the Pureborn,” prompted Xaro Xhoan Daxos. “Tell me what they said to sadden the queen of my heart.”

“They said no.” The wine tasted of pomegranates and hot summer days. “They said it with great courtesy, to be sure, but under all the lovely words, it was still no.”

“Did you flatter them?”

“Shamelessly.”

“Did you weep?”

“The blood of the dragon does not weep,” she said testily.

The only gift Daenerys keeps of all the riches she received from men looking to see her dragons, is the crown made to look like a three headed dragon:

“Viserys sold my mother’s crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this crown, and men will call me a queen.” And so she did, though the weight of it made her neck ache.

It’s very symbolic that the crown makes her neck hurt, but it’s also very interesting how she draws parallels between herself and Viserys. Being placed in a position where she is trying to buy and negotiate her way to the Iron Throne, she starts to understand the fevered madness that drove her brother:

She hated it, as her brother must have. All those years of running from city to city one step ahead of the Usurper’s knives, pleading for help from archons and princes and magisters, buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it.

The idea of being passed over, of being laughed at, is enough to make Daenerys have to pause and check herself. She understands how begging to lesser men, when she is the blood of the dragon, could break her brother.

The rejection from the Qartheen is another step in the long walk Daenerys is taking to isolation and paranoia. A Dance with Dragons is the arc that most focuses on how paranoid and alone Daenerys is becoming, but even back in A Clash of Kings, she is starting to mistrust everyone around her; and for good reason. Daenerys is young and incredibly beautiful, and also has the only three dragons in the entire world. Once she hatches them, it becomes incredibly hard for her to distinguish who follows her or wants to have a relationship with her because of her, or if they simply want her dragons. Xaro Xhoan Daxos tries to trick Daenerys into marrying him, because Qartheen custom would allow him to claim one of her dragons. The warlocks also are trying to use Daenerys for her dragons, as they try and lure her to the House of the Undying to feed off the magical energy she has.

Quaithe is introduced in this book, and from the start she tries to warn and guide Daenerys against people who want her only for her dragons:

From her Dany received only a warning. "Beware," the woman in the red lacquer mask said.

"Of whom?"

"Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power."

All of the elements in Daenerys life start to add up to her feeling alone and cornered; she doesn’t trust the Dothraki to take Westeros, the Qartheen have refused to help her sail the Narrow Sea, she is fighting with her closest companion Jorah, and the mysterious maegi Quaithe is warning her to trust no one. All of this leads to Daenerys going to the House of the Undying for answers, but I’ll get into that more below.

What is very interesting about Daenerys, though, is that after the House of the Undying goes so poorly, she throws herself back into the Dothraki culture. As a show of defiance to the Qartheen who take all of their gifts and kindnesses back after she burns the Warlocks, she searches the docks while clad in the garb of the Dothraki. The lesson she learns from Qarth is that she hates compromise. She tried fitting in with them, to play their games and follow their rules, and they still refused to take her seriously. They accepted her gifts, listened to her case, and politely but unequivocally said no. So, what was the point? Why did Daenerys give up the Dothraki, why did she bother bribing lesser men?

In the following books, she will try exceptionally hard to make compromises to rule cities, but she hates it. Even though she wants to do these things for her people, each and every time it takes a part of her, and she starts to lose sight of why she even wants to help the people she hates and rule a city that is determined to deny her. Compromise does not sit well with Daenerys.

Daughter of Three

The main points of Daenerys’ chapters in this book are foreshadowing and prophecy. I’ve always found A Clash of Kings to be such a great book on its own, but an absolutely amazing second act to A Game of Thrones, because the first book sets up in the very first chapter the high fantasy conflict with the Others, and ends on the incredibly high fantasy aspect of Daenerys walking out of a burning pyre with three dragons; but in between, the story dives deep into the political and personal stories of our protagonists. And while people still argue which element this story is “really about”, I think Clash does a great job in establishing that the answer is both. The War of the Five Kings pulls the political plotlines into harsh focus, with character like Catelyn, Tyrion, and Davos consistently acting and reacting to the respective Kings, and characters like Sansa and Arya who focus on the personal fallout of war; but A Clash of Kings also sends Daenerys and Bran on their magical journeys, and permanently sets them on very high fantasy paths. In the same book that sees the political foregrounded, two of our main characters leap forward in their magical progression. Daenerys in particular highlights the way the political and magical intertwine, and how the two can work together.

