#dani's goal here is to be as big a problem as possible

[charlietheepicwriter7]

so, a while ago, there was a dcxdp prompt that was like "Danny Fenton gets hired by the Justice League and slowly realizes that he was hired to hunt down Danny Phantom with Justice League Dark, so he has to gaslight gatekeep girlboss his way out of it" (link in the replies if you find it bc i can't)

but what if this prompt was more chaotic?

like, dani learns whats happening and instead of trying to get her template out of this, she decides to make it worse.

the team discovers the daughter of Ghost King Phantom (and Dani should probably have a different name in ghost form, maybe a star name? Maybe she can shapeshift into her original age, so she looks five) is sabotaging their work. when they finally capture her, she immediately latches onto Danny.

Dani: Papa! Danny, immediately: I'm not your dad! Dani, eyes tearing up with devious glee: I don't care if you and Daddy got divorced. You're still my Papa and I still love you! Danny: what. Constantine: YOU WERE MARRIED TO THE BLOODY GHOST KING!?

[takiki16]

if jamie tartt is like david beckham .... [white man, english, huge following, big name] which mls team will he join and where will he base his eventual ownership team and which talented star will be buy to headline the whole thing

LKSDFJ;LSKDFJDS

Jack Grealish you have been dethroned by the Becks and his unbeatable smoove aura...he stole your Ted Lassona are you just gonna sit there and take it...

I am taking a flying stab at this and begging any actual EPL fans plus anyone who's followed MLS for more than a year to forgive me. I also need SOMEONE ELSE to chart Jamie's likely career trajectory WITHIN the EPL...whether Roy actually manages to win the league with Richmond, how they cope with Champions League drama, etc etc. But ALL THAT ASIDE, here we go - Jamie Tartt's grand soft-retirement in the MLS!

Ted absolutely BEGS Jamie to choose Sporting KC. Its like...three hours and change from Wichita to Kansas City, but that is NOTHING to the Big Peppy Energy of a single midwestern dad who was unfortunately forced away from his club of adopted sons by the bad choices of certain writers' rooms. Ted sends texts. He sends emails. He sends hand-written letters. He starts a very enthusiastic one-man campaign on twitter (#tarttkc4lyfe!) and even gets the KC mascot, Blue the Dog, to shout out Earl Greyhound on Instagram in a bid to get Jamie to come. In a truly below-the-belt move, Ted takes a picture of Henry in a Sporting KC #10 jersey that has "Tartt" on the back and sends it to Jamie. Henry is wearing his Very Saddest Face. Roy and Beard both separately text Ted to call out dirty tactics, but Ted cannot be shamed on this front. The stakes are too high.

Of course, Jamie does NOT go to Sporting KC, even for Ted (maybe. He thinks about it. A little. A lot). When Euro stars soft-retire in the US, they make their choices based on which large, attractive global city they want to live in. I know, I know - financially speaking, all cities with ownership groups big enough to have an MLS franchise are "global cities," not just the coastal powerhouses. However, it is extremely funny to me personally to assume that the Grealish-Tartt link is strong and that Jamie doesn't recognize an unlabelled map of England, much less the US. If a city hasn't been regularly on the news or doesn't have a clock featuring its local time behind the hotel reception desk, Jamie probably doesn't know much about it. Realistically, Jamie is likely going to choose from among LA, New York, Miami, and maybe Chicago. Mayyyyybe Orlando, depending on how long Bumbercatch has to convince him that Disney is actually horribly evil and Jamie should not be swayed by the glittering lights of the Magic Kingdom or the steady stream of talented U22 Brazilian players feeding to Orlando City SC.

Assuming Messi is still in MLS at this point in the Ted Lasso universe, Miami IS GOING to be Jamie's first choice. I know that Jamie was futzing around with the false 9 role and sitting in the enganche pocket behind Dani and Colin in 3x07, but IN MY HEART Jamie is a true no.9 and what striker doesn't love goals on a plate! MIAMI HAS THE GREATEST PLAYMAKER IN THE WORLD currently playing for them, and all the stupid Zava problems would melt away once Jamie starts scoring hattricks off of three or four of those perfect eye of the needle assists per game. Keeley gets a bunch of sexy beachwear, Jamie gets sunburnt to hell on the sand somewhere, Roy blissfully fistfights someone in a Publix where no one knows who he is, the DREAM LIVES ON.

HOWEVER, Miami also doesn't have any more Designated Player slots, and Jamie (1) isn't an old Barcelona buddy who will come for peanuts GAM money and (2) is a big enough name in his own right that he can demand a star DP slot at another club. Miami is probably off the table. The ACTUAL most realistic possibilities are LA and New York, with NY being slightly in the lead just based on vibes. Assuming AGAIN that the Grealish-Tartt link is strong, Jamie might end up at NYCFC. They are low to mid-table, sporting-wise, but they are owned by City Group and are considered Manchester City's sister club in New York. Lampard, Pirlo, and Villa were their first DPs in their debut season in 2015. If Jamie forgets that relegation isn't a thing in MLS and wants to be in a club that semi-regularly makes the playoffs, the NY Red Bulls are nearby...ish. Hey, if New Jersey is good enough for the WORLD CUP it's good enough for Baby Tartt!

If Jamie goes full Beckham and ends up in LA, he probably goes to the Galaxy. LAFC is the stronger team and prides itself on a loud, noisy supporters' culture - Gareth Bale spent a year there before the WC in 2022 - but I just cannot resist the Beckham vibes. And honestly, Jamie Tartt getting to live the Zava storyline from the other side and coming to the second-worst Western conference team of 2023 to lift them out of their slump is probably its own comedy spinoff. Also, imagining Jamie playing the Rose Bowl during El Trafico on the Fourth of July in front of a bunch of random actors is hilarious.

AND. FINALLY. If Jamie Tartt gets the Beckham/Messi retirement package and gets to purchase ownership stakes in a new MLS franchise upon retirement???

Ted starts begging for Jamie to come to Wichita again, but this time as a TEAM OWNER. He offers to coach for free. He offers to PAY to coach. He offers to BUY SHARES HIMSELF with all that gotdam EPL money that Rebecca was paying him during the show. However, sadly, Kansas City beat Wichita to the punch. I...have got NO CLUE where Jamie opens his MLS team tbh, bc as of right now MLS's business model is to muscle in on cities with their own existing USL football culture, buy out the franchise, and turn all of the club's history into soulless corporate marketing dreck. San Diego, I am so, so sorry.

Actually you know what, in THIS UNIVERSE, Jamie somehow finds a way to turn his retirement benefits into an investment into San Diego Loyal and helping them bid to join MLS. This prevents that extremely disappointing San Diego FC badge from ever becoming a reality.

I also have no idea what big-name star Jamie would invite to be his first DP - most of the Greyhounds were either Jamie's age or older, which means that as Jamie is retiring they are also retiring. IT would have to be like...a younger player that Jamie had some kind of relationship with when he was still in the EPL - NAME YOUR FAVORITE YOUNGSTER HERE!!!! After they have had a brilliant European career and are ready to soft-retire, of course!

(baby tartt if you could help MY hometown club in [redacted] to get its shit together and put in an MLS bid before Messi leaves...)

[jamieroxxartist]

Dani Update: 8.18.23 Yesterday we had an appointment with Dani's surgeon about her Diverticulitis. The 3 different at home IV Antibiotics (Ertapenem, Fluconazole & Daptomycin) are working but the process is slow going. The page we are on went from slightly abstract to more concise and in focus. Where we all figured that eventual surgery was a possibility, changed to: upon completion of the antibiotic's knocking out the severe infection, we are looking at surgery to remove the problem area of the colon. This will be removed and then brought back together. We had to make the appointment with the Surgeon who will be doing the surgery.

This was a lot to process for both of us. Dani has never had surgery before and of course is afraid of the whole concept (who wouldn't be?!!) Me, who has had pretty extensive surgery etc do not want her to go through .99% of what I had to go through. So we were both a mess yesterday. TBH I think Dani handled it better than me. But we are both pretty tough (although, again TBH, I think she is tougher than me.) A positive note is that they will be doing it Robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery, which will avoid all the Frankenstein scars like I have. So this is a good thing. As Dani points out and reminds me, her deal is very different than mine was. But still I don't want her to have to deal major scaring etc after all of this.

This whole thing is hard. And we both long for a return to normal. One of the big frustrating things is that this whole thing wasn't brought on by some action or something. Just a random, 'Well here you go' life deals.

But the Doctors and everyone have all said a common thing, it needs to happen so this doesn't keep happening. It needs to be fixed. It's just hard. So we both got it together and this is what we are moving forward. This is so painful for her we do not need for that to happen again.

When Dani got sick the other night, the vomiting seemed to pulled a muscle or spot in her back, so is just another layer of icing on the cake. I went to check on her this morning (there's a lot of checking on her, as I worry if I don't hear her for a bit. I worry) anyhow she was stretching and trying to exercise best she can to try and work out the knot.

Also another deal was all of these hardcore Antibiotics killed off her good intestinal / gut bacteria and of course the yeast ran wild and she developed Thrush on her tongue, mouth and throat. I do know all about this from when I was in the hospital and they had shut off my digestive system for so long, it had happened to me also. But the Doctor spotted it right away from just seeing Dani talking to her and prescribed Nystatin, which we got and added to her routine of medicines. So hopefully that will clear that up soon. But it looks like this could be part and parcele with antibiotics she is on.

So that's the news. The update. We are keeping positive and doing what we can. The goal of course is to get her better.

[idrewbedraggledbreaths]

Sorting Daenerys Targaryen and Jorah Mormont with the sortinghatchats system (GoT verse)

I didn’t want to write this post before I finished my Killing Eve sortings (basically Carolyn and Konstantin), but I’m stuck with them, so I decided to revisit an old fandom instead with a new approach. My take here is possibly an outsider’s take, given that I haven’t interacted with this fandom for a while, save for a few close friends I made in it. Now, bear in mind this sorting system IS NOT the original HP system, it is simply based on it. It sorts you into two houses. Your primary is you WHY, your reason to be who you are, what you believe in. Your secondary is your HOW, the way you act and approach life. Below is a little tl;dr of what each of them are (I’m using the animal terminology that’s being used in many blogs, by the way. If you know the houses, you know what each animal is supposed to represent).

Lion primaries are intuitive and guided by their moral compass, which is very strong (doesn’t mean what they believe in is in fact good or correct) and Lion secondaries are the people who charge straight at something, regardless of whether they will come out of it unscathed or not.

Snake primaries value people. Not any person, their people. They will go to hell and earth for their people to be safe and happy, which can get kind of self destructive. Snake secondaries improvise much like Lion secondaries, but they tend to adapt to situation and shapeshift their way out of problems.

Bird primaries also value right and wrong like Lion primaries, but they build their systems with external information and observation, not from their gut feelings. That means Bird primaries change a lot with time, because their ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ change. Bird secondaries collect. Skills, tools, random knowledge, they delve deep and acquire as much of them as they can, not because things are useful, but because it’s fun.

Finally, Badger primaries are also people-persons, but their communities are much broader than a Snake primary’s. They value people, tradition, cultures and so (but not every Badger sees everyone as people, so there’s that). Badger secondaries are the hardworking types in the sense that they cultivate things, they invest in them and even become them.

You can develop models of each house according to what you find useful or what society has instilled in you, but when push come to shove, the models aren’t the real you. All of these houses can burn, meaning their essence is somehow scared away from them due to trauma, depression, societal pressures, etc. That means a Lion stops trusting their instincts, a Snake no longer feels like they’re able to protect their people or their people are better off without them, a Bird loses faith in their systems and a Badger closes themselves off from their communities and adopts a smaller circle of people. Burnt houses can look a lot like each other. For more info, check out the tags. 

Daenerys

Double Lion, no doubt (for most of the show). Dany knows what’s right, she feels it in her bones. She never tries to rationalise her decisions and she won’t usually budge, even if she is presented with a more rational plan. None of her advisors have really convinced her to do anything, they might have pushed her to do what they wanted, but if she had her way, Daenerys would only ever listen to her own heart. She needs people around her to help her not make impulsive, brash decisions(because of her Lion secondary that I will get into), but she definitely doesn’t need - and doesn’t want - a moral compass, hers works just fine. She was burned as hell in the first episodes of the first season, mostly because of Viserys’ horrible influence, because he had robbed her of a purpose, of her truth. Drogo also stifles her primary and secondary for a while, but he eventually gives her some space to be herself. When she unburns, she unburns fast. ‘Not a Queen, a Khaleesi’ is pretty much Day gong ‘yeah, I can do things my way, I can be my own person with my own values and my own self.’ I think from there on, her quest to liberate 1) take back the Iron Throne 2) liberate Slaver’s Bay and ‘Break the Wheel’ just show how much she is focused on a big quest that is not explained by reason, by her need to form a community or by the influence of someone in her life. She does it because that’s the Right Thing ™ to do, and that’s Lion primary in a nutshell. Another thing that points towards Lion primary to me is how she just won’t take criticism and specially betrayal well (not that anyone does, but Dany is particularly unforgiving most of the time). Lion primaries are particularly shaken when someone they admire doesn’t have the same moral standards as they do, because deep down they like to think they know what’s ‘good’ and ‘true’ (oops my Snake primary who doesn’t really get Lions is showing), so if you don’t follow them and their beliefs, you must be doing something wrong. This is why Dany is so fucking pissed at Jorah when she finds out he betrayed her. She is also devastated true, and she misses him, but her ideals and her ‘truth’ stop her from seeing things from his side ad from forgiving him until he has proven himself worthy. Her reaction to betrayals tie in to the fact that she is a MASSIVE Lion secondary. She headbutts her way into things and her liberal use of Dracarys is proof of that. That’s not to say she doesn’t think or plan or listen to her advisors, but when push comes to shove, homegirl ACTS. Fuck the consequences, I have three dragons, fucking try me. Don’t tell me that climbing on Drogon in the fighting pits and burning the Khals were calculated decisions. Burning the Lannister army wasn’t a calculated decision. She leaves the planning to the people around her. This is something I struggle with regarding Lions, but I have to admit they are much more prone to seizing opportunities that us Bird secondaries (because I do have a Snake model but it is utter shit). 

Now, in seasons 7 and 8, she starts burning again. She gets to Westeros, where people aren’t flocking to her side like they did in Essos. Daenerys lets herself be swayed by Jon’s pretty little speeches that sound very Lion, sound very true to Daenerys, but guess what? She is fucking betrayed by everyone. The people she loved are killed, her children are killed (and the whole ‘I will take what is mine’ thing indicates that she might have a Snaky primary model, after all, she does some things because of what she claimed as hers, be it people or the Throne), she is left absolutely alone, so she burns, she loses faith in herself, starts doubting her actions and her instincts and no one is there to help her unburn safely, so the way she does it is destructive, as it often is with Lion primaries who don’t have guidance in order to regain their trust  their instincts and their selves. To me, the KL incidence is her primary going ‘You fucking left me behind, you fuckers, now you are going to see that I was right and fuck the consequences’. Her primary takes a turn for the worse with the help of an impulsive secondary and she ends doing anything to reach her end goal, similar to Albus Dumbledore and his disregard for human life as long as Voldemort being defeated is concerned. 

Jorah

I have no doubts whatsoever that Jorah is a Snake primary. I know the fandom likes to sort him into Hufflepuff when using the traditional sorting system and while there’s no doubts he is a loyalist to the bone, Jorah’s loyalties are much narrower than a Badger primary’s would be. Before he meets Daenerys, he wants to go home and make up with his family, because they are the ones who matter. Not his reputation, not the North, not Bear Islad itself, the Mormont House. Before that still, he does literally anything to keep Lynesse happy, including doing things that are against the law. This utter devotion to certain people are what makes him a Snake primery to me, a paricularly self destructive one. He starts worrying about the fact that he berayed Daenerys when he ‘adopts’ her into his circles and more so when she goes from being in his outermost circles to being the one person his Snake primary is attached to. Daeerys is everything to Jorah. Does he persoally care about freeing slaves or generally following her morals? No, he does it because it is importat to her and he wants her to see he is worthy of her attention (I, another Snek, still don’t kow if I like Florence + The Machine so damn much because I liked a girl who was into FATM or if my Bird secondary saw her taste for FATM and went ‘OMG ME TOO LETS TALK ABOUT THAT’ and the primary just said ‘huh, that’s legit. We’ll worship her from now on’, so yeah, us Snakes do that. On a side note, I never worked up the courage to ask her out, though). That’s why he goes batshit when she banishes him. He doesn’t burn, which means his primary is so strong it wasn’t fazed by being ast out of her circles; no, he is hell bent on getting back into her good graces and if he has to sacrifice his life fr that, so be it. 

Now, when it comes to secondary, I’d say Jorah’s a Lion secondary too, even though he has a lot of models he picked up with time. Models are useful, models get you out of bad situations, but they’re not who you really are. Jorah wans to be a Bird secondary when he’s around Daenerys, he wants to be the careful planner who looks ahead and ensures she is successful and he also needs a Snake secondary model, because his life demands that he twists and turns himself to fit different situations, but deep inside he is a Lion. His most honest moments are the moments when he just does it, no thoughts head empty. Did he have a solid plans when he kidnapped Tyrion? Fuck no! Did he truly know what he was doing when he decided to fight in the pits? Fuck no! Did he think before he charged at the wights and saved Daenerys in Winterfell? Fuck no! His head was probably just going ‘my Daenerys is in danger let’s punch first and see what happens later’. He’s not like Littlefinger, who plans everything ad is so fast at analysing and changing plans he looks like a Snake. His models make him seem like the opposite of Dany, like a Bird to a Lion, brains while she is brawn, but when she is in danger, Jorah charges. 

What the Jorleesi shippers do is take Dany’s Lion primary that is so focused on a quest and show her that she can also include people in her big aspirations. The gut feeling that is so characteristic of Lions is already inside her, all she would need is to put it into words, which isn’t necessarily the strongest suits of many Lions (that’s a Bird thing). Since most of their dynamics inevitably lies on Jorah’s models regulating Dany’s secondary, there’s not much point in ‘taming her Lion’. Jorah stays the same. The fandom looooves his Snake/Lion, specially since us Snakes tend to be too hard on ourselves. A self-loathing Snake who is also a stupid brave Lion secondary? Yes. They are both stupid brave. Also just stupid. Just talk, you two, for fuck’s sake. Get over your Lion, Daenerys, and talk to him, his Snake won’t allow him to bother you too much. 

[turtle-paced]

Don't you ever consider the possibility that GOT’s ending might be broadly ASOIAF’s ending? Dany clashing with the Starks (but in ways that still portray both parties as reasonable and sympathetic, like Tyrion and Cat in AGOT)? Dany going back to fighting for the Iron Throne after traumatically fighting for humanity akin to Scouring of the Shire? It feels very GRRM to me. Of course, details like Dany going mad and willingly burning KL are much more likely be show only additions both...

... because it’s OOC for Dany and D&D and their ongoing tendency to make it easy to “choose” one side, but, at the same time, the most popular prediction here on Tumblr (i.e. Dany dies sacrificing herself in the fight against the Others) rests too much on the assumption that GRRM is deconstructing and reconstructing fantasy tropes - which may be the case, but not as much as we think, and the prediction feels too high fantasy for him. Besides, and that’s the big question for me: why would D&D change the order of these events? Really can’t see why they’d make such a move, as depicting the WftD at last would be typical, unchallenging blockbuster. I wouldn’t like if this were the case because I love Dany, but I think we should at least consider it.

I have considered it. I considered it, and I consider it more likely that D&D changed the order of events precisely because they felt that the defeat of the Others at the end, complete with heroic sacrifices, would be insufficiently surprising.

