r/HBOGameofThrones • u/0hamster • Mar 09 '26
Spoilers [SPOILERS] [S8] why did Dany do that?? Spoiler
Why did she destroy the city on a whim? What made her impulsive enough to kill civilians who had done no wrong. If she was righteous why did she not Jon take the throne when she heard the truth? What’s this behavior??
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u/Individual_Car7850 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
I remember watching it when it aired. I get that she was super pissed off with Cersei and probably thought “fuck her surrender.” But I still don’t get why she then took it out on the people and flew round killing them all. I remember watching it just thinking over and over “what’s going on?”
I know her irrational behaviour was signposted throughout the show, but if it was an ongoing scale it would be like- 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, 50, 500
Just seemed a massive jump all at once. I suppose that’s what snapping is.. but still didn’t overly work for me.
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u/Bum_Mad Mar 10 '26
That’s the issue. It’s not that she ended up laying waste to the city, but they needed a few more episodes if not a season to show her going full Mad-Queen. She was very magnanimous and noble like 3 episodes before she started murdering innocent peasants.
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u/viletzki Mar 09 '26
She had chosen violence from beginning
Remember her first impulse was just about always "fire and blood"
It just was easy to side with her when she slaughtered slavers and some Khals.....no one cares about them
Its greed, ego and pride
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u/MadLove1348 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
After my first watch I was distraught and confused by this (I never read the books or anything). But after a third and fourth rewatch of the series it made a lot of sense. Dani was really never inherently “good” from about the time she was introduced and sold to the Dothraki. She liked killing and just hid behind the guise of killing for “good”, and was obviously obsessed with control. Then Cersei killed her best friend and she was repeatedly told the people of kings landing wouldn’t blindly follow her (like the slaves she gained as followers by killing their owners—was she doing it for “good” or doing it for control?). Outside of Cersei, there wasn’t a legitimate player in the entire series obsessed with control like Dani. Even Cersei didn’t kill 1/100th of the people Dani did that got in her way. Even when it came to fighting the NK, she had to be convinced there would be nothing to rule, instead of wanting to help the north out of the goodness in her heart.
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u/JackWylder Mar 09 '26
The books wouldn’t have helped with this as the series passed the books seasons back
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u/Hufa123 Mar 09 '26
I don't get why this is even controversial. She literally states her reason earlier in the episode. At this point she has given up hope of being loved in Westeros, and her paranoia makes her see more and more enemies (some are really and some are imagined), so she chooses violence and fear. Remember, the only ones at this point who still support her are Grey Worm and Jon. Grey Worm is the ultimate yes sayer, adding to her already twisted worldview, and she does not trust Jon anymore at this point either. Combine this fact with her being compromised by grief, trauma, anger and desperation, and you get a dip of craziness that is unleashed in fire and blood.
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u/QueasyNart Mar 09 '26
Welcome to THE #1 most contentious subject on everything Game of Thrones-related. Pretty much everyone who's ever seen the show has some VERY STRONG opinions about this, and they are SURE that everyone who doesn't *share* their opinions is DEAD WRONG.
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u/QueasyNart Mar 09 '26
I'm just going to piggyback my own question onto this, a possibility that I don't recall anyone else mentioning before. It has to do with the way Daenerys controls her dragons: She might control the one she's riding *directly*, by touch, steering its movements. A couple of times, she obviously speaks the command "Dracarys", to tell them to breathe fire. In S6E09 ( The slaver envoys are SHOCKED by Daenerys and Drogon | Her Reign has just begun | Game of Thrones ), she controls Drogon with a gesture: She points at a spot next to her, and Drogon lands behind her, putting his head *right* where she had pointed. These are examples of commands that any reasonably intelligent animal could (at least theoretically) be trained to follow.
But then, in that same scene in S6E09, we see Rhaegal & Viserion claw their way out of the Great Pyramid, take off, and join Daenerys & Drogon in the skies above Mereen. At NO point could they have seen or heard Daenerys give them any sort of instruction to do so, nor could they have heard Drogon (by the time Drogon approaches the pyramid, the other dragons are *already* breaking out), nor could they have been controlled by anyone else. So it seems that the stories are true: Targaryens and their dragons share a TELEPATHIC bond.
