History Fridge / GameOfThronesS8E5TheBells

* The Northerners gleefully throw themselves into slaughtering the citizenry of the city like their Unsullied and Dothraki counterparts because, for them, they're settling a personal score. Unlike the Dothraki and Unsullied merely (for the most part) following Daenerys's example, for the Northerners, [[ItsPersonal King's Landing is the heart of a regime that has inflicted untold horror and destruction on them, caused the deaths of their rulers, friends, and families, and decimated their homeland]]. Now, the chance for revenge has come, so [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge, of course, they will seize a chance to settle grudges over the War of the Five Kings]] [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown with both hands]].

** The more you think about this, the more sense it makes. Daenerys didn't ''need'' to come to Westeros. She had a kingdom that loved her in Essos. She ''chose'' to come to Westeros, because she felt it was her ''right'' to rule over Westeros -- even though, as many, ''many'' people around her pointed out, she had no such right at all. Her only claim was her Targaryen blood... a claim that had been rejected by Westeros when she was a child, and which was established only by right of conquest in the first place. She was an invader from a long line of invaders, and deluded herself into thinking that she would be perceived as something else.

* Thematically, Dany's FaceHeelTurn makes perfect sense. After all, this is a ''DarkFantasy'' series, where the usual trope is ''MagicIsEvil'' or at least (and this is true for Tolkien as well), you can't use magic for actual long-term utopian goals and brute-force society and culture to make a better world come to pass. The original series is called [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire A Song of Ice and *Fire*]]. Fire and ice are two equally destructive forces. In the books, R'hllor followers see "ice" magic (warging and weirwood) as evil and vice versa, and even the reader can't tell who's right. In the show, magic serves a purpose only against a threat that can't be dealt with any other way (such as Rhllor's Lord of Light practitioners and adherents -- Thoros, Beric, Lady Melisandre -- and Bran's greenseer activity working against the Night King). But Lady Melisandre, after formerly doing terrible things for utopian reasons comes to believe that there's NoPlaceForMeThere once she played her part in averting the Long Night. Likewise one reason why Jon is probably the real hero is that his experiences with magic, being revived from the dead by Rhllor, don't seem to have changed him, or made him accept that magic is wonderful and grand, whereas all of Daenerys' experiences have led her to believe that one can use magic to shape the world as she see fits. After all, Jon Snow exiled Melisandre upon learning of her past actions refusing to accept his revival, and the North's eventual victory, was PoweredByAForsakenChild.

** Also, the odds of either result of a coin toss is 50/50. Of the six Targaryens who made physical appearances in the series, half went mad (Aerys, Viserys and Daenerys) while the other half didn't (Jon, Aemon and Rhaegar).
* Why was Euron so happy about his fight with Jaime, even though he was the one who died first? Because Euron has, throughout his life, [[ForTheEvulz reveled in causing as much pain and sorrow as possible]]. Through his actions, he knew he had almost certainly thwarted Jaime's plans to rescue Cersei -- and as it turned out, he was right.
* The Northerners gleefully throw themselves into slaughtering the citizenry of the city like their Unsullied and Dothraki counterparts because for them, they're settling a personal score. Unlike the Dothraki and Unsullied merely (for the most part) following Daenerys's example, for the Northerners, [[ItsPersonal King's Landing is the heart of a regime that has inflicted untold horror and destruction on them, caused the deaths of their rulers, friends, and families, and decimated their homeland]]. Now, the chance for revenge has come, so [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge of course they will seize a chance to settle grudges over the War of the Five Kings]] [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown with both hands]].
* Why is the Kingsguards so easily dispatched? It's known for a long time that most modern Kingsguards are appointed based on family connections and loyalty rather than fighting skills. Moreover, Cersei is only in control of three Kingdoms at best [[note]]The Crownland and the Westerland are the only two Kingdoms she definitely controls. The North and the Vale are on Daenerys's side. The Reach might have surrendered after the loot train battle. The Riverland's allegiance is completely unknown after the assassination of the Freys. The Stormlands is presumably under Targaryen control since Daenerys has the authority to grant it to Gendry. Dorne is under an independent prince who pledges to Daenerys. The Iron Islands are merely an ally and one that doesn't believe in knighthood to boot.[[/note]] so her pool of potential recruits is limited even further.
* Jaime returning to Cersei seems to throw his entire CharacterDevelopment up to that point under the bus, but it's very true to how someone in the throes of a DestructiveRomance will act; No matter how hard they try to redeem themselves and try to live away from their abusive partner, part of that person still loves their abuser and will try to return to the only relationship they feel is stable, often because they feel they deserve no one better. With this perspective, Jaime bringing up his worst secrets to Brienne seems to show that he doesn't feel worthy of a life free of Cersei.

