06x07, 'The Broken Man'
The last few weeks have given Daenerys too much time to reflect.
She avoids Daario, who continues to pester shamelessly, like an irritating gnat. Another thing she hasn't noticed before.
So many things she's been wilfully blind to.
Immersing herself in the Dothraki culture without Jorah there to protect her has been an unpleasant experience.
She's been forced to reflect on all of her experiences, examining them like a maester might inspect a corpse in the aftermath of a grotesque death.
Drogo was once considered the greatest khal of the age. How many defenceless people had he driven into slavery, women raped, children killed?
How much had she hurt in the early days of their marriage? How much had it hurt to ride, how many silent tears had spilled as he fucked her tense body? The same torture, over and over.
Viserys had sold her to be a broodmare, to be mounted whenever her husband pleased.
She'd been raped.
Raped.
It's an ugly word. A word she has refused for so long to endorse because it couldn't be true. The dragon's daughter couldn't be so downtrodden.
But what else could it be?
People learn to love their chains.
Is that what had happened to her? Had she fallen in love with Drogo in an attempt to save herself?
It's an uncomfortable thought.
Was any of it real?
If Missandei or any one of her female subjects had confessed such truths she would have been horrified. Done anything in her power to make them see it for what it was.
She has been blinded by nostalgia for so long. For the sake of her son's memory. For the safety she had once known, for a brief moment in time.
Drogo had been hard and cruel at the beginning. He hadn't spoken to her during the first weeks, ignoring her presence entirely until it was time to fuck. Jorah had been her only solace, a fellow exile in a world he was forced to bend to.
The change in her relationship with Drogo had left her awash with relief.
Had she mixed up relief and love? She had never had a model to compare it to.
It's an unsettling thought. But it feels like a truth at last, after years living beneath a film of scum.
She hadn't loved Drogo.
Raped, belittled, viewed only as a trophy. How many times had he laughed at her fire, attributing it to his son?
She wasn't a dragon in his eyes.
She is blood of the dragon. The last dragon.
She will take the Dothraki where they have never been before, teach them ways they never knew of.
Ironically, despite what he did, Jorah's friendship was the only real thing she has from that time.
She prays that he will find the elusive cure to the greyscale so that one day she can tell him that.
That she forgives him for a past he can't change. That she wants them to change the future together.