Mick Ryan
At the beginning of season 7 of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen lands at Dragonstone island, as her dragons weave lazy circles in the air above. Daenerys drops to her knees in the wet beach sand and feels the solid earth of her native Westeros for the first time. Accompanied by her entourage of advisors, she enters and explores the deserted Dragonstone castle. Daenerys continues to the empty throne room, seeing the volcanic rock throne of House Targaryen. After pausing a moment, Daenerys strides past the throne and enters the Chamber of the Painted Table. She does so as a queen, khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, strategic commander, and coalition leader.
By this stage of the Game of Thrones story, she oversees powerful land, sea, and air (with her fire-breathing dragons) forces. She occupies a powerful and isolated fortress of Valyrian design. And she now possesses the only source of one of the only substances known to kill White Walkers—Dragonstone. These combined provide powerful incentives for other houses on Westeros to ally with her. As Daenerys looks at the Painted Table, she turns to her advisor Tyrion and states, “Shall we begin?” It has been quite a journey for the young queen.
A key story arc across all the seasons of the Game of Thrones saga has been the exiled descendant of the realm’s deposed ruling dynasty, Daenerys, and her exploits in seeking a return to the Iron Throne. In the earliest days of this epic series, this was the crusade of her brother, Viserys. He had claimed the Iron Throne as King Viserys III in the wake of his father being killed in Robert’s Rebellion. But he never sat on the Iron Throne. After Viserys is murdered by Khal Drago (by having molten gold poured over his head, no less), Daenerys makes the fateful decision to continue her brother’s quest to seize back the Iron Throne for the Targaryen family.
The exploits of Daenerys cover multiple trials, relationships, coalitions, and continents, all to support her triumphant return to Westeros and accession to the Iron Throne. Her journey sees Daenerys assume new titles—khaleesi, queen, and Mother of Dragons—and results in her development as a commander, leader, and strategist. Above all, Daenerys develops a profound understanding of the requirement for coalition partners. By the conclusion of the seventh season, she possesses a superbly honed capacity to seek out potential allies, build mutually beneficial relationships, and apply the art of compromise in the quest of her strategic objective.
Before progressing in this examination of Daenerys’s coalition-building skills, it is worth examining the difference between alliances and coalitions. These are not terms that are interchangeable. From a military perspective, alliances are formal arrangements for broad, long-term objectives and are often underpinned by formal treaties. A coalition, however, is a less formal agreement for common action between two or more entities (mainly nations but, for our purposes here, also houses, tribes, and ethnic groups).1 For Daenerys Targaryen the majority of her security partnerships are coalitions—temporary relationships that sometimes come undone and sometimes provide significant advances in her pursuit of the Iron Throne. She has few true allies. Over the seven seasons of Game of Thrones it is only the Unsullied who could truly be defined as allies. This distinction between allies and coalition partners is important to remember.
This chapter examines the development of Daenerys Targaryen as a coalition builder. The narrative covers key steps in her development as a coalition builder, while examining the rationale for her seeking allies. This chapter also reviews her personal style and methods in soliciting and building these relationships. Finally, it examines lessons for coalition building that we might take away from the experiences of Daenerys Targaryen.
The recent U.S. National Defense Strategy noted that alliances and partnerships are crucial to strategy, providing a durable, asymmetric strategic advantage that no competitor or rival can match.2 While Queen Daenerys, khaleesi and Mother of Dragons, may not have used these precise words, she was a fast learner when it came to seeking out and nurturing coalition partners. When we first meet her at the start of Game of Thrones, Daenerys is the subject of a trade between her brother (seeking an army) and Khal Drogo (seeking a wife). Despite this repugnant treatment by her brother and Drogo, she rapidly learns the ways of the Dothraki, through observation, empathy, and the advice of characters such as Jorah Mormont. She eventually gains the trust of the Dothraki by learning and respecting their ways, including wearing their clothes, learning their language, and even at one point eating a stallion’s heart. She has learned the art of influence (a strategic skill in itself) and the value of gaining partners in achieving larger goals.
Her influence sees Khal Drogo eventually agreeing to move his forces, by ship, to Westeros to fight for the Iron Throne. But we soon observe that Daenerys’s influence in sustaining this partnership with the Dothraki has its limits. With the death of Drogo following ritual combat and the stillbirth of their child, she is ostracized by the Dothraki. Her capacity to sustain influence with the Dothraki was based on her marriage to Drogo. She learns from this. It is a limitation that she will not allow to compromise her future efforts in alliance building to achieve her seizure of the Iron Throne.
At the end of the first season of Game of Thrones, we see Daenerys evolve her approach to leadership through a mix of personal inspiration and mysticism. The majority of the Dothraki have deserted her, leaving behind a small band of her supporters. She appeals to the remaining khalasar that they are free to go or follow her. And she appropriates the mysticism of fire and dragons (soon to be more than old myths) in demonstrating to this small band of followers that she is destined to ascend the Iron Throne.
