Stefan Dolgert, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, wrote a piece recently published in the National Post about the sexist tones found in the Game of Thrones finale.
Dolgert writes:
This story contains spoilers for Season 8 of HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones has ended, and all is well — especially with the long-suffering Starks of Winterfell.
Arya has forsaken revenge and is off to explore new lands, Jon Snow is back in the true north with his faithful direwolf, Ghost, Sansa is the Queen in the North for a newly independent realm and Bran the Broken is the near-omniscient ruler of the Six Kingdoms. Westeros is truly the land where dreams come true.
Of course, there is the small matter of why Jon is back with the Night’s Watch — he murdered his lover, queen and aunt, Daenerys “Dany” Targaryen, the self-proclaimed Mother of Dragons who had finally just reconquered her family’s ancestral throne.
This incident (so traumatic to Dany’s fans) was justified in the show when Tyrion convinced Jon that Dany was now a crazed dragon-riding tyrant (apparently inheriting this touch of insanity from her father, the Mad King), who needed to be assassinated after she burned much of King’s Landing to ashes in the penultimate episode.
And really, the writers didn’t need Tyrion’s speech to make this point, given they’d just depicted Dany as a Disney villain (Maleficent) by framing her in front of her dragon’s outstretched wings while giving a Triumph of the Will-style pep talk to her troops.
It’s tempting to go along with this notion of Dany as Mad Queen, and accept the good feelings that accompany the triumph of the righteous Starks. But what if, instead, Dany is the real heroine of the series, and Jon is the real heel?
Much of the case against Dany depends on the supposed insanity that fuelled her destruction of a city, but I offer another perspective — drawn from Renaissance political thinker Niccolo Machiavelli — to explain why Dany is not “mad” at all, but rather an avatar of cold-blooded realpolitik.
Continue reading the full article here.
