[0:00] “Who is the greatest threat
to the people now?”
[0:09] The finale of Game of Thrones
is called “The Iron Throne,”
[0:12] and it hinges on the event
the whole series has been building to:
[0:15] the destruction of that bewitching,
corrupting symbol of ultimate power.
[0:20] In a roundabout way, Daenerys Targaryen
does make good on her promise
[0:23] to break the wheel.
[0:24] “It’s a beautiful dream,
stopping the wheel.
[0:28] You’re not the first person
who’s ever dreamt it.”
[0:30] “I’m not going to stop the wheel.
[0:34] I’m going to break the wheel.”
[0:37] Instead of being the savior
she believed herself to be,
[0:40] it turns out she’s the danger
the world needs saving from -
[0:43] but her invasion and death
result in the old back-and-forth
[0:46] between warring rulers
getting replaced
[0:48] with a new, more enlightened
form of government.
[0:50] “Sons of kings can be cruel
and stupid, as you well know.
[0:55] His will never torment us.
[0:57] That is wheel our queen wanted to break.”
[1:06] In this video we’re just going to
focus on Dany’s ending.
[1:08] While her transformation in
the final season feels rushed,
[1:12] the groundwork for her
eventual descent into tyranny
[1:14] can be traced back to
the beginning of the series.
[1:22] The early sparks of her determination
to disrupt the existing order
[1:25] finally flame up into
an all-consuming obsession
[1:28] with wielding total, unchallenged power
over a new world that bows to her.
[1:32] And as she ends up
Queen of the Ashes,
[1:35] becoming the very thing
she set out to destroy,
[1:37] “You’re not here to be
Queen of the Ashes.”
[1:39] “No.”
[1:40] the tragic fate
of this great character
[1:42] contains the true heart
and soul of this story.
[1:45] So here’s our take on the deeper moral
in the elimination of the Iron Throne,
[1:49] the downfall of the Dragon Queen
and the Death of her Dream.
[1:56] “Will you break the wheel with me?”
[2:23] We open with Tyrion walking through
the burning remains of his home city,
[2:27] forcing himself to stare the consequences
of his mistakes in the face.
[2:31] Acknowledging that his idealistic dream
to bring about a better world
[2:35] through the Dragon Queen is dead,
[2:37] he weeps for all that he destroyed
in service of a lie,
[2:40] as his family’s melody
“The Rains of Castamere”
[2:43] plays one last time.
[2:45] In our first glimpse of Daenerys
after her mass killing,
[2:52] the cinematography reinforces
that she has become the dragon --
[2:56] just as the visuals announced in “the Bells”
just before she killed Varys.
[2:59] Now that her raging
Targaryen dragon has been woken,
[3:02] “You don’t want to wake
the dragon do you?”
[3:04] the world is feeling the pain.
[3:06] “You are liberators!
[3:07] You have freed the people of King’s Landing
from the grip of a tyrant.”
[3:12] Daenerys the tyrant is a dark inversion
of the liberator she once was --
[3:16] the emancipation she now promises
to bring to the rest of the world
[3:19] is in fact death.
[3:20] “We will not lay down our spears
until we have liberated
[3:23] all the people of the world!”
[3:28] This sequence echoes
Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will,
[3:31] and it might make us look back
at past Daenerys scenes
[3:34] to find parallels to Nazi
or fascist imagery
[3:37] foreshadowing the totalitarian
she would become.
[3:40] Daenerys’ turn actually is
a logical and poetic end
[3:43] to her character arc.
[3:45] You can watch our video comparing
Daenerys to Cersei for a closer look
[3:48] at how the show hinted all along
that Dany had this potential.
[3:51] However, the missed opportunity
is that the final steps
[3:53] on Dany’s journey
happened so quickly --
[3:55] her decision to burn King’s Landing
is explained mainly through this look
[3:59] on her face.
[4:03] It’s only in the “Inside the Episode”
commentary that we get deeper insight
[4:10] into what glimpsing the Red Keep
here triggers in her.
[4:13] “I don’t think she decided ahead of time
that she was going to do what she did,
[4:19] and then she sees the Red Keep,
which is to her,
[4:22] the home that her family built
when they first came over
[4:25] to this country
three hundred years ago.