* A Northerner trying to rape a woman in the [[WarIsHell middle of the carnage]] implies that the rest of Daenerys's forces are doing the same. While Jon manages to stop him in time, he can't be every where to do the same and if he can't even control his own men, what ''about Daenerys's army''? At least the [[EunuchsAreEvil Unsullied]] are literally incapable of rape, but the [[TheHorde Dothraki]] on the other hand...

* Daenerys's flight path takes her over fleeing Lannister soldiers and innocent women and children before she starts her mass incineration, and even afterwards there are sectors of the city that she leaves alone. It's not an act of mercy or even CruelMercy but part of the premeditated slaughter and destruction. Rather than kill them all herself, she's leaving the Northerners, Dothraki, and Unsullied plenty of victims in the areas that she doesn't burn down, and they take her up on her offer to horrific effect.

* Overlapping with HarsherInHindsight, but the realization that ''we saw this coming''. We saw it when Daenerys burned Mirri Maz Duur for, in effect, pointing out that Daenerys' beloved husband and unborn son were seen as monsters by the rest of Essos and nobody other than Dany would mourn them. We saw it when Dany threatened the Spice King and the Thirteen of Qarth by declaring that she would take back what was stolen, destroy those who wronged her, lay waste to armies, and burn cities to the ground. We saw it when she had slave-owning nobles crucified, and killed random people to try and root out the Sons of the Harpy. We saw it in her constant iteration that everything would be "solved" once she sat upon the Iron Throne again. We saw so many hints of how bad she could be... and we were still blindsided by her actions. Why? Because ''we fell for her own hype''. Daenerys always saw herself as the hero of the story -- and she did just enough "good" that we started to see her that way, too.
* Cersei kept Septa Unella, Ellaria and Tyene prisoner in order to torture them for as long as possible. If they weren't dead by then, they are most likely dead now.

** As Varys pointed out last episode, "[Dany's] whole life" has done nothing but show her that she's [[TheChosenOne the most important person in the world]] and that as long as she stays resolute in her convictions everything will always miraculously turn out for the best. Now, all of a sudden, it's like her PlotArmor has been revoked and [[RealityEnsues reality is ensuing]] all around her -- and she's got absolutely no idea how to handle it.

* Cersei kept Septa Unella, Ellaria and Tyene prisoner in order to torture them for as long as possible. If they weren't dead by then, they are most likely dead now.

* Cersei kept Septa Unella, Ellaria and Tyene prisoner in order to torture them for as long as possible. If they weren't then by then, they are most likely dead now.

* Overlapping with HarsherInHindsight, but the realization that ''we saw this coming''. We saw it when Daenerys burned Mirri Maz Duur for, in effect, pointing out that Daenerys' beloved husband and unborn son were seen as monsters by the rest of Essos and nobody other than Dany would mourn them. We saw it when Dany threatened the Spice King and the Thirteen of Qarth by declaring that she would take back what was stolen, destroy those who wronged her, lay waste to armies, and burn cities to the ground. We saw it when she had slave-owning nobles crucified, and killed random people to try and root out the Sons of the Harpy. We saw it in her constant iteration that everything would be "solved" once she sat upon the Iron Throne again. We saw so many hints of how bad she could be... and we were still blindsided by her actions. Why? Because ''we fell for her own hype''. Daenerys always saw herself as the hero of the story -- and she did just enough "good" that we started to see her that way, too.

