In Game of Thrones season 7, Westeros faces two very serious external threats of invasion: one by the forces of ice, led by the evil(?) Night King, and one by the forces of fire, led by the good(?) Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons. Both forces can and will bring untold destruction, but the Night King gets all the press. Truth is, the Dothraki under Daenerys’s command are a far more imminent threat to the common people of Westeros. And they may, in fact, do more harm than the Night King’s undead army.

Game Of Thrones Season 7 Spoilers: Daenerys, The Dothraki And Death

At the end of Game of Thrones season 6, Daenerys finally decided it as time to sail to Westeros, with a tremendous army at her back. The bulk of the army consists of the united Dothraki khalasar, which owes her allegiance and has sworn to do her bidding. They even agreed to cross the “poison water” of the ocean for her, something the Dothraki have never done before. Soon, the great horde will make landing somewhere in southern Westeros and they’ll try to win Daenerys her throne.

Chances are, winning that throne won’t be hard—Queen Cersei is extremely weak and widely hated, and has little base of support except in her own family lands. Most of her immediate rivals are dead, but she can’t put up a strong resistance to a vigorous new opponent with a fresh army. She’ll fall quickly. But the trouble for Westeros is what happens after Daenerys wins her crown.

The Dothraki value plunder and destruction very highly in war. Pillaging is the source of all their wealth and most of their slaves. And although Daenerys has put an end to rape and slaving in the Dothraki horde, the plundering and destruction won’t be so easily stopped. The promise of being able to tear down the castles of the knights of Westeros was a big part of how Daenerys convinced the Dothraki to come with her in the first place. And that will work well against her enemies.

But the Dothraki will soon be out of control, no matter how forcefully Daenerys tries to rein them in. Their horde is larger than any army in Westeros, probably larger than the rest of them combined. And it’s a horde made up of many individual actors, all of whom want to find new wealth in lands in the Seven Kingdoms. Creating those lands will often involve tearing down existing power bases like castles and even cities. The Dothraki will become the new lords of Westeros under Daenerys’s greater suzerainty, but they won’t suddenly become feudal rulers based in castles.

The Dothraki at Daenerys’s side are like a much more barbaric version of the Saxons who were invited into England in the early Middle Ages to protect against invading undead wights—sorry, I meant Picts and Scots. They started out as a useful military force, but they didn’t go home when they were no longer needed. They took over the country. And that’s what will happen with the Dothraki, unless the Night King manages to kill them all. Either way, it’s not a very pleasant outlook for the common people, but then again, when is it ever?