A Game of Thrones (contains spoilers)

[Celtics4ever]

Agreed. I would love to see the Celtics either draft and stash a Euro,

Here ya go

The prophecy: In the House of the Undying in season 2, Dany has a vision of walking through the Red Keep’s throne room. The ceiling is broken open. Fans assumed the white particles falling into the room was snow and that winter had come to the south. In Sunday’s episode, Dany is finally taking King’s Landing and buildings are indeed being destroyed. But it’s not snowing. It’s raining ash from her dragon’s destruction. The season 2 scene is a vision of Daenerys taking King’s Landing only by becoming the “queen of the ashes.” In the same season she also literally declares, “When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who have wronged me. We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground!”

The Mass Crucifixion: On the road to Meereen in season 4, Dany finds 163 slave children crucified. She decides to crucify 163 masters in retaliation without regard for their individual guilt or innocence. Ser Barristan advises her to be more merciful. Later, a son of one of the crucified men insists his father was actually a good man who lobbied against slavery and didn’t deserve his fate.

Revenge for Ser Barristan. Also in season 4, after Ser Barristan was killed by the terror group Sons of the Harpy. In response, Dany brings three masters to her dragonpit. All swear they have nothing to do with the rogue group. She burns one of them alive to send a message to the others. Was the man guilty? Innocent? We don’t know and Dany didn’t seem to mind not knowing.

]The Mass Burning: In season 6 in Vaes Dothrak, as punishment for taking her prisoner and refusing her demands, Dany burns all the khals alive and has the remaining Dothraki promise — echoing Khal Drogo in season 1 — that they’ll “kill my enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses.”

Meereen Revenge Plan: Also in season 6, Dany returns to Meereen and finds the city under attack from the slave cities. This is her first instinct: “I will crucify the masters. I will set their fleets afire. I will kill every last one of their soldiers and return their cities to the dirt. That’s my plan.” Tyrion talks her out of it.

Burning the Tarleys: In season 7, Dany is given the choice of killing or imprisoning Lord Tarly and his son Dickon after a battle and decides to execute both against the advice of Tyrion.

King’s Landing Battle Plan: In season 8, Dany is repeatedly urged to not attack King’s Landing to overthrow Cersei. She never seems to be entirely against the idea, but rather agrees with her advisors that it’s rather poor public relations strategy.

 The show has pretty consistently shown that when Daenerys is angered she can rather quickly leap to “kill them all” as the best solution regardless of whether it’s entirely justified or not

https://ew.com/tv/2019/05/13/game-of-thrones-daenerys-mad-queen/

In Game of Thrones season 2, Daenery's handmaiden Doreah – a naïve, stupid girl – betrayed her with Xaro Xan Daxos – a wealthy man who seduced her with riches and a life of comfort away from the indentured servitude she faced working for Dany. In punishment for this offense, Dany locked her and Xaro inside his vault to die a slow death from starvation and probably madness if they didn’t murder-suicide themselves first. It made for great television and it’s doubtful anyone mourned either of those characters for long, but five seasons later Cersei did nearly the exact same thing with Ellaria and her daughter - and it was bone-chilling.

https://screenrant.com/game-thrones-daenerys-mad-queen-clues/

Daenerys offers one of her dragons in exchange for 8,000 Unsullied and the boys still in training (about 5,000). The offer is accepted

Daenerys meets with the Good Masters in a large plaza holding the entire force of Unsullied. She delivers Drogon and is given a scourge that symbolizes ownership of the Unsullied. Now their master, she orders them to kill all the Good Masters, soldiers, and slave overseers, spare the children, and free any slaves they find. After the sacking of the city is complete, she grants them their freedom and asks if they will fight for her as free men. After a few moments, they unanimously acclaim Daenerys as their leader and join her on her march.

Broke her agreement, did not free them out of goodwill but rather to get an army.

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Unsullied

So plenty of hints about the mad queen if you were looking at the plot and not her looks.  JK

Really? I don't even think the Dorthraki were shown again after Dany's speech. And wait, you mean to tell me she still had THAT many Dorthraki + Unsullied left even after the Battle at Winterfell + Kings Landing??

Grey Worm and the Unsullied executed some of the army who already surrendered at Kings Landing, but they allow for Tyrion and Jon to have a trial? Lol.

