The first time I watched, I thought she just kinda snapped in the.. heat of the moment. ;)

I changed my mind when I watched again for caps & quotes.

Grey Worm, an obedient soldier who loves his queen, just decides to start killing soldiers who have surrendered to his queen's army? I really feel like orders would override his need for revenge, or anything else, 'cause that's what the Unsullied are. It's what they do. They follow orders. Which means Daenerys must've given the order to ignore the bells. Kinda surprised that she didn't just order her minions to kill Jon in the field, now that I think about it...

Sooo in Game Revealed, they say it's a sudden decision, but I call BS. (It "wasn't enough" that the soldiers surrendered, I believe was the reason they gave.) Whatever. Grey Worm was ready. He threw his spear before anybody knew what was going on. They had tall buildings on all sides. The dragon wasn't in sight. They planned this. I will not be convinced otherwise.

Leads to an interesting question, though: What would make her crazier, planning to burn a city to make it surrender, or suddenly deciding to destroy a city that already surrendered?

I don't think writers are that bright to think that deeply or make it planned. But, I agree. It would make sense if your speculation was right. I mean they don't really care about the small details. Like how White Walkers used those symbols. Those symbols remained unexplained. There are a lot of things fans theorized which were much better and smarter than they came up with. Personally, I'm rejecting this story timeline as a non-canon fanfiction.

"She knows that she has won this war. It's in that moment when she makes the decision to make this personal." -DB Weiss, showruiner, in Game Revealed for 8x05.

I will also be erasing S8 from my memory in the very near future.

Hmmm good point about Grey Worm, but it looked like she just snapped when she looking at the Red Keep - "a reminder of everything they'd taken from her". Sandor should've given her that memo about revenge making you nasty.

I do agree that the Grey Worm part makes sense that it would be premeditated. But when looking at her face in that moment, she does look like she just snapped. Whatever writers!

I don't think it is either really. She builds towards it. I don't think it was particularly conscious either way.

I think she saw it as a kind of last resort thing. It was in her mind back in Dragonstone, but it wasn't something she really wanted to do beforehand. She just snapped. I have no problem with this in a way - I just don't know why the whole ''Mad Queen'' storyline wasn't given longer to develop, rather than just two episodes.

I mean, she SAID she was gonna do this years ago. Drogo said he would do it for her back in s1 and she looked pleased.