cersei, dany and self-fulfilling prophesy

Its been a while since I’ve posted anything. Apparently I’ve been watching too much TV.  In reality, I watch one and only one TV show and its about to end.  I bet I’m not alone in finding a lot of useful sociological fodder in Game of Thrones.  And with last night’s episode, I’m getting the itch to play it out.  Here’s a warning:

***Spoilers ahead for GoT Season 8 Episode 5***

So… let’s talk about prophesy.

Cersei vs. Dany was the clash of two women’s destinies as determined by prophesy. Cersei’s prophesy has been described as “self-fulfilling” while Dany’s was tied to the fulfillment of ancient myths. In the end neither turned out to be the case: indeed, if anyone was the victim of self-fulfilling prophesy it was Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, not Cersei, First of her name.

Here’s the prophesy Maggie the Witch told Cersei:

Cersei: When will I wed the prince?

Maggy: Never. You will wed the king.

Cersei: I will be queen, though?

Maggy: Aye. Queen you shall be… until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.

Cersei: Will the king and I have children?

Maggy: Aye. Six-and-ten for him, and three for you. Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds, she said.

Robert Merton described a self-fulfilling prophesy this way:

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of [a] situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.”

Cersei was haunted by her prophesy and maybe it drove her mad. But all of the predicted events would have happened regardless of whether Cersei had been told about them.

Even if she had taken actions that led to the prophesy coming true it wouldn’t fit the bill because she always kept the prophesy to herself (and the other two who heard it died soon after).  The mechanics of self-fulfilling prophesies are fundamentally sociological—not psychological. As W.I. and Dorothy Thomas put it: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”.  

That should sound familiar to anyone who has followed the show closely. In Season 3 (and in A Clash of Kings), Varys poses a riddle to Tyrion about the nature of power:

“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me – who lives and who dies?”….

“Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”

Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”

In other words, the power of a prophesy is that it leads various actors in the game to do things that make the prophesy come true. In sociological jargon, self-fulfilling prophesies are *performed* social constructions.

Dany’s character was always driven by two opposing narratives. The first was tied to ancient prophesies: initially it is the prophesy of the Stallion that Mounts the World then eventually the Prince that Was Promised / Azor Ahai. Her second, competing, narrative is about the destiny of her blood: as the last Targaryen the throne is her birthright, but it comes with a possible genetic disposition toward madness.

Power resided with Dany as long as people believed her fate was driven by a magical fulfillment of destiny.  The Unburnt, the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains.  These names weren’t just a list of her accomplishments. They were interpreted by many important actors as *confirmations* that she was fated for the throne by right of blood and moreover that she was probably destined to be a legendary a conqueror and savior as well. As more people came to see the prophetic links come into focus, it became easier for her to take actions that seemed to further fulfill the prophesies. This virtuous cycle is the text-book definition of a self-fulfilling prophesy (and the Matthew .

Eventually, though, this heroic narrative smacked up against the competing one. Is Dany really mad? I would argue she isn’t. She is ruthless and occasionally impulsive but she never showed signs of madness. She went “mad” when she lost all of the people who actively performed the social construction of her destiny. Those people are replaced by a crew who are either confused (Tyrion and Jon) or who are actively contributing to the construction of the Mad Queen narrative (Sansa, Varys and Cersei).

When the bells start to ring she could have gone to the Red Keep to claim her crown. But she didn’t because she had already lost; the narrative die of history had already been set. Cersei laced the Keep with wildfire, and Sansa and Varys had begun the process of bleeding her narrative. Nothing she did at that point would have stopped Jon from being cast as the fulfillment of prophesy nor would it have stopped the Mad Queen storyline from taking hold. Having lost control of the heroic narrative, she dove in head first to the self-fulfilling prophesy that was about to replace it: dracarys!

This episode should have been number 9 of a 10 episode season. As it is, the rushed version that the show presented leaves the impression that Dany had in fact been wrestling all her life with angels of comfort and of despair–that her heroic savior side kept her mad queen in check for a while–but finally the weight of the events allowed the worser spirit to woo her purity with foul pride. (That is a generous reading—the much less generous one, which Dan and Dave seemed to imply in their after-show discussion, was that Dany simply snapped because Jon rejected her—-after all of the back bending they did to try to overcome the misogyny baked into the first few seasons, that is simply scandalous. Oy).

But I don’t think that what George RR Martin had in mind is that prophesy is all just a hoax and what really drives things is one’s blood. He just doesn’t roll that way. More likely the point is: blood matters, but it is the beginning of the story, not the end. Prophesy matters too, but not because of divine provenance. Prophesy matters because skilled players of Game of Thrones either manipulate it to their ends or else they are manipulated by it. And when you play the game of thrones either you win or you die in a blaze of infamy.

“So power is a mummer’s trick?”

“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”