screamin

Because she wanted to be the queen?

So be bitchy in return when the courtier rudely asks you a legitimate question about dragon feed or the wounded, rebuke the rudeness, and answer the legitimate question legitimately, or else you show you care more about the bruise to your vanity than your subjects, or your injured dragon baby.

Good point. But do we think Robb witnessed and condoned that? We're discussing Jon's level of enthusiasm in the battle and its aftermath for rape and pillage. We saw reject it in no uncertain terms when he witnessed it, and order his men to disengage instead of marching forward. No doubt not all obeyed him, but I don't think we witnessed an all-out Northern mutiny enthusiastically embracing Dany's fiery change of heart.

Jon's their CO. If he's not happy, they're not happy (and if they are, he'll skewer 'em).

I did not think (and I still don't think) 'mad' exactly. I think she always had a big streak of exceptionalism - the rules don't apply the same way to her, because of her heritage and her destiny. She had a kind heart and empathy for the suffering, but was okay with the idea of Drogo invading and laying waste to the pacifist Lamb Men's land, and her deciding to stop the visibly ugly rape and enslavement consequences was her halfway measure to salve her conscience for what she'd made up her mind was necessary for the conquest to achieve her ends. It was her destiny, and she would free the slaves from now on, so the collateral damage she wreaked on the way was righteous. Her streak of successes strengthened the conviction she was both right and destined. She was capable of great kindness to all those who agreed with her own view of herself. Initially, those who didn't agree, she could outfight with her dragons. She had real trouble once she finally got to Westeros, to her supposed destiny, and ran into those who didn't recognize her destiny, that she couldn't just burn where they stood but had to be diplomatic with. Sansa tested her. I agree, Sansa was rude, she was "Northern" in her impudence in Council, she should have been publicly rebuked as she had publicly been impudent. At the same time, Sansa was the most powerful lord of Dany's newly conquered territory, and she was voicing valid concerns that were concerns of the whole North. Her impudence was nothing unusual for that council meeting or for the way the North lords expressed themselves to their king ever since they got one. It was Dany's responsibility as queen to address the concerns as well as throw her authority and weight around. She ignored the concerns, and made a truly witty wisecrack that was a death threat about the giant deadly dragons that she'd already seen were terrifying to the Northerners. It was not a good sign, reinforced later when she repeated the threat to Jon more clearly, without addressing the concerns. Jon himself worsened the issue by becoming a passive doormat and turning a deaf ear to the threats, instead of trying to be a partner in helping Dany to adapt, and ignoring the issues with Dany's demand to leave WF with the wounded men and dragons just because Sansa recommended to stay awhile to heal. I do agree that the signs were vague and could have been much more clearly expressed by the writers. They weren't signs of madness, though - more hubris, which has finally taken her too far.

There's the Vale. Though of course, I doubt Sansa has the know-how to tell the Vale how to duplicate Cersei's patented anti-dragon cross-bow herself, probably the general description of 'huge motherfuckin' crossbow' is spreading in the wake of the KL disaster. Though it seemed ineffective in the battle of KL, Sansa knows it DID work well at least once. The main issue is that Dany has no trusted spymaster any more, nor anyone suitable for the position she can trust enough to hire. She can't sit on Drogon 24/7, and Grey Worm can only protect her from oncoming soldiers. Unless she wants to live a complete recluse in a fortress like Aerys the Mad, she's got to take the risk of letting people in who may or may not be trustworthy. As for Jon - I really don't think he's a good enough liar to talk Dany into the idea that he's totes okay with everything she's done, along with Sansa's probable execution, let's get it on! Somehow I think he'll go for Drogon, using his dragon whisperer talent to...I don't know, make him sit still while he stabs him in a vulnerable spot with his dragonsteel sword? Seems unlikely, but not as unlikely as Dany falling for Jon's story of how her incinerating cities makes him horny.

It annoys me to death, the idea that he'll show up, Tyrion will say to whoever's in charge, "Yeah, he made me promise at gunpoint to give him Highgarden, the richest territory in Westeros, then he slunk off and did absolutely nothing to help," and the person in charge will reply, "Awesome, a fine ruler!" and hand it over.

Probably hoping the bells wouldn't ring, disappointed when they did, and impulsively doing what she'd longed to do anyway. Still needed some more buildup by the writers for me to really buy it from Dany. I wonder if the official communiques to the rest of the kingdom and the history she plans to order to be written about the incident will state that the city simply refused to surrender, so she burned it?

But if magic is going out of the world (as the Children of the Forest predict) who and how is anyone to repair the breach in the wall? That wall needs magic to stand and endure.

Well, even if you cut a sentient god who makes decisions as to who deserves what out of the picture, and substitute a blind universal principle of payback, what we have is Dany killing a magically powerful woman who had taken away her future of a hugely powerful child who would eventually wreak widespread horror on innocent and guilty indiscriminately while empowering her. Dany gets back in exchange for this sacrifice - three hugely powerful children with the potential of wreaking widespread horror indiscriminately while empowering her. They DO empower her - and one of them eventually DOES wreak widespread horror on innocent and guilty indiscriminately in the process of satiating her desire for power. There's an element of knowing choice of this current future for Dany - and an element of Dany owing for the generosity of the universe, in a way she seems destined to pay back in a predictable way. It's elegant foreshadowing of her current end - or it would be, if the showrunners had been less clumsy in carrying it all out.

