#but rhaenyra’s characterisation in the show is SO DUMB

[artcinemas]

show! rhaenyra is kind of a prissy compared to book! rhaenyra. i said what i said like i cannot even consider show! rhaenyra as rhaenyra anymore 😭😭

[lemonhemlock]

It’s very amusing that Condal clearly wants to adapt AFFC, and how people eat it up despite it not being earned. AFFC was the fourth book of the series, after the beheading of Ned, Winterfell falling, Jaime losing his hand, the Red Wedding, the Purple Wedding. All the reasons for why the War of the Five Kings is over, all those people are either dead or scattered to the wind, and yet the war rages on. It’s a pointless war that characters we have grown to know and love undergo intense changes in, notably Jaime and Brienne as they wander through the Riverlands, Arya in Braavos, Sam on the edge of despair as he journeys south. Frankly? Considering that the Dance hasn’t even properly started yet and no one cares about the deaths that have occurs (Luke, Jaehaerys, Rhaenys) the sheer fatalism feels unearned bc no one has gone through gut wrenching tragedy yet. “War is pointless.” Great, but we got another two seasons of this and if the characters think this story is dumb and pointless and are just going through the motions, why should we watch? It’s frankly just too early for everyone to lose their shit bc they haven’t even begin to truly lose everything yet. The characters themselves thinking it’s pointless robs them of motivations bc we still got more than half the story to go! Criston’s monologue in the finale is good but that’s because it’s directly cribbed from Jaime’s “honor is mist” speech but it’s not nearly as earned bc we don’t have any idea how or why he started sleeping with Alicent or even why he became a kingsguard in the first place! Daemon’s Harrenhal arc ended with him somehow obsessed with a prophecy and connecting it back to Rhaenyra without him coming to terms with Viserys not trusting him with the prophecy which is what he was mad about in the first place!

We never actually see anyone react to anything, and the limping plodding along of character development happening off screen so we never see how or why anyone changes is not good! Episode 7 actually gave me some hope bc Rhaenyra seemed to be embracing her role as a leader of there’s dragonriders the gods have given her, but in the next episode she’s literally saying the exact same lines “what would you have me do” and “who will pay the price” which she said at the start of the season! Even Alicent’s about face is unearned bc we don’t actually see her truly fight with her children about anything, really. She just lets them talk in her face and then limps away to camp in a scene that’s “all about rebirth bc baptism and water” without ever getting to the core of anything. It’s a beautiful show full of empty symbolism without a narrative actually underpinning it, borrowing from a better story without understanding what makes that story so good.

You said it more eloquently than I could at the moment. It's not just one or two badly executed points, nothing gets built up, nothing gets resolved or even discussed, we just skip past A TON of vital characterisational changes and are expected to "fill in the gaps". No, they're just bad at writing. You wouldn't be reading a book or watching a show that is so bad at these elements - people are watching because it's ASOIAF.

Why is Alicent so mad? Aegon has barely done anything as king, he's actually tried to help the smallfolk in his audiences! Aemond dismissed her from the Council, sure, which I found a dumb political plot hole, but she hasn't done much to address it? And what exactly has Criston Cole done all season that he is the most reprehensible male character on the show? He didn't vote for Alicent and called her by her name. Does he deserve to die for that? Has Alicent ever been portrayed as the type of character who would react so disproportionately? That's Aemond-level writing. Is Alicent = Aemond now? (She isn't even shown being mad at Criston for sending Arryk after Rhaenyra!)

What Alicent is shown to have a problem with is Aemond burning Aegon. But then again why abandon Aegon to be executed by Rhaenyra? Just overdose him on milk of the poppy and let him die, ffs. Alicent also suspects Criston is not telling her about Aemond's crime, but they part on okay terms? She gives him her favour? How do you go from that to dooming him by revealing his coordinates?

I would really like to pile on-to the AFFC copycat accusations* with Succession rip-offs (my followers are probably tired of hearing me mention it, but it's truly what prestige television should be and it's what we should be comparing HotD to!). First it was teenage!Aegon wanking in the window à la Roman Roy, then Alicent suddenly gets water symbolism this season like Kendall and "I do not wish to hear it"? Do they think they're being cute here?

*not just with Criston, but with Rhaena, too, although you could at least argue there that GRRM himself is also mirroring Jaime and Sansa there

[nogoodsheepstealing-greatgrandma]

So funny that The Red Sowing is literally The Bells Part 2

...As in Targaryen Queen wants the throne so bad they suddenly flip into lunatic who burns innocent people alive en masse - something neither of them ever do in the books. Yet while The Bells is generally accepted as awful writing and an abrupt character assassination, I see The Red Sowing praised (often the same people who criticise The Bells) as making Rhaenyra more interesting.