* While the showrunners have claimed that Daenerys' actions were totally spontaneous, some of her speeches and actions that we see before the attack (such as her saying "let it be fear" to Jon, and telling Tyrion that her mercy is to "future generation", while also talking cryptically to Grey Worm about a signal) show a certain amount of pre-meditated calculation on her part, i.e. while the decision to act on it might have been made late, she did contemplate and think about the ramifications. On a certain level, Daenerys' actions have a Tywin-esque cold-blooded logic to it since it achieves the eradication and neutralization of all her external (Cersei, Euron, the Golden Company) and internal threats (Jon Snow, Sansa, Tyrion):
** The Long Night, the Wars of the Five Kings, and the various wars that followed after that, have depleted most of the Seven Kingdoms of their armies and resources -- the Reach were finished by Lannisters and Tarlys, and then the Tarlys and others in the Loot Train Attack by [[AGoodNameForARockBand Dany and the Dothraki]]; the Riverlands were finished by Gregor and Tywin's rampages followed by the Red Wedding, Jaime and Bronn's second siege on Riverrun which killed off Blackfish and his loyalists, and then Arya's massacre of the Freys; and most of the Stormlanders died fighting in Stannis' wars. The only forces left in the field are the Lannisters, the North, the Vale (loyal to Sansa and the North at present), the Iron Islands which are split into Yara's and Euron's factions, with Yara loyal to Daenerys, while the Martells are under a new Prince, who is sworn to Dany. Of this lot, the Vale is important but only in alliance to a bigger and larger kingdom (like the North) and cannot rebel on their own, the Martells will ''never'' back Jon Snow owing to the fact that his claim comes from legitimizing the annulment of the popular Princess Elia. The Stormlands are nominally ruled by Lord Gendry Baratheon, former bastard legitimized and promoted by Daenerys (i.e. his entire new status depends on the legitimacy of her regime whether he likes it or not) and so in her pocket. This leaves only Euron's faction in the Iron Islands, the Lannisters, and the North as the major forces she has to eradicate or neutralize.
** Taking the North with her on her march to King's Landing left the North without an army, as Sansa bitterly admitted in Episode 4. Daenerys' sack of King's Landing, in which the majority of Northmen soldiers followed the leads of the Unsullied and the Dothraki over the commands of Jon Snow, effectively neutralizes the Starks. Neither Jon Snow or Sansa can protest Dany's actions without recognizing that a huge part of their own army were willing participants in her war crimes, risking dissension, defection, and civil war should they try and protest. As children of Ned and siblings of Robb, they would be honor bound to hold their own soldiers to the same standards they apply to Daenerys[[note]]Robb Stark when he executed Rickard Karstark also executed the soldiers and sneered at the JustFollowingOrders excuse put by one soldier when he participated in the killing of the Lannister kids[[/note]]. In other words, Daenerys has masterfully pulled the carpet underneath Jon and Sansa Stark [[YouWillBeAssimilated and made their army her own]], putting Jon Snow and Sansa in what Adrian Veidt would call "[[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} moral checkmate]]".
** Denying quarter to the Lannister army, aside from destroying Cersei's power, also neutralizes Tyrion. With the deaths of Cersei, Jaime, Kevan, and Lancel, Tyrion is the Lord of Casterly Rock and heir to the Lannister titles and armies. But he's also been an annoying thorn in Daenerys' side, repeatedly offering second chances to his family while also being reluctant and guilty about masterminding assaults that led to the deaths of huge numbers of soldiers from his own army. Denying quarter to the Lannister army effectively makes Tyrion a "Lord in Paper", denying him any forces and soldiers in the near future and giving him [[BurningTheShips no lifeboat to hop into away from her]].
** In terms of political PR, Daenerys making an example of King's Landing has better optics than taking her anger out on Winterfell, Sansa, and the Vale for their undermining of her. Dany knows that Winterfell is the castle that defended the realm against the Long Night, and it would be seen as unforgivable (while also hard even for her to justify morally since, after all, [[TheChessmaster Sansa]] has never officially and outright declared independence and opposition to her) to attack the heroes that saved the world. But King's Landing serves as a good proxy. This is the city that the North and everyone across the Seven Kingdoms from Olenna Tyrell to Ned Stark to even Sansa herself has expressed repeated distaste and dislike for, many people describing it as a WretchedHive,. It was also a city that did nothing to contribute to the Long Night, and it's a city that Northmen would associate with Ned's execution and Lannister tyranny. And as Daenerys calculated, the visible majority of the Northern Army willingly participate in the sack of the city, all of them veterans of the Long Night.
** In short, Daenerys' cold-blooded lateral move effectively made her the uncontested ruler of Westeros in one fell swoop, emphasis on fell.

