2019 is the year of many endings for a fangirl such as me: Avengers ended its 22 movies long Infinity Saga with Endgame in April (you may read my review here), Game of Thrones, one of my major fandoms, ended its 8 year run on 19 May 2019, and the Star Wars sequel is set to reach its finale this coming December. As expected, I was quite emotionally drained as the end of May drew closer, and I needed a week-long break after the series finale of Game of Thrones to get my thoughts in order to write this article. I was reading through my previous reviews, and was thinking of doing something different this time, and decided on doing character analysis and essay on three different characters whose arcs followed a similar trajectory and assessing how each story dealt with this trope in its own way.
As always, this is a spoiler-filled article so if you have not watched The Iron Throne, Code Geass or Death Note, and intend to have a spoiler-free watching experience (though it is quite unlikely seeing how the three are quite popular), you may stop reading and come back once you are done, unless you do not mind having major plot and character giveaways in the paragraphs that follow.
The Fall of Greatness
“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.”
– Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
It is a classic tale that we have seen from Biblical times (remember a particularly beautiful angel who was too prideful and then was banished from Heaven and became you-know-who?) and all the way to even modern real-life people caught in the countless exposes that had happened over the years. Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Aung San Suu Kyi, Oscar Pistorius… These people were once greats who were admired for their talent, their skill, their determination and their drive towards the greater good. They had legions of admirers from across the globe, each one who saw in these seemingly extraordinary people the very embodiment of the human spirit.
But, that is what they were. Human. And humans are not infallible. They are prone to changes and when they have achieved such a great height, their fall from grace is generally more visible and far more profound than others. It is thus, no surprise, that this exploration of human frailty continues to pore its way into our fiction that we consume today. After all, we are all stories in the end, and fiction often reflects truths that we are perhaps too afraid to face in reality. The fallen hero, or the once great individual, continues to remain in our collective imagination simply because of the allure of their tragic situation.
Let us begin our discussion with, of course, perhaps the most famous fall of all time: the fall of the once-angel, Lucifer, who ultimately became the enemy of God and Mankind, the Devil or Satan, as he is more commonly known. Though obviously vilified in Abrahamic faiths, he was given a more sympathetic portrayal in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which could perhaps be attributed to the evergreen tendency to lean towards the misunderstood villain. Later works of art in the Renaissance and beyond also tended to portray Lucifer as a tortured soul, one whose pride was his downfall, and one who perhaps, regrets his decision made in Heaven that caused him to lose his status as God’s favourite angel.
Geefs’ sculpture depicts a tormented Lucifer, his ankle bound in chains and his face and body twisted in agony, his hand holding on regrettably to the crown he had lost and has no way of regaining. It is almost as if the loss of Paradise was felt more profoundly by Lucifer than it was by Adam and Eve (who were, as the story goes, granted forgiveness and hence, readmitted into Paradise after their deaths), and this naturally draws our sympathy to him, and compels us to perhaps pause and listen to his version of the story (for a review on narratives and perspectives of another maligned figure, you may read my review of The Gospel of Loki, here).
It All Starts With Good
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
With the sympathetic depiction of Satan, the supposed embodiment of pure evil, came the notion that perhaps, no one is really born evil after all. Villains are made, not born, and are often the victims of their circumstances. Spend a few moments reflecting on the various villains and antagonists you have encountered so far in your life. How many of them are actually, if you give them enough thought, quite sympathetic? Chances are, there are at least a few. There has been a recent surge in giving the villains of classical fairytales their own voices (see Disney’s Maleficent) and of course, one of the most prominent examples of a villain due to circumstance is Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, perhaps one of the most popular video game franchises out there. In recent popular culture, we, of course, have Darth Vader, whose fall from talented Jedi Knight to Sith Lord is brilliantly captured in an almost Shakespearean fashion in the first six Star Wars films.
