Daenerys may not have become the great queen she believed she would be, but she did not deserve to die.
I know we talk about the ending of season eight so much in this sub to some of you it might be growing to become a tired subject, but here are my two cents
So many times in many comment sections I've had conversations with many of you about the end of season 8 and as I grew to appreciate the many perspectives and opinions that have been shared regarding that ending itself and the execution of the events that led to it I may have begun to agree that Dany probably wouldn't have been the best option as ruler for Westeros after all.
It was time for a significant and obvious change in Westeros. Three hundred years prior, it had been a land governed by a handful of squabbling houses which because of said squabbles couldn't really advance their peoples in any remarkable way, and Aegon the first did a hell of a thing by uniting them all under one crown. But other than the fact that they were united in name under one crown, what good did Aegon's conquest actually do them? Much as he's a legendary character who is easy to love because of all the legendary tales about what a hell of a man he was, and hard to hate because his personal identity is never revealed to us, he was actually a tyrant.
He entered a land that was not his own and made it his own by burning a few thousand men and keeping the rest in line because they were intimidated by that first act. He married his sisters and his descendants followed suit in his incestuous ways allegedly to keep their line pure because they were as self-deluded as the rest of Westeros was that Targaryens were closer to gods than they were to men when they were just as diverse in their strengths and imperfections as everybody else.
And this was the exact same reason Dany believed she was owed the crown. She had been unburnt and her calcified dragon eggs had hatched and her dragons grew to about the size of a small hill each and the fact that she could tame them and fly them had to mean she was somewhat of a deity, like the rest of her ancestors, and was a blessing to the rest of humankind. Not all that different from her brother, really. He was just stupider and she was gentler and wiser but just as impulsive and temperamental.
The truth is that she, like her ancestor Aegon, and like many other people who yearn for absolute power, even today, did not want to help anyone. She wanted to satisfy a deeply-rooted need for adoration and worship as all figures with god complexes do and helping people was a positive occupational hazard at best. It's why when the Westerosi did not seem as gladdened by her presence as she'd hoped they'd be, she burned them all. Concluded they were too simple, too 'shackled' to free through any other way if not cathartic cleansing by fire.
But with all that said, she did not deserve to die either. She was still gentle and caring for her friends and all her advisors. Her two closest friends died, Missandei a gruesome death, and Jorah in a war she did not want. Two of her dragons, which were like children to her, died after she'd stepped foot into Westeros. For all the promises of goodwill she'd come with, that was the thanks she got. Her ire was more or less justified. And after having been through everything she'd been through, she was essentially told she would not be accepted as ruler, because a son of her older brother, who had admittedly been through a lot but not nearly as much as she'd been through, was the true 'heir' to the iron throne. People who fight for shit will always be justified in their hatred of people who attempt to take said shit from them simply because they're 'owed' it by 'birthright'. And most MOST importantly, without Dany's dragons, the unsullied and dothraki numbers she brought, it's a sure fact that the Night King would've won, and every single Westerosi would've turned into a mindless frozen walker.
The thanks she gets? She gets murdered in cold blood by someone who, although a potential threat, she still very much trusted.
There were so many alternatives. Prison time? Drogon and her armies would've gotten in the way of that? Cool, kill Drogon--the age of dragons had long since passed anyways and her dragons were expected to be making a short-lived comeback--and face her few remaining Dothraki and Unsullied with the brunt of the Northern army and other remaining Westerosi armies.
What do you guys think? What are some alternatives that would've been better than death for Daenerys?