Season 6 Teaser Analysis: the ‘Queen of Nothing’ needs to rediscover her roots
By Ani Bundel
The uproar generated last Friday when we got three short teasers for Game of Thrones Season 6, each focused on a different House, only serves to show just home much excitement there is for the upcoming year, our first with little to no spoilers to go on. (Well, no spoilers from the books, anyway.) If the trailers are any indication, things are going to get worse for these powerful Houses of Westeros.
So let us break this down. We can’t identify who’s talking in this voiceover, which leads us to believe these lines are delivered by one of the new actors cast this season as Dothraki khals. Here’s what the mystery person says:
"Yer vost ak. Yornmaraka ye sonji ri. Khaleesi vosi.You are nobody. The Millionth of Your Name. Queen of Nothing."
This is the harshest of the three voiceovers, as the speaker mocks the titles we have heard Dany style herself with over the course of five seasons. Although she’s gone through a lot of changes, Dany has always believed, down in her heart, that she is a khaleesi. It was her first ruling title, and one she still bares proudly in her litany:
"Daenerys Targaryen, First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Princess of Dragonstone."
So to have a member of the Dothraki throw her own litany of titles back in her face like this, sneering that she is nobody, Queen of Nothing, and the millionth of her name, is a blow to her sense of self.
But is this statement so wrong? One of the reasons it feels crueler than, say, what Ramsay Bolton says in the Stark teaser is because it’s true in a way that Dany hasn’t been able to admit to herself. And this is where the books come in to play. Because although we saw Dany having trouble controlling Meereen last season, we rarely saw her grapple with threats to her identity. The closest the TV show came was when Daario in bed pointed out to Dany that a Dragon Queen with no dragons is not much of a Queen.
But it is more effective to show rather than tell, and in A Dance With Dragons we see how, after imprisoning two of her babies in the catacombs and losing Dragon to the skies, Dany has lost herself. She no longer seems to remember that her ultimate goal is to cross the Narrow Sea and conquer Westeros. She is caught up in the day-to-day politics of Meereen and the demands of its Great Masters, who try to control the city both by marrying her and undermining her rule through insurgency. When was the last time you saw one of her Dothraki bloodriders at her side? Now she is guarded by Unsullied, her ‘children” are the ex-slaves of Meereen, and her Dothraki horde dwindles away. In the books, the members of her khalasar pick fights and act out in this terrible stone city, wishing to get away, back to where they belong. On the TV show, they’ve just disappeared.
What is a khaleesi with no khalasar? What is a Mother of Dragons with no Dragons? What is a Targaryen with no people to bend the knee and fly the banners? She is no more Queen of the Andals than she is queen of her sandals. She has quite literally fallen as far as she can. She is Queen of Nothing.
But that’s the thing about falling as low as you can go: there’s nowhere to go but up. And we’ve seen Dany down at the bottom, on her knees, sold to a khal, raped on her wedding night. We’ve seen her determination, we’ve seen her rise. We’ve seen her earn the right to some of those titles before. There’s a steely determination is Dany’s eyes that has always been at the heart of who she is. The khal who speaks here may be correct today, but he better watch his back. Dany will rise again.