Daenerys Targaryen is the current queen of Meereen, the daughter of the Targaryen king who died during Robert’s Rebellion, and the widow of Dothraki horse lord Khal Drago. Daenerys has a long list of honorifics, including “Mother of Dragons” and “Breaker of Shackles” (42). The long string of honorifics paper over how torn she is among the competing interests and loyalties that flow from those roles. In the novel, Daenerys goes from trying to live up to her identity as the queen in Meereen and breaker of shackles to owning her Targaryen heritage.

Daenerys is one of the central point-of-view characters, so Martin relies on internal monologues to give the reader insight into what drives Daenerys. Daenerys is driven by her desire to redeem the excesses of her Targaryen forebearers and rulers in Essos by becoming a ruler who looks out for the common people—a desire borne of her childhood spent in exile, relative poverty, and under the oppressive demands of her abusive brother. Although she is a queen, she understands her power to be a populist one earned through the act of freeing the enslaved people around Slaver’s Bay. In her own mind, she is a noble, merciful queen who has made life better for the formerly enslaved.