Yunkai is kind of a mess. If you've spent any time watching Game of Thrones or obsessively flipping through George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, you know that the "Yellow City" isn't just a backdrop with pretty pyramids. It’s a pivot point. This is where Daenerys Targaryen’s crusade for justice actually starts to face real-world friction. It’s easy to liberate a city when everyone is a downtrodden slave and you have three dragons, right? Well, the Yunkai'i proved that theory wrong pretty quickly.
They’re sneaky.
Unlike the masters of Astapor, who were basically overconfident meatheads, the Wise Masters of Yunkai knew they couldn't win a head-on fight against an army of Unsullied. So they used the one thing they had plenty of: gold and ego. When we talk about yunkai game of thrones history, we’re talking about a city that specialized in "pleasure slaves," a detail that makes the show's adaptation a bit more sanitized than the grim reality of the books.
What Actually Happened at the Gates of Yunkai?
The Siege of Yunkai—if you can even call it that—was less about a wall coming down and more about a bribe going wrong. Daenerys arrives fresh off her victory in Astapor. She's feeling herself. She has the Unsullied. She has Ser Jorah and Barristan Selmy whispering in her ear.
The Yunkai'i send out an envoy named Grazdan mo Eraz. This guy shows up with chests of gold and basically tells Dany to take the money and keep walking toward Westeros. It’s a smart play. If she takes the gold, she wins. If she refuses, she’s stuck in a desert fighting a city that has 20,000 pit-fighters and the Stormcrows and Second Sons mercenary companies on their payroll.
Dany, being Dany, tells him to kick rocks.
But here is where the show and the books diverge in ways that actually matter for the lore. In the show, we see a cool nighttime raid. Daario Naharis, Grey Worm, and Jorah Mormont sneak into the city like a fantasy version of Splinter Cell. They kill some guards, open the gates, and boom—Mhysa. The crowd cheers. The music swells. It feels like a total victory.
Honestly? It wasn't.
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In the books, the battle is way more tactical. Dany has to peel the mercenaries away from Yunkai first. She uses wine and promises of better pay to flip the Second Sons and the Stormcrows. It’s a lesson in political maneuvering that the TV show simplified for the sake of a 42-minute runtime. Without those sellswords, the Yunkai'i "Yellow City" soldiers—who were basically just bed-slaves dressed up in armor they didn't know how to use—stood zero chance.
Why Yunkai is the Most Frustrating Part of Dany’s Arc
People often ask why Dany didn't just burn the place and move on. The yunkai game of thrones plotline is the first time we see the "Slaver's Bay" trap. In Astapor, she killed the masters and left. Within weeks, a butcher named Cleon seized power and became a worse tyrant than the people he replaced.
Dany tries to be smarter with Yunkai. She frees the slaves but leaves the masters in power, thinking a treaty will hold.
It didn't.
As soon as her back was turned and she headed for Meereen, the Wise Masters started rebuilding their armies. They didn't just go back to business as usual; they started a massive coalition to wipe her out. They recruited New Ghis, Volantis, and Qarth. They turned her "liberation" into a regional world war.
- The Yunkai'i are obsessed with the color yellow. Everything is yellow brick. The people wear yellow togas. Even the dust is yellow.
- They don't train soldiers; they buy them.
- Their primary export isn't labor—it's "trained" people for specific, often dark, luxury roles.
This city represents the persistence of old systems. You can't just kill a few guys in charge and expect a 5,000-year-old culture of slavery to evaporate overnight. The Yunkai'i were the first to show Dany that being a Queen is about more than just winning battles. It’s about the boring, agonizing work of occupation and governance.
The Real Power Behind the Yellow Walls
We have to talk about the Wise Masters. In the books, these guys are grotesque. They have names like Yurkhaz zo Yunzak and Morghaz zo Zherzyn. They represent an aristocracy that has become so detached from reality that they literally cannot conceive of a world where they aren't the ones in charge.
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When you look at the yunkai game of thrones dynamic, the city functions as a shadow antagonist for the rest of the series. Even when Dany is in Meereen trying to make peace, the Yunkai'i are the ones outside the walls, catapulting corpses infected with the "Pale Mare" (a nasty bloody flux) into the city. They invented biological warfare in Essos just because they were mad about their lost profits.
It’s brutal.
Misconceptions About the Yunkai'i Military
A lot of fans think Yunkai was weak. On paper, they were. Their own noble-led "armies" were a joke. Imagine a bunch of rich guys in stilts and feathered capes trying to fight a phalanx of Unsullied. It’s pathetic.
However, their real strength was their checkbook.
By hiring the Second Sons and the Stormcrows, they had professional killers doing their dirty work. This is why the introduction of Daario Naharis is so pivotal. If Daario doesn't flip his company and bring them to Dany’s side, the siege of Yunkai would have dragged on for months. Dany’s dragons weren't big enough to burn a whole city yet. She was vulnerable.
The city of Yunkai basically forced Dany to become a diplomat, even if she was a bad one. She had to learn how to negotiate with people she despised.
The Logistics of a Siege in Essos
One detail Martin gets right that the show glosses over is the food. Essos is a wasteland. You have these massive cities built on trade, but there’s no farmland. When Dany liberated the slaves of Yunkai, she suddenly had 200,000 people following her.
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They had no food.
They had no water.
They had no homes.
Yunkai stayed wealthy inside its walls while Dany’s "children" starved outside. This is the part of the yunkai game of thrones story that really highlights the tragedy of her character. She wanted to do the right thing, but the "right thing" led to thousands of people dying of thirst and disease in the red waste.
The Wise Masters knew this would happen. They banked on the fact that her compassion would be her undoing. They expected her to give up and go home when she realized she couldn't feed the people she freed.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Lore Buffs
If you're revisiting the series or writing your own fan theories, keep these specific points in mind regarding the Yunkai arc:
- Watch the colors. The show uses color palettes to tell you who is in charge. Yunkai’s yellow and gold contrast sharply with Dany’s blue and the Unsullied’s grey. It’s a visual representation of "New World vs. Old World."
- Follow the money. The Yunkai'i conflict isn't about religion or land; it's a trade war. The Wise Masters are essentially a board of directors fighting a hostile takeover.
- Read the "Pale Mare" chapters. If you only watched the show, you missed the sheer horror of the Siege of Meereen (orchestrated by Yunkai). It’s basically a zombie movie without the zombies—just thousands of people dying of a plague while the Yunkai'i laugh from their pyramids.
- Analyze Daario. His betrayal of Yunkai wasn't about love for Dany (at least not at first). It was a business calculation. He saw the dragons and realized which way the wind was blowing.
Yunkai remains one of the most polarizing locations in the franchise. Some see it as the point where the story slows down too much, while others see it as the most realistic depiction of the consequences of war. Either way, without the yellow bricks of Yunkai, Daenerys Targaryen would have arrived in Westeros as a conqueror who didn't understand how to rule. Yunkai was her trial by fire.
To truly understand the Yunkai'i mindset, look at the way they treat their "Great Masters" versus their "Wise Masters." The distinction is subtle but important for the social hierarchy of Slaver's Bay. You should go back and re-watch Season 3, Episode 10, "Mhysa," and pay close attention to the background characters—the people Dany thinks she saved. Their faces tell a much more complicated story than the music suggests. Re-reading the "Daenerys IV" chapter in A Storm of Swords provides the gritty tactical details that make the political landscape feel much more dangerous than the TV version ever could.