I Really Wish The HotD Writers Had Given Post-time Skip Rhaenyra And Her Children (and Laenas Children)

I really wish the HotD writers had given post-time skip Rhaenyra and her children (and Laena’s children) more substance. All of team black in general aside from Daemon feels a bit… lackluster compared to team green. Especially comparing Alicent’s kids to Rhaenyra and Laena’s. I’m sure this will change next season given what I’ve heard about Fire and Blood, but right now, the two “sides” are really not on even moral playing fields. Ultimately no matter what she does, I’ll always believe Rhaenyra’s claim trumps Aegon II’s, but aren’t we supposed to be seeing both sides as morally grey?

Again aside from Daemon, team black has hardly done anything condemnable compared to team green. Daemon and Rhaenyra conspired to murder an innocent man to fake Laenor’s death, a murder that the show kind of glosses over, and Rhaenys presumably killed many when she burst into Aegon’s coronation with Melys (again, the show does not frame this as questionable). As far as I can remember, that’s kind of it for all not-Daemon team black characters. Sure Luc attacked Aemond with a knife, and Aemond has every right to be upset about it, but they were children and I’m sure Luc didn’t intend to cause as much damage as he did. We can’t put that on the same level as the hightowers planning to usurp Rhaenyra, Criston murdering a man at a wedding, Larys killing his family, etc. And I think the characters suffer intrigue-wise as a result. Is this how it’s supposed to be or do the writers except us to consider Rhaenyra having children with Harwin and marrying Daemon as acts on the same moral level as those of team green??

@nobodysuspectsthebutterfly I can’t reply since this is a sideblog but thank you!!

After finishing reading AGoT, I have a brand new hope for a way the books may differ from the show. I want to see Sansa snap. I want Sansa to be violent. I want her to get her hands dirty!!

In the show, yes, she’s responsible for the deaths of Ramsey and Littlefinger, but they’re detached kills carried out by someone else. I’d much less likely she’ll kill Ramsey in the books since I know that her marriage to him was a show exclusive, but I wouldn’t mind a bit if she did it on behalf of Jeyne. And I can only hope she kills Littlefinger with her own two hands.

To me, Sansa seems like a character who has believed her whole life that that beauty, politeness, and grace are the keys to her safety. If she can be ladylike, she will be safe. I interpret her desires for Arya to be more of a lady as, at the heart, a desire for her sister to be safe. The songs tell of lovely, happy things, so if she can keep things the way they are in the songs, it will bring safety and happiness and the heroes will win. This is a reasonable conclusion a kid might draw. Kids often fail to recognize what they actually want and misidentify the true sources of their anxiety because they simply lack the self awareness. It wouldn’t be a stretch for a child’s internal, subconsciously narrative to take “the gentle and graceful ladies of the stories are happy and safe” and conclude that “beauty and manners will make a girl happy and safe.” Combine that with a desire for her family to be safe, and it all gets expressed as a desire for Arya to be ladylike. I could imagine that at her core, it’s not politeness that Sansa truly values. She has no reason to care if Arya likes dresses. It’s safety she wants, but she’s a child who doesn’t know how to voice that.

But it seems to me like the books are setting her up to learn that these things, these “feminine” qualities, will not save anyone. To be a lady means nothing. Lady was murdered. And I want her to be ANGRY about it. Angry that she wasted so much time and energy trying to be the perfect image of a noblewoman. And I want her to lash out. I think she definitely has it in her, based on her last chapter in AGoT. She thinks multiple times about wanting to hurt others. She is FURIOUS.

He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a … a thing to him. “No,” she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he’d hurt her,

Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him,

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”

And my favorite:

All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all.

I can only hope that’s foreshadowing. I hope that, in an impulsive act of violence and rage, she pushes Littlefinger off the Eyrie. Nothing proper or calculated. A simple moment where that madness overtakes her and all the rage she’s had comes out in final shove.

touched up my old portrait of jon a little 🖤

“All in black, he was a shadow among shadows, dark of hair, long of face, grey of eye.” 

(Disclaimer that I am not team anything and believe that Rhaenyra deserves the throne and that the only thing really condemnable she did was conspiring to murder an innocent man to fake Laenor’s death, which pales in comparison to what other characters have done)

Team green is full of people who have done objectively worse things. However, I think it’s true that compared to Alicent’s kids, Jace, Luke, Baela, and Rhaena ARE boring. I haven’t read Fire and Blood, so it could be entirely a show issue, but the fact of the matter is that Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond have all been given more characterization than the team black kids. Jace and Luc have more or less interchangeable personalities. They’re nice, honorable boys. We know Jace has worked hard to learn about being king and Luc thinks he’s unworthy of being heir to Driftmark, and that’s basically all we can say about them. That and they hate being called bastards. Laena’s kids are even worse off. We know absolutely nothing about their feelings and motivations.

There’s just more substance to Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond. Aegon is a vile little slime but his actors blew it out of the water and gives us a lot to think about. He likes to have power (obviously, he’s a rapist and pays to watch children fight to the death), but mostly ignores his wife and is terrified of the crown to the point of literally running and hiding when Viserys dies. The coronation scene itself is absolutely astoundingly acted. He feels his parents don’t care about him. He has an antagonistic relationship with Aemond. This is a lot to work with and analyze. Helaena clearly has prophetic visions, has an unusual fascination with insects, resents her husband, and is, in my opinion, autistic coded. Aemond is bitter, resentful, and simultaneously is insecure and has a sense of superiority and entitlement. He’s always got something to prove. He’s probably the most complex of the three, so it’s not surprising that he’s favored.

