Game of Thrones season 5 took its most interesting and dramatic turn in its fourth episode, “Sons of the Harpy,” in which—spoilers imminently ahead—Daenerys’s right-hand man Barristan Selmy was killed in an ambush by the upstart people of Meereen. The action may look like a random act of terrorists, but it is, alas, much more: It’s just the latest sign of Daenerys’s poor rule.
Daenerys Is A Bad Ruler
Recently, I wrote an article that noted Jon Snow is going to make a pretty bad Lord Commander, and the Internet got very mad at me, despite a pretty clear-cut case in the books. So I hate to burst your bubble if you’re a huge Khaleesi fan, but… she’s just not doing a good job in Meereen. This is obvious, right? She’s making mistake after mistake.
Killing the guy who killed a Harpy for her was just the latest injustice of Daenerys’s reign. That was a classic Dany misplay—her action fit perfectly into her own morality, and in her head it was a just act. But it set off the people of Meereen, who saw Dany killing one of their own for the act of killing one of their oppressors. Those oppressors, the Sons of the Harpy, are the same ones who have now killed Barristan Selmy.
Dany’s refusal to reopen the fighting pits shows once again why she’s a bad leader: She lets her own morality get in the way of doing what’s best for her people. Some of the Meereenese will starve without the fighting pits. Even Daario pleads with her to reopen them, and that may actually get her to listen. But to the Meereenese, it looks like Daenerys Targaryen, an invader and conqueror, has taken over the city and is imposing her own way of life. Sure, she abolished slavery and killed lots of the Masters—that’s one of the good things that she’s done. But destroying the culture of Meereen, even some of the bad aspects of it, isn’t in her job description. She’s trying to do it anyway.
That doesn’t bode well for Westeros, who—chances are—will eventually need to learn to adapt to the Khaleesi’s mercurial rule. What laws will she try to change there? Hopefully, she can learn the lessons of Meereen before then—learn how to rule, even if she’s mostly learning by making mistakes. Of course, the biggest of those may have far-reaching consequences. She’s locked up two of her dragons, and now she can’t control them. Yea, that’ll end well.
