This post discusses plot points from Season 8, Episode 5 of Game of Thrones. Major spoilers to follow.
Daenerys Targaryen, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, is also the Haver of Overreactions and Barbecuer of Children.
I don't believe Westeros prosecutes war crimes, but Daenerys committed about a million of them as she had her dragon reduce King's Landing to extra-crispiness Sunday night. The same woman who has prattled on for years about how she would make the world better and rid it of tyrants and blah blah blah. And why did she do this? She'd won the battle, having destroyed the Iron Fleet and forced Queen Cersei Lannister's troops to surrender.
She was mad.
Mad about Cersei executing her kind-of slave assistant. Mad about her nephew being better-liked than her. Mad about her nephew being the actual heir to the Iron Throne. Mad that the same nephew resisted her sexual advances.
I understand those things being irksome, but, unfortunately, they don't justify her ensuing rampage, even to this neoconservative. Shock and awe is one thing, blowing the people of King's Landing to dust is quite another, even if the people of King's Landing are admittedly garbage. You can't have a leader who is so—dare I say—emotional.
So this bit of pandering from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) last month to appeal to The Millennials is particularly cringe-worthy today (parts bolded by me for emphasis):
Daenerys "Stormborn" Targaryen has been my favorite from the first moment she walked through fire. Despite being the daughter of the Mad King and the last rightful Targaryen heir to the Iron Throne (until this week), Dany didn’t grow up in the lavish palace walls of the Red Keep. She was born during the chaos of her father’s overthrow, in the last great civil war between the rich and powerful family houses.
[...]
Dany believes fiercely in her right to rule, but she despises what ruling means in the world she’s grown up in. She doesn’t want to be a slave owner or a dictator — and she definitely doesn’t want to become her murderous father. She tells Ser Jorah: "Slavery is real. I can end it. I will end it. And I will end those behind it."
[...]
She states her mission clearly in season seven: "I’m not here to murder. All I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over everyone both rich and poor, to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world." And as much as Dany wants to take on her family’s enemies and take back the Iron Throne, she knows that she must first fight the army of the dead that threatens all mankind. This is a revolutionary idea, in Westeros or anywhere else. A queen who declares that she doesn’t serve the interests of the rich and powerful? A ruler who doesn’t want to control the political system but to break the system as it is known? It’s no wonder that the people she meets in Westeros are skeptical.
That take aged about as well as the kids Dany just killed. (Too soon?)
It's a little awkward when you've endorsed universal child care as a presidential candidate and your television heroine just burned alive thousands of boys and girls.
Even before last night's events, picking Dany Targaryen as her favorite character was terrible judgment by Warren. Dany has stunk up the joint for a long time.
She is insecure (who else needs their 12 self-assigned titles read out by their assistant to visitors) incompetent (she used to have three dragons and now has one, enough said), indecisive (she could have done this three years ago), can't strategize (trying to get Cersei Effing Lannister to fight the White Walkers was idiotic), and hires badly (Tyrion is a good drinking buddy, not Hand of the Queen material).
The Free Beacon's own Sonny Bunch tried to warn you three years ago that she was not fit to lead:
And what of the so-called Mother of Dragons, one Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke)? Well, she did sacrifice her unborn child in a futile attempt to save the life of her husband. Since then, she has engaged in a series of costly and poorly thought-through wars that have led to thousands of deaths and endless sectarian violence in her ungovernable — but "free" — city-states. Not content to simply sow chaos, Dany has unleashed winged weapons of mass destruction against her enemies, uncontrollable beasts that have burned to death small children.
Oh, she also recently burned a bunch of political leaders to death in a holy site in order to terrorize their populace into bending its collective knee to her.
If this is Warren's idea of strong, feminine leadership, then we'd better ring the bells and take cover.