#alyrie florent

[alicentzwaitinglady]

alicent's relationship with her mother is so special to me. it alicent praying to feel closer to alerie and wearing blues when she's sad or feels like nothing is going well. it's the flower embroidery on them. gods i love alerie florent and the way she haunts the hightower/targaryen family. gwayne speaking of being motherless at 8yrs old bc that's when they probably left for king's landing. otto speaking of her with such fondness and not marrying after her death.

[killpilled]

mother's cloak

[prideprejudce]

Rhaenyra Arryn and Alicent Florent

[alvsanne]

Lady Alyrie of House Florent, her daughter Queen Alicent Hightower, granddaughter Queen Helaena Targaryen, and great-granddaughter Queen Jaehaera Targaryen.

You look so much like your mother in certain lights.

[alicentsgf]

the absolute power the name Alyrie Hightower holds in asoiaf. 2 women who birthed some of the cuntiest queers the realms ever seen. we were so robbed never getting to meet either of them.

[green-watcher]

"You look so much like your mother in certain lights." ✨

[sunfyrisms]

i swear, if i see one more person on tiktok put down alicent because her motherhood manifests in a different way than rhaenyra’s, i am going to scream.

rhaenyra had the privilege of picking her own husband. literally no girl in westeros had ever gotten such a privilege at that point. yes, she eventually had to marry leanor, the result a mixture of her own stubbornness and politics beyond her. i do not fault her for said stubbornness, especially because she just lost her mother after the woman suffered for years. but she found solace in harwin, a genuinely kind man who clearly loved her and their sons. from what little we saw of him, we know he was a doting father and loving partner.

alicent was fifteen. fifteen. when she was made a bride to viserys. the man was almost as old as her father. she had no friends. she was forced to be pregnant for, essentially, three consecutive years. she was raped repeatedly. women in this world are taught to obey their husbands. but the king? she could not say no to him. she could not speak about their conversations to rhaenyra because he told her to. even if she did, what could rhaenyra do? nothing. everyone loved it when rhaenyra put the elderly man in his place during her tour. he was as old as her father, as she pointed out. but a lot of people cannot seem to grasp the horror of alicent’s situation.

alicent was a child who was made a mother. that’s it. the father of her children—who, again, was the same age as her own father—was not involved in their lives whatsoever, from what we can infer. he was not affectionate, he did not love them, he only loved rhaenyra as strongly as he did as a result of his own guilt. otto was sent away. alyrie was long dead.

alicent had truly no one to rely on (aside from criston, but that is for another time). she did not know how to be a mother. she did not know how to be a parent. she tried. she did her best with what she had. did she make mistakes? yes. absolutely. but she loves her children more than anything. she will die for them. she will kill for them.

her trauma, her connection to motherhood, is incredibly complex. it is not at all the same as rhaenyra’s. one’s actions does not make the other a bad or good mother. they are mothers, they love their children. but how they had those children is vastly different, and wildly impacted they were able to properly bond with those children. the trauma and motherhood alicent and rhaenyra have is not a competition. it is not comparable.

[daeron-targs]

Was doing some thinking about Otto and Alerie and wha their relatation must've been. I think it's safe to say that they loved each other, or he loved her at the very least. It's pretty evident in this exhange from episode one of the first season:

Otto: You made a vow before the Seven to honor your wife in marriage

Daemon: Well, I'd gladly give Lady Rhea to you, Lord Hightower, if you're in want of a woman to warm your bed. Your own lady wife passed recently. Did she not? Perhaps you aren't ready to move on just yet.

After this comment from Daemon, Otto is clearly upset and Viserys has to diffuse the situation before it gets any uglier. It's also made even clearer by this exhange between him and Viserys in episdoe two:

Otto: I dearly loved my own lady wife. The pain of her passing still haunts me. And to be compelled to replace her for duty's sake...you are the king, but I do not envy you.

So yeah Otto really loved Alerie, and it also means that she died fairly recently. We're not what the cause was, or when it happened exactly, but that it is still something that has had a deep impact on him (and Alicent by extension of course).

As for how their marriage must've been like, I imagine it started out as any other marriage between two people of noble birth. The marriage was definitely arranged, neither of the two really knew each other before they first met.

