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I really need to talk about a scene from last night's episode of Game of Thrones. This is one of the most shocking pieces of dialogue that the show has ever offered up. I'm talking about Dany's willingnes to commit genocide: 
I feel I need to preface this thread by saying that I think Dany is probably the best character on GoT. She's not my favourite, but very few of the others are as beautifully realised as she is. The last two seasons have not changed that view. They have just reinforced it.
She's pretty unique in all the fiction I've read, and I think she'll be considered GRRM's greatest achievement long after he's gone. Not because she's the hero of the tale but precisely because she isn't. Dany's story has always been destined for a great tragedy.
There has always been the foreboding feeling that her motivations for wanting the iron throne never quite made sense, but for a long time that worry was secondary to her own survival; something that didn't need to be addressed while assassins and kings were trying to kill her.
We need to address it now, however. Part of the reason we tended to overlook the darker implication of her ambition was because she was forced rise up against her enemies just to survive, but at some point you need to examine the choices and the allies you've made along the way.
Was there really ever any justification for setting the dothraki, a culture of enslavers who acknowledge only power, and rape and pillage their way across the world, onto the path to Westeros just to take the throne?
There's a scene early on in the books where she sees the dothraki raping a young woman whose family they have just murdered, and she silently thinks to herself through tears that this is the cost of war. And she accepts it.
Was there ever a throne to rightfully take back, considering her father tried to burn the country alive before being cast down, or that her ancestors conquered the continent and forged the throne to force the seven kingdoms into servitude?
Was there ever a people who wanted her to rule with that in mind? Was there ever a reason why Dany, who has never lived in Westeros, would be accepted or supported by its people when she arrived with the largest foreign army the world has ever seen and demanded them to bend?
Dany doesn't know these facts because of Viserys's lies, but she learns them during her journey, and still she persists. The irony is that she had everything in Meereen. She had a people, a man who loved her, a purpose that was purer than her reasons for conquering Westeros.
Freeing slaves is easy when you have the power to do so, but in Westeros her family were the masters who rode in on their winged warheads and burned people with impunity until they submitted. Invisible chains are still chains.
Her birthright is no longer valid on account of her father being replaced, and evils committed against innocent children in her family do not justify other evils committed in the name of taking back a throne that is nothing but a tool of oppression.
If A Song of Ice and Fire is a reference work to Lord of the Rings (and it is) then the throne itself is the ring. It's the absolute power that corrupts absolutely. It's the wheel Aegon built, which Dany once claimed she wanted to break but now wants to put back up on its axis.
Her comment was taken by Tyrion as a desire to build a better world, but it must be seen by the viewers in light of Dany's motivation to grab and hold power. And it is increasingly clear now that she meant to ensure no one else will ever be powerful enough to rise up against her.
This is why Jon's parentage has been saved for a final confrontation: it's not because he has a better claim on account of being ahead in the line of succession to a cast down king. It's because it invalidates Dany's pretext for wanting to rule. This season finally unmasked her.
Without it she is a conqueror who wants to grab power because she can. She prides herself on ending slavery, but her family enslaved Westeros for centuries. You can't on one hand be the breaker of chains and on the other force people into submission under threat of death.
This is something Cersei, Stannis, Tywin and Roose Bolton would also have done. But they are antagonists in this story precisely because of their willingness to view human lives as expendable in their quest for power and validation.
… Which brings us back to the original post. Dany was ready to level King's Landing long before Missandei got beheaded. The conversation between her and her advisors on a ship headed for King's Landing, towards the end of 8x04, makes that abundantly clear:
She's literally saying: ”Let's offer Cersei a deal she'll obviously never take just so people know it's her fault when I slaughter them by the thousands.” There is no other way to interpret that comment, and the silence of her advisors speaks volumes. They're horrified.
Dany is not turning into her father. She's turning into something different, beyond madness. She believes herself to be righteous because she answers to no one else but herself, and everything she does is demanded by destiny. The hubris of her character has come full circle.
Tyranny can't be ended through more tyranny. A better world can't be built through conquest, it just can't. And it can't be built by someone who thinks that genocide is a small price that others should pay in order for her to acquire what she perceives as rightfully being hers.
A friend commented that this is a real life parallel to how people are stanning and cheering on military acts of utter horror, and it sums up one of the most important lessons of aSoIaF. This is not a story about restoring the lineage of kings.
Evil is a banal act by nature, but the path leading up to committing it is complicated. People aren't born wanting to murder children. They don't set out to kill or maim or to dole out biblical justice everywhere they see fit.
Dany once wanted a life in peace and it was denied her by people who feared what she could become instead of having compassion for what she was. They forced her out on a journey that made her see the world in terms of sheep and dragons.
And if a better world will ever be built, this worldview will have to be discarded. It's not the solution to the plight of Westeros. It's very much a part of the problem.
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