@xan:
! I know Danerys seems like a hugely popular figure now that she single handedly defeated the Khals and stuff but doesn't she give off the Mad King vibes a bit? I mean yesterday it was the slave owners of Meereen crucified without a trial, today it was the Khals tomorrow it might be King's Landing or Winterfell. Kinda makes the viewer reassess their take on the good and evil spectrum. Of course, the Khals were planning to kill her and the argument can be made that it was a defensive move but the way she did it shows how arrogant she could be with her powers. Doesn't take much to push that past the limits of sanity.
Oh, for sure, she's definitely an anti-hero. She's always had a disproportionate sense of entitlement, she's shown a bit of a bad habit of boasting when she doesn't have the power to back up her ego (got called out on that several times in Season 2), and she's gotten caught several times in the mentality of "I'm good, my family was good, and our enemies are evil" and had to be corrected. And yeah, she's absolutely ruthless to her enemies.
So far, though, the people she's killed in some horrible fashion have been major assholes who deserved it, she wants to defend and protect the innocent (and indeed, she cares more about the smallfolk than about the nobles, which is unfortunately a trait that not enough rulers/people in power have in the GoT world), and she does genuinely try to learn from her mistakes and surround herself with smart people that can help her make the right decisions. She wants to be a good queen, and she knows what her father was like and is actively trying to avoid becoming like him. She could indeed become crazy later in life, I suppose, but seeing as she's trying her hardest to avoid her father's mistakes, I have to hope that she'll turn out differently.
Also, to be fair, apparently Aegon the Conqueror was also said to be ruthless towards enemies, but he was still a good king. I'm guessing she's supposed to end up being more like him (assuming she doesn't die, of course): a good person at heart, but not somebody to fuck with.