Daenerys II

Daenerys Targaryen (Artwork by Amok)

Daenerys wakes up from a night full of bad dreams. She can hear voices, and a child crying. Soon she has to learn that this night nine Unsullied and freedmen had been killed by the Sons of the Harpy, an unprecedented number. Among the dead Unsullied was the brother of her scribe Missandei, who is the child wailing outside. As always, there are neither witnesses nor hints that could tell who did the deed, and the only lead is the wineseller and his son in whose tavern two of the Unsullied were poisoned. Dany first wants to interrogate him “sweetly”, but after seeing Missandei and hearing the full tale, she decides to question them “sharply”. 

After his incident, she goes back to bed, taking Missandei with her and soothing the girl, who tells her a bit of her home Naath and her brother before falling asleep. Dany is restless, however, and walks through her room. Suddenly, Quaithe is standing in one counter, confessing not being really there. She says she came to warn Dany and to show her the path, before she brings forth some cryptic prophecies yet again. The glass candles are burning. She foretells the arrival of the pale mare, followed by the kraken and the dark flame, the lion and the griffin, the sun’s son and the mummer’s dragon. She then warns Dany to be aware of the fate of the Undying and to who she is, and to beware the perfumed seneschal. After that, she vanishes, not answering Dany’s questions. 

The next morning she meets with Reznak and her other advisors before court. She commands her Unsullied to be taken from the city watch since they clearly can’t fulfill the job and are just dying, instead commanding Reznak to build up a Meereenese city watch consisting half of freedmen and half of natives, being paid for by the rich families. Informed that many of them are trying to leave the city for their rural estates, she demands young hostages from every family as cupbearers and pages and decrees that no family might take their gold with them out of the city. The matter at hand then changes to the guilds of Meereen which have new competition from the freedmen and demand that they are shut out from the trade. Dany decrees that the freedmen may not claim the guild’s titles but that they have to be granted to them when they fulfill the needed prerequisites. 

At court, Hizdhar zo Loraq makes his seventh attempt to sway Dany into reopening the pits. He has shorn his hair and only wears a simple tunic instead of the tokar and claims to honor Daenerys’ gods by coming the seventh time and bringing seven former fighting slaves who plead her to reopen the pits. Every man in the room except Barristan is for the opening, even Strong Belwas. Daenerys denies again, however, although with much concerns. She then dismisses the court and retreats to her chambers, asking Ser Barristan to tell her some story with a happy end, then specifying that she wants the story of his escape from the Red Keep. Barristan tells her how he took a horse from the stables when Janos Slynt approached him, and then escaped to the gates, where he was stopped. Unarmed, he ripped a lance from one guardsman in full ride and drove it through the throat of his closest pursuer, deterring the rest. Outside the city he sold the horse, clad himself in some rags and returned to the city, sleeping in alleys and witnessing Eddard Stark’s execution. He then bought a passage to Pentos. 

The mentioning of Eddard Stark enrages Daenerys, who calls him the Usurper’s dog, when Barristan tells her that he actually pleaded for her life and that he bore her no ill will. Daenerys is still furious and is having none of it, declaring that Stark and Lannister are just the same and that she’ll have all their heads for the murder of innocent children, referring to Aegon and Rhaenys. Then suddenly, she remembers the girl Hazzea that Drogon killed and declares her intent to go to the pit in the base of the pyramid. Said pit is enormously large, and Rhaegal and Viserion are chained up in it. Looking down on them, Daenerys remembers how they caught them after Drogon’s kill. They fed them as to get them dozy and chained them, still losing several men to dragonfire. Drogon couldn’t be caught and chained at all and flew away, never to return. With Dany harboring self-doubts, the chapter ends. 

In this chapter, Daenerys is plunging deeper and deeper into the swirling abyss that is the politics of Meereen. She can’t control the dragons, losing her most valuable asset, not to mention the consequences for the people dead or wounded and becoming victims of the rampant Drogon. The peace cannot be upheld, so he has to withdraw her Unsullied, constituting yet another defeat. Her domestic politics are muddled in trivia. The situation is spinning out of control, and with war upon Meereen, the situation is also dire. 

Dany shows some serious weaknesses in this chapter. She obviously is not fully fit to rule. She despites the Meereenese the longer she rules them which is a bad situation to start with, and she is prone to let her emotions cloud her judgment. When she first hears of killings, she wants the wineseller (who is likely innocent) questioned sweetly, which is the right decision, but when she hears that Missandei’s brother was killed she decides to torture him, just because he’s at her hands at the moment. This is in no way befitting a queen. She also seriously considers imprisoning and torturing Reznak on her own narrow understanding of the prophecy of Quaithe, and rushes down to the pit remembering Hazzea without really knowing what to do, but capable of everything. She is also still horny, desiring Daario as never before and showing it to everyone else. Clearly, Dany is deeply disturbed.

Knowing the future chapters, the prophecy of Quaithe can be dismantled more easily than the one she made in Quarth. The glass candles herald the return of magic, as we know from Sam’s last chapter in “A Feast for Crows”. The pale mare is a plague that will soon hit the siege camp of the Yunkai’i and finally spread over to Meereen as well. The kraken is Victarion, the dark flame is the Negro red priest he fishes out of the sea and makes his personal advisor and healer. The lion is Tyrion Lannister, the griffin Jon Connington. The sun’s son is Quentyn Martell, and Aegon is the mummer’s dragon. All these persons are currently on their way to Dany. Quaithe then urges Dany to remember the Undying and to beware of the perfumed seneschal. Since nearly half of the mentioned persons doesn’t arrive at Dany as it was originally intended, the hint of Quaithe’s about the Undying seems to imply that she should leave Meereen instead of engaging further in the fruitless effort. Why the perfumed seneschal poses such a threat doesn’t become clear of “A Dance with Dragons”. It may be because he is an advocate of the marriage with Hizdahr, who attempts to poison it, but it is more likely that she hints at Varys, who doesn’t support her as much as he supports Aegon. An additonal thought is that the ship Tyrion was voyaging on had a name that could be translated as "Perfumed Seneschal", although this can't be cleared either in ADWD. 

We get some interesting side notes in the chapter about Barristan Selmy. He uses the exact same pejorative phrase as when opposing Joffrey, “a tower to die in”, rather preferring to serve a true king and seeking out Viserys. It’s also very funny to read how he slew the two guards escaping without even a weapon, which he dismisses with “a knight is worth ten times more than a guardsman”, showing no modesty when his deeds are concerned. It is also nice that he watched Eddard’s execution and that he defends him before the raging Dany, although he doesn’t really like him (we later learn that he loved Ashara Dayne and suspects Eddard of fathering a child upon her that she later miscarried and being responsible for her suicide).