Daenerys Targaryen: Her Story and the Quiz Answers That Point to Her

If the Game of Thrones character quiz named Daenerys Targaryen, she got more of your answers than any other character, or tied for the most. This page follows her through HBO's series, scene by scene with season and episode, then looks at what the Daenerys answers have in common, where they part from the two characters whose answers read closest to hers, and how much a result like this can tell you.

Spoilers for every season of HBO's Game of Thrones, the finale included.

Who Daenerys is

Emilia Clarke plays Daenerys Targaryen in HBO's series. In George R. R. Martin's novels, which the series adapts, she is the posthumous daughter of King Aerys II Targaryen (Wikipedia). She starts the story in Pentos with nothing of her own. Her brother Viserys, an exiled prince plotting to win back their father's throne from King Robert Baratheon, brokers her marriage to the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo. Among her wedding gifts are three petrified dragon eggs from Magister Illyrio Mopatis, who helped arrange the match ("Winter Is Coming," season 1, episode 1).

From there the series gives her a long rise and a hard fall. She frees the slaves of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen, struggles to rule the last of them, crosses to Westeros with an army and dragons, and ends by burning the capital she came to take. The scenes below trace that path, each linked to the episode's article.

How she changes, scene by scene

From bride to khaleesi

The first season turns her from a bargaining piece into someone the Dothraki follow. In "A Golden Crown" (season 1, episode 6), Viserys resents her growing popularity among them. When he drunkenly threatens her at swordpoint, Drogo gives him the "golden crown" he wants by pouring molten gold on his head. She watches and coldly remarks, "He was no dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon."

In the season finale she learns that a spell cast by Mirri Maz Duur killed her unborn son. Drogo is alive but catatonic, and Mirri says she did this to avenge the destruction of her village and her people. Daenerys smothers Drogo with a pillow, has Mirri tied to his funeral pyre with the dragon eggs on top, declares herself queen of a new khalasar and steps into the fire. At daybreak her remaining followers find her unharmed in the ashes, carrying three dragon hatchlings, and they bow ("Fire and Blood," season 1, episode 10).

Breaker of chains

Season 3 gives her an army and a cause. In Astapor she trades one of her dragons to the slaver Kraznys for the Unsullied, then reveals she has understood every insult he made in Valyrian. She orders her new army to kill the slavers and free every slave, has the dragon kill Kraznys, and offers the Unsullied the choice to leave or to stay with her as free men. None of them leave ("And Now His Watch Is Ended," season 3, episode 4). Outside Yunkai she tells the freed slaves that freedom is their birthright and that they must fight to keep it. They hail her as mhysa, Old Ghiscari for "mother," and she is lifted up among them ("Mhysa," season 3, episode 10).

Ruling Meereen

Taking a city turns out to be the easier part. When a slave uprising, armed by Grey Worm and the Unsullied, leaves her in control of Meereen, Ser Barristan Selmy suggests mercy. She orders 163 masters crucified as justice for the 163 slave children crucified along the road to the city ("Oathkeeper," season 4, episode 4). By the season finale the costs are arriving at her throne. A former slave asks to be sold back, because his life as a slave was safer than his life as a freedman, and a father brings the charred bones of his three-year-old daughter, killed by Drogon. With Drogon still gone, a guilt-ridden Daenerys chains her other two dragons in the catacombs ("The Children," season 4, episode 10).

Season 5 tests her rules on her own side. When Mossador, a freedman on her council, kills a captured Son of the Harpy before the trial, she has him executed in public, and the execution sets off a riot between freedmen and masters ("The House of Black and White," season 5, episode 2). Later, after Tyrion persuades her to let him advise her, he warns that she will not take the Iron Throne without a powerful Westerosi house behind her. She compares the rise and fall of the great houses to spokes on a wheel and says she will "break the wheel" ("Hardhome," season 5, episode 8).

The road west

Brought before the gathered khals in the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen to hear her fate, she tells them they lack the ambition to lead the Dothraki and that she will lead them instead. When they threaten her, she tips three braziers onto the straw floor and the khals burn. She walks out of the temple naked but unburned, and the Dothraki bow down to her ("Book of the Stranger," season 6, episode 4).