It has become such a popular feature of stories, a tried and tested method that almost guarantees a good story, that it has turned into a trope. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, a trope refers to an aspect or a feature of a story that is recurrent and becomes easily identifiable the more stories you interact with (examples include The Chosen One, The Dark Lord, The Quest, The Evil Queen, The Unwilling Hero etc). For this discussion, I am addressing the way the trope of the good individual who falls into the state of being evil or malignant as a result of certain factors that caused this fall, paying close attention to three characters in particular: Light Yagami from Death Note, Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass, and most recently, Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. For the study of Daenerys, I will not be touching on the books as they are still incomplete and may have a conclusion that is different from the TV series.
Before I branch out into more nuanced readings of the three characters, it is perhaps good to start off by listing the similarities as I have observed in the three.
(1) They are idealists. Daenerys wants to rule and bring peace to the almost perpetually warring Seven Kingdoms. Lelouch wishes to grant Japan freedom from the control of Britannia, a tyrannical empiric entity. Light wishes to rid the world of criminals and bring about an era of peace and security.
(2) They come from prominent or noble families. Both Daenerys and Lelouch are exiled royals, and while Light is not a royal, his impressive intelligence and the fact that his father is a relatively well-known member of the police force gives him some form of status within his school.
(3) All three have some form of magical or supernatural aid. Daenerys has her dragons and is invincible to fire. Lelouch has the Geass, and C.C. Light has the Death Note and Ryuk the shinigami.
(4) All three begin their journey with noble intentions. Daenerys frees slaves and kills slave masters and rapists with her dragons. Light uses the Death Note to get rid of murderers, rapists, terrorists and various other criminals in and around Japan. Lelouch becomes the vigilante leader of a group of rebels who fight for independence from the tyranny of Britannia (Lelouch’s arc goes on a different trajectory as compared to Light’s and Dany’s , but I will be addressing it later in this article).
“For the Greater Good”: The Journey of Daenerys Targaryen and Light Yagami
Perhaps the most obvious similarity between Dany and Light is that they are both driven by a desire to do unto the world that which they perceive as morally right. To Dany, simply walking by a city with slaves in them without ensuring that they are all freed is wrong. When Jorah Mormont tries to convince her to leave the Slave Cities alone, she refuses to do so once she realises that there are thousands of slaves living in them. Light Yagami is a young boy who is frustrated with his country’s justice and law systems, knowing full well that criminals who deserve punishments often go unscathed due to factors such as politics. He longs to change this, and deliver justice to the victims of these criminals’ acts by killing them off one by one, hoping to arrive at a time when there would be no more criminals in the world.
Even though the last thing that we expect heroes to do is to kill willingly, the narrative of Daenerys and Light is positioned in a way that the audience cheers every time a criminal or a slave master fall dead due to the Death Note or dragon fire. When Light makes his first kill, we cheer as we see his success when the gunman in the supermarket is announced to have died suddenly. When Daenerys burns Mirri Maz Durr, we feel a mix of victory and pity because while we are aware that Mirri was probably the reason for Khal Drogo’s and Rhaego’s death, she was also enslaved by the Dothraki. It is possible that this could have influenced Daenerys’ adversity towards slavery later during her journey, but it was a troubling start that eventually saw her emerging unburnt from the flames with her dragons. Unlike Daenerys’ first kill, Light’s first kill was less morally ambiguous — there was hardly any watcher who would support a gunman holding students hostage.
As their arcs progress, the kind of people they kill are increasingly antagonistic and morally evil, which places both Daenerys and Light in the position of the noble hero, who has to kill in order to make way for a better world. Daenerys kills not only slave masters, but also Khals leading a tribe of Dothraki, who are intent on raping her, effectively ridding the nearby towns and villages of the Dothraki rape and pillage threat that they had always been facing. Light empties cell after cell in Japan of evil criminals, and eventually, there is an actual effect in the country — crime rates do indeed go down and individuals end up looking up to their newfound hero, whom they christen Kira. In a similar christening moment in Game of Thrones, the freed slaves of Yunkai call Daenerys “mhysa”, which means “mother”, in their tongue. Hence, in these two snapshot-like pivotal moments, both Light and Daenerys have reached the peak of their hero status.