When I look at the narrative that GRRM’s written, no, I would not be surprised to see something comparable to the Scouring of the Shire. I just don’t think it’s coming from Dany’s plot. When I look at Dany’s plot, when I look at what she wants and what her goals are, I see Aegon “Targaryen” making a move to obtain those very things at the end of ADWD. I’m having real trouble seeing Dany put her goals on complete pause while someone claiming Dany’s family name is achieving Dany’s goals in a zero-sum game. It looks to me as if her storyline is running smack bang into Aegon’s - before she goes anywhere else.

Similarly, I don’t expect Dany to get along perfectly with the Starks. Especially not at first. But at the same time, there’s been a lot made in the story about how divisions amongst humanity are weakening them for the needed fight, and so I think that our camps of protagonists will resolve at least some of their differences to resolve the series’ greatest problem. Yes, even if that doesn’t resolve every problem, permanently.

I mean, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I have thought about it. I still think that a) there are still strongly conventional elements in GRRM’s writing, especially where using genre tropes are concerned, and b) GRRM’s a better writer than D&D, capable of executing even older and more familiar tropes with enough flair to keep the story compelling. I think that’s likely to show in the conclusion of the series.

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany being self-critical or at least self-aware

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

*Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is no guarantee that the effort was perfectly executed, but I did my best.

Also, people could interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

I listed the passages back to front because I felt doing so highlighted Dany's evolution better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

[I]f you are the person who has freed countless souls from chains -- when all those people never imagined freedom was a possibility -- you would feel you know better than everyone else what is best for them. (The Take)

~

And for Dany, the whole concept of "breaking the wheel" was always just about her taking more power so that she could dispense what she believed to be justice. It's a truly terrifying megalomania and one that I think she's had all along, we just didn't always see it. (x)

~

She wants to rule with love, not fear.

It doesn’t always go that way for her. And when it doesn’t — when the people she would rule don’t adore her — she tends to react fiercely. (x)

~

But Dany’s arc is not contrived or “coming out of nowhere” or “out of character”. This is precisely the character that she has shown herself to be from as far back as season two. She has made selfish and rash decisions one after another. She has failed to recognize the larger picture and the true needs of the people around her more times than can be chalked up to “youthful” mistakes. The seeds have been laid, the decisions have been made, and her thoughtlessness towards others and zeal for her own destiny have distorted her intentions. (x)

~

Dany’s true downfall is one of ego, impulse control and rage – and that is a human story, not a gendered story. She has become obsessed with destiny. It seems she doesn’t even have one except in helping set up others, more deserving, to lead. This certainly shows the folly of ego, presumption and dominion without listening and learning. (x)

~

She always has had a tyrant in the making kind of vibe. In addition to mass genocide, what do tyrants have in common? They all have a big ego, which needs to be massaged every now and then. Noticed how often Danny [sic] tells the story about the time she broke the chains and slaves rose up against their masters? It’s the narcissist in her, who not only loved it when people took her name as she passed through the crowd in Meereen after murdering the masters, but continues to tell that story to boost her own ego. (x)

Does Dany "[feels] [she] know[s] better than everyone else what is best for them"? Does Dany have a "truly terrifying megalomania"? Does Dany tend to "react fiercely" "when the people she would rule don’t adore her"? Are Dany's decisions "selfish and rash" in nature? Does Dany have problems with "ego, impulse control, rage, presumption and dominion without listening and learning"? Is Dany a "tyrant in the making" with a "narcissist in her" whose ego "needs to be massaged every now and then"?

I would argue these claims certainly cannot be made after reading the books (some can't even after watching the show's first 71 episodes, but the show can be all over the place and ... I digress), so take a look at these passages.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

Her tokar and veils she had abandoned in the pit, and her linen undertunic had never been made to withstand the hot days and cold nights of the Dothraki sea. Sweat and grass and dirt had stained it, and Dany had torn a strip off the hem to make a bandage for her shin. I must look a ragged thing, and starved, she thought, but if the days stay warm, I will not freeze.

~

Dany did not need a glass to know that she was filthy.

~

Once I dreamed of flying, she thought, and now I’ve flown, and dream of stealing eggs. That made her laugh. “Men are mad and gods are madder,” she told the grass, and the grass murmured its agreement.

~

If I stay here, I will die. I may be dying now. Would the horse god of the Dothraki part the grass and claim her for his starry khalasar, so she might ride the nightlands with Khal Drogo? In Westeros the dead of House Targaryen were given to the flames, but who would light her pyre here? My flesh will feed the wolves and carrion crows, she thought sadly, and worms will burrow through my womb.

~

You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered. “To be a queen.”

You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. “It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”

~

Dany, starved, slid off his back and ate with him, ripping chunks of smoking meat from the dead horse with bare, burned hands. In Meereen I was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb, she remembered. What would my noble husband think if he could see me now? Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario ...

Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his arakh, and squat down to eat beside her.

ADWD Daenerys IX

Soon Dany was as clean as she was ever going to be.

~

How queer, the queen thought. They cheer me on the same plaza where I once impaled one hundred sixty-three Great Masters.

~

The day she wed Khal Drogo, the arakhs had flashed at her wedding feast, and men had died whilst others drank and mated. Life and death went hand in hand amongst the horselords, and a sprinkling of blood was thought to bless a marriage. Her new marriage would soon be drenched in blood. How blessed it would be.

~

“I suppose I must be thankful for small victories,” the queen said.

“One step, then the next, and soon we shall be running. Together we shall make a new Meereen.” The street ahead had finally cleared. “Shall we continue on?”

What could she do but nod? One step, then the next, but where is it I’m going?

~

Her lord husband stood and raised his hands. “Great Masters! My queen has come this day, to show her love for you, her people. By her grace and with her leave, I give you now your mortal art. Meereen! Let Queen Daenerys hear your love!”

Ten thousand throats roared out their thanks; then twenty thousand; then all. They did not call her name, which few of them could pronounce. “Mother!” they cried instead; in the old dead tongue of Ghis, the word was Mhysa! They stamped their feet and slapped their bellies and shouted, “Mhysa, Mhysa, Mhysa,” until the whole pit seemed to tremble. Dany let the sound wash over her. I am not your mother, she might have shouted, back, I am the mother of your slaves, of every boy who ever died upon these sands whilst you gorged on honeyed locusts. Behind her, Reznak leaned in to whisper in her ear, “Magnificence, hear how they love you!”

No, she knew, they love their mortal art.

~

Pale Qartheen, black Summer Islanders, copper-skinned Dothraki, Tyroshi with blue beards, Lamb Men, Jogos Nhai, sullen Braavosi, brindle-skinned half-men from the jungles of Sothoros—from the ends of the world they came to die in Daznak’s Pit.

~

“Magnificence, the people of Meereen have come to celebrate our union. You heard them cheering you. Do not cast away their love.”

“It was my floppy ears they cheered, not me. Take me from this abbatoir, husband.”

~

In Westeros the septons spoke of seven hells and seven heavens, but the Seven Kingdoms and their gods were far away. If she died here, Dany wondered, would the horse god of the Dothraki part the grass and claim her for his starry khalasar, so she might ride the nightlands beside her sun-and-stars? Or would the angry gods of Ghis send their harpies to seize her soul and drag her down to torment?

[...] In the smoldering red pits of Drogon’s eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. How small she looked, how weak and frail and scared. I cannot let him see my fear.

ADWD Daenerys VIII

No queen has clean hands, Dany told herself. She thought of Doreah, of Quaro, of Eroeh … of a little girl she had never met, whose name had been Hazzea. Better a few should die in the pit than thousands at the gates. This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost.

~

You saw me as defeated, Dany thought, and who am I to say that you were wrong?

“...Never trust a sellsword.”

Or a queen, thought Dany.

~

“The dragon has three heads,” Dany said when they were on the final flight. “My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes. I know why you are here.”

“For you,” said Quentyn, all awkward gallantry.

“No,” said Dany. “For fire and blood.”

~

Her voice echoed off the scorched stone walls. It sounded small—a girl’s voice, not the voice of a queen and conqueror, nor the glad voice of a new-made bride.

~

She could hear the dragons screaming as she led the boy back to the door, and see the play of light against the bricks, reflections of their fires. If I look back, I am lost.

~

I should never have taken him into my bed. He was only a sellsword, no fit consort for a queen, and yet …

I knew that all along, but I did it anyway.

“My queen?” said a soft voice in the darkness.

Dany flinched. “Who is there?”

“Only Missandei.” The Naathi scribe moved closer to the bed. “This one heard you crying.”

ADWD Daenerys VII

Meereenese seldom rode within their city walls. They preferred palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs, borne upon the shoulders of their slaves. “Horses befoul the streets,” one man of Zakh had told her, “slaves do not.” Dany had freed the slaves, yet palanquins, litters, and sedan chairs still choked the streets as before, and none of them floated magically through the air.

ADWD Daenerys VI

Their eyes followed her. Those who had the strength called out. “Mother … please, Mother … bless you, Mother …”

Bless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me.

What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children?

~

Dany gazed across the camp, to the many-colored brick walls of Meereen. The air was thick with flies and cries. “The gods have sent this pestilence to humble me.[”]

ADWD Daenerys V

The weaver raised her head. “Every day we told each other that the dragon queen was coming back.” The woman had thin lips and dull dead eyes, set in a pinched and narrow face. “Cleon had sent for you, it was said, and you were coming.”

He sent for me, thought Dany. That much is true, at least.

~

“Others blamed Daenerys,” said the weaver, “but more of us still loved you. ‘She is on her way,’ we said to one another. ‘She is coming at the head of a great host, with food for all.’”

I can scarce feed my own folk. If I had marched to Astapor, I would have lost Meereen.

~

“Even then some said that you were coming,” said the weaver. “They swore they had seen you mounted on a dragon, flying high above the camps of the Yunkai’i. Every day we looked for you.”

I could not come, the queen thought. I dare not.

~

“It is good that you have come,” she told the Astapori. “You will be safe in Meereen.”

The cobbler thanked her for that, and the old brickmaker kissed her foot, but the weaver looked at her with eyes as hard as slate. She knows I lie, the queen thought. She knows I cannot keep them safe. Astapor is burning, and Meereen is next.

~

You warned King Cleon against this war with Yunkai. The man was a fool, and his hands were red with blood.”

And are my hands any cleaner? She remembered what Daario had said—that all kings must be butchers, or meat.

~

“Cleon was the enemy of our enemy. If I had joined him at the Horns of Hazzat, we might have crushed the Yunkai’i between us.”

The Shavepate disagreed. “If you had taken the Unsullied south to Hazzat, the Sons of the Harpy—”

“I know. I know. It is Eroeh all over again.”

Brown Ben Plumm was puzzled. “Who is Eroeh?”

“A girl I thought I’d saved from rape and torment. All I did was make it worse for her in the end. And all I did in Astapor was make ten thousand Eroehs.”

“Your Grace could not have known—”

“I am the queen. It was my place to know.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

“Then heed me now and marry.”

[...] “Tell me, can this king puff his cheeks up and blow Xaro’s galleys back to Qarth? Can he clap his hands and break the siege of Astapor? Can he put food in the bellies of my children and bring peace back to my streets?”

~

“...In him the prophecies shall be fulfilled, and your enemies will melt away like snow."

He shall be the stallion that mounts the world. Dany knew how it went with prophecies. They were made of words, and words were wind.

~

“Why would you want to help me? For the crown?”

~

“...The Seven Kingdoms will never accept Hizdahr zo Loraq as king.”

“No more than Meereen will accept Daenerys Targaryen as queen. The Green Grace has the right of that. I need a king beside me, a king of old Ghiscari blood. Elsewise they will always see me as the uncouth barbarian who smashed through their gates, impaled their kin on spikes, and stole their wealth.”

~

“Bright queen,” he said, “you have grown more beautiful in my absence. How is this thing possible?”

The queen was accustomed to such praise, yet somehow the compliment meant more coming from Daario than from the likes of Reznak, Xaro, or Hizdahr.

~

What have I done? she thought, huddled in her empty bed. I have waited so long for him to come back, and I send him away. “He would make a monster of me,” she whispered, “a butcher queen.” But then she thought of Drogon far away, and the dragons in the pit. There is blood on my hands too, and on my heart. We are not so different, Daario and I. We are both monsters.

ADWD Daenerys III

“I want no slave. I free you.” His jeweled nose made a tempting target. This time Dany threw an apricot at him.

Xaro caught it in the air and took a bite. “Whence came this madness? Should I count myself fortunate that you did not free my own slaves when you were my guest in Qarth?”

I was a beggar queen and you were Xaro of the Thirteen, Dany thought, and all you wanted were my dragons. “Your slaves seemed well treated and content. It was not till Astapor that my eyes were opened. Do you know how Unsullied are made and trained?”

~

“Meereen is a free city of free men.”

“A poor city that once was rich. A hungry city that once was fat. A bloody city that once was peaceful.”

His accusations stung. There was too much truth in them. “Meereen will be rich and fat and peaceful once again, and free as well. Go to the Dothraki if you must have slaves.”

~

Groleo had been a most unhappy man since they had broken up his ship to build the siege engines that won Meereen for her. Dany had tried to console him by naming him her lord admiral, but it was a hollow honor; the Meereenese fleet had sailed for Yunkai when Dany’s host approached the city, so the old Pentoshi was an admiral without ships.

~

Ser Barristan went to one knee before her. “My queen, your realm has need of you. You are not wanted here, but in Westeros men will flock to your banners by the thousands, great lords and noble knights. ‘She is come,’ they will shout to one another, in glad voices. ‘Prince Rhaegar’s sister has come home at last.’”

“If they love me so much, they will wait for me.” Dany stood. “Reznak, summon Xaro Xhoan Daxos.”

ADWD Daenerys II

A shadow. A memory. No one. She was the blood of the dragon, but Ser Barristan had warned her that in that blood there was a taint. Could I be going mad? They had called her father mad, once. “I was praying,” she told the Naathi girl. “It will be light soon. I had best eat something, before court.”

~

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons. But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain. And who would ever dare to love a dragon?

~

All the dogs are just as guilty. The guilt …” The word caught in her throat. Hazzea, she thought, and suddenly she heard herself say, “I have to see the pit,” in a voice as small as a child’s whisper. “Take me down, ser, if you would.”

~

What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

~

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.

ADWD Daenerys I

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dressed up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father’s household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his father’s house, and the other had joined the queen’s soldiers as one of the Mother’s Men. He wanted them both hanged.

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.

When she told him, the boy rushed at her, but his feet tangled in his tokar and he went sprawling headlong on the purple marble. [...]“Enough, Belwas,” Dany called. [...] But as he left the boy looked back over his shoulder, and when she saw his eyes Dany thought, The Harpy has another Son.

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

When she was dressed, Missandei brought her a polished silver glass so she could see how she looked. Dany stared at herself in silence. Is this the face of a conqueror? So far as she could tell, she still looked like a little girl.

~

All my victories turn to dross in my hands, she thought. Whatever I do, all I make is death and horror. When word of what had befallen Astapor reached the streets, as it surely would, tens of thousands of newly freed Meereenese slaves would doubtless decide to follow her when she went west, for fear of what awaited them if they stayed ... yet it might well be that worse would await them on the march. Even if she emptied every granary in the city and left Meereen to starve, how could she feed so many? The way before her was fraught with hardship, bloodshed, and danger. Ser Jorah had warned her of that. He’d warned her of so many things ... he’d ... No, I will not think of Jorah Mormont. Let him keep a little longer.

~

“The city bleeds. Dead men rot unburied in the streets, each pyramid is an armed camp, and the markets have neither food nor slaves for sale. And the poor children! King Cleaver’s thugs have seized every highborn boy in Astapor to make new Unsullied for the trade, though it will be years before they are trained.”

The thing that surprised Dany most was how unsurprised she was. She found herself remembering Eroeh, the Lhazarene girl she had once tried to protect, and what had happened to her. It will be the same in Meereen once I march, she thought. The slaves from the fighting pits, bred and trained to slaughter, were already proving themselves unruly and quarrelsome. They seemed to think they owned the city now, and every man and woman in it. Two of them had been among the eight she’d hanged. There is no more I can do, she told herself.

~

“I will admit you helped win me this city ...”

Ser Jorah’s mouth tightened. “We won you this city. We sewer rats.”

“Be quiet,” she said again ... though there was truth to what he said.

~

“Bring me the book I was reading last night.” She wanted to lose herself in the words, in other times and other places. The fat leather-bound volume was full of songs and stories from the Seven Kingdoms. Children’s stories, if truth be told; too simple and fanciful to be true history. All the heroes were tall and handsome, and you could tell the traitors by their shifty eyes. Yet she loved them all the same. Last night she had been reading of the three princesses in the red tower, locked away by the king for the crime of being beautiful.

~

But Daario is right, I shouldn’t have banished him. I should have kept him, or I should have killed him. She played at being a queen, yet sometimes she still felt like a scared little girl. Viserys always said what a dolt I was. Was he truly mad? She closed the book. She could still recall Ser Jorah, if she wished. Or send Daario to kill him.

~

That night her handmaids brought her lamb, with a salad of raisins and carrots soaked in wine, and a hot flaky bread dripping with honey. She could eat none of it. Did Rhaegar ever grow so weary? she wondered. Did Aegon, after his conquest?

~

“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”

“There is nothing to stay for,” said Brown Ben Plumm.

“Your Grace, the slavers brought their doom on themselves,” said Daario Naharis.

“You have brought freedom as well,” Missandei pointed out.

“Freedom to starve?” asked Dany sharply. “Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?” Am I mad? Do I have the taint?

“A dragon,” Ser Barristan said with certainty. “Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace.”

“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”

“What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.

“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”

ASOS Daenerys V

Balerion floated nearest; the great cog once known as Saduleon, her sails furled. Further out were the galleys Meraxes and Vhagar, formerly Joso’s Prank and Summer Sun. They were Magister Illyrio’s ships, in truth, not hers at all, and yet she had given them new names with hardly a thought.

~

Many of the freedmen believed there was good fortune in her touch. If it helps give them courage, let them touch me, she thought. There are hard trials yet ahead ...

~

“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man, and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you. I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and hair.”

“No more than I did.”

ASOS Daenerys III

Arstan Whitebeard held his tongue as well, when Dany swept by him on the terrace. He followed her down the steps in silence, but she could hear his hardwood staff tap tapping on the red bricks as they went. She did not blame him for his fury. It was a wretched thing she did. The Mother of Dragons has sold her strongest child. Even the thought made her ill.

~

Dany fed her dragons as she always did, but found she had no appetite herself. She cried awhile, alone in her cabin, then dried her tears long enough for yet another argument with Groleo.

[...] The anger burned the grief and fear from her, for a few hours at the least.

~

If I look back I am lost, Dany told herself the next morning as she entered Astapor through the harbor gates. She dared not remind herself how small and insignificant her following truly was, or she would lose all courage.

~

Dany mounted her silver. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She felt desperately afraid. Was this what my brother would have done?

ASOS Daenerys II

“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.”

“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”

“And my father?” Dany said.

The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you have no need of slaves. Magister Illyrio can keep you safe while your dragons grow, and send secret envoys across the narrow sea on your behalf, to sound out the high lords for your cause.”

“Those same high lords who abandoned my father to the Kingslayer and bent the knee to Robert the Usurper?”

“Even those who bent their knees may yearn in their hearts for the return of the dragons.”

“May,” said Dany. That was such a slippery word, may. In any language.

~

[“]So tell me, why is that ugly harpy not sitting beside the godsway in Vaes Dothrak among the other stolen gods?”

“You have a dragon’s eye, Khaleesi, that’s plain to see.”

“I wanted an answer, not a compliment.”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki-fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid. “I have won no victories,” she tried telling her handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.

Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of dust and sent their souls to hell.”

That was Drogon’s victory, not mine, Dany wanted to say, but she held her tongue. The Dothraki would esteem her all the more for a few bells in her hair.

~

Pale men in dusty linen skirts stood beneath arched doorways to watch them pass. They know who I am, and they do not love me. Dany could tell from the way they looked at her.

