“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”
AGOT 24 – DAENERYS III (GRRM)
Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah’s words, the more they rang of truth.
POV character Daenerys Targaryen 3
Chapter (AGOT) 24 / 73
Chapter (ASOIAF) 24 / 344
Summary
Daenerys rides with a party through the great grassy plains, also called the Dothraki Sea and enjoys the day. Her brother is also there, although everybody urged him to stay behind, but he wants to wait until the “debt” is paid. Before the party catches up to her and Jorah Mormont, Daenerys ordes all of them to stay and rides further on her own. She thinks about the first time with the khalasar and Khal Drogo and how (in every aspect of life) she had to adapt. The first time was hard , she was depressed and wished to die, but after dreaming of a dragon, she suddenly embraced this new life and started to enjoy the ride in front of the khalasar. And then she relishes in the fact that she is now alone, as she is never alone.
Suddenly Viserys is by her side and shouts at her because she “dared to give him commands”. When he touches her rudely, she tries to resist, when suddenly a whip cracks loudly and Viserys is yanked backward. Jhogo – a dothraki – asks if she wants him dead or otherwise punished, but she insists to not harm him. Instead she orders to take his horse and let him walk back to the camp – an even more insulting punishment in the eyes of the dothraki. Viserys orders Mormont to resists the command, but he decides in Daenerys favor.
When riding back she and Jorah talk if Viserys would make a good king and both do not believe he would. Dany realizes that her brother will never be able to take back the throne as he is not a leader and nobody would follow him and neither can fight nor command an army. Back at the camp she is fascinated by the dragon eggs, but her handmaidens tell her that dragons are gone everywhere. In that night she waits for Drogo and weeks later when they have crossed the Dothraki sea her handmaiden Jhiqui assesses that Dany might be pregnant. She agrees as she had suspected all along. It is her fourteenth nameday.
Thoughts
- Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end.
Is Mormont referring to SNOW? - For half a moon, they rode through the Forest of Qohor, where the leaves made a golden canopy high above them, and the trunks of the trees were as wide as city gates. There were great elk in that wood,
For two weeks they rode through a wood! Essos is really big! Funnily elk are considered “northern animals” here – but Essos is more the “warmer” type of landscape… - This chapter includes big leaps in time. I always wonder how (in relation) we are in the story in Westeros as I have the feeling, that we totally lost the sync here (Robert mentioned her marriage brokered by Illyrio – but now weeks or months went by).
- Book vs. Series:
I have the feeling the scene with Viserys is in the series – but I can not remember at all.
My Song of Ice and Fire 
