There is a case to made for a storyline about a woman coming to terms with the fact that everything she believed about herself is not so. Daenerys rose from the ashes of Drogo’s hut with three live dragons. From then on, she knows herself to be special. She’s not just any queen, she’s the Mother of Dragons, and the Breaker of Chains. And for a while, everything seems to confirm this. The people of Meereen and Yunkai welcome her as a savior as she frees them from centuries of slavery; the Dothraki follow her across the Narrow Sea they so fear. And then she gets to Westeros to find that the people there have not, as she’s long been told, been sewing dragon banners and praying for her return. They’re just trying to survive A) The Night King, and B) their own petty squabbles. And that is devastating to her self-esteem.