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Could write an essay like this on Bran? I still don’t understand why GRRM chose him of all people to be king at the end. His story has almost nothing to do with being a leader and ruling. Am I missing something? I feel like Daenerys’ storyline was always (in the show and the books) much better written and plotted than Bran’s, but maybe I’ve just been overlooking something all these years.
A Dance with Dragons is the most important arc Daenerys has had since she hatched her dragons at the end of A Game of Thrones, and is a huge turning point for the trajectory of her character. And while GRRM’s books have always been incredibly detailed and focused on character, this book and A Feast for Crows is when he really mastered that style. Those two things combined make Daenerys’ ten chapters incredibly dense, and full of very important details. If I were to write it all out in one post, it would be just ridiculously long (and considering the length of my other posts, that’s really saying something…). To try and keep these posts from turning into books, I’m going to split my analysis of Dany in A Dance with Dragons into three separate posts; one dealing with the political aspects of her arc, the next a look at the outside forces that influence Dany’s decision making, and the last will center on the personal struggle that defines her arc. Here is the first, where I breakdown the political merits of Queen Daenerys Targaryen…
Holding Court
Running parallel to all of the symbolic choices and struggles Daenerys makes in A Dance with Dragons is the practical decisions she makes as Queen of Meereen. GRRM is famous for his quote about “Aragorn’s tax policy”, and it is clear that he tries to answer that question in this book. We get chapter after chapter that gives Daenerys a new political trial, and get to see and examine how she decides to move passed it. The first three books gave us small moments to look at and decide how Daenerys would rule Westeros, but A Dance with Dragons gives us definitive examples of how she would. This book asks would Daenerys be a good queen? and also gives us the answer: No.
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I get the feeling D&D really didn’t want Bran to be king, but did so because it was in George’s outline. Seeing how little Bran has done to be king (or deserve being king), they made Sansa Queen of the North because that at least makes more sense than King Bran.
Northern independence, and the people who keep defending it as an outcome on the show, continues to bother me. I like the idea of the breakup of the kingdoms in theory, but it should be a full dissolution. There is no point to the north becoming independent alone. If being part of a united realm is such horrible evil tyranny, then why isn't it horrible and evil for the remaining kingdoms? Why is it okay for them to be forced to kneel not only to a king but a Northern, and therefore foreign, monarch? Especially since at least two of them have a history of rejecting foreign rule.
And if things in the Six Kingdoms are actually going to be good and just and all that, then why is it necessary for the North to secede? They could just stay and be ruled over by the legal heir to House Stark and continue to reap the benefits of easy trade with the more winter-resistant kingdoms. The happiest years of Sansa's life were spent in a united realm, so what does she think this is going to give her? I'm pretty sure King Bran is how the books are supposed to end per GRRM, and my suspicion is that the showrunners wanted to upgrade Warden of the North Sansa to Queen Sansa in an attempt to dodge the accusations of misogyny naturally arising from the treatment of other female characters who aspired to rulership. This is empty pandering if I'm right, and I don't care for it.
Bran and Sam should have written A Song of Ice and Fire. Sam wrote the prose and Bran did all the research.
Bran should have been either King of the North, Master of Whispers (with his own army of literal little birds to replace Varys), or an advisor to the new king or queen of Westeros, not king himself.
‘Who has a better story than bran the broken?’ is blatant meera and jojen reed erasure (osha and hodor as well). Osha busted them out of winterfell, jojen showed up with his green dreams to guide them to the three eyed raven, and meera dragged his ass home after. The only thing bran managed to do is touch the night king and get a bunch of people killed (including the last living members of an entire species). Bran in general has very little agency in his own story. Jaime throws him out the window, robb leaves him in charge, theon takes the castle, the three eyed raven decides to train him. Even when he finally seems like he might actually do something in the battle with the dead, he just doesn’t.
I saw the point made that if the idea had been that the person with the most stories, that knows the most history, should be king, then this might work a little better. A 'those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it’ type thing. But as it stands, it’s such a ridiculously unsupported choice.