Quote Originally Posted by Malifice View Post
However within the context of the laws and customs of the time and place the Show is set, executing the heads of houses (who are your prisoners) simply because they wont switch sides and join you, is unlawful.
You are confusing the difference between laws and norms. Unless terms were set prior to the surrender, the victor can do whatever they want to the defeated in these circumstances. Normally, heads of houses are imprisoned, and eventually ransomed for concessions, but they don't have to be. You absolutely can put all the defeated to the sword if you want, it's just jerkish and tends to have downstream consequences.

You might want to cheer for Dany (and the Show has been very clever in making us do just that, despite her growing list of atrcities, and the growing evidence that while she's better than her Father, she's no angel, and is seriously prone to acts of vengeance, atrocities, capriciousness, cruelty and 'burning them all' just as he was) but if you're suggesting that her murder of the Tarly's was anything other than the cold blooded and cruel murder of two honorable (if otherwise despicaple in Randalls case) men and was wrong with a capital 'W' we're watching a different show.
It was an execution, not a murder. That is a thing that matters - the show has made this point extensively starting with the very first episode - and you are quite explicitly incorrect on the particulars. If you want to claim it was evil or wrong, that's fine, you can impose whatever morality you want on the events, but it was something that was within Dany's prerogative to do. She should not have done it, because it was stupid and counterproductive, but it was her right. Is the system that gave her that right horrible? Sure, but it's the system that's in place.

Unlike Dany, Jon doesnt want a Crown. He does what he does for the betterment of the people around him. He hates the thing he is good at (killing and rulership).
Jon is a terrible ruler, and honestly not a particularly good tactician. He's personally inspiring to other men on the battlefield and bonds well with other warriors, but he sucks at politics and putting him on the Iron Throne would be a recipe for widespread rebellion that he would vacillate over putting down. If Jon becomes king, the Seven Kingdoms collapses in less than a decade.

Dany wants the Crown. She's wrapped it up in a broader quest to 'break the wheel' but that's her justification for her desire; it's secondary to what she really wants, which is the Iron Throne.
Sure she wants the crown, she was raised an indoctrinated to want it. However, she stayed in Mereen for a long time trying to stabilize that conquest rather than move to Westeros (in the books she's still there because Martin hasn't yet come up with a convincing way for to walk out on those people) and only made her play for the crown after all the reasonable claimants had killed each other off, half the continent was in open rebellion, and the shockingly illegitimate Cersei took hold of it.

More importantly, Dany was, after taking some time to absorb the evidence, able to suspend her quest for the throne, offer a peace overture to her principle opponent and march her forces north to face the existential threat that, by the way, she is pretty much the only person in the whole blasted cast not named 'Stark' who hasn't made the problem worse (well aside from the whole dragon-rescue-to-undead-dragon bit, but that was just bad writing all around).

Does unleasing an horde of 'plundering, pilliaging rapist barbarians' on Westerosi seem altruistic to you?
Except she hasn't unleashed them. She's forced them to exercise immense restraint, mostly through the expedient of stuffing them on an island where there's nothing to pillage and then leading them against the undead army. She's used the Dothraki in battle exactly once, against an entirely military opponent. Repurposing a violent army from pillaging in their homeland to fighting against an existential threat in a foreign land seems pretty darned altruistic to me. Honestly, a tens of thousands of Dothraki (and Unsullied, but they're human robots and don't really have 'choices' anymore) are going to die fighting the undead and every one of them is making a heroic sacrifice for a people not their own. Dany, through pure personal, magnetism, made that happen.

The show has somehow managed to convince a lot of people she's the 'goody' when the evidence has been quite the opposiste. Now she's basically threatening to burn people for betraying her, is burning them for 'not bending the knee' despite fighting honorably, and is starting to see enemies all around her (I found her comments re Sansa particularly worrying).
The behavior of the various northerners, including Sansa and Arya, in the most recent episode is, while wholly understandable, ultimately kind of embarrassing. These are people bickering about who gets to sit in which chair while an existential threat is bearing down on them that will specifically kill them first. Dany thought Jon would take care of this problem, which considering he more or less promised her he would, is a pretty reasonable expectation. When this turns out not to be true, she's annoyed, but she hasn't yet done anything about it or even said anything much stronger than 'hey Jon, get your sister, who's supposed to be your subordinate, to shut up and supply my army like you said she would.'


Ultimately, Dany is as 'good' as things are going to get in the blood-soaked and grimdark world that is Game of Thrones. A world which, after all, has as its 'good' deity a merciless fire god that enjoys having human beings burned alive in his name. She's a would-be ruler who at least desires the peace and prosperity of the common people and has been willing to make personal sacrifices - including getting married to a man she neither liked nor respected - to insure it. She listens to the advice of her advisors and third-parties like Jon Snow to the point of occasionally acknowledging her mistakes in the face of new evidence. Yes, she is vengeful - her principle atrocities have all been connected to personal injury in some way (in the case of the Tarlys it was Bron shooting Drogon), but no one's without flaws. Of all the people who've seriously contended to rule Westeros throughout the course of the show, she'd be a better ruler than any of them.