The Fire and Bloodiest: Did Daenerys commit the worst atrocity in Targaryen history?
I’ll be honest — part of me wonders if I should even be writing so soon after “The Bells”. That Daenerys Targaryen broke bad in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, in a vacuum, is not particularly shocking. Yet the manner in which the Mother of Dragons and the Breaker of Chains became the Incinerator of Innocents still has me somewhat shook.
I have no doubt that my feelings toward the plot twist will continue to evolve as time passes and I have more conversations and consume more writing on the matter. Yet after 24 hours here’s the distilled version of my thoughts on the matter:
- Daenerys coming unhinged wasn’t unearned. She’d watched the last of her trusted advisors from Essos be mercilessly beheaded. She’d lost two of her dragons. A man she grew to love both couldn’t reciprocate that love in full and simultaneously posed the greatest threat to her claim to the throne. The people of Westeros met her with suspicion rather than the praise she received across the narrow sea.
- What wasn’t earned in my opinion is the extent of her actions. Simply burning the Red Keep and Cersei would have been one thing, but unleashing Drogon against civilians seemed antithetical to everything Daenerys has ever stood for. There is a difference between slowly becoming paranoid and unhinged and being at the point where you’re down with genocide.
- I think it would have helped to have a full episode rather than 10 minutes of her descending into that madness at Dragonstone to really get to the point where the extent of her actions were believable. I find “the writing sucks” to be a lazy refrain when people don’t get what they want from Thrones. However, I do think the critique that shortening the final seasons was a mistake gains legitimacy in moments like this.
- I didn’t want Dany breaking bad. Honestly I wanted the cliche ending — Jon and Dany ruling together as the new Jaeherys and Alysanne. But I also appreciate that part of what makes this development compelling is the fact that so many people didn’t want it.
- Along those lines, the idea that good and evil aren’t defining character traits but rather describe a character’s actions is compelling. Daenerys was a good person through most of Game of Thrones. She also may have done the most evil thing any Targaryen has ever done in burning an entire city full of innocent civilians and surrendered enemy combatants.
That last point is where I’ll pivot for the rest of this column. The internet is littered with reactions to Daenerys’ mad queen moment — some incredibly insightful, some just the lashing out of angry fans. So instead lets dive deep into the Targaryen lore to answer the question posed above — Was Daenerys burning Kings Landing and all its inhabitants the worst atrocity ever committed by a Targaryen?
We’ll begin with Aegon I (the conquerer), first king of the Seven Kingdoms and likely the most well known of the Targaryens to show watchers. Aegon’s conquest of Westeros was short on neither Fire nor Blood. He burned the castle of Harrenhal with Harren the Black and all his sons inside — in some ways the most direct comparison to Daenerys’ conflagration of King’s Landing. However, Aegon only did so after offering the Ironborn King an opportunity to surrender and be named Lord of the Iron Islands.
Aegon’s promise of openhandedness to those who knelt, or even surrendered to him wasn’t manipulative or false either. After his defeat at the hands of Aegon and his dragons at the field of fire, Loren Lannister surrendered and knelt — to which the conquerer responded by raising him to his feet and confirming him as Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West. So while Aegon did serve his enemies with fire and blood, he never needlessly slaughtered innocents or his vanquished foes that had already surrendered.
Yet it didn’t take long for the Targaryen coin to flip from greatness to madness. Maegor, son of Aegon with his older sister Visenya, came to be known as “the cruel” and with good reason. If Daenerys’ story is that of a kind hearted person being corrupted by power and mentally broken by having all she loved taken from her, Maegor’s is one of pure and unrepentant evil. In many ways Maegor was Joffrey Baratheon, but grown, competent, and formidable in battle.
Maegor killed his nephew in a battle between dragons, had wives tortured and murdered, and lords beheaded for even mentioning surrender. He oversaw construction of the Red Keep and all its hidden passageways, then held a three day feast for all the builders complete with an assortment of strongwines and as well as entertainment from the brothels — then put every one of them to the sword at the feast’s conclusion to ensure only he would know the secrets of the castle. In total, the scope of Maegor’s cruelty was far greater, yet he never committed any single atrocity as heinous as Dany’s burning of the Red Keep.
The Dance of Dragons — the war of succession fought between the children of Viserys Targaryen approximately 130 years after Aegon’s conquest — would be the bloodiest chapter in the history of the Targaryens. And while many soldiers and some civilians would die, the true tragedy of the Dance was the death of so many of the members of the Targaryen family tree — and perhaps even moreso the death of nearly all the Targaryen dragons. Aegon II feeding his half sister Rhaenyra to his dragon Sunfyre in front of her son (Aegon III) marked the end of the bloody conflict (followed shortly by the death of Aegon II himself) and was doubtlessly a brutal act. Yet no individual incident in the Dance quite equals the horror of what Dany unleashed Sunday.
The second to last contender for worst Targaryen also shares the name of the conquerer. Aegon IV “The Unworthy” was known less for his cruelty than his lecharousness — fathering scores of bastards. His most destructive act came not on the battlefield or on the Iron Throne but on his deathbed. Aegon’s last act of legitimizing all of his natural born children set off a conflict that would span 5 generations — the Blackfyre rebellions — and cost the lives of thousands, likely more than Daenerys’s ignition of King’s Landing.
The final contender is none other than the Mad King, and Daenerys’ father himself — Aerys Targaryen. Aerys demonstrated symptoms of bipolar from early in his reign — prone to flights of fancy and hyperpromiscuity in his manic episodes. His descent to true madness came much more slowly than Daenerys’ but shared some common features. The gradual falling out with his hand and closest advisor, Tywin Lannister, was as much a symptom as a cause yet nonetheless drove him further down the path of madness.
As he became more and more unhinged, his relationship with his eldest son Rhaegar became increasingly strained to the point where he became suspicious the crown prince would attempt to depose him. The atrocities Aerys committed at his peak insanity are well documented, most notably the execution of Rickard Stark via wildfire while his son Brandon strangled himself trying to aid his father. Yet the atrocity Aerys was prevented from committing — courtesy of Jamie Lannister’s sword — was the one his daughter would eventually fulfill. With the combined forces of Tywin Lannister and Robert Baratheon having taken King’s Landing Aerys ordered his pyromancer ignite all the stores of wildfire throughout the capital city — with the intent of burning every single man, woman and child in the city.
The three hundred year reign of House Targaryen saw times of great prosperity and great sorrow. Some Targaryens embodied the aspirational greatness their house claimed, some committed great atrocities either by cruelness, greed or incompetence, and most were somewhere in between. It would be unfair and inaccurate to name Daenerys Stormborn the most cruel or evil of her line. Yet her action of burning a surrendered army and an entire city of civilians is nevertheless the worst atrocity committed by any Targaryen in all of Westeros history.