However, tragically, our newfound heroes do not stay that way for long. Both Daenerys and Light have a singular troubling weakness: Daenerys is adamant about getting her throne and rule the Seven Kingdoms in peace as their rightful queen, while Light is insistent that he alone is capable of driving the world towards the peace that he had envisioned. Though the particularities of their single-minded pursuits are quite different, their motives are almost uncannily identical: they are both convinced that they are the only one who is suited for rule, which ultimately suggests that in their minds, they firmly believe that their viewpoint of the world, morality, justice and other aspects, is the only right and acceptable one and that there is no space for anything else. It is perhaps this pride, or rather, hubris, that ultimately leads to the downfall of the two quite noble characters.
As their story continues, they get increasingly desperate when they perceive that their goal is slipping out of their grip. Though he once only killed criminals, Light, in a desperate bid to prove himself worthy, kills Lind L Tailor, a criminal who was posing as the detective L, on live television, Lind L Tailor is only revealed to be a criminal after Light had killed him and so, here, Light has killed someone who could have been potentially innocent. It is, of course, a natural step to take for Light, who was at risk of being exposed by the ever tricky L, but even so, Light’s decision to kill L, who is also not a criminal himself, calls his moral standards into question.
For Daenerys, her questionable moment comes with her decision to execute Randyll and Dickon Tarly, prisoners of war after her victory at the Battle of the Goldroad, which saw her obliterating the Lannister forces and their allies who had been assembled against her, once they refused to bend the knee to her. Of course, Daenerys’ actions could be justified in the political climate of war, since prisoners of war who refuse to give up their older allegiances cannot be trusted to be let alive. From her point of view, Randyll and Dickon’s decision to refuse to pledge their allegiance to her is every bit an act of open rebellion against her, and thus, they could be regarded as traitors and the most risk-free way to get rid of traitors would be to kill them. However, even with this in mind, Randyll and Dickon are effectively prisoners of war, whom Daenerys, by right, should not have killed under normal circumstances and is hence, morally wrong in doing so. However, just like Light, it was desperation and a need to be absolutely certain of there being no risks of losing what she was after, that led her to come to such a decision.
With their decision to kill Lind L Tailor, and the Tarlys, Light and Daenerys have thus effectively left the spot-free realm of altruistic noble heroism, and ventured into a shaky, morally ambiguous territory since they have both acted out of self-interest and self-preservation rather than the greater good, which was the motivation behind their previous kills.
It seems that the two actions were what propelled our once heroes into a spiral of anti-heroism and eventual villainy, and caused the completion of the tragic fall-from-grace narrative arc that Dany and Light were inserted into. It is almost akin to building a glass castle, brilliant and magnificent, but also very fragile and delicate, and easy to topple with perhaps just a crack — the crack in the surface of the glimmer of heroism for Dany and Light being their shift from carrying out deeds in order to serve others, to doing so serve their own needs. For any other individual who is not hero-coded, the act of serving the self would result in little to no impact on their character, but both Dany and Light were created to be seen as heroes at the beginning of their arcs. Once they are subject to this method of coding, it made narrative sense to amplify the effect of their one moment of faltering to the extent that it drastically impacts the direction of their entire journey. In real life, it may not be as impactful, but within a fictional narrative, such a change sees itself displayed through a dramatised and dramatic lens, which, of course, makes the story more interesting to be told.
