The funniest thing about that ‘meta’ is if they pulled their racist Dany hating heads out of their asses for five seconds, they’d realized they stumbled across a really great parallel actually.
Dany/Mel/Cersei do make up a fire queen trio. But rather than simplifying it down to fire hot fire bad therefore 3 evil mustache twirling queens, I think its more like good/neutral/evil. Not because of the fire itself, but because of who they are and what they do.
The fire is itself neutral. Fire cleanses and fire purifies but yeah it can kill. Its how its used that matters. Just like the dragons who are fire made flesh.
Dany uses fire for the greatest good. She hatches dragons and restores magic, she frees slaves, she burns slavers (hopefully we’ll get more of that in TWOW because, and I hate that this is an important reminder in this fandom, SLAVERY IS BAD. SLAVERS ARE EVIL.)
Melisandre also works for a greater good, but her morality doesn’t really come from a place of empathy but rather her religious code. Which on its own isn’t terrible, but it allows her to do some heinous things like nearly sacrificing Edric Storm and actually sacrificing Alester Florent for Stannis’ greater good. But its worth it in the end TO HER because she sees Stannis as her Azor Ahai and helping him defeat the Great Other is the most important thing. We know the cold, we know the Others, so we know that Mel is on to something but it’s still steeped in wrongness because we’ve seen what she’s willing to do and Shireen just sits there on the page like a horrible omen. So while Melisandre may be using her fire towards a greater purpose, it may not be worth it. Especially when we already know that Stannis is not the true Azor Ahai.
Cersei, while I adore her chapters and stan a #girlboss, is undoubtedly a villain. I hate to use terms like evil for Cersei herself when there are so many worse people, but the torture of the Blue Bard, what she did to Margaery, not to mention the dwarf genocide she approved are just sickening. But the thing is, despite how awful she can be, she’s also completely understandable even if some things are not justifiable. Cersei has suffered gendered violence her entire life despite and because of her privilege. She is self serving and self motivated because all her life she’s had to fight tooth and nail for HERSELF, so when she uses fire its more of the same. She burns the tower of the hand and is cleansed of the men who have perpetrated or enabled violence towards her. Even if you dislike Cersei, even if the imagery is distressing, I think many people who have been on the receiving end can relate to the sentiment. Even for Cersei fire is a holy thing, no matter who she is or why it’s happening. The Cersei who comes out of AFFC/ADWD after it is a Cersei reborn and her relationship with gender and the world around her say a much greater deal about who she is becoming than the fire itself.
Overall fire demonstrably isn’t evil. Fire strips bare and reveals what was already there.
Anyway I could go on and on about this because I’ve actually been reading into the role fire plays a lot in the books and there’s a lot there about fire and wood and trees and I really wish the conversations about fire in this fandom didn’t get wrapped up in Dany Bad so often.
Sorry for using your inbox to rant about this!! I just really don’t know if any of this makes sense or would stand on its own as meta 🤣
I LOVE THIS!! Thank you for sharing this because it's perfect!!! I adore this breakdown!
So I have a kinda sad kinda sweet headcanon for Peli. Given how good she is with Grogu and how she advises Din, she probably has experience parenting herself. I think she had a son who fought and died in the rebellion and Din reminds her a lot of him. He would even be around dins age if he was still alive. This is why she’s taken so strongly to Din and tends to mother him a bit. Especially fixing up the ship together because that was something she used to always do with her son.