Quote Originally Posted by eskimo View Post
It was her conversation with Jon at the start of the episode that sold it for me. She wants to rule through love, but nobody loves her anymore.

Jorrah is dead. Missandrei is dead. Jon might love her, but he's not down with the whole incest thing. The people in the north don't trust her, they trust Jon. Cersei has convinced the city that she's an invading usurper so the people of kings landing hate her. She's lost 2 dragons fighting for the people of Westeros and has nothing to show for it.

So she chose to rule by fear instead. And she's inspiring fear now. She associates herself with freedom and breaking chains, and is too hurt by what's happened to her to realize that stops being true if she rules by fear. The association of herself as a freedom bringer is enabling her to take extreme actions to take power, and is blinding her to how her actions are preventing that from happening.
Yeah, I see your point, and I could totally see all of this as motivating her to be brutal and vengeful towards Cersei, Varys, and even Jon.

But I don't know, I still can't see Dany responding to that situation by roasting little kids in the street. It just doesn't work for me, because I can't think of any scene in any previous episode that foreshadows that kind of mindless sadism towards innocent people. You can't just force a character to become the new Ramsey when they never acted like that before.