So....Dany did it after all. She strafed Kings Landing with dragonfire, and today the real world is going to go nuts at the betrayal of someone who was perceived as a feminist hero; an avatar for the very real change that can happen when women run things. And there will be much hue and cry that Dany's "tantrum" is a shot across the bow by the patriarchy that we'd better not elect a woman president, because look what can happen.
On the other hand, Cersei has been monstrous for eight seasons and I don't recall anyone using her as a metaphor for female leadership. Perhaps it's because we all cut our teeth on Grimm's fairy tales, where evil queens are just part and parcel of the mythology.
But I'm not here to geek out over Season 8 Episode 5, or to provide a recap. There are plenty of them out there from which to choose, should you be so inclined. No, I'm here to diagnose Daenerys Targaryen with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
BPD is believed to have a largely genetic component, but environmental factors do play a role. Of those environmental factors, poor parenting is the most common. Now we don't know what kind of a father Mad King Aerys was in the series, but he HAD wanted to burn Kings Landing to the ground rather than let Tywin Lannister sack the city, and was only stopped by Jaime Lannister from actually doing it. So it does appear that the genetic component is there.
BPD is generally recognized as being characterized by 9 symptoms:
Daenerys is an orphan, essentially raised in exile with her horrid brother Viserys after their father's death at the hands of his own Kingsguard and of her other, nicer brother Rhaegar in Robert's Rebellion. In the first episode of the series, we see an allusion to possible sexual abuse by Viserys. So I think we can safely check off the "poor parenting" box.
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment by friends and family. Unstable personal relationships that alternate between idealization (“I’m so in love!”) and devaluation (“I hate her”). This is also sometimes known as "splitting." Distorted and unstable self-image, which affects moods, values, opinions, goals and relationships. Impulsive behaviors that can have dangerous outcomes, such as excessive spending, unsafe sex, substance abuse or reckless driving. Self-harming behavior including suicidal threats or attempts. Periods of intense depressed mood, irritability or anxiety lasting a few hours to a few days. Chronic feelings of boredom or emptiness. Inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable anger—often followed by shame and guilt. Dissociative feelings—disconnecting from your thoughts or sense of identity or “out of body” type of feelings—and stress-related paranoid thoughts. Severe cases of stress can also lead to brief psychotic episodes.
Dany's most obvious character arc is one of learning her own power, but she is plagued by self-doubt, anxiety, paranoia, and fear of abandonment, which results in "intense and uncontrollable" expressions of rage. Throughout the series, especially after Khal Drogo's death, Dany has either threatened or resorted to violence when her will is thwarted or when she fears abandonment. What the audience has perceived up to this point as Daenerys' badassery suddenly, in retrospect, no longer seems so badass, but is in fact a series-long cue that Dany is going to fly into a rage at the slightest perceived threat. These episodes show the havoc that a damaged, paranoid person with a gnawing fear of abandonment armed with a deadly weapon can wreak on anyone in the orbit of those anywhere near her targets.
In Episode 3 of this final season, Dany lost the only person who, with only one lapse for which he has more than atoned, has been unfailingly loyal to her since the series started. Jorah Mormont may have been loyal because he was in love with her, but he was loyal. And in Episode 4, she lost her one truly trusted confidant in the person of Missandei -- a casualty of Tyrion's miscalculation of the lengths his sister Cersei would go to retain power. At the celebratory dinner after the living have defeated the dead, signs that Dany perceives as her inevitable abandonment are everywhere -- in Tormund's lauding of Jon's dragon riding; in the drinking game that unites her hand Tyrion with his untrustworthy brother Jaime along with Sansa allies Brienne and Podrick; and in Sansa's side-eye. We see in her face her increasing unease as she convinces herself that no one can be trusted and that everyone will leave her.
Later, and most devastatingly, there is the feeling of abandonment in Jon's rejection of her as a love interest and her perception that by telling his sisters his true identity, he has betrayed her. People with BPD can be possessive of those close to them and have difficulty with the idea of those people having other, different relationships with others. They make people choose between them and others. It's no wonder then, that Jorah, who's in love with her; Missandei, who owes her freedom to Dany, and Grey Worm, who after being freed CHOOSES to serve her, are the only people she trusts absolutely. As we go into Episode 5, Jorah is dead, Missandei is dead, and only Grey Worm, who is now the equivalent of Ser Barristan Selmy as her enforcer, remains. In Dany's eyes, everyone else is suspect.
Once a person with BPD feels threatened (and in the case of Varys, her feeling is actually justified), the reaction tends to be swift, loud, and often disproportionate. And far from being out of character, the strafing of King's Landing by Dany and Drogon in S08E05 is an inevitable outcome.
As I write this on Monday, May 13, 2019 -- the day after the destruction of King's Landing -- there will be many keystrokes spent on how this episode was evidence of how much D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are part and parcel of the patriarchy that loathes powerful women. We're going to hear about how a series spent building Dany into a powerful woman sells her out to female hyperemotionality. We're going to hear about how it's a metaphor for Hillary Clinton, or any of the current female candidates for president. People will be appalled at how she ended up being just another psycho bitch from hell -- just like Cersei. And we're going to read about the misogyny inherent in running -- on Mother's Day -- an episode that features the death of one woman whose only redeeming quality was loving her children and the rage of a childless woman who is essentially the dragon equivalent of a Crazy Cat Lady. But I think that's the wrong takeaway.
There's a shot just before Dany heads toward the Red Keep where the grief over all of her losses, all those who have abandoned her, is all over her face. Emilia Clarke really brings it here, letting out just a tiny sob (shown in the screenshot below) before going full-bore borderline rage on the Red Keep and pretty much everything else. She's completely out of control at this point and there's no bringing her back until exhaustion sets in.
Now if this were real life, once the rage is spent, she'd be perfectly fine, and everyone around her would walk around wondering what the hell just happened and feeling as if a bit of their souls had been shredded. Because people with BPD react to the fear or threat of abandonment with disproportionate rage, and when it's over, THEY feel so much better. But everyone around them is damaged. It remains to be seen if this dynamic will play out in the finale. But for anyone with any knowledge about BPD, what happened last night wasn't just some out-of-the-blue, wrap-it-up-fast lousy writing. Dany has been signaling all along that this is what she would do if she felt threatened and the fear of abandonment overwhelmed her.
Give a person with BPD a fire-spewing dragon, and you're setting yourself up for serious trouble.