Maybe they occasionally saw each other at banquets and feasts that their families, or other houses in the Reach, threw. They were married in the Starry Sept in Oldtown, which at the time was the center of the Faith of the Seven, and both took their vows seriously. Over time they began to care about each other, especially after Gwayne was born (in the book he's Alicent's youngest brother, but he's the eldest in the show). Eventually that care for one another grew into a deep love that they both had for each other.

And the story we all know played out. They had some more sons and then baby Alicent came along. Eventually, Otto was given the position of the Hand and they moved to King's Landing. They were happy for a time, both becoming friends with Viserys and Aemma. But after a few years that happiness is shattered, Alerie dies and Otto hasn't been the same since.

[coldraindropsss]

Alyrie Florent holding baby Alicent .

[greenqueenhightower]

the greens are so shakespearean to me. like alicent forced to be a mother but can’t bring herself to be loving in her children’s hour of need. the horrible cycle of duty and costs of power feel like they are only being paid for by the green kids. they truly don’t know anything other than being on their own

That is excellently said, anon! 💚

I like to imagine that a look into the Otto x Alyrie failmarriage would have given us great context. Or perhaps Otto really loved Alyrie but couldn't show affection to Alicent as she was growing up since she was the image of her mother and the memory of Alyrie's death was painful for him. I think we will get more insight into their family dynamics as soon as Gwayne appears.

But yes, Alicent not being able to console her grieving kids is telling of how she has learned to process grief herself. And again it's coming from Otto I think... Alicent tells us in S1 that when her mother died, everyone spoke to her in riddles. All she wanted was someone to say they felt sorry for her. So I imagine that Otto kept his grief private and did not share it with Alicent. He also kept her mother's dresses for Alicent to wear as she grew older, never really able to let go of the ghost of her... She learned to keep her grief private too, and now she cannot console her son and daughter. They are all processing their suffering alone. They truly are in a vicious circle of unhealed trauma, hungry for power and control as an antidote to loneliness and lack of self-worth.

They are so Shakespearean, you're right!

[killpilled]

Alyrie Florent

[puritanpansies]

so. romola garai as alyrie florent. you agree.

as an added bonus: she has previously established fabulous chemistry with rhys ifans!

[redrosesandcharmingsouls]

IF YOU GUYS WONT WRITE OTTO/ALERIE FAILMARRIAGE DOOMED COUPLE FANFIC I WILL

[alicentsgf]

Very much like the headcanon that alicents mother was not some retiring, kind, sorta faceless motherly figure. That being a devout follower of the faith means she deeply hated the dragons and a lot of the targaryen customs and was vocal (though obviously very quietly and only with Otto. or perhaps even only her own family) about it. And though she didnt feel able to speak openly about it at all, she did instill a certain amount of that in alicent in a few really subtle ways that alicent maybe didnt even really notice. like she has a deep discomfort with it all that she cant really name given how she grew up around it and should be used to it, but theres just a little voice belonging to her mother that tells her to hate and distrust it. she probably doesnt even know its her mothers voice, but she hears it.

I always felt in episode 1 that Alicent and Aemmas exchange was quite cold and awkward, considering Aemma would have known Alicent as her daughters friend since childhood. I wonder if Aemma picked up on Ottos play to position Alicent well (not for queenship perhaps, but to be Rhaenyras sole confidante). I wonder if Aemma ever picked up on Alyrie's distrust/dislike of Rhaenyra, and the part Alicent was made to play, her dislike of the royal family in general. I wonder how Alyrie and Aemma interacted when they both lived.

Just thoughts.

[green-watcher]

"You look so much like your mother in certain lights." Alyrie x Alicent ✨

[thephantomcasebook]

alyrie florent, what do we think about her and all the stuff we know from scripts etc?

I don't really have an opinion, cause, she doesn't really have an effect on the show other than a ghost that haunts Otto and Alicent ... if I knew more about her perhaps it would inform Alicent.

My headcanon remains that Daeron is Alyrie's spitting image and that both Otto and Alicent sometimes think they see or hear a ghost in the way that Daeron has similar turn-of-phrase or body language.

I also have an entire backstory about Alicent, dolls, and toys having to do with her mother and how she and Criston bond over it before 1x05 as well as the day that Daeron is conceived that I wrote a fic about if you want to check it out.

The fic kinds contains everything I think of Alicent's mom and what she's like.