Daenerys Targaryen

After watching the season finale last week, I thought I will not write about 'Game of Thrones' - it was such a disappointing final season to such an wonderful arc of a story. However self-destructing it may be, I also understood the way it ended - though I did not like it one bit.

The reason I invested close to a 100 hours to watch the entire series (not including the numerous times I watched certain episodes) - is primarily for Daenerys Targaryen. It is probably one of the neat characters created in a Television series and wanted to write about her than about the entire series.  I could not read the books - they were tedious and I was not able to move past couple of chapters - so this is entirely based on Daenerys as depicted by Emilia Clarke in the TV series.
'Lord of the Rings' remains my favorite fantasy novel series of all time. Not just because of the quality of the writing, but also because of the characters it threw up. There are some strong women characters in LoTR - Galadriel or Arwen - comes to mind. But my favorite has been Eowyn, who in a mad part of the story kills the Witch-King of Angmar. It is one of the finest pieces of writing in any form - Eowyn emerges as a strong character from being lovelorn about Aragorn. For that, Eowyn has remained my favorite girl for a long period.
Eowyn kills the Witch-king
I prefer the women characters in the stories to be strong, with a will of their own and while I like romance as much as any other person, it cannot be the one defining trait of a women.

'Game of Thrones' is full of such women - in fact, there is no one who is exactly single-dimensional - everyone schemes and have justified reasons for it - and some get redeemed along the way - some die. No one ends up marrying the love of their life and live happily ever after but they find happiness in their own way.

The number of such characters is where GOT differs from the standard story arcs. The entire game for the throne is between strong willed women - Cersei Vs Daenerys Vs Sansa - it is basically a series full of throne-hungry women with some men playing supporting roles. Apart from these, there are others who have their own agenda - Arya, Melisandre , Yara , Brienne or Missandei. It is essentially a series for women (that is exactly why the final season sucked big time!)
Of these, there are two whose story arcs stand out - Daenerys and Sansa. Sansa starts as a doe-eyed girl who wanted to marry the prince and her life goes to hell from that point onward, she is broken but survives to become the Queen of the North. Multiple men use her for their purposes along the way but she takes her revenge by the time it all ends.

However, Daenerys stands tall above all these women in that she goes through all of that and more - but never loses her will to take back the throne and more importantly, she brings a sense of justice to everything she does.

Married to a brutal Khal Drogo and raped at an young age, she slowly finds love with him, only for him to die. Against all odds, she takes over and becomes the Khaleesi. Though her one aim to reclaim the Iron throne for herself, she takes her time in Essos to liberate the slaves and declares breaking the chains to free the world as her aim.
Mhysa by Josu Hernaiz
Called 'Mhysa' (Mother) for freeing the slaves, she has her sense of justice prevails over the masters of the cities, the slave traders and those who oppress. It is with this same aim that she comes to Westeros - to break the wheel for the people who are oppressed by tyrants. It is here that the entire series takes a tumble.
Calling herself the 'Mother of dragons' - she breaks the streotype female of these fantasy stories - and breaks into a newer kind of heroine who is probably more intelligent than her male advisors and who is not hesitant to use force to enforce (what she considers as ) Justice. She has her share of romance - first with Khal and then finally with Jon (who is her nephew - Incest is such a in-thing in Westeros).

So it is that entire arc which was broken in the final season, so that a white boy - who did little in the whole story - could become king. The entire farce of the ending is what is disappointing - to say the least. So, for now, the only thing I decided to do is to just watch the first seven seasons and pretend that the eighth season never happened.

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