And part of that is the scale - Dany pointlessly burns an entire city street by street. Compared to Rhaenyra pointlessly herding in a hundred dragonseeds into a confined space and ringing the dinner bell. Rather than letting them go one at a time and not risking killing off all your potential dragonriders in one dumb fiery swoop. So, a relatively smaller dumb pointless kill count = good writing I guess.

Part of that is the relief that after a mostly dull season Rhaenyra is finally doing something. Which wouldn't have been a problem if they actually spent the season letting Jace have his book arc and take the forefront for a bit. Rhaenyra would have taken a bit of a step back, but we would have been able to focus on her grief and it would have been set up for Post-Gullet Rhaenyra. Instead the season is spent with Rhaenyra moping in frustration or dressing up as a nun or kissing Varys Marx Part 2 while Jace also mopes in frustration.

Part of it is the fact that Rhaenyra is a morally more ambiguous and less altruistic person than Dany anyway, so people are more willing to accept it as consistent characterisation. Especially if they've irritatingly got it into their head that Crispy is a rape victim (though thankfully not even the show, for all its other faults, understands him as such). Many who complain that Rhaenyra has been whitewashed by the show even cheer that we are, apparently, finally getting something closer to book Rhaenyra.

Which irritates me because most of Rhaenyra's worst actions take place Post-Gullet.

An event that hasn't even happened yet. And what she does in The Red Sowing is already far more monstrous than anything she ever does in the book. There is a broad spectrum between morally ambiguous, even dark, and... crazy cult lunatic who gives the Mad King himself a run for his money. Rhaenyra's worst actions come about from the loss of her children, from paranoia at losing more. That's a human story. The Red Sowing is an uninspired Targ coin flip.

As for her worst actions pre-Gullet... while there are some valid charges of whitewashing the biggest ones I see are incorrectly targeted. Like Rhaenyra's lack of involvement in Blood and Cheese, or calling Helaena an innocent. That is literally canon. That isn't whitewashing. The Rogue Prince literally sent the 'son for a son' raven from Harrenhall just as Rhaenys and Corlys were sitting the council down to discuss how to respond to Luke's death (Rhaenyra was absent out of grief).

Or Rhaenyra not killing Laenor. She didn't kill Laenor in canon either - for starters Harwin was still alive at the time of Laenor's death. The show switches up and compresses the timeline - the fight at Driftmark takes place at Laenor's funeral in the book, and Harwin is sent away to Harrenhal in the aftermath. So, Rhaenyra wasn't looking to marry Daemon while she was in a loving relationship with a still-alive Harwin.

Using the dragons as deterrence? Outside of an impassioned speech after Jace's death, that literally was the strategy she used in the book. Daemon lured Aemond and Vhagar away from King's Landing, and outside from one small battle at one of the gates the city swiftly surrendered at the sight of the dragons. Which were not used. (So no, Show Baela, when Rhaenyra said 'subdue their armies' she did not mean 'burn innocents').

Which brings me to my next issue with complaints of whitewashing, because it doesn't factor in areas where Rhaenyra had been simultaneously demonised.

Such as being complicit in the murder an innocent bystander in cold blood so she can fake Laenor's death. Or the fact that her arrangement with Laena is erased so a now-whitewashed Vaemond is depicted as the wronged party (erasing a black woman's agency and wishes - thank you for that hotd). Or the fact that she now voluntarily abandons King's Landing rather than being ordered away by her father, and getting passed over as Hand as a result.

Or 'questioned sharply' now coming before Alicent's demand to cut Luke's eye out, rather than being said in response to a threat to her children. Like either way it was a toothless threat, Rhaenyra was just trying to back Alicent into a corner to get her to admit to raising her children to coup. But it makes her the aggressor where she was previously reacting to Alicent's threat. And Alicent already had an understandable reason to flip out herself - her son had lost an eye - both mothers had a reason to lose their heads and say shitty things.

This isn't book purism for book purism's sake. The problem isn't that changes were made, or that changes were even necessary. The problem is that these changes dramatically re-characterise Rhaenyra.

Or, considering her motives are changed from ambition towards Peace Keeping in the name of Altruistic Prophecy of Destiny - temporarily characterised.

The show makes changes, but then doesn't write those changes consistently. And the show doesn't compensate for the way these changes re-contextualise the canon that they do keep.

