Tyrion Was A Trash Hand to the Dragon Queen, Period

In Game of Thrones, it doesn't seem like Tyrion's (Peter Dinklage) intention to fail dastardly as Daenerys' hand. But fail he did.

Tyrion "Sure Monologues A Lot" Lannister has been a thorn to some sides since murdering Shae at the end of season four, a sweet, spirited character everyone nastily reduces to as "whore." Tyrion would continue referring her as the woman he loved without remembering telling her to leave (an overused "cruel to be kind" noble act typically reserved for male heroes) and then strangling her before letting her have a word in. A man this toxic shouldn't be a hand including to a woman like Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Targaryen. He sabotaged her from the day of his kidnapped arrival in Meereen.

Tyrion has to get rid of Jorah (Iain Gain) out of the way. Luckily for Tyrion, Daenarys still hasn't forgiven Jorah for betraying her.

It is easy for smooth talking Tyrion to swoop in and advise Daenerys to banish the treasonous Jorah again. However, Jorah saves her life and she flees with Drogon, leaving Meereen to the responsibility of Tyrion, Grey Worm, and Missandei. The plan is conceived by Daario Naharis and Tyrion feels more than capable with his buddy Varys. In his undeserved role as temporary ruler, he unchains the other two dragons, coaxes Grey Worm and Missandei to lie and drink wine, and issues a pact with the Good Masters. The latter falls through completely, upstarting a war on the vulnerable city. Daenerys returns just in time and finally obtains enough ships to return home. However, she has little to say on Tyrion's failure as temporary ruler. This alarming red flag swept beneath the rug of male writers/directors. They have forgotten that Daenerys can be quite outspoken and angry if things don't go accordingly for her.

An uncomfortable Tyrion doesn't like the way Daenerys uses her dragon children to intimidate people.

Tyrion really starts screwing up again once Daenerys, her dragons, advisors, and army reach Dragonstone, having advised her to allow Daario to keep the peace in Meereen (wonder how that's going). His plan to take Casterly Rock falls through because Cersei is one step ahead, bombing the Unsullied ships and clearing out the food. They also lose the added forces of Terrell's, Greyjoys, and Dorne, all wiped out and destroyed on the sea. This domino effect begins to take its toll on Daenerys who already has to deal with a visiting Jon Snow. Tyrion is supposedly happy to see Jorah again (a big side eye) and wished him a good journey with Jon and the Wildlings to the North. When they're in trouble, however, Tyrion advises Daenerys not to help them. Did he not inform her that she needed allies? How will she win any support if she left them to die? Plus, Jorah is there. Team Daenerys loves Jorah (save for the whole icky Jorah in love with Dany thing). Unfortunately, Daenerys loses a dragon on this rescue mission. So maybe Tyrion was right on another level.

Also apparently Tyrion is in love with Daenarys. Big gross.

The biggest ruin of his political approaches is Tyrion constantly believing in Cersei, a woman who has tried to have him killed since his birth. He actually, really, truly, genuinely believes that his nasty sister will help him. He asks her for mercy three times. And each time, she does not grant him a damn olive branch. Shame. Shame. Shame. First at the Dragonpit meeting, he leads the discussion and she refuses to provide forces to aide Daenerys and Jon Snow fight the blue-eyed undead alongside the North. Secondly, he talks to her privately in hopes of changing her mind. She does, but it's all a fluke, a funny little hoax to make him feel accomplished. Only Jaime comes to help. Thirdly, before Missandei is horribly executed, he pleads with Cersei otherwise with the worst opening ever, "your people hate you." Talk about the wrong way to negotiate.

Season eight may have been awful (sexist, racially insensitive, various character assassinations, etc), but Peter Dinklage and Emilia Clarke both scored Emmy nominations out of this mess. 

Later, Tyrion outs Varys as a traitor and his friend is burned alive. He then betrays Daenerys again, freeing his brother and having Ser Davos (a man whose son he killed seasons ago) arrange an escape for Jaime and heartless Cersei. That plan fails (ha ha, not sorry). Daenerys kills most of King's Landing including Cersei and Jaime. This pisses Tyrion off. Of course, he must commit one final act of sabotage-- the kiss of death. The show ends with Tyrion being another man's hand (he stays winning). After all, white men always get rewarded in life despite all their big, costly failures and treasons. Plus, murderer Jon Snow/Aeron Targaryen lives out his life sentence at the Night's Watch with his direwolf, Ghost. Certain characters, primarily male, get redemption arcs (Theon Greyjoy, Jaime, and even Tyrion) except Daenerys. She is ultimately destroyed by two men: a former sworn enemy and a nephew by blood (also count in the writers too). It sucks that Tyrion is likely (fictionally speaking) out there being hand by morning and desperately trying to carry out the Lannister line in a brothel by night. His intentions will be to name his kids after Jaime and Cersei (because she is not that evil).

