Game of Thrones

Dany had no qualms about seeing her brother killed with molten gold
She had no qualms in setting the Warlock on fire or locking the trader in his empty vault to die
She had no qualms in setting the owner of the Unsullied alight
She had no qualms in ordering the deaths of the Masters in Essos
She had no issues with burning the Tarlys

We have seen Dany act badly many, many, many times

Was her behaviour extreme in this week's episode? For sure.

Was it completely out of character? Not in the slightest. She has used fire to get her way in the past. She took it too far - but she was following her instincts

I don’t have any issue with Daenerys turning out to be the mad queen, if this was the intention. But the execution of it was terrible. The disintegration of her character should have been something that happened over multiple seasons, not in 3 episodes. Her sudden turn into some murderous villain who has no qualms about slaughtering innocent civilians wasn’t in any way believable. 

But her claim - which has always been her overriding obsession - has been fatally undermined by the revelation, now leaked by all of those she trusted, including Snow himself, of Jon Snow's superior claim. She has been treated coldly since crossing the sea and now friends are dead, her lover and surviving advisors have betrayed her. It was hinted in last week's episode that she was prepared to massacre civilians but blame Cersei (reminding me of Western interventions in Middle East, or to GRR Martin's generation Vietnam. Dany loves the smell of napalm in the morning. ) and that was before she knew Snow's claim had been leaked. In her firebombing she nearly killed Jon Snow too - maybe she wanted to.

Dany was raised to believe in her superiority, in her right to rule -“I am your Queen!”, “You forget yourself!”, “Bend the knee!” - and the brown populations she dealt with in the past bent the knee after they saw what she could do with her weapons.

Now she has no legitimate right to rule her self-interest kicks in and her fallback behaviour of demanding turns to violence.

If this season is about anything it’s about how the characters choices battle their true natures. Dany wants to break chains, but also wants to rule. Tyrion wants to support a political system that may break the wheel, but loves his brother. Jaime wants to try an ordinary, decent life, but he loves Cersei. Jon wants to support his Queen, but he can’t support her ethics.

No, she couldn't have stopped her brother's murder. She simply wasn't in that powerful a position at the time. Her brother was doomed to die because his arrogance/entitlement prevented him adapting to the local politics of the situation - even had she managed to persuade Drogo not to kill him then and there he'd have died ten times over since then. And then Drogo died because of his own arrogance and overconfidence.

Adapt or die; simply flying in and declaring yourself ruler is pointless if you don't successfully navigate the local politics; people are fickle; PR is really important; it doesn't matter how powerful your weapons are if they're not the right tools for the job - these have been the lessons of Dany's life.

Her failing to learn those lessons makes for an interesting tragedy. The writers just haven't done enough character work with Dany this season to achieve that. I am not even sure that they tried to - the goal seems to have been to make her an outright villain who we are happy to see die, like Joffrey, rather than a character whose downfall the audience regrets.

Oh, and Dany's belief in her right to rule isn't about her place in the line of succession, it's about the fact that she is the Mother of Dragons! That she resurrected the magical Royal emblem of her whole house, the reason that her ancestors became Kings, hundreds of years after it was believed to be extinct, like her semi-mythical ancestor did. Famously the only people who have managed to control dragons in the hundreds of years prior to their extinction were the royal family. The fact that Jon managed to fly on a dragon should have been absolutely mind-blowing to her, it should have been a major revelation - prompting wonder, terror and soul-searching. Not just for her, but for the other characters too. 

The show treated it just like riding a horse. I am honestly not even sure why they bothered spending all that money on the CGI, they've treated it with so little importance.

Even Jon Snow has executed people who have betrayed him. All of the characters have been ruthless to varying degrees. This is Game of Thrones! But that doesn’t mean that her sudden switch to crazy mad queen who’s just gonna torch hundreds of thousands of innocents for the heck of it makes any sense. The writers have said that it wasn’t a pre-conceived move and that Daenerys snapped when she saw the Red Keep, but in which case why didn’t she just fly straight there and take out Cersei. And if it really is as simple as “well she’s mad because she’s a Targaryen and that’s why she did it” then what really has been the point! 

Also, it's not that Daenerys devolving into a Mad Queen couldn't have worked as a plot, it's that the execution of it was totally inept.

It would actually be way more believable based on her experiences and previous actions if Arya rather than Daenerys snapped and killed lots of innocent people.

And Daenerys's father, the Mad King, only wanted to burn down the capital when he was under seige and about to lose everything. Now that's crazy but you can see how those extreme circumstances could push a vulnerable mind over the edge. Daenerys burns down the capital HAVING WON. So what she did is several gradations crazier than the exemplar for madness in the story, having previously acted in her rational self-interest.

Be funny if after eight series and all that fire she has melted the iron throne

Derek Smalls predicted the ending of GoT all those years ago

Well that was dissatisfying. Now to go back and read what you all think.

If Bran can mind f@?# ravens, horses and a dire wolf what is to stop him controlling a dragon 

tbf, it was a bit more than masonry ... I've seen the 5 of this season in rather quick succession which probably isn't helpful. At times I though the Long Night was a remake of John Wayne's Alamo film from the 1960s but maybe a chaps-together Last Stand trope is just that. This latest one - the 5th; The Bells - felt like a comment piece on everything from Fallujah to Aleppo, or was it the concrete dust winter of Manhattan on 9/11

An awful lot to digest. Not sure how much further it's possible to take this 2D brutalism - at least without a virtual reality headset.