Take Shae as an example. Show Shae and Show Tyrion have a genuine loving relationship. So genuinely loving that the events of book canon - Shae testifying against Tyrion and Tyrion murdering her in cold blood - no longer work. So in order to fix it, the show assassinates Show Shae's character by turning her into a bitter woman scorned, by having Tyrion now murder her in self-defense.

Sibel Kekilli reportedly defended her character, and asked the writers if they could instead give Shae the motivation that she testified against Tyrion in exchange for clearing Sansa's name. It still would have been a mess, but it would have been more consistent with the version of the character they wrote.

I ultimately think they should have just stuck with the book - if they were going to change or flesh Shae out it should have been done in a way that would have worked with the ending for her character. Making their relationship genuinely loving was a change that ultimately didn't work (as much as I am still moved to rewatch some of their scenes).

But having made that change, the show had to compensate for how the book canon they were going to keep was no longer going to work in a changed context. And they seriously dropped the ball.

So no, changing Rhaenyra's character isn't necessarily bad. But you have to understand what it is you are actually changing and how it interacts with the canon you do keep. And you have to write her consistently.

And when you have a character who is going to have a dark turn, it's important that you get that character right.

Just because a character does morally ambiguous things it doesn't mean that every dark action you can think of is on the table. What actions, why, to who, in what context, at what point in their character arc?

To compare to an actually good show (not that I think the characters are comparable) - Season 1 Walter White almost walks away from cold-blooded murder but ultimately makes his first kill out of self-defense. Season 2 Walter White guiltily lets Jane overdose so she can't blackmail him. Season 3 Walter White gets Jesse to kill another meth cook for him so he can't be murdered and replaced. Season 4 Walter White poisons and hospitalises a child (child endangerment, but not murder) to trick Jesse into helping him kill a crime boss who had threatened to kill him and his family. Season 5 Walter White will willingly work with someone who murdered a child out of cold selfish pragmatism, and will arrange the murder of 13 fellow criminals to keep himself out of prison.

Gus Fring orders a child to be shot to tie up a loose end. Todd Alquist tortures Jesse and shoots Andrea in cold blood just to punish him. Tuco beats a man to death for annoying him.

Walter White is a monster (again, I don't think he is comparable to Rhaenyra) - but he is a consistent one. It wouldn't make sense to have him act like Gus Fring, or Todd Alquist, or Tuco. And you don't prematurely put Season 5 Walter White in Season 2. Where would his character even go from there?

Where does Rhaenyra go after Squid-Gaming a crowd of bastards into a fiery massacre?

You can't have post-Gullet Rhaenyra in the pre-Gullet. And you can't have Mad King Aerys in Rhaenyra's place. Or... you can't have Aemond (burning the riverlands and beheading children) in Rhaenyra's place, or Aegon (burning the shepherd and his followers in a gruesome little light show) in Rhaenyra's place, or Daeron (slaughtering an entire town of innocents even though Maelor's killers had already been executed) in Rhaenyra's place.

To lay it out, not for the sake of book purism, but to detail the original context of her actions:

Rhaenyra reacts to Alicent demanding to cut her kid's eye out.

Rhaenyra leaves King's Landing because her father orders it.

Rhaenyra marries a man who may have killed her husband, at a point where she is grieving and has been essentially exiled from her position at court and passed over as Hand.

Rhaenyra makes an alliance with Laena to secure Driftmark and the Iron Throne for their children, and orders the execution of Vaemond when he falsely declares himself the heir ahead of both their children.

Rhaenyra fails to execute her husband, the father of two of her children and one of her few dragonriders, when he goes behind her back and orders the murder of a child.

Rhaenyra withdraws from her own council out of grief for her son, forcing her 14-year-old child to grow up too quickly (the Robb and Cat parallels hurt me)

Rhaenyra allows her son to let dragonseeds attempt to claim dragons - an inherently dangerous business that was always going to have casualties without squid gaming them into a cave and ringing the dinner bell - because they need dragonriders.

Rhaenyra turns darker after the Gullet:

Broken by the loss of one son, Rhaenyra Targaryen seemed to find new strength after the loss of a second. Jace’s death hardened her, burning away her fears, leaving only her anger and her hatred.

Catelyn doesn't become Lady Stoneheart until after the Red Wedding. Catelyn doesn't murder Jinglebell in cold blood until after she watches Robb die.

It hurts so much, she thought. Our children, Ned, all our sweet babes. Rickon, Bran, Arya, Sansa, Robb … Robb … please, Ned, please, make it stop, make it stop hurting …

Rhaenyra loses Visenya, then Lucerys, then Jacaerys and, she believes, Viserys. Four children gone, with two children left to protect.

That is the context for the worst of her.