The climax of Daenerys’ arc in this book is extremely magical. The rejection of Xaro and the Pureborn leaves her feeling like the answers offered by the Warlocks is her only choice, so she goes to the House of the Undying. Once she’s inside, she sees a whirlwind of visions that give readers a glimpse into the past and the future, as it relates to Daenerys and the rest of our characters. I’m going to try and break all of them down, and what I think they mean and why the Undying choose to show them to her.

There’s two different sets of visions Daenerys sees when she is in the House of the Undying; the first visions she sees as she is trying to find the Undying, and is tempted to look into doors. This is how Pyat Pree describes them:

“Within, you will see many things that disturb you. Visions of loveliness and visions of horror, wonders and terrors. Sights and sounds of days gone by and days to come and days that never were. Dwellers and servitors may speak to you as you go. Answer or ignore them as you choose, but enter no room until you reach the audience chamber.”

The visions Daenerys sees are of the Five Kings tearing Westeros apart, the Red Wedding, Ser Willem Darry in the house with the red door, the Mad King telling his pyromancers to burn King’s Landing, and Rhaegar talking to Elia about the Prince that was Promised. These visions are separate from the prophecies she receives from the Undying, and I don’t think we’re supposed to connect them to Daenerys or to each other. Some of them go together, but some of them simply don’t; I think GRRM intentionally separated them to show these aren’t necessarily about Daenerys, or even connected in any way. I do think the visions connect to Daenerys in thematic ways, though.

The first two she sees, of small men who represent Kings tearing the woman meant to be Westeros apart, and of a dead King with the head of a wolf at a feast, clearly go together. The first she sees is what the Five Kings do to Westeros, and the second is the climax of the war and its technical end, when Robb Stark is killed at the Red Wedding. These two visions don’t connect to Daenerys as much as they are a broad foreshadowing of GRRM’s world and his books to come; but I think it’s interesting that the glimpses Daenerys sees of Westeros are horrific, terrible things. I’ve always found the use of the phrase “mute appeal” to describe how Robb looks at Daenerys to be very interesting; GRRM only uses it twice more in the series, once to describe Ned’s pleading gaze, and then he describes Jinglebell as looking at Catelyn with mute appeal before she kills him. It’s as if Robb is begging Daenerys not to do something.

As Daenerys runs from the horrors of the Red Wedding, she sees her room from the house with the red door:

“Little princess, there you are,” he said in his gruff kind voice. “Come,” he said, “come to me, my lady, you’re home now, you’re safe now.”

Daenerys remembers that Willem Darry is dead right before she enters the room, which Pyat Pree told her she absolutely must not do. But that vision is the one thing that tempts her, brings her right to the threshold. In this case, turning around was the right choice; but I think this vision has broader imagery. Daenerys, so many times, comes so close to turning around and being the “Little Princess” again, an innocent child who didn’t want to conquer a place she’d never been. But she always turns around. She’s tempted the most in A Dance with Dragons, when she thinks of having a house with Daario free of being a Queen, but she can never commit to that kind of life. It’s not her anymore; she can’t go back.

Then she sees her father in the Throne Room, getting ready to burn King’s Landing. On a meta level, this vision exists mostly to set up Catelyn’s last chapter with Jaime, as well as Jaime’s A Storm of Swords arc; but it is also the vision most connected to Daenerys. For the first time, she’s seeing the real version of her father, the truth of the man she wants to remind people in Westeros; and she’s seeing her future, too. Daenerys was right when she thinks the people of King’s Landing will greet her like they did her father, because she’s going to burn the city.

Her last vision before reaching the Undying is of Rhaegar talking to Elia Martell, and naming his son Aegon. This is the only vision that Daenerys understands; she has no idea what the first two are, and doesn’t connect the vision of the Mad King to her father, but she does know Rhaegar. This is the first time she hears the phrase “the dragon has three heads”, which will chase her through Storm and Dance. Rhaegar also says that his son is The Prince that was Promised, and that “his is the song of ice and fire”. A Clash of Kings is the first book that really starts to introduce the overarching prophecies of the series, and it’s interesting to see The Prince that was Promised introduced in this context; Rhaegar knows something that we don’t, something about his son.

When Daenerys finally finds the Undying, she sees a second set of visions, this set all about her. First, she gets her prophecies of three:

. . . three fires must you light. . . one for life and one for death and one to love. . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt. . . three mounts must you ride. . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love. . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . three treasons will you know. . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love. . .

