Nissa Nissa - Tumblr Posts

With so many different theories predicting Dany’s downfall and death, it can be easy to forget that, by successfully waking dragons out of stone, Dany was established as Azor Ahai Reborn/Prince that Was Promised, Drogo as her Nissa Nissa and the dragons as her Lightbringer. Also, as a result, the Fridged Woman trope was gender flipped; while the male protagonist’s female love interest is most often killed off for the sake of his development (the trope is even played straight with AA/NN to be contrasted with Dany/Drogo), in Dany’s story her husband is sacrificed to further her development and to allow her to save the world. 

So, to bring attention to how GRRM played with the trope, I commissioned a fanart from @kill-a13 depicting Daenerys Targaryen literally driving a flaming sword through her husband. Some notes that I gave to the artist:

I asked them to show Lightbringer glowing with red and black flame (the color of the dragon that Dany ultimately rides) while Drogo is stabbed to represent the fact that the dragons (which are heavily implied to be Lightbringer;  like the Red Sword of Heroes, they are drawn from the fire and described as “hot to the touch” and “a flaming sword above the world”) were born partly thanks to his sacrifice. Pretend that the flames are there.

I asked them to draw Dany wearing armor, just like in her dragon dream from AGOT Daenerys IX. In that scene, we’re primed to expect Rhaegar to be “the last dragon” wearing armor, but then Dany lifts the visor and sees herself instead. That moment breaks our expectations and is representative of Dany succeeding her brother and becoming a leader and a hero in her own right. So I thought it’d be fitting to have her wearing armor because both her dragon dream and this piece highlight her tendency to surpass her male relatives in everything.

I asked them to include the red comet (also unsubtly called the dragon’s tail) because it appears for the first time right before Dany lights the pyre and hatches her dragon eggs (making it extremely likely that it specifically heralds her rebirth amidst salt and smoke to wake dragons out of stone).

I asked them to draw dragon wings coming out of Dany’s back to symbolize her rebirth as the Mother of Dragons (“I know that somewhere out upon the grass her dragons hatched, and so did she”). I told them to paint them red because she’s “a true Targaryen”.

I asked them to show Dany looking unhappy because her husband entered a vegetative state for reasons outside of her control. Her decision to put him out of his misery was nowhere near as morally questionable as Azor Ahai sacrificing Nissa Nissa (in fact, even if 14-year-old Dany had planned to kill him, she would have been justified because she was his sex slave). Neither were the sacrifices of Rhaego and MMD; the former was murdered by MMD and the latter was executed like any noble would have done to punish their child’s murderer.

game of thromes meme | seven (stories) quotes (2c/7) “a hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife.“ 

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