* Why is the Kingsguards so easily dispatched? It's known for a long time that most modern Kingsguards are appointed based on family connections and loyalty rather than fighting skills. Moreover, Cersei is only in control of three Kingdoms at best [[note]]The Crownland and the Westerland are the only two Kingdoms she definitely controls. The North and the Vale are on Danaerys's side. The Reach might have surrendered after the loot train battle. The Riverland's allegiance is completely unknown after the assassination of the Freys. The Stormland is presumably under Targaryen control since Danaerys has the authority to grant it to Gendry. Dorne is under an independent Prince who pledges to Danaerys. The Iron Island is merely an ally and one that doesn't believe in knighthood to boot.[[/note]] so her pool of potential recruits is limited even further.

** The Long Night, the Wars of the Five Kings and the wars that followed after that, have depleted most of the Seven Kingdoms of their armies and resources -- the Reach were finished by Lannisters and Tarlys, and then the Tarlys and others in the Loot Train Attack by [[AGoodNameForARockBand Dany and the Dothraki]]; the Riverlands were finished by Gregor and Tywin's rampages followed by the Red Wedding, Jaime and Bronn's second siege on Riverrun which killed off Blackfish and his loyalists and then Arya's massacre of the Freys, most of the Stormlanders died fighting in Stannis' wars. The only forces left in the field are the Lannisters, the North, the Vale (loyal to Sansa and the North at present), the Iron Islands which are split into Yara's and Euron's factions, with Yara loyal to Daenerys, while the Martells are under a new Prince which is sworn to Dany. Of this lot, the Vale is important but only in alliance to a bigger and larger kingdom (like the North) and cannot rebel on their own, the Martells will ''never'' back Jon Snow owing to the fact that his claim comes from legitimizing the annulment of the popular Princess Elia. The Stormlands are nominally ruled by Lord Gendry Baratheon, former bastard legitimized and promoted by Daenerys (i.e. his entire new status depends on the legitimacy of her regime whether he likes it or not) and so in her pocket. This leaves only Euron's faction in the Iron Islands, the Lannisters, and the North as the major forces she has to eradicate or neutralize.
** Taking the North with her on her march to King's Landing left the North without an army as Sansa bitterly admitted in Episode 4. Daenerys' sack of King's Landing in which the majority of Northmen soldiers followed the leads of the Unsullied and the Dothraki over the commands of Jon Snow effectively neutralizes the Starks. Neither Jon Snow or Sansa can protest Dany's actions without recognizing that a huge part of their own army were willing participants in her war crimes, risking dissension, defection, and civil war should they try and protest. As children of Ned and siblings of Robb they would be honor bound to hold their own soldiers to the same standards they apply to Daenerys[[note]]Robb Stark when he executed Richard Karstark also executed the soldiers and sneered at the JustFollowingOrders excuse put by one soldier when he participated in the killing of the Lannister kids[[/note]]. In other words, Daenerys has masterfully pulled the carpet underneath Jon and Sansa Stark [[YouWillBeAssimilated and made their army her own]], putting Jon Snow and Sansa in what Adrian Veidt would call "[[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} moral checkmate]]".
** Denying quarter to the Lannister army aside from destroying Cersei's power also neutralizes Tyrion. With the deaths of Cersei and Jaime, Kevan and Lancel, Tyrion is the Lord of Casterly Rock and heir to the Lannister titles and armies. But he's also been an annoying thorn in Daenerys' side, repeatedly offering second chances to his family and reluctant and guilty about masterminding assaults that led to the deaths of huge numbers of soldiers from his own army. Denying quarter to the Lannister army effectively makes Tyrion a "Lord in Paper", denying him any forces and soldiers in the near future and giving him [[BurningTheShips no lifeboat to hop into away from her]].
** In terms of political PR, Daenerys making an example of King's Landing has better optics than taking her anger out on Winterfell, Sansa and the Vale for their undermining of her. Dany knows that Winterfell is the castle that defended the realm against the Long Night, and it would be seen as unforgivable (while also hard even for her to justify morally since after all [[TheChessmaster Sansa]] has never officially and outright declared independence and opposition to her) to attack the heroes that saved the world. But King's Landing serves as a good proxy. This is the city that the North and everyone across the Seven Kingdoms from Olenna Tyrell to Ned Stark to even Sansa herself has expressed repeated distaste and dislike for, many people describing it as a WretchedHive, it was also a city that did nothing to contribute to the Long Night, it's a city that Northmen would asssociate with Ned's execution and with Lannister tyranny. And as Daenerys calculated, the visible majority of the Northern Army willingly participate in the sack of the city, all of them veterans of the Long Night.

* Thematically, Dany's FaceHeelTurn makes perfect sense. After all, this is a ''DarkFantasy'' series, where the usual trope is ''MagicIsEvil'' or at least (and this is true for Tolkien as well), you can't use magic for actual long-term utopian goals and brute-force society and culture to make a better world come to pass. The original series is called [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire A Song of Ice and *Fire*]]. Fire and ice are two equally destructive forces. In the books, R'hllor followers see "ice" magic (warging and weirwood) as evil and vice versa, and even the reader can't tell who's right. In the show, magic serves a purpose only against a threat that can't be dealt with any other way (such as Rhllor's Lord of Light practitioners and adherents -- Thoros, Beric, Lady Melisandre -- and Bran's greenseer activity working against the Night King). But Lady Melisandre, after formerly doing terrible things for utopian reasons comes to believe that there's NoPlaceForMeThere once she played her part in averting the Long Night. Likewise one reason why Jon is probably the real hero is that his experiences with magic, being revived from the dead by Rhllor, don't seem to have changed him, or made him accept that magic is wonderful and grand, whereas all of Daenerys' experiences have led her to believe that one can use magic to shape the world as she see fits. After all Jon Snow exiled Melisandre on learning of her past actions refusing to accept his revival, and the North's eventual victory, was PoweredByAForsakenChild.

* The Northerners gleefully throw themselves into slaughtering the citizenry of the city like their Unsullied and Dothraki counterparts because for them, they're settling a personal score. Unlike the Dothraki and Unsullied merely (for the most part) following Daenerys's example, for the Northerners, [[ItsPersonal King's Landing is the heart of a regime that has inflicted untold horror and destruction on them, caused the deaths of their rulers, friends and families, and decimated their homeland]]. Now, the chance for revenge has come, so [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge of course they will seize a chance to settle grudges over the War of the Five Kings]] [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown with both hands]].

** Did the Northern soldiers peer-pressure the Unsullied into massacring the people of King's landing by invoking [[ItsPersonal revenge on the Lannisters for the War of the Five Kings]]?

* Overlapping with HarsherInHindsight, but the realization that ''we saw this coming''. We saw it when Daenerys burned Mirri Maz Duur for, in effect, pointing out that Daenerys' beloved husband and unborn son were seen as monsters by the rest of Essos and nobody other than Dany would mourn them. We saw it when Dany threatened the Spice King and the Thirteen of Qarth by declaring that she would take back what was stolen, destroy those who wronged her, lay waste to armies, and burn cities to the ground. We saw it when she had slave-owning nobles crucified, and killed random people to try and root out the Sons of the Harpy. We saw it in her constant iteration that everything would be "solved" once she sat upon the Iron Throne again. We saw so many hints of how bad she could be... and we were still blindsided by her actions. Why? Because ''we fell for her own hype''. Daenerys always saw herself as the hero of the story -- and she did just enough "good" that we started to see her that way too.

* Thematically, Dany's FaceHeelTurn makes perfect sense. After all, this is a ''DarkFantasy'' series, where the usual trope is ''MagicIsEvil''. More than that, the original series is called [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire A Song of Ice and *Fire*]]. Fire and ice are two equally destructive forces. In the books, R'hllor followers see "ice" magic (warging and weirwood) as evil and vice versa, and even the reader can't tell who's right. Since the ice part (the Night King and White Walkers) have been dealt with, it's the fire part (Daenerys and the dragons) that have to be dealt with now. Daenerys was never set up to be the Night King's enemy and opponent to begin with; she was his direct counterpart and equal number all along, but we never saw her that way because she's human apart from her unique magical immunity to fire, just like the White Walkers are immune to the cold.
** The real good is in the balance between ice and fire, winter and summer. So why is probably Jon the real hero? Because he's the [[TitleDrop son(g) of ice and fire]].

