Review of game of thrones season 8 episode 1
What’s more, it has very real consequences for her in Winterfell, when she meets Sam and reveals that she cooked his father and brother. This isn’t good leadership, it’s just petty retribution. Upon taking the nobles Randyll and Dickon Tarly hostage after a battle, rather than taking them prisoner, she has her dragons burn them alive because they won’t acknowledge her as their queen. Daenerys, having perhaps spent too much time among raiders and slavers, has a brutal, burn-first-and-ask-questions-later approach to dealing with malcontents, and that’s at odds with the chivalric culture of Westeros. It’s not like the Westerosi are irrationally wary, either. She has what modern political consultants would call a “likability problem.” While Daenerys may have a solid legal claim to the throne (and while dragons are pretty sick), the history of Westeros shows that you won’t last long in a leadership role if people really dislike you. Do your dragons eat snow? Because that’s 90 percent of what we have up here.īesides her conviction that allocating resources is unimportant because “Whatever, I’ve got dragons,” Daenerys’ campaign for the Iron Throne is hitting a snag. OK, but actually, my liege? We’re trying to plan a war here. “What do dragons eat, anyway?” Sansa asks. When the “throw more Unsullied at it” approach fails, her go-to plan is “Kill ’em with dragons,” which admittedly works in most fights, but doesn’t reflect a thoughtful approach (or, indeed, a merciful one).Įarly on, Winterfell provides us with a clear illustration of Dany’s poor planning when Sansa points out that yes, it’s cool that they now have a massive army and two dragons to battle the White Walkers, but there remains the problem of how they’re going to feed all these troops. Her solution to any conflict can be summed up as: Get big army. Daenerys, however, has the tactical mind of an orc. Game of Thrones, at least in its peak years, has always understood that careful planning and cunning diplomacy decide the course of war more than knightly heroics. Whether or not she can seize the Iron Throne, what Daenerys has demonstrated throughout last season and the beginning of this one is that she has no business running a corner store, let alone seven varied, often bickering kingdoms.ĭaenerys’ poor leadership comes down to two problems: Her complete lack of strategic planning, and her penchant for brutally murdering anyone who disagrees with her, both of which have been big knocks against the show’s previous failed tyrants.
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I’m not questioning her legal claims to the throne - although Jon secretly being a Targaryen may complicate that - nor her ability to take it by force. If there’s one thing the premiere made clear, it’s that Daenerys Targaryen, She of Too Many Titles to List, should absolutely not be queen. What’s the point of saving Westeros if you’ll spend the rest of your life thereafter under the thumb of a petulant dragon queen, after all? While Jon Snow may not give a damn about crowns or titles when there’s an army of zombies marching toward civilization, intent on necromancing every living person - or turning them into macabre art installations - just about everyone else in Winterfell seems to be plotting for what comes next. Everything we know about the GoT prequel seriesĪlthough it’s holding out the promise of an apocalyptic battle between the living and the dead, Game of Thrones began its eighth season focusing on the thorny - some might say petty - political drama that defined the show in its early seasons.The most brutal battles in Game of Thrones.