#Rhaenyra and the information she gave to Alicent was the impetus for her decision

[chekhovstrap]

It annoys me so bad when people minimize what Alicent means when she repeatedly says “you have no idea the sacrifices that were made to put you on that throne.” Like it’s her entire fucking life!! She was a child when her father told her to go to Viserys’ room in her mother’s dress to comfort him. She was a child when she married him and was subsequently forced to bear his children. Her life was the sacrifice, one that her father was more than willing to give in service of his own ends. A lamb to the slaughter. It’s that violence that fuels the machine, perpetuates it. She’s scarcely been able to conceive of her existence outside of wife, mother, daughter, queen which is synonymous with woman for her (forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law—). There is no person in all of that, only a tool. An implement to be used by others and later discarded (I wanted whatever you impressed upon me to want). It is a fucking miracle that she was able to find a way to eventually extricate herself from it and I cannot stress that enough. By freeing herself in this way it’s like she legitimately found a way to explain astronomy in the absence of physics because, really, she had no model outside of Rhaenyra and her loud disdain for things associated with “womanly” duties and responsibilities. And Alicent had spent such a long time resenting her for it. And even what Rhaenyra eventually had wasn’t true freedom, because of course it couldn’t be. It wasn’t flying across the Narrow Sea and eating only cake. It was making her prison a bit more comfortable. It was if I must get married, I will have some say in who it is to. If I must bear children, I will decide who sires them. The option to choose what style of chains she will don. The only control she felt like she could exert, but that still played by the rules and conventions laid out for her. This illusion of choice.