Princess Daeyanna, First Of Her Name

Princess Daeyanna, first of her name ♡

Great assessment. I’d say that using your trauma as a sword and shield IS a way of dealing with it, as is denying it, romanticizing it, whatever else… they’re just not GOOD or healthy ways to deal with it. Maybe a better word than “deal” would be “respond.” Her actions are often fueled by her response to her own trauma that she doesn’t know how to heal from, because healing is hard and she as a character seems to prefer the path of least resistance. She has things she wants, but she will only pursue them on the path with the fewest obstacles, even if it’s not the best path or most likely to succeed in the long term.

I think this is because Alicent grapples with power and the lack of it. She fears being disempowered and needs to be able to convince herself that she does have power, but subconsciously believes that she can never have the kind of power Viserys had or her father has. She is afraid to truly grasp at power because she might be confronted with relative powerlessness. For example, I think she can see that Aegon is utterly unfit to rule, but deep down she knows that if she tried to defy her father and keep Aegon off the throne, she would fail. So her strategy is “fine, I’ll do what my father wants but I’ll do it on MY terms” because that’s an achievable goal with a low chance of failure. It doesn’t force her to grapple with power. She’s spent her whole life resigning herself to her fate and doesn’t know how to truly do things any other way. It’s the same paradoxical dance around power she’s been doing since her father forced her to get close to Viserys. Becoming his wife grants her title of queen, which, in theory, comes with power. But this was not a decision she made for herself, so how much power can she really have?

Of course, this all applies to show!Alicent. As I understand it, book!Alicent is basically a different character entirely.

On Alicent Hightower and the concept of the “perfect victim”:

Note that I will only be talking about show!Alicent as I have yet to read Fire and Blood. I know that book!Alicent is a very different character.

I have a lot of feelings about Alicent. I think there are a lot of flaws in the way she’s been written and I wish the writers had made her embrace her spite and resentment more, but I also have a lot of sympathy for her. I read a lot of complexity into her. I don’t know if that complexity was intended to be there or if I’m seeing things between the lines that aren’t actually there. But anyway, I agree with a lot of what many Alicent critics say about her, but disagree with the notion that she represents the perfect victim.

Mostly because I disagree that the perfect victim exists. People will always, always, ALWAYS criticize female abuse victims for the way they respond to abuse. Doe-eyed helplessness is not favored over fighting back. If she doesn’t fight back, she’s criticized for doing nothing to help herself. She’s victim-blamed. If she does fight back, then whether or not the abuse even took place is called into question, often with some DARVO added in. There is no winning.

People dismiss the trauma of Alicent’s marriage to Viserys by pointing to the way she cried when he died. Did Daenerys not cry for Drogo? Did she not name one of her dragons after Viserys? I personally don’t believe she was necessarily crying out of grief. I think she cried because she knew what his death meant—a great power struggle, the day of reckoning, was coming. But even if she had cried in sorrow, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t miserable in their marriage. Some have minimized this suffering because of the great power the marriage gave her as queen. But could this not also be said of Daenerys? Her marriage to Drogo gave her a position of great power as Khaleesi. Alicent is criticizing for allowing herself to be taken advantage of by Larys (and yes that scene sucked for many reasons), because she is queen and should have the power to avoid that. Again, could the same not be said of Daenerys and Viserys? Dany protects him at every turn. She did not command his death. The most she did was to have him walk behind the khalasar as punishment so he wouldn’t be physically harmed. Daenerys is my very favorite character. I am not criticizing her here in the slightest.

My point is only that I think criticism of Alicent’s character as the role of the perfect victim don’t really hold up because other victims in the series who have engaged in similar behaviors haven’t been met with the same dismissive attitude, and more importantly, because the perfect victim does not exist. Alicent is still being criticized for the way she responded to abuse. Perhaps not by the same people who would criticize her if she fought back, or by the people who would criticize Rhaenyra’s response to suffering, but she is still being criticized.

This post is not anti anyone or anything or any character. Please do not use it to attack any other female characters for the way THEY responded to trauma and abuse, although critical analysis and discussion is encouraged.

I think he probably meant that it was a possibility for VIEWERS to THINK “I just want them to stop fighting,” not that it was actually a possibility that that would happen in the story.

This makes me worry they’ll do things that don’t make sense just for shock value, to try to throw off fans. Such a huge pet peeve of mine. It seems insecure to me, like they don’t trust their own narrative to be enthralling enough.

now i’m team black out of spite.

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.

Are you tired of being nice?

Don’t you just want to go ape shit?

More validation for this analysis from Sansa’s first chapter in A Clash of Kings:

Sansa felt that she ought to say something. What was it that Septa Mordane used to tell her? A lady’s armor is courtesy, that was it.

I doubt we’ll get a rosy ending, but in my dreams, Sansa will apologize to Arya and Arya will push her into the mud and they will laugh about it and have fun and Arya will teach Sansa and Dany the names of all the flowers in the north

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.