A lot of the plot did not make sense after the Battle of Winterfell.   She must have had troops left in Stormreach because the Dothraki at Winterfell were destroyed.

A lot of the Unsullied stuff never made sense, their armor was vinyl supposed to look like leather.   Even their helms are made of this crap.   I know it was costs.   But this would not make them very arrow proof compared to Alexander the Great's troops in linothorax and metal helms.  They also show no resilience against the robed dagger wielding Sons of the Harpy.  Yet were very tough in Westeros, and pikes often could win handily against Cavalry whist Sword and Bucklers armed men could evade their pikes and close the range and cut them to pieces.  Huge pot holes, after Martin was past up.

Mongols could kill knights with their bows, but on the show, the Dothraki have none.   The reality was the men in iron would own them in a fight.    Romans beat the savagery of the Germans, Brits and Gauls more often than not due to discipline, tenacity and their equipment.   It would be no different here.  Their Arakh's sword are variation of a real life sword called a Khopesh.  They died out relatively quickly around 1300 BC in history, because there were better options.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khopesh

The Show runners were pretty ignorant of History and Warfare in general.    Why did they fly the dragons right at the Ballista for instance rather than trying to flank them and destroy from angles where the defenders would have been defenseless or better yet attack the ships at night by surprise and burn a bunch of them before a solid target was presented?

As for the trial,  think they would have demanded Death regardless for Tyrion and Jon.   I was hoping Grey Worm would die, too as I never cared for the Unsullied for the above reasons.

But IMO he recognizes Tyrion should be King, and has given him most of those powers because others would not.

I agree Tyrion was picked by Bran to rule in his stead but let's think about your comment.   Tyrion was wrong time and time again in this show.   For all his alleged smarts, he had to rely on Jon to bail him out and betrayed a friend, in Varys who was right.

[PhoSita]

What do you think the range is on Bran warging?  Do you think he can like, find a dolphin out in the Sunset Sea and just live carefree in the tropical waters to his heart's content?

[Celtics4ever]

I don't know the answer to the warging question.   Bran can clearly do it a long ways due to the ravens flying.

[Csfan1984]

A game of thrones thought I had today was how Bran ended up on the throne and why Bran made it so. We know how he got there but why did Bran bring things to this point. What is his ultimate goal? His goal was a holy war. Yeah that's what I said, Holy war.

Now stick with me. The faith of the seven lead priest are gone after they made their play and Cersei blew them up.The red priest and their Mesiahs (Stanis*, Dany & Jon) dead or exiled. The maesters and citadel tarnished. The dragons KIA or AWOL. Death's champion (Arya) gone. The iron islands abandoning their way of life. And now the King who typically in history dictates the religon of his people is a prophet of the old gods and the ways of the children of the forest. He only has one kingdom leave his rule, the one that already worships the old gods.

So was it a plot of Bran and that of the children of the forest's to bring their religon to the top of Westeros? And do remember the pack of the first men. The children used the army of the dead to push the humans into accepting their religion once before. Was this a more cunning game of thrones than we realize?

[LarBrd33]

As many have already said by now, this made ZERO sense to me.

Devil's advocate...

Drogon:  It can be argued that Drogon respects Jon more, because he senses he's the alpha Targarayen.  Also, the mother of Dragons was pretty abusive/neglectful (getting his siblings killed/locking them up for years, etc)...  and Drogon might be relieved to be free from her tiger-mom mass-murdering psychopath ways.    On the flip side, it's been suggested that Drogon thinks Dany accidentally stabbed herself on the iron throne - hence why he melts it down... which is a less-ridiculous explanation than Drogon melting it down because he was making an existential political statement about the symbolism of the throne... lol


Dothraki:  In Warrior culture, isn't the leader whoever kills the one in charge?  Couldn't Jon have just claimed them all as he was now the Top Khal?  They'd probably respect him as their leader.

Greyworm:  This one was a bit weirder, but in his defense he only was murdering the Lannister army, because his psychopath mad Queen ordered it.  Once she was gone, he had no obligation to keep ruthlessly murdering people.  He was probably salty about Jon ending her tyranny, but also probably just respected Jon for the champion he was and was ready to just move on. 

[tazzmaniac]

One thing I saw somebody mention on Twitter today, but that hasn't come up in all the reaction articles to the finale --

Doesn't the Three Eyed Raven live for like, thousands of years?