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The Fall of Daenerys Targaryen: A Failure of a Feminist Icon?
||| So far, it seems the story trajectory written and played out for Dany and Light are on the same level: they both started off by giving each character definite, heroic moments, where the audience cheered them on, positioned them as having reached the peak of their heroism marked by their supposed altruism, only to be toppled by a single act of in defense of the self rather than others. However, it is here that the way the stories were written in terms of space and time given for the natural growth and development of the character and the narrative, the type of storytelling adopted by the writer(s), and the way it was presented on screen as a visual text and communicated to the audience, that the way the two stories were received differ greatly.
The final season of Game of Thrones spared no moment in deciding to plunge Daenerys, the once breaker of chains, into an abyss of clear black-and-white villainy within the span of three episodes, cutting every string of her built up heroism loose by killing off all her allies and loved ones one after the other in quick succession until it became inevitable that she was going to fulfil the Mad Queen arc that she had been pitted against for the rest of the previous seasons. It even went as far as to give watches perhaps one of the most iconic shots of the series; Dany’s body superimposed against the wings of her dragon about the take flight, which is, of course, nestled in the iconography of the Devil. The Devil is often represented artistically as having bat-like leathery wings, as opposed to the feathery wings of angels, and, as mentioned above, is classically regarded as evil incarnate. Here, any hope of Dany not being a villain is immediately burnt to the ground just as Kings Landing had been, and she is the epitome of evil. In addition to the iconography of the Devil, the final episode also employed familiar imagery associated with real-world dictators and extremists, in particular, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, as depicted in this shot:
It was almost as if the cinematographers had worked extra hard to cement Dany’s new status as tyrant into the minds of the viewers, in order to make up for the unexpectedly sudden change in her characterisation that was probably the result of there being not even space and time allocated to the storytelling. It is not that the movement of Daenerys Targaryen across her narrative arc, from the naive girl who becomes a heroic freer of slaves, who then falls prey to her own excessive hunger for power and then turns into an unwitting tyrant that is unbelievable; it was just the general abruptness of this narrative that many viewers found impossible to accept.
To be or not to be — that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.
– Hamlet, Act III Scene 1, William Shakespeare
Like the famous Prince of Denmark, Daenerys too, had spent the previous seasons asserting to herself, the people around her, and as an extension, the viewers watching the show, that she is not her father, and will bring about something close to an era of peace once she achieves her goal of becoming Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Two of the well-known quotes in the series are, in fact, attributed to her: “I am going to break the wheel”, the wheel here referring to the cycle of rule in Westeros that leaves a house at the top and the other to topple, only to repeat after some time, and “a dragon is not a slave”, a quote usually said in High Valyrian, which can be taken to mean that she sees herself as the agent of her own fate, rather than a slave to either fortune, or her family background. But, alas, she is but the puppet of fate, and is defined by her heritage, and eventually dies as the Mad Queen, and all her time spent freeing entire slave cities, ridding Essos of cold and cruel monsters, and proving herself to be a compassionate leader, is but a memory long gone with the death of Jorah Mormont.
Even after her death, no one seems to acknowledge any of her deeds, and this could be because the only people who knew of it, men such as Tyrion and Jon, probably did not wish to tell of it to the people who have not witnessed it, so that Daenerys is not just the Mad Queen, but a woman with compassion and ambition whose fate was cruel to her.
After spending days pondering over the bitter taste the finale had left in their mouths, fans had come up with numerous, logical explanations for the reason that Daenerys’ eventual fall into villainy and madness was not as good as it was expected to be, ranging from commenting on how the general style of storytelling that Game of Thrones tended to employ in the first few seasons changed abruptly in the seasons that moved beyond the novels, or how the writers’ choice to change elements of Daenerys’ story in the very first season, in particular, the aspects of her sexual vulnerability and the nature of her first encounters with Khal Drogo, that added further real-world political layers to the way her story ended. Though it may not have been the writers’ intent, current political and social implications had inadvertently tangled themselves up with the troubling message that Daenerys’ arc seemed to send; that a woman in pursuit of power and ambition, having been abused by men in her past, could not possibly be a reasonable leader and would necessarily be reduced to villainy and madness. In S1E1, we see Daenerys being objectified even beyond what we would have expected of a woman in such a landscape, and eventually, she is raped by the man she is married off too like a broodmare. Over the rest of the seasons, she starts to forge out an identity for herself, and absolves herself from actively seeking out a male romantic partner and drives herself towards a position of power she is not willing to give up for a man, and it seems almost as if she is being vilified for this reason alone. Hence, to many women across the globe watching Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen effectively became the woman that they were dreaming of, especially since it is not common to encounter female characters actively seeking power without being villain-coded. Daenerys was positioned as a hero, the protagonist of the story, the harbinger of the magical element in this fantasy tale that seemed to be more removed from anything magical until her dragons were hatched.
