but from dany's perspective mirri was also a woman whose village had been ravaged and who had been raped multiple times, and she still chose to burn her alive as a blood sacrifice. what's so hard to understand here?
can you actually show she intended to kill the baby? she told no one to enter the tent, but jorah carried dany in anyway.
Neither Daenerys nor MMD are wholly good or evil. They're people, both of whom do/did good and ill.
What MMD did to Daenerys' child was unjustifiable — and yes, we can safely conclude she consciously killed the baby, in
both book and show.
In the show, when MMD is describing to Daenerys the horror that was her stillborn child, she does so
tauntingly. She visibly drops her facade.
From the very beginning, MMD knows the price of the "life" Daenerys pleads her to restore to Drogo. It wasn't the horse; it was the child. And the "life" was a vegetative state. Just watch:
And read:
A Game of Thrones said:
Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. "Leave us. I would speak with this maegi alone." Mormont and the Dothraki withdrew. "You knew," Dany said when they were gone. She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength. "You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay it."
"It was wrong of them to burn my temple," the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. "That angered the Great Shepherd."
"This was no god's work," Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. "You cheated me. You murdered my child within me."
"The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust."
"I spoke for you," she said, anguished. "I saved you."
"Saved me?" The Lhazareen woman spat. "Three riders had taken me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god's house burn, where I had healed good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved."
"Your life."
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. "Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone."
A Game of Thrones said:
Dany turned to the godswife. "You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse."
"No," Mirri Maz Duur said. "That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price."
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. "The price was paid," Dany said. "The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid." She rose from her cushions. "Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son's life."
MMD made a decision rooted in spite and prophecy to kill Daenerys' child, under the supposition that it was the prophesied Stallion that Mounts the World. As we know, prophecy is unreliable and self-fulfilling in Martin's world. Through murdering the innocent Rhaego, she ensured the birth of the real Stallion: Daenerys and her dragons.
MMD wasn't an innocent when she was burned. She was a victim who lashed out and herself killed an innocent child. That's the tragedy of her character.
As Stannis says, a good act doesn't wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. That's true for both MMD and Daenerys. Yes, Daenerys cruelly executed her, but her child had been murdered — there was no madness there. That doesn't change the fact that Daenerys' characterization has consistently been that of a savior, a champion of the downtrodden, the Breaker of Chains.
Her mass genocide of King's Landing — rather than a targeted killing of Cersei — is unjustifiable and unseeded characterization. The latter could still have been somewhat morally ambiguous if it was done after the surrender, without descending into character assassination. Daenerys is by no means going to become a "Mad Queen" in the books.
