I’ve been thinking on the Mad Queen, torch Kingslanding warpath about the actions in the last episode of Game of Thrones. I argue that her turn felt like it needed to be earned.

However, as this article by Terri Schwartz over at IGN claims, the show has been preparing us for this for a while.

You should read Schwartz’s article if you are in the same boat as me. Schwartz makes great points that are hard to argue. I think she makes a great point at everything here.

Game of Thrones’ biggest disservice to Daenerys in these past couple of seasons has been its decision to keep the audience at arm’s length from these characters. Instead of getting the intimate “perspective” scenes that mirrored the POV chapters in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which really put us in the characters’ heads and allowed us to follow their thought processes, the TV show has opted to keep their motivations a secret until a surprise plot twist that’s meant to shock us. (Exhibit A: Sansa and Arya teaming up to kill Littlefinger after the audience was led to believe they were being turned against each other.)

and

But that doesn’t mean she’s a ruler without flaws, and as much as Game of Thrones is doing a one-dimensional job examining her dark turn in Season 8, it did a similarly bad job challenging her as our hero in previous seasons. By Daenerys being so removed from the rest of our main characters, we only saw her story through her own lens, and those of people like Jorah and Missandei, who were devoted to her. The biggest changes in our perception of her in Seasons 7 and 8 have been because we’re suddenly seeing her through the eyes of our other heroes, specifically Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and Varys. (Only in episode 5 did Jon Snow seem to let his puppy dog infatuation with Daenerys fall aside.)

It’s a great read. Check it out.