Did anyone else see Mad Queen Daenerys and immediately think of Adrian Veidt? probably not but hear me out
- show!Dany and both versions of Adrian are blonde, blue-eyed, and famously beautiful
- dark family legacy (Mad King and movie!Adrian's semi-canon Nazi parents backstory)
- tries to rise above family legacy through social action (abolishing slavery and becoming a superhero/billionaire philanthropist)
- grows disillusioned and decides that the only way to make people do what they want is mass murder
- destroys city with giant monster
- expects people closest to them to continue supporting them after all the destruction
This is how I know that the kind of story they probably thought they were telling with s8 Dany could maybe work with like even a second’s worth of thought and effort put into it, I’ve seen it done well with Adrian (in two mediums where he’s played in vastly different ways). It’s not what I would’ve ever wanted for this character, but as a story arc it CAN work in isolation.
But it definitely couldn’t have worked in the time they allotted, and certainly not with the same character they spent 7.5 seasons framing as a straightforward Strong Heroine with what appeared (to me and most of the audience, based on the response this ending has gotten) to be fully unironic messianic overtones and pushing as the closest this show had to a real protagonist (which is decidedly NOT what was done with Adrian, nor with other characters I keep seeing Dany compared to like Morgana and Azula)
and that’s without getting into the ableism of turning Dany into a “Mad Queen” via her Suddenly Snapping