[4:27] It’s in that moment on
the walls of King’s Landing
[4:31] where she’s looking at that symbol
of everything that was taken from her
[4:35] when she makes the decision
to make this personal.”
[4:38] This is an incredibly interesting point
that unfortunately didn’t quite
[4:42] make it into the script itself --
[4:44] if it had, it may have illuminated
for viewers the true subconscious reason
[4:48] Dany makes the choice she does.
[4:50] Along her way Daenerys
has convinced herself
[4:53] that she wants to rule
for the people
[4:55] and created a utopian
ideology around herself
[4:58] as a benevolent freedom fighter --
[4:59] “Together we will leave the world
a better place than we found it.”
[5:03] while on a repressed,
involuntary emotional level,
[5:06] the Iron Throne is actually a symbol
to her of pain and trauma.
[5:11] So even though she doesn’t
understand this herself,
[5:13] all this time her inner dragon
wasn’t really driven by hope
[5:17] or the promise of change,
[5:19] but by rage and the will to avenge
the abuse she endured
[5:22] at the hands of her enemies.
[5:23] “When my dragons are grown,
we will take back
[5:27] what was stolen from me
and destroy those who wronged me!
[5:31] We will lay waste to armies
and burn cities to the ground!”
[5:36] And this duality of the beautiful --
[5:37] sounding rhetoric and
the hatred-fueled emotional truth
[5:41] coalesces into a dictator
who is all the more terrifying
[5:44] because her dreamy story allows her
to keep believing her actions are righteous,
[5:49] no matter the body count.
[5:51] “I’m here to free
the world from tyrants.
[5:55] That is my destiny,
and I will serve it
[5:58] no matter the cost.”
[6:00] Tyrion resigns as Daenerys’ hand,
which is what you might call
[6:03] the definition of
“too little too late” --
[6:06] not to mention that he was about
to be tried for treason anyway.
[6:09] “Take him.”
[6:11] Despite how clear it seems
to everyone else
[6:12] that Daenerys is
now the villain,
[6:14] “I know a killer
when I see one.”
[6:16] Jon Snow drags his feet and pays
unconvincing lip service to his Queen.
[6:21] “What's it matter what I'd do?”
[6:24] “It matters more than anything.”
[6:26] So the imprisoned Tyrion persuades Jon
that he has to kill Daenerys --
[6:31] through a brief analysis
of what went wrong
[6:33] for the Breaker of Chains.
[6:34] “She liberated the people
of Slaver's Bay.
[6:37] She liberated the people
of King's Landing.
[6:40] And she'll go on liberating
until the people of the world
[6:44] are free and she rules them all.”
[6:47] As Daenerys freed slaves
in her path to the Iron Throne,
[6:50] she faced win-wins that allowed her
to avoid tough decisions --
[6:53] she picked up armies
she didn’t have to pay for,
[6:56] while she got to feel squarely
in the moral right
[6:58] because all the men
she killed were bad guys.
[7:01] “When she murdered
the slavers of Astapor,
[7:03] I'm sure no one
but the slavers complained.
[7:05] After all, they were evil men.
[7:08] When she crucified hundreds
of Meereenese nobles,
[7:12] who could argue?
[7:13] They were evil men.”
[7:14] The more absolute power
she consolidated,
[7:17] the more she was lauded
as a selfless hero.
[7:21] “Everywhere she goes,
evil men die and we cheer for it.”
[7:28] Even her closest friends and advisors
were deferential servants, not equals.
[7:32] “Do not walk away from your queen
while I command you to find the cure.”
[7:36] “She bought me from my master
and set me free.”
[7:39] “That was good of her.
[7:42] Of course, you’re serving
her now, aren’t you?”
[7:44] Being hailed as a savior for so long
has made her fall for that narrative
[7:48] more than anyone.
[7:49] “Do you know what kept my standing
through all those years of exile?
[7:55] Faith.
[7:56] Not in any gods,
not in myths and legends.
[8:02] In myself.”
[8:03] She’s come to believe she is
a goddess among men.
[8:06] So when she slides into
doing the wrong thing,
[8:08] “Children, little children, burned!”
[8:11] “I tried to make peace with Cersei.
[8:15] She used their innocence
[8:17] as a weapon against me.”
[8:18] it becomes easy for her
to justify why --
[8:21] if she did it --
it must be right.
[8:23] “How do you know?