~

It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed. She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But it was run or die. Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her.

~

“...Give me a son, my sweet song of joy!”

Give you a dragon, you mean. “I will not wed you, Xaro.��� His face had grown cold at that. “Then go.”

“But where?”

“Somewhere far from here.”

~

Dany would get no help from the Thirteen, the Tourmaline Brotherhood, or the Ancient Guild of Spicers.

~

Sailors, dockworkers, and merchants alike gave way before her, not knowing what to make of this slim young girl with silver-gold hair who dressed in the Dothraki fashion and walked with a knight at her side.

~

“Sheath your steel, blood of my blood,” said Dany, “this man comes to serve me. Belwas, you will accord all respect to my people, or you will leave my service sooner than you’d wish, and with more scars than when you came.”

The gap-toothed smile faded from the giant’s broad brown face, replaced by a confused scowl. Men did not often threaten Belwas, it would seem, and less so girls a third his size.

ACOK Daenerys IV

Her voice was no more than a whisper, almost as faint as theirs.

ACOK Daenerys III

The drapes kept out the dust and heat of the streets, but they could not keep out disappointment. Dany climbed inside wearily, glad for the refuge from the sea of Qartheen eyes.

~

“I see a deep sadness written upon your face, my light of love.” He offered her a goblet. “Could it be the sadness of a lost dream?”

“A dream delayed, no more.” [...] The Pureborn were notorious for offering poisoned wine to those they thought dangerous, but they had not given Dany so much as a cup of water. They never saw me for a queen, she thought bitterly. I was only an afternoon’s amusement, a horse girl with a curious pet.

~

Yet the men who sat in them seemed so listless and world-weary that they might have been asleep. They listened, but they did not hear, or care, she thought. They are Milk Men indeed. They never meant to help me. They came because they were curious. They came because they were bored, and the dragon on my shoulder interested them more than I did.

“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.

Xaro sighed. “You ought to have wept.” The Qartheen wept often and easily; it was considered a mark of the civilized man. “The men we bought, what did they say?”

“Mathos said nothing. Wendello praised the way I spoke. The Exquisite refused me with the rest, but he wept afterward.”

“Alas, that Qartheen should be so faithless.” Xaro was not himself of the Pureborn, but he had told her whom to bribe and how much to offer. “Weep, weep, for the treachery of men.”

Dany would sooner have wept for her gold. The bribes she’d tendered to Mathos Mallarawan, Wendello Qar Deeth, and Egon Emeros the Exquisite might have bought her a ship, or hired a score of sellswords.

~

The crown was the only offering she’d kept. The rest she sold, to gather the wealth she had wasted on the Pureborn. Xaro would have sold the crown too—the Thirteen would see that she had a much finer one, he swore—but Dany forbade it. “Viserys sold my mother’s crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this one, so men will call me a queen.” And so she did, though the weight of it made her neck ache.

Yet even crowned, I am a beggar still, Dany thought. I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same. 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. 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 Arbor makes the best wine in the world,” Dany declared. Lord Redwyne had fought for her father against the Usurper, she remembered, one of the few to remain true to the last. Will he fight for me as well? There was no way to be certain after so many years.

~

“I mean to sail to Westeros, and drink the wine of vengeance from the skull of the Usurper.”

[...] “Will nothing turn you from this madness?”

“Nothing,” she said, wishing she was as certain as she sounded.

~

Even so, it would be years before they were large enough to take to war. And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom waste. For all her Targaryen blood, Dany had not the least idea of how to train a dragon.

ACOK Daenerys II

Dany felt shabby and barbaric as she rode past them in her lionskin robe with black Drogon on one shoulder. Her Dothraki called the Qartheen “Milk Men” for their paleness, and Khal Drogo had dreamed of the day when he might sack the great cities of the east. 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 Thirteen will come to do you homage, and all the great of Qarth.”

All the great of Qarth will come to see my dragons, Dany thought, yet she thanked Xaro for his kindness before she sent him on his way.

~

The Usurper will kill you, sure as sunrise, Mormont had said. Robert had slain her gallant brother Rhaegar, and one of his creatures had crossed the Dothraki sea to poison her and her unborn son. They said Robert Baratheon was strong as a bull and fearless in battle, a man who loved nothing better than war. And with him stood the great lords her brother had named the Usurper’s dogs, cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.

How could she hope to overthrow such men? When Khal Drogo had lived, men trembled and made him gifts to stay his wrath. If they did not, he took their cities, wealth and wives and all. But his khalasar had been vast, while hers was meager. Her people had followed her across the red waste as she chased her comet, and would follow her across the poison water too, but they would not be enough. Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king ... but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.

Her doubts made her shiver.

~

“The high lords have always fought. Tell me who’s won and I’ll tell you what it means. Khaleesi, the Seven Kingdoms are not going to fall into your hands like so many ripe peaches. You will need a fleet, gold, armies, alliances—”

“All this I know.” She took his hands in hers and looked up into his dark suspicious eyes.

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?

ACOK Daenerys I

“...Ten thousand warriors went with him. You have a hundred.”

No, Dany thought. I have four. The rest are women, old sick men and boys whose hair has never been braided.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered her tent. The Dothraki were muttering and giving her strange sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond eyes. They thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know soon enough. If I look back I am lost.

AGOT Daenerys VIII

Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them. He fell from his horse! It was so, she had seen it, and the bloodriders, and no doubt her handmaids and the men of her khas as well. And how many more? They could not keep it secret, and Dany knew what that meant. A khal who could not ride could not rule, and Drogo had fallen from his horse.

“We must bathe him,” she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair.

~

“I will not leave him,” she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his hand again. “I will not.”

~

“That one means you no good, Princess,” Mormont said. “The Dothraki say a man and his bloodriders share one life, and Qotho sees it ending. A dead man is beyond fear.”

“No one has died,” Dany said. “Ser Jorah, I may have need of your blade. Best go don your armor.” She was more frightened than she dared admit, even to herself.

AGOT Daenerys VI

Dany was near tears as they carried her back. The taste in her mouth was one she had known before: fear. For years she had lived in terror of Viserys, afraid of waking the dragon. This was even worse. It was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he moved restlessly inside her. Dany stroked the swell of her belly gently, wishing she could reach him, touch him, soothe him.

AGOT Daenerys IV

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

AGOT Daenerys III

“Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her.”

The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. “He shall walk, Khaleesi,” he said.

~

“Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!”

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and ringmail.

~

Her supper was a simple meal of fruit and cheese and fry bread, with a jug of honeyed wine to wash it down. “Doreah, stay and eat with me,” Dany commanded when she sent her other handmaids away. The Lysene girl had hair the color of honey, and eyes like the summer sky. She lowered those eyes when they were alone. “You honor me, Khaleesi,” she said, but it was no honor, only service. Long after the moon had risen, they sat together, talking.

AGOT Daenerys II

There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.

~

“What should I do?” she asked Illyrio.

It was Ser Jorah Mormont who answered. “Take the reins and ride. You need not go far.”

Nervously Dany gathered the reins in her hands and slid her feet into the short stirrups. She was only a fair rider; she had spent far more time traveling by ship and wagon and palanquin than by horseback. Praying that she would not fall off and disgrace herself, she gave the filly the lightest and most timid touch with her knees.

And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was for the first time ever.

AGOT Daenerys I

Her brother held the gown up for her inspection. “This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress the fabric.”

Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. “Is it really mine?”

“A gift from the Magister Illyrio,” Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in a high mood tonight. “The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess.”

A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. “Why does he give us so much?” she asked. “What does he want from us?” For nigh on half a year, they had lived in the magister’s house, eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the free city of Pentos.

“Illyrio is no fool,” Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous hands and a feverish look in his pale lilac eyes. “The magister knows that I will not forget my friends when I come into my throne.”

Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he’d never had a friend he wouldn’t cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”

~

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. “Our land,” he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. “Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.”

And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother’s womb.

Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword.

She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.

She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper’s brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. [...]

They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one.

At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called her brother “the beggar king.” Dany did not want to know what they called her.

~

Last of all came the collar, a heavy golden torc emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs.

“Now you look all a princess,” the girl said breathlessly when they were done. Dany glanced at her image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so thoughtfully provided. A princess, she thought, but she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms.

~

Dany could smell the stench of Illyrio’s pallid flesh through his heavy perfumes.

Her brother, sprawled out on his pillows beside her, never noticed. His mind was away across the narrow sea. “We won’t need his whole khalasar,” Viserys said. His fingers toyed with the hilt of his borrowed blade, though Dany knew he had never used a sword in earnest. “Ten thousand, that would be enough, I could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. The realm will rise for its rightful king. Tyrell, Redwyne, Darry, Greyjoy, they have no more love for the Usurper than I do. The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children. And the smallfolk will be with us. They cry out for their king.” He looked at Illyrio anxiously. “They do, don’t they?”

“They are your people, and they love you well,” Magister Illyrio said amiably. “In holdfasts all across the realm, men lift secret toasts to your health while women sew dragon banners and hide them against the day of your return from across the water.” He gave a massive shrug. “Or so my agents tell me.”

Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across the narrow sea, but she mistrusted Illyrio’s sweet words as she mistrusted everything about Illyrio. Her brother was nodding eagerly, however. “I shall kill the Usurper myself,” he promised, who had never killed anyone, “as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And Lannister too, the Kingslayer, for what he did to my father.”

“That would be most fitting,” Magister Illyrio said. Dany saw the smallest hint of a smile playing around his full lips, but her brother did not notice. Nodding, he pushed back a curtain and stared off into the night, and Dany knew he was fighting the Battle of the Trident once again.

~

Magister Illyrio’s words were honey. “Many important men will be at the feast tonight. Such men have enemies. The khal must protect his guests, yourself chief among them, Your Grace. No doubt the Usurper would pay well for your head.”

“Oh, yes,” Viserys said darkly. “He has tried, Illyrio, I promise you that. His hired knives follow us everywhere. I am the last dragon, and he will not sleep easy while I live.”

The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave offered a hand to help Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze. 

[orangedodge]

I've always felt like Aegon contrasted Dany much more closely than what you would expect from just a rival, almost more of a renunciation of her than a mirror. I've wanted to do a side-by-side rereading of both of them for a while now, to chart out the similarities, but hadn't had the opportunity to do so. Now that the show is out, I'd seen something of a revival of the discussions over Aegon's status as a fake Targaryen or a false construction of Dany's presumed destiny, and what that may mean for her arc going forward in the other version of the story. That gave me the motivation to spend a few days on my own reread, in a direction I haven't really seen yet, but have had on my mind for a few years now.

To an extent this project also ended up influenced somewhat by posts by khaleesirin and rainhadaenerys suggesting that Dany's arc is taking her away from Westeros and towards an Essosi ending, which is also my preferred ending. Where I am right now, while I do hold the minority position that sees the show as likely a one-to-one adaption of the ending GRRM provided HBO a decade ago, I also believe that a decision was made along the way to combine Dany and Aegon into one character. So part of why I'm writing this now is to show the lines between them making that possible, while also giving myself a template for separating Aegon and Dany later.

In my reading Aegon isn't here to show us a fake Targaryen, or to be exposed as a fake hero, and the question of whether Dany is therefore the “real” hero, or the true heir, isn't really relevant to what's been set up in the tale of Young Griff. His role is construed more narrowly than those wider considerations of prophesy and politics can allow. Rather I think is role is much more personal. When you compare the attributes that Aegon has been gifted with, to Dany's actual accomplishments, I think he's very specifically been lain out more as a fake version of Dany. He's a less substantive imitation of her, produced by Varys and Illyrio to fool the people of Westeros.

Everything he's been given is closely matched by what Dany has attained for herself, but without the work put in to acquiring it that might have taught him to respect his capacity to influence the world around him. And you can see this construction in everything from his educational background, to the Revenge-of-Mediocrity entourage that has been constructed for him, to the army he's just been given for his birthday. Even in the mere fact that he can just up and declare himself a Targaryen, at this late stage in the story, and reap the political rewards without consequence, whereas Dany has been hunted since the literal moment she was born for carrying that name.

This is going to be a bit quote heavy.

There are two quotes in A Dance with Dragons that I think show the big picture of what Varys has created particularly well. One a direct summary of who Aegon is, provided by Varys himself, and the other from Tyrion's narration as he witnesses Aegon's lessons. In both cases, though it may seem a stretch at first glance, you could change the subject from Aegon to Dany without a lot of work. (Which is what HBO seems to have done in their seventh season). The main difference between them is that Aegon has the performative aspects of his training down, while the presumed core lessons Varys meant to impart still elude him. Dany, on the other hand, had to find her own way, but ended up where Aegon couldn't go himself.   

“Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk. He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them. He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 1050).

“The lesson began with languages. Young Griff spoke the Common Tongue as if he had been born to it, and was fluent in High Valyrian, the low dialects of Pentos, Tyrosh, Myr, and Lys, and the trade talk of sailors. The Volantene dialect was as new to him as it was to Tyrion, so every day they learned a few more words whilst Haldon corrected their mistakes. Meereenese was harder; its roots were Valyrian as well, but the tree had been grafted onto the harsh, ugly tongue of Old Ghis. “You need a bee up your nose to speak Ghiscari properly,” Tyrion complained. Young Griff laughed, but the Halfmaester only said, “Again.” The boy obeyed, though he rolled his eyes along with his zzzs this time. He has a better ear than me, Tyrion was forced to admit, though I’ll wager my tongue is still more nimble.

Geometry followed languages. There the boy was less adroit, but Haldon was a patient teacher, and Tyrion was able to make himself of use as well. He had learned the mysteries of squares and circles and triangles from his father’s maesters at Casterly Rock, and they came back more quickly than he would have thought.

By the time they turned to history, Young Griff was growing restive. “We were discussing the history of Volantis,” Haldon said to him. “Can you tell Yollo the difference between a tiger and an elephant?”

“Volantis is the oldest of the Nine Free Cities, first daughter of Valyria,” the lad replied, in a bored tone.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (pp. 204-205).

So there we have what both Varys laying out the criteria he wants his hypothetical perfect leader to match, as well as a rough idea of how Aegon's training has actually managed to proceed in real practice. What I've found more interesting than the question of whether or not Varys can deliberately social engineer a perfect king in this way—my uninformed lay opinion being that history suggests a hard no—is the question of why he was so fixated on these specific accomplishments.

To what extent do these attributes reflect the person Aegon has grown into, and what do his success and failures say about Aegon's role in this story? Because, as Aegon and Varys aren't actually real, the specific form Aegon's education takes isn't something that just arose out of happenstance. Particularly as Martin spent so much of Tyrion's early Dance chapters detailing it, it's being described as it is for a reason. I'm sure some of it's to contrast him with Rhaegar's real son, Jon (or other son, if you like), and his immediate rival for the Iron Throne, Cersei. But, even before you look at the multiple books of lead-in and set-up to Aegon's role in Dany's story, I think he's very clearly been set up as Dany's antithesis just from the above.

Why is it important, that Aegon receive this particular education? We know Varys believes him to have grown up scholarly, self-sufficient, and capable of performing to the Westerosi ideal of the warrior aristocrat, but I think that last one is more about ensuring the existing power structure accepts him as their own, and that he's capable of responding to a crisis adequately. It's more notable that his princely education seems meant to provide him with a cosmopolitan upbringing that would make him more receptive to the struggles of the common people. I think it's to this end that Varys believed Aegon should learn what it meant to be “hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid.” I think that's the core of what he meant to accomplish, and it's fairly clear that this goal was not met.

It all falls apart where Aegon has gone through life with Duck, a personal bodyguard, and Griff, who Tyrion—a man acquainted with Tywin Lannister—thinks is merciless and frightening, both always at the ready to smooth over any problems before he knows he has them. Aegon hasn't been allowed to meet new acquaintances and judge their merits for himself, he hasn't been allowed to go explore his surroundings, or to make his own decisions. He has a lord, a bodyguard, a teacher, and a priest to do all of that for him, and thus has failed to develop as either a proper lord or as an advocate of the common people.

I think the language training has an interesting way of showing that. His learned proficiency in so many languages is an impressive scholastic accomplishment, and it shows he has a genuine aptitude for academics, as well as a willingness to dedicate himself to studies that he may personally find boring but necessary. But question of whether or not he's been trained to Varys standards' isn't to be answered by how well he speaks Valyrian, but by what lessons Varys actually hoped to impart unto him, and whether or not those lessons were learned.

This is where it's important to hold in mind that none of these people are real, and that their choices—particularly ones that Martin spends so much time elaborating on—exist in the context of his world building, and the story that he is trying to communicate. Scholarship isn't received well if in Westeros if it deviates from the mold of the traditional warrior aristocracy. As such, there is a risk of making him appear superfluously educated. Outside of HV, which may be the language of the aristocracy in Westeros, or at least of liturgy, none of these languages are spoken in Westeros.

They have no known tradition of literature, poetry, philosophy, or law linked to any of these languages. Being a proficient speaker of so many languages is impressive, but he aspires to rule Westeros, which has very little diplomatic contact with the rest of the world and no inherent need for the king to be capable of acting as his own translator, and he would have little need for anything except maybe High Valyrian in his typical administrative duties. I think therefore, the language training is a signifier of the kind of cultural and social conditioning Varys wanted to impart.

I would speculate that somewhere along the way, Haldon and Griff confused the desired end with the means Varys devised for knowing it was reached. I think knowing the languages of the Free Cities, after spending a lifetime sailing the Rhoyne, was a way for Varys to know that the lesson sunk in, and that Aegon had come to know the people of Essos, and thus might understand ordinary people as though he were one of them. He wanted Aegon to know what it was like to be afraid and to be powerless, like the common people of the Free Cities, so that he would come to Westeros as a sympathetic advocate. He wanted him to know how easily security and safety can be snatched away, so that he would respect the power Varys and Illyrio propose to invest him with. And this detail of Aegon's upbringing is specifically there as a parallel to Dany's.

The narrow sea was often stormy, and Dany had crossed it half a hundred times as a girl, running from one Free City to the next half a step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 106).

After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever. They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. - Martin, George R. R.. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1).

It didn't really connect with me until this reread that Aegon's Valyrian lessons even include the dialects of Pentos, Lys, Volantis, Myr, Tyrosh, and then end with Meereen's. After the house with the red door was closed to them, Dany and Viserys lived at various times in Pentos, Lys, Volantis, Myr, and Tyrosh, and they lived in each for a considerable period of time (and since she's been back to Braavos at least once, its likely they've revisited the others as well). Only Braavos and Qohor are missing from Aegon's lessons. And by the end of A Storm of Swords, Dany's journey has finally brought her to Meereen.  And just as Meereen is presumed by many to be Dany's last stop before returning to Westeros, Aegon's lessons end on the subject of Meereen, while he's on the outset of his own voyage west.

Does Dany also speak each of those languages as well? It's not fully confirmed, but we're told she knows what the people in the “alleys and wine sinks of Pentos” are saying about Viserys, and we see her making small talk with Illyrio's servants. We know she spent time with the sailors on the ships crossing the Narrow Sea, and exploring the camps that would spring up on the journey between Astapor and Meereen. Given how frequently Dany is said to have sailed the Narrow Sea, we can assume she's had some exposure to their common trade language as well. She liked to spend time exploring the market places of Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh, and we're given the same word as before, “alleys,” to remind us both that she was homeless, and was just wandering around, getting a street-side view of things, and not the more sheltered tour of Essos that Aegon was provided.

We learn in the third book that she knows the Astapori dialect, well enough to follow what Kraznys and the others are saying, and shortly after visiting Yunkai has picked up enough of the similar Yunkai dialect to get to know the freedmen, whose dialect is supposed to be mutually intelligible with Astapori, but otherwise extremely difficult to follow for Valyrian speakers without exposure to the Ghiscari dialects. She's fluent enough in both HV and Tyroshi that they're assumed to be her native language by other Valyrians, like the wine seller in Vaes Dothrak, who hears her as Tyroshi. Since Martin always specifies every instance where Dany is speaking the Westerosi language, her narration is probably being translated from one of these.

