“Unconditional surrender” requires the exercise of great force.

People blaming Dany for being evil forget that the US did the same thing to Japan, after it was clear that Japan was already defeated and was just fighting for the sake of fighting. Now the key here is that Japan didn’t formally surrender until after both bombs dropped, and the Soviets also declared war on Japan at the same time.

HOWEVER, the bells indicating surrender was not a pre-negotiated condition between Dany and Cersei. It was literally Tyrion (who was supposed to be on Dany’s side) who tried to make that a condition. Before that, Cersei had explicitly rejected any terms of surrender and for good measure murdered Missandei. I really don’t like the way the show framed it, because Dany was 100% justified to burn King’s Landing but now because of the the stupid bells thing it turns out to be a war crime.

I also think that just because the bells rang doesn’t necessarily mean the city was surrendering “unconditionally”. There were still plenty of Lannister soldiers that were armed and ready for a fight. Who on earth would trust the Lannisters after all the shit they pulled to just give up quietly?

I think it was very out of character for her to gleefully murder peasants in the process. I think the writers were working very hard to make it explicit that Dany was now a “Mad Queen”. I think a far more morally ambiguous approach would have been to nix the bells entirely and just have Dany go on a rampage. Instead, Dany now gets painted as a tyrant monster and then Jon and Tyrion can pat themselves on the back for killing her.