Many would argue against associating politics with fiction, but in such a day and age, and the fact that Daenerys had been so deliberately positioned and portrayed as a feminist icon that subverted tropes and expectations usually associated with fantasy-based narratives, does result in the series not being able to pry itself away from such implications. |||
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The Inevitable Metamorphosis from Man to Monster in Death Note
||| As for the story of Light Yagami, aka Kira, the progression, of course, seemed more natural even though Death Note (37)had less episodes than Game of Thrones (73). Other than the fact that the anime was adapted from an already completed manga, Death Note also had the sense of knowing exactly where the story was headed, and loose threads left behind by sub-plots were effectively tied up. Perhaps this could be attributed to its genre as crime/detective fiction, which demands audiences to pay careful attention to each and every element of narrative, character and even visual design of the anime itself. It employs the psychological storytelling method, allowing itself to be tightly focused on the characterisation and development of Light Yagami, from before the discovery of the Death Note, during his use of it, and the way he and others reacted to the effects of using it.
As much as the audience initially rooted for Light’s actions, it started becoming increasingly clear that Light was indeed slowly losing his mind and his control over his use of the Death Note in his desperation to keep himself from being caught by the authorities, and his eventual descent into what can be regarded as madness was definitely entirely believable. Just like the final episode of Game of Thrones used visual framing to represent the transformation of Daenerys Targaryen from human to monster, Death Note also makes use of a similar visual framing to depict Light Yagami as monstrous, as shown below:
This iconic moment in the anime makes use of light and dark imagery, as a clever callback to the character’s name being Light, and borrows from the age-old classical association of the shadow with the negative, monstrous aspects of an individual. But making Light’s eyes glow red in this scene and by manipulating his shadow to look more amorphous and monstrous in size and shape as compared to Light in the foreground, this moment in Death Note seals Light’s final descent into madness as Kira, having completely lost all control of himself, a characteristic that he had steadfastly held on to throughout the series. Of course, seeing that Death Note is animated as opposed to the live-action of Game of Thrones, it would be slightly easier to make use of the visual medium to depict characterisation where it is no longer only the actor who brings the character to life, but also the artist, animator, and effects designer. Every element of the scene is deliberately put into place and there is almost zero room for error since animated scenes are all created from scratch.
However, at the same time, the medium does not discount the effort that has been out into it. Death Note definitely comes across as a well-planned and thoroughly researched story that does not shy away from the politics of its time. Unlike Game of Thrones which returns to the triumph of the noble hero in the end, with the Starks getting the best endings as compared to other characters, Death Note does not promise a “good” ending to anyone in particular and does not ignore the positive outcomes caused by Light/Kira’s activities. While the triumph of the noble heroes is arguably a trope in fantasy fiction that is not easy to escape from, it just seemed quite forced to the extent that there seemed to be very blatantly obvious plot-armour driven scenes for certain Stark characters that would have otherwise resulted in death or failure if said character had not been a Stark. In Death Note, there is no forced plot-armour driven scenes since everything, once again, is well-planned out. The characters who need to die, do die; those who are supposed to stay alive, stay alive but are not placed in unrealistically life-threatening situations.
