for the entire length of the series. Even when the writing was good and more closely based on Martin's story.

Dany always had a way to make us love her despite doing terrible things, or good things for ambiguous reasons. They showed us her humanity, her struggles, but also her gleeful lust for vengeance. The gleeful vengeance against Viserion was set up in such a way that we naturally thought it was justified. The gleeful vengeance against the slaveholders was easy to see as justified.

The "breaker of chains" stuff, freeing all the slaves, was masterfully executed to make us see her as a heroic figure, when in fact a big part of it was that she wanted to be adored as a messianic figure. It was right that she freed those slaves, but she wasn't doing it for them. And when she suddenly wasn't adored anymore we saw where her real priorities lied.

Also with surviving being burnt on the pyre. It revealed her as a supernatural being, and since we'd already been coaxed into seeing her as a sympathetic figure, we took it to mean that she was a supernatural force for "good." But one of the things that the story has always tried to tell us is that supernatural forces (like kings) aren't really best understood as "good" or "bad," really they're just more powerful (and sometimes mostly bad, lol).

I'm certainly not happy with how she turned out, just because I personally liked her so much. But I think that's the point! And I think a lot of people (not necessarily you; I just mean a lot of the people I've talked to and seen talk about it online) are misunderstanding their disappointment in the character as disappointment in the writing. (A lot of the writing now IS dumb, but this, I think, has been telegraphed for quite a long time.)

Also, the feminist in me cringes a bit that the "chosen" queen gets turned into a monstrous character, to destroy another monstrous female character, all to the apparent benefit of a sometimes feckless man whose main strategy in life is to know one's place. But at this point it's pretty clear that Jon's not gonna end this with much glory either. I think he just gives up on Westeros and goes north to reunite with Ghost, maybe serving as some kind of guard for Bran as he lives under a tree. Arya and Sansa seem to be the ones "winning" the game of thrones, though Sansa's just gonna be queen of the North (the only Kingdom left anymore) and Arya's just gonna live as an anonymous nobody.