This post contains frank discussion of several plot points from Season 8, Episode 5 of Game of Thrones. If you’re not all caught up, or would prefer not to be spoiled, now is the time to leave. Seriously: this is your last chance, and you won’t have another so, get out while the getting is good.

You would think that after eight seasons of Game of Thrones that fans who had read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels would have run out of things to be smug about, right? The show is so far past the books now! Well, you may be correct. But an informal poll of book readers leads me to believe that those who have followed Daenerys Targaryen’s journey on the page are having at least a little easier of a time understanding her transformation into full-blown fire-and-blood villain. And there’s one very obvious reason why: in the books Daenerys is point-of-view, giving repeated access into her state of mind that the show simply can’t accomplish. But this isn’t just an I-told-you-so from a smug book reader; the HBO series stumbled big time in translating Martin’s version of Daenerys to the screen, particularly when it came to turning her into the “Mad Queen Daenerys” who torched the innocents of Kings Landing.

One of the thornier aspects of Martin’s novels has to do with a very specific structure that puts each chapter inside the mind of a different character. This makes it hard for Martin to tell a story, because he needs to leap around from internal monologue to internal monologue. But it also means readers can better understand what motivates the heroes and villains of Westeros, Essos, and beyond. It’s why, for example, many book readers have an even stronger devotion to Jon Snow—they know what’s cooking inside his brain and behind that pout. And it’s why, too, book readers long ago noticed the many clues leading to Dany’s downfall. (I wrote about it in 2016, many other astute readers wrote about it earlier.) The theories about Daenerys becoming a Mad Queen kicked up in earnest after she started hallucinating in the the latest book, A Dance with Dragons, but truth be told Martin laid the track from the start.

Take, for instance, her thoughts as she wades through the fire into Drogo’s funeral pyre. This is when Daenerys first fancies that she has become a dragon: