Posted: May 15, 2019 9:18 pm
Shrunk wrote:I'm surprised there has not been more discussion, here and elsewhere, of Grey Worm's role in the genocide, which is almost as pivotal as Dany's. In a way, that about-face was less foreseeable. But in other ways, completely predictable. The message I took from this episode (which I thought, even taking the flaws into account, were some of the finest 80 min of TV I have ever seen) is that Dany and her army killed thousands of innocent people, because that is what rulers and their armies do. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Daenerys Targaryen or Barack Obama.
Innocent people die in wars, sure, but GoT has made that point before, and I don't think it's quite what they were getting at here. At least it wasn't the main point. The war part was over. She'd won. The enemy armies had surrendered. The city itself had surrendered. That's when she decides to ignore her actual enemy (Cersei) in the Red Keep, and specifically target the civilian population of King's Landing, systematically strafing from street to street with dragon fire to maximise fatalities. The methodical brutal efficiency of the extermination kind of reminded me of the killing machines in Stephen Speilberg's War of the Worlds. Deliberate mass murder - genocide, like you say. Less Barack Obama, more Hitler or Genghis Khan in vengeful mood.