#The Unjust Orders

[awkward-sultana]

"Everyone knows about his majesty's feelings for Hürrem. She has been stuck in his heart like an arrow for years."

[synchodai]

HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics

So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.

The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.

Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.

Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.

Rhaenyra heard his terms in stony silence, then asked Orwyle if he remembered her father, King Viserys. "Of course, Your Grace," the maester answered. "Perhaps you can tell us who he named as his heir and successor," the queen said, her crown upon her head. "You, Your Grace," Orwyle replied. And Rhaenyra nodded and said, "With your own tongue you admit I am your lawful queen. Why do you serve my half-brother, the pretender?" Munkun tells us that Orwyle gave a long and erudite reply, citing the Andal law and the Great Council of 101. Mushroom claims he stammered and voided his bladder. Whichever is true, his answer did not satisfy Princess Rhaenyra.

(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)

In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.

Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.

Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).

In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.

Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:

Rhaenyra was older than her brothers and had more Targaryen blood

the late king had chosen her as his successor, that he had repeatedly refused to alter the succession despite the pleadings of Queen Alicent and her greens

hundreds of lords and landed knights had done obeisance to the princess in 105 AC, and sworn solemn oaths to defend her rights.

Here are the arguments for Aegon II:

many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead [...]

Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92

the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter

Ser Otto reminded them that Rhaenyra’s husband was none other than Prince Daemon, and “we all know that one’s nature. Make no mistake, should Rhaenyra ever sit the Iron Throne, it will be Lord Flea Bottom who rules us, a king consort as cruel and unforgiving as Maegor ever was [...]”

Should the princess reign [...] Jacaerys Velaryon would rule after her. “Seven save this realm if we seat a bastard on the Iron Throne.”

Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).

For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't seem to care about the laws of the Realm or the political need to maintain a more predictable/tested transfer of power.

Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.

And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?

This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession, but neither is "because daddy said so".

[booty-uprooter]

truly, it is the subtlety of one piece's political messaging that makes it such an enduring work of art

[wishesofeternity]

My problem with The Dragon Prince is that while it preaches about "breaking the cycle" and "choosing love", it repeatedly does so in a way that echoes the age-old idea of telling victims to passively accept their lot in life and the injustices inflicted upon them while their perpetrators never have to acknowledge their wrongs or face consequences for their actions. This is the kind of narrative they follow on both a personal and systematic axis, and it's exactly why the show will always frustrate me.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

anyways, still deeply invested into my read of Ganondorf being an immense bully to children partially because, in a way, he rationalizes that putting children through the grinder is baaaasically kind of helping them to grow up faster, in a throwing you into the river to teach you how to swim kind of way, and if they can't handle the grinder, they were weak and it's on them and they can either suck it up and try harder, or get wrecked and die

and obviously that says absolutely nothing about how his own upbringing may have been handled, right twinrova, nor anything about how he may have buried a profound bitterness about the fact he was never really allowed a childhood of his own, and it's not fair others, especially hylians, get to spend their own carefree.

of course not.

[lovesickeros]

thought abt focalors + tsaritsa sagau fic bc it'd be funny as hell to throw them in a room together but now its actually got me thinking a little too much.......similar but only in the barest sense and complete opposites..one of them fearing celestia and the other trying to bring celestia down.

[tyrellia]

[balleater]

every time someone talks about the raven queen as if she's some sort of heartless cold bitch of a god i think about the fact that one of her champion's primary duties is to soothe the fears of those most afraid of death when their time comes as they are guided into the afterlife.

[skele8rity]

also in case you didnt know, terry from the dragon prince is a canonically trans character who explains his experience quite obviously and sincerely to someone and is met with tenderness about it. hes also voiced by a transgender voice actor. this is the tip of the iceberg for a lot of the really cool situations going on like that in the dragon prince.

its very good. i would recommend.

[awkward-sultana]

"According to the criterion of stipend, the haseki, or favorite concubine, enjoyed the greatest status in the imperial harem after the valide sultan. The haseki, a slave concubine and no blood relation to the reigning sultan, ranked higher than the sultan's own sisters and aunts, the princesses of the dynasty." - The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire by Leslie P. Peirce

[bisexual-magneto]

I mean, I feel like it is a natural outcome considering that both the jury and the public seemed to completely forget that Depp v Heard was about defamation, not abuse, but it terrifies me that a lot of people don't realise me what a giant blow to women's freedom of speech this was. She didn't name Depp as an abuser in that article, she said she was a figure representing abuse. The article was co-written with the ACLU and one of the contested lines was written by the editors but she got sued for it. Not the Washington Post, not the ACLU. Which definitely is at least partially because she had the worst lawyers and partially to get back at the ex, but Depp sued the Sun in the UK. He does sue newspapers.

