Game of Thrones has at last come to an end, and the conclusion of the HBO series left many fans feeling dissatisfied and frustrated. Some even felt betrayed by the creators of the show, who had brilliantly created a powerful narrative experience that captured our imagination and asked fans to invest emotionally into a fantastic world of fascinating characters, only to give them a rushed ending filled with unsatisfying resolutions to a number of major character arcs that seemed illogical, unfitting, or unsupported by the narrative. Had all those years of emotional investment been for nothing?
I’d like to discuss the conclusion of Daenerys’ storyline, which was one of many controversial aspects of the final season that viewers had problems with, and along the way, I will examine some structural and thematic parallels in Classical mythology for hints and ideas about how her narrative arc could have been improved.
Spoilers follow, for those who have not seen the final season.
In episode five of the final season, “The Bells,” Daenerys Targaryen seems to rapidly descend into madness and cruelty, as she brutally rains dragon fire down upon the innocent people of King’s Landing. Many found her sudden transformation shocking and out-of-character for a figure who had been presented as a heroic symbol of female power or a just ruler who liberates the oppressed. As a result, these fans were let down by their expectations for the character. Admittedly, Game of Thrones is known for subverting expectations, but it must be done well.
The opposing camp argues that hints of her madness and violent tendencies had been foreshadowed heavily in past seasons (she has said many times that she would attain victory through “fire and blood,” and has repeatedly burnt her enemies to death). They contend that her transformation into a mad tyrant should have been expected.
I support a complex middle ground. While her transformation was foreshadowed and did convey the thematic concerns of Game of Thrones about power and ambition, the showrunners did not provide enough narrative support and character development to set up such a sudden and drastic change. Daenerys, while ruthless and vengeful against her enemies, has never been a murderer of the innocent-indeed, she has shown moments of tenderness and love for the downtrodden and weak-yet she shifted to so-called “Mad Queen” within only two episodes. The short six-episode season was simply too rushed to fully develop the proper reasoning and logical progression to support Daenerys’ character arc.
It’s unfortunate, because her story had the potential to be a brilliant character study following in the footsteps of Classical tragedy. We could have witnessed the tragic downfall of a hero, as a just ruler attempts to do good, only to have her own ambition, thirst for vengeance, her absolute conviction that her cause is righteous or that she is destined to rule, and the darker instincts of her Targaryen blood-recalling the ancestral curses so prevalent in the family sagas of Classical myth-turn her into that which she claims to hate: a mad tyrant.
Structurally, a close parallel from Greek mythology is the tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, in which the ruler Oedipus attempts to root out the murderer of the previous king, Laius, because the murderer’s presence produces religious pollution, or miasma, that is poisoning the city of Thebes. Consumed by a stubborn drive to learn the truth at all costs, he musters his power and intelligence to uncover the murderer, only to bring about his own downfall, for he learns that he himself is the source of the miasma: unbeknownst to him, he was the killer of Laius, who turns out to be his own father, and he married and slept with the old king’s widow, his own mother Jocasta.
It is not the details of the situation that carry narrative impact, for many members of the ancient Greek audience would have already known the myth of Oedipus. Rather, what grabs our attention is the gradual development of narrative tension and suspense, as Oedipus stumbles toward the truth and begins to suspect the horrific reality of what he has done. Then, when all is revealed, the narrative pay-off emerges from his response to the realization of the truth: he reacts with guilt, horror, and fear, before blinding himself and sending himself into exile, thereby saving the city from his own pollution.
Thematically, another excellent parallel is Euripides’ Medea, in which Medea, consumed by rage and jealousy against her husband, makes the horrific decision to kill her own children to get back at him. The act of murder itself, although terrible, would not have nearly as much narrative impact without the build-up to that moment. The killing of her children becomes more effective dramatically because we are able to witness her gradual transformation from suffering victim to villain and see the psychological conflict within her, as she goes through the torturous leaps of logic that convince her she has no other choice but to commit this unthinkable act.