[8:25] How do you know it'll be good?”
[8:29] “Because I know what is good.”
[8:31] When she talks to Jon about deciding
what’s best on the people’s behalf,
[8:35] “What about everyone else?
[8:38] All the other people
who think they know what's good?”
[8:41] “They don't get to choose.”
[8:42] out of context her words sound
entitled-beyond-belief.
[8:46] But if you are the person who has
freed countless souls from chains --
[8:50] when all those people never imagined
freedom was a possibility --
[8:54] you would feel you know better
than everyone else
[8:56] what is best for them.
[8:59] “It's not easy to see something
that's never been before.”
[9:03] It’s almost impossible to imagine
walking through fire
[9:06] and experiencing the intense worship
she’s known without coming to think
[9:09] you have superhuman rights
to decide the future of the world.
[9:12] “But when the fire burned out,
I was unhurt, the Mother of Dragons.
[9:19] Do you understand?
[9:25] I'm no ordinary woman.”
[9:27] Many monarchs throughout history
declared their divine right to rule
[9:30] based on far less.
[9:31] “I’m the last hope of
the dynasty, Mormont.
[9:34] The greatest dynasty
this world has ever seen,
[9:36] on my shoulders
since I was five years old.”
[9:39] Daenerys once put forward
[9:40] a dazzling vision of
“breaking the wheel,”
[9:42] "Lannister, Targaryen,
Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell --
[9:46] they’re all just
spokes on a wheel.
[9:48] This one’s on top,
then that one’s on top,
[9:51] and on and on it spins,
crushing those on the ground."
[9:55] but in the end she couldn’t
resist the allure
[9:57] of becoming another spoke on it,
[9:59] because feeling like a god on earth
will destroy anyone.
[10:02] “And she grows more powerful
and more sure
[10:05] that she is good and right.
[10:08] She believes her destiny is
to build a better world for everyone.
[10:11] If you believed that
if you truly believed it,
[10:15] wouldn't you kill whoever stood
between you and paradise?”
[10:18] In fact, Daenerys’ tale is
really the story
[10:20] of the most powerful ruler
who ever was --
[10:24] and perhaps the best, too --
[10:26] that’s why almost everyone
she meets falls in love with her,
[10:29] “I love her too, not as
successfully as you.”
[10:38] “I love you.”
[10:41] “It appears you’re not
the only Targaryen support.”
[10:46] and we the viewers did, too.
[10:48] The tragedy is that it’s
this very immensity of potential --
[10:52] Daenerys’ exceptional,
even supernatural power --
[10:55] that makes her even
more dangerous than a Cersei
[10:58] or indeed than any other ruler
who ever tried to stop the wheel before.
[11:02] The greater the power,
the great the temptation to misuse it,
[11:06] to seize control over all people,
and ultimately to destroy all life
[11:10] unless it perfectly obeys,
[11:12] which is a vision of total,
global slavery --
[11:15] exactly the thing Daenerys
sought out to end.
[11:17] “Do not become what you have
always struggled to defeat.”
[11:20] Despite the number of hints
we were given
[11:22] that Daenerys would
evolve into a tyrant,
[11:24] “Where are my dragons?!”
[11:26] Tyrion gets it wrong
when he says,
[11:28] “Our Queen’s nature
is fire and blood.”
[11:30] The point the story is making isn’t
that Daenerys was evil all along,
[11:34] or that her Targaryen coin
fell on the wrong side.
[11:37] “You think our house words
are stamped on our bodies
[11:39] when we're born
and that's who we are?
[11:41] Then I'd be fire and blood too.”
[11:44] It’s that ultimately this
strongest and best of people
[11:47] still couldn’t withstand
the temptations of ultimate power.
[11:52] So it’s because of all
this logic that Daenerys’ tragedy
[11:55] is a cautionary tale illustrating
that no person can ever rule justly,
[12:00] if their control is unchecked
by important restraints.
[12:03] This commentary on what absolute power
is and what it does to the soul
[12:06] is really the whole point
of Game of Thrones.
[12:09] “She is no longer
yours to torment.”
[12:12] “Everyone is mine
to torment.”
[12:16] Daenerys’ story has to end
with the Throne being destroyed.
[12:23] The best way to understand
[12:24] the significance and
inevitability of this ending
[12:26] is to look at one of
Martin’s biggest influences,
[12:29] The Lord of the Rings.