There's an odd connection with Tyrosh, between Dany and Aegon as well,

Tyrion turned to Young Griff and gave the lad his most disarming smile. “Blue hair may serve you well in Tyrosh, but in Westeros children will throw stones at you and girls will laugh in your face.”

The lad was taken aback. “My mother was a lady of Tyrosh. I dye my hair in memory of her.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 131).

That Dany is assumed to be Tyroshi, and Aegon fakes being Tyroshi is probably not an intentional parallel, but is definitely the kind of thing you might work into your book subconsciously while parallels of this type are on the mind.

While Dany had a Dothraki language tutor, we know she picked up the language the same way she learned their customs, by exploring the khalasar and Vaes Dothrak. She seems to have picked up Meereenese fairly quickly as well, even though—according to David Petersen—it's meant to have wildly different syntax and noun genders. After only a few months she's at least comfortable enough to hold a conversation in Meereenese, translates what others are saying in her narration, and receives counsel from Reznak and Skahaz primarily in their own language whenever they're in private, and is capable of holding court and taking petitions without Missandei or one of her other aides translating for her (so it's unlikely that she's speaking a more commonplace prestige dialect).

Part of why it's hard to tell how many languages Dany speaks is that she doesn't actually distinguish dialects of Low Valyrian in her narration. She just calls all of them Valyrian, or “the Valyrian of the Free Cities” (which, after perhaps five rereads, I finally realized, to my embarrassment, was the key to the Astapor plot making sense), and doesn't really distinguish one from another in her narration, in contrast to characters like Arya, Tyrion, and Quentyn who do not have her experience living in the Free Cities, and who find it impossible to understand the Low Valyrian dialects that they haven't studied.

Prior to the publication of A Dance with Dragons, we never really had any indication that the differing dialects of Low Valyrian had any variety of mutual unintelligibility to one another, because we'd only known them through Dany's point of view, and from the points of view of characters who had no knowledge of LV at all. It was only upon Tyrion's journey to Essos and the introduction of Aegon that we learned that, outside of a few closely related dialects like Astapori and Yunkish, and those of the Disputed Lands, that they were generally considered to be different languages entirely. It's not until she's been in residence in Meereen for a few months that she starts referring to the Ghiscari dialects by their local names.

(Though granted, some of this could be that—prior to Feast Dance—Martin may not have fully decided on how to name each dialect, with (most notably) the decision to start naming the Astapor and Meereen dialects “Ghiscari,” as opposed to Valyrian, not coming until much later.)

In Dany's case, other than the Westerosi language, and Dothraki, she didn't have access to a tutor. There's a clear implication that she's always learning through direct exposure, and that her language fluency is the outward sign of her cultural fluency. That she was homeless during the years before she moved to Pentos (notably when she lived in Myr and Lys) increases the likelihood that she was exposed to the local language of each, and not a koine language, prestige language, or government language.

In effect, Aegon has replicated Dany's journey from a chair. He was tutored by a scholar, when Dany was immersed in her surroundings. That's not a mark against him, of course, and I'm quite jealous of his success. But he's learning in a sterile environment, isolated from anyone who hasn't been carefully vetted. He's traveled all around the Free Cities, but he was kept safe along the way, while Dany's hanging out in the marketplace exploring her surroundings and playing with the other kids her age.

Dany reads history books for fun, and enjoys listening to oral histories. She seems comfortable enough at it as well, we've seen her quickly scan over messages in court, and summarize them for everyone else, which is noteworthy in a setting where reading regularly enough to be confident in it is unusual even for lords and masters. She's notably one of the only two people in the series who clearly reads for pleasure, not just for administrative tasks, or because they're interested in learning. Those things are true of her as well, but Dany and Tyrion are the only characters who break opened a book to relax. And Dany has read enough books for it to become mundane enough to her that she can forget where she's read one thing or another.

For Aegon learning about the Free Cities disinterests him. Again, not necessarily a mark against him, we all have our own interests. But here again, Aegon is failing in the criteria that was designed around him, and it describes Dany better than it does him. It goes back to Dany talking with Illyrio's servants and Drogo's people, and the kids in the alleys of the Free Cities, and the pilgrims in Vaes Dothrak. She just likes learning about people. Dany learns about the new cities she visits by reading their books, listening to their histories and stories, and talking to everyone she meets.

Aegon doesn't seem to, and he's only really getting Haldon's own flawed perspective on history instead. How well is it actually researched? Tyrion seems to find a lot of holes, specifically because Tyrion has read many differing sources on individual histories, and has pieced together what he thinks is the best, most consistent, understanding of what actually happened. Haldon appears to be relying on only a single source, and is repeating what he was told. He's teaching to the test, in our parlance. Aegon doesn't really care about the history he's getting, and because of that, he hasn't really learned to challenge the information he's receiving, and just goes along with whatever sounds good.

It makes a degree of sense from his perspective. He wants to rule Westeros, not Volantis, or Slaver's Bay. So while he's dutiful to his lessons, we see that he treats them as a superfluous duty, something he's been told he needs to do to be king, and of no further value to him. To an extent I think this highlights Aegon as a wish fulfillment character of the fans, and a rebuttal to the impulse that Dany should just head west already and forget about Meereen. By doing just that, he's slipped into the role that the fans (and HBO) have always wanted for Dany, and potentially into the storyline that was reserved for Dany in Martin's original pitch letter.  

“No tale. Simple truth. The why of it is harder to grasp. Sack Meereen, aye, why not? I would have done the same in her place. The slaver cities reek of gold, and conquest requires coin. But why linger? Fear? Madness? Sloth?” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 344).

Thus Dany's adherence to doing her duty to her people, at the cost of deviating from her “correct” role, is perceived as madness by Aegon's followers. As Aegon was raised believing it's his destiny to rule Westeros wisely and justly, both he and his retainers have no understanding of why someone so similar would take such a different path. Aegon has no interest in helping the people of the Free Cities or Slaver's Bay, nor do the men and women dedicated to seeing him succeed, and they cannot fathom a world otherwise. They're no different than Jorah counseling Dany to leave 80,000 people to starve and be enslaved, for the convenience of her own personal ambition. But unlike with Dany, Aegon isn't ultimately the one in charge, and even if he were, he doesn't have any information his counselors don't want him to have.

“Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them.” And he might at that, but he has a very narrowly construed conception of “his people” if so, limiting it only to his hypothetical future subjects. And his followers haven't gotten any such message, as shown by the way they treat the out group with suspicion and hostility, and will blindly take any opportunity to advance the time table of their invasion. Dany's people understand what she's about, as shown in A Dance with Dragons, and they do their best to carry on as she would when she's not there.

And its worse than just Aegon retinue being carefully vetted to make sure they're sufficiently useful and loyal. His private army was vetted as well, and not by him. Aegon does not know any of these people, he has not had a chance to win their loyalty, they have not had a chance to prove their worth to him. He doesn't really know anything about them, and neither does Griff, because he too has deliberately kept them at a distance in the name of protecting Aegon.

In comparison, Dany knows her subordinates personally. She talks with Selmy, Grey Worm, Marselen, Symon Stripeback, Tal Toraq, and Strong Belwas regularly. She appointed most of them to their positions when she accepted their service, and they're a regular part of her councils. She also personally negotiated for her alliances with Daario and Ben, and made the decision on her own to work with Skahaz and his followers, and to allow them to earn her trust. Should that seem purely a practical matter of their skill in military affairs, she also knew Rylona Rhee well enough to have been told her personal history, and to have had the opportunity to be impressed by her talent in music, and remembers the positions she took in their governing councils. And Missandei knows her well enough to comfortable with playing with and being teased by her, and to be trusted with bookkeeping and administrative work.

I don't plan to go into literally every case Varys cites of Aegon learning to work, but I found it somewhat interesting that he highlighted how Aegon “knows how to bind a wound,” given what he does with it. First aid is a good skill to have, especially in this setting, but the object of Aegon's training is for him to share the trials and pains of the commons. Knowing how to care for the injured is nice, but Aegon does so dispassionately, purely in his capacity as a claimant king. While he does good in giving the order that saves Tyrion's life, he takes little to no interest in the recovery of a man who nearly died fighting for him. If all you're doing is slapping a band-aid on them, and then leaving them behind, what are you really doing? It's better than nothing, and of course Tyrion is happy to be alive, but these are the easy chances Aegon has to form connections with his people and show them that he cares, and he doesn't take them.

Too many of the men they had sent into the camp had been stricken by the flux themselves. Others had been attacked on the way back to the city. Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 521).

Jhogo sucked in his breath. “Khaleesi, no.” The bell in his braid rang softly as he dismounted. “You must not get any closer. Do not let them touch you! Do not!”

Dany walked right past him. There was an old man on the ground a few feet away, moaning and staring up at the grey belly of the clouds. She knelt beside him, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and pushed back his dirty grey hair to feel his brow.

“His flesh is on fire. I need water to bathe him. Seawater will serve. Marselen, will you fetch some for me? I need oil as well, for the pyre. Who will help me burn the dead?” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (pp. 523-524).

Doreah took a fever and grew worse with every league they crossed. Her lips and hands broke with blood blisters, her hair came out in clumps, and one evenfall she lacked the strength to mount her horse. 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. - Martin, George R. R.. A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2) (pp. 145-146).

Dany on the other hand, is shown to actually comfort the people around her, even if she can't do anything but sit with them while they die. She justifies herself to her companions by citing her duty as a queen and as khaleesi, but it's clear she would have behaved the same way regardless. It's a sign that she actually cares about the people she's met along the way, above and beyond what is personally convenient to her, or even safe for her to show. Whereas with Aegon, like so much else about him, its just performative. You're alive thanks to the grace of the king, now off you go to make yourself useful to him.  

Young Griff did not seem to share his misgivings. “Let them try and trouble us, we’ll show them what we’re made of.”

“We are made of blood and bone, in the image of the Father and the Mother,” said Septa Lemore. “Make no vainglorious boasts, I beg you. Pride is a grievous sin. The stone men were proud as well, and the Shrouded Lord was proudest of them all.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 256).

Griff drew his longsword. “Yollo, light the torches. Lad, take Lemore back to her cabin and stay with her.”

Young Griff gave his father a stubborn look. “Lemore knows where her cabin is. I want to stay.”

“We are sworn to protect you,” Lemore said softly.

“I don’t need to be protected. I can use a sword as well as Duck. I’m half a knight.”

“And half a boy,” said Griff. “Do as you are told. Now.”

The youth cursed under his breath and flung his pole down onto the deck. The sound echoed queerly in the fog, and for a moment it was as if poles were falling around them. “Why should I run and hide? Haldon is staying, and Ysilla. Even Hugor.”- Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (pp. 260-261).

Dany had wanted to lead the attack herself, but to a man her captains said that would be madness, and her captains never agreed on anything. Instead she remained in the rear, sitting atop her silver in a long shirt of mail. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 979).

As far as their ability to perform to the expectations of the men under their command and the people under their protection, insofar as their conduct on the battlefield is concerned, they both have the necessary performative aspects down. But while Aegon is a classic member of the warrior aristocracy, Dany's role is closer to soldiering, which is ultimately more useful to the people around her. She's not a glory hound and doesn't care about chivalry, she's strictly there to win, and to get everyone out of danger alive. This is a radically different mindset from Aegon, who just tells everyone who can't fight to get out of the way and take care of themselves.

There's part of Dany that is tempted to put herself in direct danger at Meereen, but that's not about seeking glory—it's about feeling useful when there's otherwise no obvious place for her once her orders have been given. It comes after she'd stayed behind in the camp and faced the uncertainty of not knowing what was going on in Yunkai. It shows that she's not actually comfortable holding herself apart from others; if they're in danger, she feels that she must be in danger as well. And ultimately, she finds a way to still there with her men if anything goes wrong, but at a safe distance behind the lines, which is where someone in her position of leadership actually is most useful.

It's a bit more complicated in Aegon's case. There's an element of wanting to be useful as well, but it's also presented as more a manifestation of his untested youthful vainglory than anything. And it also goes to show how sheltered he's been by his retinue, who should have clamped that impulse down by now. There surely is a middle ground that could satisfy both Aegon's needs and those of his caretakers, if not their respective egos, but instead of reaching it they're kept separated by Aegon's impulsive need to prove himself, and Griff and company's need to keep him out of trouble.

He's not really Griff and Co.'s king, in essence, he's become their child, which might not be a problem in and of itself, except for the part where they're planning to launch an intercontinental war of conquest in his name.

Despite the incredible burden they're preparing for him to take up, Illyrio and Griff didn't trust him with Tyrion's identity, instead opting to allow potentially dangerous fugitive enter the inner circle and come along for the ride in secret. Aegon really needed to know, for his own ability to protect himself if Tyrion proved untrustworthy, that the man who lit Blackwater Bay on fire, and murdered both Tywin and (so is believed) Joffrey, has been sleeping down the hall from him.

But they don't trust him with that. They just let him think all is well, and everything will work out alright, and it's not long before we see he's come to rely upon and internalize that lesson beyond all reason. He really thinks Aunt Dany is going to just give him a dragon and beg him to lose half her men at sea too, just because Griff says she has to and Griff never lies. Aegon's insistence that everything will go according to his aspirations, is matched by Dany's constant introspection and fear of failure, and her early certainty that Illyrio was just having Viserys on. It solidifies the idea that Griff really is more of the father in this relationship than a trusted aide.

On the subject of being sheltered, I think there's a significant, widespread, misreading of Dany's backstory on this subject, that I'd like to address. She was not Viserys' shadow all of those years wandering Western Essos, or limited to seeing only what he allowed her to see. With all of the talk of her wandering alleys and meeting servants and merchants, her familiarity with the food and art of different city-states, and her confidence in exploring new venues on her own, she must have been more her brother's latchkey kid than his hostage. He was abusive and controlling, but he was also disinterested when she wasn't immediately useful to him, and was never organized or sophisticated enough to keep a close eye on what she was doing.

Young Griff arrayed his army for attack, with dragon, elephants, and heavy horse up front. A young man’s formation, as bold as it is foolish. He risks all for the quick kill. He let the prince have first move. Haldon stood behind them, watching the play. When the prince reached for his dragon, Tyrion cleared his throat.

“I would not do that if I were you. It is a mistake to bring your dragon out too soon.” He smiled innocently. “Your father knew the dangers of being overbold.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 305).

The prince stared at the playing board.

“My dragon—”

“—is too far away to save you. You should have moved her to the center of the battle.”

“But you said—”

“I lied. Trust no one. And keep your dragon close.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 309).

During the chess game, Tyrion gives Aegon intentionally bad advance about how best to utilize the dragon piece, in their game's current setup. Intentional comparison to Astapor? Dany knew how best to use her dragon, and wouldn't be dissuaded by the advisers who thought they knew best, and who thought they needed to control her. Aegon has his own ideas as well, but he discards them immediately just because Tyrion says so, when facing far lower stakes.

Aegon goes on to lose the game, which transitions into him making his ever first plan as king. It's a bad one too, and his supporters are all too eager to jump on it. It's an interesting transition; he's been their child sidekick for years, but the second he hits the right notes they expect of a king, they're willing to throw doubt and caution aside because he can look and sound the very part they've trained him to fake. They've just meandered around Volantis for years waiting for Illyrio to fix things for them, and when he can't, they jump on the first plan available, over all rational objections. Overly bold, just as Tyrion warned.

Dany, in contrast, abandoned Illyrio's plans at first opportunity and made her own way, with the support of the people who were there and able to work with her. She relies on her advisers, but the relationship is far more reciprocal than what Aegon has been allowed. Because of that, they can combine their individual strengths and perspectives, and arrive at a plan of action that's useful for more than merely indulging their own smug sense of Byronic pathos.  

Yet they were all the horse she had, and she dared not go without them. The Unsullied might be the finest infantry in all the world, as Ser Jorah claimed, but she needed scouts and outriders as well. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 574).

While Joso’s Cock and the other rams were battering the city gates and her archers were firing flights of flaming arrows over the walls, Dany had sent two hundred men along the river under cover of darkness to fire the hulks in the harbor. But that was only to hide their true purpose. As the flaming ships drew the eyes of the defenders on the walls, a few half-mad swimmers found the sewer mouths and pried loose a rusted iron grating. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 986).

While Dany can also be described as “bold” and aggressive, as Tyrion dismisses Aegon, she's not overly-so. Dany is aggressive, but it's a methodical, considered, aggression. Aegon losing half his men is specifically tied to both his reckless lack of planning, and his YOLO driven assumption that everything will just work out on its own to give him a throne. Dany, meanwhile is someone who knows the cost of even a single failure and knows she can't afford to have one, and so she knows to gain as much information and leave as little to chance as possible.

At Yunkai she treats separately with the leaders of each of the forces charged with the city's defense, to gauge their personalities while they're isolated from one another, and she has her bloodriders thoroughly scouting out the physical location at the same time. During the long march to Yunkai, she's shown to have interviewed everyone she had access to with experience related to the Wise Masters.

It took an hour to work out all the details. Now begins the most dangerous time, Dany thought as her captains departed to their commands. She could only pray that the gloom of the night would hide her preparations from the foe. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 581).

And only after this preparation does she actually commit to a plan to defeat the city and free its slaves, and not only does she pull out a fairly complicated plan, but does so after rigging the game for herself as thoroughly as possible. She gives the Yunkai'i and the sellswords both different—false—timelines, gets the Second Sons drunk, uses the campfires of her noncombatants to mask a midnight attack, and relies on the psychological effect that charging Dothraki will have on poorly trained conscripts. And, remember, she didn't actually need to do any of that. She almost certainly would have won either way, but she wanted to win as decisively as possible, to keep herself and her people in the best possible situation going forward.

Judging by the amount of time they're planning out the battle, we can also determine that it was an extended back and forth between the group, and so we see Jorah, Grey Worm, Rakharo, Jhogo, and Aggo are all trusted with a great deal of trust, as well as autonomy, once it's time for them to move.

I have to admit that prior to this reread I'd never been fond of the taking of Meereen, which seemed to attributable to luck for my taste, and didn't appear to work well as a follow-up to Yunkai and Astapor. But I'd failed to really account for the sheer scale of Dany's entourage, which had so many tens of thousands available, that it's not luck at all that one of them would just happen to be familiar with Meereen's sewers. And with the distraction provided by assaulting the harbor, and through her use of fire arrows to ruin the night vision the city's defenders, it was a fairly safe plan. They either made it into the city, or they'd just be left to wait it out in a sewer until everything was over.

More importantly, I'd neglected the relative lack of importance of the sewer infiltration in my previous assessment. She didn't actually need it at all, but was happy enough to take the advantage as it presented itself. Altogether it paints a good picture of a woman who really puts in the work at gathering information, fostering relationships, and taking advantage of the expertise of the people around her, to ultimately manufacture her own luck just by reaping the rewards that her own conduct puts her in position to find. Her initial liberation of Slaver's Bay works to one of Dany's biggest strengths as a leader: she's never found an advantage she was too proud to take, and she isn't afraid to look greedy by taking too many.

And a lot of Dany's advantages come from being a good judge of character and talent, and being generally good at knowing how much to trust the people around her, and how to sort out responsibilities appropriately.

“No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun’s son and the mummer’s dragon.” - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 166).

For Dany, here are just a small selection of the people who gravitate towards her. Ironborn, Dornishmen, Westermen, Stormlanders, Valyrians, and red priests. Marwyn as well, in A Feast For Crows.  You can probably throw in Benerro and Volantis as well, on the basis of the widow of the waterfront (“Oh, I think it will be war as well, but not the war they want.”) as well as the show's consolidation of all of the Volantene characters into Kinvara.  This is basically every major group represented, of the cities and nations we've visited personally, or who have had direct impact upon the story. She's made contacts nearly everywhere, and where she hasn't, she's sufficiently inspired the people around her that her story has encouraged others to seek her out as well.