It’s very interesting that these prophecies end on the note of a treason for love. Someone is going to betray Daenerys for someone they love, and that’s the end; I don’t have a firm grasp on the other treasons, fires, or mounts, but this one, to me, has to be Jon.

Next, Daenerys gets her mother of dragons prophecies; this is the first:

Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman’s name. . . mother of dragons, daughter of death. . .

The three things connecting Rhaegar, Rhaego, and Viserys seems to be that all three were the Heir to the Iron Throne when they died. Their three deaths help to push Daenerys into taking the Iron Throne. Daenerys having the title daughter of death is extremely fitting with her previous imagery; everything about her life has come from death. Rhaegar dying, the Mad King dying, her father’s fleet being destroyed on the night she was born, Viserys being crowned in molten gold, Drogo and Rhaego’s deaths. She is the product of tragedy.

These are the next visions she sees:

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies. . .

The first two are clearly Stannis and Young Griff/Aegon VI, and seem pretty straightforward; she slays the lie that Stannis is Azor Ahai, and that Young Griff is Aegon VI. The last one is a lot less clear. I really can’t say what this is. I know some people think the Stone Beast is Jon Connington with Greyscale, but to me that seems meaningless in light of the second lie. Why would both Young Griff and Jon Connington need separate lies? Jon Connington isn’t lying about anything. The imagery of a great stone beast is very prominent in all the books; from the prophecy of Azor Ahai waking dragons out of stone, to Sansa being described as a winged beast escaping the Red Keep, to Davos’ description of Dragonstone. I just can’t quite pin down what GRRM is foreshadowing.

The last prophecy she receives is this:

Her sliver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . mother of dragons, bride of fire. . .

All of these are pretty clear; Drogo was her first fire, then Euron, and finally Jon. The description of Jon “filling the air with sweetness” is very ominous, and just makes me even more confident he is the treason for love. I know there are some great metas that discuss sweetness in Daenerys’ arc, I just can’t think of any right now. But the idea of sweetness being bad, and foreshadowing a treason from Jon, is really highlighted by Daenerys hearing this prophecy in Qarth of all places. Time and again, the city’s exterior of sweet smells and beautiful buildings is used to hide the treachery underneath.

After the prophecies, Daenerys sees a whirlwind of past and future events:

Shadows whirled and danced inside a tent, boneless and terrible. A little girl ran barefoot toward a big house with a red door. Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. Behind a silver horse the bloody corpse of a naked man bounced and dragged. A white lion ran through grass taller than a man. Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed. Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. “Mother!” they cried. “Mother, mother!” They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them. . .

The vision of her “Myhsa” moment leads into the realities of the Undying:

The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs.

The wording is intentionally similar, because we’re supposed to connect the Undying feeding off Daenerys, and the reaction she has to “her people”. In A Dance with Dragons, she turns Quentyn Martell and the swords of Dorne away because she’s not going to leave Meereen, maybe ever. Daenerys loves being a savior to the people of Essos, the feeling she gets when they scream “mother!”, the feeling that what she’s doing is right and good. But apart from those incredible highs, when Daenerys has to live in the choices she made to lead the Essosi, she just hates it. In A Storm of Swords, she does give her people fire and life, opening her arms up to them, but it’s not sustainable. Her fire burns out, and she’s left feeling empty and alone and more than anything angry at the people who made her choose to stay.

The Dragons Are Returned

After Pyat Pree and the Warlocks betray Daenerys, she has finally had enough of Qarth; the warlocks hate her for burning down the House of the Undying, Xaro hates her because she turns down his proposals, and the people hate her for all she’s done in Qarth. And if they all hate her, Daenerys is done playing their games.

The next time she goes out, she does so in the traditional garb and sandals of the Dothraki, with a bell in her hair to signify victory against the Warlocks. When Illyrio Mopatis comes through with Arstan Whitebeard and Strong Belwas, Daenerys commands them to name her ships Vhagar, Meraxes, and Balerion; the world will look upon her ships and know that the dragons are returned. Where she wavered from her the Dothraki, by the end of A Clash of Kings, Daenerys is ready to double down on the “savagery” of them. She’s tired of playing nice, of diplomatically talking and negotiating. This book perfectly sets Daenerys up for the path she decides to take in A Storm of Swords. She’s going to get the army she needs, no matter what.

Even if it means Fire & Blood.

#anti daenerys #asoiaf meta #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #daenerys targaryen

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