Her brother held up the gown for her inspection. “This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress the fabric.”

We meet Daenerys being pushed around by her brother in preparation for a marriage she had no say in. By the end of the book, it’s clear that one of the driving questions for Daenerys’ series arc is what do you do with power once you have it? Over the course of the series thus far, she’s gone from having little but the dubious protection of her name, to a political figure whose reputation spans half a continent and more.

Dany’s storyline across the series is one of the most overtly high fantasy plots in ASoIaF. In a series known for its focus on the low fantasy elements, Dany openly and unabashedly fills a classic high fantasy protagonist role. She dominates her storyline to the point where she shares screentime with no other PoV character until book five.

The structure of her story in the first book starts her out as a pawn in her brother’s plan for the reconquest of our home. She’s been bought and sold before we meet her. And yet, despite what she goes through, in AGoT and after, we see Dany learn and grow. The first step is her outstripping her brother, as she learns that Drogo’s khaleesi has more power than Viserys’ sister. Still nowhere close to real agency, though, for all Khal Drogo swears to invade Westeros in her name and for their son. She has little to no power over the conduct of the war in her name, as she discovers. Just as quickly, she discovers her own deep unease with the brutality inflicted on the Lhazareen. She is unable to prevent the suffering, and as Mirri Maz Duur shows Dany, this sort of thing cannot be fixed so easily after the fact.

When Drogo falls grievously ill, however, Dany starts claiming her own power, culminating in the literal and metaphorical waking of dragons that concludes the first book.

She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children. - Daenerys X, AGoT

The next two books, and the first half of Daenerys’ story, consolidates her as a figure of power in her own right. She leads her people through the Red Waste and protects her dragons in Qarth in the process of determining that what she wants is to be a dragon in her own right. This is the note we leave her on in ACoK, when she tells a disguised Barristan to rename her ships.

“As you wish,” said Arstan. “What names would you prefer?” “Vhagar,” Daenerys told him. “Meraxes. And Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the dragons are returned.” - Daenerys V, ACoK

In ASoS she follows through. It’s a defining book for her.

Astapor represents the first time Dany gets to - and has to - choose how she’s going to fight for what she wants. In Astapor, she decides that some sacrifices aren’t worth it. She still has the empathy she felt for the Lhazareen, but now she has the capacity to do something about the injustice she sees. Unlike then, however, she enables the Unsullied to fight for themselves, and then orders them to attack the slavers of Astapor.

“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air…and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” “Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. - Daenerys III, ASoS

Dany takes her care for her people to an extreme, here. Despite advice she refuses to abandon the refugees who followed her, and instead moves on to Yunkai and Meereen, freeing slaves (and outwitting slavers and mercenaries) as she goes. ASoS ends with her decision to stay in Meereen, for a few reasons:

“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.” - Daenerys VI, ASoS

She’s aware of the gaps in her experience and the fragility of her gains for the freedpeople of Slaver’s Bay, and sacrifices her immediate interests for her followers and in the interests of learning how to do the job she wants well. Dany is not just determined to be a queen, she’s determined to be a good queen.

In many ways that comes back to bite her in ADWD, where she’s promptly caught between her desire for peace and her desire for justice. She makes compromise after compromise for very little success, culminating in two of my favourite ADWD chapters - Dany IX and Dany X. These chapters are where Dany realises that her compromises threaten her integrity:

One step, then the next, but where is it I’m going?

I am not your mother, she might have shouted back, I am the mother of your slaves, of every boy who ever died upon these sands while you gorged on honeyed locusts. - Dany IX, ADWD

Followed by the symbolic reclamation of her identity as she leaves Meereen on Drogon’s back, and her decision to stick with what she’s good at.

“Fire and blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass. - Dany X, ADWD

Okay, so that’s what Dany’s done. It’s impressive, to say the least, and it promises more to come. But simply conquering cities isn’t what makes her an impressive protagonist. Dany is constantly struggling with the moral dimension of her use of power. What is a just war? What are just measures to keep the peace? Sometimes Dany gets it wrong.

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne. - Dany VII, AGoT

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood… Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children. - Dany VI, ASoS

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.” “I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.” “Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly. - Dany II, ADWD

What we can see in these quotes, though, is that even in those low moments, Dany is doing her best. There’s her ongoing hazard, though: her tendency to believe that the ends justify the means. As with Catelyn, Dany’s virtues have their downsides. Those best of intentions don’t always translate into the best of actions.

The other incredibly poignant thing about Dany is the extent to which she is motivated by a desire for home, family, and community, encapsulated in her dreams of a house with a red door:

“We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back.” Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known. - Dany I, AGoT

Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading memory of a red door… - Dany VI, AGoT

She grew up an exile. Her most reliable and loyal caretaker died when she was young, leaving her homeless and dependent on the charity of others. Her brother was her only family, but he was as much threat to Dany’s wellbeing as protector, and certainly not capable of providing for them both. Even as Dany grows up and grows stronger, capable of making her own home, she does not feel at home in the lands she travels through:

“Your Grace?” Missandei stood at her elbow wrapped in a bedrobe, wooden sandals on her feet. “I woke, and saw that you were gone. Did you sleep well? What are you looking at?” “My city,” said Dany. “I was looking for a house with a red door, but by night all the doors are black.” - Daenerys VI, ASoS

Dany had never known a home. In Braavos, there had been a house with a red door, but that was all. - Daenerys III, ADWD

And that lack of feeling plays into her decision at the end of ADWD.

Meereen was not her home, and never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Meereen would always be the Harpy’s city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy. - Daenerys X, ADWD

So we leave Daenerys with her search ongoing. We know she wants the wellbeing of the slaves she’s freed. We know she personally wants to go home. These are sympathetic and heroic objectives. The challenge is in what she’ll do to achieve these goals. She is the hero of her story, and one of the main heroes of the story. She is allowed to take the starring role in facing down continental and global problems, and she’s allowed to fight those problems and her own flaws on her own merits as a character. Dany is allowed to struggle, as a hero - and I still believe that eventually she will be able to overcome.