So is Bran going to be king for ages and ages?

i thought the wiki said the previous one was like 110 and he was plugged into a tree

Bran calls out to his future father in desperation – to his shock, Ned seems to hear him, but dismisses it and continues into the Tower. The Three-Eyed Raven pulls Bran out of the vision, and reprimands him again for trying to interact with the past. The Three-Eyed Raven says he's waited a thousand years for Bran, as the weirwood roots have grown into him. He assures Bran that he [Bran] is not destined to share his fate, but warns that he must learn before he leaves. When Bran demands to know what it is he needs to learn, the Three-Eyed Raven declares, "everything".[11]

The Three-Eyed Raven waited for that long.  That doesn't mean that it was the same body the whole time.  I posted about the danger the three-eyed Raven could represent with all its capabilities and the ability to transfer to a different host when the current body is at its end. 

[Moranis]

Agreed. I would love to see the Celtics either draft and stash a Euro,

Here ya go

The prophecy: In the House of the Undying in season 2, Dany has a vision of walking through the Red Keep’s throne room. The ceiling is broken open. Fans assumed the white particles falling into the room was snow and that winter had come to the south. In Sunday’s episode, Dany is finally taking King’s Landing and buildings are indeed being destroyed. But it’s not snowing. It’s raining ash from her dragon’s destruction. The season 2 scene is a vision of Daenerys taking King’s Landing only by becoming the “queen of the ashes.” In the same season she also literally declares, “When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who have wronged me. We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground!”

The Mass Crucifixion: On the road to Meereen in season 4, Dany finds 163 slave children crucified. She decides to crucify 163 masters in retaliation without regard for their individual guilt or innocence. Ser Barristan advises her to be more merciful. Later, a son of one of the crucified men insists his father was actually a good man who lobbied against slavery and didn’t deserve his fate.

Revenge for Ser Barristan. Also in season 4, after Ser Barristan was killed by the terror group Sons of the Harpy. In response, Dany brings three masters to her dragonpit. All swear they have nothing to do with the rogue group. She burns one of them alive to send a message to the others. Was the man guilty? Innocent? We don’t know and Dany didn’t seem to mind not knowing.

]The Mass Burning: In season 6 in Vaes Dothrak, as punishment for taking her prisoner and refusing her demands, Dany burns all the khals alive and has the remaining Dothraki promise — echoing Khal Drogo in season 1 — that they’ll “kill my enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses.”

Meereen Revenge Plan: Also in season 6, Dany returns to Meereen and finds the city under attack from the slave cities. This is her first instinct: “I will crucify the masters. I will set their fleets afire. I will kill every last one of their soldiers and return their cities to the dirt. That’s my plan.” Tyrion talks her out of it.

Burning the Tarleys: In season 7, Dany is given the choice of killing or imprisoning Lord Tarly and his son Dickon after a battle and decides to execute both against the advice of Tyrion.

King’s Landing Battle Plan: In season 8, Dany is repeatedly urged to not attack King’s Landing to overthrow Cersei. She never seems to be entirely against the idea, but rather agrees with her advisors that it’s rather poor public relations strategy.

 The show has pretty consistently shown that when Daenerys is angered she can rather quickly leap to “kill them all” as the best solution regardless of whether it’s entirely justified or not

https://ew.com/tv/2019/05/13/game-of-thrones-daenerys-mad-queen/

In Game of Thrones season 2, Daenery's handmaiden Doreah – a naïve, stupid girl – betrayed her with Xaro Xan Daxos – a wealthy man who seduced her with riches and a life of comfort away from the indentured servitude she faced working for Dany. In punishment for this offense, Dany locked her and Xaro inside his vault to die a slow death from starvation and probably madness if they didn’t murder-suicide themselves first. It made for great television and it’s doubtful anyone mourned either of those characters for long, but five seasons later Cersei did nearly the exact same thing with Ellaria and her daughter - and it was bone-chilling.

https://screenrant.com/game-thrones-daenerys-mad-queen-clues/

Daenerys offers one of her dragons in exchange for 8,000 Unsullied and the boys still in training (about 5,000). The offer is accepted

Daenerys meets with the Good Masters in a large plaza holding the entire force of Unsullied. She delivers Drogon and is given a scourge that symbolizes ownership of the Unsullied. Now their master, she orders them to kill all the Good Masters, soldiers, and slave overseers, spare the children, and free any slaves they find. After the sacking of the city is complete, she grants them their freedom and asks if they will fight for her as free men. After a few moments, they unanimously acclaim Daenerys as their leader and join her on her march.

