But is destroying a city the act of a crazy woman? Not necessarily, says Machiavelli. Courtesy of HBOĮven her fans were upset that instead of bringing liberation from the cycle of rich oppressing poor (“breaking the wheel” as Dany phrased it), she used her dragon to immolate most of the capital, even after the symbolic tolling of bells that indicates surrender.Īnd since she does this in the wake of losing two of her dragon “children,” her two best friends (Jorah and Missandei), and then being rejected romantically by Jon Snow (who is really a Targaryen and also her nephew), many saw her fiery actions as a response to psychological trauma, and the writers seemed to confirm this in the final episode.Ĭritics pointed out that yet again, we see a powerful woman who simply can’t handle her emotions, and who becomes the “Mad Queen” in a clichéd turn to villainy that can only be explained by her losing her mind. Weiss chose to depict her acts as irrational, tyrannical or insane.ĭany with her dragons in the first season of Game of Thrones. What’s disturbing, however, is that show runners David Benioff and D. This may be disturbing, depending on your view of power politics, but it isn’t unearned (her development had been long signalled), nor is it a sexist reduction of one of the greatest female characters ever to an emotional, irrational, “crazy lady.”ĭany is making the tragic choices that all political leaders face when it comes to using violence to achieve their goals.
Much of the case against Dany depends on the supposed insanity that fuelled her destruction of a city, but I offer another perspective - drawn from Renaissance political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli - to explain why Dany is not “mad” at all, but rather an avatar of cold-blooded realpolitik. But what if, instead, Dany is the real heroine of the series, and Jon is the real heel? It’s tempting to go along with this notion of Dany as Mad Queen, and accept the good feelings that accompany the triumph of the righteous Starks.
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