The targaryen ruled 130 years without dragons. And the most capable kings were all targaryen. After them it was a decline for the throne. Robert, joffrey, tommen, cercei were all sith ruler .

I see targ stans are investing in high quality air to fill their heads lol

But anyways. “The most capable kings were all targaryens”. You know who else were targaryens? The worst rulers of Westeros. Robert, Cersei, Joffrey, and Tommen aren’t even close to the worst kings and queen to rule. And bringing them up as evidence to show that the targaryens are good is so disingenuous.

Maegor the Cruel, Aegon the Unworthy, The Mad King Aerys, Rhaenyra (yes, I know that’s controversial), and Daenerys (yes, I know that’s even more controversial) are all far FAR worse than anyone you mentioned.

Maegor killed his wife and her entire family. He was a usurper (apparently it’s good when the targs you like do it lol), a kinslayer (also a thing only good when it’s targs you like doing it), raped and tortured many people, wiped out entire houses, killed any and everyone that he saw in any way as deserving, and created a huge war with the faith of the seven.

Aegon the unworthy was corrupt and lazy and legitimized his bastards leading to the blackfyre rebellions that led to endless bloodshed for 5 generations.

Aerys was so bad he had a rebellion staged against him that ended his family dynasty. He burned fathers and sons together. He tortured people and burned them alive. He abused and raped his wife when he would burn people alive. He wanted to kill the entire city of kings landing.

Rhaenyra (who like it or not went down in history as one of the worst rulers) known as maegor with teats taxed her people to starvation. She had daily executions. She had knights inquisitors hunt down and punish people.

Daenerys burnt down kings landing, was complicit in the rape and enslavement of hundreds, ruined city economies so badly slavery was a better option, then profited from said slavery, abandoned the people she conquered (no doubt ensuring they will be enslaved much more harshly after supporting her), raped a “free” slave that she admits still acted like a slave because that’s all she knew, oh yeah and again, SHE BURNT DOWN KINGS LANDING. And this is after the people you listed.

And this isn’t including non Targaryen rulers that ruined lives like the blackfyres. Or rulers that are bad but weirdly beloved like Aegon I who basically conquered people by threatening to kill them and everyone they loved, subjugating a country for hundreds of years.

The best rulers I admit were Targaryens. But that’s because they were the only rulers save for 4 people. Of those four, two were bad and two were incompetent. Not nearly the sadistic “mad” people I described above. And funnily enough, as soon as a Targaryen came back to power…things got worse again. Funny how that is.

Oh and by the way. Going with the histories of Westeros. Guess who is among the best rulers according to small folk Aegon II and Alicent. Seethe :)

I find it infinitely fascinating that Dany - even outside a purely Targaryen context - follows the footsteps of her female ancestors and is married far too young, is pregnant with a prophecy baby, and would have likely died giving birth to a deformed stillborn half-dragon fetus. A disposable vessel for a flawed incarnation of war and conquest, given no room for her own desires, her own inherent worth.

And a healer saves her from this fate. She helps her survive the traumatic birth even though she is in conflict with Dany and her people, has been victimized by Dany and her people. Dany is allowed to escape the cycle of birthing a conqueror. Is allowed to escape the cycle of dying for men's ambition.

And then she turns that healer into a vessel for her weapon of war, burns her alive to birth herself a conqueror. Mirri screams in agony to give life to Dany's ambitions. The maternal sacrifice to Dany patriarchical consummation of her body and life.

Dany could have chosen a painful lesson and freedom. She chose to uphold the oppressive cycle, with herself at the top now. The half-human dead child fully replaced by reptiles that will kill for her within a year.

Mother, she calls herself.

If your strong female character needs every other female character to always agree with her and sacrifice her own goals for her maybe she isn’t that great and heroic 🫶🏻

Dany: Hello Northerns I'm here to liberate and free you!

Northerns: We already did that ourselves?

Targaryens: Infamous End Inevitable.

This entire discourse on Jaehaera is so laughably absurd. I love my Green characters, but I couldn't care less what the show does with Jaehaera's arc. Team Black loves to remind everyone that Rhaenyra's lineage survived while Team Green's perished. That is true... BUT not only did her sons separate themselves from their mother's legacy to keep the Lords happy, but they did nothing to elevate her name in any way after their supposed 'win'. Their mother's 'usurper' was perceived as the legitimate ruler while she was branded a traitor. Rhaenyra's legacy was so badly tarnished that even after her lineage lived on, no Targaryen descendent carried her name, despite the House's tendency of reusing names.

