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09th May 2019

Game of Thrones star has a very different view on what Missandei’s last word truly means

Paul Moore

Dracarys

The relationship between Missandei and Daenerys has consistently been one of the defining characteristics that has shaped Dany’s motives.

When they first met, Missandei was a slave who served as an interpreter to a cruel slave-trader in Astapor. By the end of the episode, the Mother of Dragons frees Missandei after she orders the enslaved Unsullied to turn on the slave-traders of Astapor.

In the ultimate act of defiance and victory, Daenerys then instructs her dragons to burn the masters.

In doing so, Dracarys became a word that’s synonymous with both Daenerys’ growing power and her quest to break the chains of slavery, tyranny, and subjugation.

How things have changed.

As the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones approaches, Daenerys is teetering towards Mad Queen status with Emilia Clarke even saying that her character is currently having  some “destructive and pretty dark” thoughts.

Like father, like daughter, eh?

Well, she has lost a large chunk of the Dothraki and Unsullied forces, two dragons, Ser Jorah, and now Missandei.

To compound matters, Daenerys has also seen that she’ll never command the total respect of  The North. All this without mentioning the fact that Jon Snow/Aegon Targaryen has the stronger claim to the Iron Throne.

After Tyrion’s attempt at brokering peace outside the gates of King’s Landing failed, Cersei gave Missandei one last chance to say her final words.

Dracarys.

In this case, the majority of us would think that the High Valyrian word is Missandei’s final utterance of allegiance, defiance and support to her queen.

Aside from this, we can assume that she wants Daenerys to burn Kings Landing down to the f**king ground.

In fact, Nathalie Emmauel even alluded to that on Twitter but in an interview with IGN, Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos) thinks that Missandei’s final word has a more layered meaning.

When asked about that particular scene, the Irish actor was reluctant to fully go along with the prevailing idea that Daenerys will burn every single man, woman, and child in King’s Landing.

Cunningham thinks that Missandei was only wishing a fiery death on those that were standing on the platform itself – Euron, Cersei, The Mountain, Qyburn etc.

“No, but I’m not sure … I suppose it is open to interpretation, but the Dracarys thing from Missandei, I think is aimed at the people that were standing around her on top as opposed to “take the place out.” Because Missandei’s character’s a delightful, sweet, gorgeous, loyal human being, and I think Missandei, in that word, was saying, “Don’t worry about me, get rid of me. Don’t let me stop you doing the right thing. So I don’t think there was anything vicious behind it or giving her permission to Khaleesi, to destroy everything. But whether she will or not, we’ll have to find out.”

Will we see fire and blood in King’s Landing? We shall wait and see.

You can view Cunningham’s interview in full here.

Clip via IGN