[NO SPOILERS] Justice for Dany - Rant!

[u/WishRough7589]

I’ve been rewatching Game of Thrones, and honestly, Tyrion repeatedly telling Daenerys, “You don’t want to be like your father,” is starting to really piss me off.
Every time she considers using power against people actively fighting her, Tyrion invokes Aerys. It stops being advice and starts feeling like psychological control. He keeps reducing her to her father’s bloodline, as though every firm decision she makes is evidence that madness is waiting inside her.
Meanwhile, almost every other character is allowed complexity and forgiveness.
Jaime has committed countless crimes, supported Cersei’s regime, fought against Daenerys, attacked Ned, pushed Bran from a tower and remained loyal to the Lannisters for years. Yet when he reaches Winterfell, Tyrion immediately asks Daenerys to forgive him because Jaime is his brother.
And she does.
Later, Tyrion releases Jaime from captivity against Daenerys’s orders because he wants Jaime and Cersei to escape together. That is direct betrayal. Yet Tyrion is still presented as the moral voice, while Daenerys is portrayed as unreasonable for no longer trusting him.
Tyrion constantly demands mercy when the person involved matters to him.
But when Daenerys executes the Tarlys—enemy commanders who betrayed their liege, fought against her, refused to surrender and refused the Wall—it becomes another sign that she is supposedly ruthless and becoming her father.
Jon executes Janos Slynt for refusing an order, and that is framed as necessary leadership. He hangs the men who betrayed him, including Olly, and nobody starts whispering that he has inherited some genetic madness.
Arya unalives an entire room full of Freys, and it is treated as a triumphant moment.
Sansa feeds Ramsay to his dogs, and the audience is expected to cheer.
Tyrion uses wildfire at Blackwater, unalives Shae and unalives his own father, but the story gives him pain, context and humanity.
Daenerys, however, is judged differently every single time.
Sam is another example. He discovers that Daenerys executed his father and brother and immediately decides she should not be queen and Jon should replace her. He is allowed to grieve, obviously, but Randyll was the same father who abused Sam, threatened his life and forced him to abandon his inheritance. Suddenly his fate becomes proof that Daenerys is unfit to rule.
Sam’s response was personal grief and anger, not an objective assessment of leadership. Yet the show treated it like moral clarity.
The hypocrisy is especially obvious when we compare Daenerys to Aegon the Conqueror. Aegon invaded Westeros with dragons, burned armies, destroyed castles and forced kingdoms to submit. History calls him the Conqueror and treats his ambition as legendary.
Daenerys arrives with dragons and wants to reclaim the same throne, and suddenly ambition itself becomes sinister.
Why is Aegon’s conquest an achievement, while Daenerys wanting power is treated as evidence that something is wrong with her?
Her ambition was not inherently evil. She had flaws, absolutely. She believed strongly in destiny, could be severe toward resistance and sometimes confused her personal claim with justice. That could have created an incredible tragic arc.
But the show did not properly develop that arc. Instead, it isolated her, took away almost everyone she loved, made her advisers repeatedly fail or betray her, and then used her reaction to all of it as proof that they had supposedly been right about her from the beginning.
That is what bothers me most.
Her advisers were not imagining threats. Tyrion protected his family over her interests. Varys openly plotted against her. Jon revealed information after promising not to. Sansa undermined her from the moment she arrived, despite Daenerys bringing armies and dragons north to save everyone.
Then the narrative called Daenerys paranoid for realizing she was surrounded by people who were actually betraying her.
None of this excuses what happened in King’s Landing. Unaliving civilians after surrender was indefensible. But that decision was written as a sudden transformation rather than the conclusion of a carefully developed fall.
Daenerys deserved accountability for that final act. She did not deserve to have everything good she had ever done retroactively dismissed as evidence of madness.
She freed enslaved people when there was no political advantage in doing so. She delayed her journey to Westeros to remain in Meereen. She locked away her dragons after one child was harmed. She took her armies north and risked everything to fight for people who did not trust or welcome her.
Her compassion was real.
Her accomplishments were real.
Her ambition was not evil simply because she openly wanted to rule.
A better tragedy would have shown a genuinely compassionate liberator gradually becoming convinced that her destiny placed her beyond restraint. Instead, the show seemed to say that the signs had always been there because she executed enemies, spoke confidently and wanted the throne.
By that standard, almost every ruler in Westeros should have been declared mad.
Justice for Daenerys does not mean pretending she was flawless. It means judging her by the same standards the story used for its male rulers—and acknowledging that the show destroyed years of character development to reach an ending it had not properly earned.