For me, the Dance tells the story of how House Targaryen ruined itself. They put their most powerful assets (Dragons) all in at once... only to become extinct in just over a century, while the other noble houses had been ruling Westeros for millennia. It doesn't matter whose line survives - if this doesn't make sense to you, then you are not intelligent enough to engage with any form of media. I'm content with the way things ended because ultimately, no one is triumphant.

Even if Jaehaera lives, her line still loses since it was Viserys II's line that eventually took over. No matter who ends up reigning, HOUSE TARGARYEN WILL BE DEAD! The last survivor of the house (barring Jon Snow) will make sure its legacy would be one of infamy. It will linger in Westeros like the Mussolini's monument, forever infamous.

Even if the books attempt to alter Dany's storyline, it would be idiotic to expect a Targaryen restoration. To those who foolishly believe that the books will be rewritten and the Targaryens will once again sit on the Iron Throne, then I've got a bridge in Pyongyang I'm looking to unload.

I think its funny that technically Jon has "the blood of Old Valyria" in him as well. But if you told him that as if it meant something, you know Jon would dismiss it entierly as unimportant, and that he does not give a single shit about it. Being Valyrian is so integral to someone like Danaerys or really any mainstream Targaryeans identity.

Then you have Jon Snow whose just like "I have things to do, I don't care" literally anytime something tries to convince Jon hes special. He's the opposite of everything Valyrians stand for and it would be so funny if hes the only one with Targaryean blood to survive, so that the last living relic of the ancient Valyrian Freehold is stuck inside the most grouchy, anti prophecy Northerner known to man.

Show Dany’s burning of KL has always been seen as a Mad Queen argument but I always thought of it as entitlement and rage emanating from that entitlement. The people of Westeros were supposed to welcome her and her armies, they were supposed to open their arms and open their forts up to the rightful ruler of their kingdom, they were supposed to vouch for her not be resistant to her rightful conquest, not attack her, provide her with what was hers all along, overthrow the usurpers in her name before she even came along. They were supposed to be on her side and they weren’t. They betrayed her. So she burned them and she took what was hers, with fire and blood. It wasn’t some of unreasoned madness but I feel wrongfully reasoned clarity.

I mean it's worth mentioning that Mirri exploited the grief of a fourteen-year-old girl, one who attempted to save and protect her, taking both her husband and her child (and therefore her security and stability in the society she was still pretty new to, as well as getting a lot of the slaves Dany saved from worse fates killed) in the process. I'd probably kill someone for that too. And if I knew I'd get a dragon out of it? Fuck that bitch if I can't have my son I'm having a dragon.

Like yeah it's not great but per the moral standards of this series Dany is pretty good

I've already explained, Mirri didn't kill Drogo, and Dany knows Mirri didn't kill Rhaego.

As for Dany's age meaning she isn't responsible for her actions:

"Unsullied!" Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. "Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She raised the harpy's fingers in the air . . . and then she flung the scourge aside. "Freedom!" she sang out. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" (ASOS, Daenerys III)

Dany ordered her men to kill kids younger than that.

And Dany "saved" Mirri? They burned and murdered and pillaged and raped throughout her village. Dany thinks of it all as the cost of the throne ie Dany's ambition demands it. You don't have to agree with each POV, every thought they have. Sometimes you are meant to judge them. Listen to Mirri's perspective on being saved:

"I spoke for you," she said, anguished. "I saved you." "Saved me?" The Lhazareen woman spat. "Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god's house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved." "Your life." Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. "Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone."(AGOT, Daenerys IX)

And then what does Dany do? She takes Mirri's life.

"You will not hear me scream," Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing. "I will," Dany said, "but it is not your screams I want, only your life. (AGOT, Daenerys X)

Dany didn't save anything. She took. She repeatedly benefits from other people's suffering.

You can convince yourself to be cool with this, but the author isn't. He didn’t intend for audiences to work themselves into moral pretzels to avoid condemning Dany or realize where her story is going.

Here is what he said of some famous Dany essays:

And here are some quotes about Dany from those essays:

(link)

This is not a hero.

oh, d*ny stans. never change.

the way Daenerys treats Irri in the books is incredibly disturbing and I hate how it's overlooked by both the narrative and the majority of the fandom.