In his final moments, Light is humanised once again, with flashback sequences of his life as a high school student replaying as he staggers towards his eventual death. He dies not as a villain or a monster, but rather as a misaligned victim who only intended good but lost himself inevitably along the way. The inclusion of Ryuk, a neutral supernatural force that does not directly influence Light’s actions but does inform him time from time that there has never been any human in the history of the world that had used a Death Note and had a happy ending. As much as Light hoped to overcome this cycle, he too succumbed to it eventually, and as much as audiences may have been horrified by some of his later actions, most are invited back to sympathise with him in the moments leading to his death. Light’s journey from idealistic high school student who was sick and tired of the injustice he sees in the world (which I feel is exemplified best in this number from Death Note: The Musical), to someone who is a tragic puppet of destiny, much like Oedipus Rex, who ended up marrying his mother and killing his father in spite of having him and his family doing all that they could have within their power in order to prevent that very damned fate from happening.
Hence, much like Daenerys, Light too, is a victim of his inevitable fate, but at the same time, the way the end of his journey is presented visually and emotively to the viewer, is drastically different from the way Daenerys’ had been. The moments leading to Light’s death paints and presents him in a largely sympathetic light: he is alone, and he has failed, and it is clear that this was not what he had intended to be. The music that plays during this scene is entitled “Light Lights Up Light”, and it is a sweeping string melody that sounds regretful and tragic, almost as if Light is not necessarily the villain, he had always been the misunderstood hero. It speaks volumes of his intentions, and how he only picked up the Death Note and used it because he saw it in himself that he needed to take action to set the world right, and was far from the apathetic youths that we tend to see today. Even as he dies, the true evil is exposed to be Ryuk, the shinigami who got bored of endless existence, rather than Light himself. |||
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Hero To Villain, and Back Again: The Trickster Protagonist
|||Now, we have seen two examples of the classic hero-to-villain narratives as embodied by Daenerys Targaryen of Game of Thrones and Light Yagami of Death Note. Of course, such a character is no stranger to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of stories, as readers and viewers will constantly be drawn to the allure of such individuals, and the reason for their fall. Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion gave us one such example, managing to shock viewers just as D.B. Weiss and Dave Benioff attempted to with Daenerys’ sudden change into mad queen, but had the final trick up their sleeve and waiting until the very last episode.
As previously stated, the protagonist of Code Geass is exiled prince Lelouch vi Britannia, of, as his name states it, Britannia, which is basically an extrapolation of what the British Empire would have been if it had not fallen apart by the 20th century, along with his younger and disabled sister, Nunally vi Britannia. The royals end up living in Area 11, or what was previously known as Japan, and spearheads a rebellion against the tyranny of the Empire, and hopes to free the Japanese people from their chains of subservience. As a mecha anime, there is the very nuanced employment of giant robot war machines used by both the Empire and by the rebels in Japan, with various references to British mythology such as King Arthur being tossed in.
As expected, the audience sides with Lelouch and his group of friends, who are automatically labelled terrorists (which is a very bold statement made by an anime that came out only a few years after 9/11), and every time a soldier from the Empire falls, we cheered them on. Unlike the case with Light Yagami, Lelouch’s circumstances here make him very similar to Daenerys, except that he never once states that he wishes to be the ruler of the kingdom; in fact, he wishes to grant freedom to Japan more than he wishes to destroy the Empire altogether. He adopts the alias Zero as the masked vigilante who sends threats to the forces of the Empire, and as a son of the Emperor, we see how he is so vastly different from the blatantly tyrannical man his father is, and naturally, once again, as more of his backstory is revealed, we are drawn to support him.