All in all, Daenerys would have been much better off with a hand whose last name was not Lannister.

The Problem With Dracarys

From the start of season three, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) had a compelling dynamic on Game of Thrones.

It seemed only yesterday that in Astapor Daenerys commanded Master Kraznys to give Missandei to her for "a bargain well struck." Moments after the "deal" was done (a dragon "exchanged" for eight thousand Unsullied and a translator), Daenerys tells Missandei that she belongs to her and that she must never lie.

Five seasons later, before a gruesome execution on the hit HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones, Missandei's last word is "dracarys," the order Daenerys issues to her dragons to breathe fire. It is a false declaration of feminism, a false defining moment of female friendship from two characters who had abruptly stopped sharing intimate scenes altogether.

Daenerys brings Missandei to her camp.

On the path to the Iron Throne, sworn enemies Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen had no sisters and terrible fathers. Since becoming Queen Regent, Cersei surrounded herself with militant men like the barbaric The Mountain and eccentric Qyburn. For years, she has also orchestrated putting women characters like Lady the innocent direwolf, Margaery, Olenna, Ellaria, and Tyene to death. Meanwhile, on her journey, Daenerys has killed mostly powerful male figures and has the intelligent Unsullied commander Grey Worm, Jorah the Andal, her three dragons, and of course, Missandei, her longest running female confidante in her camp. Like predecessor Irri-- viciously murdered by Doreah, Daenerys' betrayer in Qarth during season two--Missandei was a monumental asset, offering a gentler voice of reason. Yet she also knows when fighting is absolutely necessary.

From season three to five, Missandei introduced Daenerys to the people throughout their travels and kept the queen's confidence. Daenerys returned the favor, braiding Missandei's hair, giving the young girl love advice on the whole complicated Grey Worm situation, and holding her hand during a grisly assassination attempt by the Sons of the Harpy. At one significant point, Daenerys even asks Missandei her honest opinion on important political matters:

 "You are as fit as anyone I know. You know why I'm here. And you know who will suffer the most if this all falls apart. So what do you think?" Daenerys asked.

 "I can only tell you what I have seen, Your Grace. I have seen you listen to your counselors. I have seen you lean on their experience when your own was lacking and weigh the choices they put before you. And I have seen you ignore your counselors, because there was a better choice. One that only you could see."- Missandei responded, Game of Thrones season five, episode five's Kill the Boy. 

Daenerys and Missandei talking about the Unsullied.

However, throughout seasons six, seven, and eight, Daenerys begins sharing major screen time with Tyrion Lannister (her future backstabbing hand) and Jon Snow (future betrayer/queenslayer) while Missandei is either relegated to background propping, standing or sitting quietly, or not present at all.

Missandei and Daenerys have a certain grace when posing despite the power imbalance between their characters. 

For a time, it appeared that Daenerys wasn’t necessarily threatened by the presence of other women until meeting Cersei and Sansa Stark, both seeing Daenerys as a usurper. In The Long Night, season eight, episode three, Sansa retorts to Tyrion about his loyalty to Daenerys and Missandei intervenes saying, "without the Dragon Queen, there would be no problem at all. We'd all be dead already." While that is true, the remark also thinly implies that Missandei will die because of her blind allegiance to Daenerys. Sansa and Tyrion's subtle looks to each other at Missandei's statement also reveal that these two are the primary reasons that Daenerys will fail. After all, Sansa told Tyrion about Jon's true lineage and Tyrion convinces Jon to kill Daenerys.

Before Drogon saves the day, Daenerys and Missandei are surrounded by Sons of the Harpy.