Daenerys uses Irri for sex at least twice over the course of the story, once in Storm and once in Dance. I really, truly cannot overstate how horrific the power imbalance between them is: Daenerys is her khaleesi, her queen and her employer; Irri was formerly a slave in her service and is now her maid with absolutely nowhere else to go. She has evidently been conditioned to believe that displaying absolute obedience to her higher-ups, including sexual services, is her "duty", which Daenerys recognizes and still actively exploits for her own pleasure. This is also why consent between them is utterly impossible – contrary to some asoiaf blogs who claim that consent was not a major issue in this situation (lol) or that Irri freely consented, Irri’s conditioning means that she will never be able to freely consent to someone like Daenerys, who is her employer and holds absolute power over her. Daenerys herself acknowledges this and feels guilty (damning in itself), but ends up using her in such a manner anyway, despite explicitly recognizing that Irri's kisses "tasted of duty" and nothing more.

What makes this even worse is that despite using her in this way in Storm, Daenerys has no issue saying that Irri and Jhiqui (who are her age and have had the same, if not worse, experiences than she has) are "only girls" in comparison to her. She also dismisses their (pretty sensible, imo?) concern about her touching sick and dead people by calling them "utter fools" and saying the Dothraki were only wise when it came to horses. She says all this AFTER sleeping with Irri, which makes it twice as bad - Daenerys considers her a little girl and a fool when it comes to advising her, but still finds it perfectly fine to use her for sex? This condescension extends to their sexual relationship as well, where Daenerys refers to Irri as "the maid", "her handmaid" and "the Dothraki girl" as she has sex with her. It's patronizing, disrespectful and exploitative at best, outright dehumanizing at worst.

While I highly doubt this was Grrm's intention, Daenerys's dynamic with Irri is clearly reminiscent of the horrific way Cersei uses Taena Merryweather. Dany is obviously not as vicious with Irri as Cersei was with Taena but that really doesn't change the fact that she was still a queen exploiting her employee's obedience and conditioned sense of "duty" for her own pleasure, made even worse by the fact that Irri, as a servant and former slave with no family, no connections and nowhere else to go, was 10x more vulnerable than Taena was and certainly more dependent on Dany. It's bizarre how Cersei's treatment of Taena is recognized as fucked up by most of the fandom but Daenerys's treatment of Irri is not, even though the power imbalance between them is infinitely worse. (also: Grrm writing about TWO white queens using their brown maids/ladies-in-waiting for sex is flat-out racist. I'm also extremely uncomfortable with how both wlw interactions are dubiously consensual at best and arguably revolve around Cersei/Dany's relationships with men to some extent: Cersei uses Taena to reenact her trauma by Robert, and Dany not only "pretended it was Drogo holding her...only somehow his face kept turning into Daario's" when she was having sex with Irri, but also explicitly states that "it was Daario she wanted, or perhaps Drogo, not Irri").

Certainly, Daenerys and Irri's dynamic is part and parcel of Grrm's fucked notion of consent and piss-poor writing of wlw relationships (both of which he should be called out for far more than he is, btw), but it doesn't change the fact that in-universe, these are Daenerys's textual actions. Grrm seems to believe that Drogo didn't rape Daenerys (a 13 year old who was forced into marriage) on their wedding night because she said "yes", just like he seems to believe that Jaime didn't coerce Cersei to have sex with him over their own son's dead body because she eventually responded to Jaime's advances, but I clearly recognize them as rape and coercion. The same logic and same standards apply to Daenerys and the way she uses and exploits Irri and she should be judged accordingly.

Reminder that if your feminism revolves around propping up women that partake in traditionally masculine activities/roles and shitting on or even hating women who embody traditionally feminine roles and enjoy feminine activities you’re not really a feminist.

It sets the precedent that women are only valuable and valid if they have traditionally masculine traits, which feeds a narrative that masculine traits are better simply because they are associated with men who are the ideal. It perpetuates the idea that things that are feminine and traditionally associated with women are in fact inferior to men/masculinity and should be looked down upon and belittled.

And, it alienates so many individuals that feel more comfortable in femininity, regardless of gender identity.

I think people in the ASOIAF fandom really need to learn this because feminine characters are so despised on the basis that they are not “better” women. Simply because they don’t embody traditionally masculine things like conquering or fighting.

Much of the hate comes from stans that love characters like Rhaenyra, Daenerys, and Arya (and do not get me wrong I love Arya), who are women and girls that are in positions that allow for more traditionally masculine behaviors and tomboyishness. And they will say incredibly sexist things about how the other women in media are inferior and directly contrast these women to their faves negatively by pointing out that they’re “too weak” or “subservient”. They reduce femininity to weakness and bowing to patriarchy instead of considering that some people have a different, more feminine nature. And that is OK! Just because a woman isn’t wielding a sword or fighting on the front lines or pursuing leadership roles in masculine ways (because historically women exacted and sought power in different ways than men) doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable and strong characters. Do not use feminine characters as a negative comparison to show how “feminist” and great your fave is. Because it’s just so blatantly sexist.

