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Daenerys Targaryen is the love of my life

@rainhadaenerys / rainhadaenerys.tumblr.com

I write Daenerys Targaryen meta | my metas | Daenerys Meta Masterpost | my tags | This is a source blog of Dany metas | Admin/member of asoiafdaenerysdaily
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One thing that Dany/Targ antis say is that the Doctrine of Exceptionalism is proof that Targaryens are blood purists… but it really isn't. First, because it wasn't even created with any "blood purist" motivation. The motivation for the creation of the doctrine was simply because Jaehaerys and Alysanne got married, but were afraid that the realm wouldn't accept their marriage because of the Faith of the Seven. So they had to create a whole propaganda to make people believe that the Targaryens were a different kind of people because they rode dragons, and that the gods allowed them to marry each other. At the end of the day, the Doctrine of Exceptionalism was just an excuse that Jaehaerys and Alysanne created so that they could get married, and so that the Targaryens could keep following Valyrian traditions, without getting into conflict with the Faith. And the only thing the Doctrine of Exceptionalism did was to allow incest between Targaryens, but at no point did the Doctrine ever dictate that Targaryens must only marry each other, that they must only marry those of Valyrian blood, or that they should never mix with other people (and indeed, Targaryens married outside their family and outside of Valyrian families many times). The Doctrine has nothing to do with forbidding mixing of blood or with "keeping the blood pure", the Doctrine simply allowed Targaryens to marry each other. The doctrine had nothing to do with "blood purity".

#asoiaf meta#house targaryen#jaehaerys i targaryen#alysanne targaryen#this has been in my drafts for ages so i might as well post it#my meta
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annabrainchase
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dragonseeds

love and light to everyone but if i see one more post that’s like “the point of asoiaf is that feudalism is BAD” i’m going to rip out my hair and start eating dirt and worms. like yes, it is bad. yes, monarchies are bad. yes so true it’s annoying when people ignore all of that and focus on who they think deserves the throne more. but that’s not the point—that is the premise? it’s the beginning of the exploration and deconstruction. functionally this system is rigid (specifically in terms of gender and class) and horrifically violent: so what it’s really like to live in it? to try to be a hero, a knight, to be a lady in a world where your body belongs to your family, your lord, your order? is it possible to be a good person in a hierarchal world like this, with such vast power imbalances woven throughout it and every relationship and interaction that you have informed by that? how do you navigate that imbalance in order to have meaningful relationships—can you every truly do it? and who decides what is good? how do you know if it’s truly right or it just felt right because it’s what you wanted to do? what about the people who have no name, no family, no order: what happens to them? don’t they matter? what if in a lifetime of looking the other way or actively causing others harm, you do a few things—maybe one thing—that’s objectively good: does it mean anything? does it matter, even if no one ever knows? what if the best thing you ever did broke every vow you made, every law that governs your society? how do you live with that dissonance?

what’s it like to be a ruler, to be a king or queen—is it possible to be a good one in such an unequal system? to wield power justly? who decides what is just? who decides who should rule? at which point does the amount of power someone can have cross the line into too much? is it when you stop trying to figure out how to use it correctly and worry only about how to keep it? if holding onto it costs you everything, your family and all your relationships, is it still worth it? what if having that much power available is necessary to the survival of your people, maybe even your world, but when it’s misused the carnage left behind is beyond articulation—is it still worth it? are the lives it saves worth the lives it took? how do you measure that? who carries the weight of that choice and how? how do you live with it? how do you go on living in a world that can be harsh and cruel and unfair, a world where your good intentions and your personhood seem to matter very little in the face of someone else’s greed or when compared to the yoke of your duty? and the questions never stop and the answers when and if they come are rarely easy, but the point is that you keep asking and keep trying because that’s what it means to be alive lol

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rhaenin-time

My big issue is how dismissive and often plain disingenuous the stance the point of asoiaf is that feudalism is BAD and it's equivalents across fiction and even non-fiction often are. Because it's often used to dismiss the notion that anyone has the moral high ground, which unfortunately means too many people seem comfortable in giving themselves license to indulge in their implicit biases under the guise of "objectivity."

The reason I find it disingenuous is these people will often claim, "The whole point is that feudalism is bad," and then in the same breath express various sentiments that amount to, "Oh no, the more I look at it, the more I see the parallels between how the power structures of Slavers Bay and Westeros are both dependent upon exploitation, and how "slavery" actually comes in many different forms by many different names. I worry that when Dany gets to Westeros, there's a decent chance she might look around and decide that feudalism is bad. And that would be very bad of her to do."

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horizon-verizon

It's a nihilism meant to reaffirm the status quo, and attempts to disguise itself as being "deep" or claiming "it's just the [only] truth [that matters]" (rationalism) when really it is trying to silence the tea pot the series sets alight. You're right.

This erasure of certain characters out of the others that exist having distinctly more "moral high ground" or just better values and behaving better than others matches the "both sides" argument against people identifying with even in the "littlest", more subtle, or those things not immediately familiar to a larger or more privileged group of the fandom (example, Dany speaks to many PoC and Black woman for variety of reasons, one being SA; another being looking at one's family and developing a self from the good, the bad, the ugly to consolidate a strong base in oneself that society/those closest toy you or else tries to diminish or erase).

Lovely bit:

"Oh no, the more I look at it, the more I see the parallels between how the power structures of Slavers Bay and Westeros are both dependent upon exploitation, and how "slavery" actually comes in many different forms by many different names

And they hate it! And they deny Dany's positive presence bc they do not wish--at risk of being repetitive--of the status quo they recognize to be challenged. Some want to merely cosplay.

#asoiaf meta#daenerys targaryen
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gotham-at-nightfall

Daenerys meets the freed slaves of Astapor!

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons. “Mhysa!” a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. “Mhysa! Mhysa!” Dany looked at Missandei. “What are they shouting?” “It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’” Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. “Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. “Maela,” some called her while others cried “Aelalla” or “Qathei” or “Tato,” but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother. The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed to shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and as they came they took up the call. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to touch her hand, to stroke her horse’s mane, to kiss her feet. Her poor bloodriders could not keep them all away, and even Strong Belwas grunted and growled in dismay. Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. “They will not hurt me,” she told him. “They are my children, Jorah.” She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. The freed slaves parted before her. “Mother,” they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. “Mother,” they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as she flew by. “Mother, Mother, Mother!”

By Hed-ush

#daenerys targaryen#daenerys targaryen art#silver#this is actually in yunkai not astapor
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