#bc it'd look crazy on screen if the show suddenly changed genre

[lemonhemlock]

Yet Alys managed to live perfectly fine as a wetnurse and a servant before Aemond came into her life. Even during Daemon's time we don't know anything about her. It's only when Aemond becomes "so besotted" with this women at least twice his age that they have to come up with stories to explain away his attraction to her. Yes, there is magic in this story. But similar things have been said about Sansa and Dany and we know that the things said about them are untrue.

I'm not so sure about the 'perfectly fine' part, anon. Harrenhal is unquestionably and emphatically cursed within the narrative. House Strong was never going to inhabit Harrenhal indefinitely; their doom was surely coming. The presence of Alys may serve as an additional leitmotif that accompanies that curse.

Both Sansa and Dany are POVs and we know what's up with them from the get-go. The main series and the backstory texts are written in different formats and, in my belief, we must accommodate those structures within any pertinent literary commentary. Within AGOT/ACOK/ASOS/AFFC/ADWD, magic and fantasy elements are introduced organically to cobweb themselves alongside the political machinations.

Fire & Blood, the worldbook and RotD are written like (fake) historical accounts, which is a separate genre in itself. Alys' participation within these "textbooks" jumps out as peculiar at the very least. Like in gothic fiction, Aemond quite literally goes inside the haunted manor, gives into temptation and willingly ingratiates himself in the metaphysical. Daemon is the character who rejects this domain of the paranormal and leaves, while Aemond vacates his (fake) medieval historical warfare arc and becomes trapped.

At any rate, the hypotheticals of this are not very conducive, because Aemond never had any future to begin with. He was mostly likely invented within the story with his death in mind from the very beginning. I posit that Aemond's very existence in the books is predicated on him being Daemon's foil. GRRM always intended Aemond and Daemon to die facing each other, so there is no version of this story in which they survive. The author just chose to signal Aemond's fate in advance via some very classic gothic tropes.

Much like in Greek tragedies, characters that are supposed to die at the end receive within the text markers that communicate their eventual doom. On the one hand, Aemond dooms himself on the political plane by reneging on the Baratheon agreement and, on the other hand, that infringement is highlighted meta-textually by the interference of the otherwordly sphere.