* On the flip side, Daenerys' rampage isn't an act of madness, it's actually a Tywin-esque cold-blooded political calculation to preserve her reign from both external threats (Cersei, Euron, the Golden Company) and internal threats (Jon Snow, Sansa, Tyrion):
** The Long Night, the Wars of the Five Kings and the wars that followed after that, have depleted most of the Seven Kingdoms of their armies and resources -- the Reach were finished by Lannisters and Tarlys, and then the Tarlys and others in the Loot Train Attack by [[AGoodNameForARockBand Dany and the Dothraki]]; the Riverlands were finished by Gregor and Tywin's rampages followed by the Red Wedding, Jaime and Bronn's second siege on Riverrun which killed off Blackfish and his loyalists and then Arya's massacre of the Freys, most of the Stormlanders died fighting in Stannis' wars. The only forces left in the field are the Lannisters, the North, the Vale (loyal to Sansa and the North at present), the Iron Islands which are split into Yara's and Euron's factions, with Yara loyal to Daenerys, while the Martells are under a new Prince which is sworn to Dany. Of this lot, the Vale is important but only in alliance to a bigger and larger kingdom (like the North) and cannot rebel on their own, the Martells will ''never'' back Jon Snow owing to the fact that his claim comes from legitimizing the annulment of the popular Princess Elia. The Stormlands are nominally ruled by Lord Gendry Baratheon, former bastard legitimized and promoted by Daenerys (i.e. his entire new status depends on the legitimacy of her regime whether he likes it or not) and so in her pocket. This leaves only Euron's faction in the Iron Islands, the Lannisters, and the North as the major forces she has to eradicate or neutralize.
** Taking the North with her on her march to King's Landing left the North without an army as Sansa bitterly admitted in Episode 4. Daenerys' sack of King's Landing in which the majority of Northmen soldiers followed the leads of the Unsullied and the Dothraki over the commands of Jon Snow effectively neutralizes the Starks. Neither Jon Snow or Sansa can protest Dany's actions without recognizing that a huge part of their own army were willing participants in her war crimes, risking dissension, defection, and civil war should they try and protest. As children of Ned and siblings of Robb they would be honor bound to hold their own soldiers to the same standards they apply to Daenerys[[note]]Robb Stark when he executed Richard Karstark also executed the soldiers and sneered at the JustFollowingOrders excuse put by one soldier when he participated in the killing of the Lannister kids[[/note]]. In other words, Daenerys has masterfully pulled the carpet underneath Jon and Sansa Stark [[YouWillBeAssimilated and made their army her own]], putting Jon Snow and Sansa in what Adrian Veidt would call "[[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} moral checkmate]]".
** Denying quarter to the Lannister army aside from destroying Cersei's power also neutralizes Tyrion. With the deaths of Cersei and Jaime, Kevan and Lancel, Tyrion is the Lord of Casterly Rock and heir to the Lannister titles and armies. But he's also been an annoying thorn in Daenerys' side, repeatedly offering second chances to his family and reluctant and guilty about masterminding assaults that led to the deaths of huge numbers of soldiers from his own army. Denying quarter to the Lannister army effectively makes Tyrion a "Lord in Paper", denying him any forces and soldiers in the near future and giving him [[BurningTheShips no lifeboat to hop into away from her]].
** In terms of political PR, Daenerys making an example of King's Landing has better optics than taking her anger out on Winterfell, Sansa and the Vale for their undermining of her. Dany knows that Winterfell is the castle that defended the realm against the Long Night, and it would be seen as unforgivable (while also hard even for her to justify morally since after all [[TheChessmaster Sansa]] has never officially and outright declared independence and opposition to her) to attack the heroes that saved the world. But King's Landing serves as a good proxy. This is the city that the North and everyone across the Seven Kingdoms from Olenna Tyrell to Ned Stark to even Sansa herself has expressed repeated distaste and dislike for, many people describing it as a WretchedHive, it was also a city that did nothing to contribute to the Long Night, it's a city that Northmen would asssociate with Ned's execution and with Lannister tyranny. And as Daenerys calculated, the visible majority of the Northern Army willingly participate in the sack of the city, all of them veterans of the Long Night.
** In short, Daenerys' cold-blooded lateral move effectively made her the uncontested ruler of Westeros in one fell swoop, emphasis on fell.

** In terms of political PR, Daenerys making an example of King's Landing has better optics than taking her anger out on Winterfell, Sansa and the Vale for their undermining of her. Dany knows that Winterfell is the castle that defended the realm against the Long Night, and it would be seen as unforgivable (while also hard even for her to justify morally since after all [[TheChessmaster Sansa]] has never officially and outright declared independence and opposition to her) to attack the heroes that saved the world. But King's Landing serves as a good proxy. This is the city that the North and everyone across the Seven Kingdoms from Olenna Tyrell to Ned Stark to even Sansa herself has expressed repeated distaste and dislike for, many people describing it as a WretchedHive, it was also a city that did nothing to contribute to the Long Night, it's a city that Northmen would asssociate with Ned's execution and with Lannister tyranny. And as Daenerys calculated, the visible majority of the Northern Army willingly participate in the sack of the city, many of them veterans of the Long Night.

** Taking the North with her on her march to King's Landing left the North without an army as Sansa bitterly admitted in Episode 4. Daenerys' sack of King's Landing in which the majority of Northmen soldiers followed the leads of the Unsullied and the Dothraki over the commands of Jon Snow effectively neutralizes the Starks. Neither Jon Snow or Sansa can protest Dany's actions without recognizing that a huge part of their own army were willing participants in her war crimes, risking dissension, defection, and civil war should they try and protest. As children of Ned and siblings of Robb they would be honor bound to hold their own soldiers to the same standards they apply to Daenerys[[note]]Robb Stark when he executed Richard Karstark also executed the soldiers and sneered at the JustFollowingOrders excuse put by one soldier when he participated in the killing of the Lannister kids[[/note]]. In other words, Daenerys has masterfully pulled the carpet undeneath Jon and Sansa Stark and made their army her own.
** Tak

* Thematically, Dany's FaceHeelTurn makes perfect sense. After all, this is a ''DarkFantasy'' series, where the usual trope is ''MagicIsEvil''. More than that, the original series is called [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire A Song of Ice and *Fire*]]. Fire and ice are two equally destructive forces. In the books, R'hllor followers see "ice" magic (warging and weirwood) as evil and vice versa, and even the reader can't tell who's right. Since the ice part (the Night King and White Walkers) have been dealt with, it's the fire part (Daenerys and the dragons) that have to be dealt with now. Daenerys was never set up to be the Night King's enemy and opponent to begin with; she was his direct counterpart and equal number all along, but we never saw her that way because she's human apart from her unique magical immunity to fire, just like the White Walkers are immune to the cold.
** The real good is in the balance between ice and fire, winter and summer. So why is probably Jon the real hero? Because he's the [[TitleDrop son(g) of ice and fire]].

* Remember way, way back in season 2 when [[Recap/GameOfThronesS2E10ValarMorghulis Dany had that vision of the Great Hall covered in falling snow]]? It wasn't snow. It was ''ash'', and the vision came true.

** As Varys pointed out last episode, Dany's ''whole life'' has done nothing but show her that she's [[TheChosenOne the most important person in the world]] and that as long as she stays resolute in her convictions everything will always miraculously turn out for the best. Now, all of a sudden, it's like her PlotArmor has been revoked and [[RealityEnsues reality is ensuing]] all around her -- and she's got absolutely no idea how to handle it.

* Why is the Kingsguards so easily dispatched? It's known for a long time that most modern Kingsguards are appointed based on family connections and loyalty rather than fighting skills. Moreover, Cersei is only in control of three Kingdoms at best, so her pool of potential recruits is limited even further.

* Remember way, way back in season 2 when [[Recap/GameOfThronesS2E10ValarMorghulis Dany had that vision of the Great Hall covered in falling snow]]? It wasn't snow. It was ash, and the vision came true.

* Jaime returning to Cersei seems to throw his entire CharacterDevelopment up to that point under the bus, but it's very true to how someone in the throes of a DestructiveRomance will act; No matter how hard they try to redeem themselves and try to live away from their abusive partner, part of that person still loves their abuser and will try to return to the only relationship they feel is stable, often because they feel they deserve no one better. With this perspective, Jamie bringing up his worst secrets to Brienne seems to show that he doesn't feel worthy of a life free of Cersei.

* The Northerners gleefully throw themselves into slaughtering the citizenry of the city like their Unsullied and Dothraki counterparts because for them, they're settling a personal score. Unlike the Dothraki and Unsullied merely (for the most part) following Daenerys's example, for the Northerners, King's Landing is the heart of a regime that has inflicted untold horror and destruction on them, caused the deaths of their rulers, friends and families, and decimated their homeland. Now, the chance for revenge has come, so of course they will seize it with both hands.