Small Council Matters – Game of Thrones 8×05 The Bells

1. I understand Dany’s fall was more foreshadowed in the books. I understand in the tv show she does have a temper and loves to burn and threaten to burn people. In the tv show, the people she’s burned are murderers, rapists and slavers—not a child among them, much less wanton mass burning of innocent children. If this is where the showrunners wanted to go, like Jaime & Cersei’s “tryst” on Joffrey’s coffin, they bungled the job.

   Imagine a better alternative:

   Instead, the showrunners might have followed up the Battle of Winterfell with the fall out of the massive snowstorm that Night King brought freezing up the surrounding area, keeping passage south to King’s Landing blocked for six months. That would allow time for the characters to make the changes they did when the snow and ice melt. Brienne could be heavy with child, explaining why she didn’t travel with them and also why she was uncharacteristically emotional with Jaime who is reminded that everyone is gunning for his sister as the army prepares to journey south.

   When Dany discussing betrayal with Tyrion, she ends it revealing that Jaime was caught trying to cross enemy lines. Tyrion explains that Cersei is his sister and that as much as they should, despite commonsense and all good reasoning, that some people refuse to change.

   In the battle at King’s Landing, when the bells ring, Dany can smugly beam with pride at victory, only she sees people she’s freeing from Cersei’s tyranny, fleeing from her, frozen in terror and some actually shouting in anger at her, some even shooting arrows at her that are easily blocked by Drogon’s scales. In that moment, she’s reminded of the Mereen slaves who hissed at her, who tried to assassinate her, Tyrion’s words that some people refuse to change, and she thinks of all the time, humiliation, shame and abuse she endured to take the Iron Throne and free the Seven Kingdoms from a tyrant—and the people she is freeing bite the hand that frees them.

   And then an errant arrow knicks her forehead. As she wipes the blood from her eyes, she literally sees red and goes to kill Cersei and destroy the Red Keep. She sees Cersei in the window, she thinks, but her vision is blurred, but no matter. Fire is too good a death for Cersei, so she has Drogon destroy the base of the Red Keep so that it crumbles from beneath Cersei and she literally falls to her destruction.

   Only the walls of the Red Keep crumble but they fall on the civilians, men, women and children. Worse, the debris set off a chain reaction of Wildfire explosions around the city. She looks on with her bloodied hand covering her mouth as she sees fires ablaze throughout the city and the episode ends with the flames dancing in her wide eyes—in shock? In horror? Or with glee?

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