Every week, Todd VanDerWerff will be joined by two of Vox's other writers to discuss the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Check out the recap for this episode here, and follow the whole discussion here. This week, Todd is joined by foreign runescape gold policy writer Zack Beauchamp and politics writer Andrew Prokop. Come back throughout the week for entries.

Zack Beauchamp: Andrew, the notion that Daenerys is being set up as the well-intentioned villain of the series is fascinating. I'll just note, apropos of nothing, that my first-ever piece for Vox was about how Daenerys is secretly George W. Bush.

Whether or not you're right about Daenerys, the fact that the theory is plausible points to something deeper about Game of Thrones and suggests that we might all be watching it a bit wrong.

It's easy to forget, as we root for super-likable badasses like Arya and Tyrion, that George R. R. Martin's books were designed as takedowns of the kind of stylized violence you see in the dominant, Lord of the Rings–inspired type of fantasy novel. Martin, a conscientious objector of the Vietnam War, despises war and violence and wanted his work to reflect that.

"The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that," he told Rolling Stone. "World War I is much more typical of the wars of history than World War II the kind of war you look back afterward and say, 'What the hell were we fighting for?'"

But as viewers, we love Game of Thrones as a violent spectacle. We cheer the huge battles at Blackwater and Castle Black, and marvel at the show's beautifully staged duels. We get grumpy when episodes are slow and talky. We cheer when Daenerys torches the slavers and when, for a few fleeting moments, it looks like Oberyn is going to dismember the Mountain. This is all key to Game of Thrones' appeal.

And that's fine. It's not a problem like the "bad fans" who www.rsfarmer.com kept rooting for Breaking Bad's Walter White even as he became a monster. But I wonder if when we cheer for our favorite Game of Thrones characters to win battles and wars, we're being subtly blinded to show's underlying message: war is terrible, and all of this is pointless.