Broke her agreement, did not free them out of goodwill but rather to get an army.

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Unsullied

So plenty of hints about the mad queen if you were looking at the plot and not her looks.  JK

Really? I don't even think the Dorthraki were shown again after Dany's speech. And wait, you mean to tell me she still had THAT many Dorthraki + Unsullied left even after the Battle at Winterfell + Kings Landing??

Grey Worm and the Unsullied executed some of the army who already surrendered at Kings Landing, but they allow for Tyrion and Jon to have a trial? Lol.

A lot of the plot did not make sense after the Battle of Winterfell.   She must have had troops left in Stormreach because the Dothraki at Winterfell were destroyed.

A lot of the Unsullied stuff never made sense, their armor was vinyl supposed to look like leather.   Even their helms are made of this crap.   I know it was costs.   But this would not make them very arrow proof compared to Alexander the Great's troops in linothorax and metal helms.  They also show no resilience against the robed dagger wielding Sons of the Harpy.  Yet were very tough in Westeros, and pikes often could win handily against Cavalry whist Sword and Bucklers armed men could evade their pikes and close the range and cut them to pieces.  Huge pot holes, after Martin was past up.

Mongols could kill knights with their bows, but on the show, the Dothraki have none.   The reality was the men in iron would own them in a fight.    Romans beat the savagery of the Germans, Brits and Gauls more often than not due to discipline, tenacity and their equipment.   It would be no different here.  Their Arakh's sword are variation of a real life sword called a Khopesh.  They died out relatively quickly around 1300 BC in history, because there were better options.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khopesh

The Show runners were pretty ignorant of History and Warfare in general.    Why did they fly the dragons right at the Ballista for instance rather than trying to flank them and destroy from angles where the defenders would have been defenseless or better yet attack the ships at night by surprise and burn a bunch of them before a solid target was presented?

As for the trial,  think they would have demanded Death regardless for Tyrion and Jon.   I was hoping Grey Worm would die, too as I never cared for the Unsullied for the above reasons.

But IMO he recognizes Tyrion should be King, and has given him most of those powers because others would not.

I agree Tyrion was picked by Bran to rule in his stead but let's think about your comment.   Tyrion was wrong time and time again in this show.   For all his alleged smarts, he had to rely on Jon to bail him out and betrayed a friend, in Varys who was right.

Yeah that is a much better breakdown then I had, but Dany has often not cared who died if it was for the "right" reason.

[tazzmaniac]

Dany and Cersei were my two favorite characters.  Nice and complex.  Jon Snow on the other hand was a simpleton.  The female characters in general were more 3 dimensional than the male characters. 

When I read the books and watch the show, I found the opposite to be true.   I thought the story would have been better with the cutting of all stuff not related to Jon Snow and it would have been a better book.  I wanted more on the wall and the Wildings as I thought this was way more action packed.  I have read fantasy and sword and sorcery for many years.  Martin is known as a father of a type of fantasy known as Grimdark which is fantasy deviod of idealism.   But those of us that read the books seemed less surprised than those that did not.   

Dany had everything she wanted. 

Also, a lesser claim to the throne, at the end of the day she was her brother's sister and her father's daughter.   

There would have been fewer books and no HBO series if the books were predominantly focused on Jon.  Like I said I think the Jon Snow character is pretty bland, two dimensional and really didn't experience much growth.  The interesting part of his story was characters around him and the environment. 

Don't see where the claim to the throne means much.  Its been about who has the power to take and hold the throne. 

[RPGenerate]

Dany and Cersei were my two favorite characters.  Nice and complex.  Jon Snow on the other hand was a simpleton.  The female characters in general were more 3 dimensional than the male characters. 

When I read the books and watch the show, I found the opposite to be true.   I thought the story would have been better with the cutting of all stuff not related to Jon Snow and it would have been a better book.  I wanted more on the wall and the Wildings as I thought this was way more action packed.  I have read fantasy and sword and sorcery for many years.  Martin is known as a father of a type of fantasy known as Grimdark which is fantasy deviod of idealism.   But those of us that read the books seemed less surprised than those that did not.   

Dany had everything she wanted. 