It is her arrival in Astapor, in the Bay of Dragons, where Daenerys reveals a growing sophistication in coalition building. Accepting the advice of Jorah that she will need to build a greater source of strength to provide a foundation to eventually enlist the Dothraki in her cause, she trades a dragon for a small army of eight thousand Unsullied warriors. Using her new warriors, she captures Astapor. Demonstrating her growth as a leader, she then frees the Unsullied, who all elect to remain in her service. She then uses her new army, and a newly formed partnership with Daario, to capture the second key city in the Bay of Dragons, Yunkai, and eventually the largest city of Meereen.
Later, in season 6, we see Daenerys apply all she has learned to grow the size of her army through a new alliance with the Dothraki. While negotiations start poorly, she turned the tables on an assemblage of Dothraki leaders and burned them all alive. The remaining Dothraki pledge their allegiance to the Mother of Dragons, and she leads them back to Meereen. There she is challenged by the slave masters. Using dragons to burn the slave masters’ ships, she negates the threat of the old masters of Meereen.
Not long after, Daenerys is approached by Yara and Theon Greyjoy to form a partnership. They offer to provide one hundred ships to Daenerys if she helps them defeat their uncle Euron Greyjoy. Dany accepts Yara’s offer but demands that the Ironborn end all pillaging. The Ironborn agree to her terms; Daenerys and Yara Greyjoy make a pact to work together.
Daenerys Targaryan now commands a coalition that comprises mounted and dismounted land forces (the Dothraki and the Unsullied), an aerial support element (her dragons), and the means to transport her coalition force across the Narrow Sea to Westeros (the Greyjoy fleet). This represents the results of a multiyear effort on her behalf to bring together disparate forces from across Essos and, through compromise and guile, build a force that will enable her to fight for the Iron Throne in Westeros. The final episode of season 6 sees this coalition force led by Daenerys commence its move across the Narrow Sea to Westeros.
Her return to Westeros sees further expansion of her coalition. First, she forms a partnership with Ellaria Sand, who agrees to provide an army from House Martell for the conquest of Westeros. She also possesses a nascent relationship with House Tyrell, forged by Olenna Tyrell after the deaths of her son and grandchildren at King’s Landing. The coalition is further expanded when Jon Snow is swayed to join Daenerys in the wake of her assistance to his mission north of the wall. This time, however, coalition partnerships are not secured with threats or armed force but with her personal negotiations with the principals: Jon Snow, Ellaria Sand, and Olenna Tyrell. While her maritime forces suffer a defeat at the hands of Euron Greyjoy and Ellaria is captured, the forces of the khaleesi’s coalition are poised and ready for the conquest of the Iron Throne.
But as we depart season 7, for the first time in her quest for the Iron Throne, Daenerys must place this goal on hold. While the perfidious Cersei is the most obvious obstacle to her assuming the Iron Throne, the threat of White Walkers moving south of the Wall is a more compelling and existential threat to her goals—and to Westeros. The Army of the Dead represents the most dangerous obstacle to everything she has strived for. To defeat it will demand that she apply everything she has learned in strategy, command, and coalition management.
Over the seven seasons of Game of Thrones, the Mother of Dragons builds a deep appreciation of the need for coalitions to achieve her goals. Applying her own experiences and the advice of trusted advisers such as Jorah and Tyrion, she develops a sophisticated view of coalitions as a key “ways” in achieving her strategic “ends” of gaining the Iron Throne. The first part of this chapter has reviewed her dawning appreciation of the importance of building and sustaining alliances. As this narrative describes, it was a learning process built on failure and success over many years. Using her experiences, the khaleesi develops her own method of building and sustaining coalitions. This “Daenerys method” has several components.
First, Daenerys always retains a focus on her overall strategic objective of regaining the Iron Throne. She never deviates from this end state. This provides her with a unifying purpose for coalition formation and sustainment. It also allows her to offer incentives to the leaders of different groups should their endeavor be successful and should she be able to claim leadership of Westeros and its spoils.
Second, Daenerys learns to apply various approaches to coalition building. There is no “one size fits all” to building an effective coalition army. She uses compassion with the Unsullied and with the slaves of Meereen. She exploits marriage to partner with the noble families of Meereen and avoid a conflict that would distract her from preparing for the conquest of Westeros. She applies other inducements with the Dothraki, the Greyjoys, House Tyrell, and Jon Snow in the conquest of Westeros in later seasons. This demonstrates a growing shrewdness in how she differentiates incentives for different coalition partners.
Finally, she demonstrates a streak of ruthlessness in forming coalitions. As she matures in her strategic decision-making, Daenerys essentially embraces a “join me or die” approach. This was used against Dothraki leaders at the Khalifa Vezhven and against the slave masters at Meereen during their revolt against her rule. In both instances, it was a choice between alliance and fire; both resulted in the incineration of her adversaries. Toward the end of season 7, we once again witness this approach when Daenerys has the dragon Drogon roast Randyll and Dickon Tarly when they refuse to ally with her after the Battle of the Goldroad. While this ruthlessness is somewhat ameliorated through the advice of Tyrion Lannister, it remains an instinctive stance for Daenerys and something we are likely to witness in future.