Rhaenyra has Tyland tortured... to try to retrieve the crown's finances, and the failure to do so leads directly to the collapse of her reign.

Rhaenyra executes turncloaks - again after a series of betrayals that had already resulted in the loss of 4 children, with 2 left to protect.

Rhaenyra passes over the daughters of Rosby and Stokeworth... because she couldn't risk alienating the lords. The Greens had bankrupted her kingdom, she was in the middle of a civil war, she had two children left to protect. And idk maybe she had qualms about serving a 6 and 12 year old girl up to be child brides to Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White. Which leads to...

Rhaenyra turns against Nettles and Addam. Her own son's friends... out of classism and racism and... the urging of her own council. On the word of her mistress of whisperers. In the aftermath of one of the most horrific war crimes of the dance by Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White. Is turning against two of your few remaining dragonriders when the other side has just gained two dragonriders a strategically bad move? Absolutely. Arguably, so is risking the possibility of the other side gaining four dragonriders.

Even so, this is Rhaenyra at her worst. It is her at her most paranoid and, if Eustace is to be believed, most vindictive. It comes towards the end of her reign. It comes at a certain point, in a certain context. It is an earned moral decline.

It is nowhere near as bad as, or consistent with, a crazy cult leader Squid Gaming a crowd of bastards into a fiery massacre out of some deluded religious sacrifice.

Now, 'book purism' aside... even with the changes the show makes to Rhaenyra's character, The Red Sowing still isn't consistent with her new character (as inconsistent as her show character already was).

Rhaenyra just isn't set up as a crazy religious cult leader, even with her prophecy of destiny (heck the prophecy of destiny certainly never stopped show Rhaenyra from voluntarily bouncing to Dragonstone and leaving King's Landing for the greens). In the very first episode she acknowledges that the idea of Targaryen's being closer to gods than men is propaganda. She lets the white hart live rather than kill it and use it for political gain. She honours both Erryk and Arryk and is upset by their suicide. She doesn't force Steffon Darklyn to tame a dragon, and is horrified at his death. She is concerned with deterrence and avoiding conflict to the point that she'll disguise herself as a septa and risk everything to stop a war. She advocates intervening between the Blackwoods and Brackens rather than leaving it to Lord Tully because she knows how quick they are to turn to bloodshed.

There is no consistent set up for her being a) a lunatic or b) seeing human life as disposable.

Yes, even with this version of Rhaenyra's willingness to kill an innocent bystander in order to fake her husband's death

Because frankly that's about as consistent with the rest of her character onscreen as Rhaenys' dragonpit massacre is with the rest of her pro-geneva convention character. In both examples, you can see the contrivance by the writers. Their motivation for the dragonpit massacre was, in their own words, "what would be the worst thing to happen at a coronation?" and "wouldn't it be cool if?"

With very little thought of course to Rhaenys' motivation - as is embarrassingly clear in the way they address the glaring plothole their Big Episode 9 Moment created: why didn't she end the war there and then?

Well, it wasn't her war to start! (the greens had already started it, also how is the dragonpit massacre not an act of war?). And... she wouldn't do that to another mother! (she had already in fact done it to many many mothers). Ok well she's a classist who doesn't value the smallfolk as much as she does Alicent (except for 99% of the time when she's pro-peace and anti-violence and lamenting the cost of war, also I'm pretty sure she at least values the survival of her granddaughters over Alicent).

Ok... well she just had a stressful day and the tactic "hand over the crown, I've got a dragon and I'm not afraid to use it" didn't occur to her.

Meanwhile Dead Bystander-Gate... clearly the result of not wanting to bury their gays. Well done show, harmful trope averted, but now Laenor and Rhaenyra are chill with a) murdering an innocent bystander and b) traumatising Rhaenys, Corlys and their children for life with the charred corpse of their loved one.

Now there are other reasons for why Laenor's exit from the show happened the way it did - primarily the structure of the season.

It had just two episodes to fit in the events of before, during and after Driftmark. They needed episode 6 to serve as a second pilot episode, while they wanted episode 7 to focus entirely on Driftmark, leaving no room for the aftermath (Rhaenyra leaving for dragonstone, Harwin's death, Rhaenyra getting passed over as Hand, Rhaenyra marrying Daemon).

So instead they took part of the aftermath of Driftmark (Harwin's death and Rhaenyra leaving for Dragonstone), stitched it in before Driftmark, and used it to set Larys up as an antagonist in the second pilot.