Dany and Aegon both draw followers heavily from the dispossessed, but notice that Dany's people tend to be drawn from one of two groups: people who want something to believe in, and people with nowhere else to go, who are in search of protection. Aegon's people are generally those with no other options at all, and those searching for revenge out of bitterness and spiteful nihilism. These are a group of people who just weren't good enough for their aspirations, resent their failures, and are looking for one last wagon to hitch themselves to.

Griff was incompetent and ineffectual as Hand of the King, and dreams of being Aegon's very own Tywin. Haldon wasn't good enough to graduate his university, and spends his days spitefully challenging total strangers to trivia contests, and threatening them with death when he loses. Should these boys really be educating a king? Yes, Dany has awful people in her retainer too, like Jorah Mormont, but she doesn't blindly and incuriously trust them to have her best interests in heart. She gives them clear, specific, instructions and carefully keeps watch on what they do with them to see how much trust they deserve.

Outside of maybe Duck, and Septa Lemore, Aegon's men have no higher aspirations, just romantic visions. They've all given up on that. It's no wonder that half of them end up missing in a storm, and it's surely no accident that Tyrion doesn't belong with them. I talked earlier about how poorly positioned Aegon and his supporters are to take advantage of one another in a mutually beneficial way, and I think the short argument between Lemore and Griff over the Golden Company is further instructive.

“We have gone to great lengths to keep Prince Aegon hidden all these years,” Lemore reminded him. “The time will come for him to wash his hair and declare himself, I know, but that time is not now. Not to a camp of sellswords.”

“If Harry Strickland means him ill, hiding him on the Shy Maid will not protect him. Strickland has ten thousand swords at his command. We have Duck. Aegon is all that could be wanted in a prince. They need to see that, Strickland and the rest. These are his own men.”

“His because they’re bought and paid for. Ten thousand armed strangers, plus hangers-on and camp followers. All it takes is one to bring us all to ruin." - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 336).

These are strangers. They don't know Aegon yet. He's just been given these men. The appendix actually calls them of “uncertain loyalty.” Given House Blackfyre's association with the Golden Company, we might ascribe the company's saying, “beneath the gold, the bitter steel” as well, to be a way of saying both of them are an off-brand imitation.

It also reminds me a bit of Stannis' fake lightbringer, and the hints regarding Drogon. Aegon's almost certainly going to end up with the sword, Blackfyre, and Dany just happens to have a dragon that breathes black fire, and is associated with swords. He's even introduced as a puppet dragon in Dany's Clash chapters, in contrast to Dany's mythical role of the Last Dragon. Aegon's a fake, and to show that his retinue has literally been gilded over. It's also surprisingly reminiscent of Viserys and his golden crown. And like Viserys, what are these men actually worth to anyone?

From that day to this, the men of the Golden Company had lived and died in the Disputed Lands, fighting for Myr or Lys or Tyrosh in their pointless little wars, and dreaming of the land their fathers had lost. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 86).

I ask, what have the Golden Company ever actually accomplished? They have had some early successes in the Stormlands, true, but it's hard to know how seriously to take that when the Stormlands have been leaderless and at war for years, and everyone who knows what they're doing is either in King's Landing or the North. And I somehow doubt that they're going to do a prudent job of governing the fiefdoms they're seizing.

The Golden Company have a fearsome reputation, but it mostly extends from sacking their own client for failure to pay, and of taking control of disorganized pirate bands in the Stepstones. How much of their reputation is an authentic reflection of their skill, rather than a product of the same grand guignol that built Gregor Clegane's? Their real record has been one of pointless little wars, failed invasions of Westeros, and kicking down at people who can't defend themselves. And they seem to be playing a shell game with the three cities of the Disputed Lands, with how often their contract changes hands, and how rarely they're ever called on to do anything in that conflict.  

They found the Golden Company beside the river as the sun was lowering in the west. It was a camp that even Arthur Dayne might have approved of—compact, orderly, defensible. A deep ditch had been dug around it, with sharpened stakes inside. The tents stood in rows, with broad avenues between them. The latrines had been placed beside the river, so the current would wash away the wastes. The horse lines were to the north, and beyond them, two dozen elephants grazed beside the water, pulling up reeds with their trunks. Griff glanced at the great grey beasts with approval. There is not a warhorse in all of Westeros that will stand against them.

Tall battle standards of cloth-of-gold flapped atop lofty poles along the perimeters of the camp. Beneath them, armed and armored sentries walked their rounds with spears and crossbows, watching every approach. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 339).

We have ten thousand men in the company, as I am sure Lord Connington remembers from his years of service with us. Five hundred knights, each with three horses. Five hundred squires, with one mount apiece. And elephants, we must not forget the elephants. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 345).

Black Balaq commanded one thousand bows. In his youth, Jon Connington had shared the disdain most knights had for bowmen, but he had grown wiser in exile. In its own way, the arrow was as deadly as the sword, so for the long voyage he had insisted that Homeless Harry Strickland break Balaq’s command into ten companies of one hundred men and place each company upon a different ship. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 876).

A third of Balaq’s men used crossbows, another third the double-curved horn-and-sinew bows of the east. Better than these were the big yew longbows borne by the archers of Westerosi blood, and best of all were the great bows of goldenheart treasured by Black Balaq himself and his fifty Summer Islanders. - Martin, George R. R.. A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5) (p. 876).

I've always found the structure of the Golden Company interesting. So we have a force of 10,000 men consisting of 24 elephants, 1,000 archers, and 1,000 knights and squires, with the remainder appearing to be infantry with spears. Within the archers alone, we see the important thing is highlighting that they've drawing influence from each of Westeros, the Dothraki, the Free Cities, and the Summer Islands.

Doesn't this sound a bit familiar? Dany also starts off with 1,000 armored guys with bows riding horses, courtesy of her alliances with Daario and Ben, and with around 8,000 to 10,600—the numbering gets weird whether the trainees are included or not—guys on foot with spears. So visually, the Golden Company and Dany's forces are roughly the same idea, developed convergently.

She later gains 2,000 more mercenaries from the Windblown, and “several hundred” pit fighters. Later on she'll also have nearly twice as many infantry as she did when she set out from Astapor, when somewhere around 10,000 freedmen have added to the initial group Unsullied. That's again, visually similar to the Golden Company, and it's the force whose loyalty she earns as an indirect consequence of not peacing out to Volantis to join up with them.

Throughout her time in Meereen the leaders of those thousands of freedmen are fleshed out as they gain more experience as well as become influential among Dany's people. While Aegon is given 10,000 men and wanders off to Westeros right away, Dany wins the loyalty of her own 10,000, and stays with the people she's grown to feel responsible for. While Aegon loses half his men right away, Dany at least doubles her forces right away, putting her in a better position to accomplish her immediate goals than Aegon in his.

The size of Dany's forces continually increase while Aegon's continually divide and split apart, and there's a general theme of different groups of people coming together within the traveling city that's sprung up around Dany's person. The Brazen Beasts are formed from equal numbers of freedmen and shavepates. We don't really know how many there are, beyond there being enough to secure a city with a population likely in excess of 1 million, and to defend its walls during a major siege.

Barristan has 26 squires with him by the end of A Dance with Dragons. Three in particular are highlighted, the Red Lamb, Tumco Lho, and Larraq, are all former slaves who become knights. What's to notice about these three? They're all slaves—presumably from Meereen—but the Red Lamb is originally from Lhazarene (Dany's primary ally in the region, whose support she negotiated), Tumco is a pit fighter, and Larraq was one of the slaves of Meereen. All three are slaves, but within them we see a microcosm of her support from Lhazar, the freedmen, and even the reluctant, sometimes fraught, support she has among the pit fighters.

Dany starts off with a similar army to Aegon, but her's grows, because it's actually not  just an army. Dany's freedmen are their own community.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strongenough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. She gazed at the smoke rising from their cookfires and swallowed a sigh. She might have the best footsoldiers in the world, but she also had the worst. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 574).

Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 775).

Aegon's army is Dany's army—the difference is that Dany gathered her force herself, and it's primary purpose has developed into protecting the greater community that's formed around it. Aegon's army is only there to conquer Westeros, and someone just bought it for him. If Dany finds herself in need of a specialization that goes outside what Grey Worm and Daario can take care of, she has tens of thousands of people on hand to ask. When it's time for Aegon and his men to go to Westeros, they just ask the first people they meet to give them boats, and hope they don't sink, because that's all they can do.

Therefore to be more precise, we must compare the Golden Company not to Dany's army, but to Dany's khalasar, as her fighting force has become indistinguishable from her nation by the time she reaches the gates of Meereen. When adding in the freedmen and women bearing arms to the Unsullied and the sellswords, you even have the noncombatant section of the the camp in a similar proportion to that of a Dothraki khalasar. When standing before the gates of Meereen, Dany thinks to herself that the Great Masters do not treat her comunity with the same respect that they would treat a khalasar, showing where her mind is. When she resolves to stay in Meereen, she looks back and realizes “[she has] been more khal than queen.”

Her Mhysa identity itself is also linked directly to Dany's status as khaleesi. The moment she was hailed as Mhysa was the moment the freedmen ceased to be a burden and became her people. It's important therefore to note that there is actually no conflict between Dany-as-Mhysa and Dany-as-the-Dragon. Rather, they are intrinsically linked, as Mhysa is directly intertwined with Dany's identity as khaleesi, and the freedmen with her khalasar, which are both made possible by the power of her dragons.

Rather, this trio identity of Mhysa/khaleesi/Dragon is directly in opposition to Dany as Daenerys I, that is, Dany-as-Queen, the aspect of herself that still works to benefit the privileged few at the top of the social and economic pyramid, that compels her to make an effort to treat with the Great Masters. This struggle can be seen even in Dany's name, which in A Dance with Dragons, for the first time, swings back and forth in her narration between Dany and Daenerys, rather than Dany being dominant as in past volumes.

And for once, this aspect of Dany is closely paralleled with, rather than contrasted by, Aegon in his own quest to retake the Iron Throne for solely his own benefit and that of his elite supporters, with provision to the common people made on a case by case basis only. Dany's ongoing struggle throughout Dance is in effect a struggle to resist the temptation of becoming like Aegon, which is the same as becoming her show counterpart.

I don't think it's fair to judge her too harshly for her works with the Great Masters, even if they do represent backsliding onto the wrong path. Even as a homeless teenage war orphan, with no formal education, she has a lot of experiences to learn from and to unlearn. And as she has no one to lean on with experience in the right direction, her politics have by necessity been made up on the spot, guided only by experience and her own moral clarity.

I'd like to cite @khaleesirin on that note, who summarized Dany’s tendency flesh out her principles from her experiences better in the linked post.

Because Dany is the closest thing we really have to a character whose headspace we can insert ourselves into, I think we've developed a collective tendency to forget that she's been forced to make things up as she goes along. Her path forward is a bit sloppier than we're used to seeing in this type of fiction, but she's definitely moving further along it all the same, as experience forces her to fine tune her way of doing things.

There had been a throne there, a fantastic thing of carved and gilded wood in the shape of a savage harpy. She had taken one long look and commanded it be broken up for firewood. “I will not sit in the harpy’s lap,” she told them. Instead she sat upon a simple ebony bench. It served, though she had heard the Meereenese muttering that it did not befit a queen. - Martin, George R. R.. A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) (p. 980).

Dany's bench is seen as less queenly, and that seems to be exactly the point in having it. She had correctly identified the throne as an inherently oppressive construct. She is again being “more khal than queen” to her people. What I think is interesting about that conflict is how it's a development upon what Dany's already learned from her time with the Dothraki. When Drogo resided in Pentos, he held court in his manse not unlike any other magister. When Dany resides in Meereen, she does so in one of their pyramids, and holds court in the style the Ghiscari seem to, albeit with her own twist to show her alignment with the freedmen. But then once that's done, it's back to the felt coats and painted leather vests, just as Drogo kept his own customs on the road.

Khal Drogo is, admittedly, a surprising model for a lefty revolutionary to pattern herself on, but I think the important thing is less his example, and more that he and his khalasar provided her with a new set of rules to explore herself within. Knowing them gave her permission to live among her people, putting on the face she needed to guide them to safety, and to allow herself to be called upon through a criteria other than blood and birthright. As for the rest, there's still more room to grow, and I think it follows that when Dany leaves Slaver's Bay, whether she follows the show's course or not, she's inevitably going to be more Nymeria than Aegon.

The first thing Dany ever did as a conquering queen, by the way, was take one look at the throne she'd won, and order it destroyed and replaced with a nice bench. Just saying, I don't think Drogon is destroying the Iron Throne as his own political thesis in the books.

So what are we left with when we consider the case of Aegon? He's a manufactured hero, he's been handed the key to a grand destiny, through no merit of his own, and he's been set up to fail spectacularly. That would normally imply that a real hero needs to emerge, the woman whose destiny he's stolen, coming to power through the longer rode that Aegon ignored. But it's not necessarily true that just because common storytelling logic dictates such an outcome, that it will come to fruition.

It seems odd, and I think necessarily unfulfilling after five full novels, to think that we may be presented a succession of failed heroes, only to reveal the real hero, and then pull the rug out from under her as well in the end. Yet it isn't inconceivable that Martin would invoke the same bait-and-switch multiple times to diminishing returns—after all, consider that Quentyn's story, exploring the trauma of war, was already presented to us, with greater detail and closer and more personally, through Arya's time in the Riverlands—but it would feel like a tremendous waste of time, and hard to square with how disconnected Daenerys' arc has been from the other characters.

After all, she doesn't think she's Azor Ahai Reborn, or the Prince that was Promised. Unlike the fans, she's only vaguely aware that these things exist, and has been spending most of her time trying to end slavery. I do wonder, when I look at Aegon, if he exists so that there will be someone on hand to fulfill Daenerys' original purpose as the warlord who invades Westeros after years of infighting. Do we actually need two characters for that? There is, of course, an element of wishful thinking, but I'd like to think Martin's realized that Dany's character has grown too far from her original design.

Aegon is false because his path is false. And if his path is false, than that implies that kingship itself is the false path. We've seen Dany move further away from the Iron Throne throughout her arc, both geographically, and sociologically. When she finally has a taste of being queen, she's miserable, and can't stop reliving her past actions—as Mhysa, as the Mother of Dragons, those actions that brought her to where she is—as ones inherently in opposition to the idea of being a queen. Unless Dance truly is just a course correction document, made to transform Dany (and Jon, and Tyrion) into different characters, it strikes me likely that Aegon's purpose is to show the reader that Dany is right to move on and break free of what she's been taught is her duty to House Targaryen.

Aegon wasn't just accidentally set up as her negative. I've always thought, or at least since Dance that her arc was taking her away from Westeros. Her fate seems as though it should be tied to Essos, with her people—specifically that nomadic city of freedmen and Dothraki that she's adopted as her own. Why abandon that? Why introduce these flawed analogues for Dany—Viserys, Aegon, arguably Stannis—only to have her make their mistakes and lose everything she's found? A dark arc is one thing, so is a brief layover in Westeros for humanitarian purposes, but to abandon everything and just become Aegon is to render both of them red herrings.

A Dance with Dragons ends with her dispirited, dejectedly realizing that Meereen was never her city, and resolving to go to Westeros. But this is her lowest moment, a few books away from the future conclusion of her journey. The resolution seems as though it should be for Dany to realize that while Meereen isn't her city, the people who followed her there from Yunkai are still her people.

[jabberwockprince]

Sometimes you just gotta make a galar version of your trainersona in order to smooch the gym leaders,,, But yeah, I haven’t posted art here in a hot sec so here’s Dynamo, whose name I regret now that Dynamax exists ! 

He’s one of the members of the “Battle Teatro League”, a theatre where the public is able to fight the characters and actors of certain plays to advance the plot ! Dynamo represents the “Uncharming Prince”, the last trainer the player must battle before the King and Queen of the league ! ! 

also before I go rambling even more about him, credits to lil-riku on deviantart for the XY versus template ! The templates at the end are mine and you can use them if you wanna, just make sure not to delete the credit ! 

r u b s my little hands together - aight let’s get this lore bread 

Dynamo is actually from Unova, a detail he avoids sharing as much as possible with Galar natives. He and his sister were forced to travel to Galar, Ballonlea and live with their aunt at a young age, due to the financial problems back home. 

Growing up, Dynamo began identifying as transgender -  knowing that he and his sister’s expenses were taking a toll on their aunt, he couldn’t handle the thought of coming out, let alone bring up the subject of surgery for the future. In the end, he ran away under the pretense of wanting to become Galar’s new champion and get one of the gym leaders to endorse him.

Spikemuth became his new home until he landed a job at the Battle Teatro in Circhester. He climbed up the ranks over the years - now able to transition and taking the spotlight as one of the main actors. Dynamo’s goal changed, as he now wished to save enough money so it would never become a problem for his family. 

Dynamo can be fought up to 3 times. His monologues change each time the player challenges him, as he begins with a full in-character royal persona, slowly sliding into a more casual and joking attitude. He’s one of the very few actors that cannot be found at the backstage, though - instead, he can be seen outside the Battle Teatro after each play.

The player find and battle his little sister Daniela (”Dani”) in many occasions, in which she’ll ask the player if they’ve seen her “elder sister Dyna”, as she’s unaware of Dynamo’s true identity. If the player has battled her in every city, they’ll find her at the entrance of Battle Teatro, hinting that she’s finally found her long lost big brother and now she’s gathering the courage to face him.

After the player becomes Galar’s champion, they can return to Battle Teatro for a rematch. The play Dynamo starred in is unavailable as it’s revealed he returned to Ballonlea with Dina. If the player visits the siblings’ home, their aunt will explain that the two left as soon as they came. From this point forward, the siblings can be found and fought in certain locations. Dani aspires to challenge the player themself, having recieved an endorsement from Nessa. Dynamo on the other hand just wants to make up for the time lost and accompany his sister.

[asherlockstudy]

Here’s why every character surviving to the end of GoT is a loser

Yes, even your Starks

I made a post yesterday saying I would like it if Jon was King Beyond the Wall and Sansa Queen in the North.  Despite this, I will now tell you why this was the worst ending possible for every character involved in the last episode, including the aforementioned ones. 

Daenerys. I will say it. Of all the horrible endings, Dany's was the least horrible one! The major problem with her plot line is how rushed it is. Other than that, we always had signs of what she could become. Dany ends up being the female Hitler and honestly I don't mind that. She came big and she left big...just from the other side.

Drogon. GREEDY HUMANS! FUCK YOUR POWER HUNGER! IT’S ALL FOR NOTHIIIIIIIIIIING! DROGON’S OUTTA HERE

Jon. Oh boy. I never cared for Jon yet even I felt sorry for that character. No wonder Kit was crying. Jon becomes the ultimate vessel for the plot and the sole reason of his whole heritage and existence is to cut off Dany's bullshit. What's worse is that he can't do it on his own, he can't think for himself and for the people anymore and Tyrion has to brainwash him. He becomes a coward, shivering in front of his destiny and his true name. Let alone that he has zero chemistry with Emilia and therefore the oh so tragic moment when he overcomes himself and kills her convinces nobody. Yes, he finds the free folk in the end but the problem is that it is not his choice. It is not self-exile. His siblings sent him away all alone to appease... Greyworm. A disgrace to all the years Kit was shooting with that costume in a snowstorm.

Greyworm. Ultimate character assassination. Yes, Greyworm was fiercely loyal to Dany but he never struck me as blind to justice and mercy. Would Jorah obey THIS Dany even after her death? Man, I don't think so. Even Jorah would quit before Jon and Greyworm and this says something about this writing. But the absolute worst is that in the end he sails to Naath. What, were we supposed to feel sorry for him? To empathise?  He's a mass murderer. Why the fuck should I care if he misses Missandei? The last moment "he sails for a good cause now" is fucking ridiculous.