While Game of Thrones exists in the fantasy world, it nonetheless offers the contemporary strategic leader useful lessons on coalition formation and sustainment. The building of coalitions is almost as old as warfare itself. The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen multiple occasions where the benefits of building coalitions can be demonstrated. The First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and first Gulf War are good examples.3 What might be the lessons from Game of Thrones and the coalition building of Queen Daenerys?
First, coalitions allow for the achievement of strategic objectives that individual actors or nations may not otherwise possess the means to achieve. When national resources from multiple nations can be pooled toward an individually unachievable goal, collective action is highly desirable. When we first meet Daenerys at the start of Game of Thrones, she possesses little more than her name and an aspiration to return to Westeros with her brother. She learns that as her aspirations grow, so too must she grow the means to achieve these aspirations. Only through coalition building, and the maintenance of increasingly larger coalitions, can she do this.
Second, friction within coalitions may be as significant as that between the coalition and its adversaries. There is deep historical evidence of coalitions and alliances being notoriously difficult balancing acts. Whether it was frictions within the Delian League during the Peloponnesian War generated by Athenian use of its navy or the “caveat management” of NATO leaders for the fifty countries engaged in Afghanistan operations in the twenty-first century, coalition management is a tricky business.4 This is mirrored in Daenerys’s experiences and the challenges of the changing affiliations of the Dothraki and the slave masters and will potentially manifest in the future in her relationship with the conniving and vicious Cersei Lannister.
Third, practical necessity and shared goals dictate the formation of most coalitions. Once they are formed, coalitions need coordination of effort to achieve their agreed common objectives.5 For Daenerys, her all-consuming goal is gaining the Iron Throne. While achieving this often requires subsidiary efforts, she never veers away from this single goal. It provides the clear and unifying vision for how she views coalition formation and provides the rationale for her relationship building and maintenance for coalition formation.
Fourth, coalitions must be underpinned by cultural awareness. In seeking to build and sustain a consensus around strategic objectives, it is critical that coalition members demonstrate understanding of the cultural norms and sensitivities of their partners. During the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians were not always the masters of this, even though they managed to keep the Delian League together until their eventual defeat. The khaleesi displays an early appreciation for this aspect of coalition building and leadership. She learns and mimics Dothraki habits and traditions and develops a deep empathy for partners such as the Unsullied, freed slaves, and Jon Snow’s forces. As such, she increasingly establishes the capacity to balance her own objectives with the different cultural mindsets and approaches of the members of the collation she leads.
Finally, coalitions are built on personalities. Whether it is the modern example of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s masterful orchestration of partners for the liberation of Europe or the ancient example of Philip II of Macedonia and his League of Corinth, personal relationships matter in building and sustaining coalitions.6 History’s most outstanding coalition builders and leaders deeply appreciate how their personal leadership approach complements the national imperatives of each nation for joining the coalition. Tolerance, cultural awareness, empathy, good leadership, and courage (physical and moral) have defined the great coalition leaders of history. So too is this the case with Daenerys. While these qualities are not evident early in the series, she develops and hones these qualities over multiple years to eventually lead a powerful invasion force to Westeros. These personal qualities put her very close to achieving her goal of the Iron Throne at the end of season 7, before the intervention of the Army of the Dead.
The growing maturity of Daenerys’s strategic decision-making manifests most clearly in the coalition that she has assembled by the end of season 7. From innocent young princess at the start of the series, she progresses through a broad range of experiences that hone her ability to build coalitions of different groups in order to ascend the Iron Throne. This demanded a significant level of personal resilience but also enhancing a variety of interpersonal skills that underpin her management of the key leaders in her coalition force that is now lodged in Westeros.
Daenerys demonstrates a growing sophistication in her approach to coalition building and leadership. Maintaining her ruthless focus on the goal of gaining the Iron Throne and applying different methods for different coalition partners, her actions offer a range of insights for contemporary strategic leaders and thinkers. And while the eventual outcome of her campaign to regain the Iron Throne is yet to be revealed, Daenerys Targaryen, khaleesi and Mother of Dragons, offers us an outstanding exemplar of a coalition builder and commander.
1. Wayne A. Silkett, “Alliance and Coalition Warfare,” Parameters 23, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 74–85.
2. Jim Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (Washington DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2018), 8, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.
3. One useful history that cover this aspect of the Cold War is John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005). See also Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, eds., The Whirlwind War: The United States in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Washington DC: Center for Military History, 1995).
4. For more, see Robert B. Strassler, ed., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (New York: Free Press, 1998). Details of the fifty coalition members can be found at “NATO and Afghanistan,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, last updated November 27, 2018, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_8189.htm.
5. Silkett, “Alliance and Coalition Warfare.”
6. Among the references of Eisenhower’s coalition building, see Louis Galambos, Eisenhower (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt, 2002); Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Permabooks, 1952). For a useful examination of Philip II and the League of Corinth, see Nicholas Hammond, Philip of Macedon (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1998).