Daenerys Targaryen
Daenerys Targaryen, the last acknowledged scion of House Targaryen and the self-proclaimed Queen of Meereen, spends the bulk of A Dance with Dragons trapped between the irreconcilable demands of conquest and governance. Having smashed the slave trade in Slaver's Bay, she finds herself besieged not only by the armies of Yunkai and the fleets of Qarth but also by the insurgency of the Sons of the Harpy within her own walls. Her narrative is a prolonged crisis of rule, where the liberator must become a ruler, and the mother of dragons must confront the cost of her children's nature.
Identity and the Burden of Rule
Daenerys is defined by her titles—Stormborn, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Shackles—but the book relentlessly tests the meaning of each one. She begins as a conqueror who has freed thousands, yet she is unable to feed them, protect them from the Sons of the Harpy, or prevent the return of the slave trade just outside her gates. The weight of the crown is literal: she wears a three-headed dragon crown that leaves her neck and shoulders stiff and sore, and she forces herself into the Ghiscari tokar, a garment she calls her "floppy ears," to appear as a Meereenese queen rather than a foreign barbarian. Her identity is split between the girl who dreams of a house with a red door and the queen who must sit in judgment, between the dragon who wants to burn her enemies and the ruler who must make peace with slavers.
The Siege and the Search for Peace
Meereen is encircled by enemies. The Yunkish armies, bolstered by sellsword companies like the Windblown and the Long Lances, have established a siege camp outside the city. The Qartheen fleet has closed the bay, strangling trade. Inside, the Sons of the Harpy murder freedmen nightly, leaving their mark in blood. Daenerys's response is a series of compromises: she agrees to reopen the fighting pits, she takes Hizdahr zo Loraq as her husband, and she chains her dragons Rhaegal and Viserion in the dark beneath the Great Pyramid. Each concession is a wound to her sense of self. She tells Ser Barristan Selmy, "I am only a young girl and know little of such things," a refrain that becomes a bitter mask for her strategic calculations. The peace she negotiates is a hollow one, built on the continued enslavement of others beyond her borders and the imprisonment of her own children.
The Dragons and the Mother
Daenerys's relationship with her dragons is the emotional and thematic core of her story. She has chained Viserion and Rhaegal in a pit beneath the pyramid, where they grow more savage and their fires burn hotter. Drogon, the largest and wildest, has escaped and hunts freely, killing a shepherd's daughter named Hazzea. The queen pays the blood price and suppresses the story, but the guilt haunts her. When she visits the chained dragons, she sees them as monsters, but also as her children. The climax of her arc comes at Daznak's Pit, where she is forced to attend the reopened fighting pits as a spectator. When Drogon descends into the arena, she leaps from her box, mounts him, and flies away, abandoning Meereen and her hard-won peace. The flight is both an escape and a surrender to her own nature.
Marriage and Betrayal
Daenerys's marriage to Hizdahr zo Loraq is a political act she undertakes with grim resignation. She does not love him; his kisses leave her feeling nothing. She sets him a test: ninety days without a murder in Meereen. When he succeeds, she marries him, hoping the peace will hold. But the marriage is poisoned from the start. The honeyed locusts served at the royal box in Daznak's Pit are meant for her, and only Strong Belwas's gluttony saves her. The attempt on her life, combined with Hizdahr's eagerness to have Drogon killed, suggests his complicity. Her flight on Drogon is also a flight from a marriage that has become a cage.
The Dornish Offer and the Prophecy
Quentyn Martell arrives from Dorne with a marriage pact signed by her brother Viserys and Prince Doran, offering an alliance sealed by their union. Daenerys is intrigued but ultimately dismissive. She has already married Hizdahr, and Quentyn is a plain, earnest boy, not the fire she craves. She tells him, "I am only a young girl and know little of such things," but she also sees him as a tool. She shows him her chained dragons, a test he fails. The prophecy of the Undying—three treasons she will know, one for blood, one for gold, one for love—weighs on her. She suspects Reznak mo Reznak, the perfumed seneschal, and Skahaz the Shavepate, but the betrayal that matters most is the one she cannot name.
The Flight and the Return
After Drogon carries her into the Dothraki sea, Daenerys survives alone, hungry and feverish, on a rocky hill she calls Dragonstone. She eats charred meat from the dragon's kills and drinks from a stream. In her solitude, she hears voices: Jorah Mormont's ghostly counsel, Viserys's bitter accusations, and Quaithe's riddling prophecy. She bleeds, and the blood is a reminder of her barrenness, the curse Mirri Maz Duur laid upon her. When a Dothraki scout finds her, she mounts Drogon and flies to confront Khal Jhaqo, the man who abandoned her after Drogo's death. The book ends with her standing beside her dragon, facing the khalasar, having chosen fire and blood over the impossible peace of Meereen.
