Naturally no one who cares about spoilers and who has not seen Season 8 Episode 5 should read this post.

I am of two minds about the events of The Bells  where Daenerys gives her rage and anger full reign destroying most of King’s Landing with dragon fire. (Along with the occasional sympatric explosion her father’s still existent stores of Wildfire cached around the city.) Quite a few fans are upset about this ‘turn’ where a character that

Photo Credit: HBO

they had looked upon as a hero, as a symbol of someone over coming tremendous adversity to achieve greatness suddenly is seen as monstrous, petty, and cruel. However to me this has been a moment of revelation where freed from the constraints of others Daenerys exhibits her true character, a character that is monstrous, petty, and cruel, a character that has been evident from the beginning of the series if you cared to pay attention.

When Daenerys was a pawn in her older brother’s schemes to regain the Iron Throne of Westeros, she showed no ambition for herself, accept that Viserys as the older and male heir had the legitimate claim to be the sovereign. However immediately upon Viserys’ brutal murder at her husband’s hands, a death she shed no tears at her lack of sorrow accepted because of Viserys’ own cruelty and stupidity, she begins asserting her claim as Queen of Westeros and attempts, repeatedly, to get his Dothraki husband Drogo to invade and conquer the seven kingdoms so she can take what is hers. At no point is she tempted to remain the Khalessi to a powerful Khal, to live within this new community with the love she has discovered, all that is to be tossed aside and used to achieve her desire of power and title based solely upon her name. Long before she claimed ‘Breaker of Chains’ she sought to establish herself as an absolute monarch. Daenerys’ lust for power has always been present.

For years Daenerys fought to claim her throne, suffering bitter losses including her husband Drogo, and repeated betrayals by those she trusted. It is important to note that at nearly every turn when faced with an enemy, traitor, or someone unwilling to accept her unquestionable authority, and with the power to inflict punishment upon them, Daenerys has chosen the cruelest methods available as punishment, and that method was often fire. Now my point here is not that Daenerys should have ‘turned the other cheek’ or otherwise forgiven those that robbed her of children, subjected her husband to a living death, stolen her dragons, sought to enslave her, or refused to bend the knee. Westeros is a brutal land and death to your enemies is a norm, it is the manner of those deaths that is the heart of her character. Burned alive upon funereal pyres or from the mouths of dragon are for the vast majority of people the most horrific death imaginable. Also note how throughout the series fire is a motif that is repeated and the use of fire by characters such as Daenerys father the ‘mad King’ burning suspected enemies alive in the throne room or seeking to burn all of King’s Landing, Gregor Clegane, burning and scaring his little brother Sandor for playing with his toys, or Melisandre, the Red Priestess, who burns children alive as sacrifices to her god. All character we are expected to consider as evil and yet when it come to Daenerys this propensity for execution by flame is excused.

It is a tribute to the writing and to Emile Clarke performance that we empathize with Daenerys so completely through the years that her repeated acts of cruelty as dismissed with the simple thought ‘They Deserved It.’ Of course that is the crux of the matter, with all these other character, their use of fire and flame is seen as horrific acts, at best misguided as they obsessively chased goals that they have deemed sufficient to justify these barbarous actions, but with Daenerys we are in her point of view, not watching horrified from some other character. It is no surprise at all that Daenerys, stripped of her trusted advisors, thwarted in her life’s consuming goal, and crushed by the twin revelation that the man she loves can’t love her in return and like Viserys has the more legitimate claim on her treasured prized, lashes out, giving in to her well shown nature of punishing with fire and blood. Her slaughter of innocents at King’s Landing is no ‘turn’ it is the culmination of years of character and if you loved Daenerys as she crucified hundred perhaps it would be best to look and understand how easily we are lead astray from what we consider good and just. The same is true for Daenerys lust for power. Never has she offered compromise, she had been pleaded and wheedled into it from time to time but she offers nothing to others except her terms. The North cannot be allowed to be free, even if such freedom would acquire her allied against her war with the Lannisters. Daenerys gives up nothing and makes enemies where should win friends because it is her destiny by birthright alone to the absolute monarch of all seven kingdoms. Despite he constant tirades against tyranny she is blind to the fact that she herself is a tyrant. The Bellsis the logical culmination of Daenerys’ choices and personality.

I said I was of two minds about this episode and here’s my other mind.

While the conclusion of her arc is on point the execution is flawed. Bereft of GRRM’s books as guidance the shows writers have fallen back in tricks, tropes, plot driven coincidences, and hand waving more typical of television scripts. Vital information is withheld to create ‘surprises’ that are in actuality lies to the audience, time is compressed in the sake of speed versus more credible world building, and characters have lost all subtlety and this episode parades these flaws, undermining the powerful commentary of the slippery nature of righteousness into evil that Daenerys’ arc has provided.