[12:30] The allure of the magical ring
is supernatural --
[12:34] more or less impossible
to overcome --
[12:36] and the Throne is this story’s
version of the ring.
[12:39] When Daenerys finally
lays eyes on the throne,
[12:41] she looks almost like Gollum
spying his precious.
[12:45] And on a deeper level,
she might remind us
[12:47] of the beautiful elf Galadriel.
[12:49] Frodo offers her the ring --
because if anyone were capable
[12:51] of wielding it justly,
it would be her.
[12:54] “I do not deny that my heart
has greatly desired this.”
[12:58] But while Galadriel is tempted
by the vision of herself
[13:00] as the all-powerful Queen,
[13:02] “All shall love me and despair!”
[13:07] she refuses, understanding
that she would be lost to the ring
[13:10] if she accepted.
[13:12] “I will diminish and go into the west
and remain Galadriel.”
[13:18] And as Jon kills Dany,
his last words to her --
[13:21] “You are my queen,
now and always.”
[13:27] are a tribute to the underlying
beautiful and good person
[13:30] that she really is,
[13:31] beneath this monster
the throne has made.
[13:33] His words frame the murder as
an act of freeing her true self
[13:36] from the Throne’s
corrupting influence.
[13:39] And the crucial symbolic moment
comes when Drogon appears,
[13:42] giving every indication
that he’s about to breathe fire
[13:44] on the man who just
killed his mother.
[13:46] But instead, he destroys
the Iron Throne.
[13:53] Just as the ring is destroyed
by falling into Mount Doom
[13:56] where it was forged,
[13:57] the Iron Throne is destroyed
by dragonfire,
[13:59] which is what Aegon used
to forge it.
[14:02] “Forged in the fiery breath
of Balerion the Dread.”
[14:05] So the finale reveals that,
despite how it looked for a while,
[14:08] Jon is not the Aragorn
or final king of this story
[14:12] “You’re the true king.”
[14:13] he’s Frodo,
[14:14] “You are the shield
that guards the realms of men.”
[14:18] the suffering ring-bearer.
[14:19] He’s the only one who can bear
the heaviest burden of
[14:22] being the closest to the throne --
[14:24] as symbolized by the fact
that he’s the rightful heir
[14:27] “You're Aegon Targaryen,
true heir to the Iron Throne.”
[14:31] while not falling into
its temptation.
[14:33] “You are a ringbearer, Frodo.
[14:36] To bear a ring of power is to be alone.”
[14:40] As many predicted, Jon is
the Prince Who Was Promised --
[14:43] it’s just that the Night King
was not the looming darkness
[14:46] he was destined to
save the world from.
[14:48] Daenerys was that darkness.
[14:49] “It’s a terrible thing I’m asking.
[14:53] It’s also the right thing.”
[14:56] Martin has said this is
Daenerys’ and Jon’s story --
[14:58] these two people represent
fast-spreading, powerful, chaotic fire
[15:02] versus slow-moving,
steady, rigid ice.
[15:05] We’ve seen countless parallels
[15:07] foreshadowing how deeply
their journeys are intertwined.
[15:10] In Season 7, fire and ice are
irresistibly drawn to each other
[15:13] and fall in love,
[15:14] but in the end
it turns out the reason
[15:16] they are so interlinked is
because one’s fate is to destroy the other.
[15:20] “This is our reason.
[15:22] It has been from the beginning,
[15:24] since you were a little boy
with a bastard's name
[15:26] and I was a little girl
who couldn't count to 20.”
[15:31] This story of an over-powerful fire
meeting its end through
[15:34] an equal-and-opposite ice
is one of balance being restored.
[15:38] “Love is the death of duty.”
[15:41] “Sometimes, duty is
the death of love.”
[15:45] And Game of Thrones has
always hinted at “balance”
[15:47] as the moral underlying
the back-and-forths
[15:50] of this story of
dualities and extremes.
[15:52] Dany’s prophecy in
the House of the Undying
[15:54] is very directly realized.
[15:56] What appeared to be snow
in the vision was actually
[15:59] the falling debris of
the city she would destroy --
[16:01] and this Queen of the Ashes is
[16:03] close enough to touch
her greatest ambition,
[16:05] but she never gets to sit on it.