Also, a lesser claim to the throne, at the end of the day she was her brother's sister and her father's daughter.   

There would have been fewer books and no HBO series if the books were predominantly focused on Jon.  Like I said I think the Jon Snow character is pretty bland, two dimensional and really didn't experience much growth.  The interesting part of his story was characters around him and the environment. 

Don't see where the claim to the throne means much.  Its been about who has the power to take and hold the throne.

Hard disagree on that. I think Jon's chapters are the best part about ADWD. I enjoyed watching him learn to "play the game" of politics as the Lord Commander. Seeing him try to balance the needs of multiple groups of people (Wildlings, Stannis, the North, and the Night's Watch) was more thrilling than anything that was happening with the other POVs.

[tazzmaniac]

I have a feeling George R R Martin told them

"Dany goes mad queen and burns down King's Landing.  Jon kills Dany. Jon ends up North of the Wall.   Bran ends up King"... and then they proceeded to fill in the blanks horribly.

On some level, I feel for them.  Obviously George R R Martin can't even figure out how to get to that end point.  But man, they blew it.

Bran:  Not fulfilling, because they never found the character interesting.  Flat out avoided him for a whole season.  Dipped their toes in the 3 Eyed Raven thing, but ultimately skated around it, because the fantasy element of the show always perplexed them.   They spent the last couple seasons just having him sit there acting like a weirdo consistently saying how he's "not a man" anymore - only to turn around go "hehe, just kidding guys I always knew I'd be King" - which is doubly upsetting because it means he sat by doing nothing while thousands died because like everyone else he had a boner for the Iron Throne.

Jon:  The entire story is about him.  He's the core arc of this entire endeavor.  I've been saying this all along.  He can choose to turn down the Throne in favor of living North of the Wall, but that needs to be communicated by him.  Leaving his fate to some randos who weirdly ignore what they know about his heritage was completely illogical.  That above all things leaves the biggest empty feeling about this conclusion.  It doesn't feel complete.

Dany:  I care less about this, because she's always been a mass-murdering nutjob to me, but I get how fans would be upset.  From what I understand, in the books she's a bit more of a looneytoon from the beginning... breast feeding her dragons and having weird hallucinations and things like that.  So really, my guess is the writers just never fully understood this character, leaned into her savior persona, and then scrambled to reverse course too late.

From what you understand?  You haven't read the books?  The entire story isn't about Jon.  He's never been out of the North in the books and has had nothing to do with the fight for the Iron Throne.  Dany's portrayal and story in the books was pretty much the same as the 1st 5 seasons.  Your take on Dany is completely off the wall and ignores all the good she did in the East.   

She did good, by being ruthless and doing things that many wouldn't do.  I've had this same discussion with you in this thread earlier this year.  Dany was always destined to be the Mad Queen.  The show did a terrible job setting it up and pushing her over the top, but she has always had an infinity for making "bad" men pay and if some "good" men get hurt in the process she has never cared.  She has taken great pleasure in seeing those "bad" men suffer.  She has always been so focused on her one task that it consumes her and drives her crazy.

What examples can you give that she never cared if good people got hurt in the process of punishing bad men? I'm racking my brain to remember any incident where she displayed such cruel indifference to the innocent.  Not until she burned KL.

Meereen was sacked after they stormed the gates.  Caused a lot of damage and harm and deaths.  She also tortured and killed everyone who she perceived was involved in the slaving, even those that were fighting against the system.  She killed anyone that didn't bend the knee and show her loyalty (the Tarley's are obviously the most obvious example, but are far from the only ones).  She had no problem with torture and in fact took great pleasure in it.  And frankly just burning people alive is so cruel and inhumane.  And don't get me wrong her brother was a bad guy, but she took great pleasure in watching him burn from his crown of gold as far back as season 1.  She has demanded undying loyalty from everyone and if you don't provide it she has you killed.  That has been her way from the beginning of the series.  The drive, the focus, on one task, the belief that she is the one to save humanity from itself and stopping at nothing to achieve that goal.  Everything she has done has been so singularly focused that nothing else really mattered to her.

Mareen wasn't sacked.  Dany had the slaves freed in the night and they rose up and overthrew the masters.  Dany did crucify one master for every slave the masters crucified but she didn't kill all the masters and she didn't take all their belongings.  She certainly burned some people alive but who did she torture.  In the books and in the show up to episode 5, the brutal actions she took were explainable.  Destroying Kings Landing after she's won made absolutely no sense from her perspective. 

