The Trauma of Daenerys Targaryen

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones]

As Game of Thrones has grown in popularity I’ve noticed people start to talk about it like a sports match. Lots of chatter about who is going to “win,” intrigue over who will take down who, which characters will wind up together or in the ground. It’s all a little disturbing to me because, more or less from the beginning, I’ve considered Game of Thrones to be a brutal drama about the cycles of trauma and violence and the horrors of war. It’s not just that this show isn’t about heroes; it seems pretty determined to smash the whole trope of heroism.

As the show crashes towards its tragic conclusion, I notice more and more outrage about where the story is going. The notion that characters are making bad decisions, or that their hallowed “character development” has somehow been betrayed. And if this were a Marvel superhero movie following the trope of heroism, I might agree. But it’s not.

This is a show about trauma and violence. People who are traumatized make bad decisions. They have outsized, irrational reactions. In extreme cases, they can have flashbacks to the moments when they felt most helpless and sometimes cannot distinguish past from present. In this light, I would expect, after 8 brutal seasons, that most of these characters would be making questionable decisions at this stage. In many ways, that’s the whole point. Trauma begets violence begets trauma.

We could analyze many of the characters through this lens, but here I’m going to focus on Daenerys Targaryen, whose story is among the most tragic. For those who viewed Daenerys as a hero, overcoming obstacles in an ascent towards defeating evil and taking the throne to be a truly just ruler — her bloody turn at the end of the series might feel like a betrayal of everything she is. But if this isn’t a story about heroism, and is instead a tragedy about trauma, her arc looks very different.

Daenerys is an orphan. Her family was nearly wiped out in the previous war. Her one close relationship is with her physically and emotionally abusive older brother Viserys. We can pause right there and take note that Dany almost certainly experienced developmental trauma growing up, having no home and likely no secure attachments to loving caregivers. Individuals who…

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