George R.R. Martin defended Daenerys Targaryen’s most iconic scene in Game of Thrones from critics accusing it of a racially-based theme.

Game of Thrones endured a lot of criticism during its eight-season run, and one of the most common accusations is the white savior element found in Daenerys Targaryen’s arc. She wasn’t called the Breaker of Chains for nothing – the liberation of Slaver’s Bay was one of her many military campaigns throughout the show.

Credits: Emilia Clarke and Drogon in Game of Thrones / HBO

Despite her great aspirations, many scrutinized the scene for falling under the white savior trope. This is an issue that George R.R. Martin has repeatedly responded to in the past, and there was indeed a solid answer to it.

George R.R. Martin clears up Daenerys Targaryen’s white savior allegations

Daenerys Targaryen’s liberation of the slaves in Yunkai, Astapor, and Meereen was viewed as one of her most epic and memorable scenes in Game of Thrones as not all the time we see a woman take up the position of saving people from the cruelty of slavery. Still, many critics believed this was racially-based because of the skin color of the hero and the people rescued.

George R.R. Martin addressed this once and for all in his interview via Brown University Library. He debunked the speculation that this was inspired by American slavery but was more of the slavery of the ancient Near East, of the Romans, and the Greeks where slaves could be of any race.

Credits: Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones / HBO

He prefaced his answer by asserting that the books need to be separated from the show, and he believed that the criticism was for the HBO series. Now, the scene was filmed in Morocco, and they put up a call for extra people to show up in the background. Martin said that they enlisted as many as they needed. “When you do that in Morocco, Moroccans show up,” the author promptly said.

He’s aware of the implication of this practicality, especially with people who haven’t read the novels. What was depicted in the show was not what Martin intended, but he also argued that flying in extras from Ireland to Morocco just for those scenes would be costly.

Martin said that this was also the case with the Dothraki scenes. Some of the sequences with Daenerys and Khal Drogo were filmed in the fields outside of Belfast, and when viewers look closely, they’d see “a lot of kind of pasty-white Dothraki” simply because those guys were the ones who showed up when they put up a casting call.

George R.R. Martin comments on the lack of diversity in fantasy

Credits: George R.R. Martin via CBS News

Martin addressed the issue of why fantasy is so monocultural in his interview with The Wall Street Journal. He simply said that it appears to be so because these works of literature were mostly written by white men.

The author explained that the type of literature these people grew up reading was the same kind of novels they would write because they were all drawn from the same cultural pool.

Today, more and more writers from different ethnic backgrounds have started publishing their own novels, and this is why the fantasy genre has become multicultural.

Game of Thrones is currently available to watch on HBO.