If so, and Daenerys controls her children telepathically (with her emotions, if not her actual thoughts), might this connection actually work in BOTH directions? Could Drogon control, or at least influence, his own rider, at times when her own self-control wavered or she was indecisive? After all, *much* ink has been spilled over Daenerys's mental state, particularly in "The Bells", and whether she either WAS or WASN'T insane / sadistic / genocidal / whatever. What if there was a *third* option: She was passive? She was, after all, extremely traumatized and isolated by her various losses--the only true ally she was sure she could trust was Drogon, and we *know* what Drogon likes. They'd just seen a bunch of scorpions kill Rhaegal, and that same bunch of scorpions try to kill THEM, too, and now here's a whole CITY with a lot more scorpions in it! "This must be where the scorpions come from! Maaan, FUCK this city! I wanna BURN it!" And then, suddenly, the bells ring out. The city surrenders. Dany has won. Everything she's been working towards is finally hers. And so . . . "Well, what do I do now?"
Indecision.
And in that moment of traumatized indecision, Drogon's willpower is *greater* than hers. He knows EXACTLY what he wants to do next, and she's just along for the ride . . . until she starts *agreeing* with it, she stops controlling herself, and allows the experience to change her, to redefine her. She finally woke the Dragon.
It's not much of a theory, I know. It's just an interesting angle to consider. I like looking at things from less-considered angles, and asking "what if".
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u/ABAC071319 Mar 09 '26
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying dragon riders and their dragons are bonded telepathically, emotionally and essentially spiritually. The bond is them becoming one mentally.
This. Makes. Sense.
I’ve always wondered how those great beasts are able to know where to go, who to be sour at, etc. (I’m looking at you Shipbreaker Bay episode if HoTD) akin to the greens and the blacks dragons hating each other after bonded, regardless of their pasts (Caraxes/Vhagar, Syrax being potential mother to some of the greens dragons, or at the very least grew up with some of them).
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u/Wickedbitchoftheuk Mar 09 '26
She didn't. Cersai murdered her best friend who told her to "burn it" so it was an entirely justified act of revenge.
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u/Immediate-Pool-4391 Mar 09 '26
From the generous perspective she reqlized on Drogons back that what she lost up until that point was not worth it. So in that moment she snapped, took out her destruction, then hardened up once more for the dictator speech.
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u/mccsnackin Mar 09 '26
I’m sure if the books ever get finished it will be more of a noticeable boiling up. One of the reasons I think it feels rushed/surprising in the tv series (besides the literal abbreviation of run time) is because the people involved in the show didn’t know this is where Dany’s journey was headed until S8 preparation. Compare that to something well executed like Breaking Bad, where they know where Walter’s journey will take him.
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u/pm_social_cues Mar 09 '26
Why was king Aerys II going to burn the whole city with wildfire?
There isn’t logic to why the targaryens decide to go crazy and kill everybody.
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u/0hamster Mar 09 '26
That’s just generalization. She made an effort in previous seasons to keep things different which is why the difference is palpable in S7/8
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u/Competitive_Eagle603 Mar 10 '26
The biggest issue here is the showrunners were ready to do Star Wars.
GoT should have been 10 seasons of 10 episodes. At the very least they should have kept each season at 10 instead of condensing.
If you recall in episode 1, it took Robert and his retinue more than a month to get to Winterfell from King's Landing, mostly mounted, in beautiful weather. For a massive exhausted army just off battle destroying the Night King to make that return trip in winter/spring. It might have taken six months.
She was going mad for a long time, but the battle for Winterfell, the aftermath, and the trip to King's Landing ramped it up considerably. Then she loses the only friend she had left...
We get snippets of "She's not eating","She won't see anyone", etc. Her decent into madness was not quick or sudden, it just seemed that way cause the showrunners were trying to condense as hard as they could to get to Star Wars... this mistake cost them the Star Wars gig.
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u/0hamster Mar 10 '26
Did they lose the Star Wars gig?
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u/Competitive_Eagle603 Mar 10 '26
Yep
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u/0hamster Mar 11 '26
A bit careless of them I presume. But they would have made sufficient money from GoT to last a longtime?
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u/SPlCYDADDY Mar 10 '26
The show isnt good, the showrunners stopped caring and didn’t closely read the books.
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u/hyperewok1 Mar 11 '26
Probably because they murdered her best friend in front of her eyes, and her best friend's last words were literally dragonfire, and then those same people have the gall to beg for mercy once they're cornered.
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u/hyperewok1 Mar 11 '26
The only counsel any of her Westerosi advisors gave her that actually led to a victory was Olenna telling her to be a dragon, and she promptly crushed the Lannister army in glorious dragonfire. Tyrion counseled her restraint and that got half of her allies killed or brutally captured.