In contrast to these two tragedies, Daenerys’ character arc misses the narrative set-up and suspense that maintains our interest in the story, as well as the narrative pay-off that results due to a climactic change. As Oedipus Rex and Medea seem to suggest, a sudden, extreme change in Daenerys is not as interesting as showing the conflict within her, as she grapples with the forces pushing her toward her transformation.
We could have seen her confronting the circumstances of war and politics that force her to act ruthlessly to attain victory. To some extent, these plot elements were present, but very limited in scope because of the time constraints of the final season, and the conflict of political pragmatism versus moral integrity is undercut by Daenerys’ easy victory. She was never forced to really answer the question of the moral cost she would have to pay to establish her new political order. What parts of herself would she have to sacrifice to “liberate” the people of Westeros?
The Aeneid, the Latin epic by Vergil, might be a good thematic parallel here: the hero Aeneas is fated to found the Roman race that will bring peace and order to the world, but as he achieves his divine destiny, he pays a high moral cost due to the violent acts of vengeance that he commits. For instance, he cuts down Turnus, one of his main opponents, in a rage, even as Turnus surrenders and begs for mercy. Similarly, we could have seen a deeper examination of the clash between Daenerys’ belief that she is destined to rule and to bring freedom and peace to Westeros with the violence and destruction that she must cause to do so.
Other similarities between the two stories bring out some themes that could have been explored in greater depth: both Aeneas and Daenerys are political exiles and refugees, driven from their homelands, who attempt to claim new homes in foreign lands but are perceived as outsiders and are forced to become violent conquerors, despite having or thinking that they have destiny on their side. How can she rule the Seven Kingdoms when its people view her as a foreigner? How can she gain acceptance and respect as a ruler, if she has to use ruthless tactics to gain power? And can she put aside her political ambitions and claims to destiny, if that is what’s best for the people of Westeros to be free? But the ripe opportunities for Game of Thrones to explore these questions are passed over rather quickly.
Some of these themes are momentarily addressed when Grey Worm’s execution of prisoners is challenged by Jon Snow and Ser Davos, which raised my hopes that we were about to witness an intriguing political crisis in the aftermath of military conquest, but they are quickly put aside as the series finale rushes onward to its next step: killing Daenerys, before we get much of an opportunity to process her burning of King’s Landing or think about the moral and political consequences of her actions. The themes are all there, but it’s simply over too quickly. It’s too bad that a show which used to revel in complex political conflicts did not spend much time at all dealing with these issues.
Looking back to Medea as an example, it could have been interesting to observe in closer detail how she deals with the range of competing psychological factors within Daenerys, from the madness which seems to run in the Targaryen family and her fear of becoming like her father, to her desire to be loved/feared by the people of Westeros, the emotional toll of losing her dragon and some of her closest advisers, like Ser Jorah and Missandei, her love of Jon Snow but also her fear that he is a threat to her, and her paranoia that those closest to her are turning against her. All these are touched upon, but very briefly and not in enough detail to produce an interesting character study.
Some of these plot elements, like losing her dragon to Euron Greyjoy’s Iron Fleet or Missandei being captured, occur simply because they needed to, for the show to quickly provide Daenerys with a motivation for her madness, but the real, emotional consequences of those losses are not given enough time to be fully examined, nor are they well-supported by the internal logic of the narrative. Producer David Benioff makes the strange excuse that “Dany kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet” to explain how she could have blundered into an ambush.
Yet by this moment, she is already a seasoned conqueror and is surrounded by a number of intelligent military advisers who should have seen this coming. The Iron Fleet has been built up as a serious naval threat, and through the character of Euron Greyjoy, has been established as a major source of Cersei’s power. It’s almost unbelievable that Daenerys would simply sail straight for King’s Landing without thinking about the Iron Fleet. This lack of narrative support is part of why fans are frustrated with what happens in this final season.
