Is Game of Thrones throwing DAenerys under the bus? A response to the Slate article

https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/game-of-thrones-daenerys-unfit-to-rule-plot-trap.html

I can see why someone would think that, but my opinion is No, Game of Thrones is finally getting Dany right.

However, the show is very inconsistent with its themes in some ways, as the article rightfully points out.

But on the contrary I think the show in season 8 has given far, far, far more depth of character and subtlety to Daenerys than in previous seasons: rather than building her up into some kind of demi-god as she was in earlier seasons, Season 8 has presented her as flawed; vulnerable; politically ambitious but less politically savvy than she needs to be; a little too hot-headed and rash for her own good; and, sadly, isolated and utterly alone — and lonely.

She’s had quite a shitty life but she’s had a dream — and now she’s seeing it crumble and become meaningless.

Game of Thrones is finally getting Dany right. The fact that some people are interpreting Dany as a villain is, in my opinion, amazingly unimaginative and dull: she’s not Voldemort, y’all. Grow up.

The fact is she is a complex character who has some very admirable traits (courage, will, tenacity and heart),but also helluva lot of tragic flaws.
She’s not just a feminist icon who frees slaves. Previously the show did kind of present her as just that and, yeah, there is bit of a jangle because of that.
Occasionally the show would hint at Daenerys' depth as a character in the past, but not often enough.

But I would say the article in the link, which I read yesterday, is also misinterpreting this new, more complex, greyer version of Daenerys — they see it as painting her in villainous colours and therefore “throwing her under the bus": but when you think about it she is really only villainous in comparison with the lily-white Jon Snow. (To whom, by the way, the show is also doing a disservice by presenting him as the mere slack-jawed pawn of the wily Sansa.)

Ramsay was a villain. Tywin was a villain (especially book Tywin) and Cersei is a villain. By contrast Dany is destructive and perhaps clueless, but not evil.

One of the features of GRRM’s books is that everyone is their own protagonist: and protagonists do square off. The Battle of the Blackwater is told from Sansa, Tyrion and Davos’ points of view: all of them on different sides.

The show has always had a problem with choosing sides and moral ambiguities while the book tends to present all sides, though; the article does have a point there and I can see how it might seem like “throwing Dany under a bus.” Because the show did seem to exult in ruthlessness and Dany was presented ruthless for the right reasons, there is this dissonance in themes now — the jangle I mentioned above — which causes the audience to see her as suddenly fallible, questionable, isolated and dangerous to the beloved Starks. It should have always presented her thus.

But overall the article presents yet another narrow view which is a mistake: the author of the article itself has also chosen a side, it seems.

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