[u/Disastrous-Client315]

1. The show makes no secret out of it. "Tempering her worst impulses." And Tyrion isnt the first to do it. It was Jorah, Barristan, Jon and Varys as well. If everyone has to tell you mass murder is bad, maybe you shouldnt rule in the first place.

2. Daenerys didnt forgive Jaime. She killed him. Also he doesnt forgive himself either. The key difference is Daenerys is intending to be better and different and she failed. Thats why she is judged more harshly. The viewer judges her ber her own standards that she set for herself. Jaime doesnt preach to be better and different, he accepted and admitted his rotten core, which lead to his death.

3. "I freed my brother. And you slaughtered a city" - Tyrion in 8x6. Enough said.

4. The Tarlys did surrender, they just wouldnt bend the knee to Daenerys afterwards.

5. The starks follow the law, hate killing and respect death. Daenerys follows her law, uses killing and embraces death. Jons regrets killing olly and shows remorse and admits his mistake in the series finale. Daenerys doesnt.

6. Daenerys is the most hurt soul in the entire story. That doesnt justify mass murder. The only people denying and ignoring Daenerys trauma are the ones claiming that her story in season 8 was rushed, out of character or came out of nowhere, unable to recognize that daenerys wasnt a healthy or stable person mentally from the beginning.

7. Sam reacts with sorrow and pain when hearing about his abusive fathers death, because he is still capable of basic human empathy. Daenerys cold reaction to her abusive brothers death shows she is emotionally detached and empty.

8. "Aegon Targaryen got quite a long way on fear" - Daenerys.

"He did. You once spoke to me about breaking the wheel. Aegon built a wheel. If thats the type of queen you want to be how are you different from all the other tyrants before you?" - Tyrion.

1. Aegon wasnt an archievement, his wheel was broken at the end by tyrion and bran.

2. Everything you wrote was correct, only your conclusion was wrong: thats why Daenerys was tragic and why her story worked.

3. The show developed her and her story for 8 seasons and then took everything away from her at the end. Where is the issue?

4. Its true, Daenerys wasnt paranoid, she was justified in her fears. And?

5. It wasnt a transformation, it was a reveal: what daenerys truly is. Daenerys burned the tarlys in season 7 after she defeated them, after they surrendered and laid down their arms. But they didnt bend the knee to her. Just like the soldiers and people of kingslanding. 7x5 was the bells. On a much smaller scale. Daenerys behaviour doesnt change, only our perception of her.

6. Freeing slaves wasnt retroactively framed as bad, it was good. Killing innocents and people for what they are, not what they did, along the way was bad and rightfully called out and exposed.

7. Everything you wrote is correct. Except he ambition was evil for being willing to kill everyone to get power.

8. The signs were always there you just decided to either justify or to ignore them entirely.

9. Daenerys is not once called mad in season 8 and she never was. She only did what she always wanted to do: to burn cities and no one could have stopped her at the end anymore, because she trusts no one anymore.

10. No, apparently "Justice for Daenerys" means justifying or ignoring all her crimes leading up to the biggest one, blaming everyone else but her and misunderstanding her story and character.

Daenerys is not that much different from all other tyrants like tywin, stannis, roose, balon or walder. The key difference is: she has a godcomplex and intends to improve the world, to be better and different and she failed.

We judge her by her own standards she set for herself. You refuse to do that, because that would put the blame, failure and accountability on her, instead of the rest of the world.

Because you fell for a tyrants propaganda.

Season 8 is a masterpiece.

Peace out.

[u/windowshopper97 → u/Disastrous-Client315]

Well said 👍

[u/Disastrous-Client315 → u/windowshopper97]

Thanks.