In Westeros her priorities run straight into Jon Snow's. At Dragonstone she asks him to bend the knee. He refuses, insisting they have a bigger problem in the White Walkers, and she does not believe him, saying she wants to take the Iron Throne before considering other threats ("The Queen's Justice," season 7, episode 3). After the battle on the Roseroad, Randyll Tarly and his son Dickon refuse to swear fealty to her, and she has Drogon burn them despite Tyrion's protests ("Eastwatch," season 7, episode 5).

Then she changes course. Rejecting Tyrion's advice to "do nothing," she flies her dragons north to help Jon's party beyond the Wall, where the Night King kills Viserion. Once Jon is back at Eastwatch, she accepts the loss as the cost of learning the truth and vows to fight the Night King with him, and he calls her "my Queen" ("Beyond the Wall," season 7, episode 6).

The end

In "The Bells" (season 8, episode 5), Tyrion tells her about Varys's plot and she has Drogon burn Varys alive. Tyrion then implores her to spare the commoners of King's Landing if the city's bells ring in surrender, and she appears to accept. The Lannister forces drop their weapons and the bells ring. From Drogon's back, she burns the city anyway.

In the finale she tells the Unsullied and Dothraki that they "liberated" the people of King's Landing and that she will soon "liberate" the entire world. Tyrion resigns as her Hand in protest, and she has him arrested for treason. In the destroyed throne room she blames Cersei for the deaths of the city's civilians, refuses to forgive Tyrion or the Lannister prisoners, and tells Jon that their executions, and a continued campaign of "liberation," are necessary to establish her vision of a good world. Unable to talk her out of it, Jon stabs her as they kiss, and Drogon melts the Iron Throne before carrying her body away to the east ("The Iron Throne," season 8, episode 6).

The turn was controversial. Wikipedia's article on the character reports that most critics found it rushed and therefore unearned. Whatever you make of the pacing, the scenes above set two things side by side from early on: a commitment to freeing people, and a readiness to meet resistance with overwhelming force. Astapor, the crucified masters, the khals and the Tarlys all come before King's Landing.

What the Daenerys answers have in common

Every question on the quiz offers one answer for each of the eight characters, so every question has a Daenerys answer. Read together, they draw a consistent picture, and it is narrower than the character.

A destination. Many of her answers look past the situation to what it is for. You show love "by including them in your vision, making them part of what you're building." You spend your one night before everything changes "alone with your vision, reminding yourself what all of this is for." What keeps you up is "whether the world you're trying to build is actually possible," and people follow you because "they believe in the future you're pointing at."

Authority in the open. Several answers lead by presence. Given command of people who do not trust you yet, you "command with a certainty that leaves no room for doubt." In a negotiation you make it "clear that the alternative to agreement is not appealing." In a room where everyone is performing, you "outperform all of them without appearing to try." Told you have no idea how the real world works, you look at the speaker "long enough that they feel the weight of what they just said."

The goal outranks the case in front of you. When three of your people argue, you "remind them of the larger goal and make the disagreement feel small by comparison." The full version makes this sharper. You protect someone vulnerable "if their protection serves a larger purpose." Offered a legend at the price of one serious moral compromise, you take it, "because the legend you build will do more good than the compromise does harm." Your legacy centers on "what you built and what you broke in order to build it."

Setbacks as fuel. A catastrophic mistake is carried "as fuel, building harder and faster because failure is no longer an option." The song about your life is about "the fire that wouldn't go out," and you have survived because "you made yourself too powerful to destroy." When your greatest enemy offers what you want at the price of your principles, you refuse "and get there another way, on your own terms."

Two answers touch the cost of all that certainty. Given advice you do not want to hear, you hear it out, "though you feel the resistance after being so certain for so long." And the thing people misread about you is that "they think the conviction is arrogance." Certainty is also the risk named in the description the quiz shows with a Daenerys result.

What the answers leave out is the cause. None of them mentions slavery, chains or freedom, the subject of her scenes in Astapor and outside Yunkai. The quiz draws her through vision, command and resilience, which fits the queen of the later seasons at least as well as the young one. And because the starkest trade-offs (protection with a condition, the legend bought with a compromise, the legacy of what was broken) appear only in the full version, the short version's Daenerys leans more on vision and presence than on hard bargains.