As a result two big character exits get switched around: Harwin dies an episode early and Laenor 'dies' an episode late. Which means cramming his exit into a quick montage at the end, alongside Rhaenyra's marriage to Daemon. A montage of Laenor getting assassinated, Rhaenyra grieving his loss for a few months, then Rhaenyra marrying Daemon wouldn't work - but a montage is all the episode has time for. So to expediate things Rhaenyra has to be in on it, but that would be too jarring a character assassination, so she can't actually have Laenor killed. So fake his death.

So... a big whopping mess, and honestly I think there were plenty of other ways to get around the episode structure - ways that wouldn't assassinate either Laenor or Rhaenyra's character. Or, again, temporarily assassinate.

Either way, 'this character assassination is consistent with another moment of character assassination' isn't a great argument in the Red Sowing's favour.

Same again for the blockade causing a famine in King's Landing,

Which I also see cited as set up for Rhaenyra squid gaming people. Well, the blockade didn't cause a famine in the book, because most of the food doesn't come by sea. It comes by road. Specifically, from the Reach. You know, the bread basket of the realm? Remember, from last time there was a famine on this show, during the War of the Five Kings?

This isn't an argument against exploring the costs of war for the smallfolk. But that comes later, and more realistically, with the taxes Rhaenyra is forced to raise. Right now its valuable screentime that could have been going to Jace, Cregan, Baela, Rhaena, Nettles (another smallfolk character!), Daeron, Marilda (another smallfolk character!), giving Addam and Alyn more personality and agency...

Oh wait we're giving these two random white guys sad backstories now? Sorry my bad.

The ultimate trigger for Rhaenyra's religious delusion seems to be Addam interpreting getting chased by a dragon as a divine sign from the gods...

which I guess was anticipating a cinema sins ding on whether Velaryons can be dragonriders without Targaryen blood? (Just say they're all from Old Valyria and call it a day).

In the book Addam had put himself forward as a dragonrider - demonstrating his ambition, daring and willingness to take a risk. In the show this level of agency and motivation is reserved for the white dragonseeds - leaving us with a passive Addam and a lunatic Rhaenyra.

Which leaves us with 'this bad writing was set up by previous bad writing', which again isn't a great argument in the Red Sowing's favour.

The other set up we've supposedly received for Rhaenyra's fanaticism is... reading history books and doing some light Visenya cosplay. I bet that's how Mad King Aerys got started too.

Or seeing the White Hart as a divine sign. Many people see the White Hart as a divine sign. They don't all go crazy. Putting stock in dreams and signs and portents is a Westeros thing rather than specifically an Evil Targ thing, that often does not result in mass murder.

As for the idea that Rhaenyra believes so fervently that she needs to win the Iron Throne in order to protect the realm from Long Night that she'll sacrifice people en masse for the greater good...

Again a) set that up and b) why are we prioritising inserting a song of ice and fire into a story about female succession? And after we just had 'Daenerys believed in ending slavery so badly she became hitler' do we really need another mad queen on the altruism to mass murder pipeline?

Even then, the sowing of the seeds was already dangerous in the book without squid gaming everyone. If you want to depict it as a fiery sacrifice then... people individually trying to tame the dragons one at a time already had a high casualty. That was already a decision Rhaenyra accepted as a sacrifice for the greater good. Which as moral declines go is less of a rapid descent into absolute lunacy. Again, without risking killing all your potential dragonriders in one fiery swoop. And apparently ordering your guards to let themselves get burnt alive to stop people from escaping?

It does make me wonder what was going on with the dragonkeepers strike. Setting aside the fact that this is an absolute monarchy and they don't have union rights so... Rhaenyra can just order them to do their job lol. When I first watched the episode after hearing some leaks I saw this scene and thought "oh ok so the dragonkeepers are too classist to do their jobs, and that means something is going to go wrong and the dragon is going to get out of control".

But nope, turns out the plan was for the guards to stop everyone escaping a fiery sacrifice... and to be a part of that fiery sacrifice themselves so... the dragonkeepers were refusing to be part of that fiery sacrifice? Rhaenyra was planning to burn all the dragonkeepers too?

Thing is, the Red Sowing sequence is more shocking and cool to watch on our screens

and perhaps it was cheaper for the budget to kill everyone in one go. But if the only way to save on budget is to assassinate your main character then perhaps you need to go back to the drawing board. There were ways around it. Idk, a montage of people going one at a time? A scene of some people giving up and being free to leave, while others decide to stay and risk it? A scene of a dragonkeeper reading the list of casualties per dragon?

You could have had Rhaenyra listening to the list of the dead. You could have had Rhaenyra letting the cost of the greater good sink in. You could have had Rhaenyra try to reassure herself that they did it out of their own free will and... actually explore it as a difficult morally ambiguous decision that a ruler could realistically rationalise. You didn't have to make her a monster.