Daenerys has displayed a number of character traits or flaws that are both part of yet opposed to her more heroic, idealistic tendencies, and among them are ambition, hardheaded stubbornness, the tragic self-assurance that she alone knows what is good and just, and her belief that it is her destiny to rule. As with Oedipus, the tragic hero’s “flaw” is often the same thing that makes him or her a great hero in the first place. We could have been shown the psychological struggle between these aspects of her personality, as she starts to confuse justice with vengeance, as she becomes more and more paranoid and isolated, and as her claims to destined rule guide her to greater acts of cruelty and destruction. It would have made for a fascinating full ten episodes to see the gradual development and nuanced examination of a complex transformation, instead of the rushed six episodes we were given.
Nor was she ever asked to confront her own actions and recognize that she had become the same sort of tyrannical figure from which she claimed to be “liberating” the world. We did not get to see the narrative pay-off as she reacts to her own change. What would her reaction be, when she realizes that she has started becoming a mad queen, just as her father was the mad king before her? Unfortunately, we will never know, as the showrunners rushed ahead to her death, probably thinking that such an ending was necessary for a tragic character like Daenerys. But that again misses the point: the death of a tragic figure does not have any impact without an examination of the actions that led him or her to that end.
It is true that some tragedies feature a sudden shift from sanity to madness. In Euripides’ Herakles, the goddess Hera afflicts Herakles with a madness that causes him to kill his wife and children in a murderous rage, while in Sophocles’ Ajax, Athena drives Ajax mad when he plots to kill the leaders of the Greek army at Troy and humiliates him by having him slaughter livestock instead. But what makes this type of sudden transformation fitting for Greek tragedy but not for Game of Thrones?
In Greek mythology, divine beings constantly interfere in human affairs and utilize their immense power to achieve violent ends and advance personal interests. The fits of madness that they inflict upon Ajax and Herakles are actually fitting and expected, given how gods are depicted in myth. Their presentation in these plays are meant to provoke a discussion regarding the capricious and inhuman nature of the immortal gods. This simply does not work for Game of Thrones, which, despite all its fantasy elements, presents a realistic universe driven by human characters who are expected to be psychologically consistent.
More importantly in terms of story structure, it is the response of the characters after they recover from their madness that provides narrative impact. The point is for us not to witness the violent acts, but to grapple with how to respond to them, as Herakles and Ajax realize what has happened and struggle with the guilt, shame, and dishonor of their actions. Ajax decides to kill himself, while Herakles is persuaded to keep on living by his friend Theseus.
Game of Thrones could have learned from this type of narrative structure: Daenerys’ descent into madness would have gained some much needed nuance, if, after burning down half of King’s Landing, she were forced to examine her own madness or had to struggle to reconcile her darker urges with her belief in liberation and justice.
But we were only given a quick, simplistic ending (she has to go mad now, and so, she does. Then, she has to be killed now, and so, she is) that was a disservice to a multifaceted character with a long, complex story arc. All the different layers to Daenerys’ character-hero, mother, liberator, ruthless tyrant, just ruler, lover, etc.-were collapsed into one-Mad Queen-and then she is quickly killed off. Her admirable, heroic aspects, which were a major reason that fans had identified with and invested themselves emotionally into her character, were put aside, ignored, and played no role in the resolution to her story arc. It seems shortsighted and careless of the show’s writers not to take that into account: no doubt part of the reason fans were so dissatisfied.
Of course, Game of Thrones is known for subverting narrative expectations, and so, we cannot expect our heroes to always win or remain admirable, but subverting our expectations for the purpose of creating a shock means nothing without good writing and complex character development. It’s impossible to end a character’s narrative arc properly, without touching upon the part of that character that emotionally resonated with the audience.
That’s why Ned Stark’s death was so effective in season one: his heroism and nobility as the protagonist brought us to identify with him, only to be the very things leading to his downfall. His end was unexpected and shocking, yet supported by character development, consistent with the logic of the narrative, and emotionally resonant, dealing with the aspects of the character that caused us to invest ourselves into the story. But in this last season, the creators of Game of Thrones seem to have forgotten some of the greatest lessons of their own show.
Originally published at http://windswaves.wordpress.com on June 11, 2019.
