Sex and Dragons: How Dany’s “Tasteful Nudity” and Dragon Children Symbolize Her Role as White Imperialist

         Daenerys has been known to proclaim “I am the mother of dragons.”  Anyone with Internet access and a mediocre sense of humor knows this.  But what do these dragons mean in a world where everybody is associated with a symbol or identity of sorts, including the bastardy of Jon Snow as incongruent with his genuine goodness and Tyrion’s malformed façade as a means of shaping him as a Richard III figure? Dany has her dragons.  The majority of her segment of the first book builds up to the moment at which she claims her matriarchal role and it lingers throughout the rest of the series, television and novel.  These dragons are symbolic of Dany’s imperial power.

            First, the dragons emerge in suspicious timing with the death of Khal Drogo and Rhago’s ill-fated monstrous birth.  They emerge at a time when Dany, at least in the show’s depiction, has begun to adorn herself in her original attire.   The dragons were the emblem of her family, her ancestors, really.  In this sense, they represent Dany reclaiming her heritage and seizing that power, that identity.  Normally, this gesture would be seen as empowering, however, Dany’s Targaryen roots present the much more problematic action of Dany demeaning the Dothraki people, ultimately. Upon the death of her husband, she rises from the pyre along with her dragons and she takes the role of white imperialist in place of indigenous warrior and utilizes those people to reclaim her prize.  Fire cannot burn the dragon, as she says.  Instead, it bolsters her and gives rise to the birth of her dragons.  The dragons rise and so does Dany. 

Both mythological reptile and white-haired princess are unclothed, in a high fantasy recreation of “The Birth of Venus,” a repetition of one of Dany’s first scenes in which she, naked, steps into the scalding bath.  While nudity could draw Dany closer to the carnal and atavistic depictions of the Dothraki people, we, the viewers, do not see her extremities.  The assets both the camera and the male characters draw attention to are now covered by dragons.  Dany’s armor is now her small dragon family.  Assuming dragons equate to white imperialism, Dany’s reptilian fig leaves seem to better her in juxtaposition to the nude Dothraki women.  She is still nude, she is still somewhat vulnerable, but the parts of her body both representative of her role as prize and potentially role as Dothraki Khaleesi, are shrouded by civilized imperialism.

Perhaps the dragons in their roles as Dany’s “children” as opposed to her “pets” further this imperialistic nature.  Even though mythological and ancient in appearance and nature, these dragons represent a new future.  Somehow they are a more civilized generation than the Dothraki people.  Even Dany exclaims that dragons eat horses.  Dragons, essentially the symbol of the white imperial Dany, conquer the symbols of the Dothraki.  In this sense, Dany takes over the Dothraki with her “seed,” her lineage.  It just so happens to be super convenient that her half—Dothraki son didn’t quite make it past the lump child stage.

Dany as both sexualized being and mother of dragons serves an interesting purpose.  Dany uses her dragons not quite as an armor but as a distraction from what the male characters had been determining her worth by.  Through using her dragons as form of empowerment, she proves she is more than her sexuality.  She reclaims a new identity as woman, as matriarch and not sex thing, and, further, heightens her role as an imperialist force that cannot be stopped.

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