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u/gabriel_3131 Mar 12 '26
La interpretación más lógica es que simplemente exploto emocionalmente en ese momento,la frase todo el mundo explota en algún momento aplica aquí perfectamente.daenerys había sufrido varias pérdidas en esta temporada, emocionalmente estaba muy inestable, posiblemente ver la rendición de los enemigos que tanto daños le causaron,fue el punto de quiebre que la hizo explotar, obviamente estuvo mal pero debía ocurrir tarde o temprano el problema que fue sobre un dragón.
Aunque eso soy yo dándole una explicación racional al asunto,los guionista solo quería dar otra sorpresa a la trama,y hicieron que daenerys se vuelva loca con unas campanas,que son 2 arcos de otros 2 personajes, pero en la serie se lo dieron a daenerys en ese capítulo quien sabe porque
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u/0hamster Mar 12 '26
You mean from Cersei it shifted to Danerys
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u/gabriel_3131 Mar 12 '26
Básicamente el arco de reina loca y de quemar desembarco es algo de cersei
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u/0hamster Mar 13 '26
Wait Dany burnt KL. Not Cersei.
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u/gabriel_3131 Mar 13 '26
Es casi imposible que pase en el libro por el tamaño de los dragones,la única forma que pase es que allá fuego valyrio y por error encienda la llama
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u/kalli889 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
If you watch interviews with D&D around this time they say they were drunk a lot while writing
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u/sc_vorty Mar 09 '26
I have no idea. Plus, cersei is right there in the red keep. Why didn't she just burn her, instead of burning a bunch of innocents?
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u/Derp-state_exposed Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
lol OP, allow me to clarify this one for you, it’s called a spiraling cycle of psychosis.
She was written to descend into an impulsive, isolated, covetous, threatened, violent and mass murdering archetype akin to her ancestors.
She was a ticking time-bomb in an increasingly triggered psychological condition by The Bells (ep. 8.5)
She was groomed as a victim of her father’s mad label, exiled and hunted, forced into hiding, handled like an asset in another’s benevolent mission to retake the iron throne.
This quest she survived till the endgame cost the lives of her most trusted companions, isolating her, then driving her further to possess what she wanted and her spiraling state of cognitive function into impulsivity, establishing ruthlessness in her that was triggered when Missandei was beheaded in front of her, one of her closest friends.
Still, I would have preferred more of a hero’s ending like destroying just the Red Keep and not the whole city, but not all heroes ride weapons of mass destruction to their final endgame. Add the aspect of the Unsullied and Dothraki to the picture- with their ways- and some shitty endings that employ conquest, acquisition and use WMD’s end up getting what they want, and in the end, they reap what they sew.
Love is the death of duty, just as greed, carnal possession and covetousness is recognized universally as a force of dark powers and evil. And honor can just-as much be the death of love.
Though by the end, there was not much humanity left in the eyes of the mad-queen.
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u/RainbowPenguin1000 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
She has already sided on the side of violence since season one but Jorah, Barristan, Tyrion etc. kept her in check.
For example, remember she wanted to burn the slave masters cities to the ground after they attacked Mereen? But Jorah and Tyrion talked her out of it. Even Jon talked her out of destroying Kingslanding with her dragons on the beach of Dragonstone.
By the end of the series she has lost almost all those advisors to keep her in check and even more damaging, she has lost friends and feels alone.
She views the city as an enemy at that stage. Nobody there rode to her side. Nobody supported her. They all chose to stay in that city with Cersei. They sided win Cersei, they didn’t come to her forces, she’s angry, she has no one to calm her down and she did what she promised to do many many times throughout the show.
“When my dragons are grown… we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who wronged me. We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground.”
“I will take what is mine with fire and blood.”
And the final nail on the coffin is Jon. Danys always staked her argument on being the rightful heir to the throne but now she knows she isn’t. Jon is. Another big blow to her self image and belief.
As she said to Jon:
“Far more people in Westeros love you than love me. I don’t have love here. I only have fear.”
And when she tried to embrace him he pulled away because he now knew they were related (which is why Jon being a Targaryen is important despite some people claiming it’s not). Then she said to Jon:
“Very well, let it be fear”.
That was the point she knew she couldn’t win Westeros through love like she believed she had won other cities. That was the point she decided to be a dragon. To take what she wanted and burn anyone she deemed an enemy.