Which is why it tickles me that I see fans lavish this season with praise for being a reserved pro-smallfolk anti-war story that refuses to glorify violence because... it isn't.

Not that it doesn't have effective anti-war moments (the ground-level view of the battle of rook's rest was very well done!) but:

a) Just because a show tries to address a topic doesn't mean it's doing it well (essay for another day but anachronistic riverlords geneva convention was laughably bad). Just because a show replaces action scenes with dialogue scenes doesn't mean the dialogue is actually any good (I lost count of the number of times the dialogue amounted to "oh tis so hard to be a smallfolk, you high lords do not care for us smallfolk, war crimes are bad").

And congratulations, you explored the sad smallfolk backstories of two white male characters while removing the agency of or flat-out erasing 4 smallfolk of colour! (hey remember how Hugh got Addam's moment of heroism in the Red Sowing?????)

b) The show still adds in crowd-pleasing shocking action sequences, at the expense of all internal logic and character consistency. First dragonpit massacre, then the Red Sowing. It adds in fucked up spectacle where it didn't previously exist, it prioritises shock value.

So no, the show doesn't get the credit for being reserved in it's depiction of the Battle of Burning Mill. An event that actually would have introduced us to the character of Alysanne Blackwood - but instead we spend the season with Willem Blackwood and Amos Bracken (the male characters who died at the battle), and their deaths are replaced with two male ocs for tumblr to ship.

If you're going to have spectacle and action sequences that lament the cost of war... canon already provided opportunities to do so. You don't need to invent war crimes that assassinate characters. (And you don't need Hugh and Ulf to take the place of your characters of colour as our smallfolk viewpoint characters).

And... funny how the canon war crime of Aemond burning random villages is shown only in the aftermath, some flames and screams in the distance... while we get elaborate visceral on-the-ground spectacles out of show-only war crimes for Rhaenys and Rhaenyra.

(but sure, the show is team black bias)

[mejcinta]

Forced Antagonism Toward The Smallfolk In Season 2

Okay, so back to the claims that season 2 will see Alicent and Helaena be attacked by the smallfolk from Flea Bottom (somehow because of Aegon, the convenient fall guy for all things bad and viallinous on the show 🤡)... a Redditor made an interesting observation about the writers' reason for this puzzling choice given that none of it was mentioned in F & B.

It is yet another attempt to twist the 'unsavoury' book canon in favour of Queen Rhaenyra who was recorded as being so tyrannical toward the end of her rule that she caused the smallfolk to rise up against her in deadly riots that saw the dragon population wiped out and she herself neutralised by her younger brother (a.k.a Aegon the 'villain' of the show lmao).

Here's a really interesting breakdown of what the writers are trying to do.

The smallfolk were justified in their rise against Queen Rhaenyra. They were starving and dying from the fallout of the Targaryen civil war that they believed Rhaenyra sparked.

Under Queen Alicent's rule, before the war started, they were better off because the flames of war had not been ignited yet. It's only logical that she was 'beloved' in their eyes as well as Helaena who had never harmed anyone ever.

But now the 'beloved' Former and present Queen, not Aegon and Aemond (who were recorded as being despised by the smallfolk) will apparently be the ones to face the wrath of the smallfolk first, setting up false groundwork for when Rhaenyra's justified end arrives. Lmao.

The same Queen whose decision led to the close of the channel supplying food to KL, the one that captured and tortured many innocent people in her paranoia and threw a lavish party for her (bastard) son while the smallfolk were starving to death because of the war.

Apparently in the leaks she will be sneaking in food for the smallfolk too. WHAT? Did these people care to ever read the book???

I have to commend the writers' commitment to twist, hide and ignore the soul of the story as well as characterisations for their own gain.

They think they're smart but they only look dumb. The attempted assault on Alicent and Helaena, if true, will mirror the attack of Sansa and Joffery by the smallfolk in GOT. Someone give these writers a trophy for how original and truly creative they are lmao!!!

Rant aside, if the leak/rumors are true what more can we do? Just sit back and enjoy the dumpster fire as the smoke rises high and pungent into the sky I guess.