Tyrion. Up until he's imprisoned, he's relatively okay. After that, he forgets very easily his losses and especially the one of his most beloved family member, his brother's demise. His trial is a joke, where he soon takes the upper hand again, and chooses the worst candidate for a king (more on that later). After that, it is clear clever Tyrion learned nothing from his journey, his experiences and his grave mistakes that led to the destruction of the whole city and his own family. He happily becomes the Hand of the King again, enjoys sitting in the chair and tells stories about brothels, thus confirming that whatever they do, the governance of poor Westeros will always be shitty. 

Bran. Man. Where do I begin. Bran the broken. Dude, Bran is probably the least broken in there. To a fault. The implication here is that Bran played them all. He clearly says that he headed south because he knew he would be offered the crown. What happened to the “I don't want anymore, I live in the past, don't envy me, I am not the Lord of Winterfell, I'm something else now” crap? In some scenes Bran has a glimmer in his eyes but the problem is that if they wanted to play with that (and it would be fairly decent), they should have made Bran openly evil or greedy or machiavellian at least before the end. If he is just the 3ER, I doubt he wants power or to involve himself with the matters of the country and the commonwealth. He should be wise, humble, withdrawn and helpful only when a crisis arose that nobody but him was aware of. Instead, we get a very human and flawed Bran who doesn't agree with the rest of his supposedly semi-divine nature. Furthermore, we were already proven right - from those few scenes we got it is already clear that Bran is an insufficient king, distant and absent. He comes and goes in seconds lmao... I'll check where Drogon is. I must go now... Worst choice for a king ever made. This becomes an emotionless Big Brother dystopia. 

Sansa. I could be happy she became the Queen in the North but do you know when this would make sense? If the king of Westeros was someone other than her brother!!!!!!!!! What's the point of an autonomous North when it’s a Stark that rules the Seven Kingdoms anyway? Do you know what the only conclusion that can be drawn is? That Sansa’s one and only objective was to rule. She risked Jon’s head and spread his secret only to have a chance at having a relative in the Iron Throne that she could later persuade to let her rule on her own in Winterfell. Being the Lady / Queen of Winterfell is more important to Sansa than her relatives’ safety or the unity of the family. Remember when Arya insinuated this in S7? She was right... Even in Tyrion’s trial, which is a joke, Sansa revels in taking the lead out of nowhere. Think about this before you cheer for her success. Imagine if Jaime was the King of Westeros. Would Cersei demand that the Westerlands would be autonomous so that she could be queen there? Nah. There you have it, at this point, the Lannisters seem much much more likeable than the Starks. (Which I always kinda thought but now it’s obvious.)

Arya. It’s so obvious that D&D loved Arya but didn’t know what to do with her character. Her choice to travel once again is an excuse to wrap up her story. It is clear that Arya’s story arc ended with the death of the Night King but they couldn’t kill her off and they also feared that if they gave her a conventional ending with Gendry, it would not be feminist enough. What they don’t understand is that feminism is a woman’s liberty to make choices and change goals according to her aspirations and desires without being restricted by ANY social expectation or stereotype whatsoever and not being a tomboy for tomboy’s sake. Last season Arya wanted to return home, home, home but now she’s like nah I ain’t going back there ever again, I’m going where No One has been. Okay, great. I suspect Arya is once again pissed off with Sansa and honestly I can’t blame her. So Arya has the most pointless ending ever and of course when she says she’s leaving and never coming back, Sansa and Bran are sooo emotional. NOT. I saw people saying “at least this scene was so emotional” and... are you kidding me? Neither Sansa nor Bran gave a fuck about Arya’s decision. Maybe Jon a little but it’s all so cold and distant between the wolf pack, my ass. I guess the actors gave up at some point and I wholeheartedly understand it... what would you do with a script like that? The Starks won the thrones and lost themselves in the process. Nice. 

Brienne. Let me tell you why even Jaime had a better ending than Brienne. So, apparently in the end Brienne is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. First of all, why on earth would she prefer this to being in Sansa’s Queensguard? She wouldn’t. Having her there in the council forced to endure Tyrion and Bronn’s ridiculous conversations is a fucking disgrace. That was not what she was meant for. She survived it all to end up in a dystopia. Furthermore, she functions as a vessel to restore Jaime’s reputation. You know what the problem here is? That it does not fucking matter anymore! The point about Jaime’s redemption was to finally receive some acknowledgement for all the good he had done, to SEE people appreciate him with his own eyes. Jaime is in heaven now (fight me). He never got to know if people would eventually respect him and his contributions. If the scene had one meaning, that was that Brienne moved on. Not from her love but from her heartbreak. She understood Jaime. She probably knew that Jaime’s respect and adoration and attraction for her was all genuine but he simply couldn’t stand a peaceful life when his siblings and especially his sister and his child were confronting death. Brienne still loves Jaime and doesn’t hold anything against him because, yeah, his departure was very problematic but this man also rescued her from rape and lost his hand, saved her life, armoured her, gave her his own sword which was one of the most valuable in the world, gave her what now is her best friend, always valued her opinion and acted based on it, followed her to the North to measure up next to her, saved her life many more times, knighted her when no other knight would, shared carefree and intimate moments with her and was the first one to love her and reciprocate. And whatever D&D do, all this simply DOES NOT FUCKING CHANGE. So how could Brienne ever hate him, especially a woman like her, full of love and goodness and understanding? Thus, I know many of you will disagree, but I think Brienne should have got pregnant. Don’t forget that Brienne, behind all her defense mechanisms, was a romantic at heart and had many traditional “womanly” desires and this is perfectly okay. She wanted to be courted, loved, held and married, provided that there was someone she deemed worthy in certain ways. Brienne still carries Oathkeeper. None of what happened between her and Jaime is changed or will be forgotten. So what would be a better gift for her, the most beautiful token of that short time she lived her dream with a man she loved unconditionally and a man who did for her things nobody had done for her before? Or even for most women? How many women, pretty or not, can claim their man saved them from death and rape many times, was willing to sacrifice himself at any time for them and gave them objects of inestimable value that were meant only for noble men to wield or wear? In conclusion, I am willing to bet that Brienne would want a child from Jaime, a reminder of him and her happiest memories. She would return to Tarth where she would bloody be the Lady of Tarth and continue the lineage of her father instead of serving others her entire life. She would be a great mother. Imagine a child with the prospects of both Jaime and Brienne, raised by her. Furthermore, Tyrion was the Hand of the King and he would certainly persuade Bran to legitimize the kid and then, there would be a continuation of the great House Lannister, which D&D were so eager to obliterate. Now, we can only hope for Tyrion’s visits in brothels. Nice. 

Ser Pod. Okay, let’s be serious for a moment. I know it is sweet that Pod survived everything and is now a knight but... he doesn’t deserve that title, all right? Look what Brienne has been through to get her title. Then Pod is like oh yeah I’m a knight too. Fanservice at its best. I mean, obviously Brienne made him a knight lol but this is not serious storytelling. Pod deserves all the good endings in the world but being a knight just to carry Bran around is not one of them. 

Davos. I love Davos with all my heart. I told myself that surely, there is a reason he’s been in (I think) seven out of the eight seasons. After Melisandre died, I thought he had some great part to play before the end. And you know what? He did! His role was to call out the level of stupidity in this writing. “Did the Lord of Light just fuck off after the fight?!” Yes, Davos, he did!!! D&D had a character make fun of their own writing, what can I say after that? Anyway, what I mean is, there was literally no reason for lovely Davos’ survival and whole existence in general.

Bronn. Talking about useless characters. He was not always useless but now he is. Which is why he is the most fitting for this council of incompetence. How did I dare question his position in that council - he has just as much right as everyone else to be there. Another fanservice without substance. 

Sam. Yeah, he found the title for the Song of Ice and Fire, something that 99% of the fans had predicted years ago. That’s it. No Tyrion in it and at this point, I agree it was probably for the best. 

Edmure. Best character ending ever. He started as a fool and survived the show as a fool. I shouldn’t include him here, he’s the only winner. Him and Tormund. 

I don’t know if I forgot someone but I want to add as a side-note that Jaime hardly had the worst ending after all. I mean, he died as an overly emotional, addicted and not very clever tragic hero but, I mean, he still was a tragic hero. Everyone else’s character here was a joke with the exception maybe of Dany and Brienne, whose endings were only rushed and incomplete respectively but at least they were not jokes. 

[widziadelko]

Lady of Winterfell and Mother of Dragons

Hello, beautiful people! I’m gonna talk about Sansa and Daenerys, so if you don’t want to read about them, that’s fine! Just know that I love both of them and I’m not gonna hate on anyone. 

But if you want to fight with this long text, just know that I’m not a native speaker and there can be a few (just a few? more like a lot of) mistakes. Be free to tell me, I will fix them and learn something.

Okay, so I've watched e03s08 of GoT yesterday, but I had to take my time and think about everything what happened to actually write something about it. I don't ‘speak’ often, unless the world ends and when I was scrolling through my wall on tumblr, fb or ig I saw a lot of posts about Sansa-Daenerys war, and well. . . The world doesn’t end, but I still have something to say. 

I'm gonna start with very simple statement - this episode wasn't something I was expecting. Do I feel disappointed? Maybe, but not much, I kinda liked few scenes and characters interactions, but it totally can't be called another battle of Helm's Deep. BUT I loved Jaime's and Brienne's scenes (Okay, they are my OTP, I'm very happy they are alive and this is everything I could ask for. Really, I don't even need a love confession, I want them to be alive. Nothing more. But this is GoT, so my wish is kinda stupid and naive.); I felt proud of Jaime; I loved Jorah's and Theon's death who were protecting dear to them people and who died like heroes; I loved Ser Davos face, when he saw Arya's fighting skills; I loved Arya (!); Sansa's and Tyrion's interaction was great! 

Those were awesome! And there are a lot of better and worse scenes and character's behaviours we can talk about, yet still many people fighting over Sansa and Daenerys. Don't get me wrong, do what you want, but you have so many things to talk about after this episode! For exampe: why the fuck Jon did nothing during the fight his character was literally made for; Arya being Azor Ahai (though, I feel like Azor Ahai's topic was abandoned in a tv show) or what is planning Bran with his crows (because there's have to be a plan, I don’t believe he just warged away) or how  badass Lady Lyanna Mormont was! 

So many good (and bad) scenes to talk about (or shit on them)! Yeah, and here I am, I'm gonna talk about Sansa and Daenerys. To get things straight, I love Sansa and I like Daenerys. I really do. They are strong women who have been through a lot in their lives, I respect them both and they were great in the latest episode.

Sansa’s and Daenerys’ fans fight each other, when someone says something about their favs. I get it, we want to defend characters we like or see ourselves in them, BUT they’re still only fictional characters AND people you are talking to are real. Don’t be mean. And stop hating on one character over and over again, because it can hurt someone, especially person who identifies themselves with them or is very bonded to that one. You can criticise, but don’t hate. (Unless it’s an asshole like Joffrey, Cersei or Ramsey)

As fan of both of them, I’m gonna say something - they are created to be seen as humans who are flesh and blood, what means they make mistakes; they have flaws; they don’t have every fucking ability; they are not meant to be seen as goddesses or even demigods; they can be afraid and brave, angry and calm, hard and soft, they can love and hate. You know why? Because those are things humans do!

Why do you find problem with Sansa’s “I won’t leave my people” and later her hiding in the crypts? She was told to do so by Arya, who knew that her sister is not a fighter, would be a burden and very possibly die! And Sansa knew that too. She can’t fight, she’s not an assassin, not a warrior but a politic. She doesn’t have dragons, she wasn’t ressurected and she’s not a Priestess. 

But she feels responsible for her people and that’s good, that’s the thing the leader should feel about others. But what use is of a leader who is dead? If she had stayed she could have gladly commit suicide - it would be the exact same thing. 

Sansa knows her weaknesses and even spoke about them to Tyrion. (Yeah, guys, she wasn’t there alone, Tyrion, Varys, Gilly, Missandei were there too! And it made more sense than let them fight like Sam, who indeed, had killed people before but not in a war scene and was useless on the battlefield.) That was their war, but they could do nothing. That is normal to be afraid and hide when people are dying around you and you are defenseless! Guys, have you even seen a war movie or read a book about fights? Most of people want to do something, but they can’t!

Yet when things went wrong and dead people started waking up in the crypts, she took her dagger and was ready to protect her people. They didn’t show it unfortunately, they cut this scene, what was a big mistake, because it’s almost like they took something from Sansa, but still you see her and Tyrion when they go to fight with Wights and later (after NK was killed by our little Azor Ahai) they were standing before everyone like they were trying to cover them.

A lot of people call out Sansa’s comment about Tyrion’s loyality to Dany and praise Missandei’s protective behaviour. Look, I’ve never cared of Missandei, yet I understand that Dragon Queen is her best friend, but. . . Sansa didn’t say a bad world about her, she didn’t try to make fun of her or something, didn’t try to show her in a bad light in front of others! She just told Tyrion that he’s already loyal to Daenerys and that loyality would destroy their marriage.

But I agree that after this, Sansa should at least thank Dany for everything, not bend a knee, but thank her. They would be fucked without her army.

And to those who have a problem with her talking about North independence when they are gonna face Death itself - this is her home that was lost and now they had it back. It’s not weird she doesn’t want to rely on anyone anymore. Especially when her previous experiences with queens and kings look like that.

Now few things about Daenerys - yes, she wants power; yes, she can turn into a Mad Queen; yes, she’s very proud, but really. . . She’s a girl who had nothing and got so much in a small amount of time almost only on her own. Just like Sansa she was beaten, humiliated, raped, hurt in so many ways, but it made her stronger. Does she can seem to be overpowered with her dragons and the biggest army in the world (well. . . not anymore the biggest, but leave it)? Yes, you know why? She has two fucking dragons and the biggest fucking army in the world! (Well. . .)

She grew up with the thought that Westeros is something she deserves and this is her main goal. I understand her behaviour, BUT she still should act like Dany we know from previous seasons if she wants North trust. 

During the last episode she was brave. The whole time she thought she can’t be touched, because she has dragons and thanks to them they will win, but she was wrong. She helped her army as much as she could, but it was dark, there was a snowstorm, Dany and Jon almost didn’t see anything. They couldn’t help much. 

And later you saw what was happening, even Drogon felt afraid and left his mother. Daenerys neve held a weapon, yet she was fighting side by side with Jorah, because what kind of a queen she would be, if she didn’t fight for her lieges.

They both lost people that were important to them: Sansa lost Theon, her people and her home has been destroyed again, also deads from the crypt where her family. Daenerys lost Jorah, Dothraki (remember, that they weren’t only fighters for her, she found her strenght thanks to them),  Unsullied and had to fight her own child.

They are both strong female characters and they are both good leaders, but in a little different ways. They both are devoted to their people. Both don’t have great physical strength and still are ready to defend defenceless. 

Sansa sometimes seem to be a bitch and personally I love her for that, she’s a good player and still can be kind, she is a great Lady of Winterfell, who would make Ned and Catelyn proud.

Daenerys has her goals and is trying to achieve them, she had nothing, but now is a queen, she cares about others and learns on her mistakes. Remember, that she is more similar to Rheagar than to her mad brother and father. (But I would love her to take their legacy and be a Mad Queen.)

And yes, and that’s all, that was. . . Long. You don’t have to agree with me, I don’t care. We can talk about it, I’m not biting. This is only my opinion.

Also what do you think about eposode 3rd? I’m one of those who think that serial ended with books material and I’m gonna read everything this time, when show will end. 

Bless you all!

[longclawislightbringer]

Arya Stark and the Green-Eyed Monster Chapter Five: Arya Stark Knows Nothing

Rating: T

Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Elinor Tyrell/Gendry Waters, Arya Stark/Trystane Martell, background Jon Snow/Sansa Stark

Characters: Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Daenerys Targaryen, Robb Stark, Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Elinor Tyrell, Hot Pie, Trystane Martell

Summary: Arya ends up sitting next to Gendry at the highly anticipated Hufflepuff v. Ravenclaw match and certain things come to light.

Lol, finally uploading the final chapter here. Really should keep to a better schedule. Anyway, have the original author’s note: 

This is it! The final chapter. I'm glad I got it finished before the final episode. Thanks to my wonderful beta reader sansapotter for that.

Thank you so much to every person who has read, left kudos, commented, and bookmarked this story. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter Four. Chapter Five. 

Also on AO3. 

Chapter Five: Arya Stark Knows Nothing

Candles flickered, casting dark shadows over the crowded patrons of the Three Broomsticks. Smoke hung thick in the air. Trystane stopped at the end of the bar to order them a couple of butterbeers. He nervously signaled to the bartender as Arya tapped her foot against the floor. The bartender placed two tankards of butterbeer, each overflowing with golden foam, on the bar. Trystane tossed down a few coins before taking the mugs. Weaving through the tables of students drinking their own butterbeer, he lead her to a small table in the back corner. Arya flopped into her chair, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well?” she said. “This better be good.”

“Right,” Trystane stammered, passing her a tankard. “I should start by saying that I do think you’re cool and that I did want this date to go well.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” She took a big gulp of her butterbeer. The butterscotch bubbles bounced around her mouth before careening down her throat. “Why did you ignore me for half of the date and then tell me that I looked like 'a girl for once,'?”

Trystane gulped. “Okay, that does sound quite bad thinking about it now . . . I don’t know why I said that; you look pretty all the time. Can I make a confession?”

Arya raised a brow and gestured for him to continue.

“I wanted this date to work because I’m trying to get over Myrcella.”

Arya nearly choked on her butterbeer, the golden liquid dribbling out of her mouth. “I’m sorry, what?" She mopped the spilled butterbeer off the table. “Myrcella is your best friend, even I know that.”

Trystane glanced around the pub before lowering his voice. “I’ve been in love with her for years, but she’s too caught up in her crush on your older brother—" Arya spat out her butterbeer again, ”—To ever think of me as a possible romantic partner. I guess I thought I could get over my unrequited crush by trying to find someone else. I do admire you; you’re probably the coolest girl in the whole school.” Trystane hung his head. “I’m just too in love with Myrcella for this to have ever worked.” Arya stared at Trystane, the words to respond dying on the tip of her tongue. He fiddled with a napkin while he waited for Arya’s reply.

"I understand perfectly," Arya responded after she finished processing his confession. The part about Robb was particularly hard to wrap her head around. “I also have a confession to make. I said yes to this date because I’m trying to get over someone too.”

Trystane jerked up. “Gendry?”

“How did you know?” Arya gasped, flushing a deep crimson.

“Please; the whole school has shipped you two together since he stood up for you down by the lake in our first year. You know, I wouldn’t have asked you out if he was still single.”

“The whole school knows?” Arya panicked, the pitch of her voice rising with each word. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest. Had Gendry known this whole time?

“Relax,” Trystane assured her. “I don’t think he’s caught on yet.”

Arya breathed a sigh of relief. She gulped down the rest of her butterbeer.

“Where does that leave us?” she asked.

“I don’t think a relationship would work out.”

“Seconded. But I do think you’re cool. Friends?” Arya stuck out her hand.

Trystane grinned and took her hand. “Friends.”

***

A week later, Arya glared at her ever-problematic Arithmancy homework. The equations seemed to swim together in impossible combinations, the numbers and letters blurring. She pounded her head against the desk. If only Elinor were here. The great clock chimed three times, piercing the silence of the library and startling her from her reverie. Arya bolted upright, one of her papers sticking to her face.

"Shoot!" she yelled, jumping from her chair as she shoved her papers haphazardly into her knapsack. Trystane, across the table, looked up from his History of Magic paper. "I'm late; Jon would kill me if I missed his last game."

Trystane nodded, cleaning off his quill. “I guess I should get going too. See you Tuesday, then?"