In a trajectory almost identical to those of Daenerys and Light, Lelouch too commits a murder that forces the audience to stop and think if they are indeed supporting the right person, when he kills his brother, the Third Prince of the Holy Britannnian Empire and the appointed Viceroy of Area 11, in cold blood when he was unarmed, defenseless and practically begging for his life. Though it can be assumed that the terrorist activities carried out against the Japanese in Area 11 by the Empire could have been indirectly ordered by him, he never really seemed like too big of a threat either to Lelouch or his rebel friends. Clovis has not been a good leader, he was far too pompous and vain to take anything too seriously, and when it is mentioned during his funeral service that he was a connoisseur of the fine arts, one cannot help but suspect that it might have been true. However, from Lelouch’s point-of-view, this assassination is, of course, justified, as any direct representative of the Brtitannian Empire, and the royal family, is, in fact, an agent acting against his cause for the liberation of Japan, and thus, ought to be eliminated as soon as possible.
What follows next is a dramatic turn of events that sees an entire stadium of Japanese being killed by Princess Euphemia, the youngest of the royal siblings, Lelouch as Zero eventually subduing her, continuing the rebellion against the Empire and check-mating his other brother, Schneizel, before finally killing the Emperor, and hence, achieving his goal. But, while the audience is cheering their loudest for the victory of their beloved vigilante and betrayed prince, Lelouch shocks everyone, by crowning himself the 99th Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire.
And as if crowning himself was not shocking enough, and completely out of character for Lelouch who had always proved himself time and time again to be a sympathetic and compassionate individual, who puts everyone else’s needs far in front of his own, and who would not hesitate to throw himself in front a bullet to save a friend or an ally. This, as the audience gaped in horror, was the very same masked hero that everyone was worshipping and holding in high honour, and being grateful for, and admiring for his extreme displays of altruism and loyalty. I had not read the manga prior to watching the anime, so trust me when I say that my jaw dropped at this sudden revelation that came out of literally nowhere, and I found myself questioning both my morals and my ability to catch details in the story I had just witnessed, and wondered if I had either been fooled into rooting for a villain or worse, I had been following an example of bad storytelling. It just did not make sense that Lelouch and Suzaku suddenly became the heralders of a kingdom far worse than the one that was under the previous Emperor.
And then, the finale happened.
Before I begin, let me tell all of you that this was probably the most shocking and jaw-dropping finale I had ever watched. I really did not see any moment of it coming and as soon as the very first revelation was made about the Zero Requiem plan, my heart was thumping and I found myself leaning in towards my laptop with such a sudden movement and I must have gasped so loudly that I was shocked that I did not accidentally wake my sleeping family up in the dead of the night. Lelouch was never the villain that he apparently suddenly turned into in the final few episodes, in fact, this was his final act of heroism — giving up his name and reputation, and dying as perhaps the world’s most hated villain, just so that his sister, Euphemia, would be absolved of the crimes she committed when he accidentally placed her under the influence of the Geass, and as his personal atonement for this and for all the other crimes he had committed in the name of freedom.
By doing so, Lelouch had not only proved to the audience that he is not a villain, but he had also gone as far as to remove any outward label of heroism previously attributed to him. This was the Lelouch we had watched over all the previous episodes, the self-sacrificing and loyal to a fault man, who would give up everything for the greater good. That he would resort to such a deed was shocking not because it was out of character or out of the blue, but because no one expected that he would actually go this far and that he would hold on to his values and his beliefs with such a steadfastness that Zero Requiem was the perfect way for him to end his reign of evil that everyone except for his closest friends believe in, and begin one of peace, with his sister, Nunally, in place as the new Empress (Bran becoming King in Game of Thrones actually made me think of this moment in Code Geass though Nunally was obviously more qualified in terms of parentage than Bran… and would make a far better ruler than him actually even though I think Bran was an interesting choice).