The saddest part is that none of this bs is surprising. I expected it, just not at these levels. Oh, well 🤷🏾‍♀️

[lemonhemlock]

I love Larys this season and his scenes with Aegon that's all. Compelling and Matthew Needham is quite a force. Well and Rhaena hunting down Sheepstealer is good. Nothing else is fun.

i agree about larys with the one caveat i'm going to list below

larys is probably the one green character who makes the most sense, both that his characterisation is consistent AND the way others view him and his reactions to that MAKE SENSE. larys is still larysing but when aemond proves to be a contrarian he switches back to aegon. for once, aemond's shenanigans get proper consequences from his small councilors.

how does alicent not have any leverages against being dismissed when she is the one hightower representative left? sure, aemond sends back for otto, but do you think the story frames that as compensation for dismissing alicent or did the writers feel obligated to bring him back bc he needs to have his death scene? not one braincell was put into this. daemon does shit in the riverlands and the riverlords STAND UP and bully him back. he also has a big scary dragon and they don't give a shit, so it CAN be done, the writers know deep down how to do this, IF THEY CAREF

why is tyland not putting his foot down and demanding something for house lannister? his brother has a bunch of maiden daughters and daeron is unmarried and has a dragon. the frey lord and lady negociated with jace for their support, jeyne arryn is PISSED that she didn't get what she wanted

what the hell is ironrod even doing? he threw in his lot with aemond but aemond doesn't seem to like him or even give a shit about him so why doesn't he have some kind of reaction. i guess the discussion with larys could have been a step in the right direction because you can say he is testing out the waters to see if he can curry favour with aemond by offering up intel OR if he could forge an alliance with larys and go from there

and this is where i have an issue with the writing bc, on the one hand, they are categorically NOT portraying larys as incompetent, but they are also inadvertently making him SO BAD at his job by making these stupid changes from the book. another symptom of wanting to have one's cake and eat it too. the city is in lockdown but rhaenyra can sneak in, no problem, elenda can not only sneak in, she can access an entire network of pro-rhaenyra agents larys somehow knows nothing about, can raise literal riots, can recruit dragonseeds (why do you even need dragonseeds from KL when you're living on dragonstone?!), rhaenyra's food can reach the population somehow even though there are checkpoints at every entry, the dragonseeds can leave by boat and LARYS KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT ANY OF THIS 🧍and no one even thinks to ask him 'hey wtf is going on? you're kinda fired'. but they can't, can they? they can't get rid of larys because he is important to the plot and they need him in the thick of things!

there's a dumbass post circulating now in which someone ✨generously✨ gives people permission to complain about the show but without bringing that "boring book" (FB) into discussion for a comparative analysis. because apparently the book is bad but somehow not bad enough to keep watching tv media derived from it 🤡

the problem with HotD is that it makes FB the pinnacle of logic and storytelling. it doesn't fix any problems, it compounds them. this shit with larys would not fly in the book bc it is dumb as fuck! so you can't help but compare it to the book where these things did not have to be explained away by waving a magic wand or getting a lobotomy

this post is long enough as it is and other people have already explained the problem with the rhaena storyline, so i won't get into it right now, but, in a nutshell: her story can make sense in a void, she get a semblance of an arc: she wanted a dragon and now she will get one and goes on a journey of re-defining her identity, i suppose, after having been dismissed as not sufficiently targaryen as a result of her being dragonless. so, it's the classic problem of making sense in a watsonian way, in the context of the show, but in a doylist way it's Not The Best because they have to delete the only canonically POC low-born character. so we lose that perspective in a show that already prioritizes the highborn

larys has the same problem with him being a sexual deviant directly connected to his disability. as an individual character, it can be explained and justified, but as representation for disabled people (who suffer from a severe lack of representation in media as is), it's Not Great

[lemonhemlock]

i don't like the children to be aemond's because I'm a low key hater of his characterisation in the show lol.

dude is visenya 2.0, hell he even gets her dragon. and Ryan and co. make him this dutiful guy that is supposed to be walmart daeron? nah, miss me with that shit, if he was like book!aemond it would make more sense in my head. aemond in the books is way more reckless than show!aemond IMHO.

and it's not even about helaena, she can fuck whoever she wants, you go girl!!!! but I believe that my girl would be smarter than that? tbf, I think all characters besides rhaenyra wouldn't be that dumb. (i know the kids would look the same, but still having v*serys as a father, after seeing how he treated aemond losing his eye, I personally wouldn't risk it)

fuck aemond, don't fuck aemond i personally don't care...i just don't think he deserves to have children with helaena after he abandons his family to stay in harrenhal, crash and burn walmart!daeron.

i have to say that you're not the first anon who's disgruntled that, out of aegon & aemond, they chose aemond as the character to make more sympathetic. i think you are right in that aemond was given some of daeron's traits; it is very likely that they did not intend to include daeron at all, so they preferred to mesh these two characters as a compromise. in any case, they must have fought over it; perhaps it is one of the reasons miguel sapochnik left - grrm even gave a public declaration that daeron WILL be included and when the time came to design the intro, they DID include 4 rivulets of blood streaming out of alicent to signify her 4 children, as they did with helaegon's 3 children, even though only the twins appear in S1.