[16:07] In the vision, she walks out
north of the wall
[16:09] and meets her deceased husband
and lost baby,
[16:11] just as in this future,
[16:12] Jon Snow (who’s so linked
to that north and its snow)
[16:16] sends her to join her dead.
[16:17] We might also note that
Robert Baratheon foresaw
[16:19] this ending from the start
[16:21] “If the Targaryen girl convinces
her horselord husband to invade
[16:25] and the Dothraki horde crosses
the Narrow Sea
[16:30] we won't be able to stop them.”
[16:33] (even though Ned Stark
acted like he was crazy)
[16:36] and even Sam’s dad Randall Tarly
had a point when he refused
[16:39] to bend the knee.
[16:40] “You, on the other hand,
murdered your own father
[16:45] and chose to support
a foreign invader.”
[16:50] Drogon takes his mother’s body --
and we later hear that he’s gone east,
[16:54] which implies he’s probably
returning her remains
[16:56] to the Targaryen ancestral home
of Valyria,
[16:58] “For thousands of years the Valyrians
were the best in the world
[17:03] at almost anything.”
[17:05] or possibly bringing her to
the shadowlands beyond Asshai
[17:08] where the dragon eggs are
said to come from.
[17:09] “Dragons’ eggs, Daenerys.
[17:10] From the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai.”
[17:14] Drogon’s behavior in this scene --
especially his understanding
[17:17] that it was the throne
(and not Jon) who killed Dany --
[17:20] reminds us that dragons are not
just the scary killing machines
[17:24] they seem to be
in most of the show.
[17:26] They are actually very wise,
ancient beings, as Tyrion once told us.
[17:30] “Dragons are intelligent.
[17:33] More intelligent than men
[17:34] according to some maesters.”
[17:35] Bran’s later comment
that he’s going to search for Drogon
[17:37] “Perhaps I can find him.”
[17:39] suggests that the Raven
and the Dragon share
[17:41] a deeper understanding
of life’s mysteries.
[17:44] While it’s tempting to paint
Daenerys’ ultimate nature
[17:47] as the Mad Queen
who was destined
[17:49] by her bloodline to
burn cities to the ground,
[17:51] as she passes out of this world
she reminds us of the person
[17:54] she was in the very first episode:
an abused, alone girl --
[17:58] the victim of a cruel world.
[18:00] “I would let his whole tribe f*** you,
all 40,000 men and their horses too,
[18:06] if that’s what it took.”
[18:08] Actress Emilia Clarke
has talked about how,
[18:10] for her performance
in her final scene,
[18:12] she tried to draw out
the little girl
[18:13] inside this woman,
[18:15] who began as innocent and naive,
full of hope and love.
[18:19] “I imagined a mountain of swords
too high to climb.
[18:23] So many fallen enemies,
you could only see the soles
[18:25] of Aegon's feet.”
[18:26] Daenerys’ endpoint sadly takes away
from our world the unequivocally
[18:30] empowering symbol of the strong woman
who emerged from victimhood
[18:33] to become a beacon of hope
for the oppressed.
[18:35] “You’re a dragon.
[18:36] Be a dragon.”
[18:39] It raises questions of why female
characters in positions of power
[18:43] so often tend to go crazy
or get torn down.
[18:46] And out of context, the image
of a man killing a woman
[18:49] while they're locked in
a loving embrace,
[18:51] framed as a noble deed,
is not a good thing
[18:53] to be sending out
into our culture.
[18:55] But beyond the disappointment many feel
to mourn their Khaleesi,
[19:00] “Shameful.”
[19:02] and the disjointedness of
the last few steps in this journey --
[19:05] Dany's ending is the destination
this meditation on power
[19:08] was always heading toward.
[19:10] Her inability to escape the cycle
of hate and lust for absolute rule
[19:14] that has consumed her people
for generations
[19:16] makes her the last casualty
of an old world
[19:19] that her death
will finally end.
[19:21] So Daenerys Stormborn of
the House Targaryen,
[19:24] First of Her Name, the Unburnt,
Queen of the Andals and the First Men,
[19:29] Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea,
Breaker of Chains,
[19:32] and Mother of Dragons can finally
add the most coveted title
[19:36] to her list:
Breaker
[20:27] of
[20:43] the Wheel.
[20:48] “We break the wheel together.”