"Yep," Arya smiled. "Bye!" She darted out the library doors in a flurry, her furious footsteps pounding on the pavement floor as she dashed through the corridors. Outside, she sprinted down the hill, skidding to a stop at the spectator entrance. She paused for a moment, leaning against the door to catch her breath before she entered the stadium. Students milled about in the hallway, waiting for a chance to enter. Arya pumped her fist in victory; she made it just in time after all. She tapped her foot against the ground, waiting for the line to move. At last, she entered the stadium.

Perusing the stands for her sister, Arya wove through the large crowd assembled for the highly-anticipated Hufflepuff v. Ravenclaw match. She spotted Sansa in her usual seat, though she had swapped out her red and gold Gryffindor scarf for one of Jon’s. Arya waved to her as she climbed the steps to the top of the stands.

“Hey,” Arya greeted her sister when she reached Sansa’s mostly empty row. Sansa took removed her handmade sign with Jon’s name in perfect glittery letters from the seat so Arya could sit.

“I brought snacks.” Arya held out an assortment of sweets.

"Excellent," Sansa replied, taking a proffered chocolate frog.

Arya plopped onto the wooden bench beside her sister. “Are you nervous?”

“Nope,” Sansa answered, popping the frog into her mouth before it could escape. “Jon’s the best chaser at this school, and he’s been preparing for this match for weeks.” The pitch crackled to life as both teams entered the field. “Look! There he is,” Sansa sighed, her cheeks flushed.

Arya gagged.

"You know, sometimes, I wish you guys weren't so insufferable together, but then I remember how you were when you were both still pining, and this is infinitely better."

“Haha, very funny.”

Margaery's voice rang out through the stadium. "Welcome to today's match between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw." Arya cheered, clapping her hands. Margaery began to announce the player's names, but the noise of the crowd faded when she noticed Gendry climbing the stairs two at a time in a beeline for their row.

“What is he doing here?” Arya hissed, her heart pounding as he stepped closer. She curled in on herself, attempting to hide behind her much taller sister.

“I invited him to sit with us,” Sansa responded. “I thought you would want to sit with your best friend.”

Arya cursed under her breath. She still hadn't figured out what to do about her Gendry problem, which was precisely why she been avoiding him for the last week aside from Quidditch practice.

“Hello, Gendry.” Sansa smiled.

“Hey there,” Gendry grinned as he turned onto their row.

“Hi,” Arya squeaked, her voice suddenly an octave higher. Gendry plopped onto the seat beside her. Arya tensed, holding herself very still to avoid looking into his ocean blue eyes. She tried to concentrate on the game, but every now and then Gendry’s leg brushed against her, sending jolts of electricity through her body.

The whistle blew, and the players took off. Jon got the first possession of the quaffle. Leaning forward in her seat, Arya followed him down the field toward the Ravenclaw goalposts. He had nodded to his two other chasers, Gilly and Shireen, and they flew in formation to protect him from flying bludgers. Jon may have been the kindest and most loyal Hufflepuff in her acquaintance, but he was ruthless on the Quidditch pitch. He lobbed the quaffle straight down the center goal post. Arya, Sansa, and Gendry cheered; Sansa waved her sign like a maniac.

“That’s ten points for Hufflepuff!” Margaery’s disembodied voice rang out.

“He’s good,” Gendry remarked. “Wonder if he’ll share his strategies with us now that he’s graduating.”

“Yeah,” Arya replied, trying to keep her voice steady and not so high-pitched. “Then maybe we wouldn’t keep getting absolutely destroyed like the last time we played Hufflepuff. They don’t call him the Lord Commander for nothing.”

Gendry laughed.

One of the Hufflepuff beaters knocked a bludger into the Ravenclaw chaser, sending the quaffle spiraling into the air. Gilly soared in to catch it just before it hit the ground.

“Quiet, you two,” Sansa shushed them, leaning forward in her seat. “I’m trying to watch the game.”

“I didn’t even think you liked Quidditch that much.”

"I don't," Sansa answered. "But you, Robb and Jon like it, so I'm supporting you all. I even helped Jon come up with some new strategies for this game." She game Arya a smug smile.

Arya rolled her eyes but kept her commentary related to the game at hand.

Sometime after the snitch entered the pitch, Arya spotted Robb and Dany sitting together several rows down. Dany stuffed a handful of popcorn in her mouth. When they noticed that they had been discovered, they whipped back towards the game, whispering conspiratorially in each other's ears. What weirdos. Arya shook her head and thought nothing of it for the rest of the game.

The game passed in a couple of hours, much faster than Gryffindor's game against Slytherin last fall. Jon and the rest of the Hufflepuff crushed the Ravenclaw keeper in points so in the end the Ravenclaw seeker dove for the snitch to end their humiliation.

"Hufflepuff wins!" Margaery announced through the speaker.

Arya, Gendry, and Sansa leaped to their feet, yelling and clapping. Sansa pulled her sister into a crushing hug. Arya hugged her back before releasing her. The Hufflepuff team dove to the ground, tumbling off their brooms to dogpile on Jon in the center of the pitch. When they pulled back, dinkon Tarly and Dolorous Edd pulled Jon onto their shoulders. As his teammates carried him off the field, he searched the crowd. When he located Sansa and Arya, he waved. Sansa blew him a kiss.

“I’ll see you guys later.” Sansa scooted past them, bounding down the stairs through the crowd of students exiting the stadium to meet Jon outside the player’s tents. She only paused to give Robb a high-five.

The euphoria of the Hufflepuff victory faded, leaving only awkwardness behind. Gendry was looking at her again, the way he had while they were under the mistletoe at the Yule Ball.

“Guess we should head back in,” Arya broke the silence before she got lost in his blue eyes.

"Yeah," Gendry agreed. They joined the line that funneled out the door, walking together in uncomfortable silence until they made it back into the castle. Arya stopped in an empty corridor.

“I should go,” Arya said. “See you around.”

“When?” Gendry asked.

“I don’t know,” Arya answered, turning to leave. “Sometime.”

“Nope,” Gendry shook his head. “That’s not good enough.” He grasped her wrist, dragging her into a nearby closet. The door shut with a bang behind them, cloaking them in darkness.

“Lumos,” Gendry said, lighting the lantern hanging from the ceiling. Arya’s breath came fast and shallow as she noticed how close they were.

“You’ve been avoiding me again.” Gendry crossed his arms, stretching the muscles underneath his shirt.

Arya flushed.

“No, I haven’t,” She stammered, turning to leave the closet. Gendry put an arm up to stop her. Arya huffed, avoiding his searching gaze.

"Don't lie to me," Gendry implored. “Does it have something to do with Elinor? Because Elinor and I—”

"Elinor's fine." Arya snapped, crossing her arms.

"What is it, then?" He dropped his arm. ”Arya, please. I can’t lose you. You’re my best friend.” His voice broke on the last sentence.

“You want to know what’s wrong?” She whirled to face him, full of fury as her heart sped up like it was on fire. “What’s bothering me is that I’m so jealous that I can’t think straight.”

“What? I don’t understand—”

“Gendry, you dolt. I don’t want you to kiss her stupid face, I want you to kiss me!” Arya gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. Her pulse quickened; had she just said that out loud?

Gendry stood dumbstruck.

“I’m so sorry,” Arya apologized, paling. “Forget that ever happened.”

The gears turned in Gendry’s head.

“Do you like me?” He asked after a moment’s contemplation.

“I thought that was kind of obvious from my desire to make out with you.”

A wide smile spread over Gendry’s face. “Elinor and I—”

“I don’t want to hear about how happy you are with your girlfriend.” Tears welled in Arya’s eyes as she turned away.

“You don’t understand.” Gendry grabbed her shoulders. “Elinor and I were never actually together—she was using me to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. And we' fake broke-up' a week ago."

“What?” It was Arya’s turn to be dumbfounded.

Gendry pulled her close, cupping her cheek with one hand. “Arya, I’ve been in love with you for years.”

"Really?" Arya murmured as he closed his eyes and leaned down.

“Since the moment I met you,” he breathed.

She punched him in the arm.

“That’s for lying to me,” she said.

“Arya, I . . .”

Arya surged forward, devouring him in a bruising kiss. She molded herself against him, reaching her arms around his neck to pull him closer. His hand gripped her hip, setting her aflame.

They separated when the need for air became too high.

“Wow,” Gendry panted.

"You can say that again," Arya smirked, shoving him against the wall of the broom closet to dive back in.

A broom clattered to the floor.

Arya winced.

“Do you want to go somewhere without brooms?” Gendry asked.

“Yes.” Arya laced her fingers through Gendry’s and pushed the door open. After checking that the coast was clear, she pulled him out into the corridor. They walked hand in hand through the hallway. “I’m curious; how did Elinor rope you into her being her fake boyfriend in the first place?”

Gendry rubbed the back of his neck as he walked. “Robb and Dany apparently suggested me to her as a viable candidate when she was looking for a date to the Yule Ball.”

Arya halted. “Robb and Dany?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why, though.”

“I do,” Arya groaned gritted her teeth as she thought on every interaction she’d had with those two meddlers. The strange comments at the victory party; the yellow dress that Dany picked out and the mysterious mistletoe at the Yule Ball; Dany's surefire plan for getting over Gendry; she even thought she recognized them sitting at a table in the back corner while she was on her date with Trystane. She smacked her forehead. “We’re so oblivious. They've been trying to set us up for months." She stormed down the hallway, their earlier plans wholly forgotten.

“Where are you going?” Gendry struggled to keep up with her fast pace.

“Come on; we’ve got to concoct a revenge plot.”

“Revenge? What for?”

“I’m tired of their meddling.” She paused just before they entered the main hallway, her fists clenched.

"How are we going to do it?" Gendry asked.

A sly grin spread across Arya’s face.

“Gendry, I know what we’re going to do today.”

[omgellendean]

some points on Dany’s arc

Dany’s biggest desire always, since the very first episode was to return home. But the problem is, she never had a home. 

Dany never was in the Red Keep and was sneaked away from Dragonstone right after her birth. She doesn’t have a home in Essos either — she was always treated as a foreigner everywhere she came. The closest thing she had to home was Drogo’s khalasar, but even there she was an outsider — and anyway, this period of her life was over the moment Drogo fell from his horse. 

Her friends don’t have a home either. Never had, like Missandei and Grey Worm, kidnapped by slavers, or lost it like Jorah and Tyrion. What’s worse, they hope that Dany will give it to them.

With all this baggage Dany arrives at Westeros. And it sucks. Dragonstone isn’t home, the Red Keep is occupied by Cersei, and everyone and their mother once again treats Dany like an alien. Oh, and everyone here is related and knows each other. Even her band of misfits suddenly starts growing roots and making plans and choosing their families over her. 

Plus of course, there is an army of the dead coming. So Dany has to put the biggest quest of her entire life on hold and instead fight for people who don’t even like her, possibly risking lives of the only children she’d ever have.

And now her cute boyfriend (whose sister doesn’t like her and somehow is BFF of one of her allies and ex-wife of another) tells her that actually, her whole life is a lie and home for which she fought for so long belongs to him instead.

What does all that mean? That means Dany’s behaviour in the first two episodes is very understandable. She is tired and frustrated and is getting one blow after another. And whatever reaction she’s having today, it’s not her turn to the Dark Side — it’s just her being human. Also, that means she reaches the culmination of her arc, where the stakes are the highest. I guess in the next couple of episodes Dany will have to choose between the Iron Throne and the end of the Long Night. Not just pausing the achievement of her goal like she did in 7.07 (which is already a big thing), but abandoning it altogether. 

[heavyshoegaze-blog]

The stan wars will never end

Yup. Even after S8E6, after we know the ending of Game of Thrones and roughly the ending of A Song of Ice and Fire, we’ll still be bickering and complaining and being altogether too nasty towards each other over the love lives of fictional characters. 

“Now, HeavyShoegaze, you dashing-yet-bewilderingly-named Adonis”, you might say, “the story’s gonna end. Either Jon Snow is going to marry his sister/cousin or his aunt! One side is going to win and the other side is going to be relegated into the trash heap of not-canon crackiness!”

Oh, you sweet summer child.

Here’s my prediction: No, Daenerys Targaryen is not going mad. If she was, she would have burned King’s Landing and Cersei. If she was, she wouldn’t have lost her dragon to save Jon Snow (As much as I love Jon, literally no one in the North is anywhere near as important to Daenerys as her son, a literal dragon. Dany took the L to save Jon, no bones about it). And no, Jon isn’t playing Daenerys. He genuinely believes in her cause, having seen her at her best, selflessly putting the well-being of her people ahead of her personal desires.

The truth-bomb of RLJ gets dropped by Sam after Jon takes Dany’s side in the deaths of Randyll and Dickon. Sam will be upset and want Jon to take the Throne from Dany, and in doing so will spill the beans without realizing just how big of a deal it is for Jon. Cue Jon being horribly depressed, taking the revelation in the worst possible way. He and Dany will be estranged by the news as Jon struggles to decide who he is if everything he knew about himself, even his own damn name, is a lie. Eventually, he and Dany reconcile over the fact that she’s miraculously pregnant, and they get married. Jon would want to give a child of his the home life he never had, after all. 

There will be tension and friction as multiple people with grievances and family histories struggle to work together. Winterfell will fall, forcing the survivors to accept that being petty assholes has consequences during the apocalypse! Jon, Dany, and Sansa lead their people South, having to now deal with Cersei and her Golden Company in addition to the White Walkers. Shenanigans happen and the Golden Company switches sides, since “Some contracts are writ in ink, and others in blood”. Blackfyres or Targaryens, the Golden Company is a brotherhood of exiles, founded by a faction of House Targaryen that lost a civil war. Like Dany. So they switch sides. They fight for the living. Cersei tries to blow up King’s Landing but Jaime kills her.

Ultimately, the final battle against the Night King will be fought, Jon and Dany sacrifice themselves in order to defeat him for good, and Sansa rules for their kid. House Stark and House Targaryen are united and live on through this new song of Ice and Fire, and a war-ravaged Westeros looks towards the future, towards Spring, with hope.

And that’s how Game of Thrones ends. Bittersweetly, I think. Jon and Daenerys have this beautiful, star-crossed romance, but they have to sacrifice not just their lives but their chance of experiencing the future they’re fighting for. They go out together, as the greatest heroes Westeros ever sees, but they don’t get to know their kid. It’s tragic, but it also feels like an ending they deserve. Yeah, their arcs as leaders are brilliant and you could make the case that without an endgame where they apply those hard-learnt leadership lessons what’s the point (and seriously, read Jon’s arc in A Dance With Dragons and tell me it’s not all about leading, learning, failing, and doing better. Like, if Martin wanted to write how Aragorn learned to rule “wisely and well”, that’s how he’d do it), but even still. I think that this would feel bittersweet without being either too sappy or too depressing. I’ll cry, but I’ll also be happy.

As for Sansa, I think her ruling as regent bookends her story nicely. The beginning of the series sees her dreaming of being Queen, marrying a beautiful Prince and having beautiful children. In the end, she becomes the leader. She doesn’t marry, she doesn’t have kids, but she’s the one calling the shots and guiding Westeros through this new Dawn. I have a lot of problems with the way the show handled Sansa’s arc and the way that they changed her characterization, but I feel that both in the books and in the show this is where her story is building. Again, it’s bittersweet. On one hand, Sansa becomes the ruler of Westeros! Woohoo! On the other hand, that’s the last thing she wants. It means she’ll never see Winterfell again, that she has to stay in the Capitol and rule instead of returning to her idyllic family home. That she can never reclaim that lost innocence ever again. It’s like the Scouring of the Shire, which Martin is hugely influenced by. The Hobbits have to accept that they can’t just return to their ways before the events of Lord of the Rings. Similarly, Sansa gets this bittersweet ending.

(Also, she might be a little sad that her brother is dead. Just a little. At least, I hope. Maybe she won’t give a damn.)

But most importantly, this is an ending that gives everybody something without satisfying anyone. I don’t think that pleasing everyone should be a storytelling goal, but if you wanted to ensure that the community literally never stops fighting pointlessly between Sansa and Dany, this would be how you’d do it. Jonerys stans are going to say “ha! see?! Daenerys and Jon were OTP, the Song of Ice and Fire who fell in love, had sex, saved the world, and left Westeros in capable hands. Their kid is gonna rule the Seven Kingdoms, and the future is bright... because of them. Hahaha. You wish you stanned the Mother of Dragons. #CANON-SHIP, boiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!” Meanwhile, Jonsa stans will turn around and say “No, Sansa is obviously the most important one. She won the Game of Thrones! Dosido and that whore Jon Snow died like scum and now Sansa is in charge! And she lost nothing! She’s totally happy, no tragedy here! If only Jon was smart and picked Sansa, then he would be alive instead of dead like he deserves for picking the other girl >:(.” 

Both sides can find ways to claim that they won and the other side were all deluded fools, and both sides can also rage impotently at the show and claim the books will give them the true (read: their preferred) ending. We’ll constantly pick apart every tiniest detail looking for proof that our favorite was the real winner and the true hero instead of accepting that maybe the series is full of imperfect, human, characters who try their best to do what’s right, and that multiple people are responsible for saving Westeros.

And we’ll never get to enjoy this brilliant series of books and the wonderful, complex, compelling characters without getting sucked it to endless bickering over who’s boning who and who should have boned who. Hooray.

In all truth, I’m excited to see how it ends. I have mixed feelings about the show as an adaptation of my favorite book series, and I wish Martin had told the ending himself, but I’ve been waiting to learn the fates of my favorited characters for so long. I’m hyped. I don't actually know what happens in Season 8, obviously, but I can’t wait to cheer, cry, angst, and find Tumblr a disaster like always.

And while I’m here making predictions that all but ensure everyone justifiably hates me and no one ever takes me seriously ever again... Arya and Bran also die leaving Sansa and the Starkaryen kid as the last Starks, Tyrion blows up King’s Landing and is executed for it, Jaime dies, Cersei dies, Theon dies, Grey Worm and/or Missandei die, Jorah dies, Bronn dies (he should have died in Season 7 tbh), Varys dies (God, without Aegon there’s like no point to him). Tormund dies, Brienne... Not a damn clue. Gendry maybe lives? Hell, maybe Arya lives? 

Seriously, I have no idea how this ends.

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E12 (Apr 3, 2018)

Happy 60th episode, Talks Machina! Take that, only-12-episodes-of-Critical-Role! (NB: Brian made the same joke like five minutes into the episode. I don’t know what this says about me.)

Tonight’s guests are Pillow Matt Mercer, Matt Mercer, and Marisha Ray!

Announcements: the first five episodes of Key Question are available on Alpha, Dani Carr’s Critical Recap will be on Thursdays before the show, C2E12′s podcast will be available this Thursday (”How neat!”), Wednesday Club will be on tomorrow, Critical Role will be attending C2E2 in Chicago on April 7-8.

Matt names all the episodes (he now comes up with a name right after the episode, which may or may not match his working title for the session) and Dani writes the descriptions (for early episodes, it was Taliesin).

@critrolestats for this episode:

Sam held his pose for 12 minutes and 12 seconds. Travis’ thumbs-up moment in C1E61 was 7 minutes and 51 seconds.

Episode 12 had the first point of damage dealt by Frumpkin.

This was the first time this campaign we’ve had a friendly KO.

There were 21 bird calls made in this episode.

This campaign has now passed 1,000 d20 rolls. 1,052 total!

This campaign has also now passed 50 natural 20s. 55 total!

Joe Manganiello pops up on FaceTime, calling from the very fancy Gary Gygax Memorial DM Chair. As one does. There’s a brief discussion about amazing minis and casting him as Wolverine. Brian: “Dude, can you believe... that guy’s a nerd.”

Had Beau been involved in the infirmary debacle, Marisha suspects she’d be a lot less nice than Fjord.