In season eight, episode four's Last of the Starks, Missandei wearing a completely different outfit from being kidnapped demonstrates the depth of storytelling flaws: continuity. Missandei's kept slave collar then ends the essence of her character. After six seasons of pure, staunch loyalty and a tender heart, she doesn't receive a fiery burial scene, a memorial ground for her displaced body like many beloved fallen individuals. Grey Worm tossing this meaningless plot into the flames is an allegory for the terrible writing that propels him and Daenerys to emerge into waging violence as a grief mechanism.

“When I saw that she gets captured and she dies in chains, I just felt the weight of that and what that really means,” Nathalie Emmanuel said in Vanity Fair. “I was heartbroken for her, really. . . . I think the fact that she died in chains when she was a slave her whole life, that for me was a pungent cut for that character, that felt so painful.”

Thus, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss purposely added Missandei's "dracarys" for something they believed would achieve a cheap sentimental attempt-- something for the female audience to grasp. They give no deep consideration to both women's feelings on being present in the coldness of judgmental Winterfell, the closeness to Daenerys achieving her ultimate goal of acquiring the Iron Throne, and Missandei's newfound desire to return home.

"I would’ve loved some more scenes with me and Missandei," said Emilia Clarke on if a season eight were reshot/redone in New York Times.

Missandei and Daenerys final one on one scene (if you don't count the Dothraki behind them or Jon Snow's interruption) was in season seven, episode four's The Spoils of War.

By having The Mountain execute Missandei, the only woman (and only female of color representation on the show overall) in Daenerys' circle, Cersei severs a notably strained link to Daenerys and intersectional feminism. For the Breaker of Chains to have her former slave friend die in chains remains an ugly, crushing blow. Supposedly, it is not a stretch that if Daenerys could take down the richest man in Qarth for the death of Irri (among other Dothraki and kidnapping her baby dragons), then burning down the entire King's Landing for Missandei pretty much keeps her in character? Absolutely horrible.

Dracarys indeed to this unbelievably ridiculous story line progression that stinks of male stupidity on what truly defines feminism and feminist friendships.

Burn it all. 

Goodbye Love, The Romeo and Juliet of 'Game of Thrones'

Game of Thrones lovers Grey Worm and Missandri survived countless battles, but fate had something fatal in store for them. 

"Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow," Juliet to Romeo.

After the most recent Game of Thrones' season eight episode The Last of the Starks, did we all cry into ice cream pints and watch the quixotic over pouring of Missandei and Grey Worm reminisce videos and read the limited fanfic over the course of the week? Maybe that was just me.

Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) innocently asking Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) why the Unsullied visit brothels.

Game of Thrones, a deeply uncomfortable guilty pleasure (due mostly to treatment of women on-screen and lack thereof behind-the-scenes), managed to crawl into my heart with this brown version of Romeo and Juliet. The pure, gentle romance between Missandei of Naath, the translator fluent in nineteen languages and Grey Worm aka Torgo Nudho of the Summer Isles, the eunuch leader of the Unsullied soldiers came to a devastatingly unexpected conclusion. Their final scenes together consisted of him telling her to get to the skiff (even raising his voice), resulting in her kidnapping by Euron Greyjoy and later dying in chains right in front of Grey Worm at Cersei's call. A freed brown woman-- the only brown woman character who rarely has scenes and lines to begin with-- executed in chains? The writers knew exactly what they were doing here. This viciously cruel shock value continues eight seasons of objectifying women characters and killing off Missandei in that manner was downright unforgivable.

In No One, episode eight of season six, Tyrion gets the uptight and serious Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) to tell bad jokes. 

Grey Worm is positively affected by Missandei's contagious laughter. They definitely don't have these unguarded, humanist moments enough.

In a supernatural fantasy realm that cannot imagine brown and Black bodies beyond slavery, from the beginning Missandei and Grey Worm were doomed. While Missandei remembered her past and being stolen away, Grey Worm recalled his cruel, military training. These two former slaves (now given crucial roles) were surrounded in what some perceived white saviorness fronted by The Dragon Queen, Daenerys Targaryen. Whenever Missandei and Grey Worm were allotted screen time together, their feelings for each other were so quiet, so painstakingly obvious in its beguiling intensity. Down the memory road lane, their beginnings were like fruitful buds of spring, building during Missandei's "precious" common tongue lessons to Grey Worm. Things came to a rather amorous heed in The Mountain and the Viper, the seventh episode of season four. She catches him staring at her nude form. Later, he apologizes. Yet they both admit their happiness at him seeing her. Or in Kill the Boy, Missandei tearfully sits vigil at wounded Grey Worm's bedside. They confess their fears and share their first kiss. Their beautiful love scene in season seven, episode two’s Stormborn was almost overshadowed by stupid jokes about Grey Worm’s castration (because men still believe that penises are the only thing that can satisfy a woman’s sexual needs in 2019).

