#but you automatically can't notice your own flaws because you literally have the “i am perfect and everyone hates me” disorder

[cringefailroboguy]

While being self aware about having npd has its benefits when it comes to your quality of life, it's still a horrid combination to be stuck in because you can only control your behavior so much, you only know how to deal with what you've already experienced or your attention has been drawn to, the remaining 80% of the time you have no clue that you're doing anything wrong but your friendships are still dropping like flies and you have no idea why but fast forward five years into the future and someone finally brings up ANOTHER issue you've had going on and you're like ahhh. I've never seen that one coming

[wandering-scavenger]

I think in contrast to Show Daenerys, I feel House of Dragons is portraying Rhaenyra as deeply flawed person. I am for it, she actually does get nuance and but at sametime you see where she is leading towards her own downfall both morally and literally.

Hello anon!

I do agree with you to an extent. However, I think it is mostly that Rhaenyra's opponents are given more nuance which allows us to understand that she herself is flawed.

Game of Thrones did portray Daenerys as a flawed person, as early as season 2 we see how her answer to opposition was almost always violence (i.e. threatening the Lords of Qarth that she'd come back to burn them all if they didn't allow her and the Dothrakis to enter) and that she makes promises based on her dreams rather than reality (i.e. asking for their ships to retake Westeros without offering a concrete reward in return for Qarth and having no solid evidence that Westeros was waiting for her return). The thing was, much of Daenerys' journey pit her against characters that the audience didn't care about or even know enough about to be invested in. If I recall, this was a deliberate choice on GRRM's part because of the eventual intention of pitting her against other asoiaf main characters. Because she was pit against slavers, rapers and other supposed men who only wanted for power and riches, she always seemed like the underdog to root for.

However, they even made it explicitly clear in Season 5 that she had issues with her Targaryen exceptionalism and deluded sense of having a moral high ground. This was seen when she was in the fighting pits with Hizdahr debating over the savagery of having men fight to the death for entertainment. Eventually, they come to this exchange:

Daenerys - One day your great city will return to the dirt as well.

Hizdahr - At your command?

Daenerys - If need be.

Hizdahr - And how many people will die to make this happen?

Daenerys - If it comes to that, they will have died for a good reason.

Hizdahr - Those men (the fighters) think they are dying for a good reason.

Daenerys - Someone else's reason.

Hizdahr - So your reasons are true and theirs (the fighters) are false? They don't know they own minds, but you do?

D&D's issue is that once it got to seasons 7-8, they were so invested in the "shock value" of Daenerys burning KL that it came at the cost of actually taking the time to have other characters besides Sansa Stark speak against Daenerys' actions from the start. Even worse, much of the heroes' POVs were always in relation to Daenerys without giving enough emphasis to their personal thoughts and motivations (*cough*jon*cough*), which then painted anyone who opposed her as automatically in the wrong (at least until she burned KL). But the truth is that Daenerys was a deeply flawed person relatively from the start. It was only when she was pit against the Starks that some people actually noticed those flaws and thought "hmm, maybe this isn't okay?" Emphasis on *some* because we still have a massive number of people who think she was done dirty lol.

Rhaenyra is more clearly viewed as a flawed person because the hotd showrunners took care to give nuance and explore the fears and motivations of characters like Alicent and Criston, which I am all for. There's still a ton of people who think she's precious and can do no wrong, who are likely the same people who view her as a proxy for their Daenerys hang up hahaha.

I really thank Condal and Sapochnik for having more respect and care for the hotd characters than D&D ever did for the asoiaf characters.

I can't wait to see how everything continues to unfold. While I sympathize with Alicent and her motivations more, I definitely enjoy Rhaenyra and sympathize with her as well.