The Mother of Dragons: Daenerys Stormborn

I like the way you phrase it: “to some pov characters in Westeros [cough Cersei cough] she will be the enemy.” I think that there is very much a difference between “enemy” and “villainy” in this series, especially given the variety of POVs. Robb Stark is Stannis Baratheon’s enemy. I don’t think either are particularly villainous (though for Stannis, the jury’s still out to some extent in the books).

That said, I do take issue a little bit with some of your thinking here.

it’s not like she’s coming with good or peaceful intentions and bringing with her a people who have a worse reputation than the wildlings, how will she control the dothraki from plundering the smallfolk?

I can’t really respond to this without dealing with some speculation about TWOW given the recently read Aeron Greyjoy chapter, so I’m sticking this below the cut. If you haven’t read that chapter…I’m not really sure you can read this without being spoiled to some extent (if only comparatively lightly).

What I come back to time and again for Dany is that this is a series with Ramsay Bolton–who skins and tortures people for his own entertainment, who has no idea what to do with power when he wields it beyond using it to maintain his power as best he can–and Euron Greyjoy–who has killed and raped multiple brothers, and is currently in the process of torturing another and has sent yet another on a quest during which he will undoubtedly die–and people come out with the idea that Dany and her dragons at the head of a Dothraki hoard and with an army of Unsullied is the worst thing that can happen to Westeros.

The Dothraki are a force to be reckoned with, and there’s likely going to be blood and mayhem throughout Westeros…but moreso than the War of the Five Kings?

We have this image of Dany’s trip in the House of the Undying:




It’s a pretty gross metaphor for what’s going on in Westeros, which is war-torn and brutalized quite without Dany and the Dothraki. Look at what Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch and the Bloody Mummers did to the Riverlands. Look at what Euron Greyjoy is likely about to do to the Reach. Look at what the Freys and Boltons are pulling off in the Riverlands and the North.

Westeros is hardly a place where smallfolk are safe, even without Dany and the Dothraki.

As Jorah said:





Now of course that’s not to say that the Dothraki are not necessarily going to be “better” but it’s certainly to say that they’re not necessarily worse. There is a whole heck of a lot of racism that’s written into the depiction of the Dothraki (both from a character perspective and from…GRRM’s…At some point, @lyannas and I are going to finish a thing which will talk about that.) I am hesitant to speculate in what ways they will or won’t be what they’re depicted in the coming books, though, as with Jon’s travels with the wildlings in ACOK, I am hoping for some greater depth will come in the future. I don’t have…the most faith in GRRM for that I’m afraid. But regardless–I say again: I’m not sure that Dany at the head of a Dothraki army is necessarily worse for Westeros than Euron at the head of whatever the fuck he’s planning.

This is a woman who has routinely sought to protect those in positions of oppression. She has defended women from being raped (by Dothraki who were conquering them), she has put aside her own questeros (I meant it when I said I was using that word from now on) in order to make sure that Slaver’s Bay did not fall back into slavery after she routed it, and she is constantly trying to make sure that the people with the least capacity to protect themselves can be protected.

I cannot for the life of me understand where and how and why she would get to Westeros–which she views as her rightful domain full of her rightful people–and she would say “yolo all’s fair in war I’m not gonna protect the smallfolk even from my own army.” I also…can’t really imagine that she’d manage to get the Dothraki across the sea (which they are really not into as a practice) without some modicum of control over them. It’s also likely that her army won’t just be Dothraki, but she’ll have some of her Unsullied as well.

If, of course, her arrival goes “as planned” and isn’t fucked to shit by whatever Euron’s plans might wreak on the next book because oh fucking boy are they gonna.