so, yeah, it's fair to say mewmond came about as a result of a compromise. that being said, i'd be lying if i said i didn't love what they did with his character. i'd even go so far as to say that it was the right decision to make commercially as well, because he became vv popular with v little screen time. even team black stans keep trying to steal him from us. i don't have a problem with making characters more sympathetic - team black included - what bothers me is the ridiculous bias. generally-speaking, i always like it a lot more when they make the characters out to be more human and understandable, even when they're antagonistic.

there is also the fact that, from a geographical POV, they couldn't really focus on daeron in S1 either, bc he's canonically in oldtown and they couldn't have brought him to KL without performing significant changes to the plot and complicating themselves. SO, taking into account the whitewashing of team black as it is, if they would have made aemond less sympathetic, the two sides would have ended up even more imbalanced.

anyway, what i actually wanted to say is that the characterization they did give aemond makes a lot of sense even in book-context. the maester writing FB is clearly not interested in fleshing out aemond as a person, this is a history textbook, but it is believable to me that aemond would have incurred a lot of psychological and physical damage as a result of his eye being slashed out. and idk it's just more interesting to lean into that side instead of making him a terrorist child from the get-go. this absolutely does not contradict any of the fucked up shit he'll do later on in the series, it's more about progression and descent into madness

[lemonhemlock]

Rhaenicent is what would have been if game of thrones supported danyxsansa. For all of its faults I'm so extremely glad that d&d didn't make it happen. It would have destroyed sansas characterisation where she would have willing bowed down to Dany who is a foreign invader who never gave a fuck about the north, starks or even about jon.

Clearly hotd is so much worse with their increased grooming , sexism and frankly illogical and inconsistent characterisation (that was not in the books). I'm so certain that with how wishy washy they have made alicent they will go with the poisoning theory (to me the show feels like if rhaenyra and her children are in the same danger alicent saves rhaenyra...i guess this may be controversial) and i wish i never got invested in this dumb show. I mean if that is how they conclude everything and if alicent thinks rhaenyra will make a great queen why did she even force aegon to take the throne? He never wanted it. Forcing him also puts helaena and their children in danger. Alicent should have left them to escape and go to essos or something. Maybe helaena convinces aemond and daeron too.

I miss cersei's character who doesn't give a damn about anyone else other than her children and power. She was awesome and after all she went through with robert and tywin she never became as much as a weak character as show!alicent. Both show!rhaenyra and show!alicent cannot hold a candle to cersei(the first and last woman to sit on IT).

Sorry for the rambling, but i feel they should have kept with book alicent age wise ...it would have given less grooming with viserys and otto and i always prefer that. And maybe instead of shipping, people need to focus more on politics.

Always here for the Cersei stanning, but, in all fairness, her goals were much clearer by the nature of the plot - her children are bastards and Robert's only presumed trueborns, she has the means to crown them and she will, otherwise they all die. Whereas the show did a poor job of explaining to the layman why Aegon's claim is superior and why the green children (at least the male ones) are in danger in Rhaenyra took the throne.

That being said, Cersei is her own character and we don't have to clone her every time we need to fill up the Queen spot. I quite liked that they made Alicent distinct, softened her up and gave her internal conflict. Rhaenicent adds a lot to the conversation as a lesbian love story in a medieval setting and subverts the evil stepmother trope. Alicent isn't devoid of a grooming storyline in the books - a highborn girl like her being nursemaid to Old King Jaehaerys is sketchy AF and a honeytrap. Mushroom also says Alicent slept with Viserys before Aemma died. In "The Rogue Prince", it is suggested Daemon deflowered Alicent.

Escaping to Essos has kind of become the go-to solution for everything, but, as Viserys & Daenerys can testify, that doesn't mean they are out of danger, always chased by "the usurper's knives". Saera can live her life in peace because she is a woman with no real claim on the throne; Alicent's trueborn sons? I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Rhaenicent is what would have been if game of thrones supported danyxsansa. For all of its faults I'm so extremely glad that d&d didn't make it happen. It would have destroyed sansas characterisation where she would have willing bowed down to Dany who is a foreign invader who never gave a fuck about the north, starks or even about jon.

There was no reason to make Dany x Sansa happen because they already erased Jon's personality and goals in order for Jonerys to happen. And D&D would not have had the balls to make a major lesbian pairing front & centre of their show either. 🤷‍♀️ Not that I think DxS was desirable in any way lol.