In Stormborn, Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) admits why it is hard to say goodbye to Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel).

Missandei and Grey Worm were everything that Still Star Crossed's Rosaline Capulet and Prince Escalus were not, embodying the skeletal framework of the Romeo and Juliet's forbidden story. Missandei and Grey Worm only loved the other, there was no third party except an endless war that meant frequent separation. In Stormborn, the second episode of the seventh season, Missandei visits Grey Worm to wish him a good journey and the tides turn quite honest and passionate. It is a poignant scene suspended in a very sense of intrusive voyeurism, as though this privacy must be guarded in secret, the softly delivered words, the undressing, their close up faces lit by candles. Grey Worm feels less than deserving of her due to castration. Still, Missandei accepts every part of him. Thus, in a sea of gratuitous white flesh, Grey Worm's bodily shame is dissolved through Missandei softly embracing his external as well as interval. Grey Worm then conveys his only physical way of loving her. This candidly expresses that the intimacy between man and woman can become an even more gratifying act when fulfilling the woman's pleasure becomes greater than sating his own. More importantly, Missandei understands why the Unsullied visit brothels. 

Grey Worm returns from battle and is next seen with Missandei riding through the snowy north of Winterfell experiencing terrible racism together. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, their dialogue was definitely red flag territory. Still, one couldn't resist holding onto hope despite characters (especially minor) having no real longevity. 

"When Daenerys takes her throne there will be no place for us here," Grey Worm states. "I am loyal to my queen. I will fight for her until her enemies are defeated, but when the war is over and she has won... do you want to grow old in this place? Is there nothing else you want to do, nothing else you want to see?" 

"Naath," Missandei replies. "I'd like to see the beaches again." 

"Then I will take you there." 

"My people are peaceful. We cannot protect ourselves." 

"My people are not peaceful. We will protect you."

Goodness gracious. How can one not cry? They're too beautiful for other words. And that searing kiss they share before he heads off to battle the undead….. ugh, the explicit promises their lips ravenously joined lips exhibited, as though this one kiss would be the last and another would be needed to suffice a seemingly eternal drought. 

Jacob Anderson and Nathalie Emmanuel at a Game of Thrones event.

While Missandei and Grey Worm are minor characters often flushed silently in the background, have rare time to converse and revel as opposed to the main counterparts of the television series, they brought an endearing rootability thanks to the spellbinding portrayals by Nathalie Emmanuel and Jacob Anderson. They gave so much in that granted screen time. With her thick brows, intelligent brown eyes, and clipped articulation, Emmanuel plays the strong, resilient Missandei, a genuine, loving kindred to Anderson's stoic face and heavy accented Grey Worm, whose disposition remarkably evolves from resolute to affectionate. They put such attentive grace into rendering a heartfelt love story rife with all degrees of tenderness and respect. Every stolen scene in eyes and body language is conveyed due to their believably expressive commitment. Although they will not garner the big awards and media attention, Emmanuel and Anderson deserve any praise granted their way. Kudos to them for the incredible resonance that they've brought to this otherwise dark and complicated show. Their characters represented a humbling devotion and brilliant light in a gritty world of monstrous ugliness, vehement greed, and senseless evil. 

In The Last of the Starks, unbeknownst to Grey Worm and Missandei, this precious serenity on the boat will be their last time together. Damn it. All she wanted to do was see the white beaches of Naath with her lover.

A captured, death sentenced Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) gazes at Grey Worm one last time.

A helpless, devastated Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) looks right back at Missandei, before turning away at the grisly sight of her unjust execution. It is the most emotional displays, he has ever exhibited.

Whether or not the utterly broken Grey Worm falls in upcoming battle within these two final episodes, one thing is certain-- he is the lone brown figure now. His other Unsullied will not have a voice. And Missandei, who spoke for her queen, has been snuffed out to further a lopsided plot.

Missandei deserved better. Grey Worm deserved better. The brown and Black people who watched for them deserved better.