This is also why Daemon is the most popular team black character. He’s the most complex. His relationships to other characters are interesting and dynamic and give us a lot of fodder for speculation. These things can not be said of the team black kids. Their relationships to other characters are either exactly what you’d expect or non-existent. Oh, they love their mother. Duh. Oh, they hate being called bastards, duh. Oh, they’re brothers and they reminisce together. There’s a lot of ROOM to speculate, but no FODDER. Nothing to work from and wonder “why?” or “what did that mean?” How do they feel about their wives and vice versa? How do the boys feel about Daemon? How do the girls feel about Rhaenyra? How did the boys feel about Laenor’s “death”? About Harwin’s? The show even cut out the one scene we had of Daemon showing affection to his daughters, which would have added SOMETHING to the two of them and even more to Daemon.

I think another part of the problem is that many of the morally ambiguous actions of team black aren’t really framed as such, aside from Daemon. Killing a man to fake Laenor’s death is glossed over. Rhaenys presumably killing civilians when she bursts through the ground with Melys is glossed over. What other questionable things have members of team black done in season 1, aside from Daemon? The kids fought with Aemond and he lost his eye, but I can’t really count that because they were children and I can’t imagine Luc intended to maim him. I genuinely cannot think of anything else unless you count Rhaenyra’s affair with Harwin, because I don’t count that at all. I think Rhaenyra should be LESS dutiful, MORE rebellious, and I look forward to seeing what she does in season 2.

Right now, team green is unambiguously the bad guy team. I am no team green stan, but I do think that the material that has been presented to us for team green IS more interesting. There’s just more to be discussed and analyzed. The only team black characters I could really dig into and speculate about at this point are Daemon and Rhaenyra, Daemon much more so. Which isn’t a criticism of team black or team black fans and isn’t any excuse for team green fans to be sexist towards Rhaenyra. It’s just that I think the writing team out a whole lot more effort into team green

This needs to be said but, Alicent being a holier than thou hypocrite, Criston Cole being a “nice guy” who still hasn’t gotten over Rhaenyra not giving up being heir to the throne so she could be his wife even after 16 years, Larys Strong being a kin slayer who has a creepy foot fetish, and Aegon being a rapist who watches starving children (some of which are his own bastard children) fight to the death doesn’t mean that Team Green has the interesting and complex characters.

I haven’t read Fire and Blood but I know that the age difference between Alicent and Rhaenyra is greater in the book and I think the fact that they were closer in age is making it harder for some people to see it as abuse in the show. People have a pretty easy time grasping a parent or step-parent abusing a child but people don’t really think of non-romantic relationships when they imagine abuse between peers.

I understand why they had to age up most of the characters but I do think it caused some unintentional problems. What they didn’t have to do was make Alicent and Rhaenyra childhood friends, further muddying their relationship in the eyes of the audience. Perhaps anon also hasn’t read Fire and Blood and only has the show to go off of, in which case I don’t think the abuse is as glaringly obvious. Still abuse, just not as obvious as actions that result in Rhaenyra’s death. I like show!Alicent (although I read more depth into her character than what the writers present and disagree with many of the writing decisions) but even I can see that it’s abuse. As queen and stepmother, Alicent inherently holds power over Rhaenyra. Demanding to see infants the second they’re born is a power play. It requires that either 1. the baby be taken from Rhaenyra or 2. Rhaenyra to go herself immediately after birth birth, and possibly more importantly: it sends the implicit message of, “I know your children are not your husband’s and I am judging you for it.”

Also, imagine your step parent taking your bitter ex who hates your guts to be their personal guard and ally. Alicent knows he hates her. She expressed mild disapproval when he called her a whiny cunt, but it seems like it was the misogynistic language she objected to, not the sentiment. Criston hates Rhaenyra, broke his oath, and disrupted a public event by beating a man’s face in, and Alicent chose to keep around. One could argue that Larys holds power over Alicent so she can’t get rid of him, but the same DEFINITELY cannot be said of Criston. Keeping him around is another power play and I wish the show had leaned into that. Especially given the hypocrisy of Alicent judging Rhaenyra for having sex before marriage but not applying that same judgement to Criston, who broke his oath of chastity.

"Alicent abused Rhaenyra" How??

You're asking about book!Alicent or show!Alicent? Book!Alicent abused Rhaenyra by slut-shaming her, undermining her, insulting her, driving her out of her home and conspiring against her, resulting directly in her horrible execution and the death of her children. It's not enough for you? Show!Alicent does exactly the same, the only difference is that she's crying while she's doing it.

Maybe you have some confusion because of the modern definition of the word "abuse". You hear abuse and you imagine a man gaslighting, controlling and slapping his girlfriend. So the methodical and violent usurpation of a woman that led to her execution isn't somehow important enough for you.

The show did him so dirty by barely giving us any content. I loved what we saw, but we really deserved more.

Green stans not understanding why Harwin has stans (while stanning a serial rapist and a bland loser incel), idk probably because we enjoy seeing a man who loves a woman, doesn’t pressure her into anything, gives her and their children as much support as he can, doesn't ask her to give up on her goals and ambitions for him, doesn't ask her to be his kept woman, doesn’t get pissy about being her lover. Probably because we enjoy seeing a good, decent man. He doesn’t care about his honor, doesn’t care how people view him as long as he can be close to Rhaenyra, love her and their sons. What’s there NOT to stan ? Also, Ryan Corr is fucking hot.

Preach, nonnie! Harwin Strong was a good man, he obviously loved Rhaenyra and their sons but understood the situation. He was there for the four of them, he probably would have also defended Laenor since he's the official father of his children. He might have lost his honor when he broke his vows, but as a human being, as a man, he was honorable and he deserved more than to die in a fire for the crime of being devoted to Rhaenyra and make her happy.