Don’t fall into the trap of reinforcing patriarchal rhetoric!!! Don’t reinforce narratives that traditional masculinity is superior to femininity!! Don’t belittle feminine activities and act as if they aren’t valuable!!! Girbosses are great but so are gentlewomen.

What character(s) would you have liked George to have included as a POV that made sense for the story?

Irri or Jhiqui late in ADWD after Dany left to augment Barry and Quentyn. And suddenly they turn from "simple, superstitious, loyal" and essentially mindless handmaidens to complex characters with their own opinions, motivations, priorities and judgments, and - this would be crucial - with an explicit eloquence that is denied to them from Dany's POV.

Dany speaks Dothraki as a second language, learned recently, and I can't help but think that the clunky, simplified way we hear them speak through Dany's POV is due to her inability to properly pick up and convey the nuances of their speech.

Either of these two characters suddenly emerging from the obscurity of Dany's inattention, as three-dimensional individuals would be really powerful because it would instantly reveal Dany as lacking true interest in them as people, which is pretty damning in terms of her heroic self-image. Plus, it would finally grant us better insight into Dothraki culture from inside it, giving it a voice and dignity, even if we don't share their values, similarly to the various Greyjoys giving us nuance and detail on Ironborn culture.

I think this would have amplified the impact of Dany's grasslands POV, her self-image contrasting with an outside perspective.

A "Hot take" I came across in Instagram

Remember kids. A Targaryen woman can demand your freshly mutilated child to be tortured just because he said the truth of her siring obvious bastards that weakens her claim to the throne which in results in your legitimate kids being favoured as candidates which in turn results in their lives being endangered.

A Targaryen woman can threaten the independence of your land, the independence that you've fought tooth and nail to reclaim just because she thought herself to be the "rightful heir" to a throne that no longer belonged to her as her family got deposed off of it. So she brings an army of savages who are infamous for r*ping and pillaging and taking women and children as slaves, a slave army and the medieval equivalent of three nukes to "reclaim" her throne. (Just call it conquest ffs)

And there's nothing that you can do about it. Raise any objection and you'll be the villain.

Not liking the Mary Sue over powered dragon queens is not misogynistic. HBO just uses them as cash cows and so other people's favorite characters lose, screen time, plot lines and in dany's case she was literally the only character in GoT whose magic plot and background didn't get cut.

The writers also bend all the fantasy rules of the world of Westros to make them look good. Dragon's can't even go behind the wall canonically. People are allowed to not like the blood supremacist house, people are allowed to say Rhaenyra and Dany are propped up by capitalism and executives to sell merch.

Whenever I come across a tiktok video justifying Daenerys' burning of king's landing, it makes me sick. And the comments.. oh my god.

It's always comments like;

"Daenerys did what she had to do"

"she did nothing wrong"

"King's landing was in need of a cleanse"

"as Queen it was her right"

"no one in king's landing is innocent".

It's been so many years and I still don't understand how some people can think like this... Especially with everything that's going on in the world.

Why yes literally everything about Mirri Maz Duur is what causes me to call everything Dany does, especially in relation to slavery, into question because what Dany does or does not do to help slaves has always led to her recieving great amounts of power for herself and no one else.

Why was it alright for Dany to encite slaves to rebel against their masters but it wasn't alright for Mirri?

If Dany was sure Mirri did it on purpose why do they both seem to talk around the issue as if one of them is avoiding the truth and which one of them ultimately dies in the most, cruel, horrific of manners before that truth is revealed?

Why should Mirri care about Rhaego when his would be parents are still Mirri's masters/enslavers?

Why if Mirri didn't want to help did she give specific instructions to Drogo and Dany which are explicitly not followed and thus it gets worse naturally?

If Mirri wanted to always do this why did she try and warn Dany that allowing Drogo to die naturally would be a cleaner way, and only did it after her master told her to do it?

If burning Mirri was only about justice why does it seem to match terrifyingly close to the tragedy at Summerhall except she actually doesn't actually suffer ANY of the loses that Aegon did and she ONLY gets exactly what she wanted out of it? Which was dragons.

This isn't a fair execution of a criminal. This is Dany sacrificing her slave in a horrific fashion in order to try and recreate the attempt of reviving Dragons of Summerhall, under the guise of getting vengeance on her own slave who at worst, rebelled against her masters.

Mirri wasn't Dany getting vengeance. Dany used Mirri as an excuse to use blood magic to succeed where Aegon at Summerhall failed.