Dany was not singular focused on the Iron Throne.  The slaver's bay storyline other than getting the Unsullied was a distraction and a negative impact to her quest for the Iron Throne.  The Masters would have given her all the ships she needed and even more resources to take the Iron Throne if she went away and left everything as is.  Going North to support Jon was also a diversion from the Iron Throne and it cost her plenty.  If she hadn't gone North and gotten one of her dragons killed its not clear how the Night King would have gotten the undead past the wall.  It certainly wouldn't have been as easy.   

[nickagneta]

In the books the best characters were, by far: Jon, Dany, Tyrion and Arya. It wasn't even close. The show, in my opinion, made Jon much more bland. Arya and Dany, as much as they were great characters in the show, they were better in the books. Only Tyrion was captured as being as good on television as he was in the books. That's all on Peter Dinklage, who is brilliant.

[PhoSita]

One thing I saw somebody mention on Twitter today, but that hasn't come up in all the reaction articles to the finale --

Doesn't the Three Eyed Raven live for like, thousands of years?

So is Bran going to be king for ages and ages?

i thought the wiki said the previous one was like 110 and he was plugged into a tree

Bran calls out to his future father in desperation – to his shock, Ned seems to hear him, but dismisses it and continues into the Tower. The Three-Eyed Raven pulls Bran out of the vision, and reprimands him again for trying to interact with the past. The Three-Eyed Raven says he's waited a thousand years for Bran, as the weirwood roots have grown into him. He assures Bran that he [Bran] is not destined to share his fate, but warns that he must learn before he leaves. When Bran demands to know what it is he needs to learn, the Three-Eyed Raven declares, "everything".[11]

The Three-Eyed Raven waited for that long.  That doesn't mean that it was the same body the whole time.  I posted about the danger the three-eyed Raven could represent with all its capabilities and the ability to transfer to a different host when the current body is at its end.

But like, what's to stop the TER from transferring from one body to another indefinitely as King?

[Moranis]

I have a feeling George R R Martin told them

"Dany goes mad queen and burns down King's Landing.  Jon kills Dany. Jon ends up North of the Wall.   Bran ends up King"... and then they proceeded to fill in the blanks horribly.

On some level, I feel for them.  Obviously George R R Martin can't even figure out how to get to that end point.  But man, they blew it.

Bran:  Not fulfilling, because they never found the character interesting.  Flat out avoided him for a whole season.  Dipped their toes in the 3 Eyed Raven thing, but ultimately skated around it, because the fantasy element of the show always perplexed them.   They spent the last couple seasons just having him sit there acting like a weirdo consistently saying how he's "not a man" anymore - only to turn around go "hehe, just kidding guys I always knew I'd be King" - which is doubly upsetting because it means he sat by doing nothing while thousands died because like everyone else he had a boner for the Iron Throne.

Jon:  The entire story is about him.  He's the core arc of this entire endeavor.  I've been saying this all along.  He can choose to turn down the Throne in favor of living North of the Wall, but that needs to be communicated by him.  Leaving his fate to some randos who weirdly ignore what they know about his heritage was completely illogical.  That above all things leaves the biggest empty feeling about this conclusion.  It doesn't feel complete.

Dany:  I care less about this, because she's always been a mass-murdering nutjob to me, but I get how fans would be upset.  From what I understand, in the books she's a bit more of a looneytoon from the beginning... breast feeding her dragons and having weird hallucinations and things like that.  So really, my guess is the writers just never fully understood this character, leaned into her savior persona, and then scrambled to reverse course too late.

From what you understand?  You haven't read the books?  The entire story isn't about Jon.  He's never been out of the North in the books and has had nothing to do with the fight for the Iron Throne.  Dany's portrayal and story in the books was pretty much the same as the 1st 5 seasons.  Your take on Dany is completely off the wall and ignores all the good she did in the East.   

She did good, by being ruthless and doing things that many wouldn't do.  I've had this same discussion with you in this thread earlier this year.  Dany was always destined to be the Mad Queen.  The show did a terrible job setting it up and pushing her over the top, but she has always had an infinity for making "bad" men pay and if some "good" men get hurt in the process she has never cared.  She has taken great pleasure in seeing those "bad" men suffer.  She has always been so focused on her one task that it consumes her and drives her crazy.

