“She felt desperately afraid. Was this what my brother would have done?”
Synopsis: Dany (Ocean) robs Astapor.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
Well, keep in mind the specific circumstances in which that happened:
“The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast.
She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometimes “My Lady,” and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.”
…At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called her brother “the beggar king.” Dany did not want to know what they called her.
Darry didn’t have time to organize an entourage of Targaryen loyalists, move the treasury, and instead booked it. And while Darry was alive, Dany and Viserys lived the life of a royal in exile, living in a manse with many servants, intriguing with the Sealord and the Martells, etc.
The downfall started when Darry died and left them without adult supervision and the servants stole their money, leaving them penniless and homeless – note those things are very much linked; with a more substantial entourage of loyal retainers, the looting would have been forestalled and they probably would have stayed in Braavos.
Even when they left, they were taken in by the elite of Essos. However, as with many exiles, once it becomes clear that the new regime isn’t going anywhere, they lost their political cachet and began
to fall into genteel poverty, cushioned by the fact that they still had treasure to spend.
“This beggar queen must understand, such wonders do not come cheaply…Unsullied are the finest foot in all the world, and each represents many years of training. Tell her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than any metal on earth.” Synopsis: Daenerys gets given the showfloor pitch by Kraznys mo Nakloz by way…
So there’s a couple different places where I think you can see the original “Plan A”:
“Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,” said Magister Illyrio. “The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.” (AGOT, Dany II)
He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. (AGOT, Bran III)
“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
Asshai, Dany thought. She would have me go to Asshai. “Will the Asshai’i give me an army?” she demanded. “Will there be gold for me in Asshai? Will there be ships? What is there in Asshai that I will not find in Qarth?”
“Truth,” said the woman in the mask. And bowing, she faded back into the crowd. (ACOK, Dany III)
So GRRM is creating a very strong link between Asshai and dragons from early on – Dany’s eggs come from Asshai, Asshai are where dragons are still alive tho slumbering, and Dany gets a prophecy telling her to go to Asshai.
At some point, however, I think GRRM realized that he didn’t have enough time get Dany to Asshai and back, not so much due to physical limitations (although Asshai is 2700 miles east of Qarth, so it’s not a nothing voyage) but more due to how that would screw up everyone else’s timelines.
My guess is that point was either when he decided against the five-year gap (which would have given people plenty of time to get to where Dany is and vice versa), or when he was struggling through the Meereenese Knot and realizing that the timing and sequence of who meets Dany was more important than whatever he had planned in Asshai.
The reason why I emphasize that is largely to rebut the premise that Dany is interfering with Ghiscari culture in an imperialist fashion – after all imperialism is not inconsistent with banning certain practices that might be considered immoral (hence Napier’s statement on sati, for example) – by pointing out that there is the culture of the slave (and in the case of slavery as practiced in Slaver’s Bay, there’s actually many cultures of slaves) and the culture of the slavemaster, so the situation is rather more complicated than a crude Orientalist analysis might suggest. (There’s also the fact that Dany actually shares a good bit of ethnic and cultural background with the Ghiscari…)
But to answer your question…as someone who’s argued the proper historical parallel for Dany’s narrative is the American Civil War and Reconstruction, there was a case where the slavemaster had largely (but not entirely) imposed their culture on their slaves. But in sharp contrast to “Lost Cause” narratives then and now about loyal slaves fighting for the Confederacy, despite their shared culture, African-Americans in the South didn’t share the belief that they should be slaves (and in the case of Nat Turner, we can see that shared culture being used to justify and motivate slave rebellions), and attempted to free themselves the moment that it was practical.
So if the Ghiscari slaves didn’t want to be slaves – and in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, there were likely more than a few slaves of Ghiscari ethnicity, and they demonstrated their feelings on slavery quite clearly (if sometimes equivocally, as seen in ADWD) – then I don’t see Dany’s actions as imperialist in nature.
“In time, the dragons would be her most formidable guardians, just as they had been for Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters three hundred years ago. Just now, though, they brought her more danger than protection. In all the world there were but three living dragons, and those were hers; they were a wonder, and a terror, and beyond price.” Synopsis: On a ship heading to Pentos, Dany talks to…
Dany’s decisions about a lot of things are driven by prophecy, as we see with the “three treasons.” And in Aegon’s case, Dany has prophetic reasons to believe that Aegon is false – the mummer’s dragon – especially when she turns up and Varys the Mummer shows up by his side and realizes that Varys and Illyrio have been double-dealing with her.
And in terms of pissing her off – he’ll have taken her throne. Yes, he’ll be offering her an alliance, but as one of his (multiple) queens. Dany is not about that any more. She’s the Mother of Dragons, the hero heralded by prophecy, and she is done making peace.
Given the obvious presence of accelerant in the fire at the temple of the dosh khaleen, I think Dany survived by dousing herself in ether as a retardant. Ether burns off, she walks out unscathed.
Man, I’m annoyed when I miss a quote that could have been in an essay. From ADWD, Ch. 24:
“The Yunkishmen. The envoy they sent to woo Volantis…wishes us to be the fourth and offers twice what Myr was paying us, plus a slave for every man in the company, ten for every officer, and a hundred choice maidens all for me.” “That would require thousands of slaves. Where the do the Yunkishmen expect to find so many?” “In Meereen.”
Yeah, something tells me Yunkai’s peace offer wasn’t genuine when they were paying their sellswords with the proceeds of sacking Meereen.
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