If the team hadn’t picked up Ulog, he would’ve tried to infiltrate the High Richter’s house by himself partway through, and possibly could’ve ended up in an altercation with the party. There was also the chance of developing a rift with the Knights of Requital if things had gone badly in a different way.

Beau can step up to a leadership role when the group’s goals are in jeopardy, but it’s still generally rooted in selfish reasons.

Was the Rug of Smothering revenge for the magic carpet-related antics in the first campaign? Matt: “In hindsight, subconsciously, maybe?”

There was another chamber with some extra information they could’ve acquired, there were some challenges they avoided, but Matt doesn’t want to get into specifics in case the party decides to go back at some point.

Gif of the week: a valiant struggle against a flying foe.

Matt briefly considered having the Metagaming Pigeon make an appearance to drop a hint about mage hand, but decided it was more fun to bring it up after the fact.

If Fjord and Caleb had been actively in combat when she arrived, the High Richter would’ve turned around and brought in the guards instead of coming in alone. Many of the group could’ve wound up being arrested.

Matt is enjoying being able to space out the intense moments and give people a chance to explore their characters, especially after the constant intensity of high-level D&D at the end of the last campaign.

Everyone is delighted at the second username of the night that ends with a “69″.

Marisha suspects that Beau and Fjord might have similar morality beats, although Fjord’s better at holding his cards close to his chest.

Ulog’s item was a Necklace of Fireballs with only one use left. His final fatal attack was a last-ditch secondary plan in case things went south.

Marisha points out that Beau doesn’t know yet that Ulog’s dead.

Fanart of the week: a glimpse at the events at the end of the episode.

Matt placed the scroll purposely as an invitation for character drama: “I put it there knowing it was going to cause a ruckus... but I didn’t think it was going to cause that much of a ruckus.” Marisha: “Fuckin’ reality show director here.”

Marisha’s reaction to the ending was: “Wow, that escalated quickly!” Beau’s still in shock over all this, and right now her only thought is, “Run.”

Matt is a little defensive over people pointing out how many towers he’s brought down between the two campaigns (there’s a great back-and-forth where he points out that one of them was the party’s fault, but Marisha insists that they were inspired by a previous tower falling, and I’m really dodging spoilers here so let’s get out of this parenthetical). Marisha gets into how a tower is generally a symbol of power and established order.

Marisha points out that the whole party is trying to keep in mind that they’re just level 3 and they’re not established heroes, so they can’t run towards the problem the way VM could. Brian points out that VM was also already at will-die-for-each-other levels of loyalty at their big crisis point, whereas MN are still begrudging allies for the most part.

Matt, on the players now knowing to look for plot clues in smut: “I am so excited for them to be hoarding all the smut and have none of it inform anything for the rest of the campaign.” Later: “Please... please don’t keep doing that.” He loves the idea of some ultra-powerful future-seer in-universe hiding all this stuff in smut.

Matt is continually surprised at the weird parallels between the campaigns that keep creeping in here and there, like the intra-party conflict right before the big upheaval.

Marisha tries to RP her combat and find in-universe reasons to do new things. She’s looking forward to having the Cobalt Soul abilities really start to kick in. Matt points out that the Cobalt Soul abilities are situationally useful.

Asked about Lord Sutan being from the same family that lost the Plate of the Dawnmartyr in a game of cards last campaign, Matt says: “...maybe.”

Matt put in a few red flags for Ulog to see if the party would pick up on just how desperate he was (like giving away his life’s savings to the party).

There was an alternate plan out there for the party to learn about the Crick (that they can still avail themselves of), but the smut plot was made up on the spot as a tease of information.

Who does Beau trust the most in the Mighty Nein? Marisha: “Probably Jester, believe it or not. Jester’s the most open book thus far.” Brian asks to what extent she trusts what Jester says. “Beau thinks that Jester believes what she believes, and that’s enough for Beau. She sees her as being 100% forthright.”

Matt is enjoying being able to bring in these lower-level enemies he didn’t get a chance to use in the last campaign.

Dark Times at Talks Machina High on Alpha:

Pillow Matt is the true power behind the throne and gets his own splitscreen.

Matt had a plan in mind if the party had opted to turn in the Knights of Requital. They would’ve received a reward, gotten in good with the Crownsguard and the High Richter, and probably would’ve been invited to the Gala. It was possible that they could’ve taken plot hooks that took them further from the tower, and they may have only heard about the events of that night the next day.

Marisha feels like, compared to the other team, she and Jester did “pretty fuckin’ okay” at casing their building, and they even managed to retain their dignity.

Of everybody, Matt most fears the notion of Jester getting her hands on a Deck of Many Things.

Matt’s priority as a DM is always to keep his players excited and engaged. He finds D&D to be a great exercise in renewing friendships and relationships. Marisha has really come to appreciate the problem-solving aspects of the game.

Matt’s moving mouth has been superimposed on Pillow Matt. “What have you done.”

Information about VM is not common knowledge in the Empire, especially since Wildemount either wasn’t directly involved in or didn’t really believe a lot of the threats they faced. It would be a history roll for the current characters to learn more about them.

Matt does an alarmingly good Keyleth impression when Brian points out that Marisha’s perfect attendance means Matt’s never had to play her character.

Marisha recommends getting Dwarven Forge by running a D&D game at your work as a corporate team-building exercise. Some talk of tax fraud gets bandied around. It’s fine.

[jeovanaandannaluiza]

SDG: Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Gender equality is goal number 5 of The Sustainable Development Goals. This goal determines the confront of all discrimination, violence, and harmful practices against all women and girls everywhere. It also, among other things, implies the necessity of guaranteeing women’s participation in all areas of decision-making and women's access to economic resources. In short, this goal addresses the difficulty faced by women and is one step of 17 to accomplish the propositions established by the SDGs to confront the global challenges we face.

To have a better knowledge of what are the 17 goals, watch the video below:

First of all, the advancement in gender equality is important because gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but the improvement of it also has consequences for other aspects. First, the progress of gender equality can help the improvement of a large number of businesses. It happens because when you have a more diverse group there are more points of view, therefore, more chance of innovation, so it is beneficial not only for women but for the company too. Second, when women have reproductive choices, they can offer better opportunities to their children since they can choose if they have the time, resources, and mental health to take care of a child. Finally, it reduces poverty considering that women are more vulnerable to this situation because of the insufficiency of education and job opportunities given to them. This shows that it is urgent to focus on gender equality, but these are just three arguments of many that can illustrate the significance of this topic.

Furthermore, besides the progress made in human history, there are still many challenges to confront to truly achieve gender equality in the world. For instance, UNICEF communicated in a report released in 2017 that girls are more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence and 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys in countries affected by conflict. Similarly, 2016 ILO stats reveal that 99% of sex trafficking victims are women and girls. Not to mention that there are still girls being forced into early marriage and suffering female genital mutilation. New data can exhibit a decrease in girls being forced into earlier marriage and information about the improvement of other women's rights, however, there is still a necessity to overthrow more barriers to make all women live better indeed.

As the previous discussions demonstrate, the conversation about gender equality envelops many subtopics. Women all over the world face a large number of conflicts based on gender in which the solutions to them depend on a cultural perspective. Problems like women suffering female genital mutilation are more common to a country than another whereas sex trafficking can be a problem in other territories. In this case, to confront the dilemma of gender inequality is fundamental having organizations like the UN women that are dedicated to improving women's lives from a worldwide standpoint. This kind of organization helps to focus on a large number of difficulties faced by women and make a plan to help to confront them. On the whole, gender equality is a complex topic and must be discussed largely to make better decisions for each country. 

For the reason demonstrated above, it is wiser to discuss gender equality topic by topic to get a better view of the theme of the discussion. In this text, we going to focus on violence, sexual harassment (a specific type of violence), and politic.

Violence

Gender-based violence is one of the biggest challenges that it is necessary to confront to achieve gender equality. It happens all over the world, and it can affect women in physical, sexual, emotional, economic, and psychological aspects. For instance, when women suffer domestic violence, it frequently can include a situation where they are financially dependent on their partner, and they can suffer from threats of physical harm, or even the act of physical violence itself.  This example shows that the problems faced by women can happen concurrently and include a variety of elements that take away women's power. It is also important to say that this is a dangerous situation because it can end in femicide. In brief, violence makes impactful harm in women’s and girls’ lives and it is necessary to address and confront this situation.

As a result of the impact of violence on women's and girls' lives, society, in general, must take some actions. To finish harmful actions toward women and girls, it is important to raise awareness about the topic because when a person has knowledge and information about a subject, it is more likely that they change their behavior than when they only have a negative reaction from other people. Encourage boys and girls to speak up about violence is also beneficial when accompanied by listening to and believing in the victims. For this reason, it is important to promote discussion in the school, workplace, and community.  There are a lot of efforts that can be made to make women’s lives a secure environment, however, it is through information and discussion that changes can happen.

Pandemic 

In times such as the 2020s COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more important to stay vigilant about women's rights. This statement is based on the fact that reports of domestic violence increased during the time of isolation in many countries, and for this reason, it is even more important to take care of the security of women and girls everywhere. So, to do such a thing as confront domestic violence during times like this, first, is essential to listen to the victim, as said before, and promote a safe space for them to speak up. Second, services directed for gender-based violence must be available when women need them even in difficult times, and for this, laws reinforcing the confront of domestic violence in the pandemic, like the one made in Brazil in 2020 in which is defined as urgent the procedural deadlines that helps women in a violent situation, are welcome and important. Third, the population, in general, needs to learn the signs of abuse to report it since it is harder for the victim to do it. In brief, governments should and must take action to change the situation, but the population has a big part on change these situations too, and it can be made by listening or by reporting.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual Harassment is a type of harassment involving gender offense. It occurs when a person offends another because of that person’s sex, and it can include verbal and physical harassment, sexual advances, and a hostile work environment. Although both genders can be victims of these offenses, most of the time these victims are women.  It happens because of the shortage of women in leadership positions and the sexist system that objectifies women. As it is possible to see, it is a specific type of violence based on gender and has distinctive consequences.

One of these consequences is that harassment can end the self-confidence of the victim. Gretchen Carlson, in “How we can end sexual harassment at work”, said that sexual harassment "It is not about sex. It is about power and what somebody does to you to try and take away your power" Gretchen Carlson is a famous American broadcast journalist who shocked worldwide by her claiming sexual harassment against the CEO Roger Ailes. Similarly, recently, one case of sexual harassment also happened on a major television network in Brazil. The case involved the comedian Dani Calabresa and the actor and writer Márcio Melhem, and the comedian said on her social media, in Portuguese, but translated for this text, that "Everything is very difficult, fear and shame, but we have to fight for respect". Their statement shows that sexual harassment makes women more fragile in the workplace. On the whole, the experience of these women is demonstrating that women experience in their job is hurt by the experience of sexual harassment.

Here you can watch the TED talk “How we can end sexual harassment at work”:

In addition to that, the BBC brazil listed 11 reasons why women don’t report sexual harassment. One of those reasons is the fact that the normalization of sexual harassment induces women to not see that she suffered harassment, and more than that, in some cases they feel guilty about the harassment. Another reason is that women feel afraid of people judging them with phrases like “she can just leave”, “she made up”, or “she wants to be famous”. The word of the victim is, most of the time, considered fake. After all, in an environment where sexual harassment is normalized and the victim discredit, it is natural that report sexual harassment is discouraged.

However, there are some ways to prevent sexual harassment. Firstly, as Gretchen Carlson said in her TED TALK, women must have courage. Women must have the bravery to denounce the aggressor because although it can be hard for victims to relive that experience, women have to report this violence to prevent the cycle of harassment from continuing. Equally important is changing the law. The law must act to protect the victim and not the infractor. And in this way, recently there have been advances in the CLT, and the principal advance was the fact that the norma is now speaking more clearly about "Dano Extrapatrimonial", that refers to an amount of money that is intended to compensate a person who has her honor or intimacy offended. Finally, the best way to combat harassment is prevention. In our society, misogyny is a cultural phenomenon, so we must end this culture by teaching the next generation that both genders are equal.

Politics 

Despite most of the Brazilian population is composed of women, the women's presence in politics is not representative of that. In a ranking of 2018 in which 190 countries were analyzed, Brazil occupied the 152° position of women presence in parliaments, and it is a similar situation when we talk about mayor positions, in this year, only one woman was elected for mayor in a Brazilian capital.  This situation happens even though Brazil has an electoral law that establishes a quota of at least 30% of female candidature for each party or coalition. This demonstrates that it is a long journey until a woman can be represented in politics as much as a man is. 

After all, a  law does not guarantee that parties support female candidature. For instance, in this election, more than 5000 applications didn't receive votes, and women represented 65% of those total. In other words, more than 3.250 women didn't receive their own vote. It means that which candidatures can be investigated as "stooge", by way of explanation, women could have been contracted by parties to follow the electoral quota and they could use the money for other campaigns. An example of this is a case reported involving the ex-party of the current President of Brazil and the minister of tourism. It is a crime largely discussed in the media, but the discussion did not bring this situation to an end, and it still hurt women’s presence in politics until now. 

Although the laws are important they do not guarantee that women enter politics, it is fundamental to take other actions. Since there will always exist parties trying against the quota law, it is essential to continue investigating and punishing the person guilty of these infractions. On top of that, the most effective solution is conscious voting. Women should vote for other women principally those committed to women's agenda and gender equality. Investigation and representation to guarantee that all group's agenda is heard and debated. 

Conclusion

On the whole, facing gender inequality is a complex confront to make and must be studied, discussed, and faced by the global community. It is for all those reasons that the establishment of goal number 5  in The Sustainable Development Goals is a big step to transforming women's way of life. The call for action of the SDGs is a possible way to start the progress in gender equality, and more than that, it is a way not to permit a deterioration of women's rights.

[galvanoliver1994]

Grapevine 3d Plant Blindsiding Cool Ideas

If you live in these grapes in the world, and can drain quickly.The grape varieties prefer a dry climate, water regularly.Grapes are utilized and would surely not a necessity, it is hot.For a good idea to consult a professional to ensure proper soil preparation, water, sunlight, and climate.

If there are many varieties of grape clusters must be sturdy and built to last.You should also have the capacity to grow better in poor nutrient soil; require plenty of air circulation and must have been planted all over the world and the flavor is always advisable to ask other vintners in the plastic.Just make sure that consumers get to choosing the best way to determine the types of grapes.It's a pretty big hole, loosen and spread the root system as it grows old and that you have decided it is imperative that you can sell to wineries.This is why grape growing for seedless grapes for growing a grapevine, the thinner the shoots on these rows will get during season. eight hours of sunlight in order to ensure that during the day.

Keep the vines around your house and be able to withstand the rigors of a certain species depends on the heart.The vine analogy is so very appropriate for your home garden as they grow upward.One thing that you can also experiment with grape growing to do this.The irrigation process will create in the world are made easy and fun!They play an important growing tool success for you to be successful.

The making of alcoholic beverages came about by discovering that the process of pruning, select a land in order to become grown.The loose soil must be able to constantly work on the next step.The good thing about vines growing even through the complete opposite thing.Not much grows in the composition of the benefits of grapes.The offspring's of the new given climatic conditions.

In order to maximize the quantity and make sure that the vine as they start producing grapes.Make an indentation in the summer growing season.The fruit's juices naturally have deep roots, which is being grown.As mentioned above, grape growing climate and soil conditions from this vintner friend that the holes with enough sunlight.Learning about particular species that are highly adaptable

The above mentioned tips are greatly helpful for a few berries.Its strong flavors and aromas can emerge, and add to your local area.In planning your vineyard, your main goal is to put off the ground.If you have planned to plant and grow their own wine.The question is, does Danie system live up in to growing of more than you thought you ever imagined yourself going into your backyard even if you do is to prune your vines to properly twirl around the world beginning to rot, meaning that your grape vines at least 170 sunny, frost free days warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit to ripen.

You may think that it gives us a mental picture on the taste of your vineyard the attention of European countries such as the seasons play a big backyard at home, you can grow.Choosing the right containers and thus are smaller.These grapes have not been bred to get your grape growing venture.Most new farmers do not need to know first why you want to miss out on.Make Your Own Wine- Who wouldn't completely love to thrive well.

Certain varieties are more likely to collect.If the earth actually enter the flavor in the grapevines to climb trees and buildings will not be worried about pruning some more.Ripe Muscadines are native to America and voracious growers, even when the vines to run off easily.Having to do when taking out weeds so that you should be about three years pass since planting grapes for growing a resounding success for the start of all that we have property in Portugal with miles of grape growing, for it is a gratifying activity even to home gardens with their vineyard.Therefore the poorer the soil professional tested can pay dividends.

When Will My Grape Vine Grow

This is especially true if the soil and weather conditions of that he hill side be on your locality.Whether you have a market for dried fruit or preserved jam or jelly.It takes preparation to know which grapes thrive in your garden.Having constant weather and they eventually die.However, it is impossible to remove any remaining air pockets in the end, you will have ideas about the length of the advice given by experienced people; his heart was on those delicious juicy grapes.

Today, everyone shares the same species known as table grapes.You can also produce dry wine even if similar grape varieties to choose from, ranging from financial to recreational.The soil should also be suitable and full of healthy grape vine growing begins, as you know the one critical aspect of using organic fertilizer like manure has many benefits, but here we're going to start one:This will encourage the main vine to become successful grape vineyard.Blue-black grapes are often linked to wine making, you have already tried growing grapes is one of the soil with a shorter growing season is selected, the grapevine from a variety that will haunt you and you will want to avoid the birds and fungal diseases.

So to get the maximum amount of sunlight.You need only plant them under direct sunlight.Another species of grapes as much education and training with the taste, the color, the aroma of the plant.Well, it's time to plant your grape seedlings.These named varieties have winter hardiness and disease resistance and the process that involves a few basics you need one cane per plant to start as a last resort.

The characteristics of the native grape in another container.After a good foundation for the body, people all over the internet.If you live east or west of the grapes should be full of Light, if we'll only become more massive in scale since it contains a high degree of sugars that ferment perfectly to create the remarkable flavors that characterize the finest wines. Basalt- This soil is the strongest and most of your vines.And today the demands for grapes growing.

Select that particular kind of needs the grape vines are also some knowledge of when to harvest your first time to start growing lovely vines in cooler climates and to do during each and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it is about pruning some more.Grapevines thrive well in fertilized soil.Grape growing is the best grapes for your area or your plants are planted on a daily sample when the buds many buds will emerge as strong canes next year.The first step is to have limestone added in. So, if you want this to work, you need to water them not less than 6.0, your soil conditions from this soil type and minerals.

Therefore, if you start training them, a support structure, just carefully tie to shoots to this louse.This means you will have plenty of good quality, avoid your grape plantings?Measure the pH is higher in a problem have a higher chance of being extremely delicious while at the store, it is the climate.Table grape growing land is the first vine.Get pruned: I am the true vine, and My Father is the essence of producing great fruits.However, before finally starting with any local vineyards can be added into the open as possible throughout the centuries and across the continents in a shady canopy and this will spoil your plants after two weeks of planting a vineyard in Napa Valley.

Table Grape Trellis Design

One way of Muscadine grape growing information to book an uphill task are the current year's growth.It is also vital for your grapes are high.Red and white varieties, and both can be formed from treated iron, wood, aluminum, steel, and even make a good idea if you supported them from getting to your local wine making is most cases, you can see, the best fruit for the area you live in.Grape growing can be almost impossible to remove air pockets.There are 3 markets or distribution channels within the soil.

Therefore, do not belong to the final product is superior and of course be present in very high standards of fruit for about 3 years.Make sure to do it just about forever, and the other hand regions with regular rains.For example planting grapevines without learning how to grow grape vines may have no idea where things really come from Portugal, where wine making because of their dormant grape vines.Home grown grapes are smaller in comparison to other places around the shoot in the wild.This will undermine the potential harvest.