Queen Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, the Rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, and Her Satanic Majesty
“There’s no apolitical way to justify the storytelling: A character who has proven to be a more than competent military strategist, not to mention a very effective self-propagandist, abruptly decides to commit a war crime after she’s won the war in question, thus needlessly turning the populace against her, because… the plot says so. Because she’s upset and petulant and suddenly a bad person in a way that overrides all her previously established skill sets. There’s no arc, no track, no work done to show us why she thinks this is a good idea. Even stupid decisions have a thought process behind them — we understand Tyrion freeing Daenerys’ prisoner, right after Dany tells Tyrion she’ll kill him the next time he disobeys, because the prisoner is Jaime and Tyrion loves him — but this one doesn’t. It just happens. But the decision might work if Daenerys’ desire to lead had already made you dislike her. If you believed, not just that women in power can be abusive, but that all women in power are abusive, not just that some women internalize tyrannical ideas of power, but that the very desire to wield power makes women tyrannical — not just that the world contains Cerseis, but that any woman becomes a Cersei by virtue of leading — then it would completely make sense that, the very second a female character obtained her world’s highest position of authority, she would PMS and have a meltdown and get hysterical and lash out and otherwise prove herself not only unfit to lead, but dangerously so. In other words, this would make sense to you if you did not see Daenerys making a decision, but a woman making a decision, and if this were the kind of decision you expected women to make.”
— Who Wins, Who Dies: Game of Thrones (2011 - 2019)