strike wolf wrote: Daenerys is the ultimate villain though. She basically wanted to kill everyone this week and probably would have if Tyrion hadn't talked her down and now she's going over the seas to invade Westeros with an army of savage warriors and three dragons. She's gone from underdog to juggernaut. Juggernauts fit best when they are the villain that needs to be taken down, not as the saving hero. Still Littlefinger will likely fill the gap until Daenerys is revealed for what she really will be. A conqueror incapable of ruling hell bent on destroying those who "wronged" her family.
Maybe you should consider the source before coming to that conclusion. Martin is a big feminist, like ultra feminist. Dany is the "hero". Yeah, she's got a bit of an impulse problem, but she's smart enough to have people like Tyrion around to kind of keep her centered. She's the one who's going to be instrumental in stopping the Others.
The Iron Throne doesn't matter. We'll see maybe in the final episode. After Cersi gets done with doing what she's going to do there won't be an Iron Throne anymore, there might not be much of a King's Landing left either.
The big theme in GoT is the old way of thinking clashing with a new paradigm world. We remember Tyrion scolding the masters about slavery, that the Lannisters don't have slaves and they're rich. This made me laugh as there isn't much distinction between a feudal system of serfs when compared to outright slavery. The serfs are free to starve where as the slavers have a vested interest in keeping their slaves fairly healthy, i.e. fed and working. After all, the slaves cost the master's money, it's an investment. Serfs are just born as property to the ruling Lord and are expected to give loyalty. With exceptions, a lot of the Lord's in GoT treat their small folk terribly. Small folk in Westeros or slaves in Essos, there is little difference in the reality of their lives.
Tyrion thumbs his nose toward slavery while ignoring that the system he is advocating and arguing for is barely a notch above a slavery system.
I think deep down, Tyrion knows this, he's smart enough to grasp what Dany wants to do and likely yearns for a fairer more just world considering his own life story. He just knows that it has to be done carefully. He'll steer Dany right. Dany wants to smash it all down and just proclaim a new way, where as Tyrion wants the same thing but knows it's chances of being successful lies in being more gradual. He's probably right but he doesn't truly know how great the threat of the Others, not yet at least. When that threat finally become understood he might change his tune, quickly.
Dany represents the new thinking and it's why she's so opposed. You see this everywhere in the story, Ramsay represented the old way, Tywin, Cersi, etc etc. All bent on keeping their power while the one's who were once the weakest start rising up to take power away from the old guard, the Dany's, Sansa's, Yara's. That is demonstrated well in the deal Dany makes with Yara (whether or not Yara betrays Dany later is to be seen) in that the Iron Islands are to give up thousands of years of tradition and culture. At Dany's insistence, an old way of thinking is to be discarded and a new order instilled.
We see it in Dany's story, she is the Beggar Queen, had nothing, sold into marriage. Look at her now, she wants to destroy the very system that allowed her to be treated in such a way. A system that the author of the story despises.
Ultimately, in the mind of Martin at least, things like religion, Kings, Feudal Lords, Slavery, restricting the rights of women and male rule are all evil things that have to be dealt with harshly. This is embodied in Dany's character and hence she is the hero in Martin's book. In another author's hands, absolutely, Dany could turn out to be a major villain of the like the unnamed world of Westeros had never seen before. The one thing the show has done and done well is keeping with Martin's overall themes from the books, IMO.
Cersi will probably be the major villain of next season if she lives through the next episode. But really, from this point forward the focus is going to be shifting to the North. The Others are the common enemy to everyone, serf and slave, Noble and King all are alike to the Others.
I think when it all is said and done, Westeros will be in complete ruin and those left alive will realize that most of it came about by their political system (fuedalism) and they will finally unite into not seven kingdoms cooperating, but more akin to something of a single nation under the rule of a woman, of course (because this is Martin we are talking about after all) as Westeros has been run into the ground by the male dominated ruling class. And they all lived happily ever after until the invention of gunpowder when it all goes to shit again. But that's another story...