Of course the fans who had read the manga would have been aware of the ending, but for the sake of this essay-article, I did say that I wished to focus on the visual medium of film to perform my analysis. Therefore, there is no way to escape from the imagery employed. It was well-fitting for Lelouch to be dressed in white during the final scene, which is, of course, a callback white being associated with purity. As Lelouch falls after he is assassinated by the new Zero (who is actually Suzaku, his best friend), his arms are raised to his side, in an echo of Biblical imagery associated with Christ on the Cross. Just like Christ, in Christian religion, died for the sins of the people, Lelouch died for his own sins and the sins of the Empire, and promises a peaceful future afterwards. |||
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Some Concluding Thoughts
This turned out to be far longer than I expected it to be…
Now, having watched both Death Note and Code Geass prior to the final season of Game of Thrones, and also having seen various other similar narratives being played out through other stories I have interacted with such as Star Wars and Final Fantasy VII, I was, on one hand, wondering how the Mad Queen narrative would play out since the earlier seasons but on the other hand, wondering if it would happen at all seeing how Daenerys had been so deliberately positioned as the heroine throughout the moments we see her. It was only in the first two seasons that I allowed myself to wonder if Daenerys was indeed a villain the making, rather than a heroine as she has been positioned to be, but all this had been almost completely erased from my consciousness with the many times Daenerys seemed to do everything in her power to prove to those around her that she was, indeed, not her father.
That is what I found odd — neither Light, nor Lelouch, or Darth Vader or Sephiroth, were given such moments during their stories. Lelouch never was a villain, so yes, it is safe to leave him aside for a while. Looking at the rest, I do not recall a moment where perhaps, Anakin Skywalker, was going on and on about how he wanted to prove everyone wrong in thinking that he was headed in a dark path. His decision to join the Sith and eventually become Darth Vader was not one that he was headed towards in the beginning. Though the Jedi Council kept insisting that they were afraid of what Anakin was capable of, Anakin himself did not actively speak out against this accusation. This is unlike Daenerys, who sought every opportunity that she could find to actively position herself as someone different from her father. She is both aware of the atrocities committed by her father and the fact that the people around her are assuming that she will end up like him, and is very determined to prove her adversaries wrong by showing them that she is different from him and a worthy ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.
I have mentioned Sephiroth at least twice in this essay, so it is only right that I speak of him a little. Anyone who has either played the game, or is like me, drawn to the story even without playing it, will be aware that he is also a fallen hero. Once the most skilled members of the elite SOLDIER regiment, he is driven to madness once he finds out the secret that had been kept away from him his whole life — that he is indeed a genetically engineered superhuman formed from the remnants of the extraterrestrial entity, JENOVA.
He shuts himself up in Shinra Manor, reads up all about the various experiments carried out with JENOVA, and is eventually driven to hate Shinra, the corporation behind the experiments, and then, everything else and ends up being a Thanos-like figure who decides that destroying the already sick planet that they inhabit is the only way to start afresh. Sephiroth’s decision is shocking, yes, but character-wise, it is not as completely out of the blue as it was with Daenerys. Throughout his story, Sephiroth had never really been positioned as a morally upright individual — he was skilled, he was a decent enough man, but he was never completely good. He was just like any other person, and it is very understandable why he ends up being the way he is. But Daenerys? After letting us watch her for seven seasons, being not only a decent human being but one who cares about the well-being of people who do not really affect her in any way? She was definitely a good woman, and if Game of Thrones had intended her to be the villain all along, it seems either very rushed or incredibly troubling.
I suppose that the best we have for now is to wait for George R R Martin to release The Winds of Winter and The Song of Spring in the coming years, and even if he does intend to make Daenerys into the villain that she had been forcefully fitted into in the series, two whole novels, rather than a few meagre episodes, would surely allow for more space and time for her story to unfold, and hopefully, our queen gets a far more fitting sendoff than being stabbed in the heart by the only man she trusts while he was kissing him.
As for now, qoy qoyi, I bid you, adieu.
medievalfantasyqueen 
Nice article but I would rather see Thanos being included in this list instead of Daenerys simply because last half of the GoT after Season 4 is absolute trash and doing ANY kind of analysis on it is rather stupid. There wasn’t consistent story or characters in those parts so Daenery’s never became a villain.