What examples can you give that she never cared if good people got hurt in the process of punishing bad men? I'm racking my brain to remember any incident where she displayed such cruel indifference to the innocent.  Not until she burned KL.

Meereen was sacked after they stormed the gates.  Caused a lot of damage and harm and deaths.  She also tortured and killed everyone who she perceived was involved in the slaving, even those that were fighting against the system.  She killed anyone that didn't bend the knee and show her loyalty (the Tarley's are obviously the most obvious example, but are far from the only ones).  She had no problem with torture and in fact took great pleasure in it.  And frankly just burning people alive is so cruel and inhumane.  And don't get me wrong her brother was a bad guy, but she took great pleasure in watching him burn from his crown of gold as far back as season 1.  She has demanded undying loyalty from everyone and if you don't provide it she has you killed.  That has been her way from the beginning of the series.  The drive, the focus, on one task, the belief that she is the one to save humanity from itself and stopping at nothing to achieve that goal.  Everything she has done has been so singularly focused that nothing else really mattered to her.

Mareen wasn't sacked.  Dany had the slaves freed in the night and they rose up and overthrew the masters.  Dany did crucify one master for every slave the masters crucified but she didn't kill all the masters and she didn't take all their belongings.  She certainly burned some people alive but who did she torture.  In the books and in the show up to episode 5, the brutal actions she took were explainable.  Destroying Kings Landing after she's won made absolutely no sense from her perspective. 

Dany was not singular focused on the Iron Throne.  The slaver's bay storyline other than getting the Unsullied was a distraction and a negative impact to her quest for the Iron Throne.  The Masters would have given her all the ships she needed and even more resources to take the Iron Throne if she went away and left everything as is.  Going North to support Jon was also a diversion from the Iron Throne and it cost her plenty.  If she hadn't gone North and gotten one of her dragons killed its not clear how the Night King would have gotten the undead past the wall.  It certainly wouldn't have been as easy.   

Meereen was sacked. 

Dany stayed in Slavers Bay because she needed full grown dragons to take the Throne.  She had to wait untill they grew up, so she stayed where she was safe.

As for going north, she knew she needed loyalty and a spouse to truly get what she wanted.  She needed the north.  She also knew if the north fell there wouldn't be a kingdom left to rule.

Dany had one thing on her mind and everything she did was geared toward reaching that goal

[Celtics4ever]

There would have been fewer books and no HBO series if the books were predominantly focused on Jon.  Like I said I think the Jon Snow character is pretty bland, two dimensional and really didn't experience much growth.  The interesting part of his story was characters around him and the environment.

Your opinion, but the Jon parts of the books were the best.   He also fit the archetype of the hero the best.   He is also the Song of Fire and Ice and fulfilled the prophecy to become Azor Ahai and the Prince that was promised when he killed Dany.   I guess uniting the forces of man against the dead was pretty boring for you.

Less books would not have been bad, as book five meandered and lost momentum.  I found the Dany plots and false Aegon to be far more boring and easy to spot as obvious red herrings.

Yeah that is a much better breakdown then I had, but Dany has often not cared who died if it was for the "right" reason.

I was not trying to one up you, but rather answer the questions of Dany and the signs that her character arc was drifting that way.  My bad, sorry.

[keevsnick]

I have a feeling George R R Martin told them

"Dany goes mad queen and burns down King's Landing.  Jon kills Dany. Jon ends up North of the Wall.   Bran ends up King"... and then they proceeded to fill in the blanks horribly.

On some level, I feel for them.  Obviously George R R Martin can't even figure out how to get to that end point.  But man, they blew it.

Bran:  Not fulfilling, because they never found the character interesting.  Flat out avoided him for a whole season.  Dipped their toes in the 3 Eyed Raven thing, but ultimately skated around it, because the fantasy element of the show always perplexed them.   They spent the last couple seasons just having him sit there acting like a weirdo consistently saying how he's "not a man" anymore - only to turn around go "hehe, just kidding guys I always knew I'd be King" - which is doubly upsetting because it means he sat by doing nothing while thousands died because like everyone else he had a boner for the Iron Throne.

Jon:  The entire story is about him.  He's the core arc of this entire endeavor.  I've been saying this all along.  He can choose to turn down the Throne in favor of living North of the Wall, but that needs to be communicated by him.  Leaving his fate to some randos who weirdly ignore what they know about his heritage was completely illogical.  That above all things leaves the biggest empty feeling about this conclusion.  It doesn't feel complete.

