[Spoilers for Game of Thrones, season 8 episode 5]
Daenerys, right from the beginning has been this god-like character who walks through fire multiple times (at least in the show) and brings mythical creatures back to life. She swears that she’ll take back what is hers with fire and blood and burn cities to the ground.
But first, her dragons needed to grow and she needed to acquire armies and so she slowly started conquering Essos. She always had a tendency to turn to extreme violence, starting with locking up those who betrayed her in Qarth in a vault to die a horrible death after days of starvation, to burning the slave masters in Astapor after breaking the deal struck between them, to crucifying the masters in Meereen. She was forgiven for all this by the fans as, well, they were slavers who tortured innocent people and propagated a horrible culture, and hence it wasn’t wrong to give them what they gave others back.
Dany also wanted to conquer Westeros and take back her father’s throne. So, she quickly conquered and moved on from city to city, destroying slavery, but in the process leaving behind unstable governments governed by free men who knew nothing about ruling, and finally leaving the “Bay of Dragons” in the hands of an eccentric sell sword captain so that she could go back to Westeros and strike when her enemies are weak.
Yes, Dany was eliminating slavers, but perhaps not for entirely the right reasons? She needed to acquire armies and navies before she could conquer Westeros. And then when she reached Westeros, only to discover that the people there didn’t love her as much as they did rulers like Jon Snow. Some even preferred Cersei, although they were being lied to by her. Lords like Randyll Tarly were still loyal to her, and it's not like the peasants who were under Randyll Tarly were suffering. He was a decent lord, and they didn’t really care about who sat on the Iron throne as it doesn’t matter to them.
So perhaps, when Dany realised that she wasn’t receiving the same kind of love and affection that she did from the people of Essos, a wiser decision might have been to return to Essos, and help rebuild the continent there instead of leaving it in the hands of sellswords and unstable governments, especially given the huge societal changes she had just made there. Perhaps her place was in Essos after all, where she was most loved and where she could do the most good.
Of course, nobody’s perfect and Dany’s a grey character. Dany wanted to go back to the place where she was born and rule there no matter the cost. She wanted to go back to Westeros though it didn’t want her. That might be the tragedy of her character.
All that said, the way the TV show has handled her descent to madness is completely nonsensical and extremely rushed. While it is possible for the writers to take Dany down the Mad Queen arc, it makes little sense to do so when she voluntarily lost half her armies, a dragon, and saved Jon Snow’s life twice in the same episode despite knowing that he was a possible threat to her claim to the throne, not two episodes ago.
Again, it seems the writers just have an ending in mind and want to get to it somehow. It makes little sense for Dany and her fleet to be ambushed by Euron Greyjoy’s navy, given the fact that Daenerys was in the air on her dragon when it happened, and with an aerial view, she would definitely be able to scout and see an approaching enemy naval fleet.
Sure, Dany has lost 2 dragons, her best friend, and been rejected by her lover, who’s also now her nephew and a threat to her claim, but it’s still difficult to understand why she would burn innocents and an entire city which she wants to rule when her army has already taken it. It even makes more sense for her to fly to the Red Keep and burn it down with Cersei in it. Sure, some of you might justify it from the prophetic scene in the House of the Undying, but it was SNOW there and referring to the Army of the Dead, as it should have been in the show.
George Martin talks about the Army of the Dead as a metaphor for climate change, but it makes little sense now as climate change is a global phenomenon which is going to affect everybody, regardless of class, caste or any other man made division in society, and here Cersei gets away with doing literally nothing.
That’s just justifying poor writing with improper interpretation of prophecies. The next thing they’re going to say is if Arya Stark ends up killing Daenerys, that she was prophesied to do so and Daenerys was the green eyed part of the prophecy. But then, the prophecy comes from the books, and Dany is lilac eyed there and doesn’t have Emilia Clarke’s green ones, so again it makes little sense.
Sure, Dany going mad can be used as a plot device, but the writers have gotten to the destination without the journey and the journey IS the destination, something which they seem to have forgotten while compressing 3 seasons worth of content into 1 episode.
I pity those who have named their kids after Daenerys.