And this is another facet of the larger phenomenon where all those big Western values of liberty and individualism, the personal pursuit of happiness, civil liberties for everyone etc etc etc - is and always have been directed at (white) men, with anyone else being granted some of that as a concession. So many of the lauded works in our literature are about how any person has the right to take charge of their own fate and needs civil liberties to be able to take responsibility for their lives - but at any of those points of time, it was always clear that this does not apply to women.

That since men have decided that women are happier as housewives, they have to be housewives, it had to be made law and there had to be social pressure. Since men have decided that women are better wives if they're uneducated, they barred them from education. That since men had decided that women cannot handle stress, they have to be banned from all sorts of things. And so on. The ideal of self-determination has always been a gendered one. It is about the man as the special crown jewel of creation, the being of infinite value, intelligence and depth, alleviated to personal power by the Enlightenment - and the woman as the NPC beside him. The rib. Remember, the same phase in history when male philosophers and scholars started to push for the idea that every (white) man is created equal, has the same abilities barred by circumstances - that was the same time that othering was more and more transferred from a religious rationale to a scientific one.

And much in the same way, if a man - any man but especially a white man - had lost a defamation trial on such shaky, shaky grounds, men would be taking his side, sharing 1984 quotes or whatever and consider it a dark day for human rights. In fact, think of all the male pundits who will spin outright lies about some celebrity being part of a cannibal paedo cult - and when they're found out to be lying, their fans defend them and say that "well it's their freedom of speech!"

For the public, there is no urgency to defend women's right to freedom of speech, especially when they're talking about gendered issues, because quite classically, they think a woman has nothing meaningful to say and "should be seen, not Heard".

[citrine-elephant]

resi au, but the umbrella thing doesn't happen. leon stays as a cop for a few years before exposing one of his own as a (very) crooked cop. he is ostracized by the rest of the force but he's still on because he's too damn good at the job (and the local community would not be happy, good boy does so much for the city) (he might be one of the few that actually give a shit lol)

anyway it turns in the spiral (2021) plot where someone takes a fancy to the only good cop in raccoon and tries to recruit him in some fucked up torture fantasy to correct the behavior of everyone basically. not just corrupt authority. fuckin john kramer guy out here.

[cuintuar]

Every anarchist should carry a glass bottle around, so that when someone complains about "violent protests" during the likes of g8, G20 or literally anything else, they can suddenly smash it on the nearest surface and ask "was this violent to you?".

Because no it's not. Nobody was hurt, nobody was in danger and nobody even planned to hurt anyone. Sure, it might've been surprising, scary even, but you did was to break some glass in order to make a point. And it is, as such, no different than what's happening when protesters break the windows of a bank or those of a multinational corporation.

[thebleedingeffect]

Thinking about fierce deity again and while I very much understand where the thought of him being some sort of war god comes from- I just can't get myself to believe in it. I very much do believe that the fierce deity is capable of vast amounts of destruction and carnage, but I do not believe that he's the type to enact pointless death. He's capable of so much hurt, but instead, he commits himself to protection, justice, and the very people themselves. He's just not a violent guy, but he CAN be violent, am I making any sort of sense

[thekimspoblog]

Demon trying to feed on my insecurities: "You're a bad driver"

Me: "Of course I am. I hate driving. Going 80 mph surrounded by tons of metal is nerve-wrecking. I try to do it as little as possible. Of course I'm bad at it"

Demon: "You're a bad writer"

Me: "Well that part's simply not true. I never claimed I was the greatest author of my generation, but when I put pen to paper I know what I want to communicate and I usually do it well. If someone isn't impressed with my work, that's unfortunate but they're entitled to their opinion"

Demon: "You're a bad leader"

Me: "Well I don't know about that! I mean there was that one time when... Ok look just because people don't see me as an authority figure doesn't mean... 😠 You know you can be a real asshole, demon!"

[the-avaricious-meddler]

Also speaking of the great chain I'm drawn to Hell specifically. And the bit in Heart's Desire where Beechwood is put on trial for going *down* the chain, because to Hell only going *up* is allowed.

And it makes me think: Hell, in all its stated rejection of Law, still wants to use The Chain for its own benefit rather than get rid of it. They claim to be subverting it, when in reality they just want to do Unjust Hierarchies but in a different flavor.

No wonder there are groups of Devils who want to rebel against Hell.