Dany:  I care less about this, because she's always been a mass-murdering nutjob to me, but I get how fans would be upset.  From what I understand, in the books she's a bit more of a looneytoon from the beginning... breast feeding her dragons and having weird hallucinations and things like that.  So really, my guess is the writers just never fully understood this character, leaned into her savior persona, and then scrambled to reverse course too late.

From what you understand?  You haven't read the books?  The entire story isn't about Jon.  He's never been out of the North in the books and has had nothing to do with the fight for the Iron Throne.  Dany's portrayal and story in the books was pretty much the same as the 1st 5 seasons.  Your take on Dany is completely off the wall and ignores all the good she did in the East.   

She did good, by being ruthless and doing things that many wouldn't do.  I've had this same discussion with you in this thread earlier this year.  Dany was always destined to be the Mad Queen.  The show did a terrible job setting it up and pushing her over the top, but she has always had an infinity for making "bad" men pay and if some "good" men get hurt in the process she has never cared.  She has taken great pleasure in seeing those "bad" men suffer.  She has always been so focused on her one task that it consumes her and drives her crazy.

What examples can you give that she never cared if good people got hurt in the process of punishing bad men? I'm racking my brain to remember any incident where she displayed such cruel indifference to the innocent.  Not until she burned KL.

Meereen was sacked after they stormed the gates.  Caused a lot of damage and harm and deaths.  She also tortured and killed everyone who she perceived was involved in the slaving, even those that were fighting against the system.  She killed anyone that didn't bend the knee and show her loyalty (the Tarley's are obviously the most obvious example, but are far from the only ones).  She had no problem with torture and in fact took great pleasure in it.  And frankly just burning people alive is so cruel and inhumane.  And don't get me wrong her brother was a bad guy, but she took great pleasure in watching him burn from his crown of gold as far back as season 1.  She has demanded undying loyalty from everyone and if you don't provide it she has you killed.  That has been her way from the beginning of the series.  The drive, the focus, on one task, the belief that she is the one to save humanity from itself and stopping at nothing to achieve that goal.  Everything she has done has been so singularly focused that nothing else really mattered to her.

All that may be true, but you can make the argument on a  case to case basis that each and every person deserved it to one degree or another. She crucified people who practiced slavery, a crime which Ned Stark would have beheaded Jorah Mormont for. She's not the only who killed people who failed to pledge allegiance to her or follow her order, Jon beheaded men who did the same. And she did give them a choice. Even in cases where she did kill somebody who MAYBE had been innocent (in most of those cases we have the word f their fmily members, unreliable narrators to be sure) of the crime they were accused of, those deaths still served some greater purpose whether it was to send a message to those who continued the practice of slavery, or attempt to quell a violent insurrection. I'm not saying she was a morally flawless character, because she was not. But she also displayed a sympathy for the innocent whether it was her willingness to go north when she could have stayed to fight cerise, her unwillingness to burn Kings landing for all of season 7, her use of the unsullied who "would not sack or rape a city," her willingness to lock up her own dragons when a young girl was killed, her desire to stay in Mereen and attempt to fix the city before departing from Westeros, or many others.

This idea that everything Dany did was utilitarian is as absurd as the idea that the madness storyline came out of nowhere, she clearly did things that weren't always in her absolute best interest because she thought it was right, she clearly did things that were indicative of a potential tyrant as well. The problem most people have is she never displayed any outward inclination to harm innocent women and children, groups she unidentified with, ESPECIALLY if such as action would be of no benefit to her. And that what she did at Kings landing. The battle was won, and then she killed thousand for no real gain at all. The only explanation the show provides is "I need to be feared, since I'm not loved." But just firebombing the red keep and limiting (tho not eliminating) civilian causalities would have been far more in line with her character, and accomplished the same thing in terms of fear. Or, if you WANT her to firebomb Kings landing you at least have to go threw the trouble of showing her get their incrementally, rather than saying "Her best friend(s) died, so she murders children."

Bottom line is the ending wasn't earned from a writing perspective. We went from a very harsh, but ultimately ethically aware Dany to one would killed women and children for no real reason. In like three episodes. There were ways too get there, but because of a time crunch it didn't happen. Hopefully the books do better.