Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been forced to backtrack on her pick for who should rule the fictional land of Westeros in the HBO series “Game of Thrones” and abandon dragon queen and personal heroine, Daenerys Targaryen.
Weeks ago, in an essay for The Cut, Warren, crusader for even fictional women’s rights, tried to appeal to the masses and raise her poll numbers by reviewing the season premiere of “Game of Thrones” with an eye to which character she believed would ultimately end up winning the contest for the show’s Iron Throne.
Warren said she admired Daenerys for her commitment to “freeing” communities and couldn’t resist the urge to siphon off some of Daenerys’ girl power.
“Daenerys ‘Stormborn’ Targaryen has been my favorite from the first moment she walked through fire,” Warren said. “Dany didn’t grow up in the lavish palace walls of the Red Keep. She was born during the chaos of her father’s overthrow.”
“When we meet Dany in Season 1, she’s a teenager sold off by her abusive elder brother to beefcake warlord Khal Drogo in order to further his political ambitions,” she added. “Dany might be a princess by birth, but she wasn’t dealt an easy hand.”
“And as much as Dany wants to take on her family’s enemies and take back the Iron Throne, she knows that she must first fight the army of the dead that threatens all mankind. This is a revolutionary idea, in Westeros or anywhere else. A queen who declares that she doesn’t serve the interests of the rich and powerful? A ruler who doesn’t want to control the political system but to break the system as it is known? It’s no wonder that the people she meets in Westeros are skeptical. Skeptical, because they’ve seen another kind of woman on the Iron Throne: the villain we love to hate, Queen Cersei of Casterly Rock,” she concluded.
Warren also took the opportunity to strike out at her opponents — and Daenerys’ — by labeling Daenerys’ main competition for the Iron Throne, Cersei Lannister, as the candidate of big banks.
“Rather than earn her army, Cersei’s pays for it. She buys 20,000 Golden Company mercenaries — though they arrive without their legendary elephants — with funds from the Iron Bank,” Warren wrote. “Cersei’s betting on the strength of the bank to get her through the biggest fight of her life. It never crosses her mind that the bank could fail, or betray her.”
Unfortunately for Warren, Daenerys’ actions, “freeing” slaves and conquering foreign lands, were laid bare as the precursor to the mass murder of women and children in King’s Landing, and her finally revealed desire for world domination. Daenerys turned out to be a murderous tyrant, and a look back at her efforts to “liberate” other cities, as told through a different character in the series finale, suddenly seem indicative of a very violent personality.
When NBC went back to Warren to gauge her feelings on the change, Warren was suddenly less excited to be Team Dany.
“Oh, I am so blue about Daenerys,” Warren told reporters at a campaign event. “You know, what can I say? She’s not the best choice now and she’s — it’s gonna be bad tonight. I’m trying to figure out who is gonna be on the Iron Throne, but it sure as heck can’t be Daenerys.”
Tough break. Not as tough as that 4% popularity in early primary states, but tough.