Daenerys then took her forces south to King’s Landing. Riding the
fearsome Drogon, the Mother of Dragons blasted the city’s battlements and
terrified the City Watch and Golden Company mercenaries. The city’s
defensive forces surrendered, and Daenerys’s soldiers seized control of the
capital. Daenerys took her rightful place on the Iron Throne with Tyrion
Lannister as her loyal and trusted Hand.
In the ensuing days, Daenerys I Targaryen, First of Her Name, ordered
Cersei Lannister executed for treason at the ruins of the Sept of Baelor.
Cersei’s punishment took place at the same spot where Ned Stark had been
unjustly killed many years before. The surviving Starks bore witness to her
fate. Jaime Lannister, given his thorny history of heroism and brutality, was
sentenced to serve the remainder of his days in the Night’s Watch. Sansa
Stark was granted permission to rule the North as an independent kingdom.
As for Jon Snow, his Targaryen ancestry was kept a closely guarded
secret for the good of the realm. Daenerys formally legitimized him as Jon
Stark, and they were married in a beautiful ceremony by the sea.
While she never did produce children (of the human kind, anyway),
Daenerys peacefully ruled Westeros for decades with her loyal and
courageous husband by her side.
If only

For seven seasons, Daenerys seemed destined for that sort of hero’s-journey
ending. It’s the linear road a typical fantasy story would take. But since
Game of Thrones was anything but typical, Daenerys on the Iron Throne
was not meant to be. Martin often let readers see hopeful glimpses of a safe
and comforting path ahead for his characters, then he’d veer in an
unexpected direction—somewhere darker, more perilous, and more aligned
with the complexities of human nature. As Ramsay Bolton put it: “If you
think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”

DAN WEISS (showrunner): We didn’t know the details until after the third
season, but Dany’s trajectory was implicit in the first season. You’re so
rooting for her because she’s in this horrible position. But there are a
million different ways Emilia could have played watching her brother
die, and she played it with a stone-cold-killer-like lack of affect. She has
dark currents running through her. Which makes sense when Viserys,
the only person she knew growing up, was a sociopath.

In the first-season finale, Daenerys pledged to the Dothraki, “I am the
dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you that those who would harm you will
die screaming.”
In season two, Daenerys warned the leaders of Qarth: “When my dragons
are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those
who have wronged me. We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the
ground.”

A couple of seasons later, Daenerys crucified 163 slave masters in
retaliation for their doing the same to children. One of the masters later
claimed his father was a good man who fought against slavery and didn’t
deserve his fate. Similarly, after Ser Barristan was killed by the terror group
Sons of the Harpy, Daenerys burned a master alive to send a message. She
didn’t know if the man was guilty or innocent, and she didn’t much care.
In season six, Daenerys promised her Dothraki followers, echoing Khal
Drogo, that they would “kill [her] enemies in their iron suits and tear down
their stone houses.”
And in the penultimate season, she ignored Tyrion’s pleas and had
Drogon torch Samwell Tarly’s father, Randyll, and brother, Dickon, after
they fought for the Lannister armies and refused to bend the knee.

KIT HARINGTON (Jon Snow): She did some terrible things. She crucified
people. She burned people alive. This had been building. So we had to
say to the audience, “You’re in denial about this woman as well. You’re
culpable, you cheered her on. You knew there was something wrong.”

BRYAN COGMAN: There’s a dangerous tendency right now to make art
and popular culture feel safe for everybody. I don’t believe in that. This
is the kind of story that’s meant to unsettle you and challenge you and
make you think and question. I think that’s what George’s intent was
with A Song of Ice and Fire, and David and Dan wanted to do that with
the series—make the audience never rest easy

ALEX GRAVES (director): I actually did not know we were telling the story
of Daenerys going the way of her ancestors. I thought we were telling
the story of her not doing that

Whereas Jon Snow
always did the right thing, often foolishly and regardless of consequence.

SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark): Yeah, not that impressed. Sansa had found
her safe place and wouldn’t let anyone get near it. She really didn’t
appreciate someone coming into her home again, her happy place, the
one place she really cares about, and basically taking over and taking
Jon away from the North. Despite Sansa feeling capable of ruling the
North, she knew that she and Jon would do it much better together
than on her own. So it’s very much a protective thing of Jon and the
North, especially considering the Targaryen track record—they’re not
particularly sane people. And there was a complete frustration that Jon
initially wouldn’t trust Sansa with the North at all, but he’d trust this
stranger whose ancestor happened to be the Mad Kin

DAN WEISS (showrunner): Tyrion’s biggest mistake was finally daring to
believe in somebody. His mistake is something we all hope for. To find
somebody we trust to lead us.

Committing mass murder to punish a defiant enemy hiding in a castle has
a history in the Targaryen family. When Aegon the Conqueror invaded
Westeros, King Harren the Black refused to bend the knee and took refuge
with his sons, soldiers, and servants inside his massive castle compound of
Harrenhal. (“I built in stone,” Harren declared. “Stone does not burn.”) The
Targaryen used his dragon, Balerion the Black Dread, to blast Harren’s five
towers with so much heat that it turned the castle’s impenetrable walls into
an oven that roasted everybody inside. “The riverlords outside the castle
walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night,
like five great candles,” Martin wrote in Fire & Blood. “And like candles,
they began to twist and melt as runnels of molten stone ran down their
sides.”
Aegon didn’t just end House Harren, but set an example. The lords of
Westeros quickly fell into line and swore fealty to Aegon. With Harrenhal
destroyed, Aegon built a new city by the sea to serve as the realm’s seat of
power. The city was named King’s Landing.