Where Daenerys parts from Cersei and Jon

Reading the options side by side, the two characters whose answers sit closest to hers are Cersei Lannister and Jon Snow. That is a judgment about wording, not a count of anyone's results. If one of them sits close behind Daenerys in the bars under your result, here is what separates them.

Daenerys and Cersei

Both put power at the center. On the question about taking command, Cersei's answer is to "establish dominance early, because power is a story and the first chapter matters most," a close cousin of Daenerys's certainty. Offered the legend at a moral price, they are the only two who take it, and Cersei's version is to take it "and live with it the way you live with everything hard." Asked for a supernatural advantage, Daenerys wants dragons and Cersei wants "perfect knowledge of every power structure and how each player within it can be moved."

They part on who the power is for and how openly it is used. Cersei's answers keep it close and out of sight. Her response to unwelcome advice is to "appear to consider it while privately dismissing it." She smiles at an insult "because it's useful when people believe that about you," and after a disaster, "you don't let people see the weight of it." Her loyalty runs to a circle of people. Love means placing them "above calculation," and her legacy is "the empire of loyalty you constructed around the people you loved." Daenerys's answers point at a future, and they protect a plan more than a circle. The show stages a version of the difference at the Dragonpit, where Cersei agrees to send her entire army north to fight the White Walkers. Later, as Jaime prepares to mobilize the army, she reveals that she lied and will not join Daenerys and Jon's cause ("The Dragon and the Wolf," season 7, episode 7). Daenerys had flown north and lost a dragon to the Night King the episode before.

Daenerys and Jon

Jon is the other leader on the quiz whose answers run on conviction. On the question about your greatest enemy's offer, the Jon, Daenerys and Ned answers all begin with "Refuse," so only the reason tells them apart. Jon refuses because "the version of you that accepts isn't the version that deserves it." Daenerys refuses so she can "get there another way, on your own terms."

The difference is where they look. Jon's answers face the people in front of him, and Daenerys's face the place she is taking them. He earns command "the hard way, leading from the front and letting results make the case," while she commands with certainty. He spends that night "with the people who matter most," and she spends it alone with her vision. He lies awake over "whether the people depending on you are safe," she over whether her world is possible. He protects someone who can give nothing back because "there's no other option you can live with," and her protection comes with a condition. He passes on the legend, and his legacy is "what you protected and who you carried" where hers is what she built and broke. The show puts the two side by side at Dragonstone, where she wants the Iron Throne first and he insists the White Walkers are the bigger problem ("The Queen's Justice," season 7, episode 3). Three episodes later she flies north to help him.

Reading your result

The bars under your result show the whole spread. A narrow lead is fragile, since changing an answer or two could hand the result to whoever sits second or produce a tie, and a tie names every tied character instead of picking one. A wide lead means the Daenerys answer kept appealing to you across very different questions, from negotiations to how you show love. The short and full versions can name different characters for the same person, so taking the other length is a fair check. The figures for how many answers it takes and how easily a result moves are the same for every character, so they are on the quiz page under Which answers move the result, worked out from the quiz's questions each time the site is built.

What it means to answer like Daenerys

Held lightly, it means that on these questions you kept choosing the answer that looks past the moment to what it is for, and that puts you out front on the way there. That can describe someone who starts things, makes the case for them and holds a group to a goal. On the quiz's own terms it is also the answer that trades the case in front of you for the plan, and the show spends the rest of her story on what that trade can cost. The advisor question is the one to come back to. The Daenerys answer hears the advice out but feels "the resistance after being so certain for so long," and her story turns, in large part, on who was still able to tell her no. The article on four Game of Thrones leadership styles follows that thread through her advisers.

None of this is a diagnosis. A character quiz records which descriptions you picked on one day, and an answer can describe the person you would like to be as easily as the person you are. It cannot tell you whether you lead like this, or whether people would follow you if you did.

If Daenerys does not fit

Look at the second bar. If Jon or Cersei sits close behind, the comparisons above show which of your answers could have gone either way. Answers about vision and command are easy to pick for the person you would like to be, so retaking the quiz with the answer you would actually give, rather than the one that sounds best, is a fair test. And if the description sounds exactly like you, that deserves a second look too. The article on why personality test results feel accurate explains why a sketch like this can feel personal to almost anyone who reads it.