#i'm sorry to start dany discoursing again i'm clearing out my asks

[atopvisenyashill]

since falling into my hotd brainrot ive been reminded of one of my gripes which is this misunderstanding that daenerys lived in "abject poverty" (to use the language from an ask you got not that long ago) before her introduction and this is just... not true?

That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever."

people living in abject poverty don't have access to servants or their own rooms. does this mean their time here would equal the upbringing viserys and daenerys would have had in the red keep? absolutely not. for one thing, daenerys wasn't tutored by a maester or septa which is pretty standard for most noble children of a similar standing, let alone a princess.

They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper's hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one.

they would have needed coin for those ships.

At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother's crown had gone. 

what happened with ser willem was absolutely terrible but this idea that daenerys and viserys were living on the streets is inaccurate when their targaryen name is what allowed them to live with the likes of magisters and merchant princes. nor was this something that happened overnight, as indicated by the "years past". they also had "treasures" (meaning jewels) which again no person living in abject poverty would have. those treasures were a lifeline for them but it was a lifeline that a character like nettles never has.

Her brother Viserys had once feasted the captains of the Golden Company, in hopes they might take up his cause. They ate his food and heard his pleas and laughed at him. Dany had only been a little girl, but she remembered. "I have sellswords too."

people living in abject poverty don't feast captains.

it just irks me because when you compare it to the details of nettles' life, it feels wrong to me to believe that both these girls lived in abject poverty. that was nettles. that being said though, that doesn't mean daenerys had an easy time living in exile with viserys. he was a monster to her and she deserves sympathy for that. but while daenerys and nettles' upbringings were similarly tragic (orphaned etc), they were still worlds apart in their differing levels of privilege. it also irks me when they try to use this to compare daenerys to sansa (funny how its often just sansa and not the other starks)

yeah those are all definitely good points. as you say, I don't want to discount that Daenerys had an incredibly stressful childhood (to say the least), much more stressful than The Average Noble by far because she and viserys were actively thinking about and worrying over where their next meal will come from, how to keep a roof over their heads, and they aren't learning jack shit because they don't have a maester, a guardian, a parent, or a single person in all of Essos looking out for them. but it's also like. first of all, we have two canon characters that actually do experience real poverty, the first being davos though he doesn't experience it on page and the second being arya - she's actively avoiding capitalizing on the stark name so she's actually living the life someone who is born poor would live.

and one thing about dany's life - which i've touched on before re: noble girls getting sold in marriages in what a previous anon referred to as slavery - but her last name and the class she was born into if not the class she lived in cannot be disentangled from the life she lived. i pointed it out there that for example, if poor jeyne poole found some dragon eggs in the crypts, used ramsay's dead body to hatch them, and started burning shit down, she's just not amassing the sort of following dany would because she doesn't have the name. and you can see that directly with Nettles, as you point out - despite everyone seeing clearly that Nettles manages to claim Sheepstealer, has a strong bond with her dragon, because she's lowborn and Not White (and not even an acceptable Not White, like dornish, but some ~random brown girl~ from nowhere with no claim to any specific heritage in canon) she's still seen as a temptress, a whore, a witch, all because she claimed a dragon and had some old married dude following her around. dany and viserys regularly trade away their jewels, hype up their titles and heritage, in an attempt to gain basic necessities and this is certainly a marked difference from the way other nobles have lived and important but arya, gendry, hot pie, lommy - they don't get that. lommy just gets killed. and he's not even running his mouth the way viserys is in vaes dothrak. he's just a dumb kid whose leg is broken and asks to be carried and he's murdered for it. hot pie is a normal ass kid who has to learn how to defend himself because it's literally life or death while dany regularly has some sort of guard protecting her.

and again - it's not to say dany doesn't experience a lot of trauma and instability that other nobles will never face that gives her an understanding of violence and war that others don't have. but just like you can't say she was truly "sold" as a slave to drogo because her class is tied to the concept of these nobly born child brides, it's not exactly true that she lives in abject poverty either. it's something a lot more complex than that.

#i'm sorry to start dany discoursing again i'm clearing out my asks #anti daenerys targaryen #i was gonna link to that child bride post but i'm lazy. if u kno u kno alsdkjf #asks #anons