If You Read My Last Post on Game of Thrones, You Can Probably Guess How Annoyed I Am Now

There are SPOILERS in this review.

So here we are.  The very thing I was hoping wouldn’t happen has happened: Daenerys has shown herself to be a monstrously bad ruler.  And yeah, I’m disappointed and frustrated.

Everyone else is saying that the signs were there: when she reacted coldly to Drogo killing her brother, when she crucified the slave traders, when she killed Varys.  But she certainly had her reasons: her brother was awful to her, and the slave traders were, well, slave traders, and Varys betrayed her… None of this was enough to predict that she’d become another mad Targaryen, at least not to my mind.  It was only this season, with her jealousy and greed for power, that she seemed to be heading in that direction — and one season isn’t nearly enough to foreshadow something this important.

There’s something about a powerful woman that scares men, I think, and when that woman has a dragon who breathes fire the fear ratchets up to abject terror.  So I guess it was pretty much inevitable that Dany would turn bad, and will probably be killed in the next episode.  I was almost waiting for someone to complain that she had an unsecured email server.

When I can let go of my annoyance and frustration I can see that this season’s arc does make sense, that the old adage about power corrupting is true, that someone who’s aimed everything she has at becoming a supreme ruler might not make the world’s best queen.*  It’s just that I enjoyed seeing a powerful woman get what she wants, for once.  The thing about the email server was a joke, of course, but I think part of my unhappiness comes from PTSD from the last presidential election.

There are predictions that Sansa might end up on the Iron Throne, or Tyrion might, and then marry Sansa.  (Or consummate the marriage, since they’re already husband and wife.)  That would be a good ending, I think.  I’d love to see one woman not fall to pieces when she becomes a ruler.

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* I still think there could have been more foreshadowing, though.