Just makes my point though, that the god who watches both cases from above and decides that the woman who burns the old lady to death in revenge deserves three deadly dragons as a reward is a pretty amoral god we probably wouldn't trust to be kind.

Not to mention Mirri was a prophetess who foresaw that Dany's unborn son would be a vicious conqueror who would do to the world what Drogon had done to her people. (Either that, or the mistreatment of Mirri drove her mad and gave her delusions; same difference to Mirri). Mirri knew she would pay horribly for what she was doing, she still did it for what she considered the needs of the future, not just her revenge. I still find her a heroic figure.

Show trial. She's finished her conquest, she's establishing her court, it's an occasion to throw her power around and see who applauds servilely and who still might dare to raise an objection, for future reference.

Realistically, she's also Aerys the Mad King, even if she's not literally insane, which I don't think she is. What I mean is, she will have to become as paranoid and reclusive as Aerys if she wants to stay in her current position. What Aerys did out of delusional fear of nonexistent threats, Dany will have to do out of realism. All the enemies she's made are real. And she can't sit on her dragon 24/7. She's human and vulnerable to harm and while Grey Worm and his men can protect her from frontal assault, she doesn't have a spymaster like Varys or Qyburn to protect her from everything else. I also don't think she has the loner mindset that would keep her capable of doing without human interaction aside from Grey Worm (who's in as bad shape as she is) for too long. She will probably end up wanting Jon's company, even if it's just to demand he validate her choices and reaffirm his vow that she's his queen no matter what. (And I still think she might be pregnant, damn it, which would give her another motive to want to speak with him and attempt an impossible reconciliation.)

Officially, the child of the widowed unremarried queen is a bastard, not a Lannister (however thoroughly genetically Lannister on both sides it is). Of course, Cersei had no legitimate claim to rule after Tommen "Baratheon" died, yet there she was - presumably out of sheer terror. It might be hard for her to summon that up again, though.

Then Jon's in danger already, even before Sansa tells anyone, because as soon as he realized he was Dany's nephew, he stopped being capable of being her lover/future husband. Things were going to shit between them before Sansa told anyone anything.

If Dany refuses to let her soldiers and her own reptilian children recover from wounds before marching into battle just to be contrary to the advice of someone she disliked and distrusted, the chances are good that with such reactive impulsivity she may lose to Cersei and get her Northern soldiers commanded by Jon killed in the bargain. That's not good strategic thinking...hence Sansa's distress when Jon marched off.

Yes, it's true they should not have corrected her in public. But IMO, it was more important in the long run to let her trusted people in on critical plans beforehand than to educate them on points of etiquette in front of people she planned to slaughter anyway. She was queen of nearly nothing then; her early success with a ruse that shouldn't have been so easily worked (really, it never occurred to the slavemasters not to brutally train the Unsullied never to turn on them the way they brutally trained them to everything else?) gave her the false idea of her own destined success.

I really do think Mirri Maz Duur was kind of heroic, though. Dany's vengeful impulse to kill her was completely understandable - but it showed that whatever god granted Dany her dragons was an amoral one.

Because he knows Jaime gave up a good woman to try to save Cersei, who Jaime knows as well as Tyrion that she sent a man to kill him. Tyrion knows Jaime is set on Cersei and won't leave without her, no matter what. In other words, Jaime is set on Cersei or death. If Jaime stays, Dany kills him as a traitor. If Jaime goes to Cersei, then maybe he'll convince her to leave with him - at least there's a chance for him to live then. Since Tyrion thinks of Jaime as having saved his life, he feels he owes him the chance.

I thought he was really doing it for Jaime, and Jaime's child, not specifically for Cersei.

Yeah, no. He was brutalizing and mutilating children to sell. People who castrate little boys for profit have kind of renounced their right to humane treatment. I do think her, 'don't ever question me in public' to her advisers that she had not told her plan to in private WAS a harbinger of future problems, though.

Old saying: "If God lived on earth, people would break his windows." God may move in mysterious ways, and we have to accept that things may go shittily for us now and then because all we can do is pray or rant to heaven. But if God lived among us, refusing to give us help or advice and shrugging off disasters that befell our loved ones with "yeah, I could have kept that from happening but I didn't," AND He was a fragile, easily injured, totally uncharismatic human? I doubt he'd be chosen for supreme power, or be able to survive retaliation long. I just can't find it believable that they'd want him to be king.

I agree. I think she'd have been content to have Jon as king of the North, rolling her eyes when he won't take her advice. While I don't believe she spotted signs of incipient madness in Dany, she did feel that Jon had given over WAY too much power, too quickly, to an unknown quantity. I agree that she was disrespectful to Dany, but I think it was a test that Dany didn't respond to flexibly enough to convince Sansa she was going to deal wisely with any other opposition she came across...which meant Jon was putting his and their welfare in the hands of someone who would act too impulsively - with dragons. She would reject even sensible advice coming from someone she dislikes. Hell, even Dany's confession that she had helped the North because she had fallen in love with Jon isn't really calculated to inspire trust in her longstanding goodwill to the North if things go sour with that love.

He may not have. But her assumption may be that even if he didn